60-20-20 Changed Everything | Tony Greer on the New Portfolio Regime

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: 60-20-20 Changed Everything | Tony Greer on the New Portfolio Regime

Excess Returns | January 27, 2026
Guests: Tony Greer (TG Macro)
Host: Matt Zeigler

---

Episode Overview

This episode features Tony Greer, macro investor and founder of TG Macro, discussing seismic shifts in market regimes, portfolio construction, and investor sentiment as we enter 2026. Greer unpacks the narrative of eroding institutional trust as a key catalyst behind dramatic changes in asset allocation—from the iconic 60/40 stock/bond portfolio to a new 60/20/20 framework. He relates this to investor migration into commodities, especially precious metals, and details opportunities emerging in mining and natural resources sectors. The discussion is grounded in both top-down macro observation and Greer’s decades of trading desk experience.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Erosion of Institutional Trust & The Market Consequences

• BASE Jumping Off Mount Rushmore Metaphor (00:58, 03:03)
  Tony draws a vivid analogy likening the current investment climate to “base jumping off Mount Rushmore,” highlighting a total collapse in faith in core institutions: “The narrative driving gold is a complete loss of faith in institutions left and right.”
  — Tony Greer at 00:58

• Fraud & Credibility Busts
  Greer argues the public’s reaction to recurring institutional crises or fraud is the rapid movement of capital into tangible safe-haven assets:

  “Everyone is starting to understand that the system is stacked up against them in so many ways. So they’re buying gold.”
  — Tony Greer at 03:03

---

2. The New Portfolio Regime: From 60/40 to 60/20/20

• What is 60/20/20?
  Greer notes Morgan Stanley’s shift in recommended asset allocation—from 60% stocks, 40% bonds to 60% equities, 20% bonds, and 20% alternatives, with a new emphasis on commodities and precious metals.

  “We were 60/40 since Jesus, right? And now we’re 60/20/20. And I was like, that’s a BFD...”
  — Tony Greer at 05:08

• Mutual Funds and Wealth Managers Moving
  He describes the downstream effect of these shifts:

  “Morgan Stanley wealth managers are gonna call everybody up in their wheelhouse and say, you guys gotta buy gold or gold miners, you gotta have something here.”
  — Tony Greer at 05:08

---

3. Macro Context: Central Banks, Inflation, and the Dollar

• Central Bank Credibility Lost
  Greer traces the chain of events from Bernanke’s bailouts to Powell’s pandemic response (“doubled the balance sheet in one print”), to current “political games with our kids’ future”:

  “The natural reaction for people is … ‘Give me my AppMex app and I’m gonna buy more precious metal.’”
  — Tony Greer at 06:53

• Real-Life Inflation & Purchasing Power
  Greer questions official inflation figures versus lived experience at the grocery store:

  “I’m paying $19 a pound for bologna. Like, it is not back in the bottle.”
  — Tony Greer at 08:35

---

4. The “Great Awareness Phase”: Food, Pharma, and Health Trust Erodes

• Loss of Trust in Big Food
  Americans are waking up to issues with food quality (e.g., seed oils) and corporate practices:

  “There's this awareness phase right? … people are learning what seed oils are … it's the stuff that Big Food is putting into our food that makes us unhealthy.”
  — Tony Greer at 12:05

• Medical & Insurance Fraud
  The health care sector is tarred by prosecutorial headlines and massive fraud prosecutions:

  “These are the people that are in charge of my health, defrauding everyone left and right. Give me my phone and buy me more silver. I don’t trust any of these guys.”
  — Tony Greer at 16:27

• Legal and Political System Decay
  Political prosecutions (Trump mugshot, Swift sanctions, Epstein files) fuel “banana republic” comparisons and more impetus for the “FU trade”—buying tangible assets:

  “That was the most bullish thing in gold you’ve ever seen in your life. They put a president behind bars … the rule of law is kind of out the window.”
  — Tony Greer at 16:55

---

5. From Diagnosis to Action: What Actually Works in Portfolios

• Natural Resources "Package"
  Tony’s top sectors:

  • Precious metals (gold, silver, platinum; especially gold/miners)
  • Uranium miners
  • Industrial miners
  • Basic materials (copper, oil)

  “I’m still talking about the three leaders from last year, Gold miners, industrial miners, and uranium miners. Gold miners were up 150% last year and I wouldn’t doubt that they outperform that this year.”
  — Tony Greer at 19:26

• Bull Market Technicals
  Greer emphasizes that prior cycles show multiyear rallies following long consolidations:

  “Markets that consolidate for years and then break out, they rally for years after that.”
  — Tony Greer at 29:06

---

6. Inter-Market Relationships and Rotation

• Tech Now Lagging, Commodities Leading

  “The risk assets are no longer Nvidia… That is the gold miners, industrial miners, and uranium miners.”
  — Tony Greer at 30:45

• Divergence from Old Diversification Models
  Matt probes concerns about precious metals and equities rallying together, challenging old diversification assumptions (the “Cohen and Steers real estate handout” analogy).

---

7. Understanding the Precious Metals Complex

• Clarity and Transparency
  Gold and silver (plus their miners) offer the most transparent, liquid exposure. Platinum/palladium are higher risk/complex, best left to experts.

  “If you want to just keep it to the gold and gold miners ... I feel like there’s clarity there.”
  — Tony Greer at 42:10

---

8. Emerging Trends: Tech & Miners Cross-Pollination

• Tech Companies Securing Supply Chains
  Amazon’s partnership with Rio Tinto signals a new phase where Big Tech is moving upstream to lock in resource access.

  “That’s going to be, you know, a very sought after period for natural resources. So they decided to just cut out all the middlemen and partner with the effing mine.”
  — Tony Greer at 46:58

---

9. Markets to Watch, Warning Signs & Exit Signals

• What Would Change Tony’s Bullishness?

  • Dislocating bond market pricing in runaway inflation.
  • Metals and mining stocks lagging the metals themselves (signal end of rally).
  • Breakdown in the cyclical outperformance trend.

  “Dislocating bond market will have me sitting up in my chair selling stock, meaning a dislocating bond market lower, which would mean a bond market that is pricing in inflation.”
  — Tony Greer at 61:23

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Macro “Awareness Phase”:

  “Now, nobody’s saying directly, ‘This company is putting seed oil in the food ... I’m gonna buy gold.’ But it’s part of—I don’t trust Big Food anymore and I’ve got to go my own route.”
  — Tony Greer at 12:05

• On Central Banks:

  “You can go back to Bernanke ... the bailouts ... go to Powell for doubling the balance sheet after COVID ... You kind of look at it from a big picture. You’re like, wow, we just doubled the balance sheet in one print ... there’s going to be some hella inflation to deal with at some point.”
  — Tony Greer at 06:53

• On Political Optics and Markets:

  “Arresting Trump by the Biden administration ... the most bullish thing this century I think, for gold.”
  — Tony Greer at 17:57

---

Important Timestamps

• 00:58–03:03: The “BASE Jumping” metaphor & institutional trust collapse
• 05:08: The 60/20/20 asset allocation shift & its significance
• 06:53–08:35: Central bank credibility and lived inflation
• 12:05–14:25: The “Great Awareness Phase” (food and health trust issues)
• 16:27–17:57: Legal/political system distrust; precious metals as the “FU trade”
• 19:26–21:50: Sectors for the new regime: natural resources and miners
• 29:06: Markets that consolidate for years then rally for years
• 30:45: The new rotation: commodities up, tech down
• 42:10: How to play precious metals safely
• 46:58: Tech companies buying/partnering with miners
• 61:23–62:14: How Tony would know his thesis was wrong

---

Tony Greer’s Takeaways for Investors

• Be Early: The rotation into commodities/natural resources is in early innings.
• Watch Technicals: Multi-year breakouts from consolidation are especially powerful.
• Ride the Trend, Be Ready to Exit: Bull markets reward confidence, but price/technical action will tell you if the thesis breaks.
• Diversify Smart: Gold and miners for transparency and liquidity; treat speculative metals and uranium with caution.
• Monitor Institutional Rotations: Major asset allocators are meaningfully shifting, and retail is only beginning to catch up.

