On Monday, $580 million in oil futures flooded the market — no news, no catalyst — exactly 16 minutes before Trump announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants. Paul Krugman called it treason. Iran’s parliament speaker called it “fake news designed to manipulate financial and oil markets.” The CFTC — the regulator whose entire job is to prevent this — did nothing.

This wasn’t the first time. Reuters documented a pattern: well-timed trades landing minutes before administration decisions on tariffs, Venezuela, and Iran. Millions in profits for unknown traders. Every time.

The market noticed.

Five straight weeks of red. The Dow officially entered correction territory Friday — down 10% from its peak. The S&P shed 3.4% in just two days, its worst stretch since Liberation Day last April. Oil above $110 with no resolution in sight.

But here’s what should really keep you up at night: the futures market is now pricing in a 52% probability of a rate hike by year-end. Three months ago, every talking head on CNBC was debating how many cuts we’d get. That’s not a correction. That’s the entire macro narrative flipping upside down.

The Fed is trapped. Oil above $110 means inflation is re-accelerating. War means uncertainty. Tariffs mean higher input costs. But the economy is weakening — hedge funds just posted their worst month since 2022 (Goldman Prime data: -5.4% MTD for fundamental managers). The Fed can’t cut into rising inflation. Can’t hike into a slowing economy. Can’t do nothing without losing credibility.

Meanwhile, on Friday night, a letter surfaced from Lt. Gen. Leonard Anderson IV, commander of Marine Forces Reserve, instructing reservists to check their desert camo and prepare their families. “A mass mobilization could become reality.” This isn’t a drill memo — it’s a general telling troops to get ready for Iran. Markets haven’t priced this in yet.

What the Smart Money Is Saying

Wick (@ZeroHedge_) has been relentless — and right. From his feed this week:

“Make sure you understand that this is now a game of rotations. Investing is dead. Passive is dead. Right now.”

He’s been pounding the table on Stage 4 downtrends across equities, calling the bear market in crypto since the peak, and flagging oil as the key variable:

“The supply shock in oil makes it almost impossible to cut rates. Pressure to raise rates rather. High inflation, high rates, fleeting global liquidity, tariff wars, global wars ongoing and breaking out, mortgage applications falling off a cliff, and stocks entering Stage 4 downtrends.”

His bear market screener lit up on the weekly timeframe Friday — a macro signal that new downtrends are forming across multiple asset classes. He’s been telling subscribers to stay long energy ($XLE) and short everything else. Bold, simple, and so far dead right.

“That breakthrough when you realize that everyone telling you to hold through a -70% bear market was giving you the worst advice imaginable. Not only can you not use those funds to buy in much lower, but it cost you two years of opportunity cost.”

Aaron Dishner (@MooninPapa) brings the surgical technical read on crypto, and his latest analysis is sobering:

Bitcoin took out the $67K pivot low and is targeting $49K on a bear flag continuation — with a potential measured move to $38,555 if stablecoin dominance breaks February highs. His TBO indicator confirmed a second breakdown on the 4-hour chart. RSI lower lows, OBV red, slow line pointing down. In his words: “Nothing on this chart argues for a bounce holding.”

But here’s where it gets really interesting. Aaron flagged the macro risk most crypto traders are ignoring:

“DXY broke above a bull flag. USDJPY hit 160.413 — Bank of Japan intervention pressure is real, and a forced yen intervention means US bonds get sold, and markets get hit hard.”

That’s the contagion path. Japan intervenes to defend the yen → sells US Treasuries → yields spike → everything risk-on gets crushed. Last time USDJPY pushed these levels in June 2024, the BOJ intervened hard and caused pain across all markets.

His alt calls: SOL targeting $30. ETH targeting $1,000. XRP showing first real weakness with a target of 73 cents. HYPE confirmed bearish divergence, first target $31. Gold, interestingly, is one of the few things he’s bullish on — TBO support holding since November.

The Bigger Picture

Here’s what I keep coming back to.

The Trump market playbook — threaten, crash, reverse, pump — has a name now. The Guardian calls it TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. It worked for a year. Markets would sell off on tariff threats, then rally when he backed down. Easy money for anyone paying attention.

That trade is dead.

