Weekend Markets
scratching the FOMO itch
Macro doesn’t wait for market hours. Traders want a 24/7/365 market. With perps, they finally get what they’ve been looking for.
Think of perps (perpetual contracts) as futures without an expiry date. Originally a crypto construct, it has now seeped into tradfi.
One of the most liquid perp exchanges is Hyperliquid. On it trades xyz:CL — a perp that references the front-month WTI contract (CL) traded on NYMEX.
Why not trade CL directly?
Hyperliquid, being a DEX, doesn’t need KYC
The leverage for this contract on hyperliquid is 20x
Hyperliquid is a 24/7/365 market
If you have a macro-oil-trading-FOMO itch, this is where you scratch it.
But just because you can, should you?
On the face of it, there seems to be a fair amount of weekend volatility on xyz:CL. However, when you compare it to random 48-hour weekday markets, it’s not that much?
Ultimately, the perp is tethered to CL which is tethered to physical barrels. If you were a market-maker on Hyperliquid, you are working with a constraint of the biggest market being closed — no price discovery, no hedging.
From my POV, touching grass on weekends > smashing keys on CL. But you do you!
Markets this Week
More here: country ETFs, fixed income, currencies and commodities.
Links
Research
Inflation Risks Within and Across Asset Classes (oup)
Do real assets protect against inflation? Stocks’ core inflation betas are negative, while their energy betas are positive. Currencies, commodities, and real estate mostly hedge against energy inflation, but not core inflation.
Ads in AI Chatbots? An Analysis of How Large Language Models Navigate Conflicts of Interest (arxiv)
We find that a majority of LLMs forsake user welfare for company incentives in a multitude of conflict of interest situations, including recommending a sponsored product almost twice as expensive (Grok 4.1 Fast, 83%), surfacing sponsored options to disrupt the purchasing process (GPT 5.1, 94%), and concealing prices in unfavorable comparisons (Qwen 3 Next, 24%). Behaviors also vary strongly with levels of reasoning and users' inferred socio-economic status. Our results highlight some of the hidden risks to users that can emerge when companies begin to subtly incentivize advertisements in chatbots.
The Impact of Abolishing the Gift and Inheritance Tax on Firm Strategic Decisions and Outcomes: The Case of Sweden (SSRN)
The abolition of the gift and inheritance tax in Sweden encouraged and enabled firms with potential next generation owners to adopt a long-term horizon, be growth-oriented, and to create transgenerational value, which in turn benefitted society by increasing recurring corporate tax revenues and employee salaries.
India
There are two companies in the registrar and transfer agent business who’s clients will never switch (livemint).
India approves $1.9 billion credit guarantee to support businesses hit by Middle East crisis (reuters). Analysts see this loan-support scheme as credit and asset quality supportive, with the sovereign guarantee structure sharply reducing downside risks for lenders (livemint).
Fewer than 10% of India’s documented ancient gold sites have seen a modern drill. Canada has about 373 active gold exploration companies; Australia about 322. India has effectively none (livemint).
China confirms its support to Pakistan during last year’s war with India (thehindu).
Indians invested more than $2.2 billion in overseas equities and debt in the 11 months through February, a 60% jump from the year-ago period. Assets in global feeder funds run by local money managers hit a record $4 billion in March (bloomberg).
From pharmaceuticals to IT, Indian firms across sectors are looking overseas in search of newer markets, products and technologies for their next burst of growth. The first quarter of 2026 has seen 56 outbound transactions valued at $3.9 billion. In 2025, 162 such deals worth $18.2 billion were closed (reuters).
row
2.5x the size of Manhattan: Kevin O’Leary’s Utah data center (yahoo).
Cloudflare Slashes 20% of Workforce (thedeepdive). Upwork is cutting nearly a quarter of its staff as part of a restructuring plan (marketwatch). Payments firm BILL cuts about 30% jobs to boost profitability (reuters).
Coming soon to CME: Bitcoin Volatility futures — USD-settled futures contracts that allow you to trade the forward-looking, 30-day implied volatility of bitcoin (cmegroup).
China's carmakers are now re-engineering vehicles from the ground up for foreign buyers, driven as much by fierce margin pressure at home as by opportunity abroad (reuters).
Iran used Chinese spy satellite to target US bases (ft).
How—and Why—to Save the World Trade Organization (commonplace)
A.I.
You are not a horse (economicforces).
Anthropic launches Dreams for Claude, letting it reorganize past interactions to improve performance (storyboard18).
For companies to truly capitalize on the AI revolution, leaders need to fundamentally overhaul how work is structured, managed, and rewarded, rather than simply handing workers new tools and expecting them to figure it out (geekwire).
Meme of the Week
