Research Notes

The 10-Year Real Yield Reached 2.93 Percent, Its Highest Since 2008.

When October Hike Odds Fell, It Stayed There.

The US 10-year Treasury yield rose 53 basis points between August 31 and October 2, from 4.75 to 5.28 percent, and 48 of those basis points were real yield. The 10-year TIPS real yield went from 2.44 to 2.92 percent, with 2.93 on September 30, a level not…

ETH Perpetual Open Interest Reached 70.2 Percent of Bitcoin's, Rank 1 of 73 Sessions.

Funding Closed on Its 31-Day Median.

ETH perpetual open interest closed Saturday at 70.2 percent of Bitcoin's, the highest reading of 73 sessions, and ETH funding closed on its 31-day median. Kresmion's derivatives aggregate marked the September 12 UTC day at 23:59:01 UTC with ETH open interest…

August Payrolls Printed 162,000 Against a 56,000 Consensus.

The September Hike Leg Moved to 52.5 Percent and Passed the Hold.

Twelve days before the Fed's September 16 decision, Polymarket's deepest rate market prices a 25 basis point hike at 52.5 percent and a hold at 44.5 percent. Read at 12:38 UTC, the other three legs were a 50-basis-point-or-more hike at 0.55 percent, a 25…

The Public Ship Count Through Hormuz Reads 96 Percent Lower.

Nobody Can Say How Much of That Is Real.

The IMF's PortWatch project publishes a daily count of ships passing the Strait of Hormuz, derived from the AIS transponder signals vessels broadcast. In February 2026 it averaged 69.9 transit calls a day. In March it averaged 2.8, a 96 percent drop, and…

Caterpillar's Order Book Grew 2.4 Times in Three Years.

The Part It Cannot Deliver Within a Year Grew 5.2 Times.

Caterpillar reported its first 20 billion dollar quarter on Tuesday, and 29.2 billion dollars of the record order book behind it will not ship in a year. We read the same disclosure in all fourteen Caterpillar quarterly and annual filings from the first…

There Is a Riskless Trade Sitting Next to Polymarket's Bitcoin Ladder.

It Pays 0.37 Percent a Year Against a 4.02 Percent Treasury Bill.

Polymarket's event on where Bitcoin gets to before 2027 carries thirty two live contracts, twenty on reaching a given price and twelve on dipping to one. We pulled all thirty two from the venue's API at 09:05 UTC on August 5, 2026, and every rung below is…

The Bet on a Stronger Dollar Was the Most Crowded in Three Years of Data.

Then the US Bought Yen.

Every Tuesday the CFTC takes a snapshot of who holds what in the major currency futures markets. The snapshot taken on July 28 showed speculators net short a combined 300,673 contracts of euro, yen and sterling futures, which is 19.8 percent of the open…

The Options Market Prices a Near-Term Bitcoin Dip at Nearly 40 Percent.

The Betting Crowd Puts It at 13.

Two separate markets are pricing the same question, and they do not agree. The question is whether Bitcoin, trading near $63,700 on Friday, dips to $62,500 by the close on Saturday, August 1. On Polymarket, where people bet directly on the outcome, the price…

The Market Prices a One in Four Chance the Fed Raises Rates on Wednesday.

Economists Still Say No Change.

The Federal Open Market Committee announces its decision on Wednesday July 29 at 2:00 pm Eastern. The economists surveyed for it expect no change in rates. That would leave the upper bound of the target range at 3.75 percent, where it has been since April.…

The Fed Has Cut 0.75 Points Since Last Summer.

The Two-Year Treasury Has Risen 0.48.

Brent crude settled at 100.69 dollars on Thursday, up about 7 percent, after Houthi forces attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. US stocks fell hard. The Nasdaq Composite lost 2.15 percent and the S&P 500 lost 1.21 percent, while interest rate…

Gold's 30-Day Correlation With Bitcoin Reached 0.64.