When $580 million moves 16 minutes before the president speaks, the market stops trusting the game. When a 3-star Marine general tells reservists to pack for Iran, “chickening out” might not be an option anymore. When oil is above $110 and the Fed can’t move in either direction, there’s no tweet that fixes the math.

Goldman’s own trading desk put it plainly: “The answer to everything depends on one binary variable: the duration of the war.”

And a hedge fund CIO quoted by ZeroHedge offered the longer view: “We probably see peak risk asset prices in Sept-Oct. Then the 2027 fiscal cliff hits. Growth could be atrocious. The repricing across markets would be massive.”

What I’m Doing

I’m not panicking. But I’m not passive either.

· Watching, not chasing. Wick is right — passive investing is on pause. This is a market for active management, rotations, and defined risk.

· Energy over everything. Oil above $110 with a war, a supply shock, and no rate cuts is a secular tailwind. Wick’s $XLE call remains the cleanest trade in the market.

· Cash is a position. With the rate hike probability crossing 50%, money market funds are paying you to wait. There’s no shame in dry powder.

· Crypto patience. Aaron’s targets are brutal but his methodology has been consistent. If BTC hits $49K — or God forbid $38K — that’s a generational entry. Not today.

· Gold. Both Aaron and the macro setup agree. When everything else is breaking, gold holds. It’s been the quiet winner all year.

The market stopped listening to the pump. Time to listen to the signal.

What I Am Reading

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. If Marcus Aurelius gave you the emperor’s view of Stoicism, Seneca gives you the advisor’s — sharper, more practical, and occasionally more honest. These are letters written to a friend about how to actually live: how to handle money, how to deal with difficult people, how to use your time before it uses you.

The letter that keeps coming back to me: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.”

In a market where everyone is reactive — chasing headlines, panic-selling on red days, doomscrolling futures at 4 AM — Seneca is a reminder that the edge has always been the same: think clearly, act deliberately, and ignore the noise.

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters.

— Jordan Fried

Worth a Click: - Reuters: Lucrative bets that anticipated Trump’s policy surprises - Fortune: The big stock market correction Trump can’t talk his way out of - Wick’s bear market screener video: @ZeroHedge_ - Aaron’s full BTC breakdown: @MooninPapa

Let’s dive in.

Dispatches from a War Zone

I am writing this from Israel, where I am currently stuck.

This is the second time this has happened to me. I was here last June during the Twelve-Day War. And now I am here as the United States and Israel conduct operations against Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut and oil at $100+ a barrel.

Here is what I can tell you from the ground: the atmosphere is electric. Israelis are not panicking. They are going to work, eating at restaurants, and arguing about politics—which is what Israelis do when things are normal, and what they do when things are not. These are among the most resilient people on earth. They have been forged by conflict, and they respond to it not with fear, but with a kind of focused intensity that I find genuinely inspiring.

I will come back to why this matters for your portfolio in a moment.

The Rotation No One Is Talking About

The consensus narrative right now is simple: war is bad, sell everything, hide in cash. As usual, the consensus is wrong.

What is actually happening in markets is not panic. It is a rotation. Capital is leaving growth and tech and flooding into hard assets, commodities, energy, and defense. The indexes are strained—but they are not broken. The S&P and Nasdaq are still technically in bullish territory. What has changed is the leadership underneath.

A friend of mine who runs one of the sharper macro research desks has been walking me through this framework in real time. His thesis:

This is not a trade. It is a regime change.

The data supports it:

• Gold at ~$5,172/oz, pulled back from the $5,400 test earlier this month. The all-time high of $5,600 (set in January) is only 8% away.

• GDX (Gold Miners ETF) is up 170% over the past twelve months. Miners are the leveraged play on gold—when gold moves 10%, miners move 20-30%.

• GLD, SLV, and GDX are all in confirmed bullish trends. So are Agnico Eagle, Wheaton Precious Metals, Alcoa, and Rio Tinto. This is not one trade; it is a structural shift across the entire commodity complex.

• Defense names—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX—are all making new highs. The market is not just pricing in war; it is pricing in a world that permanently needs more security infrastructure.

