Dario Capodici on Slice

IMPORTANT UPDATE - If Japan doesn't stop the FX intervention on the JPY at USDJPY 155 the chances they trigger a spike in volatility are significant

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:19:12 GMT

IMPORTANT UPDATE - If Japan doesn't stop the FX intervention on the JPY at USDJPY 155 the chances they trigger a spike in volatility are significant

IMPORTANT - Those of you who followed these trade ideas should start considering taking profits

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:23:32 GMT

IMPORTANT - Those of you who followed these trade ideas should start considering taking profits

Things keep developing as I expected heading into Labor Day long weekend

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:40:30 GMT

Things keep developing as I expected heading into Labor Day long weekend

HEADS UP - (VERY) BULLISH ASCENDING TRIANGLE ON CHENIERE (LNG)

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:04:37 GMT

HEADS UP - (VERY) BULLISH ASCENDING TRIANGLE ON CHENIERE (LNG)

JustDario Live Stream #8 (24th August 2026) - SUMMARY

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:37:49 GMT

JustDario Live Stream #8 (24th August 2026) - SUMMARY

IS BESSENT’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH TRADERS OVER?

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:36:43 GMT

From time to time, there are events that split the market timeline into two dimensions, effectively altering the course of events afterward. And what happened in real time may not have seemed all that consequential, but with the benefit of hindsight, it becomes crystal clear. I believe that what occurred yesterday, between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. Eastern Time, live on CNBC, may one day be recognized as one of those moments when everyone agrees that something in the markets snapped. At 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, August 20th, the live CNBC interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent began. And it was truly remarkable how the U.S. Treasury Secretary managed to drop every possible keyword in his vocabulary designed to trigger a significant market reaction from algorithmic trading systems. Within seconds of the interview starting, he immediately said that the buyback of long-term U.S. Treasury bonds could exceed $4 billion. Boom. Then he continued, stating, "We have a big toolkit for the Treasury." He went on to say there would likely be an announcement of increased focus on fiscal consolidation, in partnership with the budget director. When asked about the rising U.S. public debt, he quickly dismissed it, saying, "There's nothing magical about a $43 trillion debt number." And then he dropped another bomb: "We can grow our way out of that debt burden." Boom. As if that weren't enough, another big statement was waiting in the wings. Right in front of the camera, he declared, "I expect that tariff revenue in 2026 will be similar to 2025." Boom. I mean, you've got to be kidding me. The last monthly tariff revenue recorded by the U.S. was negative by roughly $20 billion. An event that has never occurred before in history. And you're standing there telling the market that you'll deliver similar income to the year prior, when you were overcharging the entire world illegally? Now that entire framework has been torn apart, and you've already started reimbursing companies that, in the meantime, passed those costs on to consumers (who ended up paying for them and won't see a penny back). And then, again and again, he continued. He said he believed markets had gotten a little ahead of themselves, that the Treasury and the Fed would work together if there were any changes to the balance sheet. He claimed rates have nothing to do with the buyback decision and that they would adjust to any Fed runoff. He also asserted that, according to market expectations, lower inflation is being priced in for the future. Boom, boom, and boom. And of course, he had to say something about Iran as well, claiming the US would impose the toughest sanctions in history. He said oil markets are misinterpreting what economic pressure means, that their actions would "curtail" Iran's ability to act through proxies, and that the ultimate goal is coordinated economic isolation. I mean, dude, what do you think everyone else has been doing for the past 47 years? This is no news. You're effectively repeating what already didn't work before. So unless you've got an incredible golden rabbit to pull out of your hat, there's nothing new, nothing magical, about whatever you're planning to announce on Iran. And personally, I don't find it surprising that they delayed this new sanctions announcement by a week, which, as a matter of fact, is not exactly a big signal of confidence. The interview ended with Secretary Bessent stating they are pursuing a strong U.S. dollar policy. Boom. Again, you've got to be kidding me. You have the President asking for an unnecessary Fed rate cut when the Fed should be doing exactly the opposite, day after day. The Fed has already restarted expanding its balance sheet under Jerome Powell. You're running a record deficit, a Treasury buyback program, intervening in the FX market to strengthen the JPY against the USD, while you are growing desperate to contain the rise in your cost of debt - and you're saying you're pursuing a strong currency policy? Cmon, man. Now, when you put all this together, the way I'm saying it, you're like, "Jesus, none of this makes sense." And as a matter of fact, it doesn't - unless you consider every single one of these sentences in the way a trading algorithm would pick up on them and interpret them. Trading algorithms have no intelligence whatsoever. Don't be fooled. They are trained to pick up specific keywords. They attach coefficients to those keywords, positive or negative, and based on the series of keywords, weighted by the source (whether it's President Trump, Bessent, or whoever), they produce a result that tells them to buy or sell a certain security. There's nothing complicated about it. You can literally say random words and get a reaction, as long as you plug the necessary inputs into the equation. And even if people claim they have proprietary algorithms, in the end, it all boils down to the same approach. That's why this narrative manipulation has worked so consistently for so long. And don't get me wrong: these people wouldn't keep doing it if they weren't making a profit. But here's exactly what snapped yesterday. Despite the U.S. Treasury Secretary dropping sentence after sentence, carefully prepped and crafted to achieve a very specific market reaction, we saw no market reaction, just crickets. It was even incredible to see U.S. Treasury yields higher after the live CNBC interview ended. And in a follow-up discussion with a journalist afterward, you could sense the level of shock that Bessent was trying to conceal, being fully aware that his performance yielded absolutely zero result. And you know, when people start to get nervous, that's when they make mistakes, or when Freudian slips occur. And here's what dropped yesterday. When a journalist asked about rising crude oil prices, Secretary Bessent, who is supposed to be highly knowledgeable on the matter, actually answered, "We've got a spike in oil prices today that I don't really understand." Dude, how can you not understand what's happening? You worked for George Soros for years. You allegedly broke central banks to make a profit. You ran your own hedge funds for years. And now you're the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. And you don't know what an imbalance between demand and supply does to prices? Of course you do. The real meaning of that sentence is that he wasn't expecting crude prices to go higher for another reason. And that reason is: he knows they are running a very sophisticated and broad market manipulation to suppress crude oil prices, via direct interventions, insider trading ahead of announcements to frame the wished market reaction, positioning, using unreliable sources at specific times of the trading day when volumes are low to trigger headlines so they can yield maximum effect on price movements, and overall crafting a specific narrative to keep market momentum, and all algorithmic trading, locked into a particular posture. So, to conclude here, putting all this together, we should ask ourselves a question: Is the love affair between Bessent and the traders over? I don't think we can answer that yet. Especially because today, Friday, August 21st, is monthly opex, which is surely conditioning a lot of market prices, pinning most of them to avoid volatility shocks and allow market makers to maximize profit. So we'll have to wait until Monday to really understand if something indeed snapped or not on Thursday this week. And be careful here, because if this current narrative is over, and as we've said many times, traders will sooner or later realize they cannot trust these lies forever, that would be a very big deal. Why? Because a powerful tool in the hands of the U.S. administration, used to egregiously manipulate markets, will no longer be available.

