“Any bodies floating to the surface yet?” I asked the team, all of us on an investment call, discussing markets, the relentless selling in crypto. “How about the basis, any signs of funding stress bubbling up, leverage unwinds?” I asked. And for sure, there is speculation of forced selling, mostly during US trading hours. But until a Bloomberg headline hits, with confirmation that a specific firm has gone belly up, or was forced to scramble for a bail out, that’s all it is, speculation. “More sellers than buyers,” said someone, and we all nodded.
Overall: The S&P 500 hit an all-time high on October 6th. Bitcoin did too. There was no particularly good reason, a typical news day. The US government was shutdown, France’s government was a mess, Russia launched 50 missiles into Ukraine, and AMD ripped 25% higher on the back of a circular deal to supply OpenAI with 6 gigawatts of compute (requiring electricity equivalent to 5mm US homes). On October 9th, China announced new rare earth trade restrictions. Trump threatened to impose 100% Chinese tariffs on October 10th, the S&P 500 and bitcoin tanked. The damage in crypto markets was savage. An estimated $19bln of positions, across 1.5mm individual accounts, were liquidated. $17bln of those were leveraged longs, which were sold at whatever bid could be found. $7bln was liquidated in a 40-minute period. Bitcoin fell 15% at one point, while numerous altcoins fell 30-40%. Some spiked far lower than that. Crypto prices have been trending lower ever since. They briefly rallied when Trump announced a trade truce with China on Oct 30th, withdrawing his 100% tariff threat. But sellers quickly emerged, and markets turned lower. And this week, when Nvidia announced better than expected earnings, crypto prices bounced for about five seconds before resuming the downtrend. It’s the kind of move that doesn’t make a ton of sense given the news. At some point we’ll learn who is selling and why. It’s probably some firms who got demolished on Oct 10th and needs to further de-leverage. The S&P 500 diverged from crypto markets and made new all-time highs on Oct 29th, just ahead of Trump’s tariff reversal. It’s been failing to rally on good news ever since, quite like crypto, which has tended to lead the stock market up and down for the past couple years. And what we don’t yet know is whether crypto selling is mostly done, or whether this market knows something deeper about risk assets that we do not.
For Week-in-Review and Weekly & Year-to-Date market data, scroll to the bottom.
Sparks: “I bought some bitcoin for the first time in a long time,” said Sparks, investor, entrepreneur, iconoclast. “When I sold in late 2021 it was because I saw the liquidity cycle tightening over 2022,” he said, having dodged that brutal bear. “I don’t think we’ll see much looser liquidity conditions ahead. Trump’s policies are a net negative.” Immigration reduction. Tariffs. “If you pump more liquidity into this economy, slash rates, all you’ll get is more inflation, which is what he’s trying to avoid. I’m not sure he really even knows what he wants.”
Sparks II: “So I’m buying bitcoin on more of a deeply oversold punt than anything,” said Sparks. “My big positions continue to be in data centers, energy infrastructure, things we started discussing three years ago.” He was early to the theme, bet massively, built infrastructure businesses, scaled them. “But talking about these things tells you more about the past than the future,” he said. “It’s like Nvidia at a $5 trillion valuation. It tells you much more about what has happened than what will happen. Cisco was similar in 1999. It was mostly backward looking.”
Sparks III: “I can tell you this, there will be $500bln of data centers built in the US over the next few years no matter what. Demand will be insane. And once it gets met, then we can talk,” said Sparks. “But will we look back that this period and say it was a boomlet or just the early stages of something bigger?” he asked, not waiting for my reply. “We’ll say this was a boomlet.” Like the dotcom boomlet, the Cisco buildout. “Two things are often simultaneously true; this buildout is very real, and the amount of capital and attention dedicated to it is offsides.”
Sparks IV: “So I’m spending a lot of my time maximizing the value of my existing investments which I started building up years ago,” said Sparks. “And with the rest, T+3 is all I care about.” Where will we be in 2-3 years. “Looking ahead, the opportunity is going to be all about what gets built on top of the LLMs,” he said. “It’s about finding the warriors; the 25yr old guys who can bring creative AI-powered solutions to an industry and obviate tens of thousands of workers. That’s the greatest T+3 opportunity. That’s where I’m spending all my forward mind share.”
