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The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin & Gold Stall As Markets Brace For Rate Cuts! Are All Time Highs Next?
01:04:20
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- [00:01]
A
Bitcoin and gold have both stalled as the market holds its breath for rate cuts this week which seem to be almost guaranteed. A lot of people think that when these rate cuts come, everything is about to soar to a new all time high. We're going to discuss everything happening in the macro and with bitcoin today on macro Monday. Let's go, let's do. Let's do happy rate cut week. To those who celebrate, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the Fed will finally give Trump exactly what he wants and the people what they want which is looser liquidity and rate cut cycle starting. We're going to unpack all of that of course today. And guys, I've got some other good news. I just put in the call to the editors to give us our own intro video and music especially for macro Monday.
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B
Cool.
- [01:10]
A
I don't know what it's going to be, but you're all going to be in it and it's going to be amazing.
- [01:14]
B
Honored. Thanks for having me on.
- [01:16]
A
I think people are just sick of hearing that same song every single day. Okay, listen, let's dig in. We know what's coming this week, right? I mean we're getting rate cuts. It would seem like basically a foregone conclusion. We have the CME Fed watch putting it a 94.2% odds that it happens at the September 17th meeting. Mike, I'm sure in the morning meeting you guys were digging into this.
- [01:43]
B
Yes. Well I enjoy you going there and starting this guy because the headline I started to prepare for tomorrow is it's easy. Feds cutting rates. Stocks go up. I mean that's like death and taxes. It's done deal, it's accepted. And that's what I'll skip over to what Michael Casper mentioned. His equity strategy said. It's unusual for the Fed be cutting at the top of an equity market. I don't think he even picks backs at the top at this point. It still pointed out how expensive stocks are versus bonds earning yield versus 10 year sign of flowing of equity returns. He's watching retail sales closely but obviously it's still quite the bull market. Speaking over to Ana, she mentioned some unique things. Seeing what happens with retail sales, expect them to drop a little bit 2 10% versus last month's 5/10%. She's key thing she mentioned twice was the wealth effect. And it's good to start here. People saying I like to hear that the Fed starts saying what's actually going on in the market. It's a wealth Effect. Come on. It's overwhelming. But she did make some key points is typically there's some. What she pointed out is the dissents. You know, not everybody votes but the descents can be. The dot plots can be quiet descents. He said last time there were seven in the last FOMC who did not expect rate to go down. And so their dissent showed. Their dot plots showed descent. She expects to be at least five actually. Obviously Steve Moran this time is going to show probably easing or vote for easing but she expects dissents. They'll show five. So it's not just pow. I love how President Trump pointed him and now is pissed at him because he's being a good economist or doing what he views. But you know Dave will touch on that one, I'm sure but so Ira Jersey from the pointed out they expect the steep winner to continue. He's looking at key technical levels 30 year 3.6%. That's my baby. That's why started in paid in the trading bits. I think it's a key indicator but right now 3.66 that's a key support and penny note he mentioned 4.4% is really none. It doesn't really matter. What really holds over time is 393 expects a curve to continue steepening and then I tilt. Audrey Chill Freeman, our FX strategist, points weakness in the dollar. She made a point I thought was interesting. The consensus is for a 25 basis point cut but we do and Ana does expect the Fed to be less dovish than the market expects.
- [04:02]
A
I agree with that.
- [04:03]
B
Yeah, there you go. So the dollar's probably going to bounce on that. And then I tilt it over to my macros. I don't know what stops gold and I tease them about everything I heard from them to me means buy gold but that's just, you know, hearing what they're not saying. I point out three five hundred good support. Next resistance I think round number is four thousand and I I dug into the positions. I still am radar on what you know you're looking for. When a good bull market you want to show positions way over extended and they're the opposite managed money net positions are well below last year's peak. That was around 50% of open interest in futures. Now it's only about a third 33%. And ETFs. Yeah, they're picking up but if you look at them on a basis since the end of 2008 they led all the way up and since 2004 they've been 2024 they've been lagging. So those two signals are show we're not overbought in gold. So I expect that continue opposite in crude oil. Here's a key little thing about crude oil is looking at positions right now. Net long is around 7% of open interest. A year ago is when the first time ever they got net short. Remember we talked about that crude oil bottom that 65 and here we are, we're below that level. It's 63 positions are long. What's the risk? Yeah, we probably stop out risk. There you go. Well, Dayton definitely pieces at risk which is probably a problem for, for gold. So I point out those key factors and then the other markets, copper stuck in the middle. Here's the key thing I mentioned on the copper doctor Copper, the economic sense of metal right now is at 466. It's never ended the year above 446. Can it do it this year with the world facing downtrends in US tariffs, I think it's unlikely. Cy waiting one for that one for a while. I think the peak this year was like crude oil. I mentioned it last time and could go lower. And then I look at the rest of the grains in terms of commodities, they're still heading lower. Too much supply. Back to you.
- [05:44]
A
If I was a betting man, I would say that we get what we'll call hawkish cut this week.
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B
There you go.
- [05:50]
A
Which is that Powell cut 25 basis points, then say no commitment towards further cuts. We're going to be data driven, we're watching tariffs closely, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It'll be the most non committal rate cut in history just to confuse people as much as humanly possible.
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C
Well, but if you follow the blueprint, if. Sorry, can you hear me, Scott?
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A
Yeah, I can. James is muted. I could see him talking.
- [06:14]
C
Oh, sorry. James.
- [06:16]
A
James. James, I think we can't hear you. Go ahead, Dave.
- [06:22]
C
Yeah, while James gets the technical difficulty sorted. I was going to say that, you know the blueprint that we talked about last week is cut, no cut, you know, whatever, however, whatever happens, happens. The, the, the total direction of the market is going to come from the presser. And if in fact he is that non committal and he is that, that hawkish, then it'll kind of be a, a crappy week for risk assets or at least a crappy day or two until the, the pounding and the, the war drums start beating again, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, which I find kind of amusing because whatever Powell says, we kind of know where things are going to go, it just, you know, it's, it's a question of time. So, you know, depending on how long term you are, it's, it's, it's fascinating. You know, it's, there's just a lot to talk about there. The one point I want to make about copper that Mike said is when you use words like never close above a certain absolute dollar level and there's double the number of dollars that exists today that existed 10 years ago, actually five years ago. What you're basically saying is right now, if you adjust for the number of dollars in circulation. It's really interesting. It's an interesting question. I'm not so sure that copper is all that high. It's that the dollar is. There's just a lot more dollars. Basic economics. And it's extremely important to look at it that way because it's the same thing with crude. The real thing to keep an eye on is copper's price versus copper's production costs, just like you always do with crude oil. Crude oil versus crude oil. And I think that that's very relevant. And I, I'll, I'll be blunt. I have no clue what copper's production cost is right now. So I don't know what to say about it. But I do think that looking at charts and not taking into account the fact that we've literally doubled the number of the money supply over the last five or six years is, is, is problematic. It leads to kind of strange analysis.
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A
Yeah.
