There's Never Just One Cockroach

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Compound and Friends

Episode Title: There's Never Just One Cockroach
Date: October 17, 2025
Hosts: Josh Brown, Michael Batnick
Guest: Bill Baruch, Founder & CIO of Blue Line Capital & Blue Creek Capital Management

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Overview

This episode of The Compound and Friends brings market experts Josh Brown and Michael Batnick together with first-time guest Bill Baruch, a seasoned commodities trader and advisor based in Chicago. The episode’s main theme revolves around lessons from past financial collapses (notably MF Global), the current state and mania surrounding private credit, the unprecedented surge in metals like gold and silver, and how recent market dynamics reflect both retail trading exuberance and underlying economic fundamentals. The hosts also discuss sector rotations, utility stocks’ AI-fueled resurgence, and the outlook for major tech and commodity stocks as earnings approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bill Baruch’s Background & Commodities Experience

• Baruch shares his history in commodities, including his time at a firm acquired by MF Global, witnessing the firm's notorious collapse.
  • “They went public and the stock never went higher. The high was the day they went public.” - Bill Baruch (09:44)
• He discusses his motivation for launching Blue Line Futures post-collapse and emphasizes providing actionable research and daily content to clients.

2. Lessons from Past Blowups

• Reflections on MF Global:
  • The need to understand risk, order flow, and the psychology of boom and bust in both commodities and equities.

3. Commodities vs. Equities—Comparing Market Psychology

• The panel compares historic commodities trading hype (like crude oil’s $150 run) to modern tech stock bubbles.
• Discussion on how equity inflows (think 401ks) have changed stock market volatility and participant attitudes.

4. Current Market Risk: The 'Cockroach Theory' and Private Credit

• Ongoing turbulence in private credit, with high-profile 'blowups' raising systemic risk questions.
  • “Jamie Dimon said there's never one cockroach. Famously now it's been repeated eight zillion times.” - Josh Brown (17:22)
• Guest statistic: Over 19,000 private equity funds now exist—more than McDonald's locations in the US.
  • “A lot of people are jumping in with little experience. When you get that, it could become bigger.” - Bill Baruch (18:54)
• Concerns about illiquidity: If too many funds try to exit at once, what happens?

5. Retail Mania and Options Trading

• Retail traders are driving call-buying mania and crowding into speculative growth stories, often in unprofitable sectors.
  • “Trading. ...retail has been buying calls for 24 consecutive weeks which reached a record high last week. I mean, there’s just no chill.” - Michael Batnick (40:04)
• Hosts question where retail is getting its endless firepower, noting that inflows have reached historic levels even during market pullbacks.

6. Metals Mayhem: Gold, Silver, and Copper

• Gold and silver are breaking out, driven by central bank buying, de-dollarization, and physical scarcity.
  • “Central bank buying and Basel 3... took effect July 2025. So it’s now officially a Tier 1 asset on Central bank balance sheets.” - Bill Baruch (23:38)
• Gold seen potentially reaching $5,000 if current trends persist.
  • “There’s proof that China has understated their gold reserves by 20%.” - Bill Baruch (24:36)
• Silver’s rally attributed to scarcity, lease rates, and industrial demand; copper lagging due to past chart damage and Chinese export actions.

7. Stock Market Dynamics, Seasonality, and Sector Insights

• Q4 seasonality is typically positive, especially after a weak August/September—panellists are optimistic, though volatility is elevated.
  • “If we start October lower, yeah, it's easier to finish higher. ...I do think we're going to have a strong finish to the year.” - Bill Baruch (37:16)
• Buyback blackout periods are discussed as catalysts once lifted, reinforcing positive outlooks.
• Mega cap techs are now underperforming frothier, non-profitable tech.
  • “Mega cap tech is no longer exciting enough to attract retail trading.” - Josh Brown (41:48)

8. Sector Deep Dives: Utilities & AI

• Utilities are now a high-growth, AI-adjacent sector due to unprecedented electricity demand, outpacing their traditional role as 'dividend plays.'
  • “Utilities are the best performing sector year-to-date up 23.7%. ...Their contribution to the S&P's year to date is less than 0.5%.” - Josh Brown (53:43)
• Discussion on natural gas, uranium, and why traditional energy stocks have lagged despite strong forecasts for future power demand.

9. Stock Picks and Earnings Expectations

• Panel shares favorite names going into earnings, focusing on Amazon’s ‘underdog’ status and Micron as a standout chip stock now considered ‘value’ versus peers.
  • “Micron...there could be a real full repricing in this name...imagine a 20 multiple on that.” - Bill Baruch (59:56)
• Comments on Tesla and Nvidia, with Nvidia’s dampened volatility ahead of report and speculation about the effect of OpenAI’s potential IPO on overall markets.

10. Big Picture: Is This a Bubble?

• Emphasis on separating pockets of mania from broader market legitimacy, underscoring that aggregate S&P 500 earnings growth is real and not just multiple expansion.
  • “The PE is only up 1% year over year while earnings are up 11%. That is critically important.” - Michael Batnick (46:07)
• Market concentration in tech reflects disproportionate profitability, not just hype.

11. Macro Outlook: The Influence of Fed Policy

• With the Fed now in easing mode (or expected to be soon), rates could drop to 2% by 2026, further fueling equities, gold, and anything “not dollars.”
  • “2% interest rates at the end of 2026 and continued AI spending...money's going to be forced into everything that's not... depreciate.” - Bill Baruch (63:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Private Credit Risk:
"The implication of that stat is... If there are, let's say there are 19,000 funds. That's too many. ...What happens? Well, you start cutting some corners." - Josh Brown (19:38)

On Gold’s Relentless Rally:
"No one's selling. There is no reason to sell. Most of the buying is coming from central banks and they're putting on their balance sheet..." - Bill Baruch (24:24)

On Retail Froth:
"It's like—what am I buying today to make money? It's like an assumption that you're going to make money today if you just open..." - Bill Baruch (43:02)

On Tech Stock/Utilities Outperformance:
"Utilities are basically AI stocks now. None of the volume that's coming into those stocks has anything to do with dividends in the way that it used to." - Josh Brown (56:59)

On Market Fundamentals:
"The PE is only up 1% year over year while earnings are up 11%. That is critically important." - Michael Batnick (46:07)

On Where the Mania Ends:
"I think this ends when OpenAI comes public at a trillion-dollar valuation, the biggest IPO ever, and it's a flop out of the gates." - Josh Brown (62:01)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• MF Global & Commodities Roots: 09:35 – 12:24
• Private Credit Turmoil & Cockroach Theory: 15:47 – 22:57
• Retail Mania in Options & Meme Stocks: 40:02 – 45:23
• Gold, Silver, and Commodities Rally: 23:04 – 34:27
• Seasonality, Buybacks, and Retail Flows: 36:03 – 43:38
• Mega Cap vs. Non-Profitable Tech Divergence: 41:30 – 41:58
• Utilities & AI Power Demand: 55:03 – 56:59
• Outlook on Amazon, Micron, Tesla, and Nvidia: 58:09 – 62:01
• Fed Policy and Macro Context: 48:31 – 53:04, 63:53
• Closing Thoughts (Most Excited About): 67:02 – end

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Closing Segment Highlights ("What Are You Excited About?")

• Bill Baruch looks forward to an upcoming Cancun family vacation.
• Hosts express anticipation for the NBA season (specifically the Knicks).
• Final remarks reinforce the show's focus on actionable market analysis as well as fun, personal asides.

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Tone & Style

The conversation is energetic, rapid-fire, and packed with both expert-level insights and inside jokes. They balance technical analysis with banter, pop culture references, and real-world stories, maintaining a relaxed yet highly informed vibe characteristic of The Compound and Friends.

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For more, follow:

• bluelinefutures.com
• @billbaruch (X/Twitter)
• bluelinecapitalwealth.com

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and standard podcast disclaimers. For investing disclosures, visit Ritholtz Wealth Disclosures.

Transcript

[Josh Brown]

What part of Chicago did you grow up in? I'm from Maryland. Oh, you're Maryland.

[Bill Baruch]

I grew up Maryland. Rockville.

[Josh Brown]

I didn't know that.

[Bill Baruch]

Good old Rockville, Maryland.

[Michael Batnick]

You're a Commander's fan.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. That was a brutal, brutal loss.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, well, it happens.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean. Well, makes it worse. Is against the team in Chicago. So I go to work, hear from everybody else. Brutal loss, though.

[Josh Brown]

We're going to go to a Commander's game, Michael and I. Oh, yeah, A couple weeks. Yeah, we're going to. We're going to go to the Lions game.

[Michael Batnick]

The stadium's a piece of shit. I heard. Be worse than MetLife.

[Bill Baruch]

They're supposed to move back to D.C. how is.

[Michael Batnick]

The stadium is garbage though, right?

[Bill Baruch]

It's been a while. It's. It's. It's inconvenient to get to. Just like Soldier Field is in Chicago.

[Michael Batnick]

MetLife is the absolute.

[Bill Baruch]

Oh, yeah. I went to a Jets game last year.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, the. Nothing's more inconvenient than the Giants at stadium.

[Bill Baruch]

It's horrific early and I was glad I was able to get out of there. It was a Monday Night Football game against the Bills. I think they hit a.

[Michael Batnick]

Did they win?

[Josh Brown]

Hillary?

[Michael Batnick]

Just kidding.

[Bill Baruch]

No, Bills won, but I think. I think Rogers threw a Hill Mary at the end of the second into the first half.

[Josh Brown]

That hit.

[Bill Baruch]

No, the.

[Josh Brown]

The Gen Z's want to have an office Halloween party.

[Callie]

We do.

[Michael Batnick]

What does that mean?

[Callie]

Physically in the office or a 12 foot skeleton?

[Josh Brown]

They want. They want to come into costumes. What do we do? Make it.

[Michael Batnick]

Make it.

[Josh Brown]

Make it. I'm not here.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, my goodness.

[Bill Baruch]

I'm here.

