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September Setup: Fed Pivot, Gold’s New Highs, Bitcoin’s Coil, and US Mineral Ambitions
MacroMashup Newsletter

September Setup: Fed Pivot, Gold’s New Highs, Bitcoin’s Coil, and US Mineral Ambitions

Fed: From Theater to Action

Sep 5, 2025
Neil Winward

Author:

Neil Winward

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Dakota Ridge Capital

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    September Setup: Fed Pivot, Gold’s New Highs, Bitcoin’s Coil, and US Mineral Ambitions
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    September’s “curse” is famous. 2025’s setup looks different. A dovish/succumbing Fed, abundant liquidity, and resilient services spend are colliding with well-telegraphed fear about stretched valuations. When the crowd leans one way, the tape often runs the other.

    Fed: From Theater to Action

    From Theater to Action
    • Pivot Watch: August minutes flagged “modestly restrictive”; Powell has effectively pre-announced a September cut and markets have priced it.
    • Labor & Growth: Softer prints and global wobble reduce the case for “higher for longer.” Unemployed > job openings for 1st time since April 2021.
    • Liquidity: US money-market funds still sit on $7T+; buybacks pause into blackout and re-emerge late Sep/early Oct.

    Bottom line: The September jinx meets a dovish Fed and dry powder. Consensus for weakness is crowded and may break the historical pattern.

    Metals: Sleeping Giants Wake

    Sleeping Giants Wake

    Gold

    • Breakout: >$3,500/oz; ATH in USD and across many local currencies.
    • Flows & Drivers: Central-bank accumulation (China/EMs), lower yields, softer USD, geopolitical risk bid.
    • Positioning: ETFs swing to sustained net inflows; upside options skew (more demand for call options); above all major moving averages.
    • Allocation Shift: Large US wealth platforms slide 5–10% gold into models for “resilience.”

    Silver

    • Follow-through: >$41/oz, tracking gold’s technicals.
    • Industrial Pull: EV/solar demand up double digits YoY; inventories at multi-decade lows; newly listed as a critical mineral.
    • Beta Trade: Silver–gold ratio compressing; silver’s technical breakthroughs are historic, and signal strong upside from here..

    Macro read: It’s more than a trade—confidence in fiat is eroding; portfolios are reaching for timeless hedges against inevitable monetary debasement.

    Bitcoin: Quiet Coil, Loud Potential

    • Volatility: Realized and implied at multi-year lows.
    • Range: $108–111k consolidation.
    • Under the Hood: Whale accumulation highest YTD; miner difficulty up (i.e., because more miners are at work, the network makes it more difficult to find a block); options skew tilts bullish; “max pain” (the price at which the largest number of open options expire worthless) implies bang if a catalyst hits (traders on the wrong side have to rebalance quickly).
    • Energy Value: Capriole’s Charles Edwards pegs “energy value” > $160k.

    Trade watch: Smart money rolls and adds. Catalysts—regulatory clarity, ETF flows, global easing—sit just offstage.

    Climate Wars: DOE Sparks a Policy Brawl

    DOE Sparks a Policy Brawl
    • DOE View: Warming’s economic damage may be lower than assumed; over-stringent mitigation can backfire; grid reliability needs urgency.
    • Pushback: Media calls it optimistic/politicized; greens push for realism and decry the blatant popular narrative disregard.
    • Capital Flows: Despite rhetoric, money follows policy—utilities and IPPs accelerate procurement into expected incentives.

    Keep in focus: The debate polarizes; spending doesn’t. Utilities become political footballs as they juggle rules vs. rates.

    Tariffs: Legal Setback, Policy Not Done

    Legal Setback, Policy Not Done
    • Ruling: A US appeals court clipped emergency-based tariff powers—curbing the admin’s latitude, but delaying effect until higher court reviews.
    • Street Take: Manufacturers face uncertainty; equities largely assume the White House finds a workaround; the bond market now loves tariff revenue to pay down debt!
    • Next Stop: Supreme Court could restore the authority, keeping trade policy a volatility lever for autos, electronics, and solar components.

    Spotlight: A “Shale Moment” for US Critical Minerals?

    A “Shale Moment” for US Critical Minerals

    (Deep dive: Is this the shale moment for critical mineral mining in the US? — The Oregon Group)

    Why It Matters

    • Security: US fully import-dependent for 12/50 criticals; >50% reliant for 31 more—fragile for energy and defense.
    • Demand: EVs, batteries, renewables, semis could double or triple demand this decade.
    • China’s Edge: Refining/processing dominance raises strategic alarms.

