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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:10]
B
Welcome to the report. It is August 5, 2026. Today's report is entitled is the Fed letting the market do the Tightening? Of course we're going to talk about the Fed. I think the main topic is NASDAQ versus Bitcoin though. So last week as we were recording, the Nasdaq was down 10% on the month and some of the frothiest corners of AI the memory stocks, they were hit the hardest. They were down like 30 to 50%. This week we have a whipsaw event with the QQQ regaining a lot of that loss and nearing on all time highs. So the dip was bought. We gotta talk about why that happened and what this means. And the question is, was this just a bump on the way to new all time highs for the Nasdaq or does this equities pump look a little fake? Look a little 10-10-10 in crypto? Also we're going to do a bitcoin cycle awareness check just to see how that time based capitulation that we've talked about, how that's going. And I think we want to answer the question is it time to buy Bitcoin and exchange, exchange QQQ stocks that might be in your portfolio for bitcoin. We're going to look at the bitcoin to QQQ ratio and ask the question if we've bottomed or not and which will outperform the other in the months to come. So stick around to the end for that. Mike, I gotta be honest, this whipsaw took me by surprise. So NASDAQ down 10%. We were talking about that last week and then we had a Fed FOMC meeting. It didn't seem to recover based on the back of that. And now suddenly a week later we're nearing on all time highs for the nasdaq. What the heck happened in the last week?
- [02:04]
A
Things are definitely getting interesting out there for sure. We spent some time last week talking about macro and rate hikes and the FOMC meeting last week. And yeah, interesting reaction coming out of the meeting. You know, yield curve steepening, you've got the QQQs up here now and you know, we've seen, we saw almost a 10% correction and it looked like, you know, maybe we were going to start to see a little bit more of an unraveling there. As you mentioned, some of the kind of like frothier names, memory stocks, things like that were down 30 to 50% or so and we've kind of just like V reversed right out of that. This Week, which is, which is interesting. I think part of that has do with the Trump administration postponing, you know, some, some more, you know, offensive attacks on, on Iran and maybe putting that aside for now because of some of this volatility that we saw in the markets. But yeah, it's, it's definitely an interesting setup and I think we got a lot to talk about just with Nasdaq Bitcoin. You know, we're going to do a quick cycle update in terms of all the Data and the KPIs we're tracking there as well this week. But, but definitely a lot to get into.
- [03:17]
B
Yeah. So what do you have a take on what this actually was like, why this happened? So was this sort of a deleveraging type event? You know, had the Leopold Hedge Fund sort of that, that unwind story and then just did buyers buy the dip here? And does this imply some strength in the Nasdaq that maybe you hadn't or we hadn't seen previously? Or is there, are there still the fault lines here that we talked about from last week?
- [03:47]
A
We will see, I mean S&P 500 already back to all time highs. NASDAQ not quite there but, but pretty close. And yeah, you know, when I kind of just observe kind of what we saw. If you go back to really the May June period, NASDAQ rallied 30% over a two month period. This was coming after that initial, you know, initial spike in a lot of concerns around the war, the ceasefire. And then we rallied 30% and that's a really, that's a really big move for the NASDAQ index over a two month period. And for that to happen you really have to get a lot of leverage in the, into the system and you really need to pull a lot of people off the sidelines into the market that were not in the market that are sort of chasing that, that move. So that, that felt like probably speak or excuse me, peak speculation. We've seen a V bounce out of this almost similar to the first V bounce that we saw back in February when bitcoin had its first kind of sharp sell off and a quick, quick bounce out of that. So the bounce is not super surprising to me. I mean it is a pretty big move like almost already retracing like all of that 10%. It shows just kind of the inertia, you know, in these markets right now. But I think there are some kind of forces under the hood that may just make it more difficult for that for, for this to continue. And when you just think about you know what it takes to move 30% in two months for us to get back up and push, keep pushing higher. It's just going to take, it's going to take a lot. And you know, one thing that I always kind of think about is just like, you know, once you kind of like break the momentum of a market, I mean, for people to come in to a market, you know, rising 30% in a few months, the only way that that can happen is people think there's no risk. Right. It's almost like lots of people make lots of investments when it feels like there's really no risk in the market. Now that some people are down on those positions, it sort of breaks the spirit of the market a little bit. And I think that's the main thing that I'm trying to pay attention to is like, are these animal spirits? Has that, has that spirit actually been broken? And if it has, and, and we'll get to sort of the macro here. You know, what does that look like for, for NASDAQ kind of heading into, into year, into year end here?