The Short-Lived Relief of Treasury Buybacks and the Unsustainable Path of Modern Central Banking

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:15:45 GMT

The recent intervention in the bond market, through the upsizing of the US Treasury’s buyback programme, has pushed yields lower and contributed to a weaker dollar. In my view, this is only short-lived relief. I cannot believe I am already writing an article on the very same topic I warned about just 24 hours ago (Pic1 and Pic2) here on Slice, but clearly I was right on the cue, warning about something that till Tuesday was still broadly ignored by mainstream and social media. The buyback is fundamentally a zero-sum game. To finance repurchases of long-duration Treasury bonds, the U.S. Treasury must issue more T-Bills. In the near term, this can suppress yields, but over the longer term it undermines the U.S. debt market in two critical ways: First, the massive volume of T-Bills that must be rolled over creates ongoing pressure . In order to control the rise of long-term U.S. yields, which are the benchmark rate for many critical financial instruments like home mortgages, the US Treasury is not only running a bigger buyback programme now, but at the same time is front-loading a ton of US debt, issuing more T-Bills while avoiding adding supply to the long end of the curve (the same it is trying to buy back). Already, more than $7 trillion in Treasuries will mature within a year, and those must be refinanced month after month. Any liquidity crunch that reduces demand for bills would place the government under acute stress. Second, systematically retiring long-duration bonds drains the market of risk-free bond supply . As the available stock of longer-term U.S. paper shrinks while the money supply continues to expand, newly created cash—especially that held by insurers and pension funds—is forced into alternative credit markets. This is precisely why hyperscalers have been able to issue unprecedented amounts of long-duration corporate bonds. What’s the risk of forcing too much cash into a specific market? Of course, inflating market bubbles. This dynamic is not isolated. Around the world, we are witnessing the same pattern: governments issue debt to fund spending, and whatever the private market does not absorb is simply purchased by central banks with newly created money. It is unsustainable. Paradoxically, instead of learning from Japan’s decades-long experiment (or the more dramatic cases of Argentina and Turkey), the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union are adopting the same playbook. The eurozone is more heterogeneous; France is in considerably worse fiscal shape than Spain or Austria; but the overall direction is identical, with one small problem: in Europe, the ECB needs to find a policy that more or less fits all, while some countries are increasingly in need of a tailored one. The chart of gold priced in Turkish lira already illustrates the endpoint (and how Japan is still not close to a monetary collapse that will take decades to unfold, contrary to what many fake social media experts keep claiming by confusing it with the dynamics of the JPY carry trade) . In the years ahead, I expect the same pattern to appear against other major currencies. That is why I continue to recommend the accumulation of physical gold for the long term. The explicit goal of recent policies by the US and other G7 countries is to inflate the debt away. What the United States still fails to grasp is that you cannot pursue this strategy while preserving the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency because the double-edged sword is that holders of U.S. Treasuries will watch the real value of their reserves erode. It is therefore unsurprising that China and other major holders have been gradually reducing their USD reserves in favour of gold. This does not mean we will see a gold-backed Chinese yuan in our lifetimes. Such a move would strengthen the currency too sharply and cripple domestic manufacturing and exports - the same fate that eventually befell the United States and, before it, the United Kingdom when the pound sterling was the world’s reserve currency. I would not be surprised, however, if gold eventually emerges as the preferred settlement asset among central banks, while fiat currencies remain largely confined to domestic use. Some observers argue that as long as the Federal Reserve is not directly monetising the buybacks, the exercise is merely a re-profiling of debt from longer to shorter maturities and should be neutral for the dollar. I disagree. Think of T-Bills as a cash proxy. Front-loading issuance of bills effectively increases the near-term supply of dollar liquidity, while longer-duration bonds “lock” that cash away for years, with very different impacts on the velocity of money and credit creation. Markets correctly anticipate higher dollar balance availability in the near future and therefore weaken the currency in the short run - exactly what occurred when the buyback programme was first introduced by Janet Yellen (criticised at that time by the very same Scott Bessent that just doubled down on it). Over the medium term, the dollar can strengthen again relative to currencies such as the yen, because a persistently weak dollar damages U.S. export competitiveness and forces other countries to devalue even further to protect their own industries. To conclude, the current relief is temporary. Physical gold remains, in my judgement, the most reliable long-term hedge against the risk of the modern fiat monetary system collapsing.

