Crypto’s Retail Traders Hit Hard as Strategy ETFs Plunge 80%

 Retail investors who piled into Michael Saylor’s grand bitcoin (BTC-USD) experiment are paying a heavy price.

Strategy Inc. (MSTR) — the company once hailed for wrapping crypto exposure into a public stock — is scrambling to calm markets after its shares plunged more than 60% from recent highs, amid a sweeping digital-currency rout. On Monday, Strategy said it had created a $1.4 billion reserve to fund dividend and interest payments, hoping to calm fears that it may be forced to sell Bitcoin if prices fall further.

But for many investors, the damage is already done. The most popular exchange-traded funds tracking Strategy’s volatile stock — MSTX and MSTU, which offer double the daily return — have both dropped more than 80% this year. That puts them among the 10 worst-performing funds in the entire US ETF market, out of more than 4,700 products currently trading — just behind obscure short bets against gold miners and semiconductor stocks. A third fund, known as MSTP, launched during the crypto mania in June, is down a similar amount since its debut. Together, the trio has lost about $1.5 billion in assets since early October.

Retail investors had poured into these funds when firms like Defiance and Tuttle Capital Management launched the high-octane products tracking one of Wall Street’s most prominent Bitcoin-proxy trades.

But what began as an easy way to supercharge bets on crypto has become a cautionary tale of how leverage, volatility and sentiment can spiral. Strategy shares lost 34% in November. Bitcoin has also dropped about 30% from October highs and now trades near $87,000. Strategy closed down 3.3% on Monday, after slumping as much as 12% earlier in the day.

Bitcoin advanced 0.5% as of 6:20 a.m. in London on Tuesday.

“The recent pullback in Bitcoin has hit Strategy’s stock hard, and 2x leveraged plays like MSTX and MSTU turn that into even larger losses,” said Roxanna Islam, head of sector and industry research at ETF shop TMX VettaFi. “It’s a reminder that leveraged single-stock ETFs can look great on the way up, but can erase gains very quickly when the underlying trade goes the other way.”

Defiance declined to comment. Tuttle Capital and GraniteShares, which is behind MSTP, didn’t immediately respond to emails asking for comment.

At the center of concern is a valuation metric known as mNAV — or market net asset value — which compares Strategy’s enterprise value to its Bitcoin holdings. That premium has largely vanished, bringing the ratio to around 1.15 — a level executives have flagged as a warning zone. CEO Phong Le said on a podcast that slipping below 1.0 could force the company to sell Bitcoin to meet payout obligations, albeit only as a last resort.

The newly announced reserve, funded by recent equity sales, is designed to head off that risk. It covers at least 21 months of dividend and interest payments. But the announcement did little to stop the broader slide — or address concerns about Strategy’s exposure to leverage, its dependence on retail appetite, and the mounting strain on its funding model.

To finance its Bitcoin buying spree, Strategy has repeatedly sold common stock, a controversial strategy that dilutes existing shareholders. As its valuation premium has eroded, the company has turned to issuing preferred shares and other costlier forms of capital to keep buying crypto.

Michael SaylorPhotographer: Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg

Meanwhile, the ETF complex built around Strategy is struggling. At least 15 such products tied to its shares in various ways are now trading — many down double digits this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Combined assets for MSTX, MSTU and MSTP have fallen from over $2.3 billion in early October to around $830 million today.

Crypto’s downturn — despite greater institutional participation and political support from the Trump White House — has triggered sharp drawdowns across miners, altcoins, and token-heavy corporate treasuries. Leveraged ETFs, which gained traction among at-home traders earlier this year, are now among the hardest hit.

The funds are built to double Strategy’s daily moves — a structure that can backfire fast. In volatile markets, compounding gains and losses can chip away at returns even if the stock ends flat, a dynamic known as volatility decay. When Strategy shares tumbled and whipsawed, the ETFs didn’t just track the decline — they magnified it.

“Leveraged ETFs are generally a dangerous investment. A leveraged ETF on shares of a stock that levers up to buy a highly speculative asset is a risk profile of its own,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at Jonestrading.

