2025-04-15 20:20:35
To investors,
I went to the White House last week to interview Bo Hines, the Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisors on Digital Assets. He is responsible for shaping our national policy on bitcoin, stablecoins, and crypto assets.
You can watch the full episode by clicking here.
Here are some of my personal takeaways from my conversation with Bo:
Crypto has become a bi-partisan effort. There are Republicans and Democrats who understand the importance of the technology and see the industry as politically important.
People from every major government agency are involved in shaping our national crypto policy. The industry touches everything from economics to geopolitics and energy to law enforcement. We are better off having a well-rounded perspective in the room.
The administration understands that bitcoin is unique. They see the digital currency as digital gold and believe it is strategically important for the United States. There is a large appetite within leadership to acquire as much bitcoin as possible. I now believe a good framework to use is “what would happen if bitcoiners infiltrated the White House?” because that is what seems to have happened.
Stablecoins are a big focus at the moment. The administration understands these digital dollars are driving greater global adoption of US dollars, which is ultimately good for the US in the long-run.
Bo Hines and the administration see bitcoin and a strong dollar co-existing in the future. They believe bitcoin is good for the dollar and a strong dollar is good for bitcoin.
Large players, whether we are talking big financial institutions or foreign governments, are all interested in figuring out their strategy for crypto. The White House is fielding calls from all of these groups.
Recent changes at various regulatory organizations should signal a tailwind for the crypto industry. The SEC, CFTC, OCC and other regulators are changing their tune, which can be seen in the personnel changes and some early rule changes.
The administration knows they have to rebuild trust with the industry and with the American people. This is difficult to measure, but they want to work with industry players rather than work against them.
We should expect to see Wall Street and legacy financial firms embrace blockchain technology in various ways, including tokenization.
There is a persistent optimism in the administration about technology in general. Bitcoin and crypto are a key part of their strategy.
Overall, not only was I impressed by Bo Hines, but I also found the administration’s approach refreshing. I did not expect to hear comments like “bitcoin is unique” and “we want to acquire as much as we can.”
With that said, talk is cheap. The administration followed through on an important campaign promise of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, but it would be disappointing if they stopped there. The tens of millions of Americans who own these assets are looking for a material improvement in the United States’ position.
Hopefully that is exactly what we will get. Have a great day and I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
Bo Hines is the Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisers on Digital Assets. This conversation was recorded at the White House.
In this conversation we talk about the US bitcoin strategic reserve, stablecoins, regulation, how decisions are being made, gold, tariffs, law enforcement side, motivational aspect inside Trump admin, biggest surprises so far, and what Bo is looking forward to.
Enjoy!
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Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.
Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.
Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com
BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.
BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.
Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.
Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.
Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2025-04-14 21:17:00
To investors,
Bitcoin and gold are brothers from a different mother. They both embody the sound money principles that allow an asset to benefit from the debasement of a currency. Those principles include being outside the traditional financial system and the inability for anyone to create more of the asset.
Simply, sound money can’t be messed with.
And both assets have had an epic run over the last 15 years, while the US dollar continued to see its purchasing power erased by undisciplined fiscal and monetary policy.
But given that bitcoin has significantly outperformed gold over the last 15 years, many people have been wondering why gold is outperforming bitcoin over the last 12 months? If both assets benefit from the same thing, shouldn’t they be moving together? And if bitcoin is the smaller, more volatile asset, then shouldn’t bitcoin be outperforming gold during that timeframe?
Bitcoin is down ~ 10% since the start of 2025. Gold is up about 20% in the same period. That isn’t supposed to happen, right?!
The reason for this big outperformance is that central banks and large pools of capital are aggressively buying gold right now. There is economic uncertainty, so people want a store of value. These very large pools of capital are not used to buying bitcoin yet. In fact, many of them are not approved to buy digital gold, so they have to stick to analog gold.
You can see this chart from Goldman about the PBOC buying way more gold than they have previously been disclosing:
If you are a bitcoin investor though, you don’t need to worry.
David Foley and Lawrence Lepard published a chart showing gold tends to lead in rallies, but bitcoin follows shortly after.