---

Where to Find Tony Greer

• tgmacro.com
• Twitter: @TGMacro
• Macro Dirt Dual podcast with Jared Dillian
• Conference: February 19-20, 2026, Nashville (Virgin Hotel)

---

Summary prepared for Excess Returns listeners seeking to understand macro trends, portfolio shifts, and actionable takeaways for the new regime.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

My dad taught me a lot, including how easy it is to forget to cancel things. So I downloaded Experian, my bff. Big financial friend Experian could help me cancel my unused subscriptions and lower my bills, saving me hundreds a year. Get started with the Experian app today. Your big financial friends here to help you save smarter. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed $631 a year average savings with one plus negotiations and OnePlus cancellations paid. Membership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details. Experian Big tax changes this there could mean a bigger refund. And Jackson Hewitt knows how to get you your biggest. You'll get $100 just to try us. That won't make you filthy rich, but definitely gas plus groceries rich. And since we know all the new tax codes, you could get thousands back which would make you low key loaded or at least wealthy adjacent. Go with our trusted Pros and get $100 to switch. Rest easy. Jackson Hewitt's got your taxes guaranteed limited time offer for new clients. Participate in locations only.

[Tony Greer]

[e-mail] the narrative driving gold is a complete loss of faith in institutions left and right. So it's like the the analogy of base jumping off of Mount Rushmore made a big deal last year about Morgan Stanley changing the portfolio weighting, right? We were 60, 40 for since Jesus, right? And now we're 60, 20, 20. And I was like that's a BFD, right? Tech is confirming the idea that it's going to going to underperform natural resources and cyclicals are confirming the idea that they are going to perform so that it just leads me to believe that if there's a lot of money going to be going into that stuff that some more is going to be coming out of this tech stuff. There's one theory that I have in markets Matt, and that's markets that consolidate for years and then break out, they rally for years after that. Now that you've got the metals trade in motion and then you've got cyclical strength behind it, I come up with a very bullish case for the stock market.

[Matt]

You're watching Excess Returns, the channel that makes complex investing ideas simple enough to actually use where better questions lead to better decisions. Today we are talking to Tony Greer from TG Macro about happy stuff like why faith in institutions is collapsing, what that means for your portfolio and which trades actually follow from all that work and analysis. Even long term investors can use shorter term perspectives like this that's why I love reading his work. Tony. Welcome to Excess returns, Matty.

[Tony Greer]

Thanks for having me, man. You're the best.

[Matt]

We are well overdue, so let's jump right in. By which I mean let's BASE jump right the hell off Mount Rushmore. I love this metaphor. It's stark, I'm not gonna lie. But faith in institutions plummeting like a BASE jumper off the mountain. Grant Williams was just telling me the same thing a week ago. That's not typical macro metaphor. I mean, it's standardly bleak, black and white, a bit of trader truck. But walk us through what you're seeing, because it feels like this is the thing that changes everything about how we're positioned going into 2026.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah. So I was trying to express, Matthew, that, you know, the. The thing that I don't think is really widely covered, the narrative driving gold, is a complete loss of faith in institutions left and right. So it's like the. The analogy of BASE jumping off of Mount Rushmore was the analogy of somebody, like, looking at the. In the existing institutions, how they behave, what they're getting caught for, the fraud that we're uncovering, and somebody just being patriotic and going like this, I'm out of here, and just BASE jumping off of Mount Rushmore. Right. So it was just a crazy metaphor, but it's something that I really feel that's very palpable in the markets, and I don't think that it's covered by the media. Right. The media is not going to say, well, nobody believes us anymore, so they're buying gold. Everyone sees how much fraud is in the system, so they're buying gold. Everyone is starting to understand that the system is stacked up against them in so many ways. So they're buying gold. And it's like, I can draw so many head. So many direct lines between things that I've seen that I think are like, oh, my God, that is a credibility buster. And. And precious metals have a little leg up whe. Whether it's like, you know, that day or that week or whatever. But I'm convinced now that people see things like that and grab their phone and they get on the AppMex app and they go, I'm going to buy 10 more silver coins here just because, like, this is crazy. Like, this is crazy. And I can't take it. We don't have any. We. We have no say. We have no vote. Right? All we can do, thank God we have the market so we can make moves. And so it's kind of an expression of that.

[Matt]

I want to zoom out just for one second on this with you too, because A, this is not a tinfoil hat conversation, B, you're not some economics nerd where this is all you're thinking about all day, all the time. The trading background, like you've sat on precious metals desks. This is part of where this awareness comes from. But you're not a forever gold bug. This isn't like, yeah, context, gimme context for somebody who's just seeing your work for the first time.

[Tony Greer]

So, you know, it's, it's, it's my, you know, what's going well now is that my job for my clients is to get them into the sectors that are performing the best at the end of the, into the end of the year. Last year I felt really strongly that, you know, the, the three leaders of the market, in my eyes, which they were really, and, and percentage wise too, gold miners, industrial miners, uranium miners, that those were going to be the lead sectors because those were the winners coming out of Liberation Thursday last year into the end of the year. So we got positioned for that and now we're just getting confirmations that that trade is working. You know, things are changing. I, I made a big deal last year about Morgan Stanley changing the portfolio weighting, right? We were 60, 40 for, since Jesus, right? And now we're 60, 20, 20. And I was like, that's a BFD, right? Like, you know, because Morgan Stanley wealth managers are going to call everybody up in their wheelhouse and say, you guys got to buy gold or gold miners, you got to have something here. You know, you have nothing in your account. You know what I mean? And I think that that's what we're actually seeing. So I don't know if I properly, you know, I'm not sure if I directly answered the question right the right way, but that's the sort of narrative that's kind of been flowing through that fits with this rally to me.

[Matt]

All right, so let's go through then a couple of these pieces of where I want to pick on the central banks first. Yeah, central banks have lost credibility. You mentioned that. This, I mean, this is part of the base chumping metaphor too, specifically with central banks. Talk to me about inflation. Talk to me about every central bank from London to Beijing loosening monetary policy. Run me through these lines.

[Tony Greer]

You can go back to Bernanke. You can start with Bernanke for, you know, the bailouts and things like that. You can go to Powell for doubling the balance sheet after the COVID lockdown and you can just see another, you know, more and more irresponsible behavior with our children's future. You know what I mean? You kind of look at it from a big picture. You're like, wow, we just doubled the balance sheet in one print. You know what I mean? After the lockdowns and things like that, you're like, there's going to be some hella inflation to deal with. At one, at some point we just. Money supply was up 40% this year. It's usually up 2 or 3. Like oh God, I'm not even sure what's going to happen. Right. So the idea was the, the fu. To central banks doing that has always been buy precious metals. Right. That's always been the underlying theme. And so when you get to a point and you see it get like so political to the point of like Jerome Powell cutting rates going, you know, for the Biden administration going into the election and you're like, oh my God, like this is literally just like a cutthroat political game they're playing again with our kids future, you know, and things like that. And so the natural reaction for people is I don't have a say in the this. Give me my app, Mex app and I'm going to buy more precious metal. So that, that's kind of where that central bank thing ties in. Like back to Bernanke to yell into whoever it's been. You can say, well, that was wildly ridiculous.