- [08:16]
D
Across the board on all of it.
- [08:17]
B
But I appreciate that. Just let me mention one thing on that, James, and you go, I'm really glad you went there, Dave, because our audience needs to understand the deflationary forces in commodities. And the reason I don't go there, because by inherent nature, commodities are deflating assets. We create more with less every day. And just the fact that crude oil is the same price right now as first traded in 2005 shows you that overwhelming, deflating force. Because what's happened versus money supply and stock market inflation since that time, that's the key thing I always like to bring out. And there's only one main commodity that's doesn't deflate. It's gold. Everything else, we create more with less. I just come from the Corn belt. I mean, compared to 50 years ago, one acre of land is double the yield it was 50 years ago. So that's the key thing to remember, and I'm glad you mentioned. But it's just when you're a commodity trader, it's just inherent and, you know, that's the way it is. And I just look at the price of corn right now. It was first traded in 1974. Yeah, that was a spike, but that's how they work. And I'll end with this. Commodities go down because they went up and that's this. Almost every commodity with. Except gold and copper's kind of stuck in there. And just where we are right now, we're going down because. Because that spike in 2022 and most of the elastic commodities. So that's the key thing. But I think I'm glad you went there. It's just a key thing to remember.
- [09:27]
C
It's why I always focus on consumer versus asset inflation. Technology does not have a deflationary impact on assets. It absolutely has a deflationary impact on stuff we consume. And with AI, it might even have a deflationary impact on services, which is something that the world is not ready for. But there's a lot, there's a lot to go for there and there's a lot to unpack. But James was going to start on something. So rather than.
- [09:55]
D
It's the classic, you know, it's the classic kind of philosophical argument of the Fed is the arsonist that has been in. Now in charge with putting out the fire. And they know it. And so you talked about the wealth effect. They caused the wealth effect. They know that. So now they're stuck. The Fed doesn't care about the stock market.
- [10:19]
C
Right?
- [10:19]
D
They don't care about it. They say it all over. And we are, We. We don't. We. We are not. That's not our concern. We're not concerned with where the stock market is. Unless, of course, because the United States is so financialized that we have to do something to produce more liquidity in order to keep the market afloat. Because if the market crashes, then the whole economy crashes. So it. We know that they are now caught in an absolute awful position. We can all see the jobs are sliding. We're watching it happen in real time. We revised out almost a million jobs from last year and that only goes through March. Who knows what the job numbers really are, Right? I mean, the BLS is obviously that. That information they have is just not accurate. And it's, it's lagging. And it gets revised over and over again as we talked about the last couple of shows. But the Fed is now sitting here.
- [11:16]
C
They're.
- [11:17]
D
They're going to say, yeah, we've got to cut 25 basis points because, because we have air cover to we don't want to, but we have to because we have air cover too and that we will have, you know, financial revolt. And that could cause the market to slide lower which again they're just trying to keep it balanced. They don't want it to crash.
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C
Right.
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D
They don't really. They say they don't care, but they do care enough that they don't want it to crash. They don't want to cause something caught that do something that caused a crash. Now getting to Dave and, and Scott's point of what's Powell going to do? Well, I think he is going to be very tempered in, in his delivery. He's me extremely careful about how dovish he sounds. So he may come off a little bit hawkish. That's right. And so the market is expecting a full, one full rate cut. Some people are expecting that it could be 50 basis points or making that bet.
- [12:13]
B
It's not.
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D
I don't think it's going to happen.
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A
That would, how would panic the market if he did?
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D
Yeah, I think that would, that would be the wrong, that would be the wrong message. It would be like we see something, the market, something's broken.
- [12:23]
A
That's what you're not saying.
- [12:24]
D
And that would, yeah, that would send people really. The market likes that. It just doesn't like uncertainty. That's exactly right, Scott. I agree with you 100. It doesn't like uncertainty. And so Powell's job here is to cut by 25 basis points and keep it tempered. But what he, what I don't think he should do is say we're going to cut 25 basis points, then, then we are firmly on hold status, then we're just going to stop. I think that would be a mistake too. I think he has to continue to say that we're, we're data dependent because the data is coming in worse and worse on every single measure except for one, which is inflation. And that's the fire they caused that they're worried that they've got to put out but they can't have the lever to put that out. Except if they use QT to put it out, it makes the job situation worse. So they've, you know, they've got two mandates. They've got the, the stable pricing mandate, 2% inflation, whatever that means. And then they've got the full employment mandate which there is no measure for that except just not too many people who are jobless. So yeah, we expect, I expect three, I fully expect three rate cuts this year.
- [13:33]
A
Interesting though here, James. I just want to show you something while you're talking, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche bank expect three US interest cuts this year. And then you have UBS saying 93% of a recession. Wow, that's aggressive, aggressive, aggressive number. I feel like that's clickbait headline, but still.
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C
Yeah, look, you probably.
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A
One guy, one.
- [13:59]
D
Guy at Bank America that's saying it.
- [14:00]
C
Yeah, look, it's. We obsess about the short term rates, which is kind of wrong. But you have to look at the cross currents that are going on here. I mean the chart that, that, that, that Robert put up that we were going to talk about, I think is extremely important here. Let's go there when we put this up because. Yeah, I got it. You know, so Robert made this post. See if you can blow that one up. Yep, you got it. Okay. So this to me is maybe one of the most important interesting charts I've seen in a very long time. So if you look the purple line and the blue line. The S is the, the blue line is what Mike talks about all the time. And frankly, until I saw this chart, it worried me a lot. It still worries me. There's no two ways about it. When corporate, when, when the, the S P divided by our gross domestic product is at all time highs. That is worrisome. It always is. But what's fascinating is corporate profits have been, have moved up in line with that. Meaning that, okay, so you know, there's some valuation issues here. I still think we're at the top end of valuations, but at least you could kind of understand it. But what is fascinating is at the exact same time that's happening, total income and wages as a fraction of GDP have been falling. So what you're seeing this, this chart shows more than anything that we've ever seen the financialization of the economy. And it shows the bind the Fed is in. Because when they cut rates, what does it do? It pumps assets, it pumps the purple line and the blue line. What does it do for income and wages? Well, arguably it allows more investment in things such as outsourcing and automation, which pushes the white line down. But it does create jobs in the short term when that's happening, which is what they're obsessing about. And so this chart shows what the easy money policy has done over the last 25 years. But the question is, can they afford to be not hard money? Because it isn't. They're still pumping liquidity into the economy, but can they afford to keep setting the price of money artificially high? And when I say Artificially high. I literally mean artificially high. I mean, our rates are higher than most of the rest of the world for lots of reasons. You can't find rhyme or reason out of it other than people will argue. And Mike and I can talk about, well, it's because the dollar's reserve currency, but as Mike points out constantly, the rates in every other country, except for maybe the uk, which is a dumpster fire, are lower, much lower. Right. I mean, hell, why should Italy have 10 year borrowing rates that are. Or France, given what's going there, have 10 year borrowing rates that are significantly che than the United States? I mean, if you could objectively explain that to me, then I'll learn something because I certainly don't understand it.