[Michael Batnick]

I saw.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, what day would. What. What day would it be? The day before Thursday the 30th.

[Callie]

Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

All right.

[Josh Brown]

Halloween costumes.

[Callie]

Yay.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, wait a minute.

[Michael Batnick]

Thursday, October 30th.

[Josh Brown]

You want me to put it on Home Office?

[Michael Batnick]

Do we have a show that day?

[Callie]

Inside out characters.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, Home Office.

[Callie]

You can be angry. My gosh.

[Josh Brown]

Thursday.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, Halloween was on Thursday last year too.

[Josh Brown]

30Th was it?

[Michael Batnick]

So I know it was an issue.

[Josh Brown]

No, it's not Thursday, though. The actual Halloween's Friday.

[Callie]

You guys dressed up with dance.

[Josh Brown]

30Th.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know dates. I don't even know when's Thanksgiving. It's the same time every year. November is the. Is Thanksgiving.

[Bill Baruch]

Oh, it's the third Thursday last Thursday.

[Callie]

But the date changes.

[Michael Batnick]

Duncan, you see PTA's new masterpiece yet?

[Bill Baruch]

I haven't.

[Josh Brown]

I want anybody.

[Bill Baruch]

I'm going this weekend.

[Josh Brown]

Not yet.

[Michael Batnick]

You liked It. I loved it. It's a good movie. Obviously. I mean, there's. It's hard to deny it wasn't a good movie. But what the is wrong with people? PTA has brainworm people. Like, he's tricking all you guys. It's not the best movie of the last decade.

[Josh Brown]

I don't think it is.

[Michael Batnick]

It's not even close. People are going nuts.

[Bill Baruch]

Say that.

[Michael Batnick]

Anytime there's a no. 1 battle after another, people are going nuts. Yeah, it was a good movie.

[Josh Brown]

Not everyone. Not everyone agrees that it was even good.

[Michael Batnick]

I had a good time.

[Bill Baruch]

Negative comments, but It's. It's.

[Michael Batnick]

It's 14 hours long. There's some really great stuff in there, but people are, like, legitimate. There's people saying it's one of the best movies the last decade.

[Bill Baruch]

What? I did hear a lot of great things before it came out. But it's a good movie.

[Josh Brown]

I really loved it, so. I loved it as a moviegoing experience. I saw it on Giant. It's a good movie, but I would not even say it's in his top three, like the director. And it's definitely not a top.

[Michael Batnick]

It had its moments, but it's so long, and I just. I don't get the PTA fee if.

[Bill Baruch]

My kids saw Gabby's Dollhouse on Monday and they're raving about it.

[Michael Batnick]

I never heard of that.

[Josh Brown]

What is that?

[Bill Baruch]

It's a kid's cartoon.

[Josh Brown]

Should Michael watch that?

[Michael Batnick]

I take my kids to see movies all the time, but it's been a minute. There hasn't been a good movie for kids.

[Josh Brown]

Well, you wouldn't take your kids to that movie either.

[Bill Baruch]

No, I got eight, six, and four.

[Michael Batnick]

You have three girls?

[Josh Brown]

Three girls, eight, six, and four. Oh, man. You're in it. You're, like, in it? In it.

[Michael Batnick]

Are you in the burbs or the set of.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, burbs.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

Glen Ellen West. West suburbs of Chicago. I was telling Josh, it's, like, right next to Wheaton, and Wheaton's like, this quiet financial hub that not many people realize.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, I asked about weed in this morning because we had somebody reach out from Wheaton who's. I said, how far is it from the city? But it's apparent it's a little bit too far.

[Bill Baruch]

No traffic. It's 35, but, you know, in a Traffic. Yeah. An hour, you know.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. With no traffic.

[Michael Batnick]

The traffic is like.

[Josh Brown]

In the morning, you mean? Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

Well, I mean, hey, the commodity space. I'm getting down to the office. If I'm heading down there. I catch the 450, the AM train. So if I remember driving. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Are you in the gym at 3 o', clock, you psycho?

[Bill Baruch]

Before you one of those. I hit that at 5am 5:30.

[Michael Batnick]

I won't get in the car in Chicago anymore. I just did the Blue Line. Yeah, it's. I'm never doing that again.

[Bill Baruch]

It's Blue Line. That's where we came from. The name I lived. I live my first house I bought in the city.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, is that what it's named for?

[Bill Baruch]

Right down the street from the Blue Line. And then you take the Blue Line and you get off in Jackson, which is next to the board of trade. And that's where our office is.

[Josh Brown]

What's the best Italian restaurant in. In Chicago? In the city? Don't tell me about a place in the suburbs that I won't go to.

[Bill Baruch]

Okay. Old school. I love taking the team to La Scarola. And that's right off the Blue Line and west, you know, off Grand Street.

[Josh Brown]

What neighborhood is that? I know some of the neighborhoods, not all of them.

[Bill Baruch]

It's called West Town, River North.

[Josh Brown]

I know River North.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. And then if you're going like newer age, Monteverde is phenomenal.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. I haven't been to either of these places. What's the best? So I took Michael to Gibson's just cause obligatory took me.

[Bill Baruch]

I feel like.

[Michael Batnick]

What was that your date?

[Josh Brown]

We went together, but I had been there before you, so I took you. You see how that works?

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. Took Michael, the Gibsons.

[Michael Batnick]

We had a great lunch there.

[Josh Brown]

It was great. I mean, we didn't like which one.

[Bill Baruch]

Downtown or did you do that?

[Josh Brown]

No, the Magnificent Mile one.

[Bill Baruch]

Okay.

[Josh Brown]

Like the. The one that's by all the fancy shit.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. The rush in division.

[Josh Brown]

And I've been to Joe's Stone Crab for steak. They call it.

[Bill Baruch]

They call it.

[Josh Brown]

What do they call it? Joe's.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

That was great. And I've been to RPG Steak, rpm, RPM Steak.

[Bill Baruch]

That's where my.

[Josh Brown]

What's the RPG Rocket propelled grenade. Why is it called rpm?

[Bill Baruch]

You know, I wish I knew, but it's Bill Rancic and Giuliana Rancic. And so when I think if I got this right when he won the. The Trump show, what you call it back in the day, the first one.

[Michael Batnick]

The Apprentice.

[Bill Baruch]

The Apprentice. He designed that. The. The Trump Tower. And they. And they had connections to Chicago and did the RPM Italian and then the.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, that's where I ate. I didn't eat a steak one. I ate at the Italian one.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

What's the one. What's the one that sits like right over the river in like a glass cube?

[Bill Baruch]

That's RPMC food now.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, yeah, whatever. I liked it.

[Michael Batnick]

So many RPs.

[Bill Baruch]

But no, I. We always do our holiday party and at RPM Steak. I love the place.

[Josh Brown]

But. All right, but so if somebody's like, I'm going to be in Chicago one night and I want to have a great steak, where do you send them?

[Bill Baruch]

RPM Steak or the Gibson. The new Gibson's. Gibson's Italia. Which is. Which is in downtown, like the business area. The Loop. Just right outside the Loop.

[Josh Brown]

I like Italian steakhouses that, that sub genre. They just reopened Pietro's here in New York, which is one of the most famous, maybe the earliest version in Austin. You ever been to Red Ash?

[Bill Baruch]

No.

[Josh Brown]

It's like Italian steakhouse flames. I like that kind of thing. So that's what you would do. Gibson's Italia.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. I love the Il Molino Prime. Told you. I always, I always go there.

[Josh Brown]

Il Molino. Il Molino. You can't go wrong. Yeah. El Millennial Prime. The stakeholder.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. Yeah. So I get the steak and a little bit side of.

[Josh Brown]

I'm all fired up over this. It's almost too much for me. All right. How we doing, boys?

[Bill Baruch]

I think we're looking good. All right.

[Josh Brown]

This is an important man.

[Bill Baruch]

All right. What is it?

[Josh Brown]

213. All right.

[Michael Batnick]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop the clock. Here's a word from our sponsor.

[Josh Brown]

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[Michael Batnick]

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[Josh Brown]

Read it carefully. SPY is subject to risks similar to those of stocks. All ETFs are subject to risk, including possible loss of principal. Alps Distributors, Inc. Distributor.

[Callie]

Welcome to the compound and friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnik and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Reditholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this Podcast.

[Josh Brown]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the compound and friends, the world's best investing podcast. It's not even close. If you're listening, you already know this. Hey, we have a first time guest with us. Michael and I are so excited to chat with this young man. Young gentlemen, Bill Baruch is the founder and stuff CIO of both Blue Line Capital and investment advisor and Blue Creek Capital Management, a commodity trading advisor located in Chicago, Illinois. Bill has extensive experience in the financial industry as an advisor, trader and manager. He began his career as an. All right, who wrote this? Way too much already. We're already at the.

[Bill Baruch]

Is this you?

[Josh Brown]

You wrote this?

[Bill Baruch]

I just dropped it.

[Michael Batnick]

Bill wrote it.

[Josh Brown]

I dropped it in there. All right. You've done many things.

[Michael Batnick]

You were a male model.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Brown]

You were at a firm that was bought by MF Global.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

How long did that last? How long were you there for?

[Bill Baruch]

I think it was three or four years before it blew up.

[Josh Brown]

You haven't met Corzine.

[Bill Baruch]

I never met Corzine, but I will tell you, they. They went public and the stock never went higher. It was the. I think the high was the day when public they threw this massive party.

[Josh Brown]

This is 2010.

[Bill Baruch]

I want to say 2008 when they bought it.

[Josh Brown]

Oh no. When did it go public? I'm trying to remember.

[Bill Baruch]

When MF Global went I think public in 0809. Okay. Yeah. And when that would public, they did this big massive party at the opera house.

[Josh Brown]

That was the.

[Bill Baruch]

That was, that was the high. And they start. Start buying stock for the company too. They forced to buy stock and never, never up on it.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. What a. What a. What an unbelievable situation. That's one of the largest blow ups ever.

[Michael Batnick]

What were you doing there?

[Bill Baruch]

8Th biggest bankruptcy.