“Gold vs BTC chart…running each on separate price axis, you can see Gold typically leads by a few weeks/months, and then Bitcoin follows. Nice gap setting up right now for Bitcoin. BTC probably back to somewhere in the $108K area within a few months.”
Is David right? I don’t know. We are going to find out.
But we know Goldman Sachs recently raised their year-end gold forecast from $3,300 to $3,700 per ounce.
So if Goldman is raising their gold forecast and bitcoin historically does a great job of catching up, then it could be an explosive second half of the year for digital gold.
It is not fun for bitcoin investors to watch gold gaining, while bitcoin is falling, but just remember that both assets are likely to do well over time.
The government can’t stop printing money. And sound money is undefeated, regardless of whether it is analog or digital.
Have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
Jordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos.
In this conversation we discuss how the market broke, what is going to happen, what that means for your portfolio, how US gets out of this situation, how China will react, and how bitcoin plays into all of it.
Enjoy!
Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency.. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets or click here to claim your $50!
Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.
Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.
Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com
BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.
BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.
Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.
Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.
Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2025-04-10 23:17:36
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To investors,
The March CPI report was published this morning. As I have been predicting, inflation is crashing. The headline inflation number dropped from 2.8% in February to 2.4% in March.
Core CPI inflation fell below 3.0% for the first time since March 2021. And even the weird “supercore CPI”—a specific measure of inflation that zooms in on the prices of services, excluding food, energy, and housing costs—dropped -0.24% month-over-month. That is the lowest number we have seen for the metric since May 2020.
According to EndGame Macro, “Supercore CPI MoM (circled) is collapsing that’s a clean signal of demand-side weakness across sticky services, especially discretionary buckets like travel, recreation, and healthcare. That supports the “disinflation is real” narrative.”
The prediction that inflation was dropping aggressively was easy. You could see it clearly in Truflation’s measurement, which is a real-time alternative inflation metric. Today the Truflation reading is at 1.3%, which is more than 50% lower than it was in December 2024.
Maybe the most important part of this slowdown in inflation is the structural change that seems to be underway. Heritage’s EJ Antoni writes the “average annual inflation rate from '09 until '21 was 1.8%, then Biden drove it up to 8.6% for a year and a half, then it rose steadily at 3.1% for the rest of his term; but now Trump is averaging a mere 1.0%.”
The current administration has only been in office for a few months, and there is still a long way to go in their term, but this material change to inflation is a welcomed development.
Remember, the last 5 years has been brutal for the average American. Charlie Bilello lays out the numbers for various goods or services:
CPI Medical Care: +12.4%
CPI New Cars: +20.9%
CPI Shelter: +26.8%
CPI Food at home: +27.5%
CPI Food away from home: +30.4%
CPI Used Cars: +33.5%
CPI Electricity: +34.2%
CPI Gasoline: +35.1%
CPI Transportation: +36.7%
CPI Gas Utilities: +49.2%
CPI Fuel Oil: +50.8%
US Home Prices: +52.3%
CPI Auto Insurance: +53.7%
CPI Dozen Eggs: +308%
And those are just the official government metrics. The true damage is probably even worse. So the good news is inflation is falling. The risk is that the Fed refuses to act in a timely manner, which leaves the economy exposed to a potential economic slowdown.
We should all hope an interest rate cut is on the way. Have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
Darius Dale is the founder & CEO of 42Macro.
In this conversation, we discuss tariffs, risk assets, blue collar vs. Wall Street, and what could happen next.
Enjoy!
Figure Markets let’s you access cash without selling your crypto offers Bitcoin and Ethereum backed loans. Learn more at FigureMarkets.com
Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/
Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.
Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com
BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.
BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.
Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.
Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.
Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2025-04-09 18:51:49
To investors,
The media is dominated by the perspective of Wall Street right now. These investment managers are freaking out over tariffs. Every TV station, newspaper and podcast has a bunch of finance experts pontificating or fear-mongering, yet they haven’t stepped foot inside an industrial or manufacturing facility in years.
Honestly, many of them have probably never been inside one of these facilities.
