Milk Road Macro
@MilkRoadMacro • 18,714 subscribers
Helping you get smarter about macro investing. Subscribe for free to learn how global markets move Bitcoin, stocks, gold and more. By @milkroaddaily
Shorts
Videos
Ken Griffin just revealed the only thing he actually looks for when hiring at Citadel. Not your GPA. Not your pedigree. Not your internship list. He wants one type of person: the athlete who excelled academically. Here's why that combination matters to him. The athlete knows what it takes to win. They've also felt what it's like to lose. That experience of pushing through both, and still showing up, is something you can't learn in a classroom. The academic side tells him something different. It tells him the person knows how to manage their time. That they have the discipline to apply their mind under pressure. That when things get hard, they'll find a way through. Griffin calls it perseverance and grit paired with high aspirations. That's the profile he's building Citadel's AI team around. Think about what that means for where the talent wars in finance and AI are headed. The people running the biggest pots of money in the world aren't just looking for quants anymore.
Milk Road Macro1,454,728 views • 2 months ago
Mark Cuban has sold majority of his Bitcoin. Cuban originally bought Bitcoin with one thesis in mind: "It was a better version of gold than gold." A hedge against fiat currency losing its value. When the dollar weakens, Bitcoin should go up. But that thesis just blew up in his face. During the Iran war, when geopolitical risk was spiking and the dollar was sliding, Bitcoin dropped. Gold went to $5,000. Think about what he was expecting. Bitcoin is priced in dollars. When the dollar falls, Bitcoin becomes cheaper for buyers around the world. Global demand should kick in and push the price up. It didn't happen. Gold did exactly what it was supposed to do as a macro hedge. Bitcoin didn't. And for Cuban, that was the line. The whole premise of holding it was gone. He's more disappointed in Bitcoin than Ethereum. He had already written off memecoins as garbage entirely. This matters beyond just one billionaire's portfolio decision. The "Bitcoin as digital gold" narrative has been the backbone of institutional adoption for years. It's the reason pension funds, family offices, and corporate treasuries started buying. If that hedge thesis is broken, the next buyer at these prices needs a different reason to hold. The honest reality: Bitcoin is still trading like a risk asset. It correlates with tech stocks in a downturn and doesn't decouple when it matters most. Gold doesn't have that problem.
Milk Road Macro895,315 views • 1 month ago
This investor explains why he holds $MU instead of $SKHY. "These companies are very similar. Their price earnings ratio are similar and their products are similar. They're both benefiting from the AI boom. Everything is fantastic for both companies." So why Micron? As the leading US based memory company, Micron benefits from the CHIPS Act subsidies. This gives Micron direct cash grants of up to $6.1 billion to build new factories. All this subsidy money has supported Micron's big projects in New York, Idaho and Virginia. Along with this, Micron continues to get tax credits and state-level help. Targeting to invest $200B-$250B over the next 10+ years, Micron aims to produce 40% of its DRAM chips inside the US. Another reason is that this investor lives in the United States, invests in US markets and has a direct pulse on American companies. Owning Micron means owning common shares he can vote with direct ownership on a US exchange. There is no geopolitical risk from Korea, no currency exchange risk, and no layers of ADR structure between him and the underlying business. His threshold for switching would be a significant valuation discount in SK Hynix that compensated for those additional risks. It is a simple framework and it is probably the right one for most American investors who are not running a global macro fund. Our analysts at Milk Road PRO hold $MU & SK Hynix. They have been in the memory trade since before the big runs. Get access to their exact portfolios for $1. Link below.