[Matt]

Where does this come back to? On just purchasing power. And I think you've tied this back to inflation. You just mentioned it with the debt. This is an actual vote of feet about how people feel about purchasing power in dollar terms.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah. So it's kind of like, you know, Main street goes to the grocery store and buys a dozen eggs for $9 now up from $7 a month two months ago, up from $6 eight months ago up. You know what I mean? Like this has all just happened, right? So now we're adjusting to that and the BLS comes back and says, yeah, inflation. We had a little, we had a little pipe up when Russia invaded Ukraine and oil went to 130 and went to 9% CPI. Remember that? It's back in the bottle at 2% and you're like, I'm paying $19 a pound for baloney. Like it is not back in the bottle. Right. And everybody like every bill, I feel like literally, Maddie, every, every month I get. Every bill looks bigger for some reason. You know what I mean? You go down the checklist and you're like, wow, that's more than. Than it's been. Like, well, that's. This is more. Now you go around the grocery store and you're like, what? You know, because I'm the shopper and the cooker and things like that. So I know, I know the price of groceries now. I've been tape reading that for 20 years. So, you know, you see things and you're just like, okay, there's nothing you can do about this. The only thing you can do is buy the thing that isn't losing purchasing power. Right? Like, this is the antithesis trade. So that. That's what I think drives that. And I think that there has been the beginning of Main street seeing this and understanding this and finally learning that the only way out is to belong the gold and the silver and the platinum and palladium now as of late, and the copper. So we're in a very different regime now than we've been for the last.

[Matt]

20 years on the consumer angle, because I think this is a really interesting point that you. You've added to. So not just the awareness of higher prices, but a real awareness around, I think you called it big food, which is this. There's a preference shift too. And first off, I'm gonna take a second to plug the bologna and cheese grilled cheese sandwich. Far superior. I mean, one of my favorite.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, I'd eat it every day. I'd eat it every day for lunch. No problem.

[Matt]

No problem at all. That give me a jersey roll once in a while too. I'm very, very happy.

[Tony Greer]

Man, you're such a foodie.

[Matt]

I love it. I love it. But on a food food preferences point, talk to me about this thesis too, because I feel like this. This feeds right into it. What people want to buy and the healthier options.

[Tony Greer]

AI is incredible. It can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem pirate style. But it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught. Because slackbot isn't just another AI It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com meetslackbot to learn more.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

This episode is brought to you by indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed's sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C according to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, you know, I feel like, you know, I feel like there's something going on that I have to mention. There's called. There's a great awareness phase, right, going on for Americans right now. I think a lot of it started with Elon Musk buying Twitter and, you know, just uncovering all of the censorship and the. And things like that, right? And then he goes into Doge and starts uncovering all the fraud. So there's this awareness phase right? Along with this awareness phase is people are learning what seed oils are, right? And they're kind of learning what seed oils are from backtracking into the ailments that they've been getting for the last, you know, whatever, several years. And everybody's learning now that it's the stuff that Big Food is putting into our food that makes us unhealthy. You know what I mean? And you learn that, you know, some, a lot of these ingredients and seed oils are illegal in Europe, not allowed to put them in the food. So that this awakening here, that to me now, nobody's saying directly, this company is putting seed oil in the food. This company is putting high sugar. This company is selling pure junk. I'm gonna buy gold. But it's part of. I don't trust Big Food anymore and I've got to go my own route around them if I want to eat good food, right? Like, everybody needs to find their own healthier option now. And pretty much everybody I know is choosing that. Or at least the awareness is opening up and they're going down now. I'm not eating a bag of chips. You know what I mean? I mean, that change, I made that change a long time ago and lost 20 pounds just because I stopped eating fistfuls of potato chips, you know, so anyway, that goes into. That's dishonest. This been putting seed oil into my food and they know that it's giving me, you know, whatever it's giving me, it's giving me inflammation. It's. It's causing me this. It's causing a breakdowns in these systems. And that's just part of the awareness thing where it's like, okay, I can't do anything about this, but I can eat eggs and I can buy more silver and gold because I don't trust these MFers either.

[Matt]

You put it in one of your pieces too. And I just thought this was a profound layer on top of the inflation story. It was the trust in US food safety dropped from 70% in 2023 to 55% in 2025. A historic. Whoa, this is a real zeitgeisty thing.

[Tony Greer]

Yes, well put, well put. Look at Kraft Hind stock, man, right? KHC Kraft Heinz was cruising along, you know, a pushing 45 in 2022 stocks, 22 and a half bucks. Now, that's not just inflation. That, that's not just people saying, oh, you know, these, some of these goods are too expensive. I have to go another route. That's people saying, I'm not buying the poison that they're making for me because you know what it's doing. I figured out the loop. They feed me poison and I go to Big Pharma to get my temporary solution right. There's the other half of the trade and people like, what is going on here? Buy me more silver.

[Matt]

There you go. Not a proxy for the local farm stand. But, but point taken. Because if it was just a profit margin story, it'd be a different conversation than what we're seeing here with a preference shift, which I think is really on the nose.

[Tony Greer]

It would be an honest business conversation. And, and now it's like, no, man, the, the whole world is rejecting the stuff that they've been putting out.

[Matt]

All right, so let's talk about healthcare next, because this is another one where I think the nuance inside of your take is really important here. What's going on with the healthcare sector?

[Tony Greer]

You know, it's just that, and I, I, I'm not a healthcare expert. It's just like you see headlines go by that contribute to this narrative that you're thinking about and you're piecing. This whole thing is serving unhealthy stuff to Americans at a lot of products. Big Pharma is profiting off of the medical solutions for those products. And then you have the insurance companies that are overseeing a lot of this activity or being trusted to getting caught with the biggest fraud story in the history of the United States. And I forgot what the size of the. Was it a $14 billion racket with like 300 defendants or something?

[Matt]

Only because I have your notes in front of me. It was the 14.5 billion with 324 defendants against the national health care industry.

[Tony Greer]

And you look at that and you're like, and these are the people that are in charge of my health, defrauding everyone left and right. Give me my phone and buy me more silver. I don't trust Any of these guys.

[Matt]

All right, let's take it another layer out. You talked about the legal system in a couple of your recent pieces, too, with an interesting caveat that both administrations are equally guilty. I see this just again, this is the institutional trust part. Fall. Falling apart. What are you seeing here? Where is this showing up?

[Tony Greer]

I thought I said it when it happened. I said that the Trump mug shot was the most bullish thing in gold you've ever seen in your life. They put a president behind j. Behind bars, or they try to. Right. Like the rule of law is kind of out the window. Right. Or at least our decorum with the rule of law is out the window. By the last administration, I mean, how many. How many people on the other side of the aisle that the. Did the Biden administration arrest, arrest in handcuffs without getting political, just observationally, a lot of them. So people look at that and they're like, oh, my God, this is a banana republic, man. This place is going to hell in a hand basket. And they do the fu trade and they buy precious metals because they have no other choice. Their vote doesn't count. And this is going on either way.

[Matt]

On the international front, I feel like you see this, too. You have it going on inside of the United States. There's an awareness of it. But then I'm thinking of Russia post the swift event. Like, these are compounding global events, and I think you're seeing it that way, too.

