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- [00:00]
A
What's up guys? On this episode of Full Signal, I'm very excited to share. We have Anthony Pompliano, the CEO of Pro Cap Financial. And we get into bitcoin, what it's doing this year, what the macro outlook is, how the labor market has changed and how young people can get jobs using AI and upskilling with this new technology. This is a fantastic conversation. I think you're going to love it. Pomp, it's great to see you. The thing we have to talk about is bitcoin. It's gone the opposite direction of gold to start the year. And, and I think especially with the geopolitical shocks we've had that surprised a lot of people. How are you thinking about this?
- [00:35]
B
Well, I think that bitcoin is a forward looking asset and deflation is the bigger risk than inflation right now. And so all the gold bugs, they should be taking their victory lap. Congratulations to all of them. It's about time that the dumb rock actually moved. It's been a long, long time since they got any sort of return, but they're celebrating a 70% move in a single year. Bitcoin for the last decade has been compound annual growth rate has been 70 plus percent. And so Bitcoiners are used to win. Gold bugs are just now getting a reminder that they could be winning. But I don't think that the victory lap will be very long. You know, it's kind of like a professional sport. You can win the championship one year, but then next year everyone starts off zero and zero. And so I think gold will do just fine. I'm not a hater of gold. I like to, you know, mess with the gold bugs a little bit. They can take it, they're big boys. But at the same time, I do think that bitcoin will outperform over the next decade or so. And so the beauty of finance is you can just put both in your portfolio, right? You can own a little bit of gold, you can own a lot of bitcoin, you can just chill. And I think that both gold and bitcoin are going to do very, very well moving forward. And bitcoin will likely outperform.
- [01:40]
A
What do you make of the rumors that Jane street was manipulating the bitcoin price?
- [01:46]
B
I have no clue, right. I don't know anything about that. I think when you look at all of these hedge funds, what people usually don't understand is there are many teams inside of these hedge funds. They're all having different strategies. Sometimes they are taking different sides of the Same trade, right. So really I think is this element where online, especially on, you know, X, people want to have a black and white narrative. It's one firm. Bitcoin is a trillion and a half dollar market cap. The odds that any one organization, let alone multiple organizations together are able to go and do anything is very, very low. And so my guess is that there are a lot of different market participants. They're all trading very differently. And ultimately that is what is determining what the price of bitcoin is. And I see that, you know, last year in 2025, one of the interesting data points is that there was a lot of individuals that were selling bitcoin, but businesses, hedge funds, ETF holder, they were all buying it. And so this idea of the shift from the whales, the OGs, the long term bitcoin holders to more of an institutional crowd is natural. The asset is bigger. You should expect the returns to not be as explosive in the future because volatility is dampening. So just, you know, this is a maturation process. It's kind of like when your kid, you know, stops pooping in his pants, now he's potty trained, everyone relax. You know, the bitcoiners are growing up a little bit and I think that bitcoin will actually end up being much better for it over the long run.
- [03:19]
A
Okay, I think that's all fair. The day that that report came out a few, maybe a week ago that Jane street was potentially moving prices, so many people were pointing to the bitcoin chart and saying this is why it's going up today, because they just stopped. Which I think it's too liquid of an asset, frankly, for again, one shop to make a difference. Let me ask you about the jobs data we got in February. We lost 92,000 jobs according to the government, which probably can get revised down the line. We've also seen a bunch of job cuts From Meta, Amazon, FedEx, there's some other companies in there. How are you thinking about the labor market right now?