Meanwhile, technology leadership is weakening. Long bonds are in bearish territory. The old playbook—buy tech, ride disinflation, wait for rate cuts—is being rewritten in real time.

The signal: Smart money is not hiding in cash. It is rotating into things that are scarce, essential, and hard to replicate. If you are sitting in a portfolio of high-multiple growth stocks and nothing else, this is your wake-up call.

The Stock That Wins Either Way

We will have enough chips. We will have enough data centers. We do not have enough electricity.

Energy is the bottleneck for AI. Every new data center that Amazon, Google, or Microsoft builds requires 24/7 “firm” power—the kind you cannot get from solar panels alone. You need gas. You need hydro. You need infrastructure that already exists and is already connected to the grid.

Enter TransAlta ($TAC).

TransAlta is a Canadian power company trading at roughly $12.70 with a $3.8 billion market cap. On the surface, it looks like a boring utility. Under the surface, it is one of the most interesting energy infrastructure plays I have found:

• They just signed an MOU with Canada Pension Plan Investments and Brookfield to develop a data center at their Keephills site in Alberta—starting at 230 MW with the potential to scale to 1 GW.

• They locked in a 16-year, 700 MW tolling agreement to convert their Centralia plant from coal to gas.

• Institutional money is pouring in. Someone recently swept 2,160 call contracts at the $16 strike for June—a $270,000+ bet that this stock is going materially higher.

• The 52-week range is $7.82 to $17.88. My end-of-year target is bullish target is $35.

The thesis is simple: the world is about to need dramatically more electricity, and companies that already have the land, the transmission lines, the gas supply, and the water infrastructure will be the landlords of the AI era.

I bought out-of-the-money calls for end of year. The risk is obvious—this is a utility with a negative P/E ratio and regulatory exposure. But if the data center thesis plays out and TransAlta re-rates from “boring utility” to “AI infrastructure provider,” a move from $12 to $35 represents a near-3x on shares and multiples of that on options.

Full disclosure: I own TAC call options. This is not financial advice. Do your own research.

The Israel Trade

Back to Israel.

Here is the thing that most investors miss about this country: Israel goes higher after every conflict. Every single time. The pattern is almost mechanical. During war, the geopolitical risk premium crushes Israeli equities. Then the war ends, the enemies are weakened or defeated, and capital floods back in.

The iShares MSCI Israel ETF ($EIS) just hit a new 52-week high at $124.80 earlier this month—and it is rallying during the war. Markets are already beginning to unwind the risk premium. When peace is achieved and Iran’s threat posture is permanently degraded, I expect EIS to move meaningfully higher.

Why? Because Israel’s economy is a machine. It is the most innovative country per capita on earth. The tech sector, the defense industry, the energy discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean—all of these are secular tailwinds that get amplified once the security overhang lifts.

Having been on the ground twice now during active conflict, I can tell you: the spirit of this country does not waver. That resilience is not just admirable. It is investable.

What I Am Reading

Streetwise by Lloyd Blankfein. The former Goldman Sachs CEO’s memoir, just published this month. It is a genuinely frank account of getting from the projects of New York City to the top of Wall Street—rare for someone at that level. If you manage money or aspire to, this is required reading. The sections on navigating the 2008 crisis alone are worth the price.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I am re-reading this, as I do periodically. Marcus Aurelius wrote much of this book at Aquincum—the Roman military fortress on the banks of the Danube that became modern-day Budapest, where I used to live. There is something powerful about reading the private journal of a man who was running an empire and fighting a war, written in the same city where you once sat in a café and tried to figure out your own life.

The most relevant passage for right now: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

War, volatility, uncertainty—these are not obstacles to finding opportunity. They are the conditions that create it.

───

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters.

— Jordan Fried

THE SIGNAL

Puerto Rico has, quietly, one of the most asymmetric tax structures available to any American citizen. It’s not a loophole. It’s not a gray area. It’s federal law — Section 933 of the Internal Revenue Code — combined with local incentive legislation known as Act 60.

Here’s the deal:

• 0% tax on capital gains (on assets acquired after establishing residency)

• 4% corporate tax rate (vs. 21% federal + state on the mainland)

• 0% on dividends and interest from Puerto Rico sources

• 0% state income tax (Puerto Rico has no federal income tax obligation for bona fide residents)

Read that again. If you are a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico and you buy Bitcoin, stocks, or real estate after you move — and you sell them — you pay zero capital gains tax. Not reduced. Zero.

