The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin & Gold Stall As Markets Brace For Rate Cuts! Are All Time Highs Next?

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Bitcoin and gold are cooling off after massive runs, just as markets brace for potential rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. With Wall Street expecting multiple cuts this year, investors are asking: i...s this just a pause before the next explosive rally? In this livestream, we’ll break down the latest market action, what the Fed’s decisions could mean for crypto and commodities, and whether new all-time highs might be right around the corner.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:01:01 I just put in the call to the editors to give us our own intro video and music, especially for Macro Monday. 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. Honored. Thanks for having me on. I think people are just sick of hearing that same song every single day. Listen, let's dig in.
Starting point is 00:01:23 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 Fedwatch 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. Yeah, well, I enjoy you going there and starting to get because the headline I started to prepare for tomorrow is it's easy. Fed's 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.
Starting point is 00:01:57 And he's an equity strategy. He said, it's unusual for the Fed be cunning at the top of an equity market. I don't think he even picks at the top at that point. He 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 close closely, but obviously still quite the bull market. Speaking over to Anna, she mentions some unique things. Seeing what happens with retail sales, expect them to drop a little bit, two-tenths percent versus last months. five tenths percent she's key things she mentioned twice was the wealth effect um and it's good to start
Starting point is 00:02:33 hear people saying i'd like to hear the fed start saying what's actually going on in the market's a wealth effect right 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 sense can be um the dot plots can be quiet the sense he said last time there were seven in the last fm fomc who did not expect rates to go down and so their dissent showed their dot plus showed dissent she expects to be at five actually obviously steve moran this time's going to show probably easing or vote for easing but she expects distance they'll show five so it's not just how i love how president trump pointed him and now he's pissed at him because he's being a good economist or doing what he views
Starting point is 00:03:18 but you know dave will touch on that one i'm sure but um so ira jersey from the uh pointed out that he expect to steepen her to continue. He's looking at key technical level, 30 year, 3.6%. That's my baby. That's why I started in the training bits. I think it's a key indicator. But right now, 3.66, that's a key support. And in any note, he mentioned 4.4% is really none. Doesn't really matter. What really holds over time is 393. Specks occurred to continue steepening. And then I tilt, Audrey Child Freeman, our FX strategies, points weakness in the dollar. She made a point I thought was interesting. The consensus is for a 25 basis, point cut.
Starting point is 00:03:56 But we do, and Ana does expect the Fed to be less doveish than the market expects. I agree with that. Yeah, there you go. So the dollar's probably going to bounce on that. And then I tilted 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.
Starting point is 00:04:14 I point out 3,500 good support. Next resistance, I think, round number is 4,000. And I dug into the positions. I still am radar. You know, you're looking for, on a good bullmark, 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%.
Starting point is 00:04:37 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 lagging. So those two signals that show were not overbought in gold. So I expect that to continue. Opposite in crude oil. Here's a key little thing about crude oil, looking at positions. Right now, net long is around 7% of open interest.
Starting point is 00:04:56 A year ago is when the first time ever they got net short. Remember we talked about that crude at the bottom that's 65? And here we're below that level. It's 63. Positions are long. What's the risk? Yeah, we probably have to stop out risk. There you go.
Starting point is 00:05:10 Well, Dayton, definitely. Peace is at risk, which is probably a problem for gold. So I pointed out of those key factors. And in the other markets, copper stuck in the middle. Here's the key thing I mentioned in the copper. Dr. Copper, the economic sensitive metal. Right now is at 466. It's never ended the year above 446.
Starting point is 00:05:28 Can it do it this year? The world facing downtrends and U.S. tariffs. I think it's unlikely. So I've been waiting for that one for a while. I think the peak this year was like Crudeau. I mentioned it last time. They could go lower. And then I look at the rest of the grains in terms of commodities.
Starting point is 00:05:40 They're still heading lower. Too much supply. Back to you. If I was a betting man, I would say that we get what we'll call hawkish cut this week, which is that Powell will 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.
