The Pomp Podcast - #1543 Darius Dale | Bitcoin & Stocks Will EXPLODE If This Happens

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Darius Dale is the founder & CEO of 42Macro. In this conversation we discuss why the economy is more resilient than most think, stock market, gold, bitcoin, DOGE, government spending, tax cuts, an...d his future outlook.=======================Core is the leading Bitcoin scaling solution, enabling you to lock in yield by locking up your Bitcoin. Simply lock it on the Bitcoin blockchain to secure the Core network, and get rewards. No bridging. No lending. Just holding. Still your keys. Still your coins. Now your yield. Start at https://stake.coredao.org/pomp=======================The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. With Gemini. =======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great episode with Darius Dale. Darius is the founder of 42 Macro, and he is one of the smartest people I know on Wall Street. His quantitative
Starting point is 00:00:38 measurements of what's going on always inform me, and this conversation is no different. We talk about why the economy is actually more resilient than you may have thought. We talk about whether the stock market is going to hit an all-time high in 2025. He explains why he's bullish on gold and Bitcoin. And then we even talk about what the heck is going on with Doge, government spending, and tax cuts. I hope you enjoy my latest conversation with Darius Dale. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment
Starting point is 00:01:17 or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by Core. You can earn yield on your Bitcoin by just holding your Bitcoin. It's simple. Core, the leading Bitcoin scaling solution, will reward you for not selling your Bitcoin. It's not magic. Here's how it works.
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Starting point is 00:02:44 Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Gemini teamed up with futurists, technologists, and designers like award-winning artist Matt Griffin, known for his illustrations for Dune, to craft a vision of the future with crypto at its core. The creative theme, Go Where Dollars Won't, emphasizes exploration, growth, and the crypto market's limitless potential. Whether it's going on that Martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd
Starting point is 00:03:11 of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet or using bitcoin to pay for your lift pass to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet whatever adventures we'll be living one thing is for sure in a future this fantastic the limits of traditional currency simply cannot keep up financial innovation will usher in this new frontier and so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. Again, go check it out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. All right, Darius, you and I were just talking. I said, turn the camera on. We got to record this. All right. Stock all time high before the end of 2025. I think, yes, you seem maybe cautiously optimistic, like it's not a done deal. But you
Starting point is 00:03:58 go first. Why do you think that the odds are not likely we get a stock all time high before the end of the year? Well, I don't know if I'd say we're not likely. So let me be very clear about this. I think ever since April 9th, the bond market broke President Trump on April 9th. And instead of pivoting us to paradigm B, which would have been multiple quarters of economic hardship in order to right size the economy from being overly allocated towards Wall Street and corporate profits back towards Main Street. I think the bond market broke the resolve in terms of trying to get push us through to this outcome. And so ultimately, where I think the probabilities, at least in the marketplace, have skewed to in recent weeks is a move towards paradigm C.
Starting point is 00:04:38 And unfortunately for Main Street, paradigm C is essentially paradigm A, which is this sort of, you know, really egregiously top-heavy economy that really set up the benefit folks on Wall Street, that on steroids with, you know, trillions of dollars of tax cuts and supply-side sweeteners that ultimately will catalyze new all-time highs. So if we're heading to paradigm C instead of paradigm B, not only are we going to get all-time highs, we're going to get a raging bull market. So paradigm A is where we were. That's how the world used to work. Paradigm B was this whole idea of Main Street, not Wall Street. Paradigm C, which I agree is where we're headed. Actually, in my mind, I look at that as we will still have a more aggressive economic policy around tariffs
Starting point is 00:05:21 or the America first strategy. It's just not going to be the most aggressive version, which is where they started at right and so the tariffs maybe are five to ten percent they're not 30 to 145 percent uh all these different kind of economic policies and so like in a weird world they're going to have taken steps towards their agenda but also we're going to get the all-time high and now i'm only willing to say we're going to get an all-time high by the end of 2025 uh but i do think that if we get two rate cuts three trade deals 2021 baby i'm just saying two rate cuts three trade deals boys better be long look man i look i so i don't um i don't disagree with you uh the one thing i