[Josh Brown]

What'd you do wrong there? Yeah, right.

[Bill Baruch]

No, I was at a trade desk and I learned a lot there. There was really good people in our division. We had obviously nothing to do with what Cortisan was doing, but that was back in the day at where order flow had to go through the floor or people are calling it in.

[Josh Brown]

This is the cme.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, the cme. So you're calling nymex, you're calling the board of trade, you're calling the cme. And there was some stuff electronic still, but options all obviously going straight to the floor. And so we, you know, we had a lot of metals traders at our desk and we actually there was. There was people that, that were trading the NASDAQ bubble that moved on to the metals because that was the last big bull Market in Silver hit 50 in 2011. So you're watching a lot of people that order flow. I was able to learn a lot what works, what doesn't work. Blow up. Had saw people make a lot of money and you know, learned little things in the business and had a good mentor and it was, it was a great experience.

[Josh Brown]

Your commodities experience help you, help you better understand like supply, demand, fear and greed as when it pertains to stocks. Yeah, I would imagine that it would absolutely. All the same shit. It's all the same people. Yeah, it's like the same people issues like the way we buy, the way we sell, what drives people to make decisions. I feel like it's not that different.

[Bill Baruch]

The only difference I think with the equity markets is like the flows that have to go into the equity markets compared to the commodities.

[Josh Brown]

That's great.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, you're not, you're not getting those flows. So, you know, commodities, there is like some elasticity that has to kind of come back in. I mean right now you're not seeing it in like silver and gold. But that's always the fear is like when, when does that supply come out? Is who, who has silver that is going to start selling or whatever commodity it might be that that's. That's moving. Is it wheat or. Or is it crude oil? You know, I remember the days in 2010, crude oil went to $150 and so weird. It was a brokerage shop, MF Global. You're opening accounts day after day. Everybody's calling. People are taking home equity lines out to buy crude oil. At the time, you know, that was like the top. That was all time high in crude.

[Josh Brown]

Oil, but not right. And that aspect of it, not so different from what you see with tech stocks like at the top of a tech bubble. I have this theory, I never wrote about it, where I feel like the stock market in the 70s was a commodities market because to your point, you didn't have that persistent inflow coming in every two weeks with 401k money and asset allocation money, stocks were treated like commodities and they were way more volatile. And the characteristics of the stock market then looked more like a commodity market. And today they don't at all.

[Bill Baruch]

Much more cyclical names leading. I mean, who were the large Exxon AT&T GE? When was Kodak? Was that the 80s? But yeah, that was. I mean the names were completely different than the makeup of the largest.

[Josh Brown]

But I just think people, the way people thought about stocks back then, they thought about them similarly to the way they Think about speculating in commodities. It's 50 years later and market has gone mostly up and we have the advent of the 401k. And now I just think people think differently about, they look at it more like a place to stash away savings rather than just to trade. You do both now.

[Bill Baruch]

Proven results. I mean, after, especially after, you know, the 2000, I mean, you've seen, was it, I mean, 10, 15% average annual returns. So people, they, they know they're missing something if they're not invested. It's proof.

[Josh Brown]

And, and it's the only guy saying buy and hold in the seventies is Jack Bogle. Yeah. Now everybody says buy and hold. So that's different.

[Michael Batnick]

After you blew up MF Global, what did you do next?

[Bill Baruch]

You know, I, I, I left and worked at a. So I, I wanted to, I never wanted to work for, you know, a big shop ever again after that happened. It was a bad experience. You know, it was seeing that play out. And so I, I started with a, a firm with another gentleman and, and you know, we, I end up starting my own firm, Blue line futures, in 2017. In 2017, one of my partners, Oliver Slope, and I got together and we wanted to put out good, consistent research for clients and kind of take that brokerage move to the. Getting that content out. I was doing videos every day talking about the S and P and trading ranges. We're putting out daily research that has grown. We put out a lot of content with our.

[Michael Batnick]

You're very good at the videos, the walking videos. You're like the only one that could actually pull that off. Most people look ridiculous. You're good at it.

[Bill Baruch]

Thank you. Back in the day, it used to be I just stood in front of a wall drop and did it in the office.

[Josh Brown]

The walking is better.

[Bill Baruch]

The walking's better. It's more casual, keeps it tighter. But. Yeah, but as a company, Blue Line Futures, we put out a ton of content. I still write a note every day that covers the S and P levels to trade. Uh, Phil Striebel, who's here listening, he, he puts out metals research every day.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Shout out to Phil. Phil's in studio. He's not really listening to you. He's on, he's on his phone. So he's already heard enough from you today.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, we got a lot of agriculture content that goes out. We have a lot, a lot of the, Just across the board.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, awesome. Love it. I want to, I wanna start with the private credit stuff that seems to have infected the rest of the stock market. Today it's been a while since we've had one of these financial market driven risk off days. I'm not saying it's good, but it's sort of refreshing. It's a, it's a, it's a change from the relentless monotony of AI stocks being up 2% every single day.

[Michael Batnick]

It's been boring.

[Josh Brown]

It's. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of money has been made, but now it seems like we're in a new phase. People are really paying attention to this stuff. What do you think?

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, I mean you're, you're getting, getting some two sided volatility after, after Friday's tweet and it's, you're starting to see a play out. And again I think it's that old cliche saying when the, when the shore, you know, know comes in, you know, who's not wearing shorts and, and I think you get that volatility happening and you, you start seeing some, some of that stuff show up on Tuesday.

[Josh Brown]

Where, where are the cockroaches? That's all, that's all, that's all I want to know.

[Michael Batnick]

On Tuesday, Josh and I were talking about financials and it's what you see in a healthy bull market. You saw black rock hit an all time high. You saw JP Morgan not quite, but great earnings. Goldman just solid numbers. But what we didn't do on the Tuesday show was divide or normalize. Like what's it doing relative to the S and P? And actually if we did do that, and especially on a day like today, the XLF divided by the spy is breaking down like hard like pretty disgusting.

[Josh Brown]

This is, that's not great.

[Bill Baruch]

What timeline is that chart?

[Michael Batnick]

This is daily.

[Bill Baruch]

Okay.

[Josh Brown]

Wow, that's.

[Michael Batnick]

Dude, that's ugly. Yeah, so it's down 2.7% today. S&P is down 70 basis points. Like this is not good.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, I would say definitely not good. And it's been about three, four weeks. Some of the big names, the big, the big money sitter banks, Goldman Sachs, they put a high in and they, yeah, they jumped up a little bit after report. The banks always jump up a little bit after the report when it's a good report, but it's where they are a week later is what I always like to think about it because you get that excitement of the report and then it comes in, you know, usually the next two, three days. So I think that the next few trading days are going to be critical for what that second.

[Josh Brown]

Well, this one is sell the news clearly right Let me read this to you. This is Bloomberg. A pair of blow ups. Oh, on Wall street, everyone's a friendly rival until the losses start. A pair of blow ups in the credit market have sparked a war of words over whether banks or private credit firms are better positioned to weather a broader downturn. So Jamie Dimon said there's never one cockroach. Famously now it's been repeated eight zillion times. Mark Lipschutz from Blue Owl Capital fired back saying the issue was in loans that banks led. So Dimon should be scouring his own books if he wants to squash more bugs. He did on tv. I saw that. He, he's, he sort of a badass. He's got like a little Jason Statham thing going on. This dude, right? He came on TV with no tie. Like, I'm not a banker. What I do.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, I do.

[Josh Brown]

And he's like, no, you're a cockroach.

[Michael Batnick]

I respect the horseshoe look. This guy's got the, the Costanza bald but like, growing out on the sides. I respect.

[Josh Brown]

I should not cry. He's not, he's not cropping it.

[Michael Batnick]

He's not afraid. Like, yeah, I'm bald with hair on the sides.

[Josh Brown]

So what, what are you going to.

[Michael Batnick]

Do about it, billionaire?

[Josh Brown]

What do you make of this stuff? Is it just noise or is it noise that potentially could lead to something?

[Bill Baruch]

I think it can lead to something, but it's more seismic. I think they would have to get deeper. I got a good stat. My research guy here, Shout out Dan White. 19,000 private equity funds, and there's 14,000 McDonald's locations. There's more private equity funds.

[Josh Brown]

There aren't enough.

[Bill Baruch]

So a lot of people are jumping in with little experience. So I think when you get that, know, it could become bigger.

[Michael Batnick]

So my take is for now, and I said this last week, I'll say it again, I'm obviously a tourist, very complacent, a tourist here. It's not nothing. It's not nothing. But the question is, like, is it really something? And of course, we will know with the passage of time. That stat. I, I just smells a little shitty. Like, I, I need it to be normalized a little bit. It sounds very odd. There's 19,000 funds. How many firms are there? How many of those funds are $4 million? Like, I think the point, the point, but the point is valid, is that there is a lot of activity in private markets, obviously.

[Josh Brown]

But the implication of that stat is to me, what's important. If there are, let's say there are 19,000 funds. That's too many. All chasing the same opportunity.

[Bill Baruch]

The question is if. How many of those funds can you get your money out of? If you could. And then if you could, who goes to the exits?

[Michael Batnick]

There's no liquidity in these funds.

[Bill Baruch]

Exactly.

[Michael Batnick]

That's the point.

[Bill Baruch]

That's the point.

[Josh Brown]

But to me, you look at that number of funds and you just picture the competition to write loans. Cause if you raise money, you want to make loans. If everyone else has raised money also, which is the case, it's trillions of dollars, and they all want to make loans, what happens? Well, you start cutting some corners. We'll do it faster than the other guys. Okay, great. We'll do it with less covenants, less protection. Okay, that sounds great, too. We'll do, like all of a sudden. And I'm not saying that's definitely what happened. That's what people are worried about is what happened with this.

[Michael Batnick]

This story is fraud. Allegedly, it looks like. But you can.

[Josh Brown]

Which one? Now we're on to. Now we're on to five different isolated incidents.

[Michael Batnick]

So hold on. It's First President's Tricolor. Is that what else.

