Growth Minus the Barrels

Charlie Bilello counts the US bond market six years into a drawdown he calls the longest on record, which is a different fact from the yield and a more useful one, because a level can be argued with and a six-year loss is a schedule. Read most of what follows as one position wearing different costumes. Bitcoin's three-month futures basis has paid less than a two-year note since February, so the institutional bid that was sold to everyone as adoption is leaving on arithmetic rather than on conviction; the covered-barge fleet that carries American grain to the Gulf is the oldest on record and is not being replaced, with hot-rolled steel plate up 23 percent off its February 2025 bottom and financing expensive; and SpaceX's $60 billion all-stock purchase of Cursor gets more expensive to its own shareholders every time the stock falls, with the extra paper landing in the same week its lockup opens. A carry trade is a strategy while funding is free and an inventory problem afterward, and inventory resolves on a calendar rather than on a thesis. Watch Thursday August 6, when roughly 911.5 million SpaceX shares become tradable two days after the company's first public earnings report, because it is the nearest date on which one of these positions has to find a real buyer.