- [03:59]
B
Well, the labor market is telling us that AI is real. That's the end result. And people don't like that. But the reason why it's confusing to a lot of people is that the labor market used to be a great signal for the strength of the US economy. And if we were creating jobs, it meant that there was growth. Well, now what we're seeing is we're seeing productivity rise, we're seeing profits of companies rise, but we're seeing them do it with less employees. So if you're looking at the labor market maybe. Actually the fact that we're losing jobs in the economy, but GDP is still going up and company profits are still going up, means that it's becoming more efficient. Now if we're getting efficiency, that usually leads to much better prices on stocks, companies are more valuable, et cetera. What it is not good for is the people who are looking for jobs. So again, this kind of K shaped economy, we also have a K shaped story when it comes to labor, where the companies are getting better, but the labor market is actually becoming weaker. And so what that ultimately begs the question for is what are those people going to do? Right? And if you saw the recent labor chart that came out from Anthropic, the AI abilities is pretty much all in white label jobs. And so white collar, white labor type jobs, those individual roles, they're the most under pressure. If AI can do your job better than it can do other things, people are going to go and use it in those areas. And so whether it's office and admin work, whether it's software engineering, et cetera. Now the beauty is that the bifurcation in these jobs is not only going to be, oh, office, admin work, or, you know, or you have a job, it's going to be, do you know how to use this technology? So think inside of an organization right? Now, if you're a young person who knows how to use AI, you're irreplaceable. No one's getting rid of you because most of the other people at the firm don't know how to use this technology. Right? It's kind of like if you're the only person back in the day who knew how to log onto the Internet and the firm wanted to use the Internet, you're safe, right? It was the people who didn't know anything about the Internet. They were in a bad spot. Same thing now. So I think that there's, you know, kind of, again, people want black and white stories. It's very gray and there's a lot of detail and nuance here. Now, in terms of the labor market, I think what the labor market is telling. The Fed cut rates and we could talk about this till I'm blue in the face. The Fed has got to be one of two things. Either they are not competent at their job, which I believe them to be, smart, intelligent, hardworking people, or there is political bias in the process. I do not believe that the Federal Reserve, with how smart those people are, how long they've been doing this, are not able to see that higher Interest rates are hurting the US Economy. That higher interest rates are helping to weaken the labor market, that higher interest rates are not needed because inflation is not a concern. So the only thing, it's kind of like, you know, Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is probably the most obvious. Why are they not cutting rates? I have not heard a single good argument. There's not one reason why rates should not be 100 basis points lower. The only thing you can conclude is that they are doing it for non economic reasons. What would be the only non economic reason? Politics. And whether people like that or they don't like it, I don't care who the President United States is. Both Presidents Biden and Trump have both tried to pressure the Federal Reserve to do things. Trump does it online, he tweets at them, he does the pressure campaigns, et cetera. Biden, he called Powell into his office like he was the principal, called him in and said, hey, inflation's way too high. What are you doing? You're behind the curve. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter, right? So like both parties do this. This is not a right or left thing. It is just the Federal Reserve. The only way that you cannot be cutting rates right now is that there is political bias in the process. Because truflation is telling you that inflation is low. The government data is telling you that inflation is falling. Even if you take the government data and say, hey, look, this is exactly what the actual inflation date is, which is not, let's say it is. It's 2.4% in falling, your labor market is weakening, inflation is under control, and you have a weakening labor market. You are failing at one of your two mandates. If you're failing at one of your two mandates, rates should be lower. There's no good reason for them to have rates where they are. And so I think that's really the story here, is that AI, robotics, tariffs and deportations are all deflationary forces. The biggest risk in the US Economy right now is deflation, not inflation. We already see in the truflation data housing, food, a couple of other sectors are deflationary. They're negative. Housing in America over the last year is down 1.5%. People can say, oh, it feels expensive, of course, because prices are still high, but it's down one and a half percent. So if we have deflation showing up in certain parts of the economy, what should you do? You got to stimulate economic activity. How do you stimulate? Use stimulus, cut rates and print money. And so I just think that they're completely behind the wheel, I think, or behind the curve. I think that they are absolutely out of their minds. And I think that once he leaves, you're going to see rate cuts way more than people expect. And I think it'll be good for the economy.
- [09:23]
A
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- [11:00]
B
Not going to matter.
- [11:01]
A
Why?