[Josh Brown]

Have you not seen what Zion's bank is saying and Western alliance is saying.

[Michael Batnick]

I was not on the news today.

[Josh Brown]

I know Regional is getting writing off. They are writing off loans and suing people saying that fraud has happened, and that's why the regional is getting crushed.

[Michael Batnick]

So here's what we know. We know that the market is not going to underreact.

[Bill Baruch]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

To any negative news. It's going to overreact.

[Bill Baruch]

Maybe.

[Michael Batnick]

Or maybe not. Maybe it is underreacting. We'll find out with that stat. That you could also say, all right, well, there is 26,000 mutual funds and 14,000 ETFs on making up those numbers, and there's too much money. And, yeah, maybe that's sort of the whole point of all of this, is that there is too much money. Yeah, there's too much money chasing too few assets. Valuations are high. The prices. The prices of everything is high. There's a lot of money in the system.

[Bill Baruch]

Well, I go back to Josh's point, too, where you have this number of funds. I mean, maybe you don't know the size of each one, but the money's coming in. The money has to be going somewhere and has to be used, which forces poor investment decisions. And I think that's where the problems happen.

[Josh Brown]

They can't sit on cash. Yeah, that's not the type of business that they're in. They're in the business of allocating the money so that they have the ability to bill on it. And you will do things if you need to bill. What do we got here?

[Michael Batnick]

That was Kobe. He showed me. He had 100 on his test.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, that's so cute. Was his test on private credit?

[Michael Batnick]

Because if not, it was senior secured. John, ins and outs.

[Josh Brown]

Give me this chart. So I was talking to, I was talking to Cali today in our research channel and Callie watches like all the spreads and thought this was interesting. We were saying like there's no spike in credit spreads in junk versus investment grade or junk versus Treasury. But interestingly this is triple C versus double B spreads. So the junkiest junk versus the quote unquote highest quality junk. And here's something starting to. It's nothing, it's not crazy, but it's also not zero. I don't know, I, I look at the regional banks, business development corporations look at the junkiest junk and I just say like, maybe the market's overreacting. But how could we be so sure?

[Bill Baruch]

Well, the other thing, the idea is on the regional banks, are they loosening their lending standards in order to win these private credit deals and is that going to come back to haunt them? Copy?

[Josh Brown]

Some yes, some no. Right. And we'll, we'll, we're all going to find out. We're going to find out together anyway.

[Michael Batnick]

We don't know shit about this. It's not the stock market.

[Josh Brown]

I think it's, I think it's, I think it's notable because other people are reacting. I don't think it's notable because the whole world's on fire. I want to ask you about the metals world. So the best performing industry group in the stock market this year, metals and mining, up almost 100% which is insane for an industry group of stocks. That means some of them are up way more than that. Are you like blown away by this? We've never seen this before.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean, I, I am, I am. You can't not be surprised at the.

[Josh Brown]

Velocity gold is up 60% on the year.

[Bill Baruch]

Well, the velocity of the move that's taken place just over the last three to six weeks is, is absurd. I mean it's in a good way. That's gotta be a little surprising for anybody. But I mean you go back to the turn of the year and you start seeing what was bubbling up in gold and, and we get to 3,000 and you see Trump policies and you see the, the de dollarization, you see the central bank buying consistently Central bank buying and Basel 3, you know, which actually took effect in July of 2025. So it's now officially a Tier 1 asset on Central bank balance sheets. Do you look at that? I mean our thesis was gold's going to go to 5,000. We just didn't think that this is going to happen.

[Josh Brown]

This would happen by Christmas.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. That seems to be the trajectory that we're on.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

No one's selling well, there is no reason to sell.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean the most of the buying is coming from central banks and they're putting on their balance sheet and it's a move away from the dollar. And we think there's proof that China has understated their gold reserves by 20%.

[Josh Brown]

You think they're quietly accumulating prior gold?

[Bill Baruch]

Oh, yeah, certainly. And so I think if gold. And I've sat down with a CEO in the gold mining space and he asked me, bill, what would make gold this? What would, what would, what would ruin this? What, what could make it go down?

[Josh Brown]

What would ruin this uptrend in gold?

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. And, and I, and I, I, I said at the end of the day, I, I don't know what would. Because the, the massive selling that would take this away would have to come from central banks. And they're not selling what we could get though. I mean we could certainly get a 10%. This at the time, gold was at $3500 to $3700 or so. It was just breaking out. And yeah, we get a 10% move. You know, probably if just deleveraging, maybe at this point it could be a 20% move. Deleveraging.

[Josh Brown]

I was going to tell you, the only thing that ruins this is a global recession where these central banks are forced to sell gold in order to do stimulus in their own countries. Because that is literally what ended the gold bull market in 2011. European sovereigns, Asians or they all. So, like.

[Bill Baruch]

But how does that change if it's a tier one asset now on their balance sheet, it is as good as cash.

[Josh Brown]

Yes. But if you need the money. You need the money.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

The other thing that could end it is if people get too excited about gold.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Like big leverage coming in alongside. I don't know. Philip probably has like better, better guesses than I do. But like, it, it eventually does end, but it doesn't have to end for 10 years. Like there's no, it could be a.

[Bill Baruch]

Big cycle here right now.

[Josh Brown]

It could be a big deal.

[Bill Baruch]

Right? Definitely. And I think what could end it? I mean the cos be a number of things. And you look back, even Covid, and I remember that it was like the first week of March, whenever that Monday coming out of the oil, Saudi Arabia and Russia, oil news and oil is down 10 bucks. Gold made a high that morning. But then within weeks and the COVID shutdowns, it was I think 300 bucks. I think it was 1700-1400. And so gold really sniffs out inflation. And it may not react how you would expect during the inflation. Like in 2022, Fed's hiking rates, the dollar is strengthening. Gold was whacked, but it smells inflation. So it's going to see it and it's going to react prior to the inflation. So I would say what we're seeing right now potentially could be more inflation, but then you're also getting the GDPs of Germany and Japan and things like that. That's why the dollar is actually rising. And over this last week, last couple of weeks, when gold's been breaking out, which is a pretty interesting phenomenon.

[Josh Brown]

That's rare.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

I wanted to ask you, why is silver rallying so hard? And then I'll ask you the same on copper. What's, what's happening there?

[Bill Baruch]

What's borrowing rates, lease rates. You can't get the physical silver. And they're trying to.

[Josh Brown]

So explain. We don't have like a hardcore commodity trading audience. Explain what you mean by that.

[Bill Baruch]

Well, I guess the best way to put it would be, you know, lease rate. So. So in order to move silver around, it's. It caught. In order to get the physical silver, you can't, you can't move it from spot to spot in order to get it to London and in order to. And there's lease rates that in order for borrowing costs, they're, they're surging because you can't get the physical silver. So why do what.

[Josh Brown]

Who needs the physical silver in order.

[Bill Baruch]

You know, it's in order for processing industrial reuses. And then you're also getting demand for buying. I mean, more than 50% of the use of silver now is industrial use.

[Josh Brown]

I thought you were going to say Jared. Yeah, okay. I thought you were going to say teenage boys in Massapequa. All right, go on.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, I mean, so I think it was a little unique that China went into its Autumn festival two weeks ago. And, you know, they are a supplier of silver. They're not exporting necessarily. That could be a driver if they decide to export silver. Put it down. But, you know, there was a, there was definitely an alignment where those Lease rates surged. It costs more money to get your hands on silver, but I guess best way to put it around the time of the autumn festival. Festival.

[Josh Brown]

So there's a scar. There's a scarcity.

[Bill Baruch]

Scarcity of silver for sure. Right.

[Josh Brown]

And tons of demand. Because silver typically rallies with gold, but has higher beta usually follow gold.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, it usually follows gold too. So it's. This has been sort of bubbling under the surface and I think once it got above $40, there's always the conspiracy theories that the banks are selling paper silver against the physical, things like that. But I think once it got above 40, the ceiling was lifted and I think it changed the dynamic.

[Josh Brown]

Silver just made its first inflation adjusted high since the Hunt brothers failed attempt to corner the silver market in 1980. I thought that was remarkable. Like what a moment.

[Michael Batnick]

Just to let you guys know, it's the physical back ETFs over in London. Those are the ones that need to secure the silver. So as they get more investors in those ETFs, the demand that they.

[Bill Baruch]

The mountain, they gotta show up.

[Josh Brown]

Investment demand turning into physical demand.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. Wow, Duncan, I'm impressed.

[Josh Brown]

That of course was Paul Tudor Jones. Thank you so much for being here, ptj. We appreciate that. How do you play the upside in the metals? Because I know you're both commodities and futures guy, but then I know you own Newmont and you're involved in the mining stocks too.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. So let's start with the futures. I mean it's, I mean the interesting. The CME Group has done a really great job of making micro contracts over the years because futures trading is of notional value. And you know, so the main contract of silver is a 5,000 ounce contract of silver. So at 20 bucks it was $100,000 contract. Now at 40 bucks it's a $200,000 contract at 60. So you get it. The value of the contract's larger. So the volatility you're withstanding is larger.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, in dollar terms the swings are huge.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, they're huge. So now there's a micro contract that's been around for a few years now and it's 1000 ounce contract of silver. Even at that point you've got the thousand ounce contract of silver. Now is what is the notional value of what silver was. I mean, so options volatility has surged. One of the ways, I mean again we were invested and I run a metals called Metals Alpha. It's a cta, it's an investable program. We've been in this pressing the gas on this most of the year. And right now we've lifted off the gas because the volatility we run our strategy with looking at the average true range and the ranges have just been massive. So we.

[Josh Brown]

The longer the rally continues, the larger that ATR becomes, which raises your potential risk for when it reverses you.

[Michael Batnick]

Then there's a blow off top. It's, it's going vertical.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean, I think we go to 70. I mean we can, we could. I mean there's calls for 100. I think was bank of America.

[Michael Batnick]

What's that on silver?

