Rekt Mkts: Macro paradigm shift?

Apologies for the 2-day hiatus, I was on a pilates retreat with an old friend I used to play village cricket with but I am not back in the hot seat. In typical fashion, it was an awful time for me to be away but an incredibly active market environment...my question here now is what we've seen over the past 24H enough to cause a paradigm shift in the "macro environment"...I for one am too much of a medium-long-term bull to stay underexposed, so I did take the opportunity to increase risk substantially.

SPX gained 0.2% yday while NDQ slipped 0.2%. Futures came in red today and the cash market has followed, with SPX down around 0.4% and NDQ off roughly 0.6% currently....but you have to drill down to the more active stuff to see the true story. The big move yday was in bonds. Treasury said it will at least double the maximum size of its longer-dated liquidity support buybacks from $2bn to $4bn per operation from September. That helped the 10Y fall roughly 5bps and the 30Y drop around 9bps at the latest close, but the relief is already fading. The 5Y is around 4.40%, the 10Y is near 4.71% and the 30Y is around 5.25%, all up roughly 5-6bps today. Gold is up around 1.9% near $4,574 while WTI is up around 1% near $86.65. The Fed minutes were not remotely dovish underneath all this. Several members were ready to hike and many thought tightening would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline. Plain English: Treasury bought the long end some breathing room, not permission for ppl to forget inflation. Red stocks, rebounding yields and gold ripping say the relief is fragile. Payrolls and then the September Fed meeting decide whether this summer rally has proper legs...it's a mixed tape but I think the forces that be are showing their hand and I've seen phrasing of the "Bessent put" banded around all over X. I've seen stuff like this in the past and although the immediate impact is not always felt, over the medium term it starts to get priced in and stuff starts to move aggressively...so I added quite a bit of exposure (memory stocks my poison of choice). With the way the market has been trading, it feels like we've transitioned out of the "sell strength" meta to now wanting to rally on good news (because people are now underexposed?)...makes me think risk-reward into Sep payrolls now possibly skewed towards the upside.

The US tape was mixed yday, with SPX slightly green and NDQ slightly red. Korea then went somewhat vertical which is an outperformance we've not seen in a while. KOSPI gained 5.9%, SK Hynix ripped 12.7%, Samsung added 9.5% and Kioxia rose 6%. Hynix's 40tn won share repurchase and cancellation plan was the specific catalyst, and it also raised its shareholder return target to over 50% of cumulative free cash flow for 2025-2027. I do think that is a proper fundamental catalyst rather than just flow (although somewhat expected?), will be interesting to see if it can catch up to the US memory guys...I think given liquidations are over there is a very good chance. I'm long Hynix, SNDK and MU, and Hynix is clearly the strongest expression right now. US memory is confirming despite the broader market weakness, with the Hynix ADR up around 4.5%, MU up roughly 2.4% and SNDK up around 2.2%. That relative strength matters to me. It is not an all-clear while NDQ and long bonds are red, but I would rather own the names actually holding a bid than pretend the technical shift has not happened...just think it's noteworthy...showing the hand.

Crypto has properly (and finally) woken up. BTC is around $72.4k and up 5.5% over 24 hours, ETH is near $2,324 and up 11.4%, while SOL is around $87.20 and up 6.7%. ETH outperforming BTC by that much tells you ppl have moved beyond simply buying the safest major and the move is parallel as opposed to BTC-specific. Treasury's support for the long end and short covering may be part of the spark, but comments from Trump on bringing "Hyperliquid to the US" and potentially looking at acquiring crypto for the US treasury is what has really driven the move (although I do feel a bit of deja vu there). HYPE is obviously the standout alt, up 18.1% near $73.10...but there were plenty of big moves out there yesterday. On Robinhood Chain, PONS is up 8.3%, while STONKBROKER is down 31.3%, amid a few +20-30% moves across the meme space as the RH chain bounces back aggressively from its recent weakness. I'm still massively bullish on this and believe it is extremely early given MCs of most coins on this chain - I would expect given the mindshare it's obtained, that we'll see this part of crypto perform strongly if overall strength still holds. Another chain I've been active on is BNB chain amid rumours of Binance launching a FOMO/PUMP competitor that I've mentioned before. I dabbled a bit in 牛来 which hit new ATHs today of $60M mkt cap, up 50%..I think that + MarsCoin are two interesting plays in the Binance ecosystem (Flaph.sh is the launchpad they were launched on, which has some investment from YZi Labs, Binance's incubator)...so in general I am expecting them to push stuff there and it's worth paying attention to. All in all, this is not the biggest crypto breakout we've seen in our lives, but we've been stuck in a rut for many months and I think this move higher is notable and warrants "locking in". When is the last time you saw ETH up 20% in a day? Right...and now what happens if ETH goes to 3k..or 4k..or 5k....we will see massive massive moves of many ETH-linked coins (cough $REKT cough). Good luck.