Starting point is 00:06:10 would i would disagree with is if trade policy ultimately turns out to be worse than what markets are currently expecting that in my opinion would be a signal that they are comfortable accepting the amount of pain required to get us to paradigm B. And ultimately, I don't know that markets are going to do particularly well in that scenario, given that markets are essentially pricing and essentially a one-quarter slowdown that's concentrated to the second quarter of this year. When you look at it in the second half of this year, and even into the first part of 2026, you have a significant acceleration in sales and earnings growth expected still. You have a meaningful pickup in GDP starting in the first half of next year. So in my opinion, I think if
Starting point is 00:06:51 they send any signal that they're okay with the amount of pain required to get us to paradigm B, I think that will cause markets to reverse. And ultimately, we're probably going to maybe even retest the lows. But again, I don't think that's the modal outcome anymore, because in our opinion, our North Star from a research perspective, and it has been this way since April 9th, is that the bond market broke President Trump. Now, you've got a chart here. the U.S. economy is far more resilient than headline real GDP growth of negative 0.3%. Explain what's happening. Yeah. So even before we unpack this chart, the whole collection of charts today that we'll walk through is trying to help investors understand
Starting point is 00:07:28 where are we coming from and how the bridge from paradigm A to paradigm C is a lot more linear and a lot less fraught with market volatility. You can go from paradigm A to paradigm C pretty easily and have it, you know, sustainable run throughout this process. Paradigm B was the real jump condition to a different paradigm, in my opinion. And ultimately, that risk is lower. So getting back into this chart, you know, the U.S. economy has been rocking and rolling. And obviously, a lot of it is based on Biden's kind of, you know, overly fiscally stimulated economy. But until they turn that off, it's going to continue.
Starting point is 00:08:03 And so that's what we show here in the bottom panel of this chart. We show real GDP, ex-government and ex-exports. So if you take out government and ex-exports and then sort of recalculate the growth rates on that residual time series, we actually saw growth accelerate to 6.2% in Q1. That's the highest we've seen since the fourth quarter of 2021. And obviously, you know, significantly above trend relative to the pre-COVID trends. So this is an economy that is even into in Q1 was rocking and rolling from the perspective of, you know, kind of the core fundamental, the core underlying strength of the business. Now, the private sector seems to still be doing very well. The public sector actually saw cuts and there's like this like pull forward from all the tariff worries. Talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the private market with the second chart.
Starting point is 00:08:49 Yeah, absolutely. So this is nine consecutive quarters of real final sales, 3% or more real final sales growth at a modest acceleration in Q1. That's pretty noteworthy, right? I mean, this is an economy where I think if you just walked up and asked the average person, are we a 2% economy or 3% economy? I think the average investor would probably stay closer to 2%, 2.5%. But this is nine consecutive quarters of 3% or more type growth. So it's indicative of private real final sales growth. So this is indicative of an economy that's doing really well
Starting point is 00:09:18 from a private sector standpoint. Now, part of the reason the private sector has been doing really well is because we've had a lot of fiscal and monetary largesse in recent years. And so that largesse continues to find its way and from a velocity of money standpoint into the private sector.
Starting point is 00:09:33 And then you can see the pullback of the public sector here down at the bottom panel. We were down 1.6% on a three-month annualized basis. You know, first pullback we've seen in the public sector since 2Q 2022. So that's noteworthy. And if it continues, we're going to start to see a little bit more of a slowdown in growth.
Starting point is 00:09:49 But again, if we're going to paradigm C, it's not going to. Consumers at the top part of the K still have plenty of money to spend. Now, K, you know, the shape K, you got it written right there. At the top, they're rich people and you're saying they still got cash. Explain. Yeah. So households currently have nine and a half trillion dollars on their balance sheets. uh when you amalgamate checkable deposits and currency plus money market fund exposure um that nine and a half trillion dollars is up from three and a half trillion dollars prior to the pandemic so almost a tripling of the amount of cash that's on the household sector balance
Starting point is 00:10:21 sheets and again when you're running 2.6 trillion dollar budget deficits you know that's what we're annualizing right now like this is uh you know that that money lines up on the private sector balance sheet uh so uh and unfortunately a lot of that money is going to rich people you know Now, you think government spending, naturally, it's easy to think about things like Medicaid or welfare or food stamps or things of that nature. But most of what the government spends on winds up, you know, in the form of it goes to businesses and wealthy business owners, folks like ourselves. So that money is, you know, continues to be concentrated at the top part of the K. And as a function of that, even amid all these sort of, you know, the market decline that we saw throughout the month of March, we actually saw real services consumption growth accelerate on both the three-month annualized and a year-over-year basis. We accelerated 2.3% through annualized, that number slightly above trend.
