Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:08]
A
This is Macro Voices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high net worth individuals, family offices and other sophisticated investors. Macro Voices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics, telling it like it is bullish or bearish. No holds barred. Now here are your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Seresna.
- [00:33]
B
Macro voices Episode 536 was produced on June 11, 2026. I'm Eric Townsend. The Strait of Hormuz crisis escalated this week with President Trump's anticipated signing of a peace deal early this week, now a forgotten memory. Meanwhile, the stock market took an abrupt turn lower last Friday and the selling continued on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Is this just a routine pullback to the 50 day moving average or is it the start of something much bigger? To try to answer that question and several more, we're bringing back best selling author and Bear Traps report founder Larry McDonald as this week's feature interview. Guest Larry and I will discuss what's driven this sell off, whether the Iran conflict had anything to do with it, and where the opportunities lie in today's markets. Then be sure to stay tuned for our postgame segment for Patrick's Trade of the week and our usual coverage of all the markets.
- [01:29]
C
And I'm Patrick Ceresna with the Macro Scoreboard week over week as of the close of Wednesday, June 10, 2026, the S&P 500 index down 379 basis points, trading at 72.67. We are seeing the first cracks in this bull advance as we're now testing the 50 day moving average. We'll take a closer look at that chart and the key technical levels to watch in the post game segment. The US Dollar Index up 53 basis points, trading at 100 spot 08. ATT Key Bull Breakout the July WTI crude oil down 624 basis points trading at 90 spot 03. Relentless grinding against this macro backdrop. The July r Bob Gasoline down 64 basis points to 311. The August gold contract down 748 basis points trading at 4133 gold experiencing a material breakdown to a multi month month low. The July copper contract down 354 basis points to 627. The June uranium contract down 116 basis points to 8,490 and the US 10 year treasury yield up 5 basis points trading at 453. The key news to watch next week is the much anticipated FOMC for warsh's first meeting as chair. This week's FEATURE INTERVIEW guest is Larry McDonald's Eric and Larry discuss why markets may be entering a new inflation shock regime, how massive tech, IPO supply and insider selling could pressure crowded growth stocks and why investors may be starting to rotate from financial assets towards hard assets value, healthcare, energy and materials. Eric's interview with Larry McDonald is coming up as Macro Voices continues right here and macrovoices.com.
- [03:32]
A
And now with this week's special guest, here's your host, Eric Townsend.
- [03:38]
B
Joining me now is New York Times best selling author and Bear traps founder Larry McDonald. Larry has prepared a slide deck as he usually does for us. Registered users will find the link in your Research Roundup email. If you don't have a Research Roundup email, just go to our homepage macrovoices.com, look for the red button above Larry's picture that says looking for the downloads. Larry, it's great to get you back on the show. It's been way too long. I want to start with what is it exactly that started last Friday because it certainly seems to be the beginning of something significant in the markets. Is this the market finally waking up to the Iran conflict or is it a reaction to the jobs reports and maybe expectations of rate cuts being harder to come by? Or is it something else? And by all means, refer to the slide deck as we dive in.
- [04:27]
D
Sure. Yeah, it's definitely a fourth quarter 2021 redux where everybody's kind of been in a transitory trance. Inflation is transitory again, which we were in the fourth quarter of 2021. And as you recall, the moment it appeared that inflation was not transitory, equities lost about 35, 40% pretty quickly between 2021 and 22. The Nasdaq lost about 77 trillion 7, $8 trillion evaluation. It's so you have a decent economy. But the Strait of Hormuz closed for 100 days, all this AI capex, and it's really just crushing the little guy as inflation is just so sticky. And you could see here on slide 2 one of the things, Eric, I want to make very clear, there's no I in team. So as part of the Bear Traps report, we host a conversation every day with the biggest hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds in the world. And what I'm going to do today is kind of share the insights, the valuable insights that I'm getting from the top institutions around the world in triangulating that information. And that's why I love this platform because I want to democratize the information. I want, you know, your Phenomenal audience to, to really have a front row seat as to what the top institutions are talking about. The biggest thing in recent weeks is the consumer oil inflation. And you could see here on slide two, junk bonds, the high yield market as a whole is okay, but the tertiary parts, and these are the typically the leading indicators, the tertiary part of the high yield bond market, which is triple Cs, as you can see, they're really kind of blowing out. The last time stocks were all at all time highs, triple Cs were much lower in yield. I think that's, you know, really telling you a lot about the consumer.
- [06:31]
B
You mentioned the big IPOs. It seems to me like that's a key part of this story as well. So I'm trying to sort of sort out, okay, we got on Friday, the jobs report kind of led to a lot of people thinking that rate cuts are less likely than they were on Thursday for whatever reason. We've also got these big looming IPOs. And I'm not sure if the market's finally woken up to how big of a deal the Hormuz crisis. What are the experts in your fund community telling you in terms of how they're perceiving what the most important drivers are? It feels like Hormuz is probably not
- [07:05]
D
it and it's indigestion really. So if you go to Slide 16, if you think about it, you're talking about an IPO that's 6% of U.S. gDP. If you think of Facebook 2012, that was an enormous IPO at the time, $100 billion in, and it was less than 1% of GDP. The SpaceX IPO would be 6% of GDP. And always remember the, the biggest IPO ever was Saudi Aramco at 25 billion. So if you do the math, if you take the secondary offering from Google last week of shares, 80 billion plus the SpaceX, you get $150 billion. 150 billion. And so net net, a lot of people have to sell stocks in the market to make room for these two absolute beasts that have come out.
- [08:02]
B
If you take SpaceX, as you said, it's a $2 trillion valuation. The actual raise, which is the money that we need to come up with someplace to pay for the shares being offered, is 80 billion. Okay, add that 80 billion. Google's, you know, and add to that Anthropic is coming up. We're going to have OpenAI. There's about 200, 250 billion of immediate raise. But here's the thing that I'm actually focusing More Lon Larry is six to 12 months after that, all the insiders and the VCs and the early investors in those companies, it's not 200 billion, it's like 3 trillion of capital that gets unlocked as those restricted shares become unrestricted. Somewhere between six and 12 months after the IPO, it seems to me that's the point where, you know, we absorb all of that equity into the market.
- [08:57]
D
If you look at the SpaceX program in terms of the lockup and unlock, it's much more aggressive than previous IPOs. And so for investors listening to us right now, it's extremely important. If you remember the Facebook IPO in 2012, once again, once the lockup started coming out in the shares, like you just nailed it in that first year, you had a 40, 50% drawdown in Facebook. And I think what's happening is the VCs were, think about capitalism in America. These companies are coming public. Think of Tesla came public at a 2 billion valuation, right? Facebook at 100 billion valuation. And now here, SpaceX almost 2 trillion valuation. So it's like it's essentially 1112 times the size of Facebook. So these companies are coming public much far later in the, in the maturity cycle, which means that the IPOs are very, very unattractive. And you're much better off waiting if you have to buy a little bit of the IPO. But you're going to probably be able to buy SpaceX IPO 50% off sometime in the first year.