Sparks V: “What people don’t really understand is that these LLMs are basically being given away for free,” said Sparks. “When broadband got built, it was not the carriers who made the real money. It was the businesses built on top of it,” he said. “These guys like OpenAI are building running water. Everyone loves running water. But you have 10 large language models chasing one another to be good at pretty much the same thing. It’s like trying to simultaneously create 10 Googles. I’d rather be the guy who takes the search engines and uses them to make real money.”
Anecdote: Markets always move for a reason. Those of us who have been doing this for a long time often say the reason is always the same: prices rally when there are more buyers than sellers, and vice versa. But that’s not exactly true. For every buy-order that is executed in a marketplace, there is a matching sell-order. What is true is that if buyers are more eager to buy than sellers are to sell, prices rise until they reach an equilibrium level. Markets generally fall faster than they rise because fear is a stronger emotion than greed, so when sellers are eager to dump their positions, they are less price sensitive. And in times of panic, buyers get caught up in the emotion and step away from their bids. In these extreme periods, markets gap sharply lower as sellers desperately search for buyers by offering their securities, currencies, and/or commodities at a deep discount to the last price traded. At any rate, what we mean when we say that markets move because there are more buyers than sellers is that when prices start to really move, it’s okay to not understand why. We say this to remind ourselves that anything can happen. It’s a protective mechanism. Investors who blow up and lose everything tend to believe that they know exactly why a market should be moving. They may believe it should move higher, and get stubbornly longer, leveraging up even as it moves lower, and lower, and lower. Or vice versa. The survivors in this game have watched enough people destroy themselves in such a way that we prefer to accept the wisdom of markets. We learn that when prices fall even as most traders/investors think they should rise, there must be a reason. We just don’t know it yet. Sooner or later, we will. A hidden fact, political dynamic, accounting scandal, bad credit, insolvent bank, bankrupt broker, or changing economic fundamental will eventually come to light. But until it does, we expect the mysterious market move to continue. And once it all makes sense, the move that no one could quite understand will be mostly over.
Good luck out there,
Eric Peters
Chief Investment Officer
One River Asset Management
Week-in-Review: Mon: US Empire mfg 18.7 (5.8e). Canada CPI 2.2% (2.1%e). Bitcoin drops below $90,000 for the first time in seven months. US Fed Governor Christopher Waller backs another cut in December citing a weak labor market. Tennessee judge blocks Trump’s use of National Guard in Memphis but put the order on hold for at least five days to allow the government to appeal. S&P -0.9%. Tue: US factory orders 1.4% as exp, durable goods 2.9% as exp. Canada housing starts 232.8k (265.0k e). Hungary rate decision unch 6.5% as exp. US plans to greenlight the first sales of advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia’s AI venture Humain, marking a win for the state-backed venture after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Trump. Microsoft and Nvidia are committing to invest up to a combined $15b in Anthropic. US stocks sank amid fears around stretched AI valuations. S&P -0.8%. Wed: UK CPI 3.6% (3.5%e), Core 3.4% as exp, RPI 4.3% as exp. Eurozone CPI 2.1% as exp, Core 2.4% as exp. South Africa CPI 3.6% (3.7%e), ret sales constant 3.1% (3.0%e). Indonesia BI-rate unch 4.75% as exp. US Bureau of Labor Statistics will not publish an October employment report; consequently, bond traders scrapped their bets on a December interest rate cut as bond markets saw a wave of selling in fed funds futures. Nvidia revenue forecast beats estimates. S&P +0.4%. Thu: US unemp rate 4.4% (4.3%e), change in nonfarm payrolls 119k (53k e), home sales 4.10m (4.08m e). Eurozone cons conf -14.2 (-14.0e). South Africa interest rate 6.75% as exp. US payrolls surged. Fed Governor Michael Barr expressed unease over stalled inflation and advises caution in considering additional rate cuts. Stocks tumbled as Nvidia’s strong earnings report failed to allay investor worries about lofty AI valuations. S&P -1.6%. Fri: US UMich sentiment 51.0 (50.6e). Trump administration is having discussions on whether to let Nvidia sell its H200 AI chips to China. Traders boosted the odds of a Fed rate cut next month to above 60% after NY Fed President John Williams said there is still room to cut in the near term. US puts pressure on Ukraine to agree to peace deal by Thanksgiving or lose U.S. support as Zelenskiy pushes back on key parts of the plan. S&P +1.0%.