- [16:51]
A
Yeah. Quickly, Dave, for those I don't want to take for granted, there's people who don't see the chart who listen to this probably more than actually watch it, believe it or not, on Spotify and such very obvious chart, because it's important. You have income and wages as a versus GDP going way down while corporate profits and stocks go up.
- [17:06]
C
Right? And so, you know, this is the kind of thing that people like Thomas Piketty would point to and say, ah. Or Zorin Momdani. Oh, you see, this is the evil corporate. So, no, it's nothing to do with the evil corpus. This is to do with the fact that we have made the price of money way too cheap for way too long and we have financialized the economy. And when you financialize the economy, this is virtually guaranteed to happen. Doesn't mean that jobs haven't been created, doesn't mean, you know, whatever. But you know, these are the forces, the forces that are operating that Mike talks about, about commodities are, are working on labor as well. As labor gets more and more productive, you pay people less.
- [17:42]
A
Okay, so Mike, obviously you have a response to this, but the point here, for those who didn't, if you didn't read Dave's tweet, he said, this is why the stock market isn't nearly as overvalued as my friend Mike McGlone thinks. He obviously pointed right to you in this tweet. So worthy opportunity for you to have a response because you do point out every single week and all the time very rightfully that this is the most overpriced the stock market has effectively ever been. So Dave's saying it may be, but still not as overvalued as you think.
- [18:15]
B
So but it's very important that we push back on each other because it helps, hone our views in our discourse. So part of the reason I've added into the US Stock market validation versus the rest of the world is to offset that factor that Dave points out. Oh yes, we financialized agreed versus GDP agreed. But Trump always legitimizes is when he says he wants Europe to spend 4 to 5% of the GDP. GDP is on defense. Like, okay, well that kind of legitimizes GDP above denominator. But I want to show you one key thing as a strategist I'm still very much concerned about. And I can show you if you can share that screen Mike, that would be great. And that's. Misha is the thing that's considered when I enjoy. And it's kind of my duty sometimes to be to agitate being antagonist. When people say how, how it easy. Easy is for the stock market when the fed eases to go up, I say, well, okay, well how about versus gold? So all I show you here is gold. This is the S&P 500Vers gold ratio. It's breaking down through a key pivot. This is a pivot at 1.94 ounces. It's been a key pivot since, you know, I remember trading it before in 2007 and then it held resistance forever. And it just broke down this year from this level, but on the same scale as fed funds. Every time fed funds really go down, stock market goes down versus gold, typically. And you know, obviously it's not perfect, it's only 30 years. But this is what like gold is leading the way here. That's why I'm so concerned what's happening in the gold market. And then I look over at positions. I, I'm sorry, Shoot. I don't see positions getting overdone. But yeah, I hope my mother's not listening, but other way.
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D
I know she might hear Dave. She might hear Dave if she's listening.
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C
Oh, that wouldn't be good. I'm, I'm, you know, I may be.
- [19:56]
A
Listening in a certain age category.
- [19:58]
B
And then I tilt over to the U. S. Bond market. Yes. And this is just the average U.S. must say 4.03 in the U. S. 10 year. Obviously it's somewhat restrictive versus, okay, we have core PC at 3% and some levers below that, but they're all, you know, going to tilt lower. It's the wealth effect. But just look at the rest of the world. Like you mentioned Italy, 3.48. I was to always love south. South Korea because it was pretty close. Now South Korea is broken down Obviously they're facing tariffs. And then there's China 1.79, there's Japan 1.5. I mean, these are one in two handles and only a few rare ones in this. So it's just to me, Canada, Canada's running 7% unemployment. Yes. They're typically a little bit higher than us, but not that much. Their latest unemployment number was what, 40 to 30,000 losses that's the same in the US is between 304,000, 400,000. So to me, this is a key thing, is what triggers that. And I think we're at that cusp. And that's why I think the next few months are gonna be great for trading. But if things are tilting lower, that will be a setup for a pretty normal correction. Those of us have been waiting for a few years. And I am so impressed. We got into 15 minutes in this conversation, haven't mentioned one. What's the word? Bitcoin or cryptos.
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C
Well, I was going to mention, I was actually going to say that, that understanding one point because we talked about it, which is the reason that you can talk about copper and absolute levels with the dollar devalue dollar being created is because we get. Less is more. Right. You can create more supply in Bitcoin. You can't. And that becomes. And by the way, you can't in gold either. Really. We've not. We've kind of reached the peak of, of, of gold extraction technology. So they're similar.
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B
There you go.
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C
Okay. Okay, fine. I'm sorry, I forgot about Alchemy and Asteroids.
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A
Takes another hit. Asteroids.
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B
Yeah, it's, it's. And what does it cost for a typical launch to and from an asteroid? No problem.
- [21:51]
C
Worth of gold out of an asteroid. It would be worth it, but depends.
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D
All right, it depends, Mike. Is it SpaceX or is it the.
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A
That's right. Who's doing it?
- [22:01]
C
Yeah, we could talk about all of that stuff and it would be just like, you know, the, the, the complete cesspool that, that all social media has turned into over the last week in terms of conspiracy theories. Or we could stick with our feet on the ground, which I'd prefer to. I think a really important. There are two other topics I wanted to bring up. One relates to James's newsletter directly and one is indirect. Right. So, James, I'm teeing you up here. So interesting news out of the uk, which is completely insane. But then again, I think that the UK government, I keep calling them a dumpster fire. I mean, they keep getting. They are struggling in quicksand. Now they're talking about capping the amount of stable coins people can hold because somehow stablecoins, which are fully reserved backed and have no fractional reserve banking are risky. Now, the reason it ties to James's newsletter is that there's this fear that the banking industry keeps telling people. I don't understand why anyone would listen to morons like this, but they keep telling people, well, this is like private banking and private banking is bad. And of course, James wrote a whole newsletter this weekend about private banking. So I think it's interesting, you know, as you know, but the UK is falling further and further behind in terms of between the Online Safety act and now this. It's like the real question is, you're in London right now, Mike. You know, are they really trying to destroy the city of London and push all the people to the rest of the world? Because if they were New York, I'm really not certain that they could do a better job if they were trying to do so intentionally. I mean, it's, it's kind of insane.
- [23:30]
B
So I want to just comment on that. I definitely want to hear what James thinks. I enjoyed arriving on Saturday for. There was a big protest, over a hundred thousand people. And I learned one quote that I was unaware of. Kerr Starmer is a wanker. That's what they were saying. I was just quoting what they. I was hearing in the tube when I was, oh, there's thousands of people yelling that. I'm like, oh, okay, I was not aware. At least Americans probably would have used less pleasant terms in that. But so the key thing I want to point out is that to me, I wanted. I think you're showing an example of the rest of the world with their eyes wide open, staring at what's happening now. What we picked up on years ago, the Trump administration hated first and now figured out help them get elected is realized the base layer for this most advanced technology is the buck, the dollar. So think of those other 130 other currencies on the planet. You know, there's only 10 of them that are really as robust near the dollar. Poof, they're going away from. People can access to the buck via their phones and crypto dollars, as you know, I like to call them. So to me, that's part of the technology that I completely agree. Scott Best. And what was 2 billion in 2018 is almost 300 billion now. It's going to go to $3 trillion. Yeah. And once we figure out how to make it more like we can get the yield on it. And make a money market. It's done. It's just like futures, a better technology.
