Click Beta 4: One Tweet From Disaster

A few big ideas, but more importantly, a playlist!

Episode 4 of ClickBeta is live, and I’m not sure Jason Buck from Mutiny Funds, Matt Zeigler from Sunpointe, and I have figured anything out. The markets are insane. The world is insane. But hey, it’s spring, and sometimes you just have to laugh at it all. Here are three ways to play:

You can just skip all the talk and listen to this 11 song playlist. I think it’s pretty great for the weekend.

Or you can watch the actual youtube video. You’ll probably at least laugh at how stupid we are once or twice.

Or here are my 11 favorite quotes from the transcript, and songs that seemed to line up (and still be great):

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“We’re so far away from NBER actually declaring recession. But boy, doesn’t it feel like we’re heading towards it?” - Dave

🎶 Song: “The Rip” – Portishead

There is a sense of impedning doom as we watch the soft data become hard data in this tariff war. I still don’t think there’s much to do for most investors. I can’t see selling everything, I can’t see buying super-expensive hedges. Geographic and asset class diversification have made sense my whole life, and that still seems like the right call while the synth swells and we await the bass drop.

“We’re one tweet away from so many outcomes.” - Jason

🎶 Song: “Waiting Room” – Fugazi

When Jason said we’re one-tweet-away I think it captured a lot of the anxiety I’m feeling personally. I’ve caught myself more than once these past few weeks mindlessly refreshing news or twitter just because it seems like we are waiting for so many shoes to drop. Who knows, maybe in the next tweet we declare war on distortion pedals. Or kale. Anything seems likely.

“We can hold this choke for so long, but I can’t imagine a scenario where there’s a real downturn and the government doesn’t just open the throttle.” - Matt

🎶 Song: “Seether” – Veruca Salt

If we’re waiting real shocks, the big ones may be stimulative. Whether it’s an interest rate cut, some form of stealth QE, or just literal airplanes dropping toilet paper and Chinese-made dolls on the suburbs, I for sure have the sense of impending rescue behind any market drop. The market seems to think so too, which is why every dip seems to get bought instantly. It’s the Seether under the surface. Can’t fight the seether.

“The bullwhip effects on supply chains are wild—people use different points in that wave to describe whatever their political or economic beliefs are.” - Jason

🎶 Song: “See No Evil” – Television

Jason with another killer observation: you can see what you want in the data. While this is always true to some extent, the silliness last week about “Biden’s Market” vs “Trump’s Market” depending on — literally — what day of the week you read statements from POTUS, show just how disconnected political dialog is from reality. Everything is strong! Everything is awful! Selective amnesia is a hell of a drug. Reality, however, has a way of eventually showing up.

“Household formation is the single cleanest metric… less and less since the 1950s.” - Dave

🎶 Song: “In My Room” – Yaz(oo)

Nobody ever seems to care about this chart or think it’s important:

In a few generations, we’ve gone from 12% of households — adults with their own housing — being single people, to almost 30%. Every other metric of household formation (marriage rates, fertility, home ownership, % of adults living with parents) shows the same pattern. Americans increasingly live literal lives of solitary, quiet desperation.

Also it’s a great excuse to play one of the best tracks from the best New Wave albums of all time: Upstairs at Eric’s by Yaz or Yazoo, depending on which side of the atlantic you’re on.

“One of Domino’s projections was that people are ordering less and less… either people are picking up or not even ordering fast food anymore. It’s interesting to see where that’s hitting.” — Jason

🎶 Song: “Olive Garden” – PUP

My go-to economic sentiment indicator is, of course, my own behavior. A week ago I went to grab a bag of little gouda cheeses — the Babybel ones in the red wax? — and they were $11!! I bought a chunk of Vermont cheddar for $5 instead. This week, we hopped in the car to grab pizza rather than relying on the unfathomable luxury of delivery (we’re rural enough that Dominos is literally the only delivery available.) There you go. The Dominos Recession Indicator lives not just in Jason’s telling, but in my own house (it’s weird to be part of a statistic). Also new PUP slaps.

“We could end up with an earnings recession without an economic recession—with some policy reversals. There are lots of ways out of it if we stagger.” - Matt

🎶 Song: “Down to be Wrong” – HAIM

The one thing that is absolutely certain right now is that nobody knows anything. Everyone is claiming they have the end game mapped out, and of course, none of us do. Matt’s point is probably the most important one in the whole episode — there are so many weird and unpredictable ways this could play out, and not all of them are disasters. While I am not optimistic, I am, as Alana Haim sings, very down to be wrong.

“Retail’s been wild—Costco vs. Target is the biggest foot-traffic bloodbath I’ve ever seen.” - Dave

🎶 Song: “Hard to Explain” – The Strokes

While I personally stopped bothering to shop at Target when they turned tail on the LGBT community with breathtaking speed, I’m very skeptical this is a boycott story: I think it’s mostly a cost savings story. But facts are facts: February and March saw Costco experiencing near-record increases in foot traffic, while Target experienced pandemic level declines. The economy is definitely reshuffling, one way or another. And that’s even without Chili’s rise to greatness!

“It’s like standing waves. You have a bunch of waves that get layered over each other, and as soon as you combine waves that are at the same peak or trough, weird stuff starts to happen.” - Matt

🎶 Song: “Wave of Mutilation” - The Pixies

The moves in markets and the economy aren’t going to be smooth — this isn’t like dealing with a normal exogenous shock, like the Asian currency crisis or even a major bank failure. Messing with supply lines, currency, the tax code, government spending, tourism and higher education all at once may yield the results the admin believes will be positive, but for sure it’s going to be a lumpy experience. Waves of volatility (Mutilation) will be the norm for a while.

“It seems hard to bet against the top of the market cap food chain when that food chain is dictating pro-company policy for themselves.” - Dave

🎶 Song: “Champagne Tastes” - Sunflower Bean

We used to talk about “regulatory capture” and “conflicts of interest” seriously. We did a lot of handwringing when some oil executive would end up in a policy position. We’re in a very different world now, and I doubt there’s ever a return in my lifetime. It is now the norm of American politics that the Executive Branch will be explicitly pro-certain individual companies, and anti- others. We’ve already seen this in Musk’s very specific gutting of NTSB investigative bodies, in the Trump aligned crypto businesses, and in the family-owned asset management business soon to directly invest in favored individual equities. None of this is up for debate — it’s in press releases. You can be all in favor of the corporate oligarchy, but I don’t think you can calim that corporate influence and governmental interconnection has declined.

Also new Sunflower Bean is awesome.

“Raising prices doesn’t magically manufacture more money—people buy less. That’s micro 101.” - Dave

🎶 Song: “Had To” – Esther Rose

Honestly, it’s the weirdest market of my entire life. None of it makes much sense. So what better way to end than Esther Rose’s Ode to Inebriation:

Drinking is a gift for any season.
And drinking is a way to pass the day.
Drinking is a sin to some believers.
And drinking is a reason to be saved.

Cheers. Literally.