Milk Road Macro22,765 views • 3 days ago
Leopold Aschenbrenner is a 24 year old who turned $225 million into $5.5 billion in just 12 months. His 13F just dropped and it reveals exactly where he's putting that money. Top holdings, all brand new this quarter: SMH (VanEck Semi ETF): $2.04B NVDA: $1.57B ORCL: $1.07B AVGO: $1.01B AMD: $969M MU: $584M TSM: $535M ASML: $494M INTC: $159M But the most interesting move isn't what he bought. It's what he flipped. Last quarter he held a $747M bullish call on Intel. This quarter that position is now a put. He also cut his CoreWeave position from $774M down to $141M. Full exits: Lumentum, Coherent, Tower Semiconductor, Cipher Mining, Hut 8. What he kept and added: the bitcoin miners turning themselves into AI data centers. Applied Digital, Bitfarms, CleanSpark, IREN, Riot. Plus a brand new position in Hive Digital. The thesis writes itself: Long the companies pouring the concrete for the data centers. Cutting exposure to the chips going inside them. The man who wrote the definitive manifesto on AGI just faded the semiconductors building it. Our analysts are watching every 13F release and positioning accordingly. They were early to $AMD, early to $MU, early to $BE. Don’t miss the next call, come join us for just a $1. (link in bio)
Milk Road Macro313,372 views • 2 months ago
Gavin Baker just spotted a massive contradiction inside the AI market. The valuations across the AI supply chain don't add up when you hold them side by side. - Memory names: trading at 3-5x PE. - Nvidia: trading at a very low PE. - Some accelerator companies: reasonable multiples. - Power and cooling names: discounting a much higher future. These multiples can't all be right at the same time. If power and cooling names are priced correctly, then Nvidia and memory are way too cheap. They're going up a lot from here. If Nvidia and memory are priced correctly, then power and cooling will significantly underperform from here. One side is wrong. Both can't be true. Baker's word for it: the AI market is "cross-sectionally inefficient" right now. For investors, the question isn't just "am I bullish on AI?" The real question is: which part of the stack is priced correctly and which part is priced for a scenario that isn't going to play out? Note: Baker runs Atreides Management, one of the most respected tech-focused growth funds in the world. He doesn't make calls like this lightly. When the best investors in tech spot a cross-sectional mismatch this size, the trade is figuring out which side wins. Our analysts are already positioning inside the AI supply chain. They called $AMD, $MU, $CRDO and $NBIS before the big runs. Follow their exact portfolios for $1 at Milk Road PRO, link in bio.
Milk Road Macro162,479 views • 1 month ago
Stan Druckenmiller just explained the one rule that separates great investors from everyone else. "If the reason I bought a stock is no longer the case, I don't care what I paid for it." No anchoring to your cost basis. No waiting to break even. Clean slate. He bought at $60. It drops to $50. Most investors sit paralyzed waiting to get back to where they started. Druckenmiller has zero emotion about it and sells immediately. "I just don't care what I paid for a stock. It's absolutely irrelevant to my investment process going forward." This is actually what support and resistance on a chart is measuring. Resistance at $60 means a crowd of people bought at $60, watched it fall, and have been waiting three or four years just to break even. While they waited, they missed everything that was going up the whole time. Anchoring to your cost basis is one of the most expensive habits in investing. But Druckenmiller pairs this with something most people struggle to do at the same time: concentration. "Not being afraid of concentration is a big reason for my success." He plays across five buckets: equities, bonds, currencies, commodities, and credit. When one market has no clear edge, he finds one that does and sizes up there instead. Bear market in equities? The real action moves to bonds and currencies. He just follows it. Unemotional about losses. Concentrated when he has conviction. Flexible across markets. That combination is what kept him from ever having a down year. Our analysts use the same discipline sizing into high conviction positions across sectors. They were early to $AMD, $MU, $BE and $CRDO before their big run ups. You can follow their exact portfolios for $1 at Milk Road PRO. (link in bio)
Milk Road Macro170,012 views • 2 months ago
Ken Griffin just asked the question everyone in AI is too scared to answer. Data center spending in the US this year alone is over $500 billion. Half a trillion dollars. To raise that kind of money, you have to make a promise. And the promise has to be big. "AI needs to be your savior almost. How else are you going to write $500 billion of checks in a single year?" He's not saying AI is fraud. He's saying the hype is structurally necessary. You can't fund a buildout at this scale without narrative that matches it. The real question is what AI actually delivers at the end. In some areas Griffin says it's going to be profound. Call centers. Software engineering productivity. Those are real, measurable, already happening. But in white collar work more broadly, he's more skeptical. A Harvard paper recently coined a term for it: AI Work Slop. Output that looks impressive on the surface. First few sentences read like genuine insight. Then you go deeper and it's all garbage. Griffin's colleague runs their commodities business. Got handed a report generated by an AI engine. First paragraph, genuinely good. The rest, useless. The model that can write a compelling opening can't yet think through the substance underneath it. This is the AI investing tension right now. The infrastructure spend is real. The hype is real. The productivity gains in specific verticals are real. But the blanket assumption that AI transforms every white collar job equally has not been proven yet.