[Tony Greer]

Right? So it was the Russia swift event. I mean, that's the most bullish thing this century, I think, for gold. Right. The most bullish thing since we turned the calendar through 2000. Arresting Trump by the Biden administration. And then I don't want to leave Trump out of this because he's equally guilty and at percent, potentially at a much higher level. He ran on getting all the Epstein files out. And we don't want to go into a conversation about the Epstein files, you and I. But when I can draw a line on the chart where Silver exploded right around when he said the Epstein files are a hoax. So now I'm going to guess that 340 million Americans heard that and went, you're lying. And that's like, so what.

[Matt]

What?

[Tony Greer]

You know, so what does that say about the legal system? Right? The last administration puts him in jail and. And half of the people on his side of the aisle, and then he comes in, and now we're protecting somebody that they're. They're honest. There are victims of what he just said is a hoax. There are FBI files About what he just said is a hoax. So people say this guy's lying to me too. Now buy me more precious metals. Like I don't have a vote. I don't have a say. This is crazy. I got to look out for myself. There's only one thing you could do if you want to look out for yourself financially right now.

[Matt]

So let's talk about what you can do because with this coming down, there's a handful of things that you can touch, so obviously precious metals. What else? Give me the list.

[Tony Greer]

Man. It's a whole natural resources package. And I wouldn't leave too much out except for my taste. I'd probably leave out livestock and grains kind of thing. But you've got precious metals at the tip of the sphere spear, right? We, we've. There's been a flywheel of them taking off. First it was gold, then platinum. Silver was sitting there at $35 an ounce. Nobody cared. Finally, silver tripled. And so there's the, the tip of the spear. If you want to get into the sectors, man, you know, I'm still talking about the three leaders from last year, Gold miners, industrial miners, and uranium miners. Gold miners were up 150% last year and I wouldn't doubt that they outperform that this year. If the big plain vanilla mutual funds get the joke about the 60, 20, 20 portfolio, they are proper underweight, precious metal risk and miners. So I think that those are the top of the heap. But I still think there's some other sectors in there that fit just broadly basic materials, natural resources. I think you want to have exposure to copper and oil. I'm a believer in the Trump boom. No matter what I think of the guy, I think of what he's doing to the economy is pretty revolutionary and very regime changing and very positive. Right? They are not. I listened to his whole, whole entire speech uninterrupted yesterday. I wait till the market closed that I would. I didn't want any distractions that I listened to it for an hour and change. And he's making serious moves, you know what I mean? Like he has got a serious agenda with the u. S. Economy in terms of keeping energy prices low, taxes low, rates low. When, when, if they have to write another regulation, they have a rule that they have to cancel 10, they've been canceling a hundred per regulation, new regulation that they write. So all this stuff to me cooks up into a really strong economy and then follows with a really strong market. And I think that these bull markets that trump has set in Motion are going to continue. And if you believe in like better GDP growth, then you can definitely get behind the natural resources trade. Right. Like the Bloomberg Commodity index is breaking out of a four year sideways consolidation. That is not a technical move to be messed with.

[Matt]

Stepping back from it because I think this is important. You see a lot of people who are confusing, I think the volatility around policy for what's going on under the surface. And this is where you're so valuable in the way that you can see what's happening under the surface here. You talked about markets and the way that they emerge from Liberation Day is the way they shall shall proceed. Maybe even a shall extra King James.

[Tony Greer]

I did, I think I did use the King James shall there.

[Matt]

I think I got a King James Shaolin there if I wrote this down. I appreciate that. Now I think this is very telling though because you're still saying go back to the Liberation Day, go back to what moved. Look at risk assets, equities and metals, higher tech, sideways energy, lower, like break down. Why that's still relevant now and part of this playbook.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah. So, you know, again, whether we like them or not, Trump came to the international trade table and he pulled the table, you know what I mean? And he scrambled the whole thing, likely on purpose if you ask me. Like the whole rollout was so obnoxiously volatile and, and, and misdirectional and confusing that he was like, I'm just going to not let anybody know what to expect or what to think out of me, but I'm going to tariff the shit out of these countries. Right. So he gets all of Europe basically to divest from the US and everybody now is seeing what he is doing, seeing how he's going to proceed. And I don't think necessarily that it was the money flow as much as it was the markets coming out of it and telling their story. Like, okay, this is what's going to happen now. You know, first we're going to have the unleashing of the precious metals trade and the uranium trade and then we're going to have the Trump boom trade come up behind that and, and provide tailwinds for that and be another draw on the commodity markets. They're going to need more copper for everything he wants to do. We're going to burn more crude oil. And then he goes over and takes out Maduro to keep the prices of oil up, you know what I mean? So like there's a little bit of 4D chess going on that I give him credit for. But my most important thing is if you listen to him yesterday, again, it was like an exclamation point on the idea that globalization did not work. It is over, it is a thing of the past. And Trump is now breaking that rules based order with IDGAF type of action.

[Matt]

And I think again, this is where it's important to be able to step back from. Not just all policy equals noise. And there's no grand strategy to say whatever you think of the strategy, here's what's actually moving in response to these.

[Tony Greer]

And then, and then, Matt, the, the beautiful part is that like those sectors have been out in the lead and now, because we just went from talking about a potential growth slowdown to what looks like is probably going to be, I mean, we've got great GDP today on the tape, right? Four. And we're at four and a half percent. You know, we're looking now at a potential, some kind of economic recovery because Trump's going to be doing fiscal monetary stimulus and keeping gas prices low. So what else could markets ask for? And then all of a sudden, what's bringing up the rear right behind the metals trades? Cyclicals. Right. So right behind the, you know, the gains on year to date this year, which you've got uranium miners and industrial miners and gold miners in the lead once again who have thought. But then you've got oil services companies and semiconductors and home construction. That's all cyclical shit. That's, that stuff's not up double digit percentage this year because it's predicting a recession, I'll tell you that. Right. So now that you've got the metals trade in motion and then you've got cyclical strength behind it, I come up with a very bullish case for the stock market.

[Matt]

I want to go to what I think you called the Three Musketeers of mining at the end of 2025 for a second. I know it's not a Three Musketeers candy bar and I've got, I've got money on Athos, Porthos or d' Artagnan for which musketeer you are. But yeah, tell me about the three Musketeers idea.

[Tony Greer]

So it was just, you know, in my processes of making sure that I get my clients into the right sectors that are going to be winning at the end of the year. Along the way, we noticed that gold miners, uranium miners and industrial miners were the three musketeers. I essentially called them of the mining space covering a lot of, you know, metal being pulled out of the ground both for the Trump recovery and for the debasement trade. And start noticing when you notice the performance and line it up with the technical backdrop and notice that the moves were really meaningful, meaning breaking out of consolidations, charging new highs. It was just the place that we I said early, okay, these are the horses to bet on and let's see if it works. And as it turns out, it worked and followed through right into this year. So that's just a matter of me kind of hawking performance, listening to the market tell me what's going to survive post Liberation Day and say, okay, this is the new black, right? The mining sector is the new black. So we need a nickname for these three that look at the screens, they're still at the top of the year to date leaderboard. So we'll see if this continues. My bet is it does chronic migraine.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox Anabotulinum Toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic.

[Matt]

Migraine preventive treatment prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more.

[Tony Greer]

This is your fix. I am your host Stassi Schroeder.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast.

[Tony Greer]

What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven because he's so evil, I do.

[Matt]

Think he is misunderstood.

