AVOID DEBT

“The majority ruled that Bachman couldn't bring her counterclaim because there is no common law duty obliging a casino operator to refrain from attempting to entice or contact gamblers that it knows or should know are compulsive gamblers, unquote. In other words, it's perfectly legal for Caesars to target an addicted gambler like Angie Bachman. It might be wrong, but it's legal.”

“February non-farm payrolls came in at negative $92,000, an outright decline, completely upending the labor market stabilization theme and better growth sentiment from the ISM prints that we saw earlier this week. Prior months, in fact, were revised down another $69,000. With that, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% and the participation rate dropped half a point to 62%.”

“But we follow every rule that casino has. In fact, if you call up a casino and you ask them, is it a is it against the law to account cards? Is it against your rules to account cards? They'll be like, well, no. Not really. But it is kind of frowned upon. How could that be? We all know that casinos spend tons of money on overhead cameras and security guys to detect card counters. Maybe because most of them are so bad at it, they lose money anyway.”

“Ball Corporation is the world's largest aluminum beverage can manufacturer. It also produces aluminum containers for personal care and household products. It is more than anything a pure play aluminum packaging name after a history of also being in the aerospace defense industry. But that sold off in February of 2024. What you're seeing is, well, big volume catalysts, sporting events, historically drive meaningful can volume.”

“They are stating that the AI-fueled stock market bubble is going to burst starting right now in 2026. Their thesis is that starting in 2026, those spectacular gains are going to unwind precipitously because rising interest rates and a higher, stickier inflation rate will essentially act as gravity on these sky-high equity valuations.”

“Ticker HTZ is Hertz Global... It emerged from bankruptcy in June of 2021 and it's still carrying some pretty hefty leverage, $15.8 billion in long-term debt, negative free cashflow that is projected to be positive next year. In spite of that, it's still projected to lose money. It has not made money since December of 2023. Bottom line is they are executing a genuine operating turnaround, but at the same time, there are still some structural weaknesses in this company that could lead you to say, okay, high risk, high reward. It's certainly not for the faint of heart.”

“The core issue they are pointing to is the infrastructure cost. If the cost of building out the servers, the power grids and the massive data centers for AI outpaces the actual dollars and cents it generates in revenue, the math simply stops working. It becomes a black hole for capital.”

“Financial success is way more about behavior than it is about the actual math; most people know what they're doing is wrong, they just can't stop themselves.”

“I gambled my house away... it’s about starting over and finding a useful thought again.”

“Financial success is way more about behavior than it is about the actual math; most people know what they're doing is wrong, they just can't stop themselves.”

“In pathological gamblers, the same regions that are activated for wins are also activated for near misses. And so these include regions such as the amygdala, which is a a region involved in emotional processing, as well as parts of the brain stem, which are involved in reward and and dopamine function, which is part of the reward system. So the pathological gamblers are are seeing, or their brains at least are responding to these near misses in the same way that they respond to wins.”

“Harrah's knew how to track each gambler's habits through total rewards cards that each gambler, including Bachman, would use throughout the casino. And that told the company exactly how much money each player spent, on which games, and at what frequency. The company would then use that information to tell them exactly what kinds of perks and rewards would keep certain gamblers coming back, and at exactly what juncture to offer those perks and rewards.”

“I gambled my house away... it’s about starting over and finding a useful thought again.”

“Here's how diabolical blackjack is. Unlike most casino games, if you play blackjack correctly, the casino barely has an edge. The odds are very close to fifty fifty. You win almost half the time. So the dream of winning is right there in front of you just out of reach. And if you did have a system that could beat blackjack, imagine what that would mean. It's like the money is just sitting there in casinos everywhere all over the world, huge stacks of chips and $100 bills waiting for you to take them home.”

“In time, their trust in each other began to fray, and suspicions that some of the members were stealing grew. One player lost big one night and phoned a lot of the other players. He was hysterical that he had cost the team so much. But their reaction? That he'd probably hadn't lost, but was stealing. Ben, the founder of the group, told me about one time when a team member claimed that he'd never even contemplated stealing. That struck Ben as unusual, and he immediately began suspecting that player of stealing.”

“After Bachman lost a quarter of $1,000,000 in one night at the casino in Council Bluffs, the phone calls began. It probably went from a couple of times a week to five times a week from various casino hosts, throughout the country, really. I have been assigned to be your casino host here in Kansas City, and I was just calling. I noticed that you haven't been in for a while. And that you had a birthday coming up. So I was calling to invite you to come to Kansas City to celebrate your birthday.”

“Bridgewater Associates has executed a massive portfolio pivot that completely contradicts the mainstream narrative. We are talking about cutting their holdings in Meta by over 46 percent, alphabet position by 40 percent, and they even cut Microsoft by 10 percent. These are the companies that completely defined the 2024 and 2025 bull run.”

“Wholesale prices rose sharply in the latest report, pointing to persistent inflation that could complicate Federal Reserve policy decisions. This unexpected uptick in producer prices suggests that inflation, well, the fight is far from over, despite the earlier optimism about cooling pricing pressures. The bond market is trying to balance safe-haven demand against persistent inflation concerns from energy price spikes.”

“It's not a complicated thing. You don't need a great memory. You don't need to know how many queens are left in the deck. You just need to know that one number. And when that one number when your running tally gets up to seven or eight or nine, it means that there are lots of aces and tens left in the deck. So it's good for you. Right? It's really, really good for you. And that is the time that you wanna start to bet big.”

“The oil story intensified dramatically. Crude oil surged over 12%, its best session since 2020 and closed above $90 a barrel, up 36% on the week. Cutter warned that all Gulf producers may have to shut down production within days, a scenario that could drive oil to $150. Kuwait has reportedly already started cutting production.”

“When you buy a tech stock at a massive premium, you're basically buying the promise of huge profits 10 or 15 years in the future. But if interest rates are high today, the mathematical value of those future profits shrinks drastically. When Capital Economics says inflation is sticky, they are saying the easy money era is over, which means the justification for these astronomical tech valuations evaporates.”

“Private equity firms are lending billions of dollars to AI start-ups entirely outside the purview of traditional banking regulators. If one major AI start-up defaults on that private debt because their models don't generate the promised revenue, the contagion in that unregulated debt market could be incredibly rapid and entirely opaque until it is far too late.”