Zucks New App, Lizard Men, Zaporizhzhia
211: Global News & Markets Updates
Good morning - hope everyone had a great week post 4th of July — seemed slow as hell on my end with most decision makers and clients out for the rest of the week, expect things to pick up next week. Next week (Monday or Tuesday) I will be dropping a new watch guide “The Best Watches Under $5,000”. Consider upgrading if you’d like full access to the guide — though we will provide a high level outline for all subscribers.
Lots of updates to cover today so let’s get started. If you missed our paid posts this week you can access them below:
Global Markets
Markets have struggled a but in the past week with some chop here and there but nothing super interesting taking place. Most traders and big players wearily eye the Fed for clarity on additional rate hikes right now and some indicators show that the impact of high inflation is starting to really show with consumer demand and the housing market.
It is going to soon be impossible for many people to afford homes in the current environment. But hey — the good news is if you’re filthy rich you can make $50,000 to $60,000 simply parking $1M in 6 month treasuries. The 6 Month Treasury Rate is at 5.54%.
Bill Ackman has said it'll be a 'huge loss' if JPMorgan, J 0.00%↑ PM, CEO Jamie Dimon doesn't run for US president (Unusual Whales)
MW reports there has been a 68% increase in Chapter 11 bankruptcies compared with the year prior.
New unemployment rate has come out at 3.6% down from 3.7%
Binance chief strategy officer Patrick Hillmann has confirmed his departure from the embattled crypto exchange (BlockWorks)
Multichain halts activities and access after a suspected $130M hack
The SEC is set to impose a slate of new rules on money-market mutual funds on July 12, which are meant to prevent the kind of outflows that occurred in March 2020 when the onset of the pandemic roiled markets (UW)
China has imposed action against Alibaba affiliate Ant Group with a $985 million fine for violating various regulations
Unilever has lost over $2.5B in value amid calls to boycott Ben & Jerry’s over a tweet claiming the US only exists “on stolen land”
According to ARK Invest +70% of Bitcoin supply has not moved for over one year, a new record high
According to three individuals familiar with the situation, in March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) conducted a search at the residence of Jesse Powell, a cryptocurrency executive. This action was part of a criminal inquiry into allegations that Powell, the founder of a nonprofit organization, engaged in hacking and cyber-stalking activities (NYT).
Equities remain relatively stable at the moment though they are slightly down with the recent jobs news. I am not adding anything except regular contributions to my dividend/growth account as well as my retirement accounts. I’d like to see some clarity on the Fed’s next move as we wind up the summer months.
Will also be interesting to see the impact on real estate as we move into fall when many severance packages will end and people will be in a tighter position unless they can find new employment.
One crypto I have my eyes on at the moment is $SOL (Solana). Solana was one of the victims of the intense deleveraging and exchange blow ups we saw last year in crypto — and on top of that it saw heavy manipulation from VC firms. But every asset goes through cycles and Solana is beginning to look attractive according to several seasoned crypto vets including Pentoshi on Twitter. Pentoshi had the following to say recently about Solana:
Solana is currently trading around $20.
Broader crypto markets are still digesting the ETF filings and adoption news from the last several weeks though price across major cryptocurrencies has plateaued for the time being.
In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the largest asset manager globally, talked about topics such as bitcoin, cryptocurrency investments, and his company's filing for a spot bitcoin trust exchange-traded fund (ETF). Fink said:
“Also I do believe the role of crypto is digitizing gold in many ways — instead of investing in gold as a hedge against inflation, a hedge against the onerous problems of any one country, or the devaluation of your currency, whatever country you are in. Let’s be clear: Bitcoin is an international asset. It’s not based on any one currency and so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative”
Fink proceeded to comment on how Bitcoin is the equivalent to digital gold and said crypto "could revolutionize finance".
META Launches Threads
You can follow us on Threads now.
On Wednesday, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, introduced its latest social media platform that looks a lot like Twitter called "Threads." According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the platform gained rapid traction, accumulating over 5 million sign-ups within a few hours of its launch. By early afternoon, the user count had surged to over 30 million. Elon Musk has threatened to take legal action alleging that Zuckerberg Used ex Twitter employees to copy Twitter and use proprietary code and information to generate the new platform.
We signed up for Threads against our better judgement — but wanted to lock down the Arbitrage Andy handle so nobody could squat on it.
The app is interesting to say the least — with Zuckerberg and others claiming it is supposed to be a friendly and fun place. It’s obvious that Threads is going to be nothing more than a teletubby sandbox filled with censorship and righting “wrong speak”.
I saw this culture during my time in tech — where we would have meetings weekly to talk about our highs and lows of the week, promote exhausting inclusion for the sake of inclusion, and generally just view the world through rose colored glasses. It’s synthetic, soft, and inherently socialist in it’s vibes — everyone is welcome except those who think wrong and are “negative” or “mean”.
By now I am a seasoned student of big tech’s efforts to shadowban, reach throttle, and censor content that doesn’t fit their agenda or the regime’s approved stances. Our Instagram has been at 250,000 followers for almost 2 years at this point, our first Twitter was shut down by the previous communist regime that colluded with federal agencies to censor information, and we’ve been given countless “strikes” for regular content.