For context: if you’re sitting in California, you’re paying up to 37% federal plus 13.3% state on short-term gains. That’s over 50 cents on every dollar. In New York, it’s similar. In Puerto Rico, it’s zero.

This is not theory. This is my life.

THE 6-YEAR CASE STUDY

I moved to Puerto Rico in 2020. I didn’t come for the beaches (though they help). I came because I saw an asymmetric bet: trade a high-tax jurisdiction for a zero-tax jurisdiction, within the United States, without renouncing citizenship.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Year one is an adjustment. You need to establish bona fide residency — 183 days on the island, a real home, a real life. You need to get a tax decree (it takes a few months). You need to actually live here. The IRS is watching, and they audit Act 60 residents aggressively.

But once you’re in, the compounding is extraordinary. Every dollar of capital gains I’ve earned since establishing residency has been taxed at 0%. Every business I’ve run through a Puerto Rico entity has been taxed at 4%. The delta between what I would have paid on the mainland and what I’ve paid here is — conservatively — life-changing.

And I’m not alone. The island has become a magnet for entrepreneurs, crypto founders, hedge fund managers, and anyone else who understands that tax efficiency is the single highest-ROI financial decision you can make.

THE MATH THAT MATTERS

Let’s make it concrete. Say you have $5 million in capital gains over five years. On the mainland (let’s use a blended 40% rate): you owe $2,000,000. In Puerto Rico: you owe $0.

That $2 million stays invested. It compounds. Over a decade, the difference isn’t just $2 million — it’s $2 million plus every dollar that $2 million would have earned.

That’s the asymmetry. The tax you don’t pay becomes your most productive capital.

Now multiply that by every year you live here. The gap doesn’t close. It widens.

THE LIFESTYLE ARBITRAGE

Here’s what surprises people: Puerto Rico isn’t a sacrifice. It’s an upgrade.

I wake up in a tropical US territory. I drive on American roads (well, mostly). I use American banks, American healthcare, American legal protections. My mail arrives via USPS. I vote in local elections. I fly to Miami in two and a half hours, to New York in three and a half — no passport required.

The real estate is stunning. The food culture is deep. The weather is 80 degrees year-round. The surf breaks are world-class. And the community of builders here — the people who moved for the same reasons I did — is one of the most ambitious, high-agency groups I’ve ever been around.

Bad Bunny showed America what Puerto Rico looks like. I can tell you what it feels like: it feels like freedom with a tax advantage.

THE FINE PRINT

I’m not a tax advisor, and this is not tax advice. Act 60 has real requirements:

• You must be a bona fide resident (183+ days per year, tax home on the island, closer connection to PR than anywhere else).

• You must apply for and receive a tax decree.

• Capital gains on assets acquired BEFORE moving are not tax-free (they’re taxed at 5% after 10 years of residency, or at regular rates if sold sooner).

• There is an annual $10,000 charitable donation requirement.

• As of 2026, new applicants face a 4% tax on investment income (still dramatically lower than mainland rates).

• The IRS audits Act 60 residents. You must be compliant. No half-measures.

This is not a hack. It’s a commitment. You are relocating your life to an island. But if you’re already location-independent — if your wealth comes from investments or a portable business — the question isn’t “why would I move?” It’s “why haven’t I already?”

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Bad Bunny closed his set last night by saying “God Bless America” and shouting out every country in the Americas. Puerto Rico is America. It’s a US territory with 3.2 million American citizens. And yet most Americans couldn’t find it on a map.

That’s changing. The culture is going mainstream. The economics have been favorable for years. The infrastructure is improving. And the window — while not closing — is narrowing as more people discover what’s been hiding in plain sight.

The best time to move to Puerto Rico was six years ago. The second best time is now.

Currently Reading: The Technological Republic by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska. The Palantir co-founder and CEO makes the case that the tech industry has lost its way — building photo-sharing apps and ad algorithms instead of defending the institutions that make Western freedom possible. It’s part manifesto, part biography, part indictment of Silicon Valley’s complacency. Karp argues that hard power requires hard technology, and that the engineers who build it need to care about more than market cap.