    What’s New

    • Tech: DLE lithium recovery (>80%), solvent-free rare earth separation, plasma reduction for titanium/nickel, and tailings mining at scale.
    • Policy: DPA (Defense Production Act) funding, faster permits (7 yrs → 2–3), strategic stockpiles, new Aug. 2025 list (adds copper, silicon, silver).
    • AI/Smart Mining: Digital twins + machine learning accelerate exploration and cut downtime.
    • Financing: OEM offtakes de-risk projects and unlock capital.
    • Oklahoma Model: Lithium/REE (rare earth elements) refineries and battery recycling set for 2026; Public Private Partnerships speed workforce and tech transfer.

    Risk tape: Technologies are nearing commercial but still face learning curves—echoes of shale’s early years.

    Closing Reads

    • The September curse meets a dovish Fed and ample cash.
    • Gold/silver price action signals a regime shift; allocations are responding.
    • Bitcoin’s calm is deceptive—setup favors asymmetrical upside.
    • DOE’s roadmap fuels debate while channeling capital.
    • Tariff authority heads to SCOTUS; watch import-heavy sectors.
    • Critical minerals show shale-like ambition; Oklahoma is the lab.

    In The Markets

    In The Markets

    Non-farm payrolls: Markets were expecting a soft print—consensus at +75–80k payrolls, unemployment at 4.2%. Instead, we got +22k, with June revised down to -13k and July nudged higher by +6k.  

    Translation: weak, but not a collapse. Weak enough to lock in a September cut (essentially 100% odds), yet not so ugly that investors panic.  

    In Fed-speak, this is the sweet spot for “bad news = good news”—soft labor gives Powell the cover to ease, and risk assets the green light to run higher. 

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      Neil Winward

      Neil Winward is the founding partner of Dakota Ridge Captial, helping investors, developers, banks, non-profits, and family offices unlock massive tax savings - on average of 7%- 10% - via clean energy investments by fully leveraging U.S. government incentives such the Inflation Reduction Act.

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      Pink Slips & Pivot Points: Fed Doves, Global Stagecraft, and Gold’s Golden Ghosts
      MacroMashup Newsletter
      3

      Pink Slips & Pivot Points: Fed Doves, Global Stagecraft, and Gold’s Golden Ghosts

      Neil Winward

      Welcome to MacroMashup — where money, markets, machines, and mayhem collide.

      MacroMashup is my premium weekly newsletter that helps investors connect the dots between global macro trends, energy transitions, and the technologies shaping the next decade. For only $9/weekly, find unique, carefully-researched insights distilled just for you.

      What’s coming next isn’t a soft landing — it’s a controlled glide into a new market regime where liquidity replaces fundamentals, optics replace policy, and capital starts choosing sides.

      This week didn’t look dramatic on the surface — but beneath the calm, the macro tape cracked.

      • A wave of corporate layoffs hit tech, pharma, consulting, and logistics.
      • The Fed turned dovish… while quietly tightening liquidity.
      • Trump and Xi put on a diplomatic Broadway show.
      • Gold dipped. Bitcoin slept.
      • Nothing moved loudly — but everything moved meaningfully.

      Inside the full article, we break it all down:

      ✅ Why the layoff wave is just Phase 1
      ✅ How the Fed quietly tightened liquidity even as it cut rates
      ✅ Why the Trump–Xi “peace show” is more theater than diplomacy
      ✅ Gold’s “ghost rally” and what central banks are signaling
      ✅ Bitcoin’s coiled-spring setup for a potential liquidity rotation
      ✅ The key signals to watch in the next 60 days

      If you’ve been waiting for an issue that connects all the dots, this is it.

      Coming Up: “The Nvidia Way” Deep Dive

      Next week, we’re unlocking Tae Kim’s blueprint book on how Nvidia went from near-bankruptcy to the cornerstone of the AI era—and the world’s first $5 trillion company. Drawing on “The Nvidia Way,” we’ll profile Jensen Huang’s leadership, dissect the company’s “30-days-from-doom” mindset, and break down the 20 top takeaways about organizational discipline, relentless adaptation, and strategic pivots.

      Preview:

      • Urgency Mindset and “30-days-from-doom”
      • Flat teams and zero bureaucracy
      • Resilience born from product flops
      • Relentless focus on speed, meritocracy, and accountability
      • The hard truths of risk, reward, and reinvention in tech

      👉 Read the full premium article below if you want easy-to-digest, in-depth weekly breakdowns every Friday a.m.

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      Disclaimer

      For educational purposes only. Not investment advice. Opinions are those of the author and may change without notice.

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      Gold Falters, Bitcoin Waits, and Bloom Energy Powers the Future
      MacroMashup Newsletter
      3

      Gold Falters, Bitcoin Waits, and Bloom Energy Powers the Future

      Neil Winward

      Welcome to MacroMashup — where money, markets, machines, and mayhem collide.

      MacroMashup is my premium weekly newsletter that helps investors connect the dots between global macro trends, energy transitions, and the technologies shaping the next decade.

      It’s normally for paid subscribers only (just $9/month) — but every once in a while, I like to gift one of our premium issues to the public.

      Today’s one of those days.

