Blain’s Morning Porridge Aug 28^th 2025 – Relax. Nothing to Worry About. The Long Term is now Tomorrow Morning.

The trick to the art of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

So much to worry about. Stop. Why bother? What’s not to like about short-term markets. Nvidia is selling more and more and more chips, SpaceX half-circumnavigated the planet, and US Treasuries care not a jot about Fed Independence. Give me another puff of whatever these guys are smoking!

The world gets a little more confusing, but more exciting every day. My natural reaction – as an economist/market watcher keen to understand and explain everything – is to fret, panic, and rant because none of this makes much sense anymore. The news flow is causing me anxiety attacks; none of it looks sustainable, all it will back-fire on us in the long run, and the consequences of today’s news will negatively impinge our futures. (Blain running round office, brain literally on fire….)

I should relax – take a red pill, and go with the flow.

I should learn to live in the moment, and buy into the short-term race for riches and glory. The trick is to stop whining and worrying. Breathe deep. Dive deep into the mood. In the long run, as Keynes pointed out, we are only here for a short-while. Might as well enjoy it. (Keynes, notoriously, was a very poor investor.)

Therefore; I am not going to worry about George Soros, holocaust survivor and genius investor, being promoted to the Top of Trump’s most wanted list for funding fiendish left-wing protest groups intent on destroying Trump’s vision of Mom, Pop and Apple Pie through terrorist environmental and welfare charities. Or, the US Govt taking stakes in more Tech and Defence Firms, (I am definitely not going to worry about Lutnick explaining it.) Or, the sacking of Disease control director Susan Monarez after a month for not being properly aligned with Making America Healthy Again and President Trump, (all I will say is remember the Golgafrinchans). Or, the Danes warning the USA about trying to suborn Greenland through an amateurish hearts and minds campaign (involving paid drunks pretending to be local MAGA supporters). It would all be hilarious if it wasn’t.

It’s all just noise… just noise.

The business of finance is finance… and returns. The World is now Short-Term focused. Go with it. That’s where the profits and upside are going to come from!

I opened up my Coinbase account to discover the position I took in Ethereum out of bemused curiosity is now up 50%. Wow. I’m convinced… of what, I don’t know. I have not a breeze of a clue as to why Ethereum is up. No matter.

The short-termism is clearly illustrated in the World’s first $4 trillion company – Nvidia. CEO Jensen Huang said: “We’re really an AI infrastructure company… we need to squeeze as much out of that factory as possible.” I admire his logic but spot the flaw. Go for it – selling more and more of their very sophisticated chips into the ever-expanding data-centre market – which accounts for nearly 90% of their profits. And since everyone needs these chips to run data-centres, everyone is building more data centres, and Nvidia is pretty much the monopoly supplier… what’s not to like? (Don’t interrupt screaming China at me..)

Except, of course… at some point Monopolies are short-term. Tech law dictates someone will design and build a cheaper, less energy intense, chip with even more functionality that just a few years later will do on a handheld device what it takes a data-centre the size of Texas to do now.. But until then, or when the whole of the USA has been tarmacked-over by data-centres… data centre chips are one way to get rich. I suspect Warren Buffet is not a buyer.

Meanwhile, I should congratulate SpaceX on the near-flawless (or as close to flawless as anything involving Elon Musk is likely to get) Starship flight from Texas to somewhere in the Indian ocean… where the freshly landed Starship immediately exploded. Credit where credit is due: the mission fulfilled its objectives. I watched it all on the SpaceX feed and was struck by the genuine surprise of the two SpaceX commentators – delighted and immensely relieved they weren’t having to explain yet another unscheduled inflight disassembly event.

SpaceX is currently valued at $400 bln, but the plan is to push it higher – and a succession of positive tests will certainly do that, attracting money excited about how the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship will make launches even cheaper – opening up new orbital commercial opportunities, a planned lunar landing and eventually sending Musk [back?] to Mars…

But, but, and but again… there is much to happen first.. and as well know Musk is literally very long on what he’s going to achieve and very short on actually doing that in a time frame recognisable to Earthlings. To deliver all that SpaceX promises the extremely tricky business of refuelling the Starship from another Starship carrying tonnes and tonnes of ultra-combustible fuel to get the first one out of Low Earth Orbit has to happen… without it ending in a very bigly (but silent) Boom.  Never been done before. Ever. (There is a reason for that – buried deep in the Nasa files….)

Musk’s approach is famously to Fail Fast and fix it – but that becomes a problem on the enormously complex system of rocket, engines, systems and constructions that is the Starship. Tweak one thing and it tweaks something else. Increasingly critics of Musk’s Starship are wondering if the Starship concept can ever work as Musk has promised – its heavy, its complex, it’s still far too unreliable to carry spacemen anywhere.

As the Irish might say: “To get to there, you would not start from here”. What Musk has done with SpaceX and Starlink is extraordinary – but does he need to show some nimbleness and switch the plan from the Starship to something different? That’s unlikely to impress investors – SpaceX remains private because Musk has stated he wants to avoid the short-term pressure from public shareholders in his long-term project.

Going back to the drawing board is not a Musk trait – it might reveal human self-awareness. He’s shown that reluctance to step back and change direction with Tesla – where he is still trying to convince the market of its future value in the Robotaxi business.

I spot a number of flaws in that. First… sans the Tech element (which is discounted over time) taxi businesses in the real world are not worth trillions because they are very competitive. Second, Musk has chosen to use the cheapest camera tech for his self-driving system, while everyone else is using complex systems to iterate self-driving threats between radar, lidar, cameras and GPS to AI the data. Which one do you think works better?

And finally, there is the US Treasury Market. It’s clear the days of an independent Fed are effectively over. Very soon, Trump will likely have forced out Governor Cook, and by May 2026 Powell will also have gone. The board will be controlled by stuffees appointed by Trump with clear instructions.

Yet the US treasury market has barely reacted… it doesn’t care…..

Some say that’s because it was already priced into the market. Some say its because Americans are loyal to their president – no matter who it is, choosing to trust their leaders judgement in all things.. (FFS!)

The reality, of course, is the market is going massively long the short-end of the Treasury market, anticipating a massive rally when Trump wins. Sell the long-end, buythe short-end and then what?

Run away before it all goes to wrack-sh*t and ruin?

Out of time, and a busy day ahead of taking wife to hospital appointments, and using my laptop as I wait…

Bill Blain

CEO – Windshift Capital

Author – The Morning Porridge

Partner – Shard Capital