- [24:40]
A
But I want to go to James on the other one. I just want to show a really quick article. There's actually an article in cointelegraph. The end game for US Dollar stable coins is no tickers that you'll just, you know, it'll become the dollar on all of these platforms and it'll be interoperable and you won't even know which one you're using because it won't matter because stable coins will be so big. But James. Yeah. There were two things I wanted to ask you specifically about. Obviously we want to talk about your newsletter here, which is shadow banking and private credit. To that end, I tried to send you a link yesterday and just didn't apparently. But WisdomTree launches tokenized private credit and London Stock Exchange launches blockchain platform for private funds. All this happening at the same time. So beyond that, you weren't even writing about crypto. This is now happening on the tokenization front. And there's one other topic after we go into this that I want to talk to you about. But go ahead and break this down because it's so important.
- [25:29]
D
Yeah, so what's, what's important about the newsletter I wrote this weekend about shadow banking is that it's, it, it's all this capital that is, you know, somewhere around a quarter of a quadrillion, so $240 trillion worth of, of money that's sloshing around in, in these what, what are known as the shadows because they're not, they don't have the same oversight as regular banks do. And it's hedge funds and private equity, private funds, private debt funds. But they're, they're non bank institutions basically and they're, they touch everything. You're talking about things like Apollo and Blackstone and, and some of the other big ones. But you know the, the biggest port part of that, the most concentrated part of that is, is private credit. And that's, that's where you've got these, the private debt from the, the Apollos and Black Blackstones, whatever that are lending to, to these companies. And, and the issue is that you don't really know what's going on at them. They mark them themselves.
- [26:34]
A
They can read it's too. Right. I mean if you're paying seven and from a bank you're paying 12 to these guys.
- [26:40]
D
Yeah, exactly. They're higher rates and they're more predatory. I've seen, you know, I've, we, we, we were Talking to a company, a bitcoin company years ago about taking a loan from one of these banks and, and, and you know, opening up a, a deadline with them. We said it's gonna, they're, they're, this is a loan to own. We, we, we're warning you. And sure enough, it became a loan to own. And what does that mean? It means that they made the covenant so onerous that they knew that the company was going to trip them, they were going to get a whole bunch of equity out of it, which is what they did. And so sometimes it's predatory. Sometimes they're just trying to make a bunch of fees on it and just push the, kick the can down the road, meaning kick the maturity can down the road. And they just, they change the terms, they change, they move the goalpost so the company doesn't go break covenants so they don't have to do the loan and own. And they, they can still mark their book appropriately and attractively in order to sell another fund. And so it's a little bit insidious. Now I'm not, I'm not saying that all of the private debt funds out there are like this. They're not, they just, you know, it's, it's a way to operate without having the same financial regulatory oversight as other as the regular banks. But it's a lot of money in there. And what we are seeing is that the, you know, they kind of, they, they do hide the, the default rate. But if you bring that back up, Scott, you bring up that, the backup and go down to that wheel it show you all of this is a great Carlyle Group. Put this out. This is a great chart to show you. Yeah, right there. How it touches pretty much everything in the universe. I mean in, in the financial universe, it's every, every single aspect there is, is touched by private credit. And so is it super dangerous right now? No, but it's something that we don't really know about, number one. Number two, what is a red flag is what you just brought up that headline of, you know, they're going to tokenize these things, they're going to create funds in them and who's that going.
- [28:52]
A
To charged private credit?
- [28:54]
D
Yeah, yeah. The issue is that, you know, you, you, the, the capital raising for these private funds, it, it dropped like massively this, this year and they've only, apparently They've only raised $70 billion through July and that's the smallest amount they've raised since 2015. What does that tell you? That tell you, tells you that institutions are full up with this stuff.
- [29:20]
B
Stuff.
- [29:21]
D
They can't keep buying it. So what does that mean? They need exit liquidity. You're going to start seeing, you know, endowments, which we have started seeing endowments selling this stuff for, for less than 100 cents on the dollar to the mark to market to get out of them. Because they're like, we need some liquidity here. We can't, we can't be sitting on these funds that keep moving the terms. And we're, you know, they're not a 5 to 7 year fund. Suddenly they're a 9 to 12 year, 12 to 15 year fund. And we've got to start getting liquidity out of them. So who's it going to go to? It's going to go to retail, they're going to sell them to these ETFs or whatever. However they're going to do it, they're going to create funds that are, they're going to be accessible for retail. So the whole point of the newsletter was just be careful. You're getting a better yield, but you don't know exactly what you're getting here. It's just something you got to be aware of. And so I don't know if you want to comment on that, Dave, but that's kind of where I was coming from on it.
- [30:14]
C
I was, I'm actually going to ask you a question more than comment because this is, I've been mulling this over ever since I read your newsletter. I mulled it over in my head. And the thing that's interesting to me is I don't see a whole lot of increased danger out of private versus banking. It's just, except for the fact that we have this distortion effect, the banks have access to somewhere around 6 to 7 trillion dollars in trapped bank deposits which they have that they can offer for no, no interest because the federal government gives them a subsidy. So we have the federal government subsidizing industry. We call them banks. Doesn't mean we don't pay the banks the same kind of bonuses that we pay hedge fund people. Because we do. I mean that's just fact. I mean if you listen to Austin Campbell, you know, who's an NYU professor who's often on spaces with Scott and I. Right. So great, dude. Anyway, Austin and I have had this conversation and you know, this is one of those topics which is, which is fascinating how much of the quote, private banking higher rates are because they don't have the federal government subsidizing them through deposit insurance and Is the time bomb sitting there in terms of unrealized losses worse than the unrealized losses at banks? I'm not so sure that that's true. I actually think the banks are probably worse because of the moral hazard of being backed by the Fed and being backstopped by the federal government. I'm just curious what you think of that.
- [31:36]
D
Yeah, well, just remember it's so where the shadow, the shadow banks is private. The private credit gets their, that gets their capital from the banks, then they lend it to the companies. The companies they're owned by who, the private equity firms who, who then turn around, they've got, they've got banks as prime brokers. It just becomes like the circular reference, you know. And so that's the issue that I, it's hard to untangle that and.
- [32:02]
C
Well, specifically though, is that is true with the money center bank level. That's true at the JP Morgan, you know, city kind of level. That is not the prime broker level.
- [32:11]
D
The prime.
