What I Talk About When I Talk About Money

The Great Machine Hums in the Basement

It is officially December. The air outside has turned brittle, and the light leaves the sky too early. Cooking smell from neighbors’ windows brings the holiday feelings even closer. It feels almost guilty even to think about money. Almost.

On the calendar, December 1st marked a specific, invisible boundary. It was the scheduled end of “tightening”—the day the authorities stopped draining the pool. Now, the water is beginning to return.

I have been listening to the voices of the men in suits. They do not speak plainly. They use euphemisms, like doctors discussing a terminal illness in a hushed hallway.

The Three Whispers

First, there was John Williams of the New York Fed. He said, with a straight face, that they will “soon need to grow the balance sheet again.” It sounds innocent, like gardening. But I know what it means. It means the printers are warming up.

Then came Jerome Powell, the conductor of this strange orchestra. He mentioned that reserves must start growing “gradually.” And finally, Lori Logan from Dallas warned that if the repo rates rise—if the friction in the gears gets too hot—they will have to buy assets.

They are telling us, in their polite, coded language, that the era of scarcity is over. Money printing is returning. It is happening not in 2026, as the textbooks predicted, but now.

The Plumbing, Not the Fire

I sat at my desk and tried to understand the why.

Usually, the Great Machine turns on because the house is on fire—a recession, a crash, a panic. But there is no fire today. This time, it is about the plumbing.

The financial system runs on a hidden current called “reserves.” If the level drops too low, the pipes begin to rattle. The Repo Market—the pawn shop where banks lend to each other overnight—seizes up. It happened in 2019, a ghost the Fed is terrified of seeing again. So, they are opening the valves not to save the economy, but simply to keep the pipes from bursting.

The Melt-Up

Ray Dalio, a man who reads history the way others read tea leaves, calls this a “melt-up.”

When you flood a sealed room with oxygen, the fire burns brighter, hotter, and faster. It is artificial, but it feels real. This is what we face: Lower yields. Higher stock prices. A fever dream of risk-taking. It is a bubble, Dalio says. We are stimulating ourselves into a bubble. Eventually, the fever will break, and the crash will be severe. But for now, we are living in the heat.

There is also the shadow of politics. Powell’s term ends in 2026. And President Trump will likely appoint someone who prefers the easy path—someone “dovish,” who likes the sound of the printing press. The melt-up could last longer than we think.

How to Walk Through the Heat

So, what does a solitary investor do in a world flooded with artificial water? I remembered I wrote down four rules I learned from my teachers in my logbook.

1. Follow the Water, Not the Noise.
   Ignore the headlines. Ignore the jargon. If the Fed is adding liquidity, the market will rise. It doesn’t matter what they call it. Watch the water level, not the weatherman.
2. Desire is a Trap.
   Do not chase the spike. When the line goes vertical, it is tempting to jump on, to feel the wind in your hair. But that is how you fall. I will wait for the pullback. I will buy when the room is quiet.
3. Plant Seeds in Different Soils.
   No one knows which horse is the fastest. Maybe it is the AI stocks. Maybe it is the digital ghosts (Crypto). Maybe it is the ancient metals (Gold). I will hold them all. I will let the risk spread out like a net.
4. Avoid the Abyss of Debt.
   This is the most important rule. I will not borrow money to invest. Margin is a shadow that eats you. Even in a melt-up, the market can drop 33% in a heartbeat. If you are leveraged, you are wiped out. You are left with nothing but the memory of what you almost had.

I closed the logbook. The computer screen hummed, a low, electric sound. Somewhere in Washington, the gears are turning, and the invisible current is rising around our ankles.

Disclaimer: I am not a cartographer, and this is not a map. It is simply a logbook of where I have walked. I am not a financial advisor, and the market is a strange, shifting landscape that does not care about our plans or our safety. Nothing written here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold anything. These are just stories from the edge of the cliff. Please find your own way through the fog.