- [06:13]
B
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta think kind of a, a V shaped spike out of this. Makes the bulls jubilant and makes people on the sidelines say, oh my God, another like V shaped recovery. I'm gonna miss out on this. I gotta plow money into the stock market today. But we'll get to bitcoin versus the QQQ a little bit later in the episode. Let's do a cycle awareness update on some of the core numbers to see if anything has changed. So what are you seeing from some of the cycle awareness metrics you regularly look at on bitcoin? Where are we?
- [06:49]
A
We are, we're at the stage of the bear market where these numbers are not changing right. That much. You know, if you look at the 20, 26 KPI low column there, we're above all these numbers now. So we really set the lows at the end of June when bitcoin had its last kind of move down to 58.5k or so. And that's really what those numbers represent. We've come off of that. Bitcoin has been trading in this range between 65 and 60k or so for, for a while now. So these numbers are not moving too much. I think the, the main takeaway here is that we're, we're in the time based, you know, capitulation stage of, of the cycle. And the main metric that I'm looking at that really hasn't kind of come into sort of Where I think it could, could come to is that decline in the realized cap. It's only down about 5.8% from the, from the peaks. And you know, we'll see if, if that has to come down, you know, maybe between maybe 8 and 10% or so. I think for that to happen, you probably have to have another capitulation possibly or this time based capitulation just kind of drags on and we slowly start to get there. When we look at the, the market structure data that, that you pulled up here, this is the, you know, where we're assessing, you know, top buyers and the rotation of coins throughout the cycle that 92 to 108k cohort has been bumping up. Right. So this is the time based capitulation playing out. About 20% of those coin holdings that were purchased in that range have rotated to new hands. I still think that's going to, that's going to rise up more as well just based on time based capitulation and you know, potentially some more fear and uncertainty hitting the markets. And so, you know, the big question is like, what's the catalyst for, for that type of move? What should we be looking for as that starts to play out? We can probably get to, you know, some of that coming up here. But I think, you know, in terms of like the high level data, you know, it's not changing too much right now. The thing that I'm looking for is like a more of a rapid rotation of coins, which I don't think we're going to see unless we get another 10 to 20% correction or so.
- [09:14]
B
All right, so. So you still think there's some unfinished business when it comes to cycle metrics and what you see in the on chain data, maybe. I want to ask you this question. As I was reading through this and looking at the numbers and they're relatively kind of unchanged. We had the 2026 lows in all of these numbers, I guess. Did that happen in June or.
- [09:35]
A
That was late June. Yeah, June 30th.
- [09:36]
B
Yeah, that was late June. Now if you were to look at this table and take a look, Mike, at the 2026 lows here. Okay, let's say the lows are in. I know you think there's still unfinished business ahead and that could be true. But you're also open to the possibility that June 2026 was actually the lows on some of these numbers. If this does turn out to be the lows and we come back and we look at the cycle two or three years from now would you have said that given these metrics, like the cycle has played out? I mean, is there a world where three years from now you look at these numbers and you're like, oh, well, it's higher lows, but they're still low. This is still some semblance of the cycle. Does it feel like it's complete? And if you were to look at this three years from now, would you be like, oh yeah, that was the 2026 cycle. Of course it played out.
- [10:32]
A
It feels like this is complete. And I think, I can't remember if it was last week or a few weeks ago where you're kind of, we were assessing this and saying, yeah, we're roughly 80% of the way there. And then we're looking at the macro and kind of folding that into the analysis. And I think if the macro looked better and, and that setup looked good, I would be more comfortable saying this is all played out. I think, I think, you know, if, but to answer your question, yeah, if you came back in three years, I think those, that column there looks, it looks pretty normal. It's pretty typical for sort of a macro cycle low in terms of some of those stats we'd be looking for.