With Long Treasuries It Is 0.10.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Wednesday that they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. Saudi authorities confirmed damage to one of them, the Encelia. The UK Maritime Trade Operations office reported a vessel struck about 70 nautical…

For Two Months Money Left the US Bitcoin ETFs.

Last Week It Came Back Hard. The Price Has Not Broken Out.

For most of the past two months, the story in the US spot Bitcoin ETFs was money leaving. Over the last sixty trading days, 27 of 39 flow days were net outflows, and the typical week was about a 268 million dollar exit. On July 13 the funds lost about 478…

Bitcoin and Ethereum Rose This Week While Every Major US Stock Index Fell.

The Macro Regime Behind Them Did Not Shift.

Over the past week Bitcoin and Ethereum are up while the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, the Dow and the Russell 2000 are all down. On Tuesday the gap widened, with Bitcoin up about 3 percent on the day and US stocks set to open lower. A week where crypto rises and…

The Three Big Index ETFs Are All in Negative Dealer Gamma.

The Mega-Cap Stocks That Dominate Them Are Not.

As of Friday's close, SPY, QQQ and IWM all sat in negative dealer gamma below their zero-gamma flip levels, while their biggest holdings stayed positive. It is an unusual split, because the same mega-cap stocks make up most of the weight inside those index…

Oil Rose About 15 Percent This Week as US-Iran Strikes Turned Deadly.

Speculators Went Into the Surge Near Their Lightest Crude Bet of the Year.

Crude oil just had its sharpest week since April. WTI settled near 82 dollars a barrel on Friday, up about 15 percent over the five sessions, and Brent closed near 88 dollars, up about 16 percent. The catalyst was not subtle. Iranian missiles and drones…

Wheat Rose 11 Percent in Six Sessions on Black Sea Strikes.

A Second Supply Signal Was Firing at the Same Time, an Ocean Away.

Chicago wheat futures closed at 611.25 cents per bushel on July 9. By Friday morning, July 17, the contract traded at 677.50 cents, about 6.78 dollars per bushel, a rise of roughly 10.8 percent in six sessions, with one session in the middle of the week up…

PBF's Top Holder Sold $49.5 Million in a Week, Across Three Form 4s

Between July 6 and July 10, 2026, the largest holder of PBF Energy sold 950,000 of its Class A shares into the open market and collected 49,509,752 dollars. The seller was Control Empresarial de Capitales, the investment vehicle associated with the family of…

Two Prediction Markets Price Bitcoin's Chance of Reaching $100,000 This Year.

One Says 14 Percent, the Other 9.

Ask a prediction market how likely Bitcoin is to reach 100,000 dollars before the end of this year, and the answer depends on which market you happen to ask. On Kalshi, the regulated US exchange, the contract that pays out if Bitcoin touches 100,000 dollars…

More Public Companies Filed to Add ETH to Their Balance Sheets Last Month Than Bitcoin.

One of Them Now Holds Almost 5 Percent of the Supply.

Over the past month, six different public companies told the SEC they were putting ETH on their balance sheets. Five said the same about bitcoin. For most of the last two years the count ran the other way, with bitcoin as the default corporate reserve asset…

Liquidity Is Abundant and the Real Cost of Money Keeps Rising.

The June Inflation Report Is the Test.

The US financial system is not short of liquidity. Bank reserves and the other balances Kresmion tracks as net liquidity sit near the top of their range since the spring, close to a full standard deviation above their recent average. Yet in Kresmion's cross…

Oil Jumped More Than 4 Percent When the Iran Ceasefire Collapsed.

Speculators Went In With One of Their Smallest Positions of the Year.

Oil jumped more than 4 percent when the Iran ceasefire collapsed this week, and speculators met the move holding one of their smallest crude bets of the year. West Texas Intermediate rose 4.4 percent to 73.52 dollars on July 8 after President Trump called the…

ETH Rose Almost 8 Percent This Week.

One Fund Did Most of the ETF Buying, and the Largest Wallets Sent the Most ETH to Exchanges in a Month.