[Tony Greer]

You see everyone face consequences.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick. Yeah, there's always a twist in this show.

[Tony Greer]

Tell Me Lies the official podcast January.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

6Th and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu.

[Tony Greer]

And Hulu on Disney Plus.

[Matt]

It's especially interesting too because all the valuation people, everybody else, you talk about it, they're still not talking about why these are cheap. If anything, they talk about a lot while they're stretched.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And yet this move has just been astounding for the length of time that it's run. And now you're here telling me it's probably not going to stop.

[Tony Greer]

That's what I think. You know, there's one theory that I have in markets, Matt, and that's markets that consolidate for years and then break out, they rallied for years after that. It's not just, it's not just the price action that they were bottled up in, it's the time bottle that they were bottled up in. And when they escape that bottle of time, they go and find a new zip code to live in. And so that's what I think we're.

[Matt]

Seeing is something that I've been thinking about a lot. And part of it is with the whole like 60, 20, 20 allocation changes that we heard last year. I'm thinking about people adding various forms of alts. Precious metals are not true portfolios when they talk about construction. And I'm thinking about this idea that like stocks and precious metals in particular were supposed to be non correlated or at least zig a little bit when the other one zags With a move like this, it candidly like the thing. This is what scares me. I think back, I used to keep a flyer on my wall like a handout from, from Cohen and Steers and it was from 2007 and it was like real estate is the ultimate diversifying asset class and you should jettison half of your bonds in your 60 portfolio and put real estate in and look how much better it makes your portfolio. And obviously if you did that in 2007, it didn't work out so well for you in the next couple of years. So when I see stuff that's kind of moving together like stocks and precious metals, I flashback to the Cohen and Steers moment and I go, am I still getting the diversification benefit of this? Do I really want to combine these things, unpack what's going on there? When I think about these asset classes side by side.

[Tony Greer]

So what you're noticing I think is regime change being translated by the markets. You know, I guess if we're, if we're looking for those, if we're looking for what's going on, big picture, you know, you've got the metals trade is something that is in the first Inning of a secular change, right? Like this is. We know we just talked about the Morgan Stanley. We just poster child with that, right? A massive regime change supportive of metal sectors. We've got then. Then catching up in the rotation, like I said, is cyclicals. And at the bottom of the rotation is tech. So the risk assets are, is, are no longer Nvidia, right. I mean they are risky assets, but they're not the ones climbing, you know, the risk pole and just, you know, getting more expensive every day. That is the gold miners, industrial miners and uranium miners. That is happening because people are completely underinvested to this space. Right. What you were perceiving was gold as a flight to quality. Oh, shit. Or a flight to safety. Oh, shit. Somebody's worried about the stock market. Buy gold, right? And it became. I don't trust anybody. Buy gold. I don't. You know what I mean? I don't. This is everything that's going on in front of me. It's all coming apart by gold, right? So that, that's the regime change of. Okay, everybody now, student body, right? Getting into this gold trade. And even though we're in the early innings of it, it's out in the lead then you've got cyclicals behind it that are also rallying. And the only thing weighing the stock market down now, believe it or not, software, cyber security, cloud storage, Internet, it's all negative on the year. Right. And so this is, you know, that, that is sort of a telling to me that we, you know, we may have reached the peak of the AI bubble. Right. That's a major, a major thing that we can't not talk about in the markets. And so I think with strength in all the other sectors and just big tech and large cap holding it back, that's why like the markets can still go up and gold can go up. I don't know if I explained that well, but I guess that's how I see it.

[Matt]

No, I think that makes it an interesting point for both where we are now and why this could continue for a while.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, that's what you got to try to explain to people, people that like this is a first inning thing still to me, like, you know what I mean? I'm excited, I'm more excited about the next 10 years, you know, for the last year, because of what Trump is doing, then I would have been, you know what I mean, without all of these changes, you know, So I still think it's very early and like the, the Runway for these trades to be able to make Money in them. I mean it's not going to be linear. But if you want to be able to get in and out of this stuff, this stuff is dreamy to be trading.

[Matt]

Well, let's talk about that. And I want to go specifically on gold from a. Basically keep your trading hat on with me for a second here. Nine consecutive quarters of expansion. Each quarter's range larger than the previous one. Signs of imbalance. What are you looking at when you're thinking about just trading gold here?

[Tony Greer]

The trend is not over. The trend is in. It's. You know, you have to look at this as a car driving by you. Right. Like you don't know where it's going. You don't know when it's going to stop or where it's going to stop. It's just flying by you right now. Right. It's going to its next level. And I try to think all the time about what, what's going to get gold to level off and cool off and stop, you know, and what that dynamic is going to look like. Because we're certainly not going into any kind of fiscal responsibility regime anytime, anytime soon. But we are making new all time highs as we speak. You know, and I guess looking at the trends that, that the things that you read out are like a technician reading what's going on in gold. Right. Quarterly. You know, when you're a technician and you get into something like you're looking for first, like a good weekly close to confirm that you're right and then you're looking for a good monthly close maybe to confirm that you're right. Right. And things are going in your direction. We're talking about gold is put up the. Forget the dailies. The weekly gold's putting up quarters at a time where it's higher, high, higher, low, higher close, higher, high, higher, low, higher close. So all that means is just that it's just noticing that we are in motion somewhere and, and that a major change is taking place around the world. I mean they're buying gold hands over fist and Bitcoin and Nvidia are going down. Right. That's a lot different than what was going on for the last five years.

[Matt]

Inside of that trend. For the last five years. Relate gold to something else and maybe relate gold, you don't have to relate it to software for the last five years and some of the chip stocks. But give me an example how this view shift and what that transition looked like to you.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah. You know, put it this way. You start, you started to see signs that we knew AI was blowing a bubble. We watched Nvidia, you know, triple, quadruple, whatever. We knew the bubble is being blown. And then you see the signs of like toppiness, where, you know, an incremental new investment is not getting you incremental performance in the stocks. And you're like, maybe this is kind of a, a toppy thing. But you have to remember things like for 10, 20 years during globalization, software led the charge in technology, right? It was just that unstoppable thing. We knew we could not possibly have needed more of it. Like everything was about software. It led, it beat all the other subsectors. Now we need less software because AI came along, right? And so now it's totally possible that this sector falls on its ass for the next several years or is dead money or things like that. So if you want to say, well, what just woke up and went time wise, forget about price for a minute. What happened recently, it's. What happened recently is the complexion of the commodity space changed dramatically. Right? And it's taking place while AI is forming this bubble and the stocks can't perform. And it's taking place where all of a sudden the new leaders in town are commodity stocks and the big losers are anything out of Silicon Valley. So this is the sort of thing where you notice like sort of the things going on outside your window are matching what's going on on your screen or matching what you feel in your heart from observing. I don't know if I. Did I get away from the ad from answering that question, Matt?

[Matt]

No, because. And I think I just, I want to make sure you get a chance to say this part too. You were positive on the semis and some of these other things in years past.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah.

[Matt]

It's this topping piece that you see now with this rotation that is part of what's got you so excited about everything we've been talking about up to this point in the moment.