You can’t learn the ground truth unless you get your boots on the ground. You have to get close to the problem. You need to talk to the people who spend the most time with the issue. Get intimate with the pain or you are left with a spreadsheet to understand something that can’t be explained with math.
I only know this because I accidentally went and did the work necessary to understand this problem over the last two years. I have been working with a friend to look at acquiring potential industrial or manufacturing businesses during that time period. Here are some of the businesses that we physically went to visit or we spent significant time with the business leaders to better understand their companies:
Highway sign manufacturer in South Florida
Rock crusher manufacturer in South Carolina
Electric harness businesses in Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky
Traffic cone business in Pennsylvania
Line striping business in New York
Pallet distributor in Georgia
Steel brokerage in Alabama
Janitorial product distributor in Illinois
Aggregates distributor in Louisiana
Tool manufacturer in Arkansas
Nothing can replace the lessons you learn walking around a factory floor. For example, the electric harness business in Michigan had a lot of women working on the assembly lines. This surprised me, so I asked the owner to explain it. He told me they found women had more dexterous hands, which meant the assembly line was more efficient and less prone to errors.
You aren’t going to learn about that in a spreadsheet.
There was the time the manufacturer of rock crushers had his 87-year old father get into a skid steer to do a live demo of their product. Or there was the realization that pallets are the operating system of the physical world, which came after I spoke to an immigrant owner in Georgia.
These business are made up of real people. People who just want to live their lives, deliver a good product or service for their customer, and put their family in a better financial position. But many of these people feel like the US economy has left them behind. It has created a situation where everything gets more expensive around them, yet it becomes harder and harder to sell their products each year.
So I am doing something today you won’t find anywhere else — I reached out to a bunch of these blue collar business owners and their commentary is below. I asked them what they thought of the tariffs and how the tariffs will affect their businesses. Here is what they had to say:
“I agree with them. It’s time to level the playing field with the world. For my business I don’t think it’s going to affect us much for now. Gas prices have come down a little. Nothing extreme yet.” - Highway sign manufacturer
_________
“Tough to say. For [Redacted Company Name] I don’t think it matters that much since most gravel is produced in the US. Although the market getting hammered doesn’t help. We are seeing a little bit of a slow down in new projects being put out I think from DOGE.” - Aggregates distributor with numerous government contracts
_________
“Suppliers are wait and see. [Very] few have passed on large increases but are expecting to announce any day.
Our industry (janitorial) is going to get hit hard if it does go through. Even so called “manufacturing” here really just private label from overseas, or a lot of the raw materials come from oversees. We sell tons of items like toilet seat covers, mops, gloves, etc. Almost everything is made oversees and it doesn’t make financial sense for it to be made here. I am all for bringing back manufacturing, but I think we need to manufacture the right stuff in this country and not items like disposables…
We should focus pushing the rest of the world to buy our military tech, military equipment, our aerospace tech, medical equipment, chemicals, food and beverage. Those are the first that come to mind. Our country has amazing intellectual capability.
We are essentially too smart and too advanced to be setting up shoe factories, low end clothing factories, disposables.” - Janitorial product distributor
_________
“Our business has an import component as well as US-based manufacturing. For US manufactured product, we expect to see stable/increasing demand. Tariffs should be helpful since we compete with lower cost overseas labor.
For imported product, we will push suppliers to eat some of the increased cost. We will also look for alternate sources where tariffs are high. Our goal is for the business to preserve or gain share while passing along lower-than-tariff prices to our customers where we have to. This is a one time impact.
However, tariffs create uncertainty in the short term. The longer uncertainty lasts, the harder it will be to plan and run our business. Overall, I think tariffs will cause us to adjust course but lead to more demand for our US-based products. It may push us to restore certain product lines as well” — PEOperator
_________
“Everything arrives to our contract manufacturer in NH at a facility that also does ITAR work (military/gov, customers like Lockheed). Components are assembled on the circuit boards on mostly automated process with pick-and-place machines. We do final assembly, provisioning, test, and fulfillment from NH.