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, silver. Yeah. So we put on when we got out of the futures and we're just kind of. We are tiptoeing in the futures because the ranges are two to four dollars a day and we don't want, we don't want to get caught in a big downdraft if it does happen. And we, you know, call options. We did some call spreads a couple months. About a month ago. They got to January 65, 75 call.

[Michael Batnick]

Spreads and the diagonal caterpillar box put.

[Bill Baruch]

But no, something simple that we could capture. If it does have that, why a call spread? Because if it has that bananas move where it just goes up 5 to $10 over what it has been, if it keeps its pace up, we're able to capitalize on it and know what our risk is to be invested in it.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, so you can put yourself in a box and get the upside but not be fully exposed.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. A $10 wide spread. 6,575 goes out to expiration end of December. And initially we're buying those from 10 to 20 cents.

[Josh Brown]

Who else is doing that trade along with you? You're seeing a lot of like, funds doing that.

[Bill Baruch]

I think a lot of funds may use options to manage the risks in this type of environment. That's where my expectation would be. So. And we're managing. You know, we look to protect our downside as well. So we're doing different proprietary strategies, managing delta and tail risks.

[Josh Brown]

Now, is it true that only silver can kill a werewolf?

[Bill Baruch]

That in a. What is it? A.

[Josh Brown]

Or vampire? Vampire is a wooden stake. Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

All right.

[Josh Brown]

I want to ask you about copper. What the hell is that about? Now that's its own. That's like. That's its own thing that's going on. People are shocked by this, that it's lagging. Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Well, just like. Wait, I don't understand. The rest of the world's stocks are outperforming the s and P500. China's stock market's up 38% this year. Why are gold and silver rallying this hard and copper is not reacting to better than expected everything overseas like it normally does?

[Bill Baruch]

Well, copper was up over five and a half and if you remember, it was like the July 30th Fed meeting and that was when Trump was really going after Powell a lot. And so right when that Fed meeting was dropped, the White House announced that the copper tariffs, but they're exempting the cathode and the cathode goes in that, in the, in the refining process to, to make the copper. And so, so that would, that actually copper fell historically 20% that day.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

So it really hasn't. I mean there's a lot of damage in the chart, but you know, and then, and then most recently like yesterday, you're hearing about more exports from, from China and they're going to ramp up their, ramp up their copper.

[Josh Brown]

You just don't have the same scarcity profile with, with copper that you and.

[Bill Baruch]

I think, I think you will over time. But when you have a 20% drop the way it did, there's a lot of damage. That chart, even somebody like myself that's, that wants to invest in it, like I've only tiptoed in it because, you know, it just feels like there's a lot of damage to the upside and it's going to, it's going to, you know, a lot of dead bodies overhead. You know, look at it that way. There's a lot of supply technically overhead. So I think it has to chew through that. I mean, if the metals in general keep going higher, I think copper is going to have to join the party. But physically, I mean, you look at the data center investment, you're looking at other things that are going on here. The infrastructure spending that's going on here in the US or around the world, the emerging market economies stepping their game up and investing in their economies. Copper is going to continue to be on high demand. But you're not really getting that growth out of China either as that demand. I think just early in the week it was negative CPI number again, surprisingly in China. So you're not getting that growth and that's been a headwind as well for copper.

[Josh Brown]

You still like gold and silver here?

[Bill Baruch]

Am I putting new positions on in gold and silver here?

[Josh Brown]

So you're letting it ride but you're not pressing the bet?

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, rolling up some stops. But I mean in our metals, our mining Alpha portfolio that you mentioned, we own Newmont, we own Core, we own Barrick we own no more than 10 names is the idea in that portfolio is concentrated. We launched that portfolio in July and I mean they were already up, you know, half, only half as much as they are now, but which was already a lot at that time of the year. We couldn't, we didn't have time to get all that cash to work.

[Josh Brown]

And I was gonna say, like, they're not letting anyone in.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. So we got, we got about two thirds of the cash to work. And so any pullbacks we want to be, we do want to be buying.

[Josh Brown]

Are you telling people that you intend to hold those forever, like be invested forever? Or would you say to the people, look, this is a gold bull market and it's in a one for the record, it's an amazing one. But if it ends, we don't want to own these companies. Well, if you look at it, they're not good companies. They never have been.

[Bill Baruch]

Well, right now there's going to be tons of free cash flow. Free cash flow doesn't last. But then the phenomenon here is you have gold prices higher and you have input costs, energy that they have to purchase and use. Oil prices lower, Oil prices are lower. And so that's a tailwind to the business. I think that's something that makes it a longer cycle. And I think we could be, you know, a year and a half into what could be a five year cycle.

[Michael Batnick]

Just wait till the copper miners discover quantum computing and then boom. Just easily extract the copper, you know, running.

[Josh Brown]

You haven't really thought about AI in the gold market yet. What, what's this purple chart? What are we doing here?

[Michael Batnick]

What we're doing here is we're talking stocks.

[Josh Brown]

All right, let's go. What do you got?

[Michael Batnick]

All right, Vanda has some great data showing retail activity in the stock market. And what they're showing is that the highest amount of one day inflows was last Friday.

[Josh Brown]

Where is that?

[Michael Batnick]

Josh? This is called a chart.

[Bill Baruch]

Oh, I see.

[Michael Batnick]

And the black line is the stocks.

[Josh Brown]

And the purple line is very. The bars.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, there you go. You got it. You got it.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, but we went down.

[Bill Baruch]

They bought.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so they bought the debt. He's new here.

[Josh Brown]

They bought the debt.

[Michael Batnick]

So the stock market went down on a lot on Friday and retail buyers went all the way in.

[Josh Brown]

And it worked. And it already worked until today.

[Michael Batnick]

So let's talk about the stock market chart, kid. Matt did this thing for us. When the S and p is up 7.8%, drawing the line to make it work, I suppose, going into the fourth quarter, the average return for Q4 is 7.7% and in fact, going back to 1950, there's never been a down quarter when the market is up this much. Going to 3/4 now. N equals. I don't know enough. 15 or so. Thoughts?

[Bill Baruch]

Well, I think one of the tailwinds to a fourth quarter rally is the seasonality that you get in August and September and we never pulled back in August and September. So if we start October lower. Yeah, it's easier to finish higher. I do think we're going to have a strong finish of the year and I think, I think the Mag 7 can, really can really. I mean some of those names are, you know, not done much this year and I expect strong earnings reports and I think they're going to be a leader to finish out quarter four. But you know, the tough thing is, you know, it would be, you know, we're seeing a lot of volatility right now. The Vix is above 20. It's a 24, 25 here today. And that leads to further volatility. I'm surprised we haven't seen more downside this week and we may. So there's going to be a little bit of a, of a, you know, rebuild a little bit potentially. But at the same time, every time this market is sold off it, it hasn't been down for more than one day or two days. So I think it's going to. We're in this little vacuum of there's, there's no, there's no government data. There's, you know, we're waiting on earnings and there, you know, no one. Everybody's kind of waiting.

[Josh Brown]

Start next week.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, waiting. No one's blinking yet.

[Josh Brown]

So we sort of need it, we sort of need a Microsoft report to, to get us to stop looking at regional bank charge offs.

[Bill Baruch]

How much more did they spend on AI?

[Josh Brown]

Right, yeah, I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess a lot more.

[Michael Batnick]

This is a good one. We could skip the next seasonal one. The bottom line is absent some news that knocks us off course and maybe it's the cockroaches the managers are going to chase. Right. The people that are underinvested chasing trn. It just, it happens every year. This is some good stuff from Warren Pies. So we are in a, I guess a blackout period where companies cannot purchase their own stock. So Warren Pies has a chart that shows the typical annual cycle for S&P 500 buyback volume. And of course there are blackout periods and we're in one right now. But the.

[Josh Brown]

They have to report earnings and then they. It's came back on.

[Michael Batnick]

But what he's showing is that once the buying picks back up, he breaks it down. Statistically, you do see pretty significant positive returns for the s and P500 companies.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, it's, it's noticeable stuff, right? Stocks. Stocks have a better period of time during the buyback phase.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I think it's obvious. But, but the point is we're coming.

[Bill Baruch]

Up to continuing bid.

[Josh Brown]

I like, I like that idea. Nobody's like really talking about buybacks anymore. I don't know if we're making a record this year.

[Michael Batnick]

You know why? Because it's, it's AI is just sucking the oxygen out if that's all anybody wants.

[Bill Baruch]

And every earnings report, they're talking about raising their buybacks too. So they're. They. The buybacks are there for sure.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So Bill, does this make you nervous? We are obviously in a. Retail is having a moment. You could call it a mania. Some of the returns at some of their favorite stocks. Quantum computing, nuclear uranium, just scary flying.

[Josh Brown]

Cars, all that shit.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So trading. Thomas3 on Twitter shared that retail has been buying calls for 24 consecutive weeks which reached a record high last week. I mean there's just no chill.

[Bill Baruch]

You know, I, I think there's certainly. And that's what's made me nervous this summer a little bit. I thought we'd get that seasonal pullback and, and you know, I love, I love what we were able to accomplish in our portfolio into July and August. And so it made sense for us, you know, to, to trim a little bit and kind of wait and watch a couple rounds, have some flexibility and the situation hasn't deteriorated at all. And I mean Camber just kept going, kept going. So I think that's the interesting thing. You get these retail flows that keep pushing it higher. But at the same time, I mean you look at what you buy those many calls, I mean there's. The put call ratio has hit a level that it does cap the upside returns in the near term. So I think that's something that what we're going through this week, it could be timely. And I don't think it's going to be seismic. I don't think it's like a. I mean you could go back to March of 23 when these literally banks were, were not. The doors were closed and shut down the next day. We, we ral. AI rallied us out of that and, and Kaisha.

[Josh Brown]

Kaisha. Crazy question. I don't Even understand where people are getting the money to do this.

[Michael Batnick]

Look at this chart. So put it.

[Josh Brown]

Could we go, can we go back to that though?

[Michael Batnick]

No, look at this, look at this.

[Josh Brown]

What is this?

