Big news today that CME launched single stock futures - these will trade 23hrs/day, weekends, cash-settled leverage, on the 55 most liquid equities names in the US market! But this is actually not the first time CME has tried to do this. In fact, they made a huge effort in 2002- and failed fantastically. It's worth studying what happened, what's different now, and what this means for the frontier of finance. Time for a side quest- That story starts with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This was the ugly byproduct of a 20yr reg turf war between the SEC and CFTC (sound familiar guys?), in which margin rules/short sales/reporting requirements were so complicated that even after approval broker dealer compliance framworks had no idea how to handle it. Most people don't remember this brief glitch in history because this was in fact just a big sideshow for what was actually the bigger/$$$ gamble of a darker legacy - exempting OTC derivatives from regulation altogether; this would in turn allow the CDS market to expand without oversight, and we all know what happened after that... But perhaps more practically speaking in fairness to the regulators, the more obvious reason why SS futures failed at the time was probably that there was just no genuine economic advantage over existing tools- because you can in fact get most of the leverage via listed options! Maybe you got slightly better capital efficiency for directional bets, but it wasn't good enough to otherwise offset the biggest reasons why most financial products fail: fragmented liquidity. So why are they attempting to do this again? There are many factors you can point to, but the single biggest difference now is that the retail market structure has changed enormously. American retail is more comfortable with leverage than ever in history, zero commission trading has brought in surplus liquidity beyond wildest dreams, levered ETFs and 0DTE options cant grow fast enough, and crypto perps have demonstrated that there is a ton of appetite for this kind of risk that simply just didn't exist before 2008. If you look at what the CME has been doing, the "retailification of leverage" has been happening for a long time already, starting with micro bitcoin futures called "BFFs" (Bitcoin Friday Futures lol) and the cringy Gen Z social ad that followed for those that are still scarred from seeing it. It's why CME launched for SS futures standard contracts (100 shares) but also micro contracts (10 shares). Honestly - who needs 10 shares futures contracts? The other reason, and probably more critically important, is to pursue a defensive posture. The CME doesn't compete in a vacuum anymore - with exchanges like Coinbase, Robinhood (+ a JVs between Susquehanna for predictions market), Hyperliquid all going after the same retail customer, the race to become the "everything brokerage" is just as much about distribution as much as it is about product design. And we know distribution is everything in finance because the beauty of Reg T + futures based margining is at its most competitive with scale and diversity, for the physics of money operates like a gravitational field: the larger the mass, the stronger its pull. So what does this mean for you? The single stock futures is not the product. You are the product. YOU are the yield. You are the currency that feed these HFTs, market makers, "big finance" just like you were the data currency for social networks, marketers, "big tech." Your intent to trade, the order book you create as makers, the tape you paint as takers, your inability to discriminate for best price when there are tens of seemingly fungible but slightly variant risks being offered, is their profit. And while it may all sound really dire when I frame it like this, but there is actually a way to win. And it goes back to the first principle of why the single stock futures failed to gain traction back in 2002. You must trade OPTIONS. Of course none of this is actual investment advice and you must always do your own research. But as I've written many times before on X already, options are the best tools retail investors have to protect against big finance. That's because options have the greatest asymmetric leverage embedded in the physics of its product that allow great convexity with great duration. When CME's Duffy says "perps are bad products for retail" he is not necessarily wrong- perps have the potential to be the most dangerous products for retail because they have no assurance or guarantee to control their own outcomes, especially given retail is so small- institutions can liquidate you (or each other, and you're just an ant caught in a stampede of bulls) where you have no agency. The reality is that the commodities futures market since the beginning of time has been found useful because it combines speculators WITH natural hedgers. And there is no natural hedger on earth who would take perps risk to hedge their long term business. Duration is an asset. Duration deserves a premium. Term structure exists because there is in fact a market for time. And when you own an option, it means you have the choice, but never the obligation, to meet time where and when you demand it. As I write this, I'm reminded that history has a peculiar sense of humor, delighting in the ironies of fate. The same bill that allowed then failed single stock futures market in 2000 is the same bill that gave us the reg vacuum for the CDS market that basically is the single biggest proximate legal cause of the 2008 financial crisis. And twenty years later yet again now as we head into CLARITY posturing for the next two weeks, on another epic settlement for a CFTC vs SEC battle, there are public debates occurring on various salient features that the crypto industry cares about. But you would all be wise to take note that if the past precedence holds again, the most consequential thing that will happen will actually be interpreted as a footnote, just like the "the Enron loophole" (aka. the OTC swap exemption) and it WILL involve offshore derivatives just as it did last time. And that footnote is what is going to let crypto industry expand again, bigger, stronger and faster. Because that is the other physics of money beyond a gravitational field: the harder you try to confine capital, the faster it leaks across borders.