- [32:11]
C
Right. It's true at the big level. But the point that is, if you looked at the stablecoin debate, is the fear of people is, oh my God, you're going to hurt the community banks. And the community banks are the source of capital for all these people who can't get access to capital. Yet. What you've proven, and in fact we know it's true, is that at least in mortgages, private credit is a bigger factor in mortgages than community banks and not by a small number. And that's probably true for, for businesses as well these days. So I was just, it's just the whole thing, banks are more there.
- [32:40]
D
Yeah, they've got a lot of, they've got a lot of CRE debt.
- [32:44]
C
Right.
- [32:44]
D
So that's the, that's the, that's the big deal.
- [32:47]
C
You tell people what CRE is.
- [32:49]
D
Yeah, it's the, you know, so the, so you've got the commercial real estate issue that we've all talked about with office buildings on. Not all commercial real estate is garbage. You've got some office commercial real estate that's, that's super upside down, you know, pennies on the dollar kind of thing. But then the rest of, I mean, a lot of commercial real estate is, you know, medical, medical centers, like hospitals or, or the medical campuses that you go on. You've got the dentists and the, you know, the different types of doctors that are on these campuses and, and small business campuses. Those are, that's typical commercial real estate. So it's not all upside down, but that's where a lot of the regional banks are focused on that paper tonight.
- [33:35]
A
Yeah, James, there was another, this comes from what Dave was just talking about, but specifically wanted to ask you about it and everybody here as well because when we talk about banks, US banks are now sitting on 395 billion in unrealized losses as of Q2, 20, 25. You can see this chart we all remember Silicon Valley bank somewhere in here, but seems to be once again kind of accelerating off the lows that, I mean, does this mean that it's on investment securities specifically? Yeah. Does this, I mean maybe you could unpack this because bad.
- [34:07]
D
That's long dated debt, right Mike? I mean that's, that's what it is.
- [34:10]
A
That's what I thought. This is the same situation, right.
- [34:14]
D
The US has not been able to term out their debt. Two reasons because number one, the, they're, they're, they're worried about the amount of interest payments that they have. It's already over a trillion dollars annually. So they can't really be paying 4 or 5% on long term debt when they, they could have the chance to refinance this by using T bills, by doing shorter term debt and just playing chicken with the Fed, you know. And the second thing is how much demand is out there because of issues like this, right? So that's, it's, it's kind of a two headed monster for them right now that they're, that they're trying to work through. And for everybody saying, well that's why the Fed's got a lower rates, they got a lower rates, remember, please, for the love of God, the Fed does not control the long end of the curve. They do not control the 10 year, the 20 year, what a stupid bond that is. And the 30 year, you know, they don't control.
- [35:12]
A
Pennies in 20 years. They got to get rid of them both together.
- [35:15]
B
What do you do about a 30 year, that ages. It gets to be a 20 year. But I agree with that comment completely, James. But if they want to, they can and they have.
- [35:25]
D
Well, unless they institute yield curve control. Exactly. I agree with that. But they don't, but they don't control it by, by lowering rates. It's not what's going to get the do this. So everybody's sitting here saying well if the Fed lowers, I'm waiting for the, I've heard this so many times and these are normal people and, and I understand why they think it, I do, I get it. But they're saying the Fed's got a lower rate so that mortgage rates come down.
- [35:49]
B
Yeah, I love that.
- [35:49]
D
What happened when the Fed lowered rates by 50 basis points? When, when, you know, right before the election, the 10 year went up by 50 basis points. So the, the difference, there was a full percent of, of movement there. And so that, that's not, that's not how it works.
- [36:07]
B
Elizabeth Warren needs to speak to you. But there, and I completely agree with you, but there's one difference. So the curve is inverted then now it's pretty steep. So there's, you gotta. And then we know what happens. We know what happens to leverage with the leverage having done it. Yeah, you know, obviously you want to. It's being in a steepener is negative carry by steeper means. You expect short rates to drop more than long rates. But the durations in the long end, if you want to get, you know, you buy, when you can buy zero coupons at pennies in the dollar and at some point in 30 years they're going to go to 100, you can get some good oomph there. So to me that's the key thing about the bond market that's waiting for and I'm just, I'm worried that that's the next big trade. And yeah, I've been wrong for two years, but there's one market I, that's why I started my job and I've been, you know, I just have never seen this before. But that's the difference. The curve is steep now and then it's the leverage that's going to kick in when they start cutting. That's why this period is going to be so important, why it's so important. The stock market absolutely has to go up in the next few weeks, months because if it doesn't go up with the Fed easing, that's the signal to buy bonds.
- [37:07]
D
But if you go look at, go look back at the, at what happens to the stock market when the Fed starts to cut? How late are they in their cutting cycle?
- [37:16]
C
Right.
- [37:17]
D
How late are they, how much are they lagging the economy? Like right now, they start cutting now, we're not in recession yet. If they wait three months or six months to start cutting, it's a totally different situation. So that's the question. If they start cutting now, before we're in recession, the market typically, as I, as I've looked at, just screams right along.
- [37:41]
A
And yeah, I mean this is a chart I've showed a million times. You have the yield curve which uninverts, then you get a Fed pivot. This time they kind of Pivoted and waited. And then you tend to get the stock market dip. So a lot of people expecting that if this drops right here, we'll finally get. By the way, the stock market has left the building on this chart. So maybe that's worth noting this time being different. But we do have a history of markets dropping after the big cutting, you know, during that cutting cycle before obviously ramping back.
- [38:11]
B
So let me piggyback on that and just show two charts real quick because that to me is so important. You can see it clearly on this chart. These red lines, this magenta lines. Fed starts cutting in 2000 and then we get to the recession. And this is again I'm overlaying with S&P 500 ounces of gold. You want to be a long goal when the Fed's easy and typically in a recession, same thing here back in we started this cut. I remember September 2007, remember. Well, took a while once it kicked in and Then S&P 500 versus gold breaking down in magenta. We got the little test baby one here. The point is we should be getting that magenta line pretty soon. But one key thing I want to show you that's so different and so worrisome to me is here I show you a chart of S&P 500 and GDP in terms of. I knew Dave would have to do it. But it's just a total market cap in GDP right now 2.3 times. But what's most significant is the most, you know, leading indicator speculative traded assets on the planet. Cryptos. This is the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index in terms of ounces of gold. Right now it's one ounce of gold. First reach that level is 2017. But I want to show you is now it's become and the correlation is very high now between the stock market and bgci. But if we narrow this back down to when we got the biggest money pump in history, it's the same chart. And that's what I'm really worried about. When we got this last high, we're above the highest ever market cap to GDP. Well, you got to go back 100 years yet this crypto in this versus versus gold is lagging significantly. So what are we going to happen are crypto is going to pick up versus GDP or we're going to get this to just drop? That to me is the key thing is if this drops, that's your deflationary trend. And you get that one ounce of gold to be a half an ounce of gold to equal the S P500 I'm sorry to equal the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index right now it's the same same as announce a gold.
- [39:58]
C
So it. Look there's so much to unpack in all this.
- [40:01]
B
Yeah, I knew that would this.