- [10:11]
B
Obviously, a lot of people think SpaceX is, you know, going to be a huge, huge thing and it's the future. It feels to me like these IPOs are very reminiscent of 2000 or so when Frank, the smartest tech leaders, had the wits to say, let me sell my equity to retail bag holders and let them ride out what happens in 2000, you know, so it feels like 1999 to me.
- [10:36]
D
And to look at chart number 15, this shows you a lot because it's the S and P versus the equal weight. And if you think about it, the biggest, most liquid stocks are the easiest to sell, right? So lo and behold, huge underperformance in the last 10 days of the S&P versus the equal weight. You can see that on the chart number 15. And what that's telling you is that people are selling the Mag 7, which is essentially unchecked to a little bit negative since October. Now they're selling the Big Mag 7 equities, which are very liquid, and they're raising capital for all these IPOs that's and like you said, the Time Warner deal in 1999, 2000, it's just too much coming into the market at the same time. Plus, we have a lot of private equity deals coming out in recent months. There's just too many sellers. And the last thing, remember in the 90s, I founded convertbond.com and for investors listening to us right now, always remember the smartest sellers in the world, our chief financial officers. And guess what, Eric, the amount of convertible bonds that have been coming to the market in the last couple of weeks from say three, four weeks, is up a lot over last year. It's up on. And the same thing happened in 2021, in the third fourth quarter. And so what's happening is as the stock market rips CFOs, see, oh my stock's up a lot. And they're coming to the market with convertible bonds. Inside those convertible bonds, there's lots of equity. And so right now, chief financial officers are selling their equity in the convertible bond market at a very fast rate of change speed, which is similar to 2021 in that third fourth quarter. And never forget what happened in 2230, 40% drawdown. So I think the CFOs smell something and they're coming to market and they're also dumping. So you have Elon's dumping stock, right with the SpaceX crowd, you got Google dumping stock. And you get CFOs across all these different companies. Iron I get this like seven or eight companies, they're also dumping a lot of stock at the same time.
- [12:53]
B
So if I look at what's happened in the last few days, it feels like, oh, we're down a lot. But really, if I just go back to the late March low when the market initially started to freak out about the Iran conflict, we got down to, what was it, around 60, just about 6400. A little bit below 6400 on the S and P. If I look at since Friday, the down move as of Wednesday afternoon, we're really only looking at, I don't know, it's nowhere close to a 38%. It's about 25% has been retraced at most. How far are we going? Is this just the beginning of something really big or are we just looking at a blip here? What do you think is coming?
- [13:36]
D
Great question. And the perfect chart is number 13 for this. So 41 trillion in the NASDAQ 100 last week before the drawdown started, 41 trillion. And to your point, in March, which was just 47 or maybe 50, 50 trading days ago in late March, there was 30 trillion in the Nasdaq 100. So the Nasdaq 100 went from 30 trillion of value to 41 trillion in less than 50 trading days. Nothing like that's ever happened in the history of markets. But let's go back to 2021, 22, the last time we had the inflation shock. Look at what. And the last time the convertible bond market was on fire too. A lot of CFOs selling stock. So 2021, 22, we were up near 19 trillion of value in late 21 and we went down to 12 trillion in literally four quarters. That's an example of what's about to happen, I think. So that kind of drawdown. And think about it. So we went from 19 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 12 trillion in 4Q22, and then that all the way up to 41 trillion. And that's why I think as money rotates out of financial assets, which are bonds and tech stocks, when you see this kind of value, the rotations can be amazing. If you look back to 2022, what were the big winners? Energy stocks were up a lot. I think well over 100%. Also materials. I think the same thing's going to play out this time around. Again, It's a repeat 2.0.
- [15:21]
B
And so does that give you any targets or expectations in terms of valuation levels that we're headed towards?
- [15:27]
D
That's what's amazing about the market now. I mean, the free cash flow yields in the energy space are so cheap. Natural gas equities, energy equities, materials. So you've got one part of the market that's really cheap. But the NASDAQ 100 valuations are really all time high. CAPE ratios, PE ratios. So there's like two different markets. One part of the market, technology is really at the highest valuations almost ever. And then. But in the energy space, in the material space, you've got beautiful free cash flow yields, which are probably the cheapest part of the market.
- [16:07]
B
Well, Larry, I apologize for jumping out of order a little bit there. You've got so many different fascinating topics I want to come back to. I got you a little jumping around the slide deck. Why don't we go back to the beginning around page three. Tell us about this S&P versus restaurants chart.
- [16:22]
D
Sure. So that's kind of the main point is that the bottom 65% of consumers are really only 10, 15% of consumption now because the wealthy have so Much money in money market funds, and money market fund yields are up a lot. But the bottom 60% of consumers are in a lot of pain. And that's why you're seeing these wacky divergences. Restaurants getting really hammered this year. Same thing on the next chart with Home Depot. I mean, Home Depot almost 30% off. Think of these brands. Lowe's, Home Depot, McDonald's. All these stocks are essentially close to 2019 to 20% off. Home Depot almost 30% off. And so it's once again, it's two different consumers. One part of the market's in a lot of pain, and the other part of the market, technology and semiconductors are partying like it's 1999.
- [17:20]
B
Larry, I see you've got Agnico on the next page. Let's talk about the big picture of gold and gold miners. Even before we get into the specific stock, we're taught to think of gold as something you want in your portfolio as a hedge against big geopolitical events. If something like the Iran conflict happens, gold's gonna go up, except for it went straight down. What gives? First of all, with that, is that about inflation expectations? Is it going to continue? And why don't we transition from there into the slides and what you see in terms of the gold miners?