Now, even Strategy’s place in major stock indexes is under threat. Analysts at JPMorgan warned the company could be removed from benchmarks like the MSCI USA and Nasdaq 100 — a shift that might trigger billions in passive outflows. For a firm once floated as a potential S&P 500 candidate, the reversal is stark.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-retail-traders-hit-hard-062429126.html

America's Poison Melting Pot And The Luxury Of Tolerance

 by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Modern western culture is an absolute anomaly in the history of human civilization. If one studies the principles and doctrines of nearly every other society and empire around the world, you will not find one that allows mass immigration of foreigners with contrary ideologies.

You will not find one that allows foreigners to migrate without strict assimilation and loyalty.

From the Arab states, to China, South Korea, and Japan (until recently), to India and beyond, every culture maintains a strict sense of supremacy. There is an absolute expectation that newcomers will adapt to political policies, belief systems, social norms, etc. Most of the world for thousands of years has operated in this way. Only the modern west deviates and only the west is chastised as “xenophobic” for establishing barriers to foreign influence.

The US in particular has been typecast as a “global melting pot”, even though the vast majority of immigration up until the last half of the 20th century was from other western nations with similar beliefs and traditions. The melting pot theory was largely promoted and glorified by socialist elites in the early 1900s and was not a value of the common American.

Israel Zangwill (a British-Jewish Broadway playwright and devout socialist/supporter of feminism) popularized the term nationally in 1908. Even then, he spoke specifically about various European cultures coming to America.

The “melting pot” was never about inviting millions of people from the third-world with utterly exclusive and hostile ideologies. This notion did not become popular until recently.

What happened? When did it become America’s “duty” to adopt the problem children of the rest of the planet? And why is western civilization the only civilization that is expected to be submissive to the concept of multiculturalism?

This topic is at the very root of nearly every political conflict raging today. The ICE raids, the foreign travel bans, the use of the National Guard to deter organized interference of deportations, the recent terror attack in Washington DC, the increasing calls by Democrats and woke activists for violent “resistance” – All of it goes back to the notion that America is SUPPOSED to welcome anyone and everyone, legal or illegal, from any part of the world regardless of the threat they might pose to our society.

Progressives, for various reasons, furiously insist that America is THE melting pot. That this is our national heritage and that anyone who says otherwise is a “fascist” trying to fundamentally change our cultural foundations.

NGOs and globalist foundations spend billions of dollars to facilitate mass immigration to the US, often in violation of the will of the voting public and the administrations in power. They also fund the majority of activist groups trying to disrupt deportations.

Global governance organizations like the UN spend vast sums of money to enable illegal immigration into the US, providing subsidies, maps, and legal advice to migrants seeking to sneak into America or exploit loopholes for temporary residency.

A number of foreign governments (mainly India and Mexico) lobby the US government to open the floodgates, expanding visa programs and allowing non-citizens to take American jobs, housing and other resources.

The “melting pot” has been poisoned with a rancid cocktail of nefarious agendas. Any positive vestiges of the ideal have been lost. Any value the melting pot might have once had is gone. All that is left is an army of parasites looking for blood; a swarm of mosquitoes rushing in to latch onto a vein. Few if any of these people or institutions care about the “American Dream”, they only see the US as an easy target ripe for conquest.

We have made ourselves an easy target. Our faith in liberalism has led us down a dark path of suicidal empathy. We naively assumed that “tolerance” is a virtue; it is not. Tolerance is a luxury – A luxury for the ultra wealthy and the extraordinarily dimwitted.

No other culture on Earth worships tolerance like westerners do, and there’s a good reason for that. In the case of the US, our ancestors already invested their blood and tears and treasure into this nation to make it the most wealthy and successful in the world. We have been living off their labors for generations.

The people that want to give that civilizational wealth away are people who lack respect for the trials and tribulations required to obtain it.

Another problem is that our tolerance often goes unappreciated because it is not a virtue for any other culture, either. The third world sees tolerance as weakness and opportunity. Many foreign social belief systems, from Judaism, to Hinduism to Islam, carry an ancient code of tribalism, an insider/outsider mentality of supremacy which is admonished in modern western thought but tolerated in immigrants.

