YWR: Is this the Biggie?
But these evils, though great, were small compared to those far more deep-seated signs of disease which now showed themselves throughout the country.
One of these was the obliteration of thrift from the minds of the French people. The French are naturally thrifty; but, with such masses of money and with such uncertainty as to its future value, the ordinary motives for saving and care diminished, and a loose luxury spread throughout the country.
A still worse outgrowth was the increase of speculation and gambling.
With the plethora of paper currency in 1791 appeared the first evidences of that cancerous disease which always follows large issues of irredeemable currency,—a disease more permanently injurious to a nation than war, pestilence or famine.
For at the great metropolitan centers grew a luxurious, speculative, stock-gambling body, which, like a malignant tumor, absorbed into itself the strength of the nation and sent out its cancerous fibres to the remotest hamlets. At these city centers abundant wealth seemed to be piled up: in the country at large there grew a dislike of steady labor and a contempt for moderate gains and simple living.
Andrew Dickson White, Fiat Money Inflation in France
Do you feel it?
It’s happening…..
Pure speculation.
Everything is working.
Everyone’s making money on everything.
Retail gets it. They are trading everything.
Robinhood, SwissQuote, Interactive Brokers are all going vertical.
The share of retail trading in the market has increased from 9-10% pre-COVID to 20% currently.
And this speculation isn’t confined to just investing.
It’s everything. Sports Betting, prediction markets.
There are strong digital platforms to bet on anything.
And these powerful platforms are integrated with social media to keep your attention and keep you speculating on the next thing.
Andrew White’s ‘disease’ is entrenched.
Like animals sensing a tsunami, retail investors sense the collapsing value of money and are running to the high ground. Stocks, crypto and precious metals.
But institutional fund managers are struggling with this.
Institutional bullishness is a 4 out of 10.
And one of the things institutional investors point to as a reason to be cautious, is rampant retail speculation.
They will say things like “In my history of investing I can’t think of a time when retail was right.”
There is this view that retail is the stupid money and the shrewd, professional investor knows how to avoid the speculative tops. Later when the market is crashing, and retail is panicking, they come in and buy the lows.
Ideally.
But that’s not what has been happening.
Instead the fund managers have been missing everything and underperforming.
Instead it is retail who bravely buys the dip.
But can I suggest another way to look at the retail trading?
Because maybe it helps.
Maybe this is the Biggie.
Instead of seeing retail speculation as a contrarian indicator, see it as another check mark that Project Zimbabwe is happening.
Project Zimbabwe is happening and we still have many chapters to go.
And we always said rampant speculation would be part of the story. It always is with rising inflation. It was the same way in Paris in 1789.
So retail mania isn’t bad. It’s confirmation we are going higher.
And there’s still lots more money to plough into the market.
$2 trillion in fact.
And consider something crazy.
Maybe we are about to have the biggest bull market ever.
What if this is The Biggie?
What is this ends up bigger than 1999?
Think about it. Think how much juice is going on right now.
The US, Europe and China are all pumping fiscal stimulus.
6% budget deficits are the new normal.
Europe and the UK are cutting rates.
The Fed is going to cuts rates 200bps even though the economy is booming and unemployment is at multi-year lows.
Corporates are investing record amounts into AI.
The dollar is weakening
Speculative fever is growing
Commodities are starting to work too (copper, silver, platinum)
Institutional investors are all doubting it and missing it.
Where do we go from here?
It’s been a good 1H 2025, especially in international markets. And this is all after a really good 2023 and 2024.
Can this uptrend continue in 2H 2025? Because it would be terrible to give it back and not earn performance fees.
But it would also be bad to miss it if it’s going higher.
So where do we go from here?