[Michael Batnick]

This is showing mega cap tech. So for all the talk of like we're in a bubble, the mega cap tech are significantly underperforming the crazy names. So it's mega cap tech divided by non profitable tech. And if you invert this it is. The ratio here is wild.

[Josh Brown]

Mega cap tech is no longer exciting enough to attract retail trading.

[Michael Batnick]

These things are going sideways. A lot of them. Tech.

[Bill Baruch]

That's the frothiness, that's.

[Josh Brown]

They want that Oklo.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, that's the stuff.

[Josh Brown]

That's what they want.

[Bill Baruch]

Makes me nervous.

[Josh Brown]

But where. So put this chart back up. The retail options trading. What is this like out of people's paychecks? What are they doing? What are the dollar amounts involved in this?

[Bill Baruch]

You know what really got cause how.

[Josh Brown]

Do you keep losing unless they.

[Michael Batnick]

What do you mean?

[Bill Baruch]

They're making money, dude, they're making money.

[Josh Brown]

The retail call buyers continue to make money.

[Bill Baruch]

They're crushing. And you know what, and you know what really got it going. And I know from talking to people firsthand, I was a little bit in the first one. I haven't done much more after that. But Eric Jackson on that open call and I think that was the big start.

[Michael Batnick]

That was the spark. You're right.

[Bill Baruch]

That was the spark. And we've seen a number. He's had a couple other calls since then but that's what really got people.

[Josh Brown]

He came out, he came out with the stock at a dollar, said it's going to $80. It did go to 10.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

I don't know where it is.

[Michael Batnick]

Looks pretty vulnerable. It's at 7:11.

[Josh Brown]

Don't try charting. Don't try charting.

[Michael Batnick]

I know you can't charge six. No, I know. It could be a 15.

[Josh Brown]

Next he might get Drake to buy. To buy a million dollars worth of stock. It'll go to 50. You really, you know, really don't want to chart that. I agree with you. That seemed like it was a moment.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

And then ever since people are just like what's the craziest thing I could do?

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, it's like what am I buying today to make money? It's like an assumption that you're going to make money today if you just open.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but that's such a good point. Where's the money coming from? Because it's not. It's not only retail and it's not only options. So last week bank of America showed that single stock inflows were the fifth largest in history. So single stocks, and the biggest ever for a week that the market was down at least 1%.

[Josh Brown]

I mean it's, they're not scared. The firepower is endless that like they don't react negatively to headlines anymore. Really. The dips are bought the same day. They don't even wait a day.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, somebody had a great take on oclo and you could use this for a lot of these companies, there's no exposure, there's no revenue. They're not sensitive to interest. It's just whatever. There's, there's nothing tethering it to fundamentals.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean a lot of these names, I mean they're unprofitable, they're not making money. I mean it's a story.

[Josh Brown]

They're equity financed. They're not subject to borrowing rates.

[Bill Baruch]

A lot of tech always is. It's not, it's not what you're doing for me now, it's what you're going to do for me in the future. And this is really extending that narrative and saying, and it's pulling that cash in there. You're buying a story. I mean these are a lot of people, I'm sure people that have made money in Bitcoin. People have made money and other things and they're moving that money around, but they've made money hodling. They made money doing things. And I'm not, I'm not dogging dude at all.

[Michael Batnick]

Making money is not dumb. Making money is not dumb.

[Bill Baruch]

They're, I mean these people are, they're doing their thing.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm sure that there will be. Listen, this is a mania. A lot of these, these are pre revenue names. I would guess that there's going to be a handful of winners over the long term. Yeah, maybe, maybe at lower valuations. But a lot of these are going to companies.

[Josh Brown]

The companies though are not stupid. They're all selling equity. They're all doing second.

[Michael Batnick]

Allegedly the CEO of one of these companies. I don't know if it's Oklahoma or Ionic, I don't want to. I forget which one it was. Allegedly like sold all of his stock.

[Bill Baruch]

Really? I mean we're getting, and we've gotten multiple calls into us at Blue Line Capital, like clients like, why can't you buy this name in my portfolio? Listen, I mean the music's going to stop at some point. It's going to be done as a fiduciary. We can't do that.

[Josh Brown]

Why don't we own this piece of shit that everyone else just made 400% on?

[Bill Baruch]

So those are the conversations that some of my team has had. Some have come to me and it's, I mean I'm not talking dozens, but maybe you don't nearly. It's hard.

[Josh Brown]

You have to just send them a link to, you have to send them a link to Robin Hood, tell them, download the app, do whatever you want. I'm not doing that.

[Michael Batnick]

But let's just bring it back to. Because I, I really think it's important that people that are listening don't hear us talking about this pocket of mania, which, which it is. And say up. The whole thing's in bubble. The whole thing's the house cards. Because it's important that we zoom out.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So Yuri and Timmer has a great chart that shows the good news is that the earnings are doing the heavy lifting as we enter year four of this bull market. The PE ratio is only up 1% year over year while earnings are up 11%. That is critically important. The PE is only up. This is for the S and P, I'm guessing only 1% year over year. So all of this expansion that we've seen, it's earnings. So it is fundamentals. Companies are growing, margins are at all time highs. Like there is good reason why stocks are going up. Despite a lot of the nonsense, Nvidia.

[Josh Brown]

Is underperforming its earnings growth.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean we, we see Nvidia as, as almost relative to other pockets in tech of value buy. There's some great names out there.

[Josh Brown]

It's wild, but it is, it is that way.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean look at like a name like Micron. I mean, I mean we own that in portfolios. It's like our number nine holding. We have a 3% holding of it and I mean I've trimmed it a couple times but it's, I mean there's names that are really growing earnings substantially. And yes, I'm not, I'm not sitting here calling this a bubble or anything. I mean I, I think when you look at some of those non profitable frothy tech, it's kind of a little bit of its own pocket. It's out there. But the, the names that we're all investing in, the names that are driving the S and P, the names that are really driving the NASDAQ 100. I mean there's a lot of, lot of money being made by those companies and I think they're going to continue to grow very well.

[Josh Brown]

I want to go Back to one of your charts. John, can you put up chart seven? So, Bill, this is yours. You mentioned the put call ratio. Walk us through why you think positioning makes it as such that we might sort of see capped upside from here?

[Bill Baruch]

Well, it's. If everybody's, you know, it's all the boat's invested on one side. I mean, so if everybody's invested in that downside protection, whatever it might be, you know, it also has an impact on gamma dealers. And really what we've seen a lot of this year where, you know, earlier on coming out of April, it really, it really helped the market move. But at the same time, if, if every, historically, if everybody's extremely negative in buying puts, you know, you're not, you're, it's, it's not move is not going.

[Michael Batnick]

To play out so weird. Everybody has one foot out the door, right? Like as soon as there's some bad news.

[Josh Brown]

What are you showing? This is the inverted put call ratio.

[Bill Baruch]

Not. Puts are not being bought enough right now.

[Josh Brown]

Puts are not being bought enough, which is like. That's what you want to see. That's April. That's what you want to see. We have the opposite of that.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, you see, you see the, the April, April move. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, so you think we are susceptible to a downside whoosh.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Got it, got it, got it.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. This is, this is what. So when, when the put call ratio is at this level, it's, it's typically caps the upside a bit.

[Josh Brown]

It's toward the end of a big rally, not, not early in the, in the game.

[Bill Baruch]

And there has been false signals. You can see like quarter four of, of 24, second half of 24 false signals that came out of April because remember, coming out April, I mean, everybody got so bullish so quickly and so no one's buying puts anymore. Everything. The coast is clear and it kept going. So there is false signals. It's not, it's just, it's just one of the things to look at.

[Josh Brown]

You have another one, John, chart 10. You say since the Fed cut rates on September 17, markets have responded as if it were a meaningful pivot with precious metals and small caps outperforming the small cap rally deserves. I mean, today it reversed because you got a lot of regional banks in there. But what do you think it was about what happened on September 17?

[Bill Baruch]

I think you get this Fed rate cut. You get the Fed rate cut last September. I mean, the economy is, I mean, 3% plus GDP, credit spreads. I mean, this is before, as of September, there May be a little wiggle. Nothing to worry about.

[Michael Batnick]

Consumers cooking consumers.

[Bill Baruch]

Inflation is. It's not where the Fed wants it, but it's not a headwind too much. So, I mean, everything is sort of almost in that Goldilocks form and you get a rate cut. I mean, they're just juicing the economy. Basically.

[Josh Brown]

They did a rate cut they didn't have to do on September 17th.

[Bill Baruch]

Essentially that, that Fed pivot. And it's, essentially, it's. Investors are saying, you know, buy me whatever's not going to be devalued because it's better than if they're going to go in this. Trump has stacked the Fed or will stack the Fed over the next couple next year. So it's in that he's going to get his cuts. They're saying they're going to get the Fed rates down to 2%. Maybe if he gets his way over the next year.

[Josh Brown]

Well, if he installs the Fed chair by, by the end of May, which is what's going to happen. It may be, it may be Besant, it may be Eric, I don't know. Whatever he, whatever he wants is nobody left to stop him. Rates are not staying where they are now. And it almost doesn't matter what the economic data says.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Because he's got an opinion that low rates, good for me, low rates, good for the economy. Don't care what the data is. Lower the rates.

[Michael Batnick]

So the labor market is low, hiring low, firing consumers are absolutely fine. Bank of America just reported they serve almost everyone. Nothing to see there. Everyone is saying the same thing. Hyperscalers continue to spend and the Fed is cutting hard to be bearish in that scenario. On the other hand, if the cockroaches come out, and as always, risk is what we're not talking about here. So. Yeah, you have to. You never know. But if you zoom out, you just place those two things, it's hard to. I think, I think bulls have the upper hand.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

You have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Bill Baruch]

Get a little, little scare here. Will be healthy.

[Michael Batnick]

Great. Let's do it.

[Bill Baruch]

Let's, let's. I mean, it would be great to see if we get little something ton. A full 5%.