HUGE $NBIS news today, showcasing why they're the premier neocloud: -> Nebius announces a new business model that lets infrastructure partners deploy Nebius’s AI cloud platform in their own AI data centers. This is so f*cking good. Simply: - Nebius will let partners (e.g. DC developers, infra funds, sovereign AI projects) build + pay for data centres. - Then pair that partner capacity with Nebius's systems, software stackm and customer book. - Meaning that Nebius can expand their capacity "pool" even faster. - With no capex or financing risks like debt/dilution. Also, for Nebius: they get a very high margin rev stream w/ minimal financing requirements. Since the partners will fund all the expensive stuff like the actual building / power / GPUs. And then Nebius supplies genuinely scarce stuff like systems architecture / $NVDA supply chain access / software stack. And ofc, the GTM strategy w/ access to Nebius's customers. Meaning that Nebius would sell a partner's DC capacity via their own in-house Nebius sales org. With identical service levels to their owned sites. Then, Nebius takes a revenue cut / licensing fees / commissions / committed capacity deals. Unbelievable from Nebius lol. Nebius sells out capacity every quarter and sits on ~$46B of contracted backlog (mainly $MSFT and $META). So their main constraint is nothing to do with customers or tech. Rather, their limiting factor has been capital + energized power where every GW costs upwards of billions of dollars. But...this announcement removes the capital constraints to crazy high expansion.

: : Four Pillars and ASA Launch Asia Crypto News, the Channel for Every Major Crypto News in Asia @FourPillarsFP and @AsiaStablecoin are launching “Asia Crypto News,” a Telegram channel that delivers every major crypto related news story across Asia in one place. Asia is home to some of the dynamic crypto markets in the world, yet key developments are scattered across local outlets in different languages. “Asia Crypto News” solves this by curating the most important stories from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Southeast Asia and beyond, covering regulation, stablecoins, exchanges, institutional adoption and market structure. Every post distills the story into three key points with country tags, so readers can follow the entire region at a glance. Follow Asia Crpyto News today and never miss a major development in Asian crypto again. 👉

Bari Weiss may be losing control of CBS News. According to Puck News today, Paramount-Skydance is in informal talks to strip her of day-to-day control over 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, and CBS Mornings. CNN CEO Mark Thompson is being considered to take over. David Ellison met with him in recent days. Five months ago, Weiss killed Sharyn Alfonsi’s 60 Minutes piece on CECOT — the El Salvador prison where the Trump administration sends deportees. Alfonsi’s email to staffers: “It is factually correct. Pulling it now is not an editorial decision. It is a political one.” Weiss reportedly threatened to sue Alfonsi over the dispute. Yesterday Anderson Cooper left 60 Minutes. He had been on Weiss’s short list to anchor the Evening News. He turned the anchor job down. Then he declined to renew his 60 Minutes contract. Paramount’s official statement today: “Bari has the full support of Paramount and David Ellison. Reports suggesting otherwise are inaccurate.” Under the proposed restructure, Weiss wouldn’t be fired. She’d keep “broad editorial influence.” She’d just lose the daily TV control. The face changes. The CECOT story stays buried.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump told Fox News today and the press gaggle on Air Force One that China has committed to buying 200 of Boeing’s jets and additional General Electric engines. Per a comment by President Trump, disseminated by the New York Times, “It’s approximately 400, 450 engines, 200 planes and a promise of up to 750 if they do a good job.” While no commensurate statement has yet been made by official Chinese channels, per the New York Times, the sale would be the single biggest sale of Boeing aircraft to the East Asian country in a decade.

Me: “damn I was so busy today, couldn’t even shitpost. I wonder what I missed…” “Hey siri, what did I miss in the news today?” “….Sure. I set a reminder for Michelin tubes today” “RIP Steve Jobs”

$NBIS signs $1B+ compute agreement with Reflection AI, for GB300 access through 2029. Reflection also signed a multi-billion dollar agreement with $SPCX earlier. Interesting to say the least, seeing Nebius drop -5% off the news today. Also... counterparty to get this done kinda reminds me of OpenAI, where they might not have the funds to actually execute on these LTAs yet compared to $META or $MSFT. But generally positive long term developments, customer diversification was one of the core strengths of Nebius.

I love living in Japan. My home. My little space. My broken figures. My konbini. My gym🥹🤍 Sadly, I got some bad news today. My landlord wants to increase my rent when it’s time to renew my contract in October… My first reaction was basically: “NOOOOOO.” 😭 It’s about ¥20,000 (around $100) more per month. To be honest, I’m not even that surprised. A few of my foreign friends have gone through the same thing recently, and rent seems to be getting more expensive overall. Well… time to work even harder. One day, I hope I’ll be able to buy a place of my own here in Japan. That’s one of my biggest dreams. 🇯🇵