What a turnaround today! But that was not a surprise for us as we discussed the possibility at my pre-opening note to my DW Family.
There is a strong possibility that we may see a good year-end rally, or Santa Claus Rally. So the current gyration is setting up the stage for this to happen. Having said that, what is coming after that in 2026 is still a big question. Here is an interesting chart posted by Charlie Bilello.
First of all, what a turnaround Friday! S&P declined over 80 points during the day, down all the way to around 6630ish then rebounded later of the day. It has actually closed in green, comfortably above the 6700 level. If it can still manage to maintain the bullish turnaround next Monday, then I believe the current mini-correction is likely done and it is poised for the year-end rally.
New Yorkers have "bravely" chosen a communist to run their city for the next 4 years. Sure, the guy sounded like "妈妈打你“ has made numerous empty promises but all just slogans than anything doable. Here is a great write-up about what is coming to the New Yorkers. It is certainly not beautiful but that's what the NY residents want to have. However brutal the prospect may be, those who have chosen him deserve it!! Good luck, New Yorkers😏
The Socialist Sandbox
Mamdani’s campaign rests on a single, seductive promise: to make New York “affordable again.” It’s a lovely slogan—until you realize he plans to achieve it through rent freezes, free services, and taxes that would make even Lenin check his calculator. His plan is a greatest-hits album of progressive wishful thinking.
He’s called for a citywide rent freeze—no more rent hikes for stabilized units, and the construction of 200,000 new “affordable” apartments in ten years. He wants to rezone affluent neighborhoods to require inclusionary housing, strengthen tenant protections, and impose new restrictions on landlords.
But as anyone who has studied housing economics knows, rent control doesn’t solve shortages—it causes them. From Stockholm to Paris, from Berlin to NYC, every experiment in price-fixing has led to fewer new developments, deteriorating buildings, and black markets for apartments. Economists can’t agree on much, but on this they do: rent control is a disaster dressed as compassion.
Mamdani also wants to make buses entirely free of charge. In his world, the MTA’s hemorrhaging budget will somehow balance itself. Kansas City tried this. Ridership increased, but service quality declined. Tallinn, Estonia, flirted with it and quietly walked away when the math no longer worked. There’s no such thing as a free ride—someone always pays, and in this case, it’s the taxpayer.
Mamdani has promised universal childcare and pre-K, funded by his new taxes on “the rich.” The idea sounds noble—who doesn’t want parents to catch a break?—but the track record is grim. Quebec’s “universal childcare” system was overwhelmed by demand, plagued by waitlists, and chronically underfunded. Stockholm’s version became a bureaucratic maze. Even New York’s existing pre-K expansion under Bill de Blasio nearly bankrupted parts of the education budget.
Then there’s the pièce de résistance: city-owned grocery stores. One in every borough, operated by the government, to “bring down food prices.” The phrase alone is a red flag—literally. When cities dabble in retail, the results are predictable: theft, inefficiency, politics, and loss. Chicago’s 2023 attempt collapsed under the weight of its good intentions. The state-run supermarkets of Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union ended up with empty shelves and long lines. Bureaucrats make poor grocers.
And of course, someone has to pay for all this. Mamdani’s answer is simple: millionaires and corporations. He wants to soak the rich, hike business taxes, and wring Wall Street for cash. The problem is that golden geese can fly. New York has already lost about ten percent of its millionaire households since 2020. If Mamdani wins, Florida’s real-estate agents may send him flowers.
Mamdani wants to replace portions of the NYPD with a “Department of Community Safety,” staffed by social workers and therapists. In theory, this might work for minor calls. In practice, we’ve seen it fail from Portland to Minneapolis. Crime rises, response times worsen, and the same citizens who demanded reform end up begging for the old system to be reinstated.
Lastly, there’s his climate justice agenda, which includes green schoolyards, electrified buildings, and sustainable retrofits. Admirable goals, but they cost money—and New York City already has a $13 billion capital backlog. The city can’t fill potholes fast enough as it is.
Where It’s All Failed Before
Berlin’s rent controls collapsed under their own contradictions; the government reversed them after construction froze.
Free public transportation in Tallinn fizzled when subsidies outpaced revenue.
Venezuela’s “Bolivarian supermarkets” went bare within months.
