Tough to keep farming $POLY while the crypto market is ripping. But sticking to the plan of farming until the snapshot 📸 Top 100 before snapshot 🙏

What actually makes the stock market go up and down? I was chatting with friends who were frustrated with the market's resilience despite what they viewed as adverse datapoints. There has been tremendous confusion over the market's recent action, and in an attempt to organize my own thoughts about it, I went through the exercise of breaking it down to its underlying drivers. At the most foundational level, equities are obviously driven by earnings times multiples. Earnings are straightforward and driven by factors such as broader economic conditions and the performance of the underlying business. Multiples are more complex to unpack but I posit they are a function of liquidity conditions flows. Liquidity conditions are driven by central banks, fiscal stimulus, the movement of liquidity between the real economy and financial assets (the demand for liquidity, see my pinned post), market-based elements (such as DXY and the MOVE index), market plumbing, and other factors. Flows can be broken down between passive and discretionary flows. The boom in passive flows have been one of the biggest changes in the market during my lifetime, and have radically changed the way the indices trade. If you look back at market history, you will see that significant declines in the indices were much more common in the past. Part of that comes from the will of the free market once being more dominant, and since the GFC, factors such as the Fed put and direct government management of the market becoming a greater force. The reality is that the stock market has become the economy, and the government has a massive incentive to find ways to manage it higher. The other main change has been passive flows. Today true passive flows like 401ks are roughly $2-3bn in flows per day on average, while corporate buybacks are another $2-3bn per day (outside of the blackout window). This is an incredible tailwind that shifts the odds of market performance towards being long, and this has correspondingly affected market participant behavior significantly. Ironically, the least sophisticated normies seem to have absorbed this lesson to the greatest degree (perma long index). So once you factor in these market tailwinds, it takes a greater proportion of discretionary flows to make the market go down. Discretionary flows are driven by psychology. Yet this psychology is also heavily influenced by the passive flows, since they make the index a comfy hold. You can argue this is like the bell curve meme, where the left curve simplistically believes stocks only go up, while the right curve understands passive and the reflexive impact of those flows on psychology as synergistically driving an environment where it is EV to staying long most of the time. I am saying this partially in jest, and personally find it difficult to stay perma long equities, despite understanding these dynamics intellectually. So this is a reminder for myself as much as it is sharing this view with you all. What drives psychology? Greed and fear. Yet more so than greed, what seems to be driving the market currently is fear, but not fear of the potential economic impact of the war and shortages caused by an extended blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. No, the real fear is of being sidelined through a painful rally like last year. That incident deeply imprinted market participants. We did have some real fear of the blockade, but at the first hint of Trump showing a willingness to deal, psychology firmly shifted over to fear of being sidelined. The reality is that the market is allowing itself to be trained, like a snake charmer with a king cobra. The market is believing more and more in Trump's ability to jawbone the market higher, and as people throw in the towel and stop fighting it, it becomes a progressively more powerful force. It's memetic consensus at its finest. Everyone agrees that Trump can manipulate the market up, and because they believe it, the markets respond accordingly. Now with the market having gotten over its prior fear of Hormuz and the war, I question whether going back to the prior state of play pre-negotiations, would have the same ability to drive fear. The market has become de-sensitized and would require much greater intensity to get back to the same level. We saw the same thing with tariffs and Covid once the initial fever broke. Yet despite everything I've just said, I'm having trouble being balls long here. So I have been gradually buying favored single stocks and trying to reduce the number of decisions I'm making. I often find commodities easier to trade than equity indices because they are a pure distillation of supply and demand. In commodities you can get a trending market when there is a clear supply shortage and inelastic buyers, and these conditions can persist for an extended period of time. The game becomes more about finding hidden sources of demand and supply, and understanding how they are impacted at various price levels. When a commodity market doesn't do what you expect, it always boils down to misunderstanding the actual levels of supply and demand, and the embedded reaction functions. However I don't see many home runs in commodities at the moment. Usually great opportunities only come around a couple times a year at best. So in the meantime I believe that grinding out single stocks is the best place to play.