For third worlders, a culture which is tolerant is fair game for exploitation and perhaps even invasion. You will consistently see foreign groups in the US argue that they are indeed American, but at the same time they will declare allegiance to their nation of origin. Their love of America is based on their love of the WEALTH they can derive from America. They’re laughing all the way to the closest Western Union.

Most have no interest in our principles and our heritage. They see America as an economic zone, a global commons with resources to be tapped. In other words, foreigners see immigration as a fishing business, a means to gain access to a largely unprotected wealth pool created by a culture with more historic merit and more success. They have been gathering their nets for quite some time.

In 2024 the US government under Joe Biden spent over $72 billion on foreign aid with another $26 billion in supplementals. India and Mexico transfer around $100 billion total in remittance from the US each year (foreign workers sending money back home). A number of officials with ethnic roots in these countries regularly argue in favor of continued visas and mass immigration while claiming it’s “for the good of Americans.”

Again, their loyalty is to their culture of origin first and America last.

For progressives and globalists immigration is also about wealth, primarily the redistribution of it from middle-class and upper-class Americans into foreign coffers. They see the common American people (conservatives) as a thorn in their side that needs to be removed. The draining of our buying power and living standards is a stepping stone to cultural deconstruction.

Mass immigration is a tool for social change. Multiculturalism erases national pride and the concept of protected borders. For if we are overwhelmed by the third world, who is going to care about maintaining the borders of our nation anymore? We might as well let the whole thing collapse, right?

They openly admit to this agenda, it’s not a secret. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Black-pilled nihilists will say that we’ll “do nothing”, but I’m not really interested in the opinions of conservatives who have given up. They are just as responsible for our troubles as progressives. They are weaklings and cowards.

Donald Trump’s recent declaration of a ban on third world immigration is at least bringing the topic to the average American dinner table. It’s been a long time since we had a real national reexamination of the “melting pot” idea. And, from my observations the use of mass deportations is gathering vast support among the American public.

I really don’t think officials living in the bubble of DC or mainstream journalists suffering from delusions of influence realize just how deep the anger goes when it comes to foreign exploitation and foreign influence over American society. I would suggest that there are tens of millions of patriots on the verge of walking out the door tomorrow to wage war on leftists and illegal immigrants should the obstructions of deportations continue.

The naysayers just don’t get how fed up people are becoming. Third world enclaves in places like Minneapolis and Dearborne don’t get it, either. Our tolerance is rapidly melting away, faster than the melting pot can be filled. The era of liberalism is over. The era of western multiculturalism is about to be stamped out. Mark my words, we are on the precipice of a reckoning.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/americas-poison-melting-pot-and-luxury-tolerance

Putin Increasingly Depends On Beijing For His Growing Arsenal Of Military Drones

 Via Remix News,

While Russia is routinely portrayed as a serious military power, as the war drags on, Russia is becoming more and more reliant on Chinese drone components to survive.

Now, China’s drone component supplier Wang Dinhua has just purchased a 5 percent stake in Russia’s Rustakt, a top drone manufacturer in Russia.

Rustakt is subject to sanctions imposed by both Ukraine and the European Union, reports Do Rzeczy, citing an article from FInancial TImes. 

Samuel Bendett, a drone expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted the growing cooperation between the Russian and Chinese military-industrial complexes, as well as Putin’s reliance on Chinese components for Russia’s growing drone needs.

However, this reliance is nothing new. 

Another Russian company, Aero-HIT, has also benefitted from this partnership, reportedly producing up to 10,000 drones per month this year.

It also plans to produce more advanced models.

China is generally considered the leading drone component manufacturer in the world, dominating much of the supply chain to the point that many of the components also purchased by the United States also come from China.

Ukraine has also discovered laser sensors manufactured by a South African company in Russian drones attacking its cities.

It remains unclear how products intended for civilian use ended up on the kamikaze drones, the independent Russian-language website The Moscow Times reported on Friday.

Laser rangefinders from several countries, including South Africa, have been detected in long-range drones modified from the Iranian Shahed, according to Vladislav Vasilyuk, a Ukrainian official responsible for sanctions policy.

