Miracle Turnaround? The US Industrial Economy Is Now Booming DESPITE High Oil Prices | Craig Fuller

I'm as botches have ever been, so if we were going to see the economy tank because of high energy prices, I would have been the