Starting point is 00:06:00 It'll be the most noncommittal rate cut in history just to confuse people as much as humanly possible. Well, but if you follow the blueprint, sorry, can you hear me, Scott? Yeah, I can. James is muted. I could see him talking. Oh, sorry.
Starting point is 00:06:15 James here. James, I think you got to work. We can't hear you. Go ahead, Dave. 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 total direction of the market's going to come from the presser and if in fact he is that noncommittal and he is that that hawkish then it'll kind of be a a crappy week uh for risk
Starting point is 00:06:45 assets, or at least a crappy day or two, until the pounding and 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's just, you know, it's a question of time. So, you know, depending on how long term you are, it's fascinating. You know, it's, there's just a lot to talk about there. The one point I wanted 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
Starting point is 00:07:20 that exist today that existed, you know, 10 years ago, actually five years ago. What you're basically saying is, 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, you know, basic, 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 production cost. And I think that that's very relevant. I'll be blunt, I have no clue. Well, copper's production costs is right now, so I don't know
Starting point is 00:08:00 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 a number of the money supply over the last five or six years is, is problematic. It leads to kind of strange analysis, across the board on all of it. I appreciate that. Just want me to 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 evidentia. Just the fact that crude oil is the same price right now as first traded in 2005 shows you that overwhelming deflating force, because
Starting point is 00:08:39 What's happened with 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 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 has doubled the yield that was 50 years ago. So that's the key thing to remember.
Starting point is 00:08:59 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. Commodys go down because they went up.
Starting point is 00:09:12 And that's a subtracting almost every commodity with, except gold and copper is kind of stuck in there. And just where we are right now, we're going down because that spike in 2022 and most of the elastic commodity. So that's a key thing. But I think I'm glad you went there. It's just a key thing. Remember, 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.
Starting point is 00:09:39 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 i mean it's the classic you know it's the classic uh um 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 right they don't care about it they say it all over and we are we we don't we are not that's not our concern we're not concerned with where the stock market is unless of course
Starting point is 00:10:29 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 crashed then the whole economy crashes. So 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.
Starting point is 00:10:58 Who knows what the job numbers really are, right? I mean, the BLS is obviously that that information they have is just not accurate. it. And 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. They're going to say, yeah, we've got to cut 25 basis points because we have air cover to. We don't want to, but we have to because we have air cover to. And we will have 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, right? They don't really, they say they don't care, but they do care enough that they
Starting point is 00:11:41 don't want it to crash. They don't want to cause something that do something that's cause a crash. Now, getting to Dave and Scott's point of what's Powell going to do? Well, I think he is going to be very tempered in his delivery. He's been extremely careful about how doveish 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 you're making that bet it's not i don't think it's going to happen that would pal would panic the market if you did yeah i think that would be the wrong that would be the wrong message it would be like we see something the market doesn't broken that's oh god and that would yeah that would
Starting point is 00:12:25 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 I don't think he should do is say, we're gonna cut 25 basis points. Then we are firmly on hold status. Then we're just gonna stop. I think that would be a mistake too.
Starting point is 00:12:49 I think he has to continue to say that 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. They don't have the lever to put that out except for QT. If they use QT to put it out, it makes the job situation worse. So they've, you know, they've got two mandates.
Starting point is 00:13:15 They've got the stable pricing mandate, 2% in place, 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 fully expect three rate cuts this year. Interesting now here. James, I just want to show you something. you're talking. Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank expect three U.S. interest cuts this year. And then you have UBS saying 93% of a recession.
Starting point is 00:13:44 Wow. That's an aggressive, aggressive number. I feel like that's clickbait headline, but still. Yeah. Look, you have to understand. But you say one guy at UBS says. One guy at Bank America that's saying it. Look, it's we obsess about the short-term rates.
Starting point is 00:14:05 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 Robert put up that we were going to talk about, I think is extremely important here. Let's go there. Why don't we put this up? Because, you know, so Robert made this post. See if you can blow that one up. Yep.