Great overview of 2025 TGEs by @mementoresearch and @ahboyash. The takeaway is brutal: most tokens launched this year are down bad from TGE. And not slightly down. We’re talking 60–90% drawdowns across the board. This applies to obscure launches like $SYND, $XTER or $YALA just as much as to some of the most anticipated TGEs like $BERA, $TOWNS or $XAN. The reasons are not hard to identify: Overinflated launch valuations, absurd sell pressure from massive exchange listing fees, and "free money" airdrops handed out to people who clicked a few buttons or posted a couple of tweets. Add to that the near-total lack of fundamentals or revenue behind many of these launches, often paired with products no one actually needs. The combination of these factors sent tokens into free fall, with little to no organic demand underneath. What’s even more concerning is that the few tokens showing decent performance on paper are often more illusion than reality. Some of the top performers like $ASTER, $ESPORTS or $COAI are well-known BNB Chain insider projects. Prices are propped up artificially while the vast majority of supply is tightly controlled, and wash trading creates the appearance of demand, especially on Pancake Swap and Binance Alpha. Sure, good for those who caught these at TGE and made some money. But these projects are rarely sustainable, and they do nothing to meaningfully improve overall TGE performance. If we want token launches to become sustainable again, several things need to change: 1) Expectations in crypto need to normalize. The community shouldn’t expect billions in free money for low-effort participation. Founders don’t need to raise tens of millions at the seed stage. Investors shouldn’t expect 100x returns at launch. And exchanges shouldn’t think they deserve double-digit percentages of token supply just for listing an ERC-20. 2) We need to think longer-term. It is not normal to invest in a startup and expect liquidity or meaningful returns within 1–2 years. Many token projects fail because they launch too early. Their fundamentals have no time to grow into their valuations, prices collapse, and a downward spiral begins. Trust is lost, attention moves on, and projects never recover. 3) Valuations must come back to reality. A major driver here is tIeR oNe vCs that raised far too much capital and now feel pressured to deploy billions into early-stage startups. To fit larger checks, valuations get pushed up, markup rounds are engineered, and paper returns are manufactured. Founders often get blinded by the money and the runway, while missing the second-order effects this inevitably has on their token launch. 4) We need better ways to favor long-term supporters over extractors. Stop allocating massive token chunks to CEXs, airdrop farmers, short-term investors, and KOLs with no long-term conviction. They will dump and move on, and recovering from that is extremely hard. 5) Stop playing games the market already understands. Low-float, high-FDV tokenomics, wash trading, and artificial market-making strategies don’t work anymore. The space is too mature to be fooled by this. 6) Either commit fully to your token, or don’t launch one at all. I’m very black and white on this. Stop pretending tokens have utility while all real value accrues to the equity entity. Tokens need to be treated as equity, either directly or indirectly. The founders who truly understand this tend to avoid most of the mistakes above, because they treat their token as the most precious asset they have, not as funny money printed out of thin air. There are probably many more points to add, but this post is long enough already. If you have good additions, feel free to share them in the comments. I hope these thoughts help, whether you’re an investor, a founder, or simply a crypto enthusiast. If we want positive momentum to return to token launches, a lot needs to change. And the most important takeaway is simple: It’s on us. The faster more people realize this and stop playing short-term extraction games, the faster the space can heal. Ironically, long-term compounding would make all of us far richer than these games ever will, but too many people still think in the time horizon of a mayfly.

Very happy with the way I played these. Identified the fair value discrepancy early and held through the volatility. Will finish off the year with some bonds that don't require much input over the holidays and get back into it in the new year.

Now firmly back in the green after a rocky start on Polymarket

In a couple of hours these Epstein release markets are expected to resolve yes on Polymarket. Started smashing YES on these as soon as they were posted. Here's a good tip, some of the most profitable markets are when you can get conspiracy theorists on the other side to you.

Didn't know Xi Jinping followed the crypto markets

They are starting to believe. This will be a nice win to end out the year

Another day, another free money Epstein market on Polymarket. This time we can make 123% APY by betting no on Epstein blackmail evidence released in 2025. The FBI reviewed the files and confirmed there was no evidence Epstein engaged in blackmail. The price is likely being propped up by conspiracy theorists

The best thing about this market is that someone at @Polymarket had to carefully consider how to write the rules to avoid any ambiguity over a non-qualifying sex tape

The Epstein client list market was an interesting one. Saw it as soon as it went up and managed to build a decent position around 87c after doing a bit of research, which indicated that by all accounts the infamous "client list" doesn't actually exist! The FBI reviewed the Epstein files and said there was no such thing contained in the documents. No-one else except conspiracy theorists claim that it exists. Literally free money. Still a decent APY for the next few weeks at 95c as well.

Have taken a big yes position on Trump releasing the Epstein files for both the Dec 19th, and the Dec 31st markets. imo there is a big mispricing on these markets as people aren't really aware of the effect of the bill that Trump signed, or they are conspiracy theorists who think the government would never release the documents. True the DOJ may use some loopholes to block release of some of the files, such as the active investigation Trump ordered. But their ability to do so is limited to documents relevant to the investigation, not the whole casefile. In addition Trump is already taking a lot of heat over the Epstein files, he knows it would be massively damaging to his approval rating if we reached the deadline and nothing was released. Great opportunity here to those that do the research on this market.

Saylors trapped bruv, he's selling shares to keep the ponzi going. Mnav is never getting back above 1.0 trust me lad

November was a pretty decent month for me. Did well on the Nov 4th elections and on the geopolitical front by fading the Venezuela and Ukraine outcomes. Looking forward to December with the Google Year in Search, Spotify, and end of year markets to trade. Feel a lot more in tune with how to value and trade after my rough start in September and October. Goal is to get back in the green by the end of the year 🫡

You can just bet on things that are guaranteed not to happen. Trump said Liz Cheney should face a firing squad...there is zero chance he is invited to the funeral 2 days till this resolves in my favour

The effect that Trump has had on Polymarket can't be overstated.