Starting point is 00:11:12 We accelerated to 2.8% on a year-over-year basis, that number meaningfully above trend. And so as long as, you know, I guess the key takeaway, which is probably on the next chart, you know, as long as the rich people feel confident that, you know, the government machine that keeps pumping out two to two to three trillion dollars a year in the form of budget deficits is going to keep hitting their keep hitting their top line and ultimately their bottom line. then the economy can remain resilient. And that's what we show here on chart four, where we show the share of nominal GDP for the manufacturing sector and share of non-profit payrolls for the manufacturing sector. That's down at 10% and 14% respect. So what that means is 90% of the economy is the services sector from a GDP perspective, and 86% of employment is the services sector from an employment standpoint. So as long as the services sector is doing well, the economy is going to do well irrespective of what's happening in the good sector from tariffs to trade
Starting point is 00:12:06 the macro weather model assesses the probability of regime change over a short to medium term time horizon what's it telling us right now yeah great question then so i i uh you know one of the things we do for our clients the number one thing we do for our clients at 42 macro is now cast the market regime and then we filter those signals through our kiss portfolio construction process for retail investors and our discretionary risk management overlay for um institutional investors to help them kind of stay on the right side of market risk by you know giving them specific allocations for their for their portfolio and with what to be long and short at any given time uh we'll use our other tools in our toolkit to essentially help them understand what the full distribution of probable
Starting point is 00:12:46 economic and policy outcomes is so that when our systematic signals via kiss and dr mo tell them to do something different in their portfolio they feel confident enough because they've been hearing me talk about it for long enough to just you know accept the fact that markets are now pricing this side of the distribution in as opposed to the distribution that we're coming from and so that's why we refresh models like this one uh on a daily basis is to again help paint that distribution of probable outcomes so that they can feel confident enough to make changes in their portfolio when kids to dr motel to make changes and right now the macro weather model when you look at the uh principal components of macro across growth inflation employment
Starting point is 00:13:21 corporate profits fiscal policy liquidity credit interest rates and then uh positioning across the various asset classes you know the the current momentum across all those different uh features is essentially aligned in a way that suggests you know you should have positive outcomes for the stock market bond market commodity markets and bitcoin over the next three months uh and a negative outlook for the dollar and so if that occurred if that if this became true this this really you know rosy scenario for stock markets for for for risk assets in our opinion you started work working way backwards from there okay if this came true three months from now what would have to to have happened from a policy signaling standpoint to get us there. And in our opinion,
Starting point is 00:14:01 you know, when I first, when we first started a lot of green in this, in this model going back a few weeks ago, my initial assumption was that things are going to get so bad in the bond market that the Fed is going to have to come out and do QE and yield curve control and stop and remove financial stability risk from that. Now that we've moved forward in time and we've gotten more signal from the administration in terms of backtracking away from paradigm B, to me, what would have to happen if this becomes true over the next three months is a move towards paradigm c which as we talked about earlier is a lot like what we came from which was obviously very bullish for markets and very bullish for the economy but with even more uh fiscal largesse in the form of tax cuts
Starting point is 00:14:38 uh and some some change from the side of reassuring manufacturing it's a it's basically a lot like what we saw from biden but with some supply side economic sweeteners on top of that now the spending is up the deficit is up it feels like um maybe it's not up as much as it would have been in the past uh economy but it's still up how do you reckon you know kind of uh hey we're gonna tighten our belt we're gonna kind of go after this stuff but the spending's still up yeah well i'll say the punchline for the last slide uh but uh let's just grind through this data because um you know i think it's really important you know i thought i would talk to this to our clients uh i think either on saturday or friday's micro starting point but you know so many people spend so much
