Making Hay Monday – December 15th, 2025
Making Hay Monday
On Stability & Anticipation
“We believe the emergence of a USD stablecoin carries the potential to be a transformative event in monetary history, one as consequential as the day the United States severed its link to gold and as powerful in shaping the world’s financial order as the moment it abandoned Bretton Woods.”
“The greatest weapons of empires are those that require no battle to win. A U.S. Dollar Stablecoin may prove to be precisely that.”
(Both quotes from Santiago Capital’s Brent Johnson, author of the Dollar Milkshake Theory)
Cue Carly Simon
One of the most memorable TV commercials of the 1970s involved a very slow-moving condiment, that tasty red sauce originally sourced from SE Asia known as ketchup. As my fellow Boomers will undoubtedly recall, a Heinz ketchup bottle was tilted at a sharp downward angle while the thick sauce was ever so slowly emerging. (By the way, catsup is a much less viscous concoction.) What made this ad particularly compelling was the dulcet voice of Carly Simon singing Anticipation.
This is the season when many on Wall Street, and even those who are far removed from it, like financial newsletter scribes, often issue their forecasts for the upcoming year. This newsletter has not engaged in that exercise, one of dubious benefits. However, the elder Haymaker did at one time author such outlooks. As he became even more elderly, he prudently began calling them “anticipations”. That was a far more humble, and realistic, approach to an effort which resides outside the realm of mere mortals. As we’ve frequently quipped, but not for a while, it’s always hard to make predictions, especially about the future. (Full credit to Yogi Berra on that one.)
Yet, these pages have been bereft even of year-end anticipations in recent years. It wasn’t actually premeditated, but our focus as prior years were winding down was much more on specific stocks, sectors, styles, and asset classes (i.e., like commodities) that might perform well in the coming year.
In this rather retro Making Hay Monday (MHM), we’ll cover some broad investment areas that might do well, in addition to one specific idea. As usual, we’ll start with the high-level view and work our way down to a previously discussed security that we feel is worth a refresh.
The subject of our Macro, or big picture, section for this MHM is something that you’ve all heard of but by which, I suspect, most of you are at least partially befuddled. That “something” is a relatively new iteration of the U.S. dollar (USD) known as a stablecoin.
Ironically, the leading issuer of this increasingly discussed creation is Tether. It’s ironic because we have repeatedly expressed our skepticism about Tether’s finances and the integrity of its management team…
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