Jesse Felder

These Presidents Found Out How Trying to Control the Fed Chair Can Backfire President Trump thinks his new chair can deliver low interest rates. Three presidents in the past learned otherwise.

Trump picked a Fed chair he thinks he can count on.

Three presidents thought the same thing. None got what they expected.

The ghosts of Burns, Miller, and Martin (not to mention Powell) loom over Trump’s choice of Kevin Warsh. www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

“.. a simple chart of large cap US energy companies. In the words of a client who has been-there-and-done-that, we’re moving into the ‘revenge of the dinosaurs’ phase of the game now.”

- GS desk $XLE

Here Comes $10 Gasoline Retail gasoline prices could rise to $10, just as we warned in our 2022 book Inflation.

‘In the past hundred years, whenever a currency’s value fell significantly vs. gold (in other words, it took more currency to buy gold, or “the gold price went up”), signs of “monetary inflation” erupted soon afterwards. This is what happened in 1973.‘ www.forbes.com/sites/nathan...

‘Big tech’s dramatic ramp-up in projected capex this year will all but wipe out free cash flow for Amazon, Google and Meta Platforms. That will force some of those companies to make some difficult choices such as whether to end stock buybacks or borrow more.’ www.theinformation.com/articles/cap...

The paradigm has shifted. Time to update your priors.

Another Changing Of The Guard Below are some of the most interesting things I came across this week. Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and get this post delivered to your inbox each Saturday morning. STAT Histo...

NEW POST: Another Changing Of The Guard thefelderreport.com/2026/02/07/a...

​​The Two Minutes That Made Traders Lose Faith in the Gas Market From an erroneous trading halt to speculation about “banging the close,” the US gas market is showing signs of strain

‘Natural gas has grown extremely volatile as US liquefied natural gas exports and the artificial intelligence boom supercharge demand.’ www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A Tech Bust Gave Way to a Broader Rally. What Comes Next Could Be Ugly. Well before the past week’s gyrations, the stock market’s character already had undergone a significant transformation, one that resembled what followed the dot-com boom at the end of the last century...

“A similar pattern emerged in 2000. After Tech peaked in March of that year, Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Healthcare rallied about 40% to 45%, even as Tech and Communications slumped 51.8% and 39.4%, respectively.” www.barrons.com/articles/tec...

’Big Tech’s AI push is bigger than the railroad expansion of the 1850s, the Apollo space program that put astronauts on the moon in the 1960s and the decadeslong build-out of the U.S. interstate highway system that ended in the 1970s.’ www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-s...

‘The era of tech buybacks has ended.’ www.dailychartbook.com/p/850 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social

‘The Mag Seven topped out vs the energy sector in December of 2025, at the same level it did back in October of 2020, when $XLE bottomed and ran 250% over the next two years.’ www.dailychartbook.com/p/850 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social

“Energy funds see 2nd biggest weekly inflow ever.” www.dailychartbook.com/p/850 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social

'Across three AI companies where we have data (Anthropic, Minimax and Z.ai), compute accounts for more than salaries, marketing, and all other spending combined. Across all three, expenses were 2-3x larger than revenues.' epochai.substack.com/p/in-both-ch...

'The AI capex spending multiple has collapsed and gone negative.' paulkedrosky.com/chart-of-the...

‘Solid tech earnings mask a more concerning trend emerging: returns on invested capital among hyperscalers are starting to decline.’ blinks.bloomberg.com/news/stories...

‘The job-opening rate for finance workers reached 2% in December, the lowest since the survey began 15 years ago. In professional and business services, openings were at the lowest since April 2020, the early days of the pandemic.’ blinks.bloomberg.com/news/stories...

A widening gap between the VIX and individual S&P 500 stock volatility suggests stress may be spreading stock-by-stock, not just at the index—appearing near Nasdaq 100 highs.

We break down what it could mean in the February Financial Forecast. tinyurl.com/44w5tbzs

‘Buybacks have been a major source of equity demand in recent years. But now, the landscape has shifted again as the biggest companies in the market started opt to spend their money on AI. And so companies themselves are no longer acting as volatility dampeners.’ www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

The cautionary tale of gold and silver Precious metals mania is just one area of excess in the financial system

'It is important to keep in mind that the precious metals mania is just one extreme area of excess in the financial system. In cryptocurrency, private capital and indeed the current AI-fuelled stock market boom, periods of spectacular gains should act as red flags.’ www.ft.com/content/0397...

"Higher capex telegraphs that it may take longer for AI strategies to play out. Not welcome news for investors that are already fixated on when AI-related revenue will start to show up.” www.ft.com/content/0e7f...

B of A: “.. THIS IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST INFRASTRUCTURE/INVESTMENT THEMES OF OUR LIFETIME. Inflation adjusted.”

AI Has Turned Bernie and DeSantis Into Unlikely Allies Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis don’t agree on much, but the data-center boom is a rare exception. Vermont’s Democratic Socialist senator and Florida’s right-wing governor want to slam the brakes on t...

‘Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis don’t agree on much but the data-center boom is a rare exception. Vermont’s Democratic Socialist senator and Florida’s right-wing governor want to slam the brakes on the hundreds of new AI facilities springing up across the country.’ www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Crypto-Hoarding Firms Pose Fresh Threat to Market After Selloff Crypto-hoarding treasury companies, which helped turbocharge a digital-asset rally in last year’s first nine months, are now at risk of sparking market contagion as selling pressure mounts.

“For DATs with no revenue, no operating business, and no way to exit their treasury positions without destroying the market for those positions, the drawdown is existential. We call this the Hotel California trade: You can check in, but you can’t check out.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘Inflation pressures are building, driven by higher wages, higher commodity prices and a weaker dollar.’ www.apolloacademy.com/inflation-ou...

‘The volume of leveraged loans to software companies considered distressed doubled in January. And the recent examples of private loans held near cost that were marked down dramatically shortly thereafter might have investors in a doubtful frame of mind.’ www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

‘We are now up to 8 Hindenburg Omen signals over the past six months, which is a pretty high reading.‘ www.mcoscillator.com/learning_cen...

‘Software makes up 13% of the Morningstar LSTA U.S. Leveraged Loan Index. The sector makes up an even larger percentage of private-credit loans made by asset managers directly to companies, with estimates putting the share at around 20% to a third of those loans.’ www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

‘Expressed in ounces of gold, the price of oil is near a record low.’ thedailyshot.com/2026/02/06/j... via @thedailyshot.bsky.social

'A weaker dollar will reduce the weight of American assets in global indices, forcing benchmark-hugging investors to sell them. That will further weaken the greenback, feeding a vicious cycle.' www.economist.com/finance-and-...

Sam Altman Is Spiraling OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared on X that he thinks Anthropic's ads are "funny" — before posting a lengthy screed about how they're unfair.

‘Altman’s frustration perfectly illustrates how AI companies have driven themselves into a corner. Either they can charge a hefty monthly fee to cut their losses and reassure investors or scare away users through annoying ads.‘ futurism.com/artificial-i...