[Tony Greer]

And it's really up against, and it's really up against the things that are happening, you know, in the United States, I think are nothing less than remarkable in terms of like the reveal that's going on, you know, and it can get political. So I don't really want to go that deep into it, but the reveal of what, like I do believe that Elon Musk buying Twitter changed the world. Literally changed the world. Right. He uncovered government censorship. And then like I mentioned before, Trump puts him into the admin, he walks into Doge and is like, we're spilling money into fraud, like by the Trillions and nobody's going to believe it, right? So he set off the fuse on this stuff. And then you see all of the, the market change in the background, right? Like the regime change of we're going Back to Trump, 20 years of global is dead. The screens completely changed. That was glaring, right? That, that was like you feel yourself squeezing into the next market regime and you feel it being early because nobody's got this stuff on. That's why they're paying any price for it, Right. Right now is to just get it on the pad. So I guess that's tried to be the 30,000 foot up view, if that helps.

[Matt]

Stay at 30,000ft with me for a second. You also have been flagging some stories on the bank of Japan and trying to normalize rates. While I think this expression was the FX market is shoveling yen into the furnace. Why is, why is that important?

[Tony Greer]

Well, there's a period where, you know, dollar yen went berserk right up to 1:45, 1:50. And so they were trying to keep rates steady. And the market, I feel like a little bit, and I could be a little bit off on this, but the market was kind of reacting to that by, by selling the currency. Right? And that was one of the international flags that you had to wake up in the morning and look for and say, okay, what's, how bad is Japan burning this morning? Or as their currency burning, then the bond vigilantes I guess picked up on it, right, and, and said that, okay, we're, we're going to see inflation down the road. At some point we're going to need to get rates off the zero boundary. So now rates are rifling higher in Japan. Any international bond market breaking down like that to me is just a glaring credibility issue. And what's going to be the benefactor of weakening credibility? Gold. Right? There's nobody, there's nobody controls it that can screw it up. So I feel like that that was a kind of direct linear thing where, you know, Japan bond market lower, okay, Gold higher. Okay, I get that. And then we broke through 2% where if you do a little charting homework and look at Japan's yields, like 2%'s been the top of the range and through there it's like, look out because there's no resistance till 6%. If you remember how hard rates came off in Japan in the late 90s, et cetera. So now we're coming out of that vacuum where Japan kept rates, you know, artificially low forever. And now the market is coming back to say no, we're going to keep you honest here. There's no way you're keeping rates at zero with this going on in the currency market. There's no way that, that the reflection of that into the precious metals market has been astounding and that that problem has not gone away for Japan. Right. It's like the, the bond market is not done selling off and it looks like there's a lot room for rates to go a lot higher very fast. That's going to be really bullish gold to me. That's why gold can't even graze a moving average. On the downside, you know, it's like every morning it's like yen rates are higher and people are like, okay, this is going to be bad for Japan. And it's all the flow is going into gold to reflect that. All the other central banks are buying it. Yeah, right. That, that trend being like, okay, we don't want to get burned with all these treasuries. We're going to sell some of those, buy gold. That's been going on for a decade.

[Matt]

And the nuance here of it being a bigger than, like this is, this is bigger than a U. S situation.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah.

[Matt]

This is another layer of it on the international stage of if globalization is coming down, breaking down whatever label you want to put on it.

[Tony Greer]

That's right.

[Matt]

The JGBs are moving just as much as anything else here.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, it totally fits in with the, with the breaking down of globalism in the old system. You know, like Japan was kind of the front, the front runner to find all that success, you know. And then we realized that they had to print all the money to keep their economy floating along.

[Matt]

Give me just a little bit more on expanding out inside of precious metals, especially for people who don't normally touch this stuff. I mean you've talked platinum, you've talked silver, you've talked palladium, you've talked gold. How do we understand the whole space? Give me some nuance between people thinking about investing in trading and either direct stuff via ETFs, maybe the commodity, who knows versus producers.

[Tony Greer]

So a lot of stuff to think about if you want to invest in metals. Obviously. Right. I, I feel like, and I felt like the trade is gold. Gold is the expression of fiat currency losing purchasing power. That's kind of almost like linear. So to me the trade is a little bit of a one trick pony. And even though the other metals are going to work, I'm most comfortable really staying in gold and gold miners. So the reason for that is that like silver to me is still part precious and part base metal. And I know that that silver can go. And I'm, I'm in it. But the most important thing is kind of to be in those two, right? Platinum and palladium. Like, I've got news for people. These are much harder to trade vehicles than they look like right now. Right now they're bull markets making anybody that bought some look smart, you know, and they're just really, really difficult. There's a lot of dynamic, there's a lot of global dynamics that go into the trading of platinum and palladium. And it's been easy to, to go in and buy those. I haven't been telling my clients to go rush into that. I, I'd rather just buy more gold and silver because I feel like people, there's going to be a reckoning in PGMs where they're very headline susceptible, you know what I mean? If a government decides they have to make platinum cheaper, they'll just put out some kind of a headline or they'll, you know, they'll constrict this, they'll make a law about that and, and they'll get their way. I do believe that there's a structural deficit there, but I just think that those are too complicated to invest in. If you want to just keep it to the gold and gold miners. Gold silver and gold and silver miners. I feel like there's clarity there. I feel like that's a lot more transparent market. It's kind of like comparing matt gold miners to your. It's like comparing trading gold to trading uranium. Gold is super transparent. I can look at physical gold trading and get a feel. I can go to the exchange data and learn everything I need to learn about gold. Lease rates with a market condition is everything uranium. There's like two websites on the Internet that show you what the price of uranium is and that's like it. You know what I mean? And I'm sure there's a little bit more of that for the uranium experts. But it's not like trading a WTI contract, right, where I can look at the calendar spreads, I can look at it versus the products. I can look at the crack spreads and see, you know, get a relative strength thing that's, that's the same as platinum and palladium versus gold and silver. It's really, it's very much controlled by the cartels that are really trafficking in it. And so I don't think that it's a safe place for retail capital. Right I think it's a little bit of a better story in copper because I believe in the economic growth tailwinds for copper and the deficit story. So there's a little bit at least worth chasing down there on a supply demand side. And you know, you can buy simple things like Freeport, Mac Moran and have all the exposure to copper that you want. You can buy the Copex, right, The Copper Miners etf and you're covered. So that's kind of the way that I'm looking at it and keeping it really simple. Even though there's nuance inside the metals trade, you gotta have some component of metal, physical metal, you gotta have some component of exposure to the ETFs and you gotta have some component of exposure to this, to the mines. And then I don't need to go and chase platinum and palladium down. Those could be a sideshow for me.

[Matt]

Shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way.

[Tony Greer]

Stitch Fix online personal styling makes it easy.

[Matt]

I just give my stylist my size, style and budget preferences. I order boxes when I want and how I want, no subscription required.

[Tony Greer]

And he sends just for me pieces.

[Matt]

Plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep what works and send back the rest. It's so easy. Make style easy. Get started today@stitch fix.com Spotify. That's stitchfix.com Spotify. Oh, such a clutch.

[Tony Greer]

Off season pickup, Dave.

[Matt]

I was worried we'd bring back the same team.

[Tony Greer]

I meant those blackout motorized shades. Lines.com made it crazy, if affordable to replace our old blinds.

[Matt]

Hard to install.

[Tony Greer]

No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install hall of fame son.

[Matt]

They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world.

[Tony Greer]

Blinds.com is the goat shop.

[Matt]

Up to 40 off site wide, plus an extra 10 off every order. And a free professional measure happening right [e-mail] stick with copper then for a second longer. Are we going to start seeing headlines? Because we're already seeing some of them. Is. Is Nvidia gonna go bid on a Freeport? Is Microsoft going to go after Peabody? Is Oracle gonna go for Southern Copper? How do we think about. First off, tell us what's actually going on there and then tell us about some of these moves in copper. Specifically.