Weekly Close: S&P 500 -1.9% and VIX +3.60 at +23.43. Nikkei -3.5%, Shanghai -3.9%, Euro Stoxx -2.2%, Bovespa -1.9%, MSCI World -2.3%, MSCI Emerging -3.7%, Bitcoin -11.5%, and Ethereum -13.7%. USD rose +2.0% vs Brazil, +1.7% vs South Africa, +1.3% vs Chile, +1.3% vs Australia, +1.2% vs Yen, +1.1% vs Sweden, +1.0% vs Mexico, +0.9% vs Euro, +0.8% vs India, +0.6% vs Canada, +0.5% vs Sterling, +0.4% vs Turkey, and +0.1% vs China. USD fell -2.2% vs Russia, and flat vs Indonesia. Gold -0.3%, Silver -1.5%, Oil -3.2%, Copper -0.8%, Iron Ore +0.2%, Corn -1.5%. 10yr Inflation Breakevens (EU -2bps at 1.76%, US -5bps at 2.25%, JP +8bps at 1.63%, and UK -5bps at 2.95%). 2yr Notes -10bps at 3.51% and 10yr Notes -8bps at 4.07%.
2025 Year-to-Date Equity Index Returns: Colombia +71.1% priced in US dollars (+47.9% priced in pesos), Korea +60.9% priced in US dollars (+60.6% in won), Hungary +60.5% in dollars (+35.2% in forint), Czech Republic +58.7% (+38.1%), Greece +56% (+40.3%), Israel +55.5% (+40.1%), Chile +54.8% (+46.4%), Poland +52.9% (+36.9%), Spain +51.7% (+36.5%), South Africa +47.2% (+35.5%), Brazil +47.2% (+28.7%), Austria +44.7% (+30.7%), Portugal +41.9% (+27.6%), Mexico +41.1% (+25%), Ireland +38.8% (+24.8%), Italy +38.2% (+24.8%), Finland +34.1% (+21.1%), Belgium +30.3% (+17.2%), Germany +28.4% (+16%), Vietnam +26.3% (+30.6%), HK +25.4% (+25.7%), Norway +25.4% (+13%), Euro Stoxx 50 +25.2% (+12.6%), Sweden +25.2% (+8.7%), Canada +24.5% (+22%), Singapore +23.4% (+18%), Japan +22.4% (+21.9%), UK +22.1% (+16.7%), Switzerland +21.9% (+8.9%), France +20.3% (+8.2%), Taiwan +19.8% (+14.8%), China +17.5% (+14.4%), Netherlands +17.3% (+5.5%), NASDAQ +15.3%, Indonesia +15.1% (+18.8%), MSCI World +14.4% in dollars, S&P 500 +12.3%, Australia +7.7% (+3.2%), Russell +6.3%, Malaysia +6.2% (-1.5%), India +5.3% (+10.2%), UAE +4% (+4%), New Zealand +2.6% (+2.4%), Thailand -5.4% (-10.4%), Turkey -7.4% (+11.1%), Saudi Arabia -8.4% (-8.5%), Philippines -9.5% (-8.1%), Denmark -21.1% (-28.6%), Argentina -21.2% (+9%).
Disclaimer: All characters and events contained herein are entirely fictional. Even those things that appear based on real people and actual events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity is merely coincidental. The numbers are unreliable. The statistics too. Consequently, this message does not contain any investment recommendation, advice, or solicitation of any sort for any product, fund or service. The views expressed are strictly those of the author, even if often times they are not actually views held by the author, or directly contradict those views genuinely held by the author. And the views may certainly differ from those of any firm or person that the author may advise, converse with, or otherwise be associated with. Lastly, any inappropriate language, innuendo or dark humor contained herein is not specifically intended to offend the reader. And besides, nothing could possibly be more offensive than the real-life actions of the inept policy makers, corrupt elected leaders and short, paranoid dictators who infest our little planet. Yet we suffer their indignities every day. Oh yeah, past performance is not indicative of future returns.