Milk Road Macro125,923 views • 2 months ago
IRAN’S TOLL SYSTEM IS NOW LIVE IN THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ In the last 24 hours, around 10 ships have made it through. Here’s how the system works: The IRGC is running an informal checkpoint inside the Strait. 1. Ships submit cargo and vessel details through intermediaries 2. If approved, they pay a fee starting at ~$1 per barrel 3.Payments are accepted in Chinese yuan or stablecoins 4. In return, ships receive a permit code, route instructions, and an escort But here’s the bigger story: This isn’t just about tolls. It’s about money and power. By accepting yuan and crypto, Iran is testing an alternative financial system right at the chokepoint that handles 20% of global oil flows. Here's what they're aiming to do: - China gets more global usage of the yuan - Crypto gets a real-world use case - The US risks losing financial leverage at the margin
Milk Road Macro183,885 views • 3 months ago
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon believes that money being spent on AI right now will NOT produce great returns. The question: with companies at $5 trillion market caps, don't you see a bubble? His exact words: "A lot of the capital being deployed will not produce adequate returns. And a bunch of the capital being deployed will actually not produce any returns." But then the key line: "It's hard to call the timing on these things." This is the Solomon framework: acknowledge the froth, don't pretend every dollar deployed will be productive but don't try to pick the peak. We've seen this pattern before throughout history. Rapid tech acceleration creates intense capital formation. New companies race to capitalize. Some win. Most lose. The opportunity set with AI is enormous. It won't be a straight line. Solomon isn't telling you to sell. He's telling you that the job right now is to figure out which companies are the real winners before the market does. Because by the time it's obvious, the multiple is already in the price. This is exactly what separates the Milk Road PRO analysts from the crowd. They don't wait for the consensus. They called $AMD, $MU, $CRDO and $NBIS months before the big moves. Follow their exact portfolios for $1. Don't navigate this AI cycle alone, link in bio.
Milk Road Macro73,809 views • 1 month ago
The Strait of Hormuz is now officially shut. Iran has even warned it may fire on any ships attempting to cross it. But here's why the Strait of Hormuz matters: The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow 21 mile wide passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply moves through that chokepoint every single day. This is a chokepoint the entire global economy depends on. This appears to be Iran’s strategy: 1. Shut the Strait of Hormuz. 2. Constrict global oil supply. 3. Drive oil prices higher (Brent crude is already at its highest level in two years). 4. Increase inflationary pressure and economic stress globally. 5. Force major economies to pressure the US to de-escalate in exchange for reopening the Strait. It’s economic leverage through geography. Even without matching military scale, controlling a vital trade channel gives Iran the ability to impact global economies. The longer it’s closed, the bigger the problem.
Milk Road Macro194,809 views • 4 months ago
Druckenmiller was asked what separates great investors from everyone else. His answer had nothing to do with intelligence. First: extreme passion. You cannot compete against people who love this business if you don't love it. They will outwork you, outthink you and outcompete you. Second: competitiveness. They have to be sore losers. They have to want to win badly enough that losing is genuinely painful. Then he got to the part most people get wrong. "I haven't even gotten to IQ yet. Anything over 125 or 130 doesn't help you. It's largely superfluous." Beyond a baseline, intelligence stops mattering. The edge is elsewhere. Third: ego that gets checked at the door. You can have one but you cannot let it anchor you to a position. The market does not care what you think you know. When things happen that you didn't anticipate and they always will, you have to be able to change your mind without inventing reasons to stay. Fourth, and the one most people never master: think against the crowd. "If you're in the crowd, those positions are already owned by everyone. It's not easy to fight your emotions and go against the crowd, but that is a big piece of it." Passion. Competitiveness. Humility. Independent thinking. Just those four things, done consistently for decades.
Milk Road Macro101,085 views • 2 months ago
TECH STOCKS ARE CARRYING THE S&P 500 RALLY Here's why according to Mark Newton CMT: The Mag 7 had gone basically sideways for 6-8 months before this rally. When tech roared back, it was a huge deal given how much of the index these names represent. Earnings have been strong and the biggest companies are still pouring money into AI. This kind of capex commitment gives the economy a lot of confidence and that's why we're the S&P 500 rally so hard. Tech continues to carry the stock market.