[Tony Greer]

Who was it that just signed the deal?

[Matt]

Amazon Rio Tintos.

[Tony Greer]

Amazon Rio. Okay. Right. Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. So that's the beginning of collaboration to address data center power and what is going to be, you know, a very sought after period for natural resources. So they decided to just cut out all the middlemen and partner with the effing mind pulling metal out of the ground and at some capacity. You know, I don't know all the details of it, but that's who they're going to buy their metal from, that's going to go into their production of. I guess it's related to data center construction, things like that. I mean, it seems like there's room for a hell of a lot more of that to happen as we, you know, first of all, broadly, as the US tries to onshore and secure our entire supply chain, you would think that now, you know, the heads of the big, big tech companies are like, oh, how do I secure my supply chain? And so I think that that's the thinking that we're going to see a lot more of. And so it definitely feels like Amazon and Rio is the tip of an iceberg, you know, or at least the beginning of a trend where, you know, if I'm, if I'm a CEO of another tech company and I know that I've got the same constraints as, as Jeff Bezos and he goes in partners with a mine, I know that I'm in motion looking for what mine I should partner with or at least that changes my thinking, changes my thinking dramatically to there's the, there's the market leader going running 100 yards of everybody else. I better catch up somehow. So that's what I think is probably going on in boardrooms right now. You know what I mean? Like, who are we buying this year? Like we need, we've got all these energy costs, we've got these natural resources demands. Like let's, let's make sure some of it is going to be there when we look for it. You know, that kind of thing.

[Matt]

So, and this was interesting, and this is coming straight out of the Navigator from your newsletter too, is like looking at that rotation, literally tech companies saying we're going to exchange basically like equity capital, we're going to take cash on the books, we're going to take profits and we're going to go buy this sector. That's kind of a crazy thing to wrap your brain about. That corporate strategy is echoing this theme too.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, it is. And I'm definitely not smart enough to figure it out or know who's going to pair with next. But I know that my head is on a swivel for, you know, who it's going to be while, you know, against the backdrop is trying to see what the catalyst that pops the AI bubble is, you know, because I think that that's going to be a kind of sloppy sell off. That the question then is going to be where does the money go? That's, that's the million dollar question in the markets right now. Because obviously this tech is confirming the idea that it's going to underperform natural resources and cyclicals are confirming the idea that they are going to perform so that it just leads me to believe that if there's a lot of money going to be going into that stuff, that some more is going to be coming out of this tech stuff. And then the question is going to be when Nvidia, Google, Apple, Microsoft and intel are down 10% three weeks in a row, is that going to completely topple the S and P or is the money just going to say we're done with tech, we're going into cyclicals, metals and mining. I don't know if you guys got the memo. And the S and P kind of grinds sideways to higher while the AI trade kind of falls apart a little. You know, I'm sure it's going to put downward pressure on it but I honestly if I had a bet right now, I don't think that. I think that that can be a fairly ring fenced sell off and it doesn't have to be an all asset class, you know, disaster for the risk trade.

[Matt]

Well and interestingly enough we've kind of seen that in the last two years. I feel like we saw Nvidia being way out ahead two years ago. Last year we saw one or two of the Mag 7 actually putting up returns at or above. I think Google was above the S&P 500 for performance. Everybody else lagged. Yeah, and so that's not. Those types of rotations can come without crashes.

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That fair point. I mean you just pointed it out so it can happen. You know, maybe not all of mag7 can go back down big at once with the S and P holding up, but I have to believe that money that comes out of that is going to be anxiously looking to go into the metals and mining trade or at least into some form of the debasement trade. Whether you pick gold, metals and mining or some people are picking bitcoin. I, I specifically am not, but that's a different story altogether.

[Matt]

I'm curious just how you're using them. You've commented them on them here and there, but poly market prediction markets, how are you thinking about these and the role in useful information versus noise.

[Tony Greer]

You got to have an eye on them, man. You know, I think you got to have an eye on them. Shane Copeland, the young man that started that business, is onto something that's for sure. You know, like, you think about what they could replace, and it's like they could replace Vegas, you know what I mean? Like, I'm sure the Vegas lobbyists are out there trying to figure out what to do if everything just becomes a poly market bet. Right? You know, so that, that's, that's one thing. And then there's effect on markets. It's really useful to have an unknown in the market that you can go to Poly Market and get a handicap for or at least see where the market on that is. You know what I mean? You get, it's an, it's, it's literally a layer of decision making clarity that Shane Copeland came up with creating. And so you can't, you can't discount the value of that at all.

[Matt]

I feel like you intuit this a little bit differently, which is part of why I'm following up on this exact point. You trading desk background, being able to like check a market besides what you see on the screens, like actually feel for things. I feel like that's the way somebody like you looks at Poly Market. It's a different type of sentiment check than the way. Okay, yeah, explain though, Walk me, walk me through what's going in your brain when you're looking at, looking at it.

[Tony Greer]

So here, here's a good example of a great use case for polymarket, right? I've got a buddy of mine calls me up two weeks ago and he's like, hey, Tone, you know, you've been bullish and right, and stuff like that. And you know, I got, I got a friend of mine here that thinks that Supreme Court is going to strike down Trump tariffs. You know, like, what do you think that means for the market? And at first I was like that, I don't know. I don't know if that, that's a popular narrative. At least it's not a popular narrative now. So let me go, let me go do some homework and see if you know what's going to transpire here. So what do I do? Go to polymarket. What are the odds Trump's, you know, and there's an answer there. And so the end, there's value in the answer. So the answer that will the Supreme Court uphold Trump tariffs? And that's how it's phrased there because it's trading at a Low number, it's trading 30%. So saying that there's only a 30% chance that the Supreme Court is going to uphold them, meaning a 70% chance that they're going to strike them down. So now knowing that markets are, number one, a discounting mechanism and that two, the market knows what. Polymarket has thought of this for months now. It's already priced in. If the Supreme Court is going to strike down the Trump tariffs, the market knows it. You know what I mean? So before there being a read on polymarket, it would just be people making their best guess. But now that that's institutionalized, it becomes trading information or at least a way to handicap your, your, your bet.

[Matt]

That idea of a, of a handicapping mechanism because it's a way of seeing what's baked in, I think of that old, like value investor terminology of like what's already baked into the price, what are the assumptions that are already reflected and polymarket being part of that. Let's see what some of the ingredients already are, not just the, oh, crap. If nobody knows this and you're the first person to put it in front of me, what's this mean?

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it kind of smooths out like headline risk quite a bit because it gives people a way to think about things and position for them ahead of time. And it's not a binary change when more news comes out. It's just a little bit of a, oh, now it's 45%. It's like, oh, okay, I have to adjust my thinking a little bit for this.

[Matt]

I like that perspective on it a lot. What about financials? Because I think this is another sector in the mix of this whole thing that feels extra, extra messy. And I'll actually, I want to draw back to that point I was making before about real estate too. There was that point in time when financials were 20% of the index. They were the most important thing and they were this huge deal in that 2006 ish era or whenever their percentage of S and P peaked and like the world almost ended for a couple of years there. But it's interesting watching us work through that. I'm curious where you think financials are right now.

