BBB 63: Is this how we go "all-in" on markets? — Europe and Japan as the forced buyers of the final leg

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Summary (TL;DR)

Boom Bust Bulletin edition 63 (Darren Wilson, PDF dated 23 September 2026, emailed 24 September as “BBB 63: Is this how we go “all-in” on markets?”) asks where the final marginal dollars of this cycle will come from. Wilson restates the cycle’s behavioural precondition — a genuine stock-market peak requires society to be all-in, “completely tapped out when it comes to access to credit and with no money whatsoever at hand” — and then argues it will not be the United States that completes the condition. The US has ~US$8trillioninmoney-marketfunds,80$115bn in 2025 purchases, ¥200 trillion in domestic equity trusts by May 2026). His verdict is that this is not investment — it is “lambs led to their slaughter”: policy-manufactured capital arriving at the top of the 18.6-year cycle, which “precedes a blow off top” rather than preventing one. [Source: PSE, BBB 63, 2026-09-23]

Key Points

• The “all-in” precondition, restated as the cycle’s defining trait. “For a true stock market peak to develop, we as a society need to be all-in. Completely tapped out when it comes to access to credit and with no money whatsoever at hand.” Wilson concedes it is a behavioural measure, not a hard number — the tell being that people believe “this time it’s different” and that everyone in your family and social circles agrees. On the facts on the ground today: “we aren’t all in yet; although it’s getting close.”
• The obvious candidate is ruled out. ~US$8 trillion sits in US money-market funds (ICI data to the Fed, September 2026). Per Fitch Ratings, most MMF flows into equities are seasonal (year-end bonuses, 401k/superannuation contributions) and ~80% of the money is operational or ultra-conservative cash, not equity capital waiting on the sidelines — corporate liquidity management, not dry powder.
• Cash is being paid to wait. US 10-year Treasury yields are above 5% as the Fed raises short-term rates. Wilson: it “makes perfect sense” to sit in short/medium government debt paying a risk-free premium amid concentrated equity valuations and macro uncertainty, and he can’t imagine what equity return would be required to unwind the trend — “particularly if… you factor in that we are fast approaching the conclusion of the current real estate cycle.”
• So the marginal buyer must be policy-made, not market-made. With the US out of the picture (“one of the most top heavy and concentrated US stock markets ever”), Wilson looks to two regions where it is governments, not investors, attempting to push capital into equities.
• Europe — “When to sit still is to lose.” Per Revolut, €6.3 trillion sits in low-yield deposits across 20 EU countries; deposits average 2.76% against 2.94% inflation, and the opportunity cost versus the MSCI Europe ETF’s 10-year annualised 9.06% is €638 per €10,000 per year — €422 billion a year of growth capital not reaching European businesses (€294 per €10,000 in pure purchasing-power loss).
• The EU programme is political, and framed that way. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen casts idle deposits as a competitiveness problem rather than a personal-finance choice: “Today, €10 trillion in household savings are kept in bank accounts… Europe now needs to put these savings to work for its companies. This is the goal of the Savings and Investments Union.” Brussels has instructed member states to create tax-advantaged investment accounts (deductions, deferrals, exemptions), with zero commission/entry costs and no minimums; ESMA and EIOPA have set EU-wide cost/performance benchmarks advisers must use; inducement rules are being rewritten with “research and other services” carve-outs.
