The key word is “average.” A few people are probably going to get millions, while others get pizza and a handshake.

After 24 years in Germany, one observation stands out: Germans often dislike each other long before they dislike foreigners. Bavarians mock Prussians, East and West Germans still distrust each other, Swabians and Franconians trade stereotypes endlessly and nearly every region believes the others are somehow arrogant, provincial, lazy or backward. The same logic extends outward. Many Germans associate Eastern Europeans with cheap labor, Muslims with aggression and parallel societies, Africans with welfare migration, Russians with authoritarianism, Americans with political dominance and Asians with wage competition. Whether fair or unfair is almost irrelevant here - these perceptions exist, they shape political behavior and pretending otherwise solves nothing. Toward South Americans, Germans are mostly neutral simply because there are not many of them in Germany. Most South Americans move to Spain or Portugal instead, so Germans rarely interact with Brazilians or Argentinians. Americans are not especially liked either because many Germans feel Americans constantly tell Germany what to do and that Germany still cannot act fully independently. At the same time, Germans often admire countries they perceive as socially harmonious or geographically distant from Europe’s political tensions. Who do Germans like? Sweden occupies a special place in the German imagination. Germans are told Sweden is the ideal social state and many see it as an example to follow even though most know almost nothing about the country itself. Whenever I describe how Sweden actually works, I lived there for some time, people look at me in disbelief and say: “That can’t be true.” Germany also romanticizes Australia and New Zealand. Many Germans dream of moving there simply because those places feel distant, exotic, relaxed and untouched by Europe’s historical burdens. For some reason, Australia in particular exists in the German imagination as an exceptionally attractive and exciting country. What many outsiders misunderstand is that Germany is not a socially unified nation hiding occasional tensions. It is a country built on layers of historical, regional, economic and cultural mistrust that long predate modern migration. Immigration simply attached itself to fractures that were already there. The irony is that Germans often describe themselves internationally as highly tolerant and post-national, while internally remaining deeply tribal in ways foreigners rarely notice.

The irony is that Buffett’s advice became famous precisely because almost nobody can operate under Buffett’s conditions. “Get rich slowly” sounds universal until you remember Buffett built his fortune through concentrated ownership, private deals, insurance float and access retail investors will never have. And investing with billions versus investing with a few thousand dollars are fundamentally different games because liquidity itself becomes a constraint. A retail investor can move in and out of small caps, niche sectors, or asymmetric opportunities instantly without moving the market. Buffett cannot. Once you manage hundreds of billions, flexibility disappears and preserving capital becomes more important than chasing explosive upside. Strategies that work for retail accounts become unusable at institutional scale. The “think in 7 years instead of 3” line also ignores that time horizon depends on financial reality. A billionaire can survive decade-long drawdowns, illiquidity and macro cycles. Most retail investors cannot. For someone managing massive capital, patience is an asset. For someone fighting inflation, taxes, housing costs and stagnant wages, waiting decades for average market returns is often presented as wisdom when it is partly a reflection of limited alternatives.

Investors in June 2026

Charts of the week

An ECB official is now hinting that Europe may need higher interest rates again because oil prices and Middle East tensions could reignite inflation. The timing feels almost nostalgic. In summer 2008, with the financial system already imploding beneath the surface, banks bleeding out and leverage everywhere ready to detonate, the ECB still decided inflation was the real danger and pushed rates even higher. Weeks later the entire system fell apart and central bankers suddenly discovered the emergency “whatever it takes” button. Now Europe looks exhausted again. Industrial output is weak, Germany’s manufacturing base keeps eroding, consumer demand is fragile, sovereign debt loads are enormous and policymakers are once again talking about tightening monetary policy because energy prices are moving higher during a geopolitical crisis. As if rate hikes can somehow force oil tankers to move faster through Hormuz. The cycle never changes. Central banks respond to supply shocks with demand destruction, economies get crushed under financing costs, southern Europe starts trembling under debt pressure and eventually the same institutions that promised discipline return to zero rates and liquidity injections large enough to flood the continent. The most impressive part is the confidence. Every cycle arrives wrapped in the language of control right before policymakers lose control completely.

BoA (Hartnett): “Bull & Bear Indicator hits 8.0...sell-signal for risk assets” Bull & Bear Indicator rises for a fourth week +0.4pts to 8.0 (Sell), up 1.7pts from its low four weeks ago (and the “old” version rose to 5.4 from its low of 4.8), remaining with none of its indicators bearish while now five are bullish or v bullish (“Bond Flow” moved from Neutral to Bullish). The increase was on “tech/EM debt inflows + record monthly jump in FMS equity allocation + drop in FMS cash levels to 3.9%”. “there have been 17 ‘sell signals’ since ’02, average loss for global stocks over 2-3 months is 2-3% (hit ratio of ~60%), with max drawdowns of 15-20%;”

“Building a portfolio that trades at less than 20 times earnings, shows no more than 2.7 times book value, and has a dividend yield of at least 1.3 percent. That should lead you to good stocks you can hold onto for a long time.” - Michael Maiello

Predicting rain doesn’t count; building the ark does.