Milk Road Macro96,176 views • 2 months ago
Netflix co-founder: "Business is not about having a good idea" His framing: Having ideas is easy and trivial. The important thing is figuring out the cheapest, quickest, most direct way to collide your idea with reality. He told the story of a university student who came to him with a peer-to-peer clothing sharing platform. She wanted to raise $5 million, hire a team and drop out of college. He stopped her and asked if she had a piece of paper, a marker, and a piece of tape. He told her to write "Would you like to borrow my clothes? Knock." on the paper and tape it to the outside of her dorm room door. Wait 24 hours. See if anyone knocks. If nobody knocks, she just learned the most important thing about her business. The problem with spending a year building in your bedroom is twofold: 1. The idea grows so large and complicated in your head that you convince yourself you need millions just to get started. 2. You are almost certainly building the wrong thing because you are working from imagination rather than real information. Don't build. Test first.
Milk Road Macro37,794 views • 28 days ago
People saying crypto has "missed out" on this bull run are thinking about it wrong. In late 2021, NASDAQ rallied for 10 straight weeks while Bitcoin was flat. Then Bitcoin took off 80% while NASDAQ gained just 7-8%. "Right now you are at peak fear for crypto. But you are starting euphoria on stocks." When pullbacks come in equities, the rotation into crypto follows. Four to ten weeks is all it takes for an altcoin rally of 200-300%. FT Henrik Zeberg.
Milk Road Macro40,033 views • 1 month ago
Charlie Munger just summed up the only real edge in long-term investing. If you're going to invest in stocks or real estate for the long term, there will be periods of agony. There will be periods of boom. He quoted Kipling: "Only if you can treat those two impostors just the same." Boom and bust are both impostors. The boom makes you think it'll last forever. The bust makes you think it's all over. Neither is true. Both will pass. "Sometimes it's night and sometimes it's daylight. Sometimes it's a boom. Sometimes it's a bust. I just believe in doing as well as you can and keep going as long as they let you." That's the whole strategy. Not market timing. Not macro calls. Not rotating in and out. Just doing as well as you can and staying in the game. Munger held Berkshire through multiple 50% drawdowns. He watched the companies he owned get cut in half. Multiple times. He didn't sell. He kept going. The investors who build real wealth over decades aren't the ones who called the top or bottomed the market. They're the ones who stayed invested through the night and were still there when daylight came back. Right now, markets are near all-time highs after recovering from the April tariff panic faster than almost anyone predicted. The people who sold at the bottom are now trying to figure out when to get back in. The people who held are already there. That's Munger's whole lesson in one quarter.
Milk Road Macro68,329 views • 1 month ago
Druckenmiller was asked what separates great investors from everyone else. His answer had nothing to do with intelligence. First: extreme passion. You cannot compete against people who love this business if you don't love it. They will outwork you, outthink you and outcompete you. Second: competitiveness. They have to be sore losers. They have to want to win badly enough that losing is genuinely painful. Then he got to the part most people get wrong. "I haven't even gotten to IQ yet. Anything over 125 or 130 doesn't help you. It's largely superfluous." Beyond a baseline, intelligence stops mattering. The edge is elsewhere. Third: ego that gets checked at the door. You can have one but you cannot let it anchor you to a position. The market does not care what you think you know. When things happen that you didn't anticipate and they always will, you have to be able to change your mind without inventing reasons to stay. Fourth, and the one most people never master: think against the crowd. "If you're in the crowd, those positions are already owned by everyone. It's not easy to fight your emotions and go against the crowd, but that is a big piece of it." Passion. Competitiveness. Humility. Independent thinking. Just those four things, done consistently for decades.
