MarketMap™

What we know

Four things carry the highest degree of confidence.

The first is the long-cycle marker. The eighty-four-year cycle and the historical parallelism behind it place this period alongside the last great structural turns, and the context of that period argues for monetary failure in some sovereign state. That state becomes the catalyst, or the excuse. While there have been all kinds of social media conversations about a dollar crisis (to the extent that it's become a cliche), there really is no public recognition of a currency crisis. It will not be in the major headlines until we're halfway done with the downtrend. Only when the market is making a panic low will the apparent unresolved monetary issue become widely accepted as the thing that brought down the house of cards.

From an economic point of view,, the second is hyper-stagflation. From a market type point of view, The ContraryThinker™ expects price swings on the order of ten times from high of the range to low of the range compared to what ran from the late 1960s through 1982. What we refer to as the little stories coming off the back pages all add to the inflationary pressure, creating an inflationary hydra.

From an investment point of view, the third is the secular change of trend away from the intangible assets that have led since 2009. Flow of funds moves into capital equipment, tangibles, and stuff. The driver is the race to build the capital infrastructure that artificial intelligence requires, infrastructure that does not yet exist. The main goal of high tech is to increase productivity to offset the inflationary pressures. In other words, to bring about the renewal of disinflation, which is what the intangible markets thrive on. As the old cliché goes, the seeds of the current boom sow the seeds of its own demise.

The fourth is that Bitcoin is not a hedge against inflation. October 6, 2025 settled that question, because it went into a bear market declining over 50% while inflation has been going higher. We'd also add here that, given the cryptocurrencies, by any other name, could be part of the monetary crisis. Does cyclically do in this period.