It will be possible for us to find suppliers for some of these components from other Asian sources like Taiwan (eg LCD screens), and maybe better domestic options for packaging, but it will be a struggle. I think tariffs will help push many of these companies to the USA.” - Hardware security device manufacturer
_________
“Tarriffs are incredibly good for American manufacturers, especially automated ones like Hadrian.
The simple reason is that 80% of American manufacturing was offshored to china between 1980-2010 and therefore removed the majority of revenue from American factories.
Much of this was done intentionally to deindusturalize the nation by the CCP artificially subsidizing energy labor and raw materials to use price as a lever to draw capability outside the US.
Tariffs balance that out so that prices increase of imports build factory demand in the US.
Due to the lack of skilled tradespeople in the US we expect most of this demand to aggregate to automated companies like Hadrian. Our TAM just went from $100B to $500B, if the tarriffs stick into law.
Secondly - and most importantly - this will bring hundreds of thousands of good jobs back to the American middle class, and reindustialize the country ahead of a China conflict in the 2027-2032 window.” - Hadrian CEO Chris Power
_________
So there you have it — most of the blue collar business owners I know are supportive of the tariffs. They understand there will be changes in their business, but they believe the overall effort is worth pursuing. On top of that, many of the US manufacturers are looking forward to the tailwind that tariffs provide their business — including onshoring of suppliers, protection against unfair trade practices from foreign competitors, or increased demand for their American products.
Again, this is information you can’t get sitting in an office or staring at a spreadsheet. You have to get out and talk to people who are living this reality daily. And those people have a very different view than the Wall Street crowd.
Because there is one hidden truth that the blue collar workers know that is completely missed by Wall Street — American manufacturing is the envy of the world. Here is a select list of products we are the leading producer of:
Reusable rockets
Defense weaponry
Suburban mansions
Advanced aircraft
Industrial machinery
Pharmaceuticals
Anyone saying America doesn’t know how to make things is an idiot. The United States of America is a leader in technology. We make things no one else in the world can make. And there is a crop of brand new companies that are leading the charge on the Industrial Revolution 2.0 — there is even a conference for it already.
I am an investor in some of these companies and a fan of others. Here is a short list of a few:
Varda Space - space manufacturing of pharmaceuticals
Cover - modern home builder
Base Power - fast-growing, modern energy company
Durin Mining - automated mineral extraction
Somatic - Commercial cleaning robot manufacturer
Rainmaker - cloud seeding startup
HelloGravel - national aggregate distributor
The tariffs have three goals — raise government revenue, reshore manufacturing, and drive fair trade practices in bilateral trade. Plenty of people doubt the likelihood that America can become a strong manufacturing company again. They simply don’t think it is possible for America to make things.
I completely disagree. And I wouldn’t bet against the American entrepreneur. They are winners who can figure out solutions to any problem. The tariffs are going to pull many of these smart people into the fight to reestablish our dominance in manufacturing.
It will be glorious to watch. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
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Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss everything that is going on with tariffs, why the tariffs will work, what the tariffs will accomplish, and what Wall Street and the media do not understand.
Enjoy!
Figure Markets let’s you access cash without selling your crypto offers Bitcoin and Ethereum backed loans. Learn more at FigureMarkets.com
Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/
Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.
Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com
BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.
BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.
Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.
Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.
Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2025-04-08 21:25:41
To investors,
The President and his administration have to pull off the impossible in the coming weeks.
They need to hold the line on tariffs so foreign leaders take the US demands seriously, while simultaneously communicating clarity around de-escalation to financial investors. If you hold the line without communicating clarity, investment assets will be in free fall. If you communicate clarity without holding the line, you don’t get any trade deals done.
Thankfully, reports surfaced yesterday that Treasury Secretary Bessent visited President Trump on Sunday afternoon with a single suggestion — focus the message on getting trade deals done.
The market can stomach short-term uncertainty if they know that long-term predictability is coming. If investors think predictability will return, financial markets will relax and everyone will realize the recent fears were an overreaction.
But don’t hold your breath.