      So enjoy this full deep-dive — on the house — and if you find value in it, do me a favor: hit that subscribe button so you can get these insights in your inbox every week.

      Gold: From Glory to Gravity

      Gold just got humbled.
      A 6% drop in one day erased months of gains — its biggest one-day loss since 2013.

      The cause? Profit-taking and positioning fatigue.
      When everyone’s long, even a ripple feels like a tsunami.

      After peaking at $4,358/oz, leveraged traders began locking in profits, triggering margin calls and cascading liquidations.
      Speculative longs fell 18% week-over-week — not panic, just exhaustion.

      Historically, sharp corrections like this in bull years precede liquidity rotations. And the next stop for that liquidity might just be Bitcoin.

      Bitcoin: The Shadow Rotation

      Macro traders are asking the same question as crypto die-hards: Is Bitcoin lagging gold by 100 days?

      Bitcoin is struggling to hold its 200-day moving average of $108,000 at the moment. If it breaks out above $113,000, watch out.

      Gold’s 2024 rally was fueled by sticky inflation and geopolitical heat.
      Bitcoin tends to follow those flows — a delayed but aggressive rotation when capital looks for “digital safety.”

      With gold’s market cap around $13 trillion and Bitcoin’s near $1.2 trillion, even a 3% rotation from metal to code could double BTC’s price.

      So, this gold sell-off might not be bearish — just transitional.
      Money moves where momentum and optionality still exist.

      Volatility Everywhere — Especially in Diplomacy

      Markets aren’t the only ones rebalancing. The geopolitical board looks like someone kicked over half the pieces and glued the rest down.

      Trump’s foreign policy continues to seesaw between pro-Zelensky messaging and “realist” overtures to Putin.
      Behind the scenes, chatter points to a frozen-border ceasefire in Eastern Europe — less diplomacy, more fatigue.

      In Brussels, China’s quiet freeze of Nexperia, a semiconductor firm with European ties, sent a message: sovereignty is fragile.
      If Beijing can shut down chip operations overnight, “strategic autonomy” becomes a slogan, not a shield.

      Europe’s tentative peace push? Less about idealism, more about dependency.

      AI: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

      While politicians redraw borders, AI redraws reality.

      Model input volume — tokens processed — is up 38× year-over-year.
      Machines are now learning from their own outputs, creating recursive acceleration.

      The result: compute demand outpacing capacity.
      Even NVIDIA’s new architectures face power and cooling limits.
      Data centers are rationing inference time.

      AI’s appetite for electricity now rivals small nations — forcing the energy sector to evolve into distributed, modular systems.

      This is the fusion point of AI and energy — chaos and genius intertwined.

      Macro Moodboard: Everything’s Connected

      Gold sells off → Bitcoin waits → liquidity rotates.
      Trump flirts with détente → Europe freezes borders → power shifts East.
      AI outgrows compute → energy redefines “infrastructure.”

      We’re no longer watching markets — we’re watching a live chess match between money, minerals, and memory chips.

      Premium Deep Dive — The Energy Revolution Goes Distributed - Access The Full Article Below.

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      Government Shutdown? Yawn
      MacroMashup Newsletter
      3

      Government Shutdown? Yawn

      Neil Winward

      Trump’s weekend tweet sent markets tumbling, crypto into chaos, and liquidity back into focus. Powell hints at ending QT while data centers quietly reshape the global energy grid.

      Macro Pulse: The Week Markets Lost Their Map

      1. POTUS Tweets, Markets Tremble
        Trump dropped a Friday surprise just as the bond market shut for the long weekend.
      • Stocks fell nearly 3%.
      • $19 billion vanished from altcoins — the biggest wipeout on record.
      • Bitcoin slid 12% peak to trough as panic spread.

      By Sunday, one tweet flipped sentiment again: “China is in control.” Bitcoin rebounded. Gold barely blinked.
      Markets didn’t just move — they convulsed.

      Macro paradox: hedges and risk assets both surged.

      1. Powell’s Velvet Gloves
        The Fed chair hinted that Quantitative Tightening may soon end.
        Liquidity returned. Leverage followed.
        The market didn’t hear caution — it heard permission.
      1. Trump’s Gaza Deal & The Next Front
        A 20-point ceasefire plan was signed between Israel and Hamas.
        While one conflict quieted, another is brewing in Venezuela.

      Trump’s team is signaling covert action “to bust cartels,”
      Machado applauds the muscle, and Maduro accuses Washington of “imperial theater.”
      Markets are taking note: geopolitical risk doesn’t vanish, it migrates.

      Inside the premium section, we break down:

      • The Bitcoin Paradox: Why hedges now rally with risk
      • Powell’s Pivot Playbook: What QT’s quiet death means for liquidity and inflation
      • The Data Center Power Grab: How AI’s energy addiction is reshaping the next trillion-dollar market

        Read the full Fearless Investor briefing for only $9/month:

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