[Tony Greer]

So I'm concerned about them a little bit. You know, they're down on the year. They've been kind of cast aside away from the cyclical trade, which they're usually leaders of. Yeah, right. So that's a, that's a problem. Whether I like it or not. I wanted to like financials because I was really impressed with the performance of Goldman Sachs and American Express and Morgan Stanley and thinking that they're, you know, going to do great in the Trump economy, etc. And then Trump comes out with a headline about cap and interest rates and all of a sudden they reprice lower, right? So it's now a tug of war between were they in a secular rally and this is just a headline that, you know, changes the, the trajectory of the trend a little bit or is it something where this sector is going to lag and Trump's going to keep leaning on them until there's less and less interest rate, you know, fraud or call it usury, because it gets a little egregious, right? There's they pay a 2%, they charge you 20 kind of thing. So if he decides to get a bug up his ass about that, you know, then, then, then there's that risk on the table if you go buy them cheap. So it became something where I'm not a good enough financials trader or prognosticator to say, let's just observe for now, you know what I mean? Like, I was getting really positive about all the effects that AI was going to have for investment banks and trading desks and think about that and you're like, oh my God, they're going to save so much money. They're, it's going to help them make money in so many ways. I get why they are going up with the AI trade. And then Trump just pissed all over the rally with a headline that I can't really figure out.

[Matt]

Another one that's interesting that you've commented on is the airlines. What do you think's going on with the airlines? Because this is not one that I was even really thinking strongly about, except you've been writing about it.

[Tony Greer]

So I, there's something there, there's something that has to do with their strength due to, you know, cheap jet fuel right now. And on the horizon in the near term, horizon, definitely a positive. We've got Trump waving the idea of monetary stimulus around, right? Hey, you know, the tariffs, we're gonna, he just said it today. If like the Trump, if the court lets him keep the tariffs, he's going to send a checkout, right? So now we're doing monetary stimmy in an economy that's not really that bad overall, but the people that get the stimmy are going to be helped. And my idea is that like, no exaggeration, people may take more vacations under Trump. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like have their I don't know. I have this idea where it frees up retail at some level, better economy, cheap gas prices, you know, flights being as accessible as ever, and the need for more business travel. You know what I mean? Just like a general economic boom. It just kind of fits the cyclical picture for me. I love the idea of cheap jet fuel with Trump wanting to get oil and energy prices lower, has the tailwinds for that sector. You know, it's just kind of a thing that more showed up on the charts for me, Matt, and started performing. And I'm kind of forcing myself to figure it out why I'm along the way. But it's one of those things where I can see what's going on. I could see them saying something and then they can break a technical level and I can get in. And it's still early enough that, like, I don't know if the whole jig is up on why they're even rallying yet.

[Matt]

Yeah, it's, it's really interesting because it's not a space where people are talking about the economics, the advantages, but all of a sudden it's, it's moving and that's.

[Tony Greer]

Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that makes me kind of sit up in my chair. You know, there's no, like, bullish headline. There's no bullish airline narrative out there. There's no, like big consolidation or cutting fees or whatever. It's just like, wow, the freaking stocks are ripping here. You know, earnings have been better across the board in a couple of different ways, but I just think it could be one of those sneaky sectors like home construction that, that hasn't really been performing for years. But if the retail consumer can maybe one get another basis point of confidence in the, you know, American institutions that he's reporting to, so to speak, at the end of the day that, you know, maybe that kind of filters into it. I try to think of what the cultural, you know, the bigger picture, cultural impact might be, you know, and I feel like there was a lot of, A lot of danger mongering about, you know, migration in the big city, immigration in big cities and the open border under Biden and high crime and rising crime. And now under Trump, like, if you look at what he did to D.C. right? He talked about it in the, in the thing yesterday at the World Financial Conference. I think it was cheap energy prices that he talked about it again. He talked about, you know, kind of bragging about the oil from Venezuela is coming online and things like that. So that, that is one of the things that goes into the airline idea.

[Matt]

So beyond the big idea of cheap energy transitions to more consumption, I'm going to take it all the way back to the beginning. Loss of faith in institutions, all sorts of decay. Despite these policies that are seemingly helping out run some of these sectors of the economy higher. What do you look at and think if, if something's going to go wrong against me, where's it going to show up? How are you going to know that you're, that your thesis is wrong here and that you got to make a change again because you've done this in the past. And that's part of what I'm watching you for.

[Tony Greer]

Dislocating bond market will have me sitting up in my chair selling stock, meaning a dislocating bond market lower, which would mean a bond market that is pricing in inflation. That may not necessarily be wildly apparent yet. Or either that or we get some headline numbers that are way above expectations which I'm not really seeing with oil at 60 bucks and gas at $3, you know what I mean? Like we're not eating gold and silver, you know what I mean? That's where, that's where the most of the appreciation is, that kind of thing.

[Matt]

Anything else that you could see that would be telling you besides so rates up, what else would possibly tell you there's something wrong with the thesis or something, Something's cracking here and who knows, maybe it's the AI bubbles not done yet. Like what, what other things could we watch?

[Tony Greer]

Yeah, you know, I think it's, it's, it's if, if trends start to break, you know, like, like that'll be, that'll be a tell. And that's just my answer. My answer is being price will let us know essentially, you know, and you'll see things like, you'll see. So right now what's going on is like metals and mining is getting way ahead of the metals trade. You'll see things like gold continuing to rally and then all of a sudden gold miners will be flat on a weekly, monthly and then a quarterly basis while gold is rallying. And that, that will be like the end of that rally or for the short term, you know what I mean? Then there'll be a sell off in gold miners and you'll be like, okay, this is what I have to look out for, right? When the chart curls, I have to make sure that I make a sale and get out. So there's going to be a point. But I mean as long as this trend is intact with its chest out and by meaning with its chest out, I mean that it's doing everything that you could want the bull market to do and it's not letting you down. You know, when you're in a bull market, you're looking to get confidence to buy dips and then all of a sudden to be sticking bids into a market that's backing off and then being in the money two days later. Big. That's what big bull markets reward you with. And that's been working and it's still working. So until you buy this little pullback in gold miners and get run over or buy the little pullback goal to get run over, then you got a problem. But this might go on for five years where we can buy the pullback and and stay positioned for the whole thing. So that's kind of how I look at it.

[Matt]

Tony, if people want to find more of your work, they want to find you on the Internet. Where should they look you up?

[Tony Greer]

My website is tgmacro.com my Twitter handle is @tg macro. You can email me at tony@tg macro if you want to find me at a. I trust all of your readers to be constructive with anything they're looking for. And that's it. There are samples of my work on my website and you can listen to me and Jared Dillian in the Macro Dirt Dual podcast or you can come to my conference in Nashville February 19th and 20th at the Virgin Hotel. It's going to be amazing.

[Matt]

Sounds fantastic. You get to support those airline prices too, which, you know, it's a win. Win.

[Tony Greer]

Exactly. I'm flying up from Puerto Rico from everywhere, man. Like, I'm all in on that.

[Matt]

It's a beautiful thing. I want to encourage people. If you're watching this, check out Tony's stuff. Even if you're a longer term investor, somebody who can actually highlight when these shifts are happening and highlight stuff below the headlines is infinitely valuable. Tony, thank you so much for coming on Excess Returns.

[Tony Greer]

You are the best. Matt, thanks for having me.

[Matt]

Thank you for tuning in to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting and valuable, please subscribe on your favorite audio platform or on YouTube. You can also follow all the podcasts in the Excess returns [e-mail] if you have any feedback or questions, you can contact [e-mail] no information on this podcast should should be construed as investment advice.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Securities discussed in the podcast may be.

[Matt]

Holdings of the firms of the hosts. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

So here's the idea.

[Matt]

You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.

[Tony Greer]

What do you have to lose?

[Matt]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms or their clients.