I’m so tired at this point of the gross overreach by big tech re: censorship and honestly I thought most others would be too, but it seems after the last 2 years people are all too eager to voluntarily enter into a new echo chamber where big mean scary “extremists” and “right wing” lunatics are muted in favor for memes about the Kazoo Kid or celebrities, or non offensive bland humor that isn’t at anyone’s expense. It’s an eerie digital world where the arbiters (META) have full control over your data and what you see and think.
Completely synthetic — not to mention Zuck is taking quite literally all of your data.
Once election season rolls around you can rest assured those who spend their time on Threads are going to have a completely different narrative fed to them — one that relies on the tried and true tactic of “fact checking” and overt bias to skew the way the masses think. Check out the SUPER FRIENDLY FUN BELOW!
Lol.
Global News
The big drama this week was the rumor that an explosion or some type of detonation was going to take place at The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine, presumably as a part of a false flag operation by either Russia or the United States to escalate the current conflict and draw in NATO.
This didn’t happen but we’ll cover the basics below in addition to other global news updates.
The discovery of a baggie of cocaine in the White House‘s West Wing has ignited mass speculation and accusations online. Online bookies have favored Hunter Biden, the President’s first son and a recovering drug addict, as the possible culprit — leading online sportsbook BetOnline has given Hunter Biden +170 odds (Insider Paper)
Thursday the 6th of July was the hottest day ever recorded, with global temperature reaching 17.2°C (63°F) (Spectator Index)
Climate activist Greta Thunberg was charged by Swedish prosecutors after refusing to comply with requests from law enforcement officials during a protest in the southern city of Malmo last month (ZH)
President Biden is close to providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite a treaty signed by many allies that bans such weapons. The U.S. is also set to announce yet another $800 million in military aid for Ukraine according to AP
A New York police dog who was stabbed 12 times by a burglary suspect, is now expected to make a full recovery - good boy!
Over 1,000 people were recently arrested in an "Unprecedented" United Kingdom Wide crackdown on Cannabis farms and facilities. From 1,013 raids on large-scale cannabis grows throughout June, nearly 200,000 cannabis plants with an estimated street value of £115-130 million were seized, along with 20 firearms, £636,000 in cash, and 26 kilogrammes of cocaine (ZeroHedge)
This morning there has been a shooting at a mosque in Lebanon. Army forces on site. No word on casualties - Lebanon state news agency (Faytuks News)
The Turkish President said recently “We will not agree to countries joining NATO as long as they open their doors to terrorists” (WarMonitor)
NATO summit to ‘reaffirm’ Ukraine will become future member, Stoltenberg says (Insider Paper)
Former President Trump pledges to ban all “communists and Marxists” from entering the United States (Leading Report)
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station
If you stay up to date on geopolitics you may have heard about the recent drama at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station. If you haven’t heard it goes a little something like this. Many analysts and figureheads online have been suspecting that there is a high chance of. some sort of sabotage event (similar to Nordstream) occuring at the plant in Ukraine.
Since 2022, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, located in southeastern Ukraine, has been held under Russian control, making it the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and one of the world's top 10 in terms of size.
I don’t have to explain the implications of anything happening at this key site — damage to the facility or reactors would strike a similar note to the Chernobyl disaster and would likely be used a s pretext for some escalation in the conflict — either by Russia or the West. As of Friday monitors examining more of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, still not been let on reactor roofs.
Monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency visited more of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on July 5-6, head Rafael Grossi told the press in Japan (Kyiv Independant).
This could be an ACTUAL conspiracy theory but the question is valid — what would happen if something did occur? There are many incentives for both sides to gain from an incident at this facility, chiefly — The West could use it as an excuse to become directly involved in the conflict against Russia.
We will continue to monitor the situation — but we should all be hyper vigilant in the coming weeks and months for events or “accidents” that are leveraged to either escalate or progress the conflict in Ukraine which, on the heels of the failed Wagner coup has become a bit stagnant.
Reptilians Flying in Coach
The internet exploded with speculation and memes recently when a young woman made a scene deboarding a plane and claiming that one of the passengers “wasn’t real”.
Internet threads were swamped with pieces of information surrounding the bizarre event with some people claiming that the man in question was a Lizard Person and some claims his eyes winked to the side and not up and down. The basis of the outburst was allegedly a conversation between the woman and the man in which he was uttering demonic phrases.
Regardless of if you think this Becky was strung out on Xanax and Mimosas or that Reptilian people actually exist this is one of the odder recent occurences online. There’s even a weird video where the guy in question sits in silence with his hoodie over his head.
Watch the video and make up your minds yourselves. We’re also way ahead of the Lizard People timeline with an extensive collection of Lizard People merch on the Arbitrage Andy store.
See you guys next week for our paid post on the best watches under $5,000 USD.
"Only the tiniest fraction of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them they are free."
—Irving Layton