Starting point is 00:15:17 time thinking about the future when they're forecasting and not nearly enough time understanding what the base rate is so that you can make, you know, moderated adjustments from the base rate with respect to your forecast, which improves your forecast accuracy. So, so anybody, any young forecasters out there write down what I just said, because I don't think you're a lot better forecaster. But anyway, get into the data. I think it's really important just to understand exactly where we are today. And this is fiscal year to date data through March, six months of the fiscal year um it's telling you that we haven't really changed much from the set of a fiscal policy and then of course of course we have to change from such policy they haven't legislated anything
Starting point is 00:15:51 and so if you look at net outlays uh we're up 10 on a year-over-year basis um we're up 23 year-over-year basis in terms of the budget deficit like if you look at the budget deficit some of the like some of the scariest stuff i see and from my perspective especially in the context of what happened on april 9th and april 11th is the fact that the elements of the budget deficit the the elements of federal expenditures that really are politically protected and or won't um we can't really do anything about like net interest those elements which comprise roughly about 70 of the budget across medicare medicaid social security net interest and national defense those five um those five categories account for 70 of total expenditures right around five percent
Starting point is 00:16:34 of total expenditures and they've been compounding at plus nine percent on a trailing three-year basis. It's almost double-digit growth in the things we know are politically protected and won't cut and will continue to grow for a variety of reasons. One, they want to keep taking up defense. They've already, you know, sort of signaled that they want, you know, an additional $150 billion of defense spending. Two, the interest is going to go up another $100 billion just from refinancing from a lower interest rate regime to a higher interest rate regime. And then number three, we know we have, you know, the demographic situation in our country in terms of the, the share, the rising share of folks over 65, we know Social Security and Medicare are going to
Starting point is 00:17:11 continue to rise. This sort of high single digits, low double digits compound growth in these categories, in my opinion, is a feature, not a bug. It's going to continue. And so what you ultimately need to see the deficits stop growing, not go down, for the deficits to stop growing, the other 30 percent of federal expenditures has to compound down 20 percent to offset that and obviously we're not even close to on track to to to to to legislating down 20 percent for the other 30 percent of the budget that's not politically protected um and so that leaves me with the final slide here um which you may take some offense to and i'm fine to to defend it you know for the for the sake of a discussion but uh i think when you start to look at the lack
Starting point is 00:17:55 of progress that doge is making and especially in the context of uh elon leaving doge early to go back to tesla and that's a smart choice right you know this is your baby you've got to go fix it but um you're talking about only getting 165 billion dollars of estimated savings through three months you know with a seven plus trillion dollar budget the budget peaked at 7.4 trillion dollars annualized in february i mean we're talking about raindrops in the ocean um right now and so i i have to be i think you have to be concerned as a as an investor and really as a u.s citizen if about doge you know what was the ultimate intent of doge is doge really here to come cut a trillion dollars of federal expenditures which by the way if they cut a trillion dollars
Starting point is 00:18:34 from the all-time high in federal expenditures back in february and float that all the way down the budget statement without any negative impact on the economy revenues you'd still wind up with a six percent budget deficit the gdp right so like even if they accomplish their goal which is one trillion dollars at least as recently as late march they would still wind up with a six budget deficit gp and that's before they legislate five plus trillion dollars of debt finance tax cuts onto the book and so i gotta wonder like was this whole doge process just like kabuki theater just to create a narrative about belt tightening and and fiscal retrenchment but behind the scenes you know they're just they're just doing exactly what the biden administration did with the
Starting point is 00:19:13 exception of instead of trillions of dollars of spending that blows up our public sector balance sheet there are trillions of dollars of tax cuts that incrementally blow up our budget public sector balance sheet, we wind up in the same place, which is a deficit that continues to grow unfettered and ultimately will become a big problem for us as we get deeper and deeper in this fourth turning. So I got a couple of thoughts. One is something I didn't know that I recently learned. I took my little behind down to Washington, D.C., and I interviewed the deputy director of the CIA, second in command. Fascinating, fascinating conversation. China, cartels, and they're learning. Bill Pulte, who is the FHFA, I think it is. He's the director there.