Dear all, I just wrote a new article on AI: "HYPE BY FOOTNOTE: WHERE DID THE $ 25 BILLION OF ADDITIONAL COREWEAVE RPOs COME FROM?" I will post this on X in about 3 hours, but you can read it in advance at this link: https://justdario.com/2026/08/hype-by-footnote-where-did-the-25-billion-of-additional-coreweave-rpos-come-from/ As always, your comments and questions are mostly welcome

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:04:47 GMT

Dear all, I just wrote a new article on AI: "HYPE BY FOOTNOTE: WHERE DID THE $ 25 BILLION OF ADDITIONAL COREWEAVE RPOs COME FROM?" I will post this on X in about 3 hours, but you can read it in advance at this link: https://justdario.com/2026/08/hype-by-footnote-where-did-the-25-billion-of-additional-coreweave-rpos-come-from/ As always, your comments and questions are mostly welcome

I noticed Wall Street analysts are now starting to hike target prices of oil refiners like Marathon (MPC) and Valero (VLO) - this might be a sign of Wall Street getting behind the trend of diesel and Crack spreads not considered anymore like a temporary short term flare up

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:32:26 GMT

I noticed Wall Street analysts are now starting to hike target prices of oil refiners like Marathon (MPC) and Valero (VLO) - this might be a sign of Wall Street getting behind the trend of diesel and Crack spreads not considered anymore like a temporary short term flare up

The crude oil price is being so suppressed that, after crack spreads (CRAK ETF), now even oil companies' stock performances have been detaching from it

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:41:24 GMT

The crude oil price is being so suppressed that, after crack spreads (CRAK ETF), now even oil companies' stock performances have been detaching from it

Dear All, considering the broader market has been "slow" overall, being mid-August and that I will still be in the middle of China for another week with VPN limitations, I believe it will be best for me to work and deliver the Second tutorial on Options rather than scheduling a Live Stream. Will resume Live Stream on Monday, the 24th of August Please note I will be in Europe from the 26th of August till the 8th of September afterwards and will do my best to propose time slots that can allow as many of you as possible to join the Live Streams.

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:09:02 GMT

Dear All, considering the broader market has been "slow" overall, being mid-August and that I will still be in the middle of China for another week with VPN limitations, I believe it will be best for me to work and deliver the Second tutorial on Options rather than scheduling a Live Stream. Will resume Live Stream on Monday, the 24th of August Please note I will be in Europe from the 26th of August till the 8th of September afterwards and will do my best to propose time slots that can allow as many of you as possible to join the Live Streams.

The 3-2-1 Crack spread is the best barometer to understand whether a move in crude oil prices is genuine or fake - based on that, the move in the past 48 hours is pretty fake Not surprisingly, diesel prices remain very elevated,

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:31:44 GMT

The 3-2-1 Crack spread is the best barometer to understand whether a move in crude oil prices is genuine or fake - based on that, the move in the past 48 hours is pretty fake Not surprisingly, diesel prices remain very elevated,

Besides a large trader rolling his puts into Nymex crude oil futures options into September expiry, nothing big in the options market yesterday, with roughly equal call and put options volumes (perhaps why the crude oil price crush faded) Nevertheless, the upcoming options expiry remains skewed on puts and that might weight on the price unless a new catalyst is strong enough to drive the price higher sending more puts OTM / more calls ITM and cause market makers delta hedging rebalancing that can support the upward move

noreply@slice-app.io (Dario Capodici) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:32:17 GMT

Besides a large trader rolling his puts into Nymex crude oil futures options into September expiry, nothing big in the options market yesterday, with roughly equal call and put options volumes (perhaps why the crude oil price crush faded) Nevertheless, the upcoming options expiry remains skewed on puts and that might weight on the price unless a new catalyst is strong enough to drive the price higher sending more puts OTM / more calls ITM and cause market makers delta hedging rebalancing that can support the upward move