Milk Road Macro51,721 views • 1 month ago
LOTS OF MOVEMENT ON HORMUZ (LAST 48 HOURS) A wide range of ships are moving through but focus on the red markers. Those represent tankers carrying crude oil, chemicals, and LNG. Here’s the latest shipping data at Hormuz: 🟢 Feb 26 → 🚢 132 🟢 Feb 27 → 🚢 128 🟠 Feb 28 → 🚢 98 🟠 Mar 01 → 🚢 18 🟠 Mar 02 → 🚢 7 🔴 Mar 03 → 🚢 2 🔴 Mar 04 → 🚢 2 🔴 Mar 05 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 06 → 🚢 0 🔴 Mar 07 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 08 → 🚢 2 🔴 Mar 09 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 10 → 🚢 2 🔴 Mar 11 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 12 → 🚢 0 🔴 Mar 13 → 🚢 3 🔴 Mar 14 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 15 → 🚢 0 🔴 Mar 16 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 17 → 🚢 2 🔴 Mar 18 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 19 → 🚢 0 🔴 Mar 20 → 🚢 1 🔴 Mar 21 → 🚢 2 🔴 Mar 22 → 🚢 3 🔴 Mar 23 → 🚢 5 🔴 Mar 24 → 🚢 6 🔴 Mar 25 → 🚢 4 🔴 Mar 26 → 🚢 4 🔴 Mar 27 → 🚢 3 🟠 Mar 28 → 🚢 11 🟠 Mar 29 → 🚢 9 🟠 Mar 30 → 🚢 8 🟠 Mar 31 → 🚢 11 🟠 Apr 01 → 🚢 16 🟠 Apr 02 → 🚢 13 🟠 Apr 03 → 🚢 14 🟠 Apr 04 → 🚢 11 🟠 Apr 05 → 🚢 10 🟠 Apr 06 → 🚢 11 🟠 Apr 07 → 🚢 11 🟠 Apr 08 → 🚢 12 🟠 Apr 09 → 🚢 9 🟠 Apr 10 → 🚢 15 🟠 Apr 11 → 🚢 17 🟠 Apr 12 → 🚢 14 Source: World Insights
Milk Road Macro96,214 views • 3 months ago
Chris Camillo just made the most bullish case on $AMZN. Everyone worried when Amazon raised their capex to $200 billion Camillo believes they might make that $200 billion back on their Anthropic investment alone when Anthropic IPOs. What Amazon has done in the last 18 months is remarkable in scope. They didn't try to win the foundation model race against OpenAI and Google directly. They went a completely different direction, positioning themselves as the infrastructure underneath everything that is AI. Trainium chips, cloud buildout, advertising integration and equity stakes in two of the three most important AI companies on the planet. First Anthropic. Now $50 billion into OpenAI on top of that. And that OpenAI investment isn't just a financial bet. It ties OpenAI into Amazon's cloud ecosystem, probably permanently. Two of the big three AI labs now run on Amazon infrastructure. Google is the only one that doesn't. The market has spent two years debating who builds the best model. Amazon decided to own the plumbing those models run on and bought equity in the winners while they were at it.
Milk Road Macro55,169 views • 1 month ago
Oil service companies could be the sleeper trade here. Energy has been in the spotlight for 2-3 months but capital hasn't actually flowed into the service sector yet. Here's the thesis from Otavio (Tavi) Costa: As oil prices stay elevated, drilling activity is likely to pick up. And when producers drill more, oil service companies make more money. As global production needs increase (especially in North America), these companies win. This trade is still less crowded so there's more room for upside. Direct oil exposure is fine but service companies may be the smarter 3-5 year play.
Milk Road Macro47,377 views • 2 months ago
A 50-year pattern just broke in silver. At the same time: - Banks are weakening - Bonds are breaking - The Fed is already intervening If this plays out, silver won’t just go up… it could go parabolic. Momentum Structural Analysis Tune in to know more ⏱ TIME POINTS ⏱ 00:00 – Intro 01:16 – Is the Stock Market Topping? 06:46 – Banking Cracks & Credit Risks 09:47 – Private Credit: What Treasury Sees 13:19 – Crash vs Slow Market Breakdown 16:35 – Iran vs Tariffs: Same Pattern? 18:55 – Sponsor: Nexo 19:33 – Sponsor: Summ 20:24 – Silver to $500 by Summer? 24:15 – Why Silver Is Breaking Out 28:22 – Physical Silver vs Miners 32:05 – Will Silver Miners Outperform? 35:50 – Old Money System vs Crypto 39:32 – Commodities & Oil Top Outlook 43:18 – Wrap-Up
Milk Road Macro55,322 views • 3 months ago