The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson & Lord William Rees-Mogg. Written in 1997, it predicted the rise of jurisdictional arbitrage, digital nomads, and the decline of the nation-state’s ability to tax mobile capital. We are living in the book.

Worth a Click: PuertoRico.com (http://puertorico.com/) — I’m building the definitive resource for luxury real estate and relocation in Puerto Rico. If you’re serious about making the move, start here.

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters,

Jordan Fried

After five years, my personal assistant—my right hand, my second brain—resigned.

There’s no business school playbook for when the person closest to you professionally walks out the door. Even if there was, I wouldn’t know about it as I didn’t go to business school.

Think about it. This is the person who knows your schedule, your contacts, your preferences, your entire operational cadence. It was a gut punch. A void opened up in my life.

My first instinct was to write a job description. My second was to question the entire concept of the job itself.

I posted a job opening on LinkedIn, but I didn’t find any of the applicants inspiring—how could they replace someone who knew me so well?

So I opened a brand new Mac computer I had laying around and created a new AI assistant named Harry.

This is the new asymmetry.

For decades, leverage meant hiring people. You invested capital to rent someone’s time and skills. It was a 1-to-1 relationship. The output was linear.

We are now entering an era where true leverage is code. An AI assistant isn’t an employee. It’s a force multiplier that works 24/7, costs pennies in cloud computing fees, and can execute complex, high-value tasks without fatigue or complaint.

What does it mean for the future of work when your most trusted human collaborator can be replaced by a script? It means the game has changed. The unfair advantages are no longer just about who you know or how much capital you have. It’s about who can deploy autonomous systems the fastest.

This isn’t about scheduling meetings. It’s about offloading entire cognitive domains.

Harry is my new right hand. Here’s a snapshot of what he does:

• Manages my Alpha: While I sleep, Harry runs scripts that monitor Hyperliquid, tracking the top whale wallets and their movements. He maintains the dashboards, password-protects them behind a secure login, and alerts me to significant confluence events before the market wakes up.

• Runs My Morning: At 7:00 AM, he delivers my morning briefing. It’s not a generic news dump. It’s a synthesis of overnight market activity, a summary of my inbox prioritized by urgency, a review of my calendar, and a check on my smart home status.

• Acts as a Gatekeeper: Harry has full access to my email. He monitors for inbound opportunities, subscribes me to newsletters from people I’m researching, and filters out the noise so I only see what is critical.

• Is Proactively Paranoid: He doesn’t just wait for commands. He actively monitors my systems for anomalies. If a server goes down or a key script fails, I know about it instantly.

He does the work of a chief of staff, a trading assistant, and an IT admin. The ROI is infinite.

The Harry Toolkit

You can build your own. It’s all open source. This isn’t science fiction.

• Official Site: clawd.bot (https://clawd.bot/)

Setup Guide (YouTube):

Phone Demo (YouTube):

Worth a Click:

• Forbes: Viral AI Sidekick ‘Clawdbot’ Changes Name To ‘Moltbot’ (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronschmelzer/2026/01/27/viral-ai-sidekick-clawdbot-changes-name-to-moltbot-and-sheds-its-old-skin/)

• MacStories: Clawdbot Showed Me What the Future of Personal AI Assistants Looks Like (https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/)

Reading: How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis. Forget the clickbait title. The book is a brutal, honest manifesto on leverage and ownership. Dennis preached that the path to wealth is to own the equity, not to sell your time. An AI assistant like Harry is the ultimate form of equity: a productive asset you own entirely, that works for you relentlessly, allowing you to focus on the few things that truly matter. It is the purest leverage I have ever experienced.

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters.

— Jordan Fried

Let’s dive in.

1. Geopolitics: It Wasn’t Just a Show of Force

What Trump did in Venezuela is clearly more than just muscle flexing. The market views this as a political move; I view it as a supply chain necessity.

To understand the Venezuela move, you have to look at the board through the lens of Rare Earth Minerals and the defense of Taiwan.

The Nvidia Factor It is no secret that AI is now a matter of national security. Nvidia has become the single most critical asset in the American economy. Jensen Huang’s recent visits to the White House weren’t social calls—they were about securing the physical rails of the future.