Starting point is 00:14:24 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. line. 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 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 moved up in line with that. Meaning that, okay, so, you know, there's
Starting point is 00:15:02 some valuation issues here. I still think we're at the top end of valuation. 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 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?
Starting point is 00:15:27 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.
Starting point is 00:16:03 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 know, you can't find rhyme or reason out of it other than, you know, people will argue. And Mike and I can talk about, well, it's because the dollars 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 low. Much lower, right? I mean, hell, why should Italy have 10-year borrowing rates that are, or France, given what's going on there, have 10-year borrowing weights that are significantly cheaper 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. Yeah, quickly, Dave, for those, I don't want to take for granted.
Starting point is 00:16:52 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. Right. And so, you know, this is the kind of thing that people like Thomas Pickety would point to and say, ah, or Zoran Mamdani. Oh, you see, this is the evil corporatist. No, it's nothing to do with evil corporates. This is due with the fact that we have made the price of money way too cheap for,
Starting point is 00:17:20 way too long and we have financialized the economy. And when you financialize the economy, this is virtually guaranteed to happen. It doesn't mean that jobs haven't been created. It doesn't mean, you know, whatever. But, you know, these are the forces. The forces that are operating that Mike talks about about commodities that are working on labor as well. As labor gets more and more productive, you pay people less. 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 McGillone, thanks. He obviously pointed right to you in this tweet. So we're the opportunity for you to have a response because you do
Starting point is 00:18:01 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 So it's very important that we push back in each other because it helps our, um, hone our views in our discourse. So part of the reason I've added into the U.S. stock market version validation versus the rest of the world is to offset sort of 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 four to five percent of GDPs on defense. Like, okay, well, that kind of legitimizes the GDP above denominator. But I want to show you one key thing as a strategy. I'm still very much concerned
Starting point is 00:18:44 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 consistent, when I enjoy, and it's kind of my duty sometimes to be, to agitate, to be an antagonist. When people say how it easy, it easy is for the stockmark when the Fed eases to go up, I say, well, okay, well, how about versus gold? So all as I show you here is gold, this is the S&P 500 versus gold ratio. It's breaking down through a key pivot. This is a pivot of 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,
Starting point is 00:19:28 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'm sorry, shoot, I don't see positions getting overdone. But, you know, I hope my mother's not listening. But other way. Oh, no, she might hear Dave. She might hear Dave if she's listening. Oh, that wouldn't be good.
Starting point is 00:19:53 I'm, you know, I may be in a W in a certain age category. And then I tilt over to the U.S. bond market. Yes, and this is just the average U.S. I say 4.03 in the U.S. 10, you know, obviously it's somewhat restrictive versus, okay, we have a core PC at 3% and some of those levels 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 always to always love South Korea because it was pretty close.
Starting point is 00:20:20 Now South Korea's broken down. Obviously, they're facing tariffs. And then there's China, 1.79. Then there's Japan, 1.5. I mean, these are one and two handles. And only a few rare ones in this. So it's just to me, Canada, Canada is running 7% unemployment. Yes, they're typically a little bit higher than U.S., but not that much. Their latest unemployment number was, what, 40,000, 30,000 losses. That's the same in the U.S. 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 is going to be
Starting point is 00:20:49 great for trading. But if things are tilting lower, that will be a set up 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? Well, I was going to mention, I was actually going to say that, that understand. ending's one point because we talked about it, which is the reason that you can talk about copper and absolute levels with a dollar devaluating, a dollar being created is because we get less is more, right?
Starting point is 00:21:23 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 kind of reached the peak of gold extraction technology. So they're similar. There you go. Well, okay, okay, fine. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:21:37 I forgot of an alchemy and asteroid. Takes another hit. Asteroid. And what does it cost for a typical launch to and from an asteroid? No, I'm not going to be a national. A quadrillion dollars worth of gold out of an asteroid, it would be worth it. It depends.