- [40:03]
C
Well no, because I, I was going to talk about the macro side stuff first which is. Let's just go straight to the, to respond to that.
- [40:12]
D
Can I, can I. But okay, because bitcoin. Can I share this screen first? Because this is really important and I, I think that our, our listeners got to think about this too. Okay. This is just something that, that keeps weighing on me and this is the S P500 versus the S P500 equal weighted. This is really important. We have an extremely, extremely top heavy s P500 right now we've got that Mag 7 that is absolutely off the charts bubble territory because of AI and that's just reality. And then if you look at the S P500 equal weighted it's a different story. I mean look at that divergence there. That's significant. You know I mean that's a, that's on the five year. You know if we go to let's say 10 years it's even worse. I mean so this is, this is just something that's important to think about Mike. When we talk about what just how much the market has gotten ahead of itself. Let's talk about how much seven stocks have gotten ahead of themselves.
- [41:28]
C
And that, and that, that, that totally backs up where I was going on the whole the use of the, the bitcoin, you know the Galaxy Bloomberg crypto index. Bitcoin is a huge piece of it. But bitcoin is very very different than the rest of the crypto sphere. The rest of the crypto sphere we always talk about on crypto, town hall etc alt season this stuff. Basically everything other than bitcoin is trading like the Mag 7. It's trade, you know as an aggregate. I'm not talking about. It's not 21 million. There's only you know only probably 15 or 20 constituents that really matter you know in that index and in, in crypto and those are trading like tech stocks and bay. And whether it's crypto or AI, AI or crypto, you know, it whatever they are inextricably linked in investors minds. And so that piece of it. So that 40 some odd percent of that index are going to trade like the mag7 Bitcoin is, is going to trade on a lag to gold. But it is a different, they are completely different investor investment Theses, yes, they are bound together. And so when you look at averages, you have to like, you have to disassociate the two. You have to unconflate them. And look at what you're talking about. And so, yeah, there is a very real possibility that risk assets could get, get, get kneecapped because they're way too high. But the one point I was going to make when you said that they have to keep going up, that the stock market has to go up, I actually don't think the stock market has to go up. I think the stock market has to not go down sharply. I think that's what the Fed really cares about. I don't think that the Fed certainly would prefer, if you asked Powell, what would he prefer from an economic point of view? He'd prefer the stock market to be flat for a couple years. I think that would be their preferred outcome. Their preferred outcome would not be IT to rise 10, 15% a year with the MAG7 outperforming that they hate. And they would prefer not to see a 25% crash in the market market, which would cause people jumping off of buildings. You know, they would prefer that not to happen because that would crush the wealth effect. They would prefer it to stay where it is and let the, let GDP and everything else catch up to it. That's what they would prefer. Are they going to get that? I mean, they always talk about soft landings. That's what they really want. They want Main street, which is probably already lagging Wall street by a lot based on the chart we showed before, you know, to do better. And they want Wall street not to collapse because that would hurt Main street, that would hurt spending because so many people are spending off of their 401ks and their assets. That's that wealth effect you're talking about. So it's really all blended together. If you think about it now, all of that, what does that, what does that leave in investors? Well, investors are looking, there's, there's this pile of money out there. Rates are coming down. It, there's going. You could either stretch for yield by buying private credit with increasing default rates, or you could stretch for yield by buying, you know, going, buying risk, you know, more risky assets. Or you could park it in Bitcoin. I personally think the latter is the, is the, the more, frankly, more prudent and better risk reward bet out there. But that's a completely separate thing from how it's going to trade because I don't know how it's going to trade. Over the next, next month and a half. I think that it's, it's a fascinating situation because of all these cross currents. I mean, what I, I'm sure you agree with that rough assessment, James. Right?
- [44:46]
D
Yeah, I, I fully do. And I mean, nobody, it's really hard to say what, what the next few months are going to bring because we don't know exactly with it. We don't know how sharply the job market really is falling off. We think it's falling off, you know, kind of in a metered fashion, but it, we could wake up in, in, in eight weeks and have a completely different employment picture. We just don't know. And that's part of the challenge of, of for the Fed. And again, look, Dave, you and I have talked about this ad nauseam is they, they will, they will wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait because they know that they can come at the, they can come to the market with a, with a money bazooka and they, you know, they, for some reason the Fed thinks they can control inflation from that side. You know, it's a, it's a little bit diabolic, but that's what they're, that's what they're doing. That's what they're going to wait and do. And maybe it's a little bit political, I don't know, but that's, that's where they are.
- [45:54]
A
Yeah. Back to the beginning of the conversation then, because everybody's obviously watching the Fed this week. And Powell, what if he says we're cutting 25 bips and it's because of an extremely weak job market and we're concerned about jobs, all cuts are not created equal. Right. So if you're cutting because it's fine to cut and we don't need to be tight, great markets go up. But if you say something's breaking and.
- [46:19]
D
We'Re worried and yeah, there's a difference between him, yeah, there's a difference between him, between him saying we're cutting because we want to get, we're, we're high, we're far enough above the neutral rate that we think we should get closer to it. That's a different thing than we're cutting because we have concern in the job market.
- [46:38]
C
Whoa.
- [46:38]
D
That, that's a completely different thing. If, if they says that, then they better cut 50 basis points. Right, Right.
- [46:43]
A
But there's no. So, Mike, I mean, it's, that's why you kind of joke about the consensus. We get a cut, everything goes up.
- [46:50]
C
Yay.
- [46:51]
A
Right. I mean we have a history of cuts not being great. Why is there so much certainty that everything will go up also when everything's already gone up in anticipation of the cuts?
- [47:02]
B
It's, it's the analysis of human nature that I've always loved in markets is that's a great way to make peaks. We all agree on something, we all remember it. You remember 2006 when everybody agreed, oh, the US housing market's never gone down on an annual basis in history. That wasn't true, but it did happen. I mean, or even Greenspan was somewhat messed up by it. But I remember getting way short, way too early markets and just knowing that, okay, well, people are focusing on something. It's human nature to, to repeat statistics that basically are not true to make you feel about levels that are just historically where you shouldn't be overweight long risk assets. That's the point I've been making about cryptos and I just want to point out this one.
- [47:41]
D
The market can stay irrational far longer than of course.
- [47:44]
B
But that's my, that's my point is at the beginning of the year I still have this bias and it should be over in positions. The best positions this year should be overweight gold and long bonds. And I stick with it and just an equal weight position of those I'll be outperform virtually all risk assets with half the risk. The fact that we're already nine months into the year and we still have a record setting stock market despite the record setting stock market makes me really concerned when we stop having record setting stock market. I didn't say if it's just a.
- [48:11]
D
Matter of time and it's also a matter of what makes it go down. Is it just a, is it just a grind lower because of the economy or is there a black swan event? And so that is the, that's the big question and then what, and then the next big question is what's the Fed's response? You believe that the Fed has learned its lesson. I do not believe there's a lesson to be learned. I believe, or, I'm sorry, I don't want to put, I don't want to put words in your, in your mouth, but you have said that before. They've learned their lessons of the past, but they, I believe that it's, it's not a question whether or not they learn the lessons. We, this question about whether the terminal patient is going to now not be given any more drugs to stay alive.