France’s millionaire tax has driven its wealthiest citizens to London and Brussels; this year, London’s inheritance tax grab has prompted nearly 10,000 millionaires to relocate to places like Milan, Dubai, and the United States.
Minneapolis’s “defund the police” experiment ended with a surge in violent crime and a quiet refunding of the department.
Mamdani insists New York can do it better. But the laws of economics aren’t suspended at the Hudson River.
Why I Want Him to Win Anyway
Here’s the paradox: I want him to win precisely because I think he’ll fail. The problem with ideology is that it thrives in the abstract. When the slogans meet the spreadsheets, reality does the grading. If Mamdani loses, his ideas remain myths—untested, unblemished, endlessly romantic. But if he wins, he’ll face the one test socialists always dread: implementation.
That’s the real value here. Let Mamdani try. If he shows us whether a city already drowning in debt and bureaucracy can somehow afford free transit, childcare, and groceries without driving the rich and productive to flee for warmer, freer shores, I’ll be the first to applaud. But if he doesn’t, his loss will be educational—not just for New York, but for every American city tempted by the siren song of socialism.
Mr. Market’s Judgment
Before Mamdani finishes his experiment, the markets will move… at the speed of capital flight.
If he wins, commercial property values are likely to drop as investors hedge against higher levies and increased regulation. Upper-income households will emigrate, whether they’re blue or red voters. Municipal bond spreads will widen as risk premiums rise. Private investment will follow the same path it has for years—out of New York, and into Florida, Texas, and Tennessee.
The silver lining is that Mr. Market is a ruthless teacher. He’ll administer the lesson faster and more brutally than any election cycle ever could.
Sean Ring
Share a few interesting data points that speak loudly about the crazy complacency of the market.
Markets don’t punish greed; they punish complacency. The most dangerous words in investing are still “this time is different,” and the illusion of a risk-free market is just another version of that fallacy.
What a bloody day! For those who have ignored numerous warning signs and kept chasing highs regardless, I'm sure they should have felt the max pain today with a 2% sudden mini-crash for the market. Of course, one day move does not make a trend and we will have to see what is coming next. For the immediate future, meaning early next week, I feel the chance is high for a quick bounce. If so, we will probably see the same group of people starting to chase again. So the following quote is a very nice reminder for them.
But by no means I imply that the current bull market has already done. We are probably just entering the enthusiasm phase of the Sentiment Cycle at the grand scale of things. An eventual blow-up and melt-up top may still be many months away. Having said that, I still believe that a sizable correction is due for the weeks ahead before we see the more sustainable next leg up.
Now about the bullish trend for gold and Bitcoin. Below is an analysis my friend shared with me. It is exciting to see that both assets as a store of value are breaking out strongly to the upside. Looks like gold may face a near-term correction but Bitcoin is likely just resuming its next major leg up. I think the chance is high that Bitcoin will end the year between $150K to $200K.
But if history is any guide, when gold breaks out like it has this year – bitcoin’s breakout isn’t far behind. And as bitcoin goes, so go the altcoins. |
We saw that happen in 2020 and 2024.This chart below shows the price action of bitcoin and gold during the 2020 pandemic outbreak. |
During the initial panic, gold rallied first. But once the market realized governments would crank up the money printer and flood the economy with liquidity… bitcoin took off. From September 2020 to April 2021, it rallied 543%.
Something similar happened in 2024 as well.
While the overall market is quite overheated at the moment, subject to a quick correction in the near term, at the macroeconomic level, don't be fooled by the latest headline news that we are heading to a recession.
As a matter of fact, as we head into 2026, Wall Street expects corporate earnings to increase sharply, which can only occur if the economy re-accelerates. Yesterday's strong GDP reading also proved this!
All the major economic forces are converging to push a rather robust economic cycle under the Trump administration, which should be great for the market as well in the long run. We are going to have a downward trend of the interest rate, along with a stable inflation, very friendly de-regulation and very pro-economic polices coming together. Indeed, getting ready for a bright golden era in the next few years.
Share Musk's master plan, the boldest plan of humanity up to now. I'm proud of having my skin in four of his five ventures. I'm closely following his plan and hope someday in my life we may have a chance to witness some of his master plan being materialized!!