Hedge funds are shorting the US stock market at the highest level since 2021. Short exposure to US equity index and ETF products just hit 13% of total gross exposure. It is nearly double where it was before COVID and the highest reading in 5 years. The S&P 500 is near all time highs. Bond yields are at 2007 levels. And Japan's bond market is cracking. Korean retail investors are borrowing record amounts to chase stocks higher. Retail is buying and Hedge funds are shorting. One of them is about to be very wrong. Chart: dailychartbook

Dubai Real Estate Crash?

Thailand has officially revised its visa-free and Visa on Arrival schemes for 2026, with major changes affecting travellers from around the world. From the new 30-day visa exemption list to the sharply reduced VoA scheme, here’s the complete country-by-country breakdown. The new rules will take effect 15 days after publication in the Royal Gazette.

Germany had 2.5 GW of grid-scale battery storage operating in 2025 - the largest battery fleet in the EU. Another 10 GW is already in development. If that capacity had been online this year, Germany could have avoided roughly $1 billion in gas-import costs simply by storing and redistributing excess solar power instead of wasting it. Germany’s residential battery market is now the biggest in Europe and still expanding fast. Roughly one in six homeowners already has a home battery installed, while another 30% are considering buying one within the next five years. What we are watching in real time is the creation of an entirely new multi-billion-dollar energy storage industry, one built around the monetization of intermittency itself. Solar and wind without storage create volatility, price collapses during oversupply and dependency on backup gas generation, but once large-scale batteries enter the equation, electricity stops being just energy and starts becoming a time-shifting financial asset, traded between hours of panic and hours of surplus.

What is happening in South Korea increasingly resembles a more extreme version of something already visible in India: foreign capital exits while domestic money keeps the market levitating.

Former Indonesian Deputy Labor Minister Emmanuel Ebenezer Gerungan, facing 5 years in prison for stealing $170K, says his biggest regret is stealing too little. After discovering that one of his former colleagues allegedly stole 25x more and received only a 6-year sentence, he apparently realized corruption has economies of scale.

S&P 500 at extreme valuations: • Price/Sales: 3.5x (all-time high, above 2000 peak) • Price/Book: 5.5x (record) • Forward P/E: 26x (dotcom bubble levels) • Dividend yield: ~1% (record low) AI concentration driving the rally 👀

Nearly two-thirds of global stablecoin payment volume now comes from Asia, led by Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. The center of financial experimentation is shifting east. While the West debates regulation and capital controls, Asia is building the settlement layer of the next monetary system.

The next battle over capital will happen between private savings and states searching for financing. Europe, East Asia and the Middle East accumulated enormous surpluses over decades while the United States absorbed them through deficits, debt issuance and asset markets. That system kept yields low, inflated financial assets and created the illusion that global liquidity would remain endless. Now the same surplus regions are moving into an era of rearmament, energy insecurity, geopolitical fragmentation and rising fiscal pressure at the same time welfare systems are already consuming historic shares of national income. This changes the political logic around savings completely. Governments facing military expansion and weak growth cannot easily solve the problem through taxation because voters revolt quickly against visible sacrifice. They cannot fully rely on central banks either because inflation already damaged trust in currencies and purchasing power. The remaining option lies in domestic balance sheets. History shows very clearly what states do once financing needs collide with political limits: they start guiding, trapping and absorbing private savings while avoiding the language of confiscation. Britain during the WWII offers the clearest example. Savings collapsed, debt exploded and yet rates remained artificially suppressed because the state imposed capital controls, restricted consumption, forced domestic financing and redirected private savings into government needs. The market signal itself became politically unacceptable. Once survival and strategic priorities dominate policy, free capital markets quickly lose importance. That pattern matters now because modern democracies already prepare the language needed for a softer version of the same process. Citizens hear constant appeals to resilience, strategic autonomy, national preparedness and fair burden sharing. Behind those words sits a simple fiscal reality: states need access to savings pools far larger than current tax revenues can provide. Financial repression works precisely because most people fail to recognize it while it develops. Nobody needs soldiers knocking on doors. Pension funds increase sovereign bond exposure. Banks face regulations favoring government debt. Inflation stays above deposit yields for years. Capital movement becomes harder through reporting rules and compliance burdens. Offshore diversification starts attracting political suspicion. The saver still sees assets on paper while the state slowly gains influence over how those assets behave, where they remain and what purpose they ultimately serve. The deeper danger lies in the psychological shift accompanying this process. In periods of geopolitical tension, mobility itself starts looking suspicious. Investors diversifying abroad appear insufficiently loyal. Citizens protecting wealth internationally begin looking detached from collective sacrifice. The state no longer views private savings purely as personal property resting outside politics, but increasingly as dormant national capacity available in times of pressure. That is why the real risk for investors over the coming decade may not come from market crashes alone, but from the narrowing distance between nominal ownership and actual control. Wealth matters far less once governments decide that domestic capital must serve national objectives before private ones.

The expected capex growth of hyperscalers from 2025 to 2028 is c. 29% per year. Never in the history of the US has tech investment growth exceeded 21% on a rolling three-year basis.