Starting point is 00:19:58 He's the chairman of Fannie and Freddie. And while I was down there, I ran into a friend who I don't want to say whose name it is, but my friend is a special government employee. Now, when I hear that term, I don't know what that means. I was told, why are people as the special government employee. You can only stay in that status for like 120 or 130 days. The reason why so many of these people are trying to be special government employees is they don't have to divest of their assets. So if you become a full-time employee, you got to divest. That's Howard Lutnick, many others, they're selling their assets, they're going into the government. But these special government employees, they don't have to divest, and then they can only stay for, call it 120,
Starting point is 00:20:37 130 days, and then they got to go back. So Elon actually is going back because the special government employee timer is up and he's got it he's got to step back so i didn't know that i learned that i thought that was interesting doesn't change anything about what they've done or haven't done or whatever but i think that that was uh an interesting data point because i never heard a special government employee until this administration right that's why two is if you take the 165 billion that they have saved so far in let's call it four months or so they actually are on track to cut a trillion over four years but i think you and i probably look at this and say hey, you lose steam over time.
Starting point is 00:21:14 Like the low-hanging fruit goes away and it becomes harder and harder and harder, right? So you can't just like extrapolate out and say, oh, if you do this in four months, like you get four years, whatever. But technically over the four-year time period, like they are on track. I just think that you and I think
Starting point is 00:21:27 the percentage is going to degrade over time. And so that begs the question, like what number would we be happy with? If they ended up cutting 500 billion, what would be like, hey, the goal was a trillion, but they cut 500 billion, like kudos, good job guys. you know you get a trophy or are we all going to be like hey you guys said a trillion didn't do a trillion you failed i don't have a good answer but i do think it's kind of interesting on like
Starting point is 00:21:49 because they put a milestone out there it really rallied people and it was aspirational and it attracted really quality talent but now i kind of turned into the yardstick and so they're being judged on whether they hit the number that they publicly put out there yeah that's a great question man because i think it's all incremental right we're moving as long as you're cutting it's better than nothing. But the problem, here's my problem. And I think it's deeper than just what number do they hit. It's what is our relationship with the rest of the world as it relates to our capital account? And this is why, in our opinion, the bond market broke President Trump on April 9th, because I think they realized that they were trying to facilitate these very heavy-handed
Starting point is 00:22:27 current account outcomes via the current account. And they forgot that, hey, every year the U.S. runs a current account deficit worth 4% of our GDP, which means we consume 4% of our GDP more than we produce. We invest 4% of our GDP more than we save. And part of that, you know, current account deficit is a function of our gross fiscal largeness. You know, we have a non-war, non-recession budget deficit of 7%. That's quite frankly on its way to 8.5% if we legislate the reconciliation process program that the congressional Republicans are currently debating and deliberating. And so, you know, by the end of the administration, let's ignore Doge and we'll allay our own Doge towards the end. But if we just have what we currently have, which is Biden's fiscal largesse, plus the
Starting point is 00:23:11 Republican tax cuts, you're talking about just a standard static budget deficit, a structural budget deficit of about 8% to 9% of GDP. So going from 7% to about 8% to 9% of GDP. Then you layer on Doge. Let's say Doge got to the full trillion dollars. That would just take you back from 8% to 9% to 7%, 7.5%. I don't think they're going to get to the full trillion dollars. And by the way, if they got to a full trillion dollars over the whole course of four years, that's 28 plus trillion dollars of federal expenditures accumulated, which means you're only cutting one trillion dollars out of that throughout the course of your four years. It's a joke. It's a real joke. And so this is why, you know, I don't want to be like cynical. I'm trying not to be cynical about
Starting point is 00:23:51 this, but I'm also, you know, well aware that, look, you know, this wouldn't be the first time that the American public has gotten, you know, lied to by people in office. And so, you know, i'll call it out whenever i see it which is this whole process could very well have been kabuki theater right like you know when you're on stage talking about cutting two trillion dollars and you walk that back to one trillion and then you leave and it's only 165 billion dollars it's just not it's not it doesn't strike me as a very serious process right it doesn't it doesn't feel serious especially in the context of 70 of the budget which is five trillion dollars growing compounding it darn near a double digit growth rate because of demographic factors and