- [11:11]
B
Okay, all right, that's what I wanted to ask. And yeah, that's a good take there. So also, when it comes to the flows, we're not seeing much volume in ETF flows. So this still looks like apathy.
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A
Market, no demand.
- [11:24]
B
No demand, no demand for the spot volumes. Kind of the same long term holders. Tell me about this chart. Why, why is this in the report and what does this mean to you?
- [11:36]
A
Yeah, I'm paying attention to this a little bit. It's typical to see the, that, that orange line there, the long term holder supply. That's the total supply of coins held by long term holders. Long term holders defined by coins that haven't moved within wallets for over 155 days. And what we tend to see in bear markets is that line will rise pretty fast. The reason for that is smart money is coming into the market and buying bitcoin in these fair value ranges. But the other piece of it that, that maybe isn't talked as much about is that you have some of these top buyers, these people that came into the market at higher levels or maybe they sort of chased dips, you know, they never got in and they were chasing some of the dips early on. Those holders then age into the cohort, right, the long term holder cohort as the cycle goes on. And so that that leads that line going up and what we, what we've seen in the past is like that line drops sort of as you get to the cycle low. I think it's because some of these newer buyers, they've been holding on time based capitulation eventually, you know, catches up to them or you have that final correction, that final bout of, you know, fear and uncertainty in the market and, and they end up capitulating. So it's something I'm, I'm sort of watching for. If you look at the far right up there, it looks like that's starting to come off a little bit. We're starting to see a little bit of that.
- [13:06]
B
It's a tiny drop, It's a tiny drop.
- [13:08]
A
It's a tiny drop right now. But something, something I'm just paying attention to, to sort of give me that confirmation that like, okay, that's another one I can sort of check off.
- [13:17]
B
How about strategy? So they are one of the long term holders. There's been some more updates on the week from micro from strategy, I should say. Over the last week the firm sold another 104 million bitcoin. This at a purchase price of 64K. I think that's below his weighted average, Michael saylor's weighted average.
- [13:40]
A
So 74k somewhere in there.
- [13:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. Taking a loss on that. What's going on in the world of strategy right now? I know that's been on your radar just on the back burner. You haven't been super alarmed at it, but you were going to watch it on a week to week basis to see if there's some more of a forced unwind happening. This still looks like a gradual unwind process. But has anything updated your view on this?
- [14:06]
A
Yeah, something where I'm just following sort of all the announcements that they're making and trying to get a sense of just, you know, how urgent they are at addressing the situation. They, I, I feel like they have been addressing this and yeah, they sold another hundred million dollars worth of bitcoin and they're using some of that to, to fund actually they're, they're buying that STRC product with some of those proceeds. Some of them are also going to, to pay the dividends for this product. So I mean it's just kind of amazing how much, how much dilution is coming from MSTR to sort of stitch this all back together.
- [14:43]
B
Is MSTR by the way under NAV right now?
- [14:46]
A
I think it's, I don't, I don't think he can actually issue shares when it's under nav. So I think it's probably just a hair above. Yeah, just a hair above or just around there. And so, yeah, I think. I think the. The chart is, you know, improving. You know, it's kind of moving up a little bit there. That's the highest level, I think it's been since mid June or so. So it looks like some confidence is being restored here. And I think what I'm looking for, just moving forward, is if. If we do have another correction for bitcoin, I would imagine that just the correction itself would potentially cause this STRC chart to drop more, and then you end up in the same spiral where Sailor has to sell more bitcoin to try to restore confidence in this. Maybe he has to get those. The sort of Runway on those dividend payments. I'm not sure what, you know, what the market is looking for there. He's got about 2.2 years right now of Runway to pay those dividends. I thought that would probably be enough to calm things down. So we'll see. I just. I just think this is kind of interesting because of the reflexivity that gets baked in. That chart goes down, the market starts turning to Saylor. Does he have to sell more bitcoin at a steeper, you know, lost on his average cost? We'll see. And then, you know, how that kind of feeds through and just like, sentiment and everything else out there, just something to watch for.