Starting point is 00:21:54 It depends, Mike. Is it SpaceX or is it the? That's right. Who's doing it? Yeah, we could talk about all of that stuff. And it would be just like, you know, the complete sets pool that all social media has turned into over the last week in terms of conspiracy theories. Or we could stick with everything.
Starting point is 00:22:11 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 stable coins, which are fully reserved backed and have no fractional reserve banking are risky. Now, the reason it ties to James's newsletter is, is that there's this fear that the banking industry keeps telling people, I don't understand why anyone
Starting point is 00:22:53 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, 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 I'm really not certain that they could do a better job if they were trying to do so
Starting point is 00:23:27 intentionally. I mean, it's kind of insane. So I want to just comment on that. I definitely want to hear by James Nixon because I enjoy arriving on Saturday for there's a big protest over 100,000 people. And I learned one quote that I was unaware of. Care Stamer is a wanker. That's what they were saying.
Starting point is 00:23:43 I was just quoting what I was hearing in the tube when I was, oh, there were thousands of people yelling that. I'm like, oh, okay, I was not aware. At least Americans probably would have used less pleasant terms than that. But so the key thing I want to point out is that to me, I want to, 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,
Starting point is 00:24:06 to 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 with scott best and what was two billion in 2018 is almost 300 billion now it's going to go to three yeah and once we figure out how to make them more like we can get the yield on it and make a money market. It's done. It's just like future. It's a better technology. I want to go to James on the other one. I just want to show a really quick article. There's
Starting point is 00:24:43 actually an article in Coin Telegraph. The end game for U.S. 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 Wisdom Tree launches tokenized private credit funds and London Stock Exchange launches blockchain platform for private funds. All this happening at the same time. So beyond that you weren't
Starting point is 00:25:18 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. Yeah. So 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 um somewhere around a quarter of a quadrillion so 240 trillion dollars worth of money that's sloshing around and in in these 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 uh private equity private funds private debt funds but they're they're non bank institutions basically. And they touch everything. You're talking about things like Apollo and Blackstone
Starting point is 00:26:08 and some of the other big ones. But, you know, the biggest part of that, the most concentrated part of that is private credit. And that's where you've got the private debt from the Apollos and Blackstone's, whatever, that are lending to these companies. And the issue is that you don't really know what's going on at them. They mark them themselves. They can reach it too, right? I mean, if you're paying seven and from a bank, you're paying 12 to these guys. Yeah, exactly. They're higher rates and they're more predatory. I've seen, you know, we were talking to a company, a Bitcoin company years ago about taking a loan from one of these banks and, you know, opening up a debt line with them. We said, this is a loan to own.
Starting point is 00:27:03 We, you know, 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 is 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
Starting point is 00:27:24 down the road, meaning kick the maturity can down the road. And they just, they changed the term. terms. They change, they move the goal post, 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. 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
Starting point is 00:28:07 you know they kind of they they do hide the the default rate but if you bring that back up scott you bring up the back up and go down to that wheel it'll show you all of this is a great um carlisle group put this out um this a great chart to show you yeah right there how it touches pretty much everything in the universe. I mean, in the financial universe. 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, are going to create funds and who's that going to? Private credit. Yeah. Yeah. The issue is that, you know, you, the, the,
Starting point is 00:28:57 the capital raising for these private funds, it dropped, like, massively 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 tells you that institutions are full up with this stuff. They can't keep buying it. So what does that mean? They need exit liquidity.
Starting point is 00:29:24 You're going to start seeing, you know, endowment. which we have started seeing endowment selling this stuff 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 five to seven year fund. Suddenly they're a nine 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 they're going to be.
Starting point is 00:29:57 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've got to be aware of. And so I don't know if you want to comment on that day, but that's kind of where I was coming from on it. 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 mold 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 in trapped bank deposits, which they have that they can offer for no interest because the federal government gives them a subsidy.