Starting point is 00:24:29 and other factors that the budget they can't control. So it's as if they don't even they're not aware of how big the problem is. And they're just highlighting this to create a narrative outside of D.C. about fiscal restraint and getting inflation down, because this is what's politically popular to talk about. But at the end of the day, I think you have to just watch the numbers and crunch the numbers like we do. And we are on track to a structural eight to nine percent budget deficit by the end of this administration, irrespective of what Doge accumulates. And I'm hoping as an american citizen that they get to a trillion but right now it doesn't look like they're going to get there are you bullish or bearish over the next right now yeah through
Starting point is 00:25:04 the summer uh i to be honest with you i don't know i don't i don't think i need to have an answer to that right now like you know we're completely systematic investors so if our if our systems take up risk i have a really credible you know framework for thinking of why that is likely to occur in terms of paradigm c because paradigm c is bullish for markets but i'm also smart enough to know that the administration could easily look at the markets doing well and have it give them a false sense of confidence in order to try to start facilitating outcomes towards paradigm B again, right? And so this is a lot more, you know, this isn't like forecasting an economic outcome or forecasting Fed policy and having it be some static outcome where, you know,
Starting point is 00:25:43 you can have a lot of confidence in that as an investor. If you have a tremendous amount of confidence right now as an investor, it's because you don't know what you don't know, quite frankly. And not you, but any investor that has a tremendous amount of confidence based on this process doesn't know what they don't know because they don't realize the dimensionality associated with, hey, they could easily try to negotiate in a very aggressive manner if markets are up over the coming, you know, if markets are doing well over the next, you know, let's call it two months in this 90 day window, they might try to negotiate heavy handed again. and negotiating heavy-handed again is going to cause markets to have a lot more pain because then markets are going to go from expecting paradigm C to expecting paradigm B again. And more importantly, you're introducing a whole host of risk in the bond market. I think it's very important to talk about what the Japanese finance minister said last week. This is Scott Besson's counterpart in Japan.
Starting point is 00:26:35 He was asked on Bloomberg, you guys are America's single largest foreign holder of treasuries. uh he said uh we they asked him will you use this as a car a chip in the negotiating negotiations he said uh well yeah it's a chip we can use whether or not we use it is up to the trump administration right and so like to me i'm like this is what i've been trying to say for years now which is our twin deficit situation is a problem and it's an extremely big problem and very timely problem if the trump administration wants to bully the world into an outcome that they don't want right and so that's my fear is that as investors that as soon as you position for paradigm c or get very convicted on paradigm c reflexively the positive reaction in the market
Starting point is 00:27:14 could cause these guys to you know double down on paradigm b again so i don't know the answer i'd be remiss to pretend like i have the answer but i tell you exactly what i'm doing in my portfolio which is the same thing i've been doing the whole time which is dispassionately execute our systematic kiss signals kiss the kiss will get incrementally bullish over the course of the year if what we're right if we're talking about paradigm c becomes true however it will maintain a relatively you know um a defensive uh position um if paradigm c becomes luster and one final thing i'll say on kiss is that there's been a real divergence between our signals for the crypto market and our signals for the stock market and i think you and i might have talked about this last time i was
Starting point is 00:27:51 on but bitcoin has developed defensive properties in this most recent market cycle in a way that it has not i've not seen it yet the beta to the smp is like one now as opposed to two to three uh and it also you can see it um trade a lot better uh than stocks did and so my opinion i think um the reason you know i feel really confident that you know having a portfolio exposed to stocks gold and and and bitcoin uh is going to do really well in a variety of scenarios and obviously that portfolio will get incrementally bullish if the scenario winds up also if paradigm c becomes the highest probability outcome in the minds of other market participants where can we send people to find out more about 42 macro i know that was a lot but uh i appreciate you man look they gotta
Starting point is 00:28:30 go get the signals yeah well no it's it's the we you and i consider and talk for 10 hours about all the different shapes of the economic and policy distribution. But at the end of the day, what I'm doing in my portfolio is KISS. Because ultimately, KISS knows more than me. And more importantly, KISS will get to the right answer. We understand that the market is smarter than us. And it's better to use quantitative market signaling to guide your portfolio than stuff about Doge or Paradigm C or B or A.
Starting point is 00:28:58 That stuff just helps us understand how those signals may evolve in the future so that when they do evolve, we feel confident enough to just make the changes in our portfolio. So 42macro.com if you want to check out those signals
Starting point is 00:29:09 and get access to them. I learn something every single time we talk. My friend, today is no different. Thank you very much. We'll do it again in the future. Always a pleasure, brother. Thank you so much, man.
Starting point is 00:29:17 Have a good one.

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