- [11:03]
B
Deportations, tariffs. AI and robotics are so deflationary that the US Government could print twice as much money as they're printing right now, and it still will not overcome the deflationary pressure. Look at what is happening in the US Economy. All anyone is talking about is AI. It is infiltrating everywhere. And what are you seeing? Entry level jobs down. What are you seeing? Lemonade is cutting the car insurance 50%. We're not talking about, oh, you get a 2 or 3% break. This isn't like a rebate. This isn't like, oh, get some airline miles to make you, you know, get a new credit card. We're Talking about a 50% drop in your car insurance if you use AI and robotics to drive you down the street. Well, if Lemonade's doing it, guess what? In five Years, everyone's going to be doing it. And so it goes sector by sector by sector. AI and robotics is so deflationary. We had a negative 2 million migration in America last year. Do you think it's going to be higher or lower this year? Probably higher. Okay, what about tariffs? He's increasing the total tariff from 10 to 15%. So you look at all this stuff, they could print two times more money and it will not matter. So you look at it. Okay, what did oil prices do? Everyone says oil prices went up. Technically they went up, but they didn't go up nearly as much as everyone thought they were going to go up. If I told you that the United States is going to start bombing Iran and the straight or hormones is going to come under pressure and people are going to be able to go through that, what would you expect? You just expect $150 oil price, was it sitting at 70? Right. Like, it's like a increase of the oil price for ants. We brought the price of gas in this country from $3.50 to like 2 bucks. So if we give up 25 cents back, do is that feel good for people? Absolutely not. But let's all keep it here. You know, in, in context, going from two to 2:25, when we were at 352 years ago or three years ago, we're still winning. And so I think that that is what people lose sight of here is, yes, is oil prices going up have some sort of inflationary effect in the economy? Of course, but it's a complex economic machine. And these other things are so deflationary that it does not matter. And so why isn't oil prices at 150? Well, because the United States is the gangsters of the world and they've got the control on oil. We're a net exporter, we've got Venezuela's oil. And it doesn't matter what's going on in Iran at the moment, because we've got a way to offset that. And so you just look at all these things. I just think people are so. People are like begging for inflation. Like the academics, the hedge fund managers, all this stuff nobody wants to admit. If you're in the finance world, you may have a tough time for the next couple of years. Because if deflation is real, guess what? Your portfolio gets smacked around. It is not up into the right. Everyone loved when inflation was 9%. If you were an investor because it was making you rich, you thought you were a genius. If deflation or disinflationary forces are Real, you got to think now, you got to be a good investor, you got to figure out where is their opportunity. You got to try to find the things that are non consensus. Now go back to the inflation thing, that was way easier, right? Just anything you bought went up. And so I think that's part of the conversation. Nobody wants to admit things are going to get way harder now because software stocks, revenues up, profits are up, but stocks are down. My professor in college didn't tell me that. How does that work? So it's all going to get more, much more difficult. That's why people want inflation. They're begging for it because they want to make it easy for themselves. It ain't going to happen though.
- [14:45]
A
Why do you think that the consensus view on let's say the macro and inflation is so different than what you're looking at? Like are you looking at different data or you think you just are seeing something that people are ignoring?
- [15:02]
B
If we did a line of people in finance and we had them all, we'll just one by one come sit down. I could probably ask them two or three questions and you would very quickly realize they have no clue what they're talking about because all they do is they just regurgitate the points that they read in the mainstream media. So if I asked them, are tariffs inflationary or deflationary? 99% of them will say it's inflationary, say, Great, why in 2018 then the items that we tariffed, why the prices go down instead of up in 2018? What products do we tariff? And so again, it goes back to, I'm not saying that I am smarter than anybody else, actually. In fact, I would argue that because I am not smarter than them, I've had to go and do an immense amount of work and look at the source material and really understand this stuff. Right? I recently tweeted, I said, look, I was not alive for the Brenton words agreement. It's not alive for World War I, it's not alive for World War II. I was not alive when we went off the gold standard. I was not around paying attention in any real way. When it came to Long Term Capital Management, the dot com boom, I was more worried about what was going on in middle school than what was going on in the tech industry. 9, 11. I literally watched in 8th grade on a TV in the classroom, right? All those things. The stock market was a foreign concept. I didn't know what that was. You might have been talking about Mars or Venus. So now I got to go figure out, well, what the heck happened in all those things? Got to go read, you got to go learn, you got to go do this stuff. So it goes back to the reason why I have said since very beginning the tariffs are deflationary, not inflationary. It's not because I've got some genius idea. I just went and looked in history, and every time the tariffs were deflationary, why, guess what? I was the guy. I don't understand why I thought they were supposed to be inflationary. You're raising. And as I looked more and more, I realized, wait a second. It shifts demand patterns from the consumer and domestic manufacturing increases for the goods that can be produced domestically, and that drives prices down. That's counterintuitive. If you go and you look now at jobs or any of this stuff, I speak to a lot of investors. There are people in venture capital in Silicon Valley and there are people on Wall street and hedge funds. If I. I'll give you a good example. We have a company called Sylvia, right? If I go tell somebody in Silicon Valley about Sylvia, guess the first thing they do, they go to the website, they sign up and start using the product. They almost never ask me any financial question about the product. How much does it cost, how much revenue, what are the expenses? That is nowhere anywhere in their mind. What they want to know is how does the product work, what problem does it solve, how many people are using it, all that kind of stuff on Wall street, exact opposite. They don't even know what the website is. They just want to see. Show me a spreadsheet. Both of those are extremes of, I think that very good investors exist. Being able to do the center, the centrist. You gotta understand the finances, you gotta understand the products, services, industry trends, et cetera. If you can sit in the middle, that's the best. Stanley Druckenmiller recently gave an interview. Morgan Stanley. And in it he said some things that I think really surprised people. He said he bought Nvidia. He didn't know anything about Nvidia. People are like, what are you talking about? He previously said that he heard a speech from Javier Milei down in Argentina. And as he heard the speech, he went on perplexity and just typed in, what are the five most liquid Argentinian adrs? And he just bought them. He didn't know anything about him. That's the best investor in the macro economy in 30 years. He's telling you he doesn't even understand the nuances. He's not doing discounted cash flow modeling. He's looking at macro Trends. And he's understanding momentum, he's understanding capital flows and all this stuff. And so there's a lot of ways to make money. But I think that the reason why you get consensus is because there's a lot of people who don't think for themselves. That's why you get consensus. And then I think that the media tends to parrot the academic viewpoint and what we are learning again, if we strike Iran, we struck one target for every three minutes for four days. 2,000 targets in four days. Oil should be at 150. Why is it sitting at 70? I gotta think for myself. Maybe actually it's because we have all this other oil. Very counterintuitive. And so I think that people just gotta understand the world's moving very quickly. It's very dynamic. And the things that you believe, you should double check. Including myself, sometimes I believe things and I realize that that's actually not right.