[Michael Batnick]

A full 5%.

[Bill Baruch]

Full 5%. Maybe 7.

[Michael Batnick]

But is that a while? A full 5. A full 5.

[Bill Baruch]

Full 5.

[Josh Brown]

Wow.

[Michael Batnick]

Whoa.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. What's this? S and P Consumer staples sector chart.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, I want to talk about this. Our Fred Todd Sohn and others at Ned Davis Research do great work. So let's start with chart 16 and we're talking about, man, it's kind of wild. The Staples have never been a lower percentage of market cap. Well guess what? Ned Davis shows that the market's not dumb. The percentage of earnings that the Staples are producing is also at an all time low.

[Josh Brown]

Don't matter anymore.

[Michael Batnick]

Listen. So John, top chart 12. So this is from Todd. Consumer staples and energy and health care and utilities are lower in the S and P than technology. Now you might see this and understandably conclude, and I love Todd, that this doesn't make sense. Bubble, bubble, bubble. I'm out. Okay, you have to look at the earnings. So check out this chart that, that Matt did. So similar to Ned Davis, I was inspired by them. I asked Matt to look at this. On the left hand we're looking at the market cap of Staples and Healthcare and we're looking at their net income. And guess what's happening? They're moving together to the lower right. The market cap is 14.8%.

[Josh Brown]

The net income share means percentage of the whole market.

[Michael Batnick]

And they're the same exact thing. 14.8 and 14.7. It's almost like the market is a dumb. And on the other side of the coin you have Apple and Nvidia. They make up 8.3% of the total income up from 4% in 2020. Doubled. And yes the market cap is higher. It's 13.2% because obviously the market's going to get excited and over extrapolate and overdo it.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So maybe we're seeing that but the market is getting it right by and large.

[Josh Brown]

So this is an answer to the people that are like the whole thing is dominated by tech yet because the earnings are the multiple.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean this, the multiple of Staples relative over the last 10 years is at the upper end of its band.

[Josh Brown]

Crazy.

[Bill Baruch]

Crazy.

[Michael Batnick]

So why was low?

[Bill Baruch]

Well, yeah, yeah, well I mean I think the situation could be different. Maybe it may be driving some of the money, you know right now potentially. I mean obviously.

[Josh Brown]

What's the multiple on staples?

[Bill Baruch]

So 21, 20 got as high as 22 and a half. But 20 over the, the mid range is, is, is just under 20 over the last 10 years.

[Josh Brown]

So you're paying 20 times for Procter and Gamble. That's growing 1 or 50 for Costco.

[Bill Baruch]

Which you want Costco. Estee Lauder, I mean Walmart, Walmart 39. Costco is 48. Estee Lauder 46.

[Josh Brown]

I mean let's, let's do utilities. This is a fun one. First of all year to date, John, 18 year to date returns by sector.

[Michael Batnick]

This is eye candy. This is crazy.

[Josh Brown]

Right? Okay, so utilities are the best performing sector year to date up 23.7%. But they're so small as a sector, even after that their contribution to the S&P's year to date total return is less than a half of 1%. Think about how insane that is. That's how tiny the utility sector is relative to the whole market. That it could be up as much as it is and not even move the needle for the market. This, we're in uncharted territory now. Yeah, I mean and these stocks have decent sized market caps at this point because they're, they've gone up a lot. But like in comparison to the microns, the, the Netflixes that they just, they don't even matter. Yeah, so I thought that was interesting. Let's just equal weight utilities, equal weight S&P 500. Look at this divergence. March 2024. Basically people that thought utilities were like grandpa's stocks. Nope, that's not what's going on anymore. Now you have record breaking electricity demand all over the country, all over the economy. And guess what? They're going to treat these stocks like they're Alphabet and meta.

[Bill Baruch]

Now that's the huge thing is I mean if you're going to drive AI and power AI, the power demand, we have a slide for that too. The power demand is incredible. I mean you can see some of the forecast here. Natural gas. So in our portfolios we don't own a traditional utility. It kind of happened quick when these things just started going. But we're also, I mean we own kmi, we own lng, we own ccj, the utility, I mean uranium, you know, some of this. But the natural gas is going to be a massive player. Look at the forecast on this chart from 2025 down to 2035. What natural gas in the yellow is going to do as empowering?

[Josh Brown]

Why are natural gas stocks so terrible then? Well, I own them then. The price, I mean the, the explorers, the producers, I don't mean the transmissions.

[Michael Batnick]

LNG is breaking down hard.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's not, it's not responding to it. I mean the price natural gas has, has not moved much. And they, they, they, they don't really, there's, there's legal things to it now but basically you just say hypothetically, you know, they just burn it, you know, they just burn it away.

[Josh Brown]

It's just endless supply. Like we're like the Saudi Arabia of.

[Bill Baruch]

Natural gas, of natural gas or what's going to need the people that own the pipelines like a Kendra Morgan. And then I mean lng there could be more geopolitical things because we're, they're. They're not making money on the Cheniere, on the movement of. I mean of the price of natural gas. They're making money on the movement of natural gas. So if it's going to, if they're going to bring natural gas to.

[Josh Brown]

They're going to exp. If they're going to export it. That's the, that's the play with that stock. Okay. I don't know. Can you buy, can you buy the utilities here?

[Bill Baruch]

We have some names on our, on our watch list like nee a couple others but you know that's, that's new era. Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean some of the high quality stuff that, that can, that can drive with it. But it's. I would like to see a pullback.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, you're seeing a potential outside day in XLU today. We'll see where it closes.

[Josh Brown]

But those stock, I mean those stocks are basically AI stocks now.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

There's none of the, none of the volume that's coming into those stocks has anything to do with dividends in the way that it used to.

[Bill Baruch]

Absolutely. I mean the other thing you gotta be careful about for us too is, I mean our top holdings are in video and Alphabet and Broadcom and Micron. It's like how much more AI exposure.

[Josh Brown]

Same trade.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. So if you get a deep seek moment or something like that, your whole portfolio is going to get. Get smoked. So. So we have a lot more. We look at more ballasts within our portfolio and how we listen to this.

[Josh Brown]

That the utility sector is expected to report the second highest Q3 earnings growth rate. 17.1% of all 11s and P500 sectors. Second only to tech. I can't. I. How many other years historically have there been where utilities were putting up high teens growth? None. Maybe none. It's possible.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean you can't imagine many.

[Josh Brown]

It's a pretty, it's a pretty exciting time to be in the market and have things like that going on. So I mean at least, at least I think so you have a Mag 7 take going into earnings. Like where are you most confident? What are the names that we should watch and what are you watching for?

[Bill Baruch]

I think the bar is high, but I think the bar is in the right spot for some of the names that have not done much this year. Amazon. I think the communication around cloud at the last earnings call was, you know, it really hurt Amazon. It kind of, kind of pushed them away and you had these just amazing numbers from others and I think that's, that's something that if Amazon can deliver the results and communicate well, that stock.

[Josh Brown]

Has done shit this year.

[Bill Baruch]

I think it's going to finish. I own it very strong.

[Josh Brown]

It's pissing me off actually.

[Bill Baruch]

It was one of our higher conviction plays coming into the year. But you know, as you move and when you raise a little bit of cashier and you rent, you know, put that cash back into something else. We haven't been adding to it. It's still up there. If we get the good results, I mean it could be something that could really run into the year. I mean I can't, I can't talk about Micron enough. There could be a real repricing.

[Josh Brown]

Is that your favorite chip stock right now?

[Bill Baruch]

It trades like a commodity. You know the one thing it is.

[Josh Brown]

It is, it always has been.

[Bill Baruch]

I thought the interesting thing, I mean the high bandwidth memory is, is you know, making, making things, make it more efficient and power efficient for to, to run this, run these chips. The Morgan Stanley, I think it was upgraded and they, they, they upgraded the story of dram. And so I think there's, there is some interesting stuff going with Micron and if it, you're seeing price targets go to 220 to 240. But there could be a real full repricing in this name if, if, if at all things are, are clicking and, and I mean the Ford multiple, what it's like it's, it's seven. Yeah. Or no, it's eleven. Eleven and a half.

[Josh Brown]

It gets valued like a commodity.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Is the way they've always done it.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean imagine that, imagine a 20 multiple on that.

[Josh Brown]

What if it becomes a less cyclical business? I mean that would be the dream come true for long standing Micron shareholders at long last.

[Michael Batnick]

You know. No, I think a pullback into earnings is, is a good thing.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. I'd rather as a, as a shareholder you want to see like a little bit of doubt creep in. You don't want to see this thing, these things flying into earnings to that point too.

[Bill Baruch]

You also remember last August and when we were getting that pullback from the highs and if you miss, if they're missing, you know it's going to hurt them more. So instead of being down 3 to 5% in an up market, you're going to be down 5 to 10.

[Michael Batnick]

It is asymmetric.

[Bill Baruch]

Yes. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

The, the losers are punished more than the winners. Are rewarded.

[Bill Baruch]

Correct.

[Josh Brown]

What do you think of the setup on Tesla going into earnings? It's rallied hard this summer and fall and it's not as though the fundamentals right away are about to get any better.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a strong to quite strong.

[Bill Baruch]

Has it reacted to earnings? So I mean when's the last time it's really reacted to the earnings report?

[Josh Brown]

It just doesn't matter I guess the auto earnings on the auto business, it just, it doesn't seem to matter anymore.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean it is a breakout. I mean really could be if it keeps moving higher from here over the end of last year high before it fell out. I think it's. It's a more of a momentum play and how. How Elon communicates. And what's the next event more than more than the earnings.

[Josh Brown]

What do you do with Nvidia here? They're not going to report till the end and end of earnings Season stock just made a new record high the other day. See it was green today with everything else red.

[Bill Baruch]

Is it the least volatile stock out there?

[Josh Brown]

It's become very unvolatile. Yeah. I feel like this can't end until this can't end until this is over 200.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah, it's got to do it I think. I mean we've actually seen volatility of Nvidia kind of come out ahead of its earnings report often. But you'll also going into its earning when it gets its earnings. We know what all those big names have already said. How much spending is Microsoft and Meta and you get those numbers and that's going to correlate to what I said.