ETH rose 7.68 percent over the past week, yet a single fund did most of the buying, positioning thinned, and the largest wallets moved coins onto exchanges. Three separate windows into who is behind the move point in different directions, and only the price…

Speculators Built a Record Copper Long Into the US Tariff Decision.

They Have Been Unwinding It for a Month.

Copper futures speculators built a record net long by mid May and have been unwinding it for a month, the newest weekly CFTC report showing the largest cut. The new Commitments of Traders report, dated June 30 and released Monday after the July 4 holiday…

Five Chip Companies Show Concurrent Insider Sell Clusters, Every One Including the CEO or CFO.

The Sector Has Not Shown a Single Buy Cluster Since May.

Executives at five US-listed chip companies are selling stock in concurrent insider clusters worth 119 million dollars, each including the CEO or the CFO. On the other side of the ledger, insider buy clusters across the entire US market Kresmion tracks add up…

Speculators Are the Most Net Short the British Pound in a Year.

They Built the Bet in a Single Week.

Speculators are the most net short the British pound in at least a year, and most of that heavily one sided position was built in a single week of trading. In the latest Commitments of Traders data, large speculators held a net short in sterling futures equal…

Options Dealers Are Positioned to Dampen the S&P and the Nasdaq.

The Russell 2000 Is the One Index They Are Still Positioned to Amplify.

As the second quarter closed, options dealers were positioned to dampen moves in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, but to amplify them in the Russell 2000. That split is the story. This note describes what Kresmion's dealer gamma model reads across the major US…

Two Independent Betting Markets Quietly Agree on Bitcoin's Year End.

The Most Likely Outcome Sits Below Where It Trades Now.

Two independent betting markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, price Bitcoin's most likely year-end 2026 outcome below today's spot price of around 60,000 dollars. That same week, U.S. spot-Bitcoin ETF investors pulled about 1.9 billion dollars out of the complex in…

Treasuries Have Started Moving With Stocks.

The 60/40 Bond Hedge Is Quietly Weakening

The textbook job of a Treasury bond in a portfolio is to zig when stocks zag. That is the whole reason a 60/40 mix exists: when equities fall, bonds are supposed to rise and soften the blow. In practice that relationship has been mildly positive rather than…

Kresmion's Cross Asset Regime Turned Risk-Off Today.

Credit Spreads and Recession Bets Have Not.

Kresmion's cross asset regime model crossed into Risk-Off today for the first time, and the one factor that had been holding it in Neutral was low volatility. The score did not fall because credit cracked or because recession bets jumped. It fell because the…

Speculators Are the Most Crowded Into Natural Gas in Over a Year.

Storage Sits Nearly 6 Percent Above Normal.

Speculators are their most crowded into natural gas in over a year, near 64 percent of open interest, and the storage report shows a well supplied market. That gap, between how heavily the fast money is positioned and what the physical balance and the macro…

Kresmion's News Engine Flagged a Maximum Oil Supply Shock.

The Coverage It Counted Was About Peace.

On June 23, 2026, Kresmion's news engine fired its loudest oil supply shock alert of the month: a maximum 100 composite reading off 42 contributing sources, pulling in Middle East intelligence, Strait of Hormuz chatter, and energy supply language. The same…

Berkshire Tripled Its Alphabet Stake in Greg Abel's First Quarter.

Warren Buffett Spent Years Calling It One of His Mistakes.

For two decades, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger openly described their failure to buy Google as one of the clearest mistakes of their investing careers. In Berkshire Hathaway's first quarterly filing under new chief executive Greg Abel, the firm did the…

Bridgewater and Appaloosa Both Roughly Doubled Their Amazon Stakes Last Quarter.

Most of Their Peers Were Cutting.

Ray Dalio's Bridgewater and David Tepper's Appaloosa each roughly doubled their Amazon stakes in the first quarter, both reporting the same 208 dollar mark. Most of their large peers were cutting in the same three months. Read across funds rather than one…

Bitcoin Futures Speculators Are Crowded Long at a Six Week High.