Starting point is 00:30:49 So we have the federal government of subsidizing industry. We call them banks. It doesn't mean we don't pay the bank. 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, is a 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
Starting point is 00:31:18 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 backed up by the federal government. I'm just curious what you think of that. Yeah. Well, just remember it's so where the shadow the shadow banks is private credit the private credit gets their they 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 it's
Starting point is 00:31:58 hard to untangle that and well 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 true the prime broker level the prime right it's true at the big level but the point that is if you looked at the stable coin 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 you banks are more they've yeah they've got a lot
Starting point is 00:32:41 of uh they've got a lot of CRE debt right so that's the that's the that's the big you tell people with CREs. Yeah, it's the, so the, so you've got, um, 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 and the dollar kind of thing. But then the rest of, I mean, a lot of commercial real estate is, you know, medical, uh, medical centers like hospitals or, or, uh, the medical campuses that you go on. that you've got the dentists and the, you know, the different types of doctors that are all on these campuses and small business campuses.
Starting point is 00:33:24 Those are, that's typical commercial real estate. So it's not all upside down. But that that's where a lot of the regional banks are focused on that paper. Can I, 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, U.S. banks are now sitting on $395 billion in unrealized losses as of Q2, 2025. You can see this chart.
Starting point is 00:33:51 We all remember Silicon Valley Bank somewhere in here. But it 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, you could have back this because that's that's long date of debt, right? I mean, that's what it is. That's what I thought. This is the same situation, right?
Starting point is 00:34:12 Well, that why do you think the U.S. is not. able to term out their debt. Two reasons, because number one, 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 four or five percent on long term debt when they could have the chance to refinance this by using T bills by doing shorter term debt and just playing chicken with the Fed. And the second thing is how much demand is out there because of issues like this. right so that's it's uh 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's saying well that's why the fed's got a lower
Starting point is 00:34:55 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 pennies in 20 years they got to get rid of them both together When 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. Well, unless they institute yield curve control, exactly. I agree with that.
Starting point is 00:35:29 But they don't, but they don't control it by lowering rates. It's not what's going to get the rate to 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 I understand why they think it. I do. I get it. They're saying the Fed's got a lower rates so that mortgage rates come down.
Starting point is 00:35:48 Yeah, I love that. What happened when the Fed lowered rates by 50 basis points? When, you know, right before the election, the 10-year went up by 50 basis points. So the difference there was a full percent of movement there. And so that's not how it works. Elizabeth Warren needs to speak to you. And I completely agree with you. But there's one difference.
Starting point is 00:36:11 So the curve is inverted then. Now it's pretty steep. And then we know it happens with the leverage, having done it, you know, obviously you want to, it's being in a steepener is negative carry. My 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 that 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.
Starting point is 00:36:46 But there's one market 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 deep now. And then it's a 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, a 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.
Starting point is 00:37:07 But if you go look back at the, at what happens the stock market when the Fed starts to cut how late are they in their cutting cycle right how late are they how much are they lagging the economy like right now if 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. Yeah, I mean, this is the chart. I've showed a million times.
Starting point is 00:37:43 You have the yield curve, which uninverts. Then you get a Fed pivoted this time. They kind of pivoted and waited. And then you tend to get the stock market dip. So, you know, 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. Yeah, it's different.
Starting point is 00:38:02 But we do have a history of markets dropping after the big cutting, you know, during that cutting cycle before obviously ramping back down so let me piggyback in that and just show two charts real kick because that to me is so important you can see it clearly on this chart these these red lines this magenta lines fed starts cutting in 2000 and then we get to the recession and this is again i'm overlaid with um s and b five hundred ounces of gold you want to be you want to be a long goal and when the fed's easy and typically in a recession same thing here back and we started this cut i remember september 2007 remember it 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
Starting point is 00:38:43 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&B 500 in GDP I'm so in terms 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 crypto's this is a Bloomberg Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index in terms of ounces of gold. Right now it's one ounce ago. First reached that level is 2017.