- [19:40]
A
Real quick, we'll get right back to the interview. Just wanted to pop in and say, if you like this content, I write a newsletter every single morning called Opening Bell Daily. I cover macro, the stock market, asset price, why things are going up, why they're going down. And if you want to get that for free, you can sign up at the link in the description. Let's get back to the interview. Man, I don't even know how to follow that up. All the questions I wanted to ask you are suddenly out the window. Okay, let me ask you before I let you go here, Pomp. If you're a young person, let's say you're graduating college and you're looking at all these headlines about jobs are disappearing, right? Companies are doing layoffs. How would you go about trying to get a job in one of these, let's say, a major corporation?
- [20:28]
B
It's a jump ball. That's what's going on in tech and finance right now. You know, a jump ball, like in basketball, you know, two guys dive on the floor, they both grab the ball. They say, jump ball. You go, hey. It's just. They're gonna throw the ball up. Who gets it. That's what's going on right now. So if you're a young person, guess what? You know how you make sure that you're a little bit taller? Got a little bit higher? Vert. You got to understand how to use AI. That's your advantage, right? I have a friend right now, they recently left their job. They're starting a new job June 1st. I told this friend, I am jealous of you. I'm envious of you. They say that that's a sin. I shouldn't be envious, but I am envious of you because you have 3ish months of free time to go dedicated to learn something that is probably going to change the world in a way that all of us are underestimating. Well, guess what? If you're a young person, what do you got? You got free time. You don't got a wife or a husband, you don't got kids, you don't got responsibilities. You can spend 100% of your time learning this stuff. If you can do that and you are curious and you have some sort of like self starter approach, you're going to be unstoppable. Because now these kids who understand this technology, they have thousands, they have armies of digital employees that are working for them. How do you compete with that? It's impossible. And so I think that's the number one thing is forget about a job or how you're gonna make money, all this stuff. Get the skills. Once you get the skills, then you got optionality because you can go and you can do something yourself. You can go and you can do like service based, teach other people how to incorporate this into their business. You can go work at one company and go and apply it. You can go and you can try to teach other people. You have all these options, but if you don't have this skill, then you're just in line with everybody else, right? So it's like I always think about if you go and pick up the skills of AI, right now you're in the VIP line. Everyone else is in the GA line. Don't be in the GA line, be in the VIP line. It's faster, it's cooler, you probably meet cooler people, all that stuff. Get in the VIP line. So I think that's the number one thing is go pick up the skills. And the beauty of this is all free on the Internet. And so I think that that is probably the single thing that everyone I talk to is like, I'm looking for a job. This is what I just ask. I said, what can you teach me about AI? And they're like, I said, listen, think about crazy. This is. You're 21, 22, 23, 25 years old. I'm older, I'm getting to the age where I don't even want to say my age anymore. How is it that I know more about this than you do? I got multiple jobs, I got all this stuff I got going on. How do I know more about this than you do? There's no way in the world that should happen. So if you walk into a job interview and the person that's interviewing knows more than you do, what's the purpose of you getting a job there?
- [23:10]
A
That is. That's very sage advice, and I'm certainly working as much as I can to learn.
- [23:17]
B
You got a job, Phil.
- [23:18]
A
While I'm trying to skill up, you know, because all the things I'm doing, I'm like, wow, this could all be automated tomorrow if the right technology comes out. So I'm trying to keep ahead. Pomp, I really appreciate you coming on the show, and we'll do it again soon.
- [23:32]
B
You got it, Phil.