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Over a year ago, we connected some dots that some others had noticed too…
Musk’s ventures—cars, tunnels, satellites, brain chips—aren’t one man’s attempt to do everything.
Instead, they’re one guy’s attempt to do just one thing.
Once you see it, it becomes obvious. It’s not like he’s been quiet about it, either. It’s just that it sounds too big for most people to take seriously.
So we nod when he says “multiplanetary,” then go back to scrolling.
But he wasn’t joking.
He’s laying the pipes for a second civilization.
Allow me to explain. And show how 2025 hasn’t broken the pattern—it’s only extended it, proof that Musk’s projects keep compounding into one massive, unstoppable trend.
One Goal. Six Pipes.
The story used to be that Elon Musk was running five different companies.
Cars. Rockets. X Corp. Brain chips. Tunnels.
Now he’s added an AI lab with the biggest GPU cluster on Earth. And, at the same time, the old story is fading.
Today, if you look at 2025 in the right light, you can see it’s not five or six companies.
Musk has one company. One vertical stack.
And the product isn’t a car or a chatbot.
It’s Mars.
Starship: The Real Product Demo
In May, Musk casually announced he’d try to send five unmanned Starships to Mars in 2026. No people.
He called it a “50/50 chance.”
And no, this isn’t just talk.
At Cape Canaveral’s LC-39A, SpaceX has been pouring the flame trench, plumbing the tank farm, and wiring up the Starship pad—they could be ready as soon as late 2025 (though mid-2026 is more realistic).
Meanwhile, the FAA signed off on an environmental review that allows up to 25 Starship launches per year from South Texas, clearing the way for a much faster cadence (subject to licensing).
Humans haven’t landed on another world since Apollo 17 in 1972. If Musk hits his 2026 window, the first footprints back won’t be human—they’ll be robotic.
Tesla: Infest Space With Robots
When Musk lands Starship on Mars, guess who steps out first? Not human astronauts. But not nobody.
Optimus.
Musk says Optimus will be 80% of Tesla’s value.
Eight-zero.
And a good chunk of that value will come from his newest company, xAI.
You know, the one that built the world’s largest supercomputer in a Memphis warehouse—122 days from zero to “Colossus.” Fully stocked with over two hundred thousand Nvidia GPUs.
For reference, OpenAI’s GPT-4 training run was rumored to use ~25,000 GPUs. Colossus has 8 times that. It’s enough horsepower to train multiple frontier models at once, or retrain a GPT-class model in weeks instead of months.
And the AI it produced—Grok 4—is, by many metrics (according to standard benchmarks), “the smartest AI in the world.”
That same AI is now running inside Tesla’s robots and even powering Starlink’s customer service. That same AI will be helping to run the Mars mission.
And speaking of Starlink…
Starlink: Mars Already Filed
By August, SpaceX had 8,000 satellites in orbit. Six million people are paying for Starlink on Earth.
But buried in a 2024 filing was the master plan: a Marslink constellation. A handful of satellites orbiting Mars, shooting data back to Earth.
And maybe from a Neuralink…
Neuralink put brain chips in five humans this year. They can shop online and move cursors just by thinking.
On Earth, it’s framed as a disability aid. On Mars, it’s something else: teleoperation.
Imagine teleoperating an Optimus from the safety of a dome while it builds a solar farm outside in minus-80 degrees.
That’s not sci-fi anymore. That’s a feature in beta.
The Boring Company: Practice Tunneling Mars
Radiation is brutal on Mars.
The short-term solution? Live underground.
Conveniently, his tunneling company is now showing autonomous tunnel-boring machines that don’t need humans inside.
This year, they signed deals to dig in Dubai and Nashville. Every mile of tunnel dug on Earth is practice for carving out habitats under Martian soil.
Connecting the Dots
So let’s add it up.
It looks scattered. But it’s not.
It’s a stack. A single machine with many moving parts.
And the output isn’t an app or a car or even a rocket. The output is a city on Mars.
In 2025, Musk updated the plan without saying it out loud.
Every move—from the Memphis supercomputer to Optimus demos to FAA launch permits—shows the mission is still Mars.
The craziest part?
It all seems to be going according to plan.
Chris Campbell
