The Numbers Nobody's Talking About (But Should Be)

Let's not dress this up: 717 companies filed for bankruptcy through November 2025. That's the highest count since the rubble finished settling after 2008. The tariff machine chewed through import-dependent businesses like a wood chipper, and we're pretending the stock market's new highs matter more than the bodies in the parking lot.

Here's what grinds me about this moment. The S&P 500 just hit record highs—an 87.5% tear since October 2022, folks—while simultaneously, corporate America is collapsing in slow motion. Spirit Airlines. Claire's. Rite Aid just ceased operations. But where's the coverage? Where's the conversation? Instead, we get "precious metals rally," "AI stocks lead," "Bitcoin pullback." The algorithm demands we talk about silver up 8% and Nvidia squeezing out another 1% like these are the stories that matter.

They're not. Not even close.

The Fed's Uncomfortable Confession

The Federal Reserve cut rates a third straight time on December 10—a quarter-point reduction landing us at 3.5%-3.75%. But here's the tell: the vote was 9-3, the most fractured FOMC we've seen since September 2019. One governor wanted to cut deeper. Two others wanted to hold the line entirely. The committee is eating itself.

Powell stood at the podium and did what Powell does best: spoke slowly, chose words carefully, and essentially admitted we've trapped ourselves. The Fed created a K-shaped economy—the wealthy thriving, the bottom half staring at this going, "What happened?" Those were Christopher Waller's words, not mine. Fed officials, the supposed architects of our monetary destiny, can't fix the mess they helped build. They can't target rate cuts at low-income households. They can't unlock long-term Treasury yields through force of will. They can only jam the steering wheel left and hope something improves.

The real problem? Inflation's still at 2.8%. The target is 2%. And the Fed's projecting just one rate cut for all of 2026—that's one. A single quarter-point. After three cuts to close out 2025, we're basically done. This is the sound of capitulation dressed as confidence.

Where the Winners Are

Nvidia just did what Nvidia does: it absorbed Groq for $20 billion, hired its founder Jonathan Ross, and basically erased a potential competitor. This is how empire consolidates power. Groq was building language processing units to challenge Nvidia's GPU dominance in AI inference. Now? Groq's inside the Nvidia ecosystem, its talent folded into the machine, its threat neutralized. Bernstein called it "strategic dominance through balance sheet power," which is analyst-speak for "too big to fail, too big to lose."

That $22 billion in quarterly cash Nvidia's generating? It's not trickling into wage growth or productive capacity for middle-class workers. It's mopping up rival startups and securing long-term structural advantages in a market where the winner takes everything.

Merck and S&P Global are sitting at overbought extremes (RSI above 70), Morgan Stanley calls them 2026 picks, and institutional money is piling in ahead of the new year. Homebuilders like Lennar have collapsed into oversold territory (RSI at 28). This is momentum-chasing, end-of-year portfolio shuffling, fear of missing out compressed into four trading days between Christmas and New Year's. It's not analysis. It's panic positioning.

The Crypto Koan

Bitcoin tried to rebound, fizzled. XRP got pinned between $1.85 and $1.91—buyers showing up at $1.86, sellers defending $1.90. Even ETF flows couldn't push it through. This is distribution in slow motion. Institutional money's supposedly flowing in (ETF assets hit $1.25 billion), but the price action says something else: real supply exists at these levels, and nobody's that excited to chase it higher.

We used to say crypto was "decentralized." Now it's just another asset class watching ETF flows and technical resistance levels like every other instrument the Fed destroyed.

The Actual Conversation

Markets are built on consensus until they're not. We've got divergent inflation data, a fractured Fed, record bankruptcies, a labor market softening at the edges, and fiscal headwinds nobody wants to name. The S&P 500's new high matters less than the 717 businesses that won't be around to compound next year.

The Fed just signaled we're done cutting. Policy is "neutral" and "not accommodative." Tariffs—still in motion. Tariffs—still destroying businesses. The bottom half of the income distribution is staring at Christmas receipts and wondering how they're supposed to afford 2026 if borrowing costs aren't dropping anymore.

And we're talking about silver futures.

That gap—between the stories we tell and the bankruptcies happening in real time—that's where the actual market is. Everything else is noise.