Starting point is 00:39:14 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 get 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've got to go back 100 years. Yet this crypto and this versus gold is lagging. versus gold is lagging significantly. So what are we going to happen? Our crypto is going to pick up versus GDP,
Starting point is 00:39:42 or we're going to get this to just drop. That, to me, is the key thing is if this drops, that's your deflation, your trend, and you get that one ounce of gold to be half an ounce of gold to equal to S&P 500. I'm sorry, to equal the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto index. Right now, it's the same as an ounce of gold. So, look, there's so much to unpacking all this.
Starting point is 00:40:01 I knew that would try you all day. Well, no, because I was going to talk about the macro side stuff first, which is let's just go straight to the to respond to that i can i can i but but okay because bitcoin can i share this screen first because this is really important and i think that our listeners got to think about this too okay this is just something that that keeps weighing on me and this is the s mp 500 versus the smp 500 equal weighted this is really important we have a an extremely, extremely top-heavy S&P 500 right now. We've got that Mag 7 that is absolutely off-the-charts bubble territory because of AI.
Starting point is 00:40:48 And that's just reality. And then if you look at the S&P 500 equal-weighted, it's a different story. I mean, look at that divergence there. That's significant, you know? I mean, 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 right and that and that that
Starting point is 00:41:28 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. The rest of the crypto store, we always talk about on crypto town hall, et cetera, all 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. 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 crypto. And those are trading, like, like tech stocks. And whether it's crypto or AI, AI, or crypto, you know, it, whatever, they are
Starting point is 00:42:11 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 Mag 7, Bitcoin is going to trade on a lag to gold. But it is a different, they are completely different investment theses. Yes, they are bound together. And so when you look at averages, you have to, 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 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,
Starting point is 00:42:50 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 and 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 Mag 7 outperforming. That they hate. And they would prefer not to see a
Starting point is 00:43:20 25% crash in the 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. But they're 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
Starting point is 00:43:57 together if you think about it. Now, all of that, what does that leave? investors. Well, investors are looking, there's this pile of money out there. Rates are coming down. 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 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 month and a half. I think that it's it's a fascinating situation because of all these
Starting point is 00:44:41 cross currents. I mean, I'm sure you agree with that rough assessment, James, right? Yeah, 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 eight weeks and have a completely different employment picture. We just don't know. And that's part of the challenge of, of, of, for the Fed. And again, look, Dave, you and I've talked about this ad nauseum is they, they will, they will wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait. And wait.
Starting point is 00:45:32 because they know that they can come at the, they can come at 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 gonna wait and do. And maybe it's a little bit political.
Starting point is 00:45:51 I don't know, but that's, that's where they are. 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.
Starting point is 00:46:16 But if you say something's breaking and we're worried and there's a difference between him, yeah, there's a difference between him saying we're cutting because we want to get, 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. Whoa. That's a completely different thing.
Starting point is 00:46:40 If they says that, then they better cut 50 basis points, right? Right, but there's no. So, Mike, I mean, that's why you kind of joke about the consensus. We get a cut, everything goes up, yay, 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 tons. It's, it's the analysis of human nature that I've always loved in markets is that's a great
Starting point is 00:47:08 way to make peaks. We all agree on something. We all remember it. You remember 2006 when everybody agreed, oh, the U.S. housing markets never gone down on an annual basis in history. It wasn't true, but it did happen. I remember even Greenspan was somewhat messed up on, 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 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 Bitcoin at this level. And I just want to point out the market can stay irrational far longer than the need to be liquid.
Starting point is 00:47:44 But that's my point is at the beginning of year, I still have this bias and it should be overweight positions, the best positions this year should be overweight gold and long bonds. And I stick with it. And just an equate position of those, I'll be outperforming virtually all risk assets. with half the rest the fact that we're already nine months into the year and we still have a record setting stock market despite a record setting stocker makes me really concerned when we stop having record setting stock market i didn't say if it's just a 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
Starting point is 00:48:18 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 and 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 mouth, but you have said that before. They've learned their lessons of the past, but I believe that it's, it's not a question whether or not they learn a lesson. It's a question about whether the terminal patient is going to now not be given any more drugs to stay alive. So what I'm expecting is a long-term period of the Fed falling cutting rates and following the stock market and wealth effect, reverse.