- [17:53]
D
Sure, Eric. So we just talked about the consumer and how weak the consumer is. You could see this in a lot of the conference calls. You could see it in the restaurants, you could see it in Home Depot. You can see it in so many different parts of the market. So it's very tough for the Fed to hike rates. But the market, gold miners are really having this kind of what I call recency bias. So in 20, 21, 22, we had that big inflation spike, and the gold miners now have really sold off for a bunch of different reasons. One, one important one is we've gone from three rate cuts to potentially one rate hike in terms of the SOFA futures or the expectations market of fed funds. So when you go, when you go from, like, rate cuts, three rate cuts to one hike, that knocks a lot of steam out of the gold miners. But the best trades in the world, Eric, the best trades of our careers are what I call the hot money flush. And so I love a sector that just had what we call a hot money flush. Think of a poker table. A lot of weak hands at the poker table, and that's the gold miners. So in the third, fourth quarter and the first quarter of last year, so many tourists, Eric, so many tourists came into the Gold miners. Think of the heavy set guy, the Hawaiian shirt and the glasses and the camera, right? That's the type of investor weekends, tourists getting off the bus, buying the gold miners with both hands in the third, fourth quarter. Next thing you know, they get hit over the head with central banks with this shock with the Middle East. Think of Turkey, all these emerging markets, central banks. There's a lot of countries in the emerging market space that don't have a lot of access to energy. And so when you have an energy shock, they have to sell something to raise cash. So emerging market central banks have been dumping gold the last couple of months. And so you had the kind of the problem with the rate hikes and inflation and then the. I'll never forget the one year Treasury 12 is up about 40 basis points. So think of late on a million bucks, you're getting close to 40 grand a year, 40 grand a year of interest on a one year treasury versus say maybe 30 grand a year, six months, six, nine months ago. I'm exaggerating a little bit to try to make it simple. So the bottom line is the gold miners have been hammered. Look at Agnico here. It's trading at 40% off, right? 5.98. And enterprise to EBITDA. And we can go back 20, 30 years. That's one of the cheapest valuations. They've got 6 to 7 billion of free cash flow, Eric, 6 to 7 billion of free cash Flow. They're buying back $2 billion worth of stock. When I sat down with David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, the famous hedge fund manager, in my new book, he said, Larry, I love to buy companies that are producing beautiful free cash flow and buying back the stock when the stock's down 30, 40% because it's not a floor under the stock. But when you're already down 40%, it's pricing in a lot of pain. But your valuation is the cheapest of all time and the company is buying back $2 billion worth of stock. So to me, your risk reward of buying Agnico here is probably 10, 15% down and 200% up. Because this time next year with that wounded consumer, the Fed really can't hike that much. You go into a slow growth economy with high inflation. Gold should be 6500 an ounce this time next year, which would put Agnico Eagle up much higher, potentially 100% higher a year from now.
- [21:45]
B
Larry, I could not possibly agree more with your basic thesis here, which is that flush of the hot money, it's clearly come out of gold since the Iran conflict started was around March 2nd, that gold there was just an inversion of the usual correlation between geopolitical events and gold. I think it's because of those rate cut expectations. Exactly as you said. But here's the thing. I agree with you completely that for a long term trade in gold, it's going to be just an incredible buy and it's going to pay off in spades. But is there a chance that it's still too early? And the reason I say that is it seems like it's pretty darn clear that it's the Iran conflict and the Hormuz closure and probably some of those central banks in the Middle east selling their gold is playing into this. I don't think this Hormuz thing is over yet. I don't think it's close to over. I think it's got a long way to go if you have that view. Is it time to buy gold now or is it time to sit on the sidelines a little longer?
- [22:49]
D
Yeah, I'm with you. I think it does have a ways to go. I think that the strait's been closed 100 days. Trump's really annoyed with Iran. Iran's pushing back hard and you saw it this week, right? So it's a standoff. So that's why in our trade alerts We've got over 2,000 financial advisors and family offices and high net worth individuals that do our trade alerts, we're buying only like 1/3 and 1/4 in the gold miners. We did a nice exit in the first quarter in the gold in the gdx. But as you can see here in chart number six, you have to be very careful on entry. But net net, I do like buying gold miners like Agnico down 40%. Okay. Are they going to drop 50%? Possibly. But if you look back to 20, 21, 22 when we had that big inflation shock, front end treasuries went up a lot in yield. And I know it's for people listening to us right now over time gold degraded inflation hedge fund. But let's make something very clear. When front end yields on T bills go up a lot, it sucks money out of gold because if you can get 40 grand a year in a one year t bill instead of 30 or 20, people just naturally will buy that. But so that's what creates the buying opportunity. So yes, probably a little early here buying. We're buying in thirds and quarters and we're looking to add on further weakness.
- [24:14]
B
Okay, so you do see the further weakness coming, but it's time to start scaling in is basically where you're at now.
- [24:21]
D
Yeah, you know the old theory, only monkeys pick bottoms. Right. So what I try to do is we have a capitulation model that measures the tourist flush and you want to start just buying in one thirds of quarters into something like that.
- [24:36]
B
You've got on page seven, the two 30s spread, the yield spread. What's going on on this chart and why does this come up?
- [24:44]
D
So this is an example of another flush where everyone thought with the Trump economy, growth, capital investment in artificial intelligence, big deficits. The steepener was a really popular trade for much of the last year. You can see that all the money came into it 24 when Trump was elected. 25. And now we've had a real flush as people are concerned about longer term growth with the consumer. And like I said, the McDonald's, the Home Depots, the Harley Davidsons are all off 20% in some case is more. And so, and that if you look at the Home Depot suppliers I went through on Bloomberg, there's probably 50% of Home Depot suppliers are down 20, 30, 40%. And so that means the growth expectations are coming down. But at the same time you've got this shock in the Middle east where the Fed might have to hike and a muscle memory of okay, inflation, the Fed has to hike. This is to me a facade. The Fed really can't hike. Never forget, interest on the debt today is at 1.1 trillion over the next 12 months. 1.1 trillion. When the last time they started the hiking cycle in 2122 it was 300 billion. Right. So the muscle memory in the market thinks the Fed's gonna hike. That's causing this flattening of the curve in two 30s. But to me it's the facade. It's a mirage. They really can't hike that much. And that means the curves are gonna steepen a lot over the next year.
- [26:25]
B
So you like the 230s steepener, long the two year and short the 30 year?
- [26:29]
D
Yes. And one way to play that is the eyeball etf, which has been battered. The famous Ivol etf founded by Nancy Davis I V O L. Okay, let's
- [26:41]
B
move on now to page eight, which is year over year inflation and the Bloomberg Commodities Index BCom. What's this comparison telling us?
- [26:49]
D
This is a blood curdling chart, for the love of God. You've got all this Data center spending 2 trillion bucks and another 5.4 trillion over the next four or five years. That's what the Street's expecting, 5.4 trillion, up from like 3 1/2 trillion 18 months ago. And so you got big deficits in Washington, $1.9 trillion deficits. You have the straight of Hormuz closed for 100 days and all the supply chain risk that comes with that. There's a lot of inflation coming at us. So this chart basically tells us that inflation's going back to 5, 6%. And today, Eric, Super Core CPI, the Super Core, which you can't fake super core, it's all the big macro people look at it, if you annualize the last three months of the super core inflation that came out, you're coming out to 5.2% by year end of super core inflation. That means core inflation or inflation headline is going to be 5, 6, up to more like 6, 7, 8% a year from now.
- [27:57]
B
And listeners, you'll see the super core chart is on page 10 of the slide deck. Go ahead, Larry.
- [28:02]
D
It's very hard to fake super core. And I think the some of the best macro traders in the bond market look at super core inflation. The thing that's the real eye opener for me. And this gets back to the core thesis of our book, how to Listen when Markets Speak is when you go into an elevated inflation regime in a multipolar world, think about multiple global conflicts, higher interest rates, higher inflation, stubborn oil prices in a war. What that does is it creates a rotation. And if you look at super core, we're 3.7%. Look at that lost world, that previous decade your high was 3%. So you're in a whole new regime which is creating a colossal migration from what we call financial assets, which are bonds and stocks and a lot of tech stocks. You can see the software names are really being sold, there's other parts of the market being sold and people are moving into hard assets and companies that control hard assets and not paper certificates. So that's really what we call in the book, the Great Migration is Coming at Us.