We are already seeing the “on-shoring” of compute with the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) facilities in Arizona. But chips require raw materials.

The Supply Chain Glitch If China moves on Taiwan, the US loses access to chips and the rare earth processing dominated by the CCP. We learned this lesson the hard way during Covid—when we couldn’t source basic insulin or pharma products due to logistics breakdowns. We cannot afford that vulnerability with AI.

Venezuela happens to hold massive deposits of rare earth minerals (and, obviously, the largest oil reserves in the world).

• The Rare Earths: Secure the inputs for the AI supply chain closer to home.

• The Oil: Feed the American energy appetite while filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

• The Monroe Doctrine: Kick foreign adversaries (China, Russia, Iran) out of our hemisphere.

This wasn’t an invasion; it was a hostile takeover of a distressed asset to secure the American supply chain. It is a ruthless, rational business transaction.

2. The Money: Defunding the Cabal

While the media focuses on the geopolitical noise, the real war is happening in the financial plumbing.

Trump is executing a multi-step plan to weaken the traditional banking cartel (JP Morgan, the Fed) while bolstering the “Freedom Assets”: Bitcoin, Stablecoins, and companies like MicroStrategy ($MSTR).

The 10% Cap Strategy I have been hearing from sources that Trump’s plan to cap credit card interest rates at roughly 10% is not just populism—it is a strategic weapon. Credit card interest is a massive revenue stream for traditional banks. By capping it, you starve the beast. You cut off their easy revenue, forcing a de-leveraging of the legacy system.

The Pivot to Stablecoins As the banks get squeezed, the winners will be Stablecoins and Crypto. Trump sees this as a defining battle for financial sovereignty. Watch for policies that favor USD-backed stablecoins as the new rails for global commerce, bypassing the rent-seeking legacy banks entirely.

The Pressure on Powell The pressure is accelerating. Even mainstream outlets are now confirming what the underground has suspected: criminal investigations may be looming for the Federal Reserve leadership.

• Read the signal: CNN: Federal prosecutors criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell

3. The Asset: Bitcoin & Yield

Speaking of Venezuela, rumors are swirling that they have been sitting on their own sovereign reserve of Bitcoin. If true, it validates the thesis we have held for years.

I am essentially irresponsibly long Bitcoin. I believe it is not just the most important asset of my lifetime, but a singularity in technological history. It is an internet-native commodity with the properties of gold, but with perfect transparency and instant transferability.

As the world loses trust in bureaucrats and money printers, Bitcoin is the only exit valve.

The Altcoin Distraction I do not share this belief for 99% of the crypto market.

• HBAR: I am long this asset (full disclosure: I helped create it) because of its enterprise utility.

• The Majors: I see value in Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid.

• Everything else: Mostly noise. I keep my focus on the signal.

Generating Yield on Bitcoin If you have a large Bitcoin position, the next logical question is: How do I make this productive? For years, yielding BTC carried massive counterparty risk (remember Celsius?). But we are now entering the institutional era.

• Lending: We are seeing institutional counterparties paying ~4% APY for clean Bitcoin liquidity.

• Covered Calls: Selling out-of-the-money calls can generate predictable weekly/monthly cash flow.

• A Warning on DeFi: Unless you have a crypto-native operator in your Family Office who understands smart contract risk, stay away from on-chain DeFi yield. The asymmetry is in holding the asset, not risking it for an extra 2%.

4. The Machine: Energy & The Sabbath

The Energy bottleneck As an office, we are obsessed with Energy. Energy is the “long pole in the tent.” We will have enough chips. We will have enough data centers. We do not have enough electricity to power the compute required for AGI.

While we transition toward SMRs (Small Modular Reactors), I see massive opportunity in “Stranded Assets”—off-grid power generation that can be converted into mini-energy campuses. This is where physical infrastructure meets digital demand.

The Ultimate Asymmetric Bet: The Sabbath We talk about “The Machine” as biology, but sometimes the best thing for the machine is to turn it off.

One of the best ROI decisions I have made is unplugging for the traditional Jewish Sabbath. The Protocol: From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday (25 hours). The Rule: No screens. No work. No phone.