Starting point is 00:48:58 I didn't say down, just reverting a little bit. But to do what we did in 2008 and 9, pumping too much liquidity system, and do again what we did in 2020 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. Well, I mean, that's the other thing. You've got two paths.
Starting point is 00:49:27 You've got the stock market going into all-time highs and gold going to all-time highs. It just doesn't make sense, right? So you've got two different trades going on that. But it does. We're printing more dollars. All assets have to go up. And gold is performing because it's a pure play. And stocks that, and your.
Starting point is 00:49:45 And that is the point. That's the point. But your chart that you showed 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 mag seven, you know, having losses as far as the eye could see. They're not going to generate a penny of cash until 2029 and they're worth a trillion dollars in the private market. That's not a story. Of course it's a story. The mag seven are up because of potential future earnings in the
Starting point is 00:50:14 next decade based upon some technological story. So they're not tethered to earnings and whatnot. Gold is basically a pure play on the debase for 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 i mean it is consistent 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 that's right that's all they're doing they're taking money out of the money markets there is no reverse repo anymore. It's gone. That's right. No, I'm basically, look, I'm not,
Starting point is 00:50:58 I'm not disagreeing with a lot of what Mike is saying in terms of evaluation. 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? Yeah, right. Is it a power outage or is it, you know, the, you know, the house burned down? So what caused it to stop in the year 2000? Price is just, went up too high and started tickling and ticking down and then we got 9-11 which accelerated but it's just when you go too high the too high plateaus the chart i showed you i mean we'll remember something about two thousand though because it goes back to the same thing because of the idiocy of worrying about
Starting point is 00:51:40 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 uh then there was a then they stopped then they panicked and and and reverse course for a bit uh you saw a rally through the summer then we got into the end of the year and then we had some pretty big fraud in there you had nron you had whirlcom tons there's so many things there are so many cross currents 9-11 obviously was the final you know nail in the stake you know i remember you know going to saccaucas to our back up DR trading floor, you know. I mean, you know, like I remember this, you know, pretty carefully. You know, the last week 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.
Starting point is 00:52:48 So, you know, there were lots of cross currents back then. But still, if you really, search through the noise. The real, the two real drivers were the, the, what was going on on the monetary side where they panicked it at Y2K and pumped too much. Then they kind of decided, oh, you know, whatever, you know, it was just the driving was terrible. I mean, Greenspan, I mean, Bill Fleckenstein wrote a book about Greenspan. That's probably worth everybody reading before you lionize him too much, because he basically deconstructs all of this crap. And, and that's what happened. And then, of course, the second driver was the, the, the, real economy. And after 9-11, the real economy went, got, you know, got, you know, the knee on the throat.
Starting point is 00:53:29 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. And we all know. And some of us, I mean, 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, I've been I've been with you before and then I'll probably be with you again. Anyway, sorry for interrupting, but this, obviously I lived that. So I know it pretty well. Is it crazy that we didn't talk about Bitcoin basically and it's 957?
Starting point is 00:54:08 Is that how boring we are at 115, 116,000 year for Bitcoin? I will tell you, if you look at the Bitcoin volatility chart, it's, it's crazy. You know, it's still, it's, look at it, it's bopping along the bottom. I mean, when volatility returns, and it will be upside, 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 downside only. So it's a very interesting point.
Starting point is 00:54:41 But what makes sense? 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 of 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 Willie Wu, not just Willie Wu, 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 is a commodity. But in this case, if it's a commodity.
Starting point is 00:55:20 Mike, then Mike, if it's a commodity that you can't increase the supply, that there's no way to do it, and the money supply continues to go up, then you have to be more bullish on Bitcoin than you are on other commodities, because all the other commodities we can produce it better. There's certain times I was, and I pointed out in the chart, certainly in 2020 was at a significant discount. But now in 2025, it's in a significant premium with 21 million companions. I hope that's the right word that doesn't piss everybody else. But we're seeing that flow now. We're seeing that. Did you say that about stocks? I mean, seriously.