- [48:49]
B
So what I'm expecting is a long term period of the Fed following cutting rates and following the stock market and wealth effect reversion. I didn't say down, just reverting a little bit. But to do what we did in 2008 and nine pumping too much liquidity system and do again what we did in 20, 20 and 21, pumping too much liquidity in the system. I mean that upset a whole. That shifted the election cycle. The inflation. That's what was a key thing in the election cycle was inflation. So I think that's my point is at some point this is the lose. Lose that gold I think is figuring out.
- [49:24]
D
Well I mean that's the. Then that's the other thing. You've got two, you've got two paths. You've got the stock market going to all time highs and gold going to all time highs. It just doesn't make sense.
- [49:32]
B
Right.
- [49:35]
C
But it does.
- [49:36]
B
We're in inflation more.
- [49:37]
C
We're printing more dollars. All assets after to go up and gold. Yeah forming because it's a pure play and stocks that the, and you're.
- [49:46]
D
That is the point. That's the chart that you code.
- [49:49]
C
Yeah is exactly right. The companies that are not tethered to earnings because they're based on stories, I mean open AI which it isn't even part of the MAG7, you know, having losses as far as the eye could see. I mean they're not going to generate a penny of cash until 2029 and they're worth what trillion, you know, worth a trillion dollars in the private market. That's not a story. Of course it's a story. The Mag 7 are up because of potential future earnings in the next decade based upon some technological story. So they're not tethered to earnings and, and whatnot. Gold is, is basically a pure play on the debasement of the currency. But when the denominator moves, everything moves. And what's going to move most, it's going to move most of the things that are based on animal spirits and stories. So yeah it is actually consistent.
- [50:34]
D
I mean it is now but, but in, in and that's the point is that we're printing at a rate now that people are looking for ways to, to, to avoid having their, their debasing of their investments.
- [50:50]
C
That's right.
- [50:51]
D
That's all they're doing. They're taking money out of the money markets. There is no reverse repo anymore. It's gone.
- [50:56]
C
That's right. No, I'm, I'm basically. Look, I'm not, not, I'm not disagreeing with a lot of what Mike is saying in terms of valuation. The question is, is. The problem is when you're playing a game of musical chairs, everything is great as long as the music's playing. Right, Right. The question is what stop? What causes the music to stop? Does it.
- [51:14]
D
Yeah, right. Is it, is it a power outage or is it, you know, the, the, the, you know, the house burned down.
- [51:21]
B
So what caused it to stop? In the year 2000 prices just went up too high and started tickling, ticking down. And then we got 911 which accelerated happen. But it's just when you go too high, the two high plateaus, the chart I showed you, I mean well remember.
- [51:34]
C
Something about 2000 though because it goes back to the same thing. Because of the idiocy of worrying about Y2K they, you know, Greenspan did a massive money pump in 19, the end of 1999 which peaked and then took away the punch bowl in March. Stopped it in March. And of course what happened? So March there was a little bit of a, you know, there, a little bit of a, there was a pretty nasty correction in the NASDAQ stocks. Then there was a, then they stopped, then they panicked and reversed course for a bit. You saw a rally through the summer. Then we got into the end of the year and then you had some.
- [52:11]
D
Pretty big fraud in there. You had Enron, you had WorldCom, tons.
- [52:14]
C
There's so many things, there's so many cross currents. 911 obviously was the final, you know, nail in the stake. You know, I remember, you know, going to Secaucus to our backup doctor trading floor. You know, I mean, you know, like I, I remember this, you know, pretty carefully. You know, the last week was, it was 9 11. I have very vivid memories of the towers falling. I have vivid memories of going into our disaster recovery site which is where we set up our temporary trading floor because we were 10 blocks north of the towers and weren't allowed back because they were worried about asbestos poisoning and other sort of stuff. So you know, there were lots of cross country occurrence back then. But still if you really search through the noise, the real, the two real drivers were the, the was going on on the monetary side where they panicked at y2k and pumped too much. Then they kind of decided, oh, you know, whatever. It was just the driving was terrible. I mean Greenspan and Bill Fleckenstein wrote a book about Greenspan that that's probably worth everybody reading if you, before you lionize him too much is he basically deconstructs all of this crap. And, and that's what happened. And then of course the second driver was the, the real economy. And after 9 11, the real economy went, got, you know, got, you know, the knee on the throat. And they didn't do anything on the monetary side, you know, particularly for a little bit. And then once they did, what happened and then you had the 2003 through 2006 run and saw this happen to real estate, et cetera, et cetera. We all know, and some of us, I mean I, I was way too early on shorting the leverage real estate market. I started in 2006. So yes, I feel your pain, Mike. I've been with you before and I'll probably be with you again. Anyway, sorry for interrupting, but this, obviously I lived that, so I know it pretty well.
- [54:04]
A
Is it crazy that we didn't talk about bitcoin basically? And it's 957. Is that how boring we are at 115, 116,000 here for bitcoin?
- [54:14]
C
I will tell you, if you look at the bitcoin volatility chart, it's, it's crazy, you know, it's, it's still, look at it, it, it's bopping along the bottom. I mean when volatility returns and it will be up bitcoin. I've made this point before. Bitcoin's volatility is quite often driven by upside volatility, not just downside, whereas the VIX is almost exclusively. I mean it's huge correlation to, to downside only. Yeah, it's a very interesting.
- [54:43]
B
Yeah, so, but Dave, you just described a infant market that's maturing and potentially tilting the other way. Now we have the, you know, the mainstreams in it, the ETF flows, everybody's in it. The correlations are to the equity market the highest ever depending maybe 48 months, four year cycle. And that to me is part of the end game. And I view with, you know, there's a lot of competitors now and willy woo, not just willy woo, but Tom would point out that, Tom Lee, that now to me it's just much more of a commodity. And obviously to me sometimes everything's a commodity, but in this case.
- [55:19]
C
Well, if it's a commodity then, but Mike, if it's a commodity that you can't increase the supply, that there's no, there's no way to do it and the money supply continues to go up, then you, you have to be more bullish on bitcoin than you are on other commodities. Because all the other commodities we can produce it better.
- [55:36]
B
Better. There's certain times I was and I pointed in the chart. Certainly in 2020 was at a significant discount. But now in 2025 it's a significant premium with 21 million companions. I hope that's the right word that doesn't piss everybody off. But it's. We're seeing that flow now. We're seeing.
- [55:51]
C
Did you say that about stocks? I mean, seriously, I mean, all the time. What's the difference between saying that that fart coin is a competitor to bitcoin and as, as you know, I don't know, whatever. Joe's Bar and Grill, you know, equity is a competitor to, to Google.
- [56:10]
B
I mean, so let's, let's talk.
- [56:12]
C
I don't understand the difference.