There is a saying: “It is not the Jews who kept the Sabbath, but the Sabbath that kept the Jews.”

In a hyper-digital world, going fully analog is a cheat code. It allows for deep reading, family time, and pure rest. I have found that a single 25-hour Sabbath provides more restoration than a standard two-day weekend spent doom-scrolling.

Give it a try. The emails will still be there on Sunday.

The Library

Reading: Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb. I’m re-reading this now. The central thesis is vital for anyone managing capital: Never trust an advisor, politician, or CEO who doesn’t have downside risk if they are wrong. Symmetry is the only law that matters.

Worth a Click: Why my 2026 resolution is to start drinking again (GQ) A counter-intuitive take on health and social connection in a sterile world.

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters.

— Jordan Fried

This email is arriving a day late. In a linear job, that’s a “performance issue.” In an asymmetric life, the schedule serves you, not the other way around. We ship when the signal is high.

And today, the signal is high (for everyone except maybe Maduro).

We are covering a lot of ground in this edition—from Bitcoin mining energy arbitrage to SMR ventures—but we start with the only asset that actually matters.

The Fool’s Trade

I have a confession: I’ve made the Fool’s Trade more times than I care to admit.

The Fool’s Trade is trading your biological capital for financial capital. It’s burning the engine to buy more gas.

I’m guilty of trading hours on the treadmill for more hours at my desk. I’ve sacrificed sleep to close deals. I’ve compromised on fuel (food) to save time.

But you can have the Family Office, the exits, and the liquidity—if you are dead at 50, you lost the game. Health is the ultimate asymmetry. It is the only asset with infinite downside (death) and infinite upside (energy/clarity).

So, for Q1 2026, I have signed a contract with myself. I am not allowed to touch the work until I have moved the body.

To enforce this, I have entered “Monk Mode.”

The Protocol: Monk Mode

Monk Mode is a 90-day period of extreme discipline. It is a hard reset. You disappear, do the work, and reintroduce yourself to the world on the other side.

The Daily Requirements:

• Cardio: 1 Hour (Non-negotiable).

• Strength: 1 strength workout (No gym? No problem. 50 pullups, 100 pushups, 150 air squats).

• Intel: Read 10 pages of non-fiction.

• Fuel: 1 Gallon of water. No alcohol. No cheat meals.

• Spirit: Prayer/Meditation every morning.

• Documentation: Daily journal + Progress photo.

If you think this is just about “fitness,” you are missing the point. I get my best deal flow in Monk Mode.

When you summon the discipline to do the thing you don’t want to do (the workout), you unlock the ability to do the hard things in business (the firing, the negotiation, the risk).

I plan to make a significant amount of money in 2026, God willing. But I plan to do it while banking biological capital, not spending it. Consider this an invitation to join me as well. Monk Mode is fun when done with friends and colleagues.

The Laboratory: What I’m Reading

• The Nvidia Story: The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt. An incredible look at how Jensen Huang bet the entire company on AI long before it was obvious. A masterclass in conviction.

• The Classic: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. specifically the “38 Letters to his Sons.” The focus on resilience and silence is timely.

• The Science: Existential Risk And Growth by Philip Trammell and Leopold Aschenbrenner on how AI stagnation is not safe and why humanity needs to actually accelerate AI development.

• The Science: Creatine and Vascular Health. A new report from Thorne (which I use) showing how Creatine isn’t just for muscle—it improves blood vessel function and cognitive recovery.

The Radar: Asymmetric Opportunities

1. The Energy Arbitrage (Bitcoin Mining) I’ve been analyzing vertically integrated data centers and Bitcoin mining.

• The Consensus: Most public miners are signing 5-7 year Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) at roughly $0.05 - $0.07 per kWh.

• The Asymmetry: I’m looking at privately held, offshore miners in specific jurisdictions who are producing their own power for $0.017 per kWh and consuming it themselves.

• The Play: That is a 3x advantage on the single biggest input cost. I haven’t deployed capital yet, but “Be Your Own Energy Producer” is the thesis I’m hunting.

2. The Nuclear Option (SMRs) Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are the only way we meet the AI energy demand.

