What Happened Today?
Tuesday February 17, 2026
MACRO:
So far the market is playing out as expected for 2026. A lot of thrashing around to go nowhere. I don’t expect anything to change until April or into the Summer still. Election season is going to be a nightmare so hopefully we’ve reached our targets by then.
Low bid pressure again today as people await the FOMC Meeting notes which come out tomorrow at 2pm. The Fed is going to wait but likely there will be some evocation on economic weakness.
We could (Shaun could. I could help I guess. Or watch.) automate the entire money-supply/interest rate process with a raspberry pi if the government just asked us to. All you have to do is require all payment processors to make their records available to the government and then model money flow and velocity. This entire FOMC nonsense is unnecessary. You don’t even need AI to do this. The US could have automated the FOMC in the 1990s. The BLS could be automated as well. More on this topic later.
There appears to be no consensus on how SCOTUS is going to rule in regards to IEPA. And no commitment as far as I can tell on how a ruling either way will affect the bond and stock market. I can’t even decide if I need to hedge. Or not.
Does the possibility that the US has to return funds matter to the bond market? It would be the biggest fuck you to the American people since all the tariffs would be returned to corporations (not to you since you are not the payer on record) and to Lutnik’s former firm that has been buying rights to reclaim tariffs for 5-10 cents on the dollar since tariffs started. Repaying would further drive the US into debt obviously.
Does the market think a ruling against Trump is going to actually change the Administration’s behavior or will Trump just find a different way to lobby tariffs? Does the possibility of getting tariff money back make equities more attractive? Are institutional market participants just too tired to really care anymore?
Dunno.
But, there are a few stocks that are trading in the channel that really can’t go much lower if tariffs are upheld and have a lot of upside if tariffs are ruled illegal. So there are asymmetries if you can find them. There are a lot actually. Not sure why more people aren’t trying to find these sort of trades.
We are currently only in one such play: Ford. There are others I am looking at but only committed to NYSE:$F.
We’ve been in it for a few weeks as discussed a few times in chat. We own various call options. It’s pretty easy to see why we picked this one and besides the chart here the premium on this stock was stupid cheap. All of our options are already up 50+% some are up 200+% now.
MICRO:
I was able to flip some option contracts today again. But did not make any additional equity purchases. I expect tomorrow to be low bid in the morning as well and a mini-tantrum when the FOMC notes come out. So I want the extra cash for tomorrow.
As always, if you think there are spelling errors update your dictionary to the latest version. Happy speculation!
— AJ
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