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Markets Forgot About Risk Again
Everyone Is Bullish Thats The Problem
Everyone’s still playing Fed Watch 2025.
Every CPI release gets dissected like it’s gospel. Every Powell pause sparks a wave of hopium. Meanwhile, something real just happened — and most people missed it.
In April 2025, the U.S. Treasury posted the second-largest monthly budget surplus in history:
$639 billion in receipts. $499 billion in spending. Surplus: $139 billion.
This didn’t happen in 2009 with stimulus checks. It didn’t happen in 2020 with pandemic chaos. It happened in a year where the narrative was “fiscal cliff,” “unsustainable debt,” and “America’s running out of rope.”
And yet… here we are.
Customs duties — yes, tariffs — hit an all-time record: $16.3 billion in April alone.
Income taxes surged. Capital gains came in hot. The market’s been strong, and Uncle Sam is cashing in.
What does this mean?
First, it crushes the short-term narrative that the U.S. is spiraling out of fiscal control. Not forever, but enough to push out the timing on any real crisis. That’s a big deal if you’re running trades based on that collapse arriving tomorrow.
