Originally Posted by rrgg

Am I overlooking something?

Since the $10 is only paid once per AMEX, a "perpetual churn" seems harder to me than implied. You'd have to buy a new gift card and auto-reload three times to get the $5 bonus. You also must spend a little at Whole Foods between every reload. Then sell the card to yourself online. If you get 4% plus 2.5%, you end up buying points at a good rate. If you only get 2.5% plus 2.5%, it doesn't seem as good but the loss isn't bad to meet a threshold. I don't know MR very well and mostly based this on starpoints. Why is MR better?