Perspective
How It Changes Despite Looking At The Same Thing
Are the plates upside down? Is one upside down? Are they all right-side up?
I was reminded of that today when my old acquaintance Tony LaPorta (TLP) posted his thoughts about trading in US Treasury bonds. Yesterday, bonds firmed. This Friday is Unemployment, and if the data stinks, bonds will rally higher. Interest rates move inversely to price. Hence, that means lower interest rates. TLP is a chart man. Like
and , he follows the candles in markets to guide decision-making. He’s been doing it for years.I remember trading Eurodollars. I was a spreader. I started in the back months but wound up in the 3rd and 4th option. One day I was ruminating about positioning and just perspective. I thought, you know, those people trading the deferred contracts have a very different perspective than me, and it might be a better one because it was more macro. They were looking at the market with a wider lens.
When I read Tony’s comments, I asked, “Did you check underlying option volatility?” Why? Because if the bonds firmed, and the underlying vol moved in one direction up or down it would be signaling future sentiment. A move up in volatility would indicate that the market expected a big move on Friday. A move down would be a nothing burger.
It occurred to me that options traders have a wider perspective than back-month futures traders. They see everything. Their lens is a lot different.
The same can be said for American politics these last many years. People loved Obama. I was one of those who said he was diametrically opposed to American values and the ideas of free, transparent, and open government. Since the $DOGE boys have been plugging away, all of us on that side of the opinion aisle were proven correct. Obama didn’t care about America. He cared about lining the pockets of his cronies, using taxpayer dollars to destabilize governments, and following up by installing a hard leftist agenda. It was Bill Ayers 101 and Ayers was Obama’s mentor.
When Trump was impeached for the Ukraine phone call. People told me Trump was using the power of political office to undermine rivals. Yesterday we learned from Michael Shellenberger that not only was Trump “having a perfect phone” call but Democrats and the alphabet soup of US government intelligence agencies engineered a soft coup against him. The point man in Congress was Adam Schiff.
Shellenberger writes:
USAID's defenders say it's about charity and development in poor nations. It's not. It's a $40 billion driver of regime change abroad. And now the evidence suggests that it, along with the CIA, were behind the 2019 impeachment of Trump — an illegal regime change effort at home.
He has the receipts to prove it.
We have learned that Covid came from a lab. We learned because of the Patriot Act, the CIA was engaged in spying on the American people. (Repeal the Patriot Act, along with Dodd-Frank, and Obamacare) We learned men can’t menstruate or have babies. We learned Biden couldn’t even take a meeting. We learned the border could be closed. We saw how 60 Minutes doctored an interview with VP Harris. We learned Mitch McConnell is physically unfit to be in office. Who knows how many other elderly legislators are the same? I suspect a lot.
In the last two weeks since Trump took the oath of office America has been exposed to radical transparency. Lie after lie from 2008 on has been exposed and will continue to be exposed. The family business is starting to be settled.
Will those on the left be convinced? Or will they dig their heels in? Instead of reading the receipts and understanding how absolutely corrupt our government is, they are worried about a corporate takeover of the American government. They are shooting the messengers.
$84 million to Chelsea Clinton. Billions upon billions to entities controlled by Uniparty politicians so they could funnel money to their cronies.
As Dana Loesch aptly put it on X:
Why the hell should anyone pay taxes again after the criminal way our government has stolen from us to fund Democrat campaigns and gun control? You Republicans better get a big set of brass balls and abolish the IRS in addition to every agency not authorized under Art 1 Sec 8.
Answer, they should not. Only pay tax on what you consume.
$DOGE has uncovered just over a trillion in profligate spending and they are still working. Wait until they get to the mandatory spending items in the budget.
Oh, and those plates. Here is the answer. Instead of “social media”, you might just shorten it to “media”. Ironically, because X has community notes, it becomes the place to find the ultimate truth.
Just wait’ll you see the flowcharts of USAID grants to charities of Members of Congress trickling down to paying the charities officer salaries whom just happen to be sitting Members of Congress. DAI is a great example.
The caterwauling and handwringing will soon lead to the required “rending of garments”, if I have my Shakespeare right.
This is a very, very old Play (Noh, anyone?). We’ve had our finale of Act I (Xiden). Act II is moving quickly, leave your seat and you’ll miss something just by standing up!
Oh, and if all of DJT’s actions of the last two weeks haven’t been the single greatest deflationary period of the U.S. since just following the Japanese surrender of WW2, I’m not sure what could be. Maybe the end of the Cold War, but as we now know, totally hijacked in Iraq, and Iraq2.0. And almost isolationist in its deflation, I might add.
Corn should be limit bid from all the popcorn demand.
The Democrats have clearly stated in the past week their intentions with selecting poster child for the simp movement, David Hogg, as the Vice Chair for the DNC, and Hakeem Jeffries telling people to take the fight to the streets.
They have not learned anything from the election.
I just keep smiling and know that they are self-destructing and heading toward, if they keep this up, a veritable bloodbath in the 2026 midterms.
Also love The Godfather reference.
Transparency is a beautiful thing when you are doing the right thing and exposing the wrong one.