- [16:06]
B
I think one last crypto native chart here is bitcoin dominance. And so you say this bitcoin dominance has been rising recently, but has been rising over the last several months to year, I guess, but recently has turned over. And is this a signal that the end is near? So that, you know, I guess the. The end of the bear cycle is near. So we're currently at 58% Bitcoin dominance. So what signal do you get from the bitcoin dominance number?
- [16:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is interesting. I mean, the dominance. Bitcoin dominance has historically dropped to around 40% at the bottom of bear markets. I am not expecting to see that in this cycle. And this kind of speaks to just, you know, the. The dominance, I guess, of bitcoin and just maybe lack of competing projects that have really taken market cap and things like that, which is kind of interesting that in some ways the sort of bitcoin maxi thesis is sort of playing out a little bit. I think if you just look at the dominance here. So I'm not looking. Not looking to see that number drop significantly, but I do think It'll drop into the cycle lows. And I think the big takeaway here is that altcoins, you know, some of the major L1s, I mean, it's hard to say which, which ones, but I think a lot of the sort of altcoin space, I'm just kind of broadly saying everything that's non Bitcoin is an altcoin. That, that space looks like it's probably more likely up to already. Already bottom to me than. Than bitcoin. Things like E. Things like sol.
- [17:46]
B
Why? Just seller exhaustion in those. In those assets.
- [17:50]
A
Yeah, they've had. They had kind of, you know, pretty significant drawdowns, obviously more than, than bitcoin. And if, if bitcoin dominant, if bitcoin dominance drops on weakness, then I think those assets would drop as well. But I don't know if they would drop more than bitcoin and, and go down to, to their cycle lows. I think they would have to drop more than bitcoin to get back down to the levels they established, you know, late June or so. So that's kind of the takeaway for me is like, even though maybe I'm leaning towards more potential pain for bitcoin, I think the markets are so oversold. There's very little going on out there right now. There's very little on chain activity. Desire to speculate. I think you can get into some good positions in altcoins at these levels, and bitcoin's in fair value as well. So I don't want to pretend that it's not a good time to be buying out there.
- [18:45]
B
So as you mentioned, in previous cycle lows, bitcoin dominance has decreased to actually 40%. And right now it's 58%. It's been on a massive incline. I just want to zoom out and ask a question to you about whether this is a healthy signal for crypto or not. I know analysts that I followed for a long time, people like Chris Berninsky, have long preached the message that bitcoin dominance would actually fall over time. And for the many cycles he's been in crypto and I've been in crypto, it's kind of fallen, right? Bitcoin used to be the only crypto asset. It was just like the first and the only. And then dominance has fallen in all previous cycles to lower and lower numbers. This cycle it has risen. It has gotten to like, over what, 60%, almost 65% this cycle, and now it's just off that high, but it's 58%. And so there's a bitcoin maxi bull take which is like, oh yeah, bitcoin's going to outperform all the other crypto assets and suck in all of the, their, their value and those assets will be worth nothing. And bitcoin wins everything. Right. But the, then there's another take of just like, well, is the only use case in crypto bitcoin. I mean, if dominance continues to be at these levels or even increase, then what does this say about our other tokens and our other assets? So I guess my question to you is like, do we actually want bitcoin dominance to go up or does that speak poorly about the, the use cases in crypto?