- [56:13]
B
The key, the key difference is let's see the beef, let's see the test and we haven't seen the test. My point is. But we're getting snippets of it. S P 500 total returns 14 first year of Trump and his administration.
- [56:24]
C
Yeah, great.
- [56:25]
B
Bitcoin's up way underperforming of 25, 22%. Gold's taken off up 39%. To me, that's the potential beginning of, you know, my job is to try to look ahead to those inflection points. And yes, oftentimes being early, predicting the future. That's why I think this is what I'm seeing. It's just comparing the precious metals with only four and some of the other brain banks are, you know, spreading out a little bit away from gold. There's just so many companies, competitors in cryptos and they're all linked. I just, unfortunately this morning I looked at Dogecoin again at 40 billion. I'm like, oh no. At some point I'm going to say it's going to be a 4,000.
- [56:59]
A
I think, I think you might be disappointed when it doubles.
- [57:03]
C
Yeah. I mean I would love to say is this. If you look at Gold vs Silver.
- [57:08]
A
Musk one Musk tweet.
- [57:10]
C
Silver @ least has some amount of precious metal. If you look at it versus platinum and you look at it versus palladium, they have more industrial uses. I mean this notion that meme coins are competitors to bitcoin is just fabricated. The fact that they have coin in the name is the only thing where it is. It's like Micro Muse versus Microsoft. I mean stocks are different. Yes, there's correlation among stocks and there's correlation between stocks and bitcoin and stocks and crypto also. But this notion, the only reason that that notion of competitor is true is the Same thing. If you look at what, what caused, what was the proximate cause for the bubble being pricked in 2000? The proximate cause was two things was monetary supply. And there was this huge surge of people trying to IPO companies younger, you know, one or two year old companies company. The average, if you look at at the time, the average age of companies, the average profitability of companies going, the IPO window dramatically dropped and, and dropped. And so yeah, that was competition for new dollars. That's true. But that's true among all assets. Assets. I mean it's, and the 21 million is, you're just talking most of that is pump dot fund. I mean there's really, there hasn't been more than one or 200 crypto assets that get any significant capital for quite some time. And I'd actually say it's probably more like 40 or 50. I mean what do you think, James? I mean may even be lower?
- [58:31]
D
No, I mean look it, it's easy just to look at all of them and say that they're correlated. But the reality is that, you know, bitcoin marches ahead and the other, and, and the thousands of other coins just benefit from capital coming into the space and from you know, a lot of people who are just speculating on, on trying to make more money than they can in bitcoin. I mean that's just, it's, it's the only stable one in there reality, you know, and for the, and that's why when we talk about the market, we talk about drawdowns, we talk about risk assets, we, and, and this is the real thing. This is really what's most important for our listeners is that I do expect that if the market has a drawdown, Bitcoin's going to have a steep drawdown too and probably steeper than the general market. It's just a reality of a, of a young adopt assets being adopted. It's in its adoption phase. And so, but I also believe that it will recover slower but stronger than gold. And, and that's, but so you, it just depends on your view on it and how much liquidity you need. And my, you know, my advice to people has been depending on the person, everybody's portfolio is the same, is not the same. So you have to look at your own portfolio. But for me it's how, how much liquidity do you need? And if you don't need liquidity right away, then just hold tight. And, and I wouldn't sell all of it because you've, you've Got you're not going to be able to time that V shape recovery that I would expect in, in, in that kind of market drawdown.
- [60:22]
A
So I know that because of everything.
- [60:24]
D
About with them, with the money bazooka. What's that?
- [60:26]
A
I know that we need to go but James, did you guys see what happened in Nakamoto today? If we were talking about treasury companies, we didn't. It's down 56 today, trading at a buck 20. Saw somebody in the comments mentioned it so I looked it up thinking that I was being trolled. Yeah. But yeah, what's 19? It was the first round I think was a dollar or $2. The second round was $5 and this was trading at 20.
- [60:50]
C
What's, what's their M navigation, Scott?
- [60:53]
A
Nobody knows. I tried to look it up. It was like at 2 or 3 bucks it was like 130. They've got to be trading at a discount now and there's only publicly like one purchase of Bitcoin I think. But they've been buying Meta Planet and other things. So it's kind of their M Nav is a bit.
- [61:09]
C
I would make the argument that it's probably not institutionally held, that it's all been retail and that institutions don't know where to make of it. Because if you look at Gemini today it's actually up 3%.
- [61:19]
B
So what's beta in that? In that space MicroStrategy is trading 326. It's well below its 200 day moving average for first sign of a couple years it's breaking down. You're supposed to sell it on rallies and I'm a technical standpoint.
- [61:33]
D
Well, I mean.
- [61:37]
B
We could have a.
- [61:38]
D
Whole show of a conversation about MicroStrategy and Bitcoin treasury companies. But look, MicroStrategy is the leading bitcoin treasury company right now. It's just reality and it's. And it's going to, it's going to trade it in M Nav a multiple of the nav of the bitcoin underlying Bitcoin it holds on its balance sheet. And so the question is where does that settle out? And you know, I think long term it settles out around. It sells out somewhere between one and a half and two and a half but. And right now it's right, it's just under one and a half. So you know I think that that's the long, that's the bigger question we, there's a whole discussion to be had about that because it's much more complicated than just looking at how much bitcoin they own on their balance sheet.
- [62:20]
C
Wow.
- [62:21]
A
Yeah, it's gonna. That, that's. I don't know if that's a harbinger or very unique to them, but people are gonna pay attention to that. All right. Wow. Macro Monday. We did talk about bitcoin for the last 10 minutes by going over time so people can be happy about that. I know both of you guys have. All three of you guys have got to go. Deeply appreciate it as always. Another incredible show. Talked a lot of macro. I think that was a nice breath of fresh air. We didn't argue about the same things, so good for us. All right, everybody, we will see you next week. Important reminder that apparently Starmer is a wanker. And we will see you guys soon. Thank you. Bye, guys. If your mobile number was stolen and your passwords were reset, would you even know it until it was too late? Your crypto wallets, exchanges, email, bank, cloud account, gone. Because someone took over your phone number and hijacked your two factor authentication. This is called a SIM swap attack. And in the crypto world, it's one of the most devastating ways to get hacked. It's not rare. It happens every single day. That's why I've personally been a customer of Afani for years. In fact, I've been with them since before it was even called Afani. When I was the victim of a sim swap and my friend Charlie Shrem introduced me to the CEO and founder Haseeb, I trusted them with my security first, and because I believed in it so much, I later became an investor in the company as well. Afani is built to stop SIM swaps, protect your privacy, and back you with $5 million in insurance just in case. They even include complimentary international data roaming so you can stay secure but also stay connected all around the world. Top crypto investors, traders, influencers, public figures and financial institutions use Afani because one attack can be so, so costly. Afani is offering a discount for our community. And to learn more, go to afani.com ScottMelker to get a secure mobile service with peace of mind. That's E f a n I.coms C-O-T t m e L K E R. You can also find the link in the description and show notes. In crypto security isn't optional, it's survival.