- [29:12]
B
Larry, your book has got to be the best title for a finance book ever. How to listen when markets Speak. Because it's about the market. It's not about what you think the market should be thinking, it's figuring out what the market's thinking. Let's apply that now and talk about some rotations that are going on in the market. Moving on to page 11 in the deck.
- [29:30]
D
Okay, so think about this, Eric. You go from a 10 year disinflation regime when in a unipolar world with less Gold, global conflicts. And you rotate into a multipolar world with more global conflicts, higher interest rates, higher inflation. That means your portfolio construction needs to have a totally different view. Companies that control hard assets and also value. So look here, growth versus value has failed here a lot since 2019. Big move over the last week. Big move. And I think this is the beginning of a colossal move over toward value. Because you think of value companies like look at Buffett, Buffett, Berkshire, big outperformance the last week or so from Berkshire, but they own a lot of companies that control hard assets. The Occidentals, petroleums of the world, right. So value companies, many of them today control oil and gas, natural gas, materials. And so that's a really colossal under owned part of the market. And so if you have 41 trillion in the NASDAQ 100, which was a lot of that's growth stocks, and you got this big IPOs and kind of like a massive overdose in the market on technology. When this rotation comes, you're going to see a big move out of growth into value. You can see it's really started this week and I see a lot more ahead. And then on slide 12, if you look at right there, big move out of the s and P500, which is a lot of tech stocks, over toward the Russell 2000. And you got a, you're breaking that down wedge there, which I think is pretty powerful move. So if you go into a period where there's too many IPOs that are coming in, there's too much money being sucked out of the market with new offerings and bond deals, you'll see a great migration out of the S and P back over toward the Russell 2000. And so that's an important part of this trade. The next one is oil services ON slide number 14, big outperformance this year. A lot of value names in there. The Weatherfords of the world, the Schlumbergers. They control a lot of valuable assets. The artificial intelligence potential of Schlumberger or SLB is literally one of the most exciting trades or investments I can think of in the market today. Everyone's in the chips. People have to start thinking of other parts of the market. They're going to benefit from artificial intelligence. The oil services is a big one and you can see their big outperformance versus the S&P.
- [32:15]
B
Larry, let's stay on that AI theme. What other parts of the market are beneficiaries of artificial intelligence?
- [32:22]
D
Eric, number 18, slide. This is the mind blower, right? So over the last 30 years we've been lectured and lectured, especially the last 10 years that the baby boomers are turning 80 years old. The average boomer is probably 70, 70 years old. That controls 79 trillion of wealth. Wall Street's been lecturing us, you have to belong health care. You have. Every analyst has been preaching this for the last 15, 20 years. And lo and behold, healthcare as a percentage of The S&P 500 has gone from 16% to 8%. With all of these baby boomers, one of the reasons why it's accelerating is people are selling healthcare stocks to make room for tech stocks, right? To make room for the spacexes of the world. So the cheapness of healthcare relative to tech is extremely attractive. And it goes back to the year 2000. Like you said with that AOL Time Warner deal, you kind of had a big break. And healthcare and Staples really destroyed technology from 2000 to 2002. But at the end of the day, health care today is such a cheap part of the market. And you've had, in the last two months, you've had not only people selling healthcare to make room for tech stocks, but you've had a lot of quantitative momentum players in the market. And guess what they're doing. They've been going long momentum, which is what we call high momentum stocks like semiconductors, and they've been short low momentum, Staples and healthcare. So it's like a perfect storm. You've got a lot of quants playing this game that are, they're really creating incredible cheapness in the healthcare space. But at the same time, you have a lot of asset managers that are selling down healthcare to make room for all these big tech IPOs. To me, this creates a colossal opportunity, an incredible opportunity looking forward to for the next five years. You want to be selling down your exposure to technology and increase your to health care. Look at slide number 20, Eric. Look at this factor. Momentum, momentum factor. It's way, way out of whack relative to the previous regimes. And so once again, momentum, you see there, everyone's long aggressive momentum, which is the semiconductors, everyone short health care. And as you can see here, we're at very rare territory. And I think with quarter end month end coming up at the end of the month into the second half of the year, the probability that we have a huge turn here I think is a very high probability of a move out of high momentum into low momentum. So out of the semiconductors and aggressive growth over toward healthcare, I think it's going to be a big winner. The Second half of the year.
- [35:22]
B
Larry, everything you're saying is really resonating for me, but it's from a different angle. I want to run past you, which is so many tourists are looking at this saying, but AI computers are so smart now. And my reaction is, wait a minute. The humans who invented artificial intelligence are pretty darn smart too. And what they all seem to be doing, the very smartest of them ones who truly invented this stuff, is they're selling their equity to bag holders as fast as they can. There's a race on right now between anthropic and OpenAI and SpaceX. All, all of these big technology private unicorn companies are either going public or in the case of Google, doing secondaries. Seems like everybody's trying to sell stock to retail at the same time. Am I interpreting that correctly as reinforcing what you just said about this transfer from momentum to value?
- [36:13]
D
Yes. Jack Bogle, God rest his soul, is rolling over in his grave. The S&P 500 was constructed and invented with the best of intentions, and passive investors have crushed it. The S&P 500, the NASDAQ, these are passive indexes. In the old days, active managers that run money had more capital than these indexes today. I have a theory that we laid out in our book, Eric, is that once you get near 60%, 65% passive versus active, and all that means is so much capital is in indexes that are not thinking, they're just owning things. And when that happens, the indexes can become more and more and more gamble. And you're seeing this on S&P 500. Inclusion stocks like Lululemon come into the S&P 500. Everybody that you know, the, the in the know crowd knows this and they buy it up ahead of time. And so the same thing with these IPOs, the billionaire investors on the west coast, the venture capital people, they have think of SpaceX, right? $30 billion valuation in 2019, 30 billion to now, 1.8 trillion when it comes public. And so when they come public and they are accelerating these IPOs into the indexes like you saw with the Nasdaq, the S and P, it's going to be over the next year. So passive investors are the bag holders up against, really billionaire investors that have been in these IPOs for a decade now and maturing. In the old days, Microsoft came public at less than a billion dollars. Right. Facebook came public at 100 billion.
- [38:09]
C
Right.
- [38:10]
D
And now companies are coming public at 1.8 trillion. It's a colossal failure of common sense. They're going to destroy indexes, okay. Because there should be rules against this. But the rules are being bent in favor of letting the billionaires dump stock in the hands of retail.
- [38:28]
B
That sure feels like what's going on. Let's move on to page 21. What's Intuitive Surgical?
