Friday Thoughts
Trading on the Road / Review of the Macro Week
I have been checking in only a couple of times a day over the past week, and it seems I haven’t missed much. We have seen the ECB hike rates (see Macro D’s section and interpretation). Of course, as far as geopolitics is concerned, we have seen renewed escalation and now, presumably, another “deal” that is getting very close just as Trump “cancelled” another attack. I can not wait. Let’s remind ourselves of all the “deals” we have been promised but have yet to be completed.
The beauty of being on the road and in a different time zone is that time shrinks, and trading decisions are less frequent. My week has been very profitable, as the shorts in Gold paid off nicely, and, thanks to the reversal signal, I was able to monetise them in a timely manner. Similarly, there was a reversal in the DAX and US Treasury futures that I was able to turn into holiday money. This is a trading market, not much to do with traditional macro (yet).
Then, of course, we have the hyped up SpaceX IPO coming down the pipe. I have never bought an IPO in my lifetime. This time will be no different. It will be on my radar, but at these valuations, boy, you will have to think twice. 1.77 trillion against 18.7bn of 2025 revenue and a 4.2bn operating loss — for context, the smallest of the nine existing trillion-dollar companies by revenue is Micron at 58bn. That's ~95x trailing sales, with revenue growing 33% and all operating profit coming from Starlink while the rocket division loses money. The SpaceX IPO alone is raising more than all US IPOs combined in 2024 and 2025.
Is it the market top? Nobody knows, of course, but there are some historical precedents. Let’s have a look.
BP privatisation, Oct 1987 — priced days before Black Monday; underwriters carried the loss.
The 1999–2000 cohort (theglobe.com, Pets.com et al., plus the AOL–Time Warner deal, Jan 2000) — within weeks of the March 2000 Nasdaq peak.
Blackstone, Jun 2007 — the smart money selling itself to the public four months before the equity top.
Glencore, May 2011 — almost to the day, the top of the commodities supercycle.
Aramco, Dec 2019 — the previous record-holder, listed within months of what may prove peak oil-demand psychology and the COVID crash.
Coinbase, Apr 2021 — Bitcoin peaked the day of the direct listing, then halved. Rivian (Nov 2021) did the same for the speculative-growth complex, top-ticking it within a week.
A reminder that subscribers now have access to the full suite of tools, all housed in our dedicated site at pa-globalmacro.com. I would recommend the “how-to guide” to get started. There are daily dashboard updates and signals straight to your inboxes. In addition, we have the entire chart book printed daily (covering more than 200 securities), the newly launched sector map, and a daily performance run of our buy-and-hold portfolio. It’s all there, and there is more to come.
Macro D is sharing his latest macro thoughts and central bank analysis below. He has been holding the fort while I’m away and has published the June series of the Macro FX trade corner (wee below), presenting 7 new trades.
Have a wonderful weekend. The FIFA World Cup has started. Usually, I’m getting excited for it, but not this time. Not sure why that is. Rest assured, I will be observing markets from afar and will update subscribers on any notable market shift that catches my attention. Oh yes, Trumpy-boy is turning 80 on Sunday. What surprise does he have in store for us all? You can say what you want, but it won’t be boring for sure.