[Michael Batnick]

That's Josh last quarter. It's anticlimactic because you already heard from all their compet, all their suppliers.

[Josh Brown]

You know what? I think this ends when OpenAI comes public at a trillion dollar valuation. The biggest IPO ever and it's a flop out of the gates. And it's not because there's anything wrong with OpenAI. It's just because at a certain point enough is enough. That'll be the. I don't think the market can withstand a meteor of that size hitting the surface of the planet. It's a trillion dollars. It'll soak that money out of all these other public companies like they people don't understand. When a company comes public, Josh is.

[Michael Batnick]

A big money come out guy.

[Josh Brown]

It's sell. When a company comes public, the people who own it privately are selling it to new people who don't own it. Yeah, they need to pull money from somewhere to buy It. That's by. That's. It's a tautology, but it's the actual fact that you're selling stock to the public. Unless public offering of stock.

[Michael Batnick]

Nah. 7 trillion comes out of the money funds and boom, problem solved.

[Josh Brown]

Trillion dollar IPO the valuation and they need to raise $200 billion to facilitate the offering. People are going to sell other shit.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so what do you think about this theory? People are. I feel like bulls and bears. Everybody's waiting for this to end, for it to burst.

[Josh Brown]

Is that not. Wait. Is that not a good framework?

[Michael Batnick]

That would be. That would. That would.

[Josh Brown]

How poetic.

[Michael Batnick]

That would make the most sense.

[Josh Brown]

The OpenAI IPO that would make the most sense.

[Michael Batnick]

The what if the most frustrating outcome is the most likely? Where this just keeps. We just plot along and there is no.

[Josh Brown]

It's not the most likely.

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no, no, no. That's not what I said. I said the most frustrating outcome is the most likely. Like. Like lo. In an LOL world where the most frustrating outcome is there's no bust. And maybe there is no boom. And maybe we just plot along and we grow into these valuations and there is no kablooey other than the fact that it's not.

[Josh Brown]

Never happen that way.

[Michael Batnick]

I know. Okay. A lot of things happen.

[Bill Baruch]

2% interest rates at the end of 2026 and continued AI spending. I mean, you're going to. Money's going to be forced into everything that's not, you know, has to be invested into things that are not going to depreciate. Invest your money somewhere. And that's what's driving gold. It's driving silver, it's driving you knowing commodities, but it's driving AI investment. It's. It's driving these call options into, you know, all these nonprofit tech names.

[Josh Brown]

So it is seem. It does seem like a scramble for people to get their money out of dollars and do anything else pretty much.

[Michael Batnick]

Except the dollars aren't crashing.

[Josh Brown]

Dollars aren't crashing. But. But, but the inflation never went away.

[Bill Baruch]

It is Dollar is crashing. It's crashing to gold.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, stop it.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, my God. One of those. So I got. No, I got a text from Sprinkles the other day. Should we be doing more gold?

[Michael Batnick]

Shut up.

[Josh Brown]

You want to see it? I don't have my phone. But wait, I find.

[Michael Batnick]

Should we be doing more gold?

[Josh Brown]

Should be doing more gold. Hold on.

[Bill Baruch]

All right.

[Michael Batnick]

Bill's like, all right. On secondhand.

[Bill Baruch]

I'm giving the sign to Phil here.

[Josh Brown]

Why?

[Bill Baruch]

Phil's going to step out.

[Josh Brown]

How you say Sophisticated investor here. Want to see it? Deadass. Wait. She sent me a whole bunch of nudes, so I got to be careful scrolling through this with you here. Hold on. I want to give you the exact words. Here she is yelling at me.

[Michael Batnick]

What did you say? I'm curious to hear your response.

[Josh Brown]

I was like, shut the up or something. No, no. I told her, we have gold. We're fine. We have everything. We're invested in everything. We never stop investing. I can't find it right now, but it was to the effect of. I heard it's doing really good now. Where the hell did she hear that? Below decks.

[Bill Baruch]

CNBC commercials.

[Michael Batnick]

Good Morning America.

[Josh Brown]

She's not watching cnbc. No offense.

[Bill Baruch]

There's always. There's always a gold commercial somewhere.

[Josh Brown]

She must be. They must have been talking about it on either, like, she doesn't watch the View like a Bethany Frankel podcast, or she listens to Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher. She likes that one. I got to find out from her where she heard this. If I hear it's the View, I'm bearish. No offense to anyone, but I don't think it's quite. I don't think it's quite there. Gold at 5,000 will be a huge deal and will become mainstream news.

[Bill Baruch]

Well, congratulations to everybody that bought as much Costco gold as they could last year.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They were right. There's another example where the crowd was right. The herd. The herd was not. The herd is not always stupid.

[Michael Batnick]

All those things we just never bring up that at the time of, like, the end of. This is the top. Oh, yeah. Jensen Wang signed a bra. Yeah. Two years ago.

[Bill Baruch]

Video. Yeah. It was at night.

[Michael Batnick]

Was it?

[Josh Brown]

That should have been the top.

[Michael Batnick]

Remember the watch party? The invited watch parties.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

I was like. I was right.

[Josh Brown]

Why wasn't that the top? The. The earnings call. Happy hours.

[Michael Batnick]

One of these days, right?

[Josh Brown]

All right, Bill, did you have fun on the show today?

[Bill Baruch]

I had a great time.

[Josh Brown]

Dude, we love you. I have to tell you something. I get the list of who's going to be on the show with me every morning, and when I see your name, I know it's going to be a good show. So I hope you feel that way about me.

[Bill Baruch]

Of course I do.

[Josh Brown]

Would you like to say some nice things about me now?

[Bill Baruch]

Of course.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. This is a good space to do that. Hey. We always end the show asking people what they're most excited about. You're. You got a lot going on. What. What. What's. What's out on the horizon for you?

[Bill Baruch]

Well, outside of markets, I'm excited. We're going to. My family. We're going to Cancun next week.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Bill Baruch]

And I got three daughters and another family that we are really close with. They have four daughters. They're all, like, best friends. The kids don't know that they're going up together.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, they're gonna be so excited. When are they gonna see each other at the airport?

[Bill Baruch]

Different flights.

[Josh Brown]

Different flights.

[Bill Baruch]

So we land at the same time.

[Michael Batnick]

Unreal.

[Bill Baruch]

And they're gonna see each other at the airport, and it's gonna be, like, you know, exciting.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, very cool. So they're. Oh, so you're gonna boat. You're gonna run into each other at the Cancun airport?

[Bill Baruch]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

Probably in the line at customs.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. That's gonna be cool. How long you going for?

[Bill Baruch]

I think just four days.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, good Enough with kid.

[Bill Baruch]

With kids.

[Josh Brown]

That's plenty.

[Michael Batnick]

Four days is plenty.

[Bill Baruch]

Yeah. You know, you plan it. It's late October, Chicago. You don't know if it's, you know, weather's gonna. How the weather's gonna be, and if we get into holiday season and stuff.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, I have a plot twist for you. It's Michael's family that's meeting you there. What do you got? What do you got going on? What are you excited about?

[Michael Batnick]

I'm excited for the Knicks. I'm excited for.

[Josh Brown]

What's the first regular season game. It's like.

[Michael Batnick]

Is it Friday against the Celtics? Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

This coming Friday?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

I think we win that one. I think we win that one, too.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I hope so. They are depleted. Coming in strong. Coming in hot. You're a big Bulls guy.

[Bill Baruch]

Not so much.

[Michael Batnick]

Bulls stink.

[Bill Baruch]

No, he's from Maryland.

[Josh Brown]

He's a Wizard. He's a Wizards guy.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, the Arian works.

[Josh Brown]

You grow up watching the Bullets.

[Bill Baruch]

I did.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

I did Juwan and Weber, and she'd.

[Bill Baruch]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

What a horrible franchise. No offense.

[Bill Baruch]

I mean, I think. I think. I think Jordan played his last couple of years there, and that was just brutal. I mean, I did go see him play. It was great, you know, but you.

[Josh Brown]

Had the 80s early 90s Redskins to make up for it. That wasn't terrible.

[Bill Baruch]

That was.

[Josh Brown]

Wasn't all bad.

[Bill Baruch]

The Mark Rippon super bowl, that was. That was fun. That was a fun one, too.

[Josh Brown]

All right, dude, 91. We want to tell people where they could follow you for more. So I have a whole bunch of links here. I have bluelinefutures.com, bill Baruch. We'll just tell people Blue line futures. Right? I have your Twitter x.com billbaruch and social.

[Michael Batnick]

What's a good social for you?

[Josh Brown]

That's his social. Twitter and then bluelinecapitalwealth.com bluelinecapitalwealth.com okay. And you on LinkedIn too, dude.

[Bill Baruch]

You're everywhere. Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

All right. You having fun doing Halftime Report?

[Bill Baruch]

I love it.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

It's been such a great. And I'll tell you, it's just. It's so great being able to go to the New York Stock Exchange to do it. It's. It's like humbling. Walk into that, dude.

[Josh Brown]

It's pretty epic, right? It's still. It still is. It's still like a magical building. Yeah, I agree. Well, I love being on with you, as I said, so thanks for everything. Thank you for being on the show. We appreciate you.

[Bill Baruch]

Thank you.

[Josh Brown]

All right, Bill Baruch, ladies and gentlemen. You guys, thank you so much for buying out all the tickets for the live compound and friends that we're doing. We appreciate you guys. We're super excited to see you all.

[Bill Baruch]

That's cool.

[Josh Brown]

Coming up very soon, October 24th, and, man, what a night we have in store for the compound fans. Huge thanks to Duncan and John, who are in the room with us today. Rob, Nicole, Graham, Keith, the whole team. We appreciate all of you. Thank you guys so much, and thanks to you, like, and subscribe. We'll see you soon. Got it. Yeah.

[Bill Baruch]

You want to beat yourself one more time?