- [38:33]
D
So last week, Eric, we hosted a private call with a billionaire family office. And what I try to do is I do these cage matches where I get had a good bull and a good bear in the room and like a zoom room and I call them the cage matches and guess what? They fight to the death. It's absolutely hilarious. But you learn so much and think about healthcare. Everything we talked about five minutes ago, with everyone's long momentum been selling down healthcare. Look at Intuitive Surgical. And then when you talk to people in the family office space that are in artificial intelligence medical sector, right? So billionaire family office, they've got, they're on the front row seat. The intelligence that they have relative to most investors in that sector is off the charts. And they made the point to me that they love the surgicals of the world, the Baxters, because guess what, just think of Intuitive, they have the best data, the best data. It's think of like Tesla 10, 20 years ago or 10 years ago, what they've done with the data on the road, it's like every road system in the world. Now all that data is in the hands of Tesla, right? Same thing with Intuitive Surgical. Doctors today with robotics can operate on patients in other countries. And the data in the future of artificial intelligence, the big beneficiaries are companies like Intuitive that have that incredibly valuable data. I think, and I'm hearing this from the, like I said, the top family offices in the AI medical field. These socks are unloved, under owned, everyone's in the chips. And if you buy Intuitive Surgical now on the 200 week moving average to us, that's a really screaming buy. Because over the next 10 years, five years, the data and the artificial intelligence that's going to take that data, it's going to turn Intuitive Surgical into a absolute profit beast.
- [40:42]
B
What's Tourmaline oil on page 22?
- [40:45]
D
Okay, that's our last idea. So another family office that we spoke to last week, we have a Bloomberg chat with hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds and we do these ideas dinners in New York. Next week we're going to be in Toronto and Montreal. And so the last 10 days we got some of these big oil hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds in a room and we had a about Trapped gas. This is the next artificial intelligence play. So think about this. There's supposed to be 800 to 1,000 data centers built over the next five years. And around the world, 5 trillion of spending. Some of those data centers are in the wrong places. What we call nimby, not my backyard. Right. And so you're seeing some political pushback around the country for data centers that are in the wrong places. Guess what? There are companies like Tourmaline in Canada that have gas. It's trapped, it's difficult to get to. Over the next five, 10 years, all of this trapped gas in Canada, especially in Texas, is going to be harnessed and extremely valuable because you're going to be able to take those data centers and move them in and create like a private turbine near that natural gas and really harness that cheap, relatively worthless natural gas because it's trapped. And so you're taking trapped gas and you're making it available to data centers. And Tourmaline's in discussion with hyperscalers right now. I think this is one of the best trades over the next five, 10 years. Plus, the political backdrop, Carney in Canada, relative to is far less hostile to this investment philosophy. And the last thing is with the war. The one of the points that the big hedge funds have been making to us in the chat, this war in Iraq and the Strait of Hormuz and lng, what it's doing, it's making US Natural gas and Canadian natural gas much more valuable. Because if you're a global buyer of LNG and you're getting your gas has been trapped in the Middle east, you know, you're burnt, you're not happy, and it's almost like America, you know, attacked Iran. But what they've actually done is they've increased the value of U.S. and Canadian gas assets. I don't know if that was intentional, but think about the buyers of natural gas globally of LNG, that it's going to benefit tourmaline and US natural gas exporters dramatically over the next five, 10 years. I think tourmaline, your downside's 15, 20%. Your upside's 200%.
- [43:31]
B
I want to move on now to your final slide in the deck, slide 23, which is the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. I'm going to ask you to expand this topic a little bit more to also include the uranium miners, if we could talk about that as well. Because I've got to tell you, I need some help listening when market speak. And I'll tell you exactly why I couldn't possibly be more long term bullish on uranium and uranium miners because I think the nuclear news flow couldn't possibly be better. Even before you consider all these SMRs and advanced reactors and all that stuff. We already had a uranium deficit on the horizon that just to run the reactors that are already in place that haven't been built yet. So I just can't think of any reason not to be bullish long term. Except for one thing, which is this is a famously high retail participation, high volatility sector. Not so much the Sprott Uranium Trust, but the miners are a really high volatility, high retail participation sector. And if what we just talked about a few minutes ago about the momentum stocks maybe being right on the precipice of a big sell off, if we get a broad market risk event, if this Iran war gets worse and it leads to a bunch of negative events in the market, I can't imagine the uranium miners not getting slammed by that. What do you do in a situation like that? I could be super bullish on one hand, but I'm really concerned about what could happen in the market next.
- [45:12]
D
So what I've been thinking about at the Beartraft support, we go back and forth between the uranium commodity and the companies, you know, the camecos of the world, the next gens, the Denison mines. And what I try to do is when the market, when I don't like the market short term in terms of straight a Hormuz, in terms of all kinds of things coming at us with inflation, like you said, Eric, high beta sectors get hammered much more than the commodity or in general. So uranium gold miners, they're a very high beta sector. But what's interesting with uranium now, the SRUUF, it's down 5% year to date, almost 6, but Cameco's up 4% still. So the underperformance of the commodity gets me excited right now. And I think I want to buy the URNM or the NUKZ, which is the ETFs that own these companies, I want to buy them on a little bit more pain like we had last April, May of 2025 with the trade war. You look at the drawdowns just like you nailed it, Eric. These companies really are susceptible to market volatility. And so you want to be in the commodity if you expect volatility ahead and then you want to rotate into the miners during that big kind of huge drawdown in the market. So we hosted a call two weeks ago with a famous family office in the uranium space. And he made a couple great points. First of all, he completely agrees with you around the 20, 27, 28 deficits. And But I think the sexiest part of his story is supply and demand. And the point that he made to me, and I'm hearing this from some of the most sophisticated investors in the world. And that is on the supply side, the next gens, the Camecos, the Denisons, they tend to over promise on production. And so for example, that next gen mine that's supposed to come on in later this decade, a lot of the people, a lot of the family offices that are close to the uranium space think that they're probably exaggerating by a year or two. And so you have a supply problem because of, because of kind of over exaggeration of production in the years to come. So that, that's where the supply problem is on the demand side. It's so obvious with what we're doing in the United States, we need, we need to build, I mean the United States, this is a real, this is a real national security problem. And so we're going to really ramp up nuclear power the next two, three years in terms of, in terms of nuclear power plants. It's going to take a while, right? And around the world countries are more friendly now. The Germany's of the world, the Japan's of the world. So you have this increase of demand that's coming at us. You got a shortness of supply, the amount of time that it's going to take NextGen to get that facility up and running and then you have the big brain drain. So if you think of brain drain, think of like Saskatchewan and think of like uranium assets around the world, they're hard to get to. There's environmental regulations and a lot of the talent has moved into bitcoin mining, for example. Like a lot of times what happens in bear markets is that the bear markets over five or 10 years that are really grueling, nasty bear markets, they actually, you see the best engineers, the best intelligence, the best brain power kind of leaves the sector for other hot parts of the markets around the world, whether it be artificial intelligence or whether it be bitcoin mining. And so to me that's a really sexy part of the story. And so, so that's once again that's a supply issue. So we're looking at 20, 27, 28, 29 with a massive supply demand problem. So SRUUF, we sold some in our trade alerts in the first quarter on that kind of move up. We've been Buying down here. And I really see a beautiful outlook over the next two, three years. And guess what the most important part of this story is. The contract buyers. The contract buyers, the major utilities, they've been sitting on their hands the last decade because once again the bear market conditioned them to really not panic, buy on uranium. But when you talk to people on the front lines, the big family offices that are close and really on the front lines, boots on the ground type people, they see the contract buyers really starting to get nervous. Behind the scenes you're going to see a ramp up in purchases. In other words, uranium's not a spot market like in the commodity market. There's no futures. So these contract buyers are really going to have to step up the next 12 to 18 months because they see the supply and demand problem. So the risk rewarding uranium now is absolutely one of the most attractive entry points for the commodity that I've ever seen.
