SUNDAY SETUP June 15, 2025
CURRENT POSITIONING
While the broader market’s been grinding sideways like a rusty gear, our Macro Ops Futures portfolio has been absolutely crushing it with nearly 19% returns year-to-date. We’ve been positioned for exactly the kind of macro volatility that’s been keeping traditional equity investors up at night.
YTD PERFORMANCE UPDATE
- Macro Ops Futures, Commodities and Currencies +18.99%
- S&P 500 +1.62%
- Outperformance +17.37%
These are my TLDR notes for this week’s Sunday Setup…
Recession Risk
100% NOT happening
AI capex boom says otherwise
Rate Environment
Short end going lower
Debt servicing demands it
Next chair will be dovish
No other mathematical option
Energy and Energy Security
Massively under-invested
Critical infrastructure play
War in the Middle East
CRUDE OIL POSITION UPDATE
We’ve been long crude oil a few months ago, added to position last week…Alex had a vision after recovering from a near death experience.
Catalyst: Israel’s strike on Iran sent oil prices vertical – sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but we prefer being positioned AND lucky.
A scenario my friend Le Shrub posted on Twitter this weekend.
The crude market closed on Friday
$60-80/barrel
(Dead Sea/Med only)
Escalation Scenario?
$80-100/barrel
(Persian Gulf disruption)
Let’s see what crude has to say on Sundays open
AI-ENERGY-METALS-DEBT Is the theme
“Anyone thinking we’re in a recession is woefully underappreciating what’s happening with AI. Oracle’s earnings call was a vivid reminder that we’re not taking this revolution seriously enough.”
– Someone smart on the internet.
Let’s connect some dots:
The AI Reality Check: Oracle’s recent earnings weren’t just numbers on a screen – they were a glimpse into an infrastructure buildout that makes the railroad boom look quaint. We’re talking about data centers that could power small countries, and guess what powers data centers? Energy. Lots of it.
The Energy Security Blindspot: While everyone’s been obsessing over chip stocks, energy infrastructure remains vastly under-invested. This isn’t just about crude oil (though that’s working nicely for us). This is about a fundamental shift in what constitutes critical infrastructure in an AI-driven economy.
Rare Earth and Precious Metals: Rather than rewrite what my partner Brandon wrote about metals and rare earth, you should read what he wrote.
The Debt Trap Solution: Here’s where it gets interesting. With the US sitting at 120%+ debt-to-GDP, there’s literally only one way out of this mess: a very dovish Fed chair and a short-end rate environment that goes significantly lower. The GOAT Paul Tudor Jones was on Bloomberg talking about this last week, it’s worth a watch.
Boom in growth + lower rates…
If ever there was a time to be a Macro investor this is it!
The math isn’t hard here – but the test results won’t be posted for at least 3-5 years.
What We Are Focusing On This Week
Crude Oil: Maintaining and potentially adding to long position as we are just barely in the neutral market regime after drifting lower for a full year…thers’s a lot of room left.
Rate Positioning: The geopolitical premium is real, and energy security concerns aren’t going away anytime soon. Looking for opportunities to position for lower short-term rates. The debt servicing math is becoming impossible to ignore.
Energy Infrastructure: Exploring broader energy security plays beyond just crude. The AI infrastructure buildout is going to require massive energy investment. I think everyone has heard that, but I don’t think investors fully understand just how much of a tailwind for growth this will be.
We’re positioning for a world where energy, energy security, rare earth, precious metals and AI infrastructure converge.
I mentioned Oracle’s earnings earlier, and it’s well worth a read to understand just how rabid demand for AI is.
- Q4 Remaining Performance Obligations up 41% to $138 billion
- Q4 GAAP Earnings per Share $1.19, non-GAAP Earnings per Share $1.70
- Q4 Total Revenue $15.9 billion, up 11%
- Q4 Cloud Revenue (IaaS plus SaaS) $6.7 billion, up 27%
- Q4 Cloud Infrastructure (IaaS) Revenue $3.0 billion, up 52%
- Q4 Cloud Application (SaaS) Revenue $3.7 billion, up 12%
- Q4 Fusion Cloud ERP (SaaS) Revenue $1.0 billion, up 22%
- Q4 NetSuite Cloud ERP (SaaS) Revenue $1.0 billion, up 18%
- FY 2025 Total Revenue $57.4 billion, up 8%
“MultiCloud database revenue from Amazon, Google and Azure grew 115% from Q3 to Q4,” said Oracle Chairman and CTO, Larry Ellison. “We currently have 23 MultiCloud datacenters live with 47 more being built over the next 12 months. We expect triple-digit MultiCloud revenue growth to continue in FY26. Revenue from Oracle Cloud@Customer datacenters grew 104% year-over-year. We have 29 Oracle Cloud@Customer dedicated datacenters live with another 30 being built in FY26. Overall Oracle Cloud Infrastructure consumption revenue grew 62% in Q4. We expect OCI consumption revenue to grow even faster in FY26. OCI revenue growth rates are skyrocketing—so is demand.”
Here’s what Oracle’s AI infrastructure boom actually means for the materials space: every data center, every EV charging station, every solar panel installation requires a cocktail of rare earth elements and precious metals that most investors can’t even pronounce.
The Rare Earth Reality: China controls 80%+ of rare earth processing, and these materials are absolutely critical for everything from wind turbines to missile guidance systems. The same geopolitical tensions driving our oil thesis apply here – but with even more concentrated supply chains and longer replacement cycles.
Precious Metals Positioning: Silver’s industrial demand story is getting overlooked while everyone obsesses over gold as a “safe haven.” But silver is essential for solar panels, EV electronics, and 5G infrastructure. It’s not just a monetary metal anymore – it’s become a critical industrial commodity in an electrified world.
The Supply Chain Vulnerability: When the next supply chain crisis hits (and it will), rare earths and specialized metals will be the chokepoint everyone suddenly cares about. We’re not waiting for the headlines – we’re positioning before the crowd realizes what’s happening.
Again if you want to go even deeper on metals, my partner Brandon is a must follow must read on X.
Setups for next week
We are pretty well positioned in the portfolio now.
I’ll be digging into single stock names this week now that the regimes in equities are back to where the Swing Beast momentum system is in play.
I did not mention it at all in this week’s note, but Bitcoin is the best asset in this environment and I expect a parabolic move higher this year. That means alt coins will be back in play.
Crypto is all about timing. If you are just blindly buying things hoping for “the new Bitcoin” the crypto markets will punish you dearly.
There’s a right time to be in Bitcoin, and a wrong time.
There’s a right time to be in alt coins, and a wrong time.
It’s all about timing, and our systems have kept us out of altcoins when the bloodbath happened..and we just started getting trades in certain alt coins.
If you are interested in the strategies that I use.
And you can work with me on building out your trading business in the Trading Thunderdome (we’re starting a new cohort next week).
