You are a free subscriber to Me and the Money Printer. To upgrade to paid and receive the daily Capital Wave Report - which features our Red-Green market signals, subscribe here. Things I Think I Think... (This Visual Capital Chart is Insane)A few thoughts as we wind down the week and turn our attention to inflation reports...
Dear Fellow Traveler: Welcome to new readers who have been gracious enough to join our little paper boat after my recent appearance on Josh Brown. On Fridays, I tend to do a more reflective piece that will preview expectations for the weeks ahead, pulls from the randomness of finance, and gives us a few discussion points for future commentary. This morning, I was rushing to get The Capital Wave Report out… and found myself “not ranting” about the now THREE drawers in my house that are dedicated to cell phone and computer chargers that I don’t need anymore. However, somehow the end of my little story ended without the punchline. I had noted that Europe has seen enough companies constantly creating new extension wires to capitalize upon. In late 2024, the EU required all small electronic devices… including phones, tablets, and cameras… to use USB-C. The logic was simple. They wanted to stop turning e-waste into a business model. It’s a partial reversal of the Broken Window Fallacy. Here, tech companies break the window by changing ports, then profit by selling you the glass.  Meanwhile, in the U.S.? Are we going to mandate this? Absolutely not. We’re Americans. We use gallons, pounds, Fahrenheit… and 19 different iPhone bricks. (SNL link). We don't want standardization… We want variety with a markup. We're one of only three countries on Earth that hasn’t adopted the metric system. AMERICA!
So get ready: the iPhone 20’s charger will be nostril-shaped and cost $73 at the airport when you leave the last one behind… All to create jobs in China and Vietnam… Thing I Think No. 2: I Got a Medill F YesterdayWhile in college, my journalism program had something called The Medill F. You would get an F on any journalism assignment if you made a grammatical, factual, or citational mistake. It happened to me one time… where I used the wrong homonym in an article… Well, it happened in yesterday’s column. Now, I don’t do this often… but when I make a stupid mistake (I’m not talking homonyms or misspellings), but something so glaring and boneheaded… I have to pay a tax. That tax is giving the reader that spot it… one month free to me and the Money Printer… even if they are a paid subscriber already. What was the mistake? I said in the Subhead in the body of the article that SEVEN powerful words in the global economy are hiding in plain sight on every dollar bill.
Do you see it? There are eight words there. A reader pointed this out… and the article has been amended… Come claim your prize, Sir… Thing I Think No. 3: Gold is For The ChildrenIt’s now been 30 months since I formally became a “Gold Bug.” And we’ve now cleared the $3,500 threshold since we first officially went long gold here as part of our Hedge of Tomorrow report in March 2024. I don’t know why this is so complicated for people. ALL ROADS point to more monetary inflation and currency debasement. And the slow burn gets harder and harder for people. I’m expecting that this cycle will easily take gold to $4,000… And again… It’s the debt… It’s the debasement… It’s the money printer. Thing I Think No. 4: This Chart Says EverythingWhen we talk about how financial systems unravel, it's never just about numbers. It’s about trust, concentration, and what happens when too much power gets funneled into too few hands. This came up in our TheoTrade chat today… and it's something I wish I’d gotten to when I was on with Josh Brown. Here’s Visual Capitalist…
So here it is: These stories never end with a soft landing. They end with reform… or they end with revolution. Take the Dutch East India Company… the world’s first publicly traded corporation. By the late 1700s, it collapsed under its own weight. It was bloated, corrupt, and too entangled with the state. And the Dutch didn’t just lose a company. They lost an era of control and wouldn’t regain financial credibility until Napoleon rewired the system… Meanwhile, English banks are still somewhat conservative after what happened hundreds of years ago… reform would follow… But then, look at John Law’s Mississippi Company… the original financial hype machine. It crashed in 1720 after inflating the value of paper shares with royal backing. That collapse torched public faith in paper money and made inequality in France even worse. It didn’t cause the French Revolution directly… but it lit a match that smoldered for decades. And here we are again... wondering if this time is different. Critics will say that this time is different because we have regulatory bodies… and that we have more safeguards than in the past… But the reality? The regulatory safeguards enabled more concentration, not less. “Too big to fail" has become a perverse incentive structure where the largest institutions can take outsized risks knowing they'll be backstopped. We've socialized losses while privatizing gains. And we wonder why people are pissed? The numbers are stark - the top 7 stocks now represent concentration levels we nhaven’t seen in forever... But unlike previous eras of concentration, we've created systematic incentives for concentration that amplify risk rather than distribute it.
The 2008 crisis was supposed to teach us about concentration risk… We responded by making the big banks even bigger and adding tech monopolies to the mix. Each intervention creates a moral hazard for the next crisis. When financial power consolidates, and the exit doors get smaller, history only offers two outcomes. Fix it… or break it. Thing I Think No. 5: The ETF Scam Keeps Going…I looked on Finviz today. 5,531 individual stocks you can buy. There are 4,423 ETFs. We have almost as many ways to package stocks as we have actual stocks. It's like having 4,000 different boxes to wrap the same birthday present. Should we buy Apple directly, or through the Large Cap Tech ETF, the Innovation ETF, the ESG ETF, the Millennial CEO ETF, or the Catholic Values S&P 500 ETF, which has nothing to do with Catholicism - unless you count Home Depot’s inclusion… because Jesus was a carpenter? Wall Street has now figured out how to sell you the same 500 companies in 4,000 different flavors. It's financial Baskin-Robbins. Next week: The "Stocks My Degenerate Gambler Bartender Recommends" ETF. It has Monster Beverage in it… to give you the energy to lose money faster… Expense ratio: 0.85%. I’ll be back tomorrow with a look back at the week… and give you a little insight into what we may see with the CPI. We’ll look at institutional positioning ahead of the report… That will be while I catch up on my business taxes… Hooray!!! Stay Positive, Garrett Baldwin About Me and the Money Printer Me and the Money Printer is a daily publication covering the financial markets through three critical equations. We track liquidity (money in the financial system), momentum (where money is moving in the system), and insider buying (where Smart Money at companies is moving their money). Combining these elements with a deep understanding of central banking and how the global system works has allowed us to navigate financial cycles and boost our probability of success as investors and traders. This insight is based on roughly 17 years of intensive academic work at four universities, extensive collaboration with market experts, and the joy of trial and error in research. You can take a free look at our worldview and thesis right here. Disclaimer Nothing in this email should be considered personalized financial advice. While we may answer your general customer questions, we are not licensed under securities laws to guide your investment situation. Do not consider any communication between you and Florida Republic employees as financial advice. The communication in this letter is for information and educational purposes unless otherwise strictly worded as a recommendation. Model portfolios are tracked to showcase a variety of academic, fundamental, and technical tools, and insight is provided to help readers gain knowledge and experience. Readers should not trade if they cannot handle a loss and should not trade more than they can afford to lose. There are large amounts of risk in the equity markets. Consider consulting with a professional before making decisions with your money.
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