Industrial lasers from South Africa’s Lightware are small and lightweight, making them suitable for installation in drones.

The supply of military equipment to countries engaged in armed conflict without the consent of the South African government is prohibited, but Lightware is not registered as a trader in ammunition or dual-use products or technologies.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-increasingly-depends-beijing-his-growing-arsenal-military-drones

Airbus Hit by Fuselage Quality Issue Affecting Hundreds of A320 Jets

 Airbus has identified a quality issue with metal panels on hundreds of its bestselling A320 family of aircraft, a fresh setback days after the company warned that thousands of the jets required an urgent software fix.

The European plane maker said Monday that it was inspecting jets that may be affected by what it described as a “supplier-quality issue”—a discovery that threatens to upend an already high-pressure scramble to meet full-year delivery targets.

Airbus hasn’t publicly disclosed the number of planes that may be affected, but told customers late last week as many as 628 jets could have defective panels installed, according to a confidential presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Of those, 168 are in-service, while another 245 are in final assembly and being readied for delivery, Airbus engineers noted in the presentation. A further 215 are moving through earlier stages of production.

The issue at hand is the thickness of five specific panels that sit on top of the cockpit and either side of the jet’s right and left front doors. The defects were introduced during the stretching and milling process used to manufacture the panels, leaving some with patches that either exceed or fall short of thickness requirements, according to the presentation.

The affected parts were produced by Spain’s Sofitec Aerospace, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Sofitec isn’t the sole supplier of the components for the A320 family.

The manufacturing fault has now been rectified and all newly produced panels conform to requirements, an Airbus spokesman said Monday.

In its presentation, Airbus said tests on jets that had yet to leave its factories had found no safety concerns. For those already in service, the company told operators that there was a potential, “unlikely” risk of a rapid decompression event, but only on aircraft with overly thin panels that might have been thinned further during unrelated repair work. Without checks, that risk “cannot be excluded,” it said.

Airbus has assessed that the likelihood of a safety issue was too slim to warrant any emergency action, according to people familiar with the matter.

The panel problem does, however, threaten to interrupt an end-of-year scramble to meet the company’s annual production target. Airbus is staring at a monster December run of deliveries to meet a goal of delivering some 820 aircraft in 2025.

Airbus needs to deliver more than 160 jets in the next few weeks to hit the target, according to analyst estimates. Most of those planes will now need to be checked to ensure panels meet thickness requirements, a process that can take hours per aircraft, according to people familiar with the process. That could risk delivery delays if sections need to be replaced.

Analysts at Vertical Research Partners said they now expected Airbus to fall 30 jets short of its forecast.

Airbus shares fell as much as 10% in European trading Monday before closing down almost 6%. The panel issue was earlier reported by Reuters.

The aerospace sector has been on high alert for potential quality issues after Boeing’s yearslong battle to overcome a run of production challenges. Airbus customers have also been dealing with ongoing delivery delays along with a large-scale metal contamination problem on engines manufactured for the latest generation A320neo family.

The panel issue is the latest in a run of frustrations for Airbus and its customers, including an urgent warning issued Friday about a problem with cockpit software on its A320 jets that could cause the model to pitch downward during a solar-radiation event.

In response, regulators issued an emergency directive to update the software, which led to cancellations and delays at airlines across the globe over the weekend. Fixes were required on about 6,000 aircraft—or more than half of the in-service fleet—before their next flight.

Airbus said earlier Monday that the fix had been made on all but fewer than 100. The remaining jets require an additional hardware change to enable the software upgrade.

The A320 family of aircraft is by far Airbus’s most important and bestselling aircraft, which has for decades competed head-on with Boeing’s 737 models. The narrow-body jet has helped the company surge past Boeing in recent years to take the crown of world’s biggest plane maker.

Since the pandemic, Airbus has been battling to rapidly increase output of the aircraft from its factories and fully capitalize on an order book of more than 7,100 of the planes.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/airbus-suffers-new-quality-issue-days-after-software-glitch/ar-AA1RuYrU

Powell skips policy talk at Stanford

 United States Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered prepared remarks at Stanford University, choosing not to address current economic conditions or monetary policy.