Uncertainty is the name of the game right now. A few people online have pontificated that a key aspect of negotiating these trade deals is you have to convince the other side that you are crazier than them. If it works out, you look like a genius. If it doesn’t work out, you just look ridiculous. That is the classic trade-off of high-stakes negotiating.
While those negotiations are happening, we are starting to hear opinions on the tariffs from various executives and business leaders. Some are bullish, while others think the tariffs are stupid.
Take the Marlin Steel CEO. He went on CNN and explained the unfair trade practices of foreign governments. Take a listen:
“When we shipped that to Germany, the German government taxes our clients $128.95 per basket. If a German competitor ships it to America, it's $1.25 per basket. It is so unfair what's happening to the American worker? They can't compete when you have that kind of unlevel playing field.” - Drew Greenblatt
That is a pretty powerful interview from someone on the frontlines of the industrial and manufacturing industry. There are obviously plenty of critiques of these policies too. Take Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone as the counter-example.
Langone told the Financial Times the US president was being “poorly advised”, the 46 per cent tariff on Vietnam was “bullshit” and the additional 34 per cent tariff on China was “too aggressive, too soon” and did not give “serious negotiations a chance to work”.
“Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on!” said Langone. “You might as well tell them, ‘Don’t even bother calling.’”
And Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary during the first term, has the following to say:
“It’s more severe than I would have expected,” Ross told the FT. “Particularly the way it is impacting Vietnam, China and Cambodia is more extreme than I would have thought.”
Ross added that businesses and investment firms could deal with good news and bad news but warned: “It’s hard to deal with uncertainty. Fear of the unknown is the worst for people and we are in a period of extreme fear of the unknown.”
I agree that uncertainty and fear of the unknown can paralyze investors. That is why I think the tight-rope walk constitutes clarity for financial markets, while holding the line for trade negotiations.
This brings me to something I have noticed — the closer someone is to the finance industry, the more they are against the tariffs. The closer someone is to the industrial or manufacturing industry, the more they are supportive of the tariffs. Fascinating to watch.
Lastly, one aspect of these tariff deals that seems to be undiscussed is the likelihood that foreign countries will commit to making direct investments in the US. These countries will also look to buy products made in America too. As I wrote yesterday, Taiwan committed to buying industrial products, agricultural products, energy, and weaponry from us. I would expect many of the deals to include these concessions and commitments.
There is plenty of volatility left in these markets. Stocks are down. Bitcoin is down. Crypto is down. And no one knows where the bottom is. The undisciplined, over-levered, and short-term oriented panic, while the patient, un-levered, and long-term oriented feel nothing.
Make sure you are on the right side of that equation.
Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
NOTE: My wife, Polina, recently interviewed Jonathan Bush, a former Wall Street CEO who went toe-to-toe with activist investors. He says “failure is good for you, but it is not fun.” The interview is great and you will learn something if you read it. Check it out here.
Anthony Pompliano records a solo episode explaining everything that is currently going on with tariffs, how we got here, President Trump’s tariff plan, examples in history, and where we could be headed from here.
Enjoy!
Figure Markets let’s you access cash without selling your crypto offers Bitcoin and Ethereum backed loans. Learn more at FigureMarkets.com
Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/
Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.
Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com
BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.
BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.
Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.
Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.
Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2025-04-07 21:23:37
To investors,
Everyone is prepared for a volatile week as the reality of US tariff policy sets in. There have been plenty of negative reactions from investors and market participants, but it is important to stay focused on the signal, rather than the noise.
We can start with Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the best-performing and well-respected investors in the world. He explained in a recent interview that tariffs are the lesser of two evils. Take a listen:
Druckenmiller mentions that 10% tariffs would be the ideal level and we obviously have much higher tariffs announced at the moment, so I would expect intense negotiations between countries before the April 9th deadline for implementation.
Regarding those negotiations, we learned that more than 50 countries have reached out to the White House to begin discussing potential solutions.
And these countries are not showing up empty-handed to the negotiations. Take Taiwan as an example. The country is offering to remove all trade barriers with the US and commit to zero tariffs moving forward. Taiwan will also increase their investment in the United States, including purchases of agricultural products, industrial products, energy, and weaponry from America.