Spot ETFs, Whales, and the Options Desk Are Leaning the Other Way.

Bitcoin's futures speculators are crowded into their biggest net long in six weeks, even as spot ETFs, whales, and the options desk all lean the other way. That split is the kind of signal that only shows up when you read positioning, flows, hedging, and odds…

The Market Prices Today's Fed Decision at 98%.

The Real Event Is Warsh's First Dot Plot.

The Federal Open Market Committee announces its June rate decision at 2:00 p.m. Eastern today, and the deepest market betting on the outcome has gone quiet. On Polymarket, the contract for no change in interest rates holds $9.95 million in volume and prices…

Five Funds Opened New Meta Positions in Q1.

Five Others Trimmed Theirs.

Five large funds opened brand-new Meta positions in the first quarter, a combined 1.23 billion dollars of fresh money, even as five others trimmed theirs. The same quarter that drew Viking Global, Dragoneer, Renaissance Technologies, Third Point and Soros…

Producer Inflation Hit 6.5% in May, the Hottest Since 2022.

The Oil Spike Behind It Is Already Reversing.

Wholesale prices in the United States rose 6.5 percent in the year to May, the hottest reading since November 2022, and most of that increase traces to energy. The Producer Price Index was released on June 11, and the May Consumer Price Index landed a day…

Bitcoin ETFs Shed $3.4 Billion in Twelve Sessions.

Futures Traders Are Still Crowded Long.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs have shed roughly $3.4 billion over the last twelve sessions, broken by a single tiny up-day, while futures speculators sit crowded long. That combination is the day's most interesting tension, and it lands on a CPI morning. Here is what…

Every Macro Factor Turned Negative This Week.

A Hot Jobs Report Was the Trigger.

Kresmion's cross-asset regime score swung from +0.20 to -0.30 over the past week, and all four of its underlying factors are now negative as of June 8. The model's conviction stepped from MEDIUM to HIGH on June 5 and has held at maximum for four straight…

$2.3 Billion of Bitcoin's Whale Volume Last Week Was Self-Transfer Noise.

The Genuine Flow Ran One Way.

Over the past week, 86% of large Bitcoin exchange transactions on Kresmion-tracked wallets were same-exchange self-transfers, not genuine cross-party flow. Of roughly $2.3 billion in headline "whale movements," about $949 million was real. And nearly all of…

Viking Global Put $1.9 Billion Into Visa in Q1.

Not Every Fund Agreed.

In Q1 2026, Viking Global built a $1.913 billion Visa position, up 58.8 percent, leading a cluster of elite-fund accumulation in payments as several peers cut. The 13F filings made the AI trade obvious: the largest funds piled into a short list of chip and…

The Big Funds Were Buying Alphabet in Q1.

This Week, Berkshire Added $10 Billion.

Four of the largest funds opened fresh Alphabet positions in the first quarter, and this week Berkshire added $10 billion to anchor an $80 billion raise. The quarterly 13F filings showed where the conviction was building before it became a public capital call…

Risk Appetite Rebounded in May.

It Skipped Bitcoin.

US equities closed May at a record high even as US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted their weakest stretch of demand all year, a divergence that defined the month. The risk-on rebound that lifted stocks largely bypassed crypto. The trigger for the recovery was energy.…

Risk Comes Out of the System: Positioning Capitulates as the Oil Shock Fades

The fear that drove markets to de-risk is starting to fade, but the positioning that fear created has not caught up. Cross-venue prediction markets now assign just a 11.77% chance that Bitcoin clears $130,000 by year-end, roughly one in eight. Kresmion's…

Accumulation Without Conviction: Bitcoin Inflows Build, the Market Stays Skeptical

Bitcoin spot ETFs pulled in $1.43 billion of net inflows on May 29, and coins kept leaving exchanges, yet cross-venue prediction markets still price only about a 12% chance that Bitcoin trades above $130,000 by year-end. That gap, real money accumulating…