- [50:38]
B
But your take on it is invest in the commodity now, rotate into the miners only after the pain. That hasn't quite happened yet.
- [50:46]
D
And that's what we saw last year with the trade war. It was just absolutely ridiculous. The sector was viciously for sale. Same thing in the summer of 2024 with the Japanese yen crisis, the carry trade blow up. In both instances the commodity, I'm sorry, well I should say the producers on the uranium side were down like 30, 40%, 45% percent in a short, very short order. Because once again, like you said, retail tourists, some weak hands at the table. And all that means is, you know, imagine you're playing a poker game, somebody does a big raise and that's like the same thing as a big shock in the market. A shock in the market knocks a lot of the tourists back on the bus and they leave and go home. They take their ball and go home.
- [51:32]
B
Well, Larry, I can't thank you enough for another terrific interview. Before I let you go, let's just touch on what you do at the Bear Traps report for our institutional audience. You're also a best selling author of what I think is the best title for a finance book ever conceived, which is how to Listen When Markets Speak.
- [51:50]
D
Well, I'm really proud, Eric. I mean, I can't believe that we have two books with now about a million copies sold, over a million copies with the Colossal Failure of Common Sense and How to Listen When Markets Speak. I'm so grateful to you and all of our supporters around the world. It's info@the beartrapsreport.com what we do for Macro Voices audience is we give people discounts because once again, it's an institutional platform where we share information, democratize information, but we want to make it affordable for the smaller investor as well.
- [52:26]
B
And that's@beartrapsreport.com Patrick Seresna and I will be back as Macro Voices continues right here@macrovoices.com.
- [52:39]
A
Now back to your hosts Eric Townsend and Patrick Ceresna.
- [52:43]
C
Eric, it was great to have Larry back on the show. Now, listeners, you're going to find the download link for this week's Trade of the Week in your Research Roundup email. If you don't have a Research Roundup email, it means you have not yet registered@macrovoices.com just go to our homepage and click on the red button over Larry's picture saying Looking for the downloads.
- [53:05]
B
Patrick, what's on deck for your Trade of the week this week?
- [53:08]
C
Larry McDonald's argument was that we may be entering a very different market regime where the leadership shifts away from crowded growth and momentum stocks and back toward value, hard assets and under owned sectors that have been left behind. One of the clearest examples he highlighted was healthcare. Despite the long term demographic support from aging baby boomers, healthcare has been aggressively sold down as investors crowded into AI, semiconductors and mega cap technology. So rather than chasing the sectors that have already absorbed the majority of the speculative capital, this week's Trade of the Week is about positioning for a rotation back into healthcare, one of the most under owned and unloved parts of the market. From a trade construction standpoint, I want to express the view through the XLV, the Healthcare sector ETF. With XLB closing around $152.85, the primary position is simply to own the shares and participate in what appears to be an emerging rotation back into healthcare. Now, because broader equity market volatility remains a risk, I want to overlay a low cost option collar structure to define the near term downside while still leaving room for upside participation. Specifically, I'm looking at buying the August 145 put for roughly $1.90 which sits near the March and April lows and creates a logical downside protection level. To help finance that hedge, I'm selling the August 165 covered call for around A$24. That reduces the net hedge cost to approximately 66 cents, creating a carry efficient collar around the long stock position. The idea is to maintain strategic equity exposure to the healthcare rotation while using the options market to define a short term risk budget around the position. From A payoff perspective. The protective put defines the downside floor to $145, limiting risk through expiration to approximately only $8.51 per share. While on the upside the covered call caps gains to about $165, leaving approximately $11.49 of upside potential over the next few months. The result is a stock first investment in a potential healthcare rotation with a defined risk option overlay designed to protect against short term market turbulence while still allowing meaningful upside if the XLV continues to break out.
- [55:52]
B
Patrick Every Monday at Big Picture Trading, your webinar explains how retail investors can put on our most recent trade of the week. For those listeners that want to explore how to put on these trades in greater detail, don't miss out on a 14 day free trial@bigpicture trading.com now let's dive into the postgame chart.
- [56:11]
C
Dick all right, Eric, let's dive into the equity markets. What's on your mind?
- [56:15]
B
Well, the stock market rally finally broke, but I don't think the Hormuz crisis had anything to do with it. Oil hasn't seen any meaningful upside response despite a complete failure of the peace deal negotiations and a major kinetic escalation. As a long term investor, I think we need to step back and look at the big picture of what 2027 could bring. We've got the three biggest IPOs ever.
- [56:43]
D
Ever.
- [56:43]
B
I mean, by a lot, the biggest one ever was 25 billion Saudi Aramco. Now we're talking about trillion dollar capitalizations, $80 billion raise on a single IPO. And there's three of them on that scale between SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, all on deck in the next probably six months. So where is the 200 to 250 billion of immediate capital raises? Where's that money going to come from? Well, of course it's going to compet equities, the rest of the stock market for capital allocation. I think the biggest tell here though is all the smartest money in the world. The billionaires that run these companies, the founders, the Elon Musks, the Sam Altmans, these guys are all at the same moment deciding their next move should be to sell their private equity to public market bag holders. Or at least that's the way I'm seeing this. But I don't think the real story is the IPOs, Patrick. I think it's the overhang in those stocks. For anyone not familiar with that term, overhang refers to the number of restricted shares. The founders, the venture capitalists that funded the early stage development of these companies. Their shares are all restricted at the time of the ipo, but they all come out of lockup, in the case of SpaceX, on a pretty aggressive schedule. It's before the end of 2026, I think around December or so. So don't worry about the paltry little 200 to 2 billion of IPO direct raises. Think about the $3 trillion of restricted shares that are going to be unlocked by the end of 2027. A trillion here, a trillion there. We're talking about real money, folks. The Iran conflict meanwhile, is not going well. So just think about what 2027 is going to look like. There's going to be $3 trillion of equity that's being unlocked that people will be tempted, especially if markets are selling off, to get the heck out of and cash in, you know, collect their winnings from the last however many years they've been in those private equities as a illiquid investment. If the Iran conflict continues to not go well, well, what's the US political picture going to look like in 2027 if the Democrats take both houses of Congress in the November election, we'd probably be looking impeachments, partisan gridlock and $3 trillion of insider shares coming out of lockup all at the same time. Sounds like a recipe for maybe a lot of people panicking and just getting the heck out of the stock market. So I think as we really consider what the outlook for 2027 is, there's a bear case that's pretty darn strong that I don't think a lot of people are thinking about.