Speaking at former US State Secretary George Shultz memorial lecture, Powell said his focus was on honoring Shultz's legacy as a policymaker and public servant. "Just to be clear, I will not address current economic conditions or monetary policy," Powell told the audience.

Powell described Shultz as a figure who combined integrity with practical policymaking, citing his work in four cabinet posts and his commitment to markets, collective bargaining and nuclear disarmament. He also said Shultz's example continues to guide those who serve in government.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Powell-skips-policy-talk-at-Stanford/65277372

Asia mixed after Lutnick confirms lower auto tariffs for S. Korea

 Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed, while South Korea's Kospi Composite jumped over 1% on Tuesday, after United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed Washington's auto tariffs on South Korea would be retroactively lowered to 15% from the previous 25%, effective November 1.

"The US will lower certain tariffs under the deal – including auto tariffs to 15%, effective November 1. We are also removing tariffs on airplane parts and will "un-stack" Korea's reciprocal rate to match Japan and the EU," read a post by the US Commerce Department on X, which cited Lutnick.

South Korea's Kospi Composite gained 1.53% at 3:27 am CET. Japan's Nikkei 225 added 0.41% at 3:28 am CET. Hong Kong's Hang Seng went up by 0.60% at the same time, while on the Chinese mainland, the Shanghai Composite lowered by 0.34% and the Shenzhen Composite declined by 0.57%. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 increased by 0.27% at 3:30 am CET.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Asia-mixed-after-Lutnick-confirms-lower-auto-tariffs-for-S.-Korea/65277422

Oregon's Far-Left Governor Threatens Lawfare Against ICE Agents

 Oregon Governor Tina Kotek (D) has put her state - one of the most progressive in the United States - on a collision course with the Trump administration, threatening to investigate Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel and, if necessary, bring state criminal charges against ICE agents for enforcing federal immigration laws.

In a video statement shared to Instagram this week, Kotek accused federal agents of using excessive force and “reckless” tactics that she claimed endanger bystanders and local police. The Oregon governor vowed to monitor ICE operations and treat federal officers the same as any private citizen who violates state law.

“I believe as you do, in the rule of law and keeping our community safe,” Kotek said. “We also believe in being a welcoming place, where our immigrant and refugee community help our state thrive. The ongoing violent actions of the federal Department of Homeland Security are unacceptable - going after Oregonians, and stoking fear in the name of ‘immigration enforcement.'”

“If a federal officer breaks Oregon law,” she said, “they will be held accountable—just like anyone else,” she added.

Kotek’s opposition to federal authorities bringing law and order to Oregon is nothing new.

During the 2020 Portland unrest, Oregon governor criticized federal agents deployed to protect the federal courthouse, arguing that their presence inflamed rather than calmed the situation and that local authorities should have primary control over street-level order.

For those who view secure borders and consistent enforcement of immigration law as essential to national sovereignty and public order, Kotek’s posture looks like another instance of a progressive state placing ideological commitments above constitutional obligations. The Oregon governor defenders will no doubt frame it as a courageous stand for civil rights and community safety.

Either way, Oregon has now openly declared its willingness to treat federal immigration agents as potential state criminals. If the Kotek administration acts on that threat, the resulting clash will force a federal court—and perhaps the Supreme Court—to remind the states, once again, where the ultimate authority over America’s borders resides.

Kotek is hardly alone among Democratic governors in issuing such threats. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) has gone further, openly suggesting that Trump-administration officials could eventually face prosecution in his state.

“The tables will turn one day,” Pritzker told FOX 32 Chicago last month.

These people should recognize that maybe they’re not gonna get prosecuted today, although we’re looking at doing that, but they may get prosecuted after the Trump administration because the statute of limitations would not have run out.

Pritzker also said he had held discussions with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul (D) and other attorneys regarding a potential criminal investigation into DHS officials and ICE agents.

"We’re talking to the state’s attorneys and Attorney General to see how they can go at this because what we want to make sure is that they follow the law,” Pritzker said.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/oregons-far-left-governor-threatens-lawfare-against-ice-agents