- [20:20]
A
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. And I don't know if I have a take on whether this is good or bad for, for crypto, but I think, you know, maybe some of the reasons that this is happening, I would say is maybe a few things. So earlier in, or maybe in the previous few cycles there was more venture capital, you know, that came into the, the crypto ecosystem. And that obviously, you know, creates more opportunity for people to speculate on other things. And I think that there was more interest, there was more, there was more innovation actually happening, I think in the 21 cycle, I think you could argue, than in the current cycle. And things are starting to consolidate around bitcoin stablecoins. In the last cycle we saw like the meme coin narrative. And part of the reason that the meme coin narrative came up is that people are frustrated with sort of unlocks in the token economic structures of a lot of these altcoins, which I think you could also look at that and point towards regulation and lack of regulation, lack of standards around some of these things. So I think there's a lot of factors that have sort of played into why bitcoin dominance, you know, was basically much higher in the 2025 cycle than it was in the, in the, in the 21 cycle, especially, especially here in the bear market. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't write off the idea that this can't actually still come down in the future, especially if you get regulation and you get new. And we actually, I still have the belief that like there's going to be all these new business models that can use tokens and different incentive structures. We just haven't like cracked the code on how to do it properly and create standards around of it. I think part of it is the regulatory piece.
- [22:09]
B
Yeah, I think I view it similarly. I think bitcoin dominance is Sort of a reflection of the use cases that are working in crypto. And Bitcoin, of course, is primarily the store of value use case. And that's a use case that was working I think in previous cycles. We had a list of all sorts of other things we thought crypto would do and the market had hopes and was speculating on. And some of those use cases have turned out not to be product market fit essentially. And so we've winnowed down. But, but I do see, see that, that that could change in the future too. Let's get to the main event. So there's a lot of listeners with equities in their portfolio, I'm sure tech forward equities, things like the NASDAQ, things like S&P 500. So we, you have a chart here, Bitcoin versus the NASDAQ. This is the ratio and it tracks it over time from 2017 to now. And in previous cycles, in previous crypto bear cycles, we've seen declines of, of bitcoin relative to the NASDAQ. So 2018 cycle, 2017, 2018 cycle, there was a 75% decline. In the 2021, 2022 cycle, a 68% decline. And right now we are at a 62% decline. The bottom of this cycle, I think we hit that bottom probably June 30th. June as well, June 30th as well. Okay, so the question is, have we bottomed on this ratio yet? And the implication of course is if we have bottomed, then it means you should be selling your Q. Q. Q. For some, for, for bitcoin maybe, or maybe cash for a while until everything bottoms. But let's say bitcoin would be, if we have bottomed, a better asset to hold versus the NASDAQ in the months to come. But it hasn't been like that for a long time, Mike. So what's your conclusion when you look at this chart? Do you think we have bottomed on this ratio or is there more pain ahead on this ratio?
- [24:13]
A
I am leaning towards the, that we bottomed actually on this and at that 630 low, we dropped right into that white. That is possibly the low. We are off that level right now. So we, Bitcoin has been outperforming NASDAQ since, since June 30th. And yeah, I think, I think the big question here, and actually maybe just to come back to those declines, what's interesting to me is the 62.2% is 90% of the 68.5%. So it's like a 90 symmetrically sort of dropping down. So it feels like this is a pretty good level for, for the bottom to be in the. I guess the question then comes back to okay, well if, if that was the low then what can this potentially what are some of the scenarios that can start to play out from here? And you know, I think, I think they can both. My sort of take on this is that there, there's to me the probability points to them both potentially falling into, into year round. I don't know what's going to happen in the near term here. We could certainly go back to all time highs and there's still a lot of inertia and it seems like some, some desire to speculate out there for sure. But when I think about, you know, when I went back and kind of looked at what happens with NASDAQ in midterm years, especially, you know, at the sort of tail end of midterm years, we've had corrections in the past. So in 2018 we had a 23% decline in the last few months of the year. Bitcoin dropped 47% over that same period. So they both, you know, dropped, dropped together. Bitcoin bottom first. And then if you go to 2022, Nasdaq had a 14% decline starting from August and Bitcoin dropped 26% around the same period. Again, bitcoin bottom first. You know, back in 2022 we did actually set a lower low on BTC Nasdaq and in the chart, if you go back up to that chart a little bit, actually kind of looks sort of similar. So if you look at, it's sort of