Starting point is 00:55:53 I mean, all kidding aside. You say this all the time. What's the difference between saying that that fart coin is a competitor to Bitcoin and as, you know, I don't know, whatever, Joe's barring. grill, you know, equity is a competitor to Google. I mean, you know, I don't understand the difference. The key difference is let's see the beef. Let's see the test. And we haven't seen the test. My point is what we're getting snippets of it. S&B 500 total returns 14%. First year of Trump and his registration. Yeah, great. 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
Starting point is 00:56:35 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 banks are, you know, spreading out a little bit away from gold. There's just so many competitors and 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, I think. I think you might just be disappointed when it doubles. Yeah. I mean, all I'll say is this. If you look at gold versus silver, one must tweet. Silver at least has some amount of precious metal. If you look at it versus platinum and you look at it versus palladium, they have
Starting point is 00:57:16 more industrial uses. I mean, this notion that that meme coins are competitors to Bitcoin is just fabricated. The fact that they have coin in the name is the only thing that they're 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 in 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 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 the
Starting point is 00:58:00 time, the average age of companies, the average profitability of companies going to, the IPO window, dramatically dropped and dropped. And so, yeah, that was competition for new dollars. That's true. But that's true among all assets. I mean, it's, and the 21 million is bullshit. You're just talking, most of that is pumped dot fund. I mean, there's really, there hasn't been more than one or two hundred crypto assets that
Starting point is 00:58:22 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. No, I mean, look, it, it's, it's, it's. 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 the thousands of other coins just benefit from capital coming into space and from, you know, a lot of people
Starting point is 00:58:51 who are just speculating on trying to make more money than they can in Bitcoin. I mean, that's just it's the only stable one in there, reality, you know. for the and that's why when we talk about the market we talk about drawdowns we talk about risk assets 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 adopting assets being adopted it's in this adoption phase and so um but i also believe that it will recover slower but stronger than gold and uh and that's so you it's just depends on your view on
Starting point is 00:59:45 it and how much liquid do 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 your own portfolio. But for me, it's how much liquidity do you need? And if you don't need liquidity right away, then just hold tight. And I wouldn't sell all of it because you've got, you're not going to be able to time that V-shaped recovery that I would expect in that kind of market drawdown. So I know that. Because of everything you talk about with the money bazooka. What's 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.
Starting point is 01:00:33 It's down 56% today trading at a buck 20. So somebody in the comments mentioned it. So I looked it up thinking that I was being trolled. But, yeah, what's 19? It was the first round, I think, was $1 or $2. The second round was $5. And this was trading at $28. What's their MNAV, Scott?
Starting point is 01:00:52 Nobody knows. I tried to look it up. It was like at two or three 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 Metaplanet and other things. So it's kind of their MNAV is a bit bog. I would make the argument that it's probably not institutionally held,
Starting point is 01:01:12 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%. So what's beta in that space, micro strategy is trading 320. It's well below its 200-day movement average for the first sign of a couple of years. It's breaking down. You're supposed to sell it on rallies and I'm a technical standpoint. Well, I mean, it needs to go to 100. Normal corrections start on it.
Starting point is 01:01:35 We could have a whole show of a conversation about micro strategy and Bitcoin treasury companies. But look, micro strategy is the leading Bitcoin treasury company right now. It's just reality. And it's going to, it's going to trade it an MNAV, 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 two, one and a half.
Starting point is 01:02:06 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. Wow. Yeah. It's good. That that that's, I don't know if that's a harbing. are very unique to them, but people are going to pay attention to that. All right.
Starting point is 01:02:28 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.
Starting point is 01:02:45 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. See you guys soon. Thank you. Bye, guys. Bye. If your mobile number was stolen and your passwords were reset, would you even know it until
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