• Scale of the prize. EU households currently hold 41% of financial assets in bank deposits versus 20.6% in investment funds and listed shares (EFAMA). Legislative acceleration is underway on pension-product reviews and cross-border insolvency; national pilots are running; a mid-year EU progress review is scheduled for Q2 2027 — i.e. just as this cycle’s downswing is expected to be underway.
• Japan is the worked example of what the EU wants. NISA’s January 2024 reform turned a stale, time-limited program into a permanent tax-exempt vehicle (versus Japan’s ~20% standard investment-profits tax) with a reusable ¥18 million (~US$115,000) lifetime quota — and, notably, book value of a home purchase is credited back to the account the following year. 28M+ accounts were open by end-2025 against a government target of 34M by end-2027.
• The NISA flow is already large and accelerating. ¥6 trillion (~US$38bn)inQ12026alone;\ast \ast US$115bn purchased through NISA accounts in 2025**, including US$8bnfrominvestorsintheirtwenties\ast \ast .Japan-domiciledopen-endequityinvestmenttrustssurpassed\ast \ast \yen 200trillion(US$1.2 trillion) by May 2026. The “eMAXIS Slim” passive series alone took ~¥1.8 trillion of quarterly inflows and became the first Japanese individual investment trusts to exceed ¥10 trillion in net assets.
• Wilson’s read of the charts. The weekly Nikkei 225 shows the NISA formalisation as an inflection point layering policy-forced retail flow onto an already-trending market; the STOXX Europe 50 has been trending strongly since April 2025 before any EU scheme has gone ahead — “imagine how much higher the STOXX 50 could go if the uptake mirrors what’s happened in Japan.” His gloss: “This is how global equities reach all-time highs. This is how normal people get sucked in at the wrong time.”
• “Lambs led to their slaughter” — the cycle argument. “You should know by now exactly where we are within the current 18.6 year Real Estate Cycle. We have arguably already seen the ultimate peak in US land values, with a slow but increasingly clear slide toward an eventual recession. Now is not the time to be going all in on any market.” He asks whether another six million NISA accounts by 2027 plus an EU scheme could buck the trend — “You can never say never, but I feel strongly that history is on my side.”
• The inducement/red-tape parallel to the last cycle. Wilson reads the EU’s adviser-inducement carve-outs (permitted if used to fund “research and other services,” subject to conflict-of-interest mitigation, suitability and loss-absorption tests) as “reminiscent of the last completed real estate cycle”: “Corners will be cut. Assumptions will be made. Conflicts of interest will interfere with transparent and frank advice… this won’t truly come to light until the tide goes fully out — and we see who’s been swimming naked. Same as it ever was.”
• The core causal claim. “All politicians remain blissfully unaware that this is not the time to indulge in grand financial engineering. These governments are manufacturing speculative behaviour through incentives, tax structures, and patriotic framing. That’s exactly the kind of thing that precedes a blow off top.” Wilson: “But if I’m right, it could also be a great opportunity for you to fine tune your own timing for when the stock market peaks are due.” His close: both regions “will significantly contribute to the final chapter of the greatest wealth creation event in human history. And become the biggest catastrophe of all time when it begins to unwind.”