right above the 1 3, 2023 there you can see that we were kind of coming up a little bit and then FTX happened and we went down, we actually set a lower low. So I'm kind of thinking that, you know, we went up and we may come back down. The question is, do we set, do we set that lower low? But yeah, I think just kind of putting it all together, I think if you can come to the conclusion that peak speculation has occurred in Nasdaq, then I think you can start to look at sort of what we saw with the yield curve last week coming out of the Fed meeting. And I think this is kind of really why I think that, you know, there's a, the probability starting to point towards weakness from Nasdaq is it's starting to become a little bit more clear to me like what's happening with the Fed? What does the Fed want to happen you know, how is the market starting to adjust to a new Fed chair? Like, this is all starting to come together. We've had two meetings now. The, the new Fed has a different policy as it relates to forward guidance and sort of like how they message to the market. And so what seems clear to me is like the, the new Fed chair war. She wants the market to, to, to just be the market. He doesn't want to say what they're going to do and then let the market reflexively price off of what he says. I think this is, like, really important. It's like this subtle thing that we haven't really been talking enough about. It's like the Fed is just steering the economy. He wants the economy, he wants the market to just react to the economy itself and, and then the Fed will react to that. And so I think he wants the yield curve to steepen. To be honest, if, if you want inflation to come down, which, you know, they, he's been coming out saying that that's, that, that they're going to get back to target, you would just kind of let, let thing, let the market do its thing. And what the market is saying is that, in my opinion is that, you know, there are concerns about inflation and there are concerns about these wars, and there are concerns about the fiscal spending, new trade, and like, sort of structural inflation getting baked in at a time that we're running these massive fiscal deficits. So I think that is the reason why the long end of the yield curve wants to, to go steeper. And if this continues, then you have to think that, you know, higher interest rates, that gets factored into discount rates, valuations, it typically will lead to slowing growth. Right. That's why the Fed, you know, hike hikes rates in the first point to kind of slow growth, tamp down inflation. And so, yeah, I just think, you know, he's kind of letting the market do the tightening. There's the old saying, like, don't fight the Fed. And I think this is sort of a situation where you want to not fight the Fed, but it's a little different because the Fed's just kind of letting the market do its thing. And it looks like the market wants higher yields. It makes sense. The economy is running hot, inflation's above target. The question is, you know, we talked about it last week, is there sort of some weakness under the hood with the labor market savings rate, the consumer, where they would have to kind of reverse, you know, or, or sort of step back into the market and possibly add liquidity or Cut rates if things started to spiral out. So that's kind of the setup. And if that setup wasn't there, I think we could come back. As you mentioned earlier in the show, like looking at those metrics, you kind of say, okay, maybe we have bottomed. We're just going to have a sort of time based capitulation and then start the next expansion phase. Because of this setup. I just, I'm still kind of anchored to the fact that this does not look great. And we may have a little bit, a few more bumps in the road here heading into, into the, into the year end the near term. I have no idea what's going to happen. But what's kind of interesting too is like if, if NASDAQ bottomed and you know, we're just kind of, that was just a, a bump on a way to new all time highs. You know, we're seeing, you know, that trade come back. When I look at crypto, it's dead. It is just dead. Everything on chain is just really dead. And that's, that's signaled to me broadly, I think that's, you know, as a crypto native investor, I think we tend to have a little bit of an interesting view on liquidity, sort of broader liquidity conditions that impact crypto first. And we're really not seeing, you know, a lot of liquidity out there. Real rates have been rising. That's, that's obviously liquidity negative. And so, yeah, that's kind of a bit of a ramble. But that's kind of my take is this is, it's not a great setup for risk assets and I don't want to fight the Fed right now.
- [31:16]
B
Okay, so understand, I think I understand that, but I. This paradigm shift of how Warsh is running things is taking a minute to sink in for me and I'm still trying to get adjusted to it.
- [31:30]
A
Sure.
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B
So you think that this means the 30 year keeps running up and it's at 5.17 right now and that is the highest it's been since I think you, you pointed out 2007.
- [31:45]
A
Yep.
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B
So it keeps ticking up. And what does that drain capital out of other areas of the economy, particularly risk assets? Because now they're, they're seeking that higher yield. Is that part of the secondary effect here?