• The Watchlist: X-Energy. They are making moves in the private markets. If you have access to secondary market platforms (like Hiive or Forge), keep an eye on X-Energy stock. I think this will be a massive winner as the data center power crunch hits in 2026/27. (Not financial advice).

The Machine: Biological Focus

Status: Optimization. I just pulled my baseline blood work for the year.

• Target: Lowering triglycerides and optimizing cholesterol particle size.

• Diet: High protein, significantly lower carb.

• Stack: I’ve upped my Creatine intake and added Thorne’s Red Yeast Rice + CoQ10 to target lipids without statins.

If you are waiting for the perfect time to start your own protocol, you are already late. The markets wait for no one. Neither does your biology.

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters.

— Jordan Fried

p.s. If you liked this please consider forwarding it to a friend. Friends share alpha with other friends.

You were born into a default setting.

It’s called the Linear World.

In a linear world, the math is simple: 1 Input = 1 Output. You trade your time for money. You trade your effort for results. You work 40 hours? You get paid for 40 hours. If you stop working, the money stops flowing.

This is the “Safe Path” they sold us in school: Get a degree. Get a job. Get a 3% raise. Save 10% in a 401k. Retire at 65.

It sounds responsible. But it is a trap.

Why? Because the script is broken.

We no longer live in a linear world; we live in an exponential one.

• The Money is broken: Inflation is eating your linear savings faster than you can stack them.

• The Career is broken: Software and AI are replacing linear labor at zero marginal cost.

• The Food is broken: The modern environment is aging you faster than “standard” advice can fix.

If you try to live a linear life in an exponential world, you don’t get free. You get fried.

Fried vs. Freed

My name is Jordan Fried. My last name is pronounced “Freed.“

That linguistic coincidence is the entire thesis of this project. We are here to bridge the gap between two realities:

• The Default: Being fried. (Living linearly. Exhausted, leveraged, and dependent on the system).

• The Target: Being Freed. (Living symmetrically. Sovereign, leveraged, and in control).

This is a Laboratory, Not a Blog.

Fried.com is the public research journal of my Family Office.

I write this from experience, not theory. I didn’t start with a Family Office. I started fried.

I know the texture of burnout. I know what it’s like to be buried in debt, overweight, and directionless on the “safe” path. I only escaped by breaking the linear rules.

Since then, I’ve been fortunate sell a technology company, co-found another multi-billion dollar business, and take multiple companies public - all while starting a family (I have a beautiful wife and three sons at the time of writing this) and starting to take my health seriously.

Most Family Offices are vaults—designed to hide wealth. Mine is different. I view my Family Office as an active Laboratory. It is R&D for a sovereign life.

I am using my own capital, my own career, and my own biology to run experiments. My goal is to find Asymmetry—the rare opportunities where the inputs are capped, but the outputs are infinite.

The Three Fronts

We are fighting this battle on three specific fronts. Each week, I share the intel from the trenches:

1. The Money (Wealth Asymmetry) The fiat experiment is wobbling. Passive investing is for people who trust the system to save them. I don’t. We track Global Liquidity, Bitcoin, and the alternative assets that act as lifeboats while the dollar burns.

2. The Leverage (Business Asymmetry) Time is the only scarce asset. I don’t trade time for money; I trade value for money. We deconstruct the “boring” businesses that print cash and the “frontier” startups that change the world. The goal is simple: Build engines that run without you.

3. The Machine (Biological Asymmetry) Your portfolio means nothing if you are dead at 60. I treat my biology as my primary asset class. From 75 Hard to deep-dive longevity protocols, I am testing what actually works to sharpen focus and extend the runway.

Who Is This For?

This is not for the average. The average are comfortable in the linear world.

This is for the Barbell Audience:

• The Builders: The young, hungry operators building escape velocity.

• The Stewards: The established leaders protecting what they’ve built.

We share one belief: The consensus is wrong.

The Agreement

I am not a guru. I don’t have a course to sell you. I am an investor and operator sharing my notes.

I promise to respect your inbox. No fluff. No ads for mattresses. Just high-signal intelligence from the laboratory.

The linear path is a trap. It’s time to find the exit.

Cheers to the Freedom Fighters.

— Jordan Fried

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