No tariffs. No trade barriers. And more capital headed to the US. That seems like the ideal outcome, right?
Speaking of ideal outcomes, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been saying for weeks that the administration wants to get oil prices and the 10-year yield lower. Adam Kobeissi points out both of those have been happening in recent weeks. Adam writes:
“The real plan all along was to lower interest rates and lower oil prices as soon as possible. The 10-year note yield is down -90 bps and oil prices are down -25%. The tariffs are "working" as planned.”
But oil prices and the 10-year yield are not the only things falling. We are also seeing inflation continue to crash lower over the last few weeks. Truflation shows inflation has gone from over 3% in December to 1.22% as of Sdun. This is the lowest level for inflation since November 2020.
This inflation number is important to keep an eye on for two reasons. First, this is a good reminder that tariffs are not inflationary, they are deflationary. Remember the timeline of what has transpired. Perplexity, my favorite AI search engine, shows the initial 10% blanket tariff on China was put in place on February 4th and an additional 10% increase to the tariff was implemented on March 4th.
The 25% tariffs were put in place on March 4th as well. So although the US implemented tariffs of at least 20% on three of our largest trading partners, inflation has been going down for months. The falling oil prices are helping drive inflation down, but ultimately tariffs are deflationary, not inflationary.
Second, if inflation keeps falling this aggressively, the Federal Reserve may be forced to make an emergency interest rate cut. I am not predicting they are going to do that, but rather the odds increase as inflation falls further below their 2% target. The biggest issue the economy faces right now is economic slowdown.
Odds of a recession are spiking, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow is falling, and investors are nervous — this all points to the importance of the Fed encouraging economic activity and employment by lowering interest rates. Maybe they do it in an emergency fashion, or maybe they do it in their next two meetings, but I expect interest rates to be lower by the end of the summer.
Which brings me to the future — what do I think will happen over the coming weeks and months?
Overall, I think we will look back at the fear in the market right now and realize it was an overreaction. Look at the fear and greed gauge sent out by BTIG. This is exactly what blood in the streets looks like when on a graphic.
I believe we will see the tariff rates negotiated down closer to 10% globally. Some countries will be higher, some will be lower, and some countries will end up with zero tariffs against them. Most of these countries will have to remove all tariffs and trade barriers against the US in order to have tariff rates reduced. We will also see many countries commit to spending a large amount of money in the United States as well.
Asset prices will bottom out in the coming month. We will likely see new all-time highs in stock prices and bitcoin before the end of the year. There will be no high inflation and we will not experience a crushing recession.
Instead, this economic and global trade reset will lay the foundation for an economic boom. All Americans, both the wealthy and the working class, will get to participate. And the golden age of innovation and growth will be an incredible sight to see.
It may be dark in the tunnel right now. But if you squint you can see the light at the end. Be patient and the light will get bigger in the coming days and weeks. Eventually we will be out of the tunnel and all will be good in the world.
Study reflexivity. The faster we go down, the faster we go back up. It happened in 2020 during the pandemic and it is going to happen again this year.
And before I let you go, you are going to hear lots of debate about free trade in the coming days.
I believe the ideal situation is to have unfettered global trade between countries, which means no tariffs from either country in bilateral trade. The United States has been pretending for decades that free trade still exists. Other countries were more sober in their analysis and realized they could levy tariffs, subsidize their producers, manipulate their currencies, and gain an advantage over America.
This means the US had two choices — (1) keep pretending the new game didn’t exist and let other countries take advantage of us or (2) learn to play the game better than anyone in the world.
We are rightfully choosing the second option. Free trade doesn’t exist anymore. We can only hope that America can become so good at playing this new game that it allows us to dictate a reset of the rules back towards true free trade where our trading partners participate on a level playing field.
Throughout history America has proven we can dominate any game we play. This may be the most important one yet.
Hope you all have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
Jordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos.
In this conversation we discuss all the chaos going on in the the market right now, tariffs, stock market, recession, what we expect other countries to do, interest rates, bitcoin, gold, and how to navigate uncertainty in this volatile market.
Enjoy!
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