Notable Quotes

“For a true stock market peak to develop, we as a society need to be all-in. Completely tapped out when it comes to access to credit and with no money whatsoever at hand.”

“So, I don’t believe it’s controversial to assume that if society is to go all in and bring about the peak in equity markets, it certainly won’t be these money market funds leading the charge.”

“This is how global equities reach all-time highs. This is how normal people get sucked in at the wrong time.”

“We have arguably already seen the ultimate peak in US land values, with a slow but increasingly clear slide toward an eventual recession. Now is not the time to be going all in on any market.”

“These governments are manufacturing speculative behaviour through incentives, tax structures, and patriotic framing. That’s exactly the kind of thing that precedes a blow off top.”

Ursula von der Leyen: “Today, €10 trillion in household savings are kept in bank accounts. And a large share of Europe’s savings is invested outside our continent. Europe now needs to put these savings to work for its companies. This is the goal of the Savings and Investments Union.”

“Corners will be cut. Assumptions will be made. Conflicts of interest will interfere with transparent and frank advice… this won’t truly come to light until the tide goes fully out — and we see who’s been swimming naked.”

Watchlist Changes

• None. BBB 63 contains no ADD, REMOVE, RAISE STOP, or EXIT and no reference to the Mex Pete Model Portfolio or the US/AUS watchlists. It is cycle/structural commentary on the sources of late-cycle equity demand.
• Unrelated PDF adjudication in the same window: Watchlists/pdfs/Short-Watchlist-May-27-2026.pdf flagged by the fast-path scan — standing adjudication (oldest short list in the local set, superseded by June 9/16/22/26 and July 8, no signal against the current book). Re-affirmed, not ingested. [Source: PSE Archive, standing ruling]

Concepts Referenced

• winners-curse-phase
• 18-6-year-real-estate-cycle
• real-estate-cycle-peak
• financial-conditions
• land-value-theory

Emma’s Analysis

This is the demand-side completion rule for the cycle’s final leg, and it is the first PSE document to name where the last dollars must come from. PSE has repeatedly stated the psychological precondition for a top without saying who supplies the money: Anderson in January 2026 — “Markets can’t top until we’re all-in. All the cash has to be gone, except for the really smart guys” [Source: PSE, 2026-01-21]; Sub #28 in July — “every single short seller be put out of business” [Source: PSE Sub #28, 2026-07-01]; and the 2026 Roadmap’s p.25 condition that universal bullish conviction be reached. Wilson now supplies the mechanism: the marginal buyer is a policy-created retail flow in Europe and Japan, not voluntary American risk-taking. Per Floyd’s standing instruction (2026-07-12), read through the 18.6-year lens: the peak phase does not require Americans to become more reckless — it requires the coin to be forced off the sidelines elsewhere, which is the same “winners’ curse” texture (capital committed at the worst possible moment by people making the greatest upward errors about value) applied at sovereign scale. [Source: PSE, BBB 63, 2026-09-23]

It is also the third instance of the same late-cycle pattern: policy loosening into the peak. BBB Postcard 39 flagged HUD’s plan to “take a machete to red tape” and expand non-prime mortgage access as “a classic late-cycle play” [Source: PSE, BBB Postcard 39, 2026-07-15]; Anderson’s Gann #33 read the first Fed hike in three years as the tightening that “tends to play a major role in ending the real estate cycle’s upswing” [Source: PSE, Gann Sub Email #33, 2026-09-23]. BBB 63 sits between them: the fiscal/tax arm of the same impulse — inducements and tax exemptions engineered to manufacture demand at the top. Wilson’s own framing (“grand financial engineering… precedes a blow off top”) is the cleanest statement in the PSE corpus of why the final surge, when it comes, will feel official rather than manic. The testable corollary: watch the EU’s Q2 2027 mid-year review and Japan’s 34M-account target — if both land during the downswing, PSE’s “lambs” call is scored by the calendar itself.

The MMF section is the more subtle analytical contribution. Wilson’s ~80%-sticky estimate is why the US cannot complete the all-in condition on its own, and it explains the apparent paradox that the peak keeps being deferred despite record margins, record IPO supply, and the largest speculative flows in cycle history: the cash isn’t marginal capital, it’s operational float, and it is now paid a real risk-free return to stay put. That is a structural brake on the behavioural precondition — and it implies the peak requires either a fall in the risk-free alternative (the Fed cutting, or bond yields dropping — see financial-conditions) or a coerced substitution (the EU/Japan route Wilson describes). Both paths converge on the same cycle arithmetic: the topping process runs through rates and policy, not through sentiment alone.

Where it fits the current book. No watchlist implications — but the read is consistent with the surviving Mex Pete long book, which is a hard-asset/commodity core (DBA, CGS, SFR with IEFA the equity laggard and likely next stop-out) rather than an index-exposure book. If the final leg is a policy-forced equity flow into concentrated indices, the index gets the blow-off and the disciplined real-asset book gets the exit liquidity. That is the same asymmetry the mex-pete-model-portfolio pyramiding filter (best positions don’t linger in pullbacks) is designed to exploit, and it argues for holding the discipline rather than reaching for the last leg of the melt-up.