- [32:01]
A
For sure? Yeah. You know, if you just made a bunch of money on some AI stocks and you're looking maybe, you know, you're looking at what are the returns going to be moving forward from these levels and then you look over and you see that you can get a much higher yield on, on cash. It, it impacts, you know, sort of investor allocations. So that, that's part of it. It also impacts the discount rate and how you think, how we think about valuations. And so those are the two things that I think if this continues, I would expect that it just would, it would, it would not be good for risk assets.
- [32:39]
B
And so WASH is just letting that your take is warsh is letting some of these long term duration yields just run. Let the market dictate them. So the 15 year and the 30 year, however, doesn't that get to a point where something else breaks and we have to rein that in. So the US Government still has to pay interest on these bonds, has a lot of debt to sell. There's more debt every year to sell to the world where the buyer is going to be and what are the interest payments on this debt? What does that do for the deficit? How hot can you run yields or let the market go before something else breaks?
- [33:24]
A
Something will break. And yeah, the, this is impacting mortgage rates and you know, the real estate market is a massive, you know, big part of the economy. So you know, I think he can talk tough and, and sort of say, yeah, we want a smaller balance sheet and we want to let the market kind of dictate this. But I, I do think something will break and you know, that's when Trump will, you'll start seeing Trump just getting a little unruly and they'll have to cut rates. And you know, this happened in 2018 with, with Powell in Trump's first term, midterm year market started to, to, to unravel a little bit. August, September, period, there was, Trump was all over the media asking for rate cuts. Powell held off for a while and then eventually cut rates and the market ripped after that. So I kind of think that's, that's the setup here is like, yes, if you want inflation down, let the yield let, you know, let, let the yield curve steepen. That should, should help. But also it's going to slow growth and you're going to have to deal with that on the other side of it. But that's what opens it up for him to cut rates and deal with the interest payment issue and all that and appease Trump.
- [34:41]
B
So your message today, don't fight the Fed, you are fading. This equities market rally, you don't think it's persistent and you are thinking the weight of probability is that we have bottomed on the bitcoin versus NASDAQ Ratio as far as the portfolio goal goes, Mike, on the week are kind of holding steady. Are you remaining patient at these prices?
- [35:02]
A
I am staying patient right now. I think that's, that's the name of the game at, at these levels. And yeah, I mean I think I'm happy with sort of how this bare market has played out. Some of the execution we could, could have been better but I think I'm sort of prepared for the portfolio to drop a little bit here into, into yearend and hopefully we get some more fat pitches. We can get into some, some positions and sort of average into some of our positions and get a better cost basis and we'll see, we'll see where we land. I think if you can sort of like get to the end of the bear market and have a portfolio built out and be, be a break even, I think that's a really pretty big win especially if you were able to stack some cash, you know, at, at the highs.
- [35:48]
B
What do you mean break, break even on your cost basis kind of thing?
- [35:51]
A
Yeah, as long as you're not down like if you're, if you, if I can get to the end of the, the bear market where I've built out the portfolio high conviction, have been able to buy some of these capitulations, get into some good positions and even with all that good work, I'm not up right on the portfolio, you know, I'm, I'm okay with it because I think, you know, we're in a really good spot. I think a lot of people when you get to the, the bottom, the bottoms of the market, you're, you're down significantly on, on a lot of positions. So I think it sets you up in a really good spot for when, when the market turns. So I'm sort of prepared for some, some weakness here, but I just view that as a buying opportunity and you know, short term, I don't know, it's going to be interesting to see if this momentum just goes here for the next few weeks or so. It's been September where the weaknesses come for like the S&P 500 and NASDAQ in the past. So we could, we could, you know, keep going for, for a few weeks here.
- [36:49]
B
Well, I've heard you say on previous weeks you like that number around 55k. That would be maybe a place to set the limit orders. I should remind folks that 63.5k is the 200 week moving average. So we're just a hair above that. But we get further dips in the future. We should dip into the 50s. We'll see how it goes. Gotta remind you, of course, none of this has been financial advice. This is an investor journal. We're on the journey right alongside you. Until next time, stay curious.