- [59:40]
C
Well, Eric, I will completely agree with you you that the IPOs are going to be the story for the entire summer going into the third quarter and whether they'll be able to raise that capital. But I want to specifically speak to the charts here for a moment because we had this correction from 7,600 down to testing 7,300 on the S&P along its 50 day moving average. To me this is a, a very key pullback because the bulls had a pretty good cushion and they could absorb this type of a sell off without triggering systematic selling. And we are still at that moment where if the bulls can get past a SpaceX IPO and keep the market pinned to the 7300 area, then we could still see a rally in the markets back to its previous highs and generally keep the market elevated. I say that because if 7,300 on the other end is given out there, this is where we're going to see some systematic selling kick in. Obviously there's no clarity exactly where CTA is kicking in on a selling. But many estimate that that selling kicks in around 7, 300 on the S P. And so if we see any further deterioration, we may see as much as 100 to 150, $50 billion to sell. That would be a feedback mechanism of selling as CTAs would be forced to liquidate. Are we going to see that systematic selling kick in or will the bulls be able to keep it above the trigger points? This is the puzzle to solve here. Technically at this moment I'm going to give the bulls the benefit of the doubt because we here we are right before the SpaceX IPO and we many people that are funding this would have already done their structural sell very well be a key support line. We're definitely going to watch. Now the one thing I will say, if 7300 does give out and systematic selling does dominate, a trip to retest 7,000 on the S P could be in the cards. That would be that 10% pullback from peak to trough. At this moment that's not my favorite scenario, but we are at the edge of that cliff. And if that systematic selling kicks in, that would be a logical first target. All right Eric, let's talk about this US dollar.
- [62:05]
B
Well, the dollar rally finally pushed through 99 and a half on the Dixie, up to resistance again at 100 this week. I anticipated that that would be the case and that's exactly what happened. I think the Iran conflict is likely to escalate from here. If it does, I think there's more upside at least to 101 and a half on the Dixie. The dollar is eventually going to top out and roll over and probably roll over hard, but not yet. I think it's when the Iran conflict is really and truly winding down that we see the dollar top out. And then I think it probably has a long way to go to the downside, but I don't think we're there yet.
- [62:41]
C
Well, this is certainly the puzzle to solve here, Eric, on the dollar because it has been behaving very bullishly and we are now approaching the 52 week highs. And if the dollar here bullishly breaks to fresh new highs here on a bull impul shock waves through the intermarkets as a dollar bull can certainly has all sorts of implications on other asset pricing. It's been a very stable, boring currency market and there's been very little to nothing happening here. Which means that if we did suddenly get a Breakout that would certainly catch a lot of traders off guard. We are right now trading right up along those highs. That euro's been weakening below 116. This is certainly a moment to see whether resistance actually holds or whether or not Dollar has that journey to 102 or 103 ahead of it. All right, Eric, we gotta talk crude oil here.
- [63:40]
B
Well, President Trump deserves an Oscar for his ability to jawbone the oil market down in the face of all the facts and evidence suggesting the conflict is far from over. And with considerable kinetic escalation in the last week alone, resulting in exactly zero increase, at least as of recording time, in oil prices whatsoever since last Friday's close. We're not up penny over last Friday's close. We've been down quite a bit. We've recovered some of that downside. But the story last Friday was supposedly a deal was close at hand. We expected that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week is when the final signing was going to happen. Peace was close at hand. That was the story Friday. Since then we've had a major escalation. The straits completely closed again. Kinetic escalation and oil prices are flat. On Tuesday of this week, CNN cataloged the number of times President Trump has said a peace deal with Iran is now imminent. It's just around the corner. All we have is just a few little details to work out and we've got the peace deal. He said that a total of 38 times since February 28th. I think it's actually 39 now because there's been one since Tuesday. So my hypothesis here is speculators have been scared out of the market. Why all of this jawboning by the President is so effective, I'm not sure, but it seems to be working. It's scaring the speculators out of the market. We're seeing clearly in the price action that every time he does this and says there's another peace deal at hand, it pushes oil prices back down lower. It's amazing to me that that works, but it works. So the physical market is not forward looking. We don't need to see the physical market reprice anything until we actually exhaust those buffers and storage tanks and so forth. Once that's exhausted, the physical market does need to rebalance in order to close the monthly futures contract. There has to be a rebalancing of supply and demand. Normally what happens is that outcome would be anticipated by speculators who would front run it, resulting in a gradual ramp up to a final crescendo when the Physical market finally rebalances supply and demand. My expectation is speculators are going to continue to stay scared out of the market by all these Truth Social posts, which, you know, hey, they take $10 bite out of the market in an instant. If you're a speculator, you don't want to be long in an environment when you don't know when the next Truth Social post is and you have at least a gut feeling that maybe some people do have that inside information and you're trading against. Meanwhile, sentiment surveys say that over 75% of market participants now expect lower prices and soon. Now, if they're all wrong, and I think they probably will be proven wrong, the repositioning will be extremely violent once they're proven wrong. So when it suddenly becomes game on time, in other words, when the physical market really does have to resolve an imbalance that can only be resolved through the price mechanism, the specs I think will pile in all at once. They've been afraid to get in this market. That fear, I think will shift from fear of getting trapped by the next Truth social post into fear of missing out on the biggest price spike of all time. So that means that when the physical market forces a price spike, when it comes, you're going to see the speculators that normally would have front run it by several weeks all diving in at once. Everybody piles on at the same time. And I think the result could be that it makes that price spike when it happens both much more sudden and much more violent than it would have been without all the jawboning, scaring specs out of the market. All of this is predicated on my personal analysis that we're nowhere close to a peace deal and that we can can't realistically come to one because the disagreement on the nuclear file is frankly irreconcilable. Now if I'm wrong about that and the other 70% of the market are right, then the big piece deal wins. Next week it's all peace, Everything's over. You know, it's a completely different outlook. I see that as profoundly unlikely. But hey, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.
- [68:16]
C
Well, Eric, when we're talking about oil's chart, it is fascinating how this is coiled up into one big horizontal triangle pattern as we've seen it become coiled into a tighter and tighter range, even though it's hard to to measure that when you're seeing five, six, seven dollar swings this often. But really the question is, is going to be what will be the catalyst for a Potential breakout out of this triangle formation. Where would it likely go? Now obviously some people speculate that if suddenly there was a peace deal that we could see, you know, $80 or less on crude. But there has structurally been been a huge inventory depletion and there is a higher level of oil that is likely to be with us. And so be very interesting to see whether there will be this one moment where everyone realizes that a peace deal is much farther than everyone expects and it causes oil to break back above the 100 handle, which I think is psychologically going to be a breaking point that could create a rush back into oil and drive a potential advance. Now I'm not looking for that just yet. But listen, we can get that kind of a trigger at any point if, if we see missiles flying in the Middle east and everyone recognizes that this problem is going to be last longer than everyone expects. All right, Eric, let's, let's touch on gold here.
- [69:44]
B
Well, I warned last week that we were teetering on the 200 day moving average support level at 44.15, which I said I did not expect to hold. And I further cautioned that sticking out that critical 200 day moving average would likely result in an acceleration of downside price action toward the prior low at 4,100 from about three months ago. Well, that's exactly what happened. We've already taken out 4,100 to the downside with the low print so far as of recording time at 4047. 4047. That 4100 support line ought to be good for at least a little pause here, maybe a bounce. But if Hormuz remains unresolved, I think there's plenty of room for lower prices still. And frankly, if we were to see the Hormuz crisis extend all the way to the end of the calendar year, I don't think 3,000 is out of the question for the gold market to test that 3,000 round number support by the end of the year. Now that would only happen if we were to see a prolonged extension of the Hormuz crisis. But I don't think that's out of the question.
- [70:52]
C
Well, Eric, on this show for over a month we've been talking about how distributive the price action has been on gold. This last one week was a definitive acceleration of that selling. What's clear to me is that we went through a two year bull market that was an extraordinary impulse higher that ended with a beautiful parabolic rise at the tail end. We're now six months into a correction. And at this stage there is a lot of headwinds. You have higher interest rates, a rising dollar, things that typically are headwinds for gold and then probably no imminent turn in those trends. And so at this stage, expecting gold to continue to remain in this consolidation phase is the path of least resistance. The bigger question is how low can it go? I know you're suggesting 3,000. I think for now the most logical short term target is looking back at the October lows which were around 3, 900 and if that doesn't hold there's key consultants consolidation levels that happened earlier in 2025 around that 3400 level. Those would be all kind of logical downside targets for, for short term moves. Now overall there's going to be an extraordinary buying opportunity in gold, but it really does look like the summer is going to be rather challenging for it and we'll really be looking for where's that turning point once we get into the second half of the year. Year. So Eric, what are your thoughts here on uranium?
- [72:29]
B
Well, as our regular listeners know, I remain, and I will always remain super bullish long term, but I've been warning for several weeks now that this market felt toppy and that a broad market risk event could easily drive uranium miners much lower. Well, that's exactly what played out this week. It's the exact scenario that I've been expressing concern about here on Macro Voices for the last few weeks. We saw the S&P 500 down hard on Friday and uranium down even harder on a percentage basis and again on Tuesday. Now I still love the fundamentals, but hey, a popping of the AI bubble and a broad bear market in stocks could easily mean a washout for uranium on the scale of the 2024 into April of 2025 period. Frankly, the fundamentals were terrific then at the end of 2024, but it just wasn't registering. This is a very volatile sector with famously high retail participation. If we see people getting margin called out of the stock market, I think it could be a real disaster scenario for the uranium miners. Doesn't change my fundamental outlook one iota. But as a long term investor I still believe uranium is the opportunity of the decade. But I'm bracing myself for more downside before this is over. And I'm not in any rush to start adding to my long term buy and hold positions in uranium because frankly, I don't think it's time yet. I think that there could be considerable more turbulence before we're out of this storm.
- [74:08]
C
Well, what's interesting to me is that uranium has been a little bit weak as a commodity, but certainly we have seen the distribution cycle in uranium stocks really accelerate here. And it really does look like it happened the same time as the gold miner started to sell. And so we really at this stage are in the midst of some sort of distribution cycle. When we look back at uranium stocks back in 20, 24 and 25, the bull story was also super strong. But in that period the URA managed to have two consolidations in the 35 to 40% variety. And so the idea here that we are in the midst of this style of a market correction is very likely. And so now it's just a matter of seeing where and how low it goes and then we'll be looking for the technical bottoming formations for the potential next key buying opportun. That's the thing that overall things are very bullish fundamentally for uranium. So the question becomes when do the stocks start to behave like there's another bull impulse coming on the upside? And that's going to be the thing to watch.
- [75:16]
B
Patrick, before we wrap up this week's podcast, let's hit that 10 year treasury note chart.
- [75:21]
C
We've basically been trading in a consolidation for the last month pinned between like 445 to 465 over. Overall there's been a very clear and distinct correlation between rates and inflation expectations driven by oil. And so the puzzle to solve here is that if oil for whatever reason did have another bull impulse on the upside and broke out on there, would we see it impact the rates markets again and that correlation stay true? That is the thing to watch. Overall, some stage bonds are going to be a no brainer buy. But at this moment with the current geopolitical and macro backdrop, I think it's a very premature to be looking for a peak in these yields and lows and bonds just yet. And so at this stage I'm staying very neutral and observing and respecting that this prevailing uptrend in yields is still intact.
- [76:17]
B
Folks, if you enjoy Patrick's chart decks, you can get them every single day of the week with a free trial of big picture trading. The details are on the last pages of the slide deck or just go to big picture trading. Patrick, tell them what they can expect to find in this week's research roundup.
- [76:32]
C
Well, in this week's research roundup you're going to find the transcript for today's interview as well as the trade of the week chart book that we just discussed here in the post game, including a number of links to articles that we found interesting. You're going to find this link and so much more in this week's Research Roundup. That does it for this week's episode. We appreciate all the feedback and support we get from our listeners, and we're always looking for suggestions on how we can make the program even better. Now, for those of our listeners that write or blog about the markets and would like to share that content with our listeners, send us an email at research roundup macrovoices.com and we will consider it for our weekly distributions. If you have not already, follow our main account on X at Macro Voices for all the most recent updates and releases. You can also follow Eric on X at Eric S. Townsend. That's Eric Spelt with a K. You could also follow me Patrick Ceresna on behalf of Eric Townsend and myself, thank you for listening and we'll see you all next week.
- [77:41]
A
That concludes this edition of Macro Voices. Be sure to tune in each week to hear feature interviews with the brightest minds in finance and macroeconomics. Mac Macro Voices is made possible by sponsorship from BigPicture Trading.com, the Internet's premier source of online education for traders. Please visit bigpicturetrading.com for more information. Please register your free account@macrovoices.com Once registered, you'll receive our free weekly Research Roundup email containing links to supporting documents from our featured guests and the the very best free financial content our volunteer research team could find on the Internet each week. You'll also gain access to our free listener discussion forums and research library. And the more registered users we have, the more we'll be able to recruit high profile feature interview guests for future programs. So please register your free account today@macrovoices.com if you haven't already. You can subscribe to Macro Voices on itunes to have Macro Voices automatically delivered to your mobile device each week free of charge. You can email questions for the program to mailbagrovoices.com and we'll answer your questions on the air from time to time in our Mailbag segment. Macro Voices is presented for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information presented on Macro Voices is should not be construed as investment advice. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making investment decisions. The views and opinions expressed on Macro Voices are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the show's hosts or sponsors. MacroVoices, its producers, sponsors and hosts Eric Townsend and Patrick Ceresna, shall not be liable for losses resulting from investment decisions based on information or viewpoints presented on Macro Voices. Macro Voices is made possible by sponsorship from BigPicture Trading.com and by funding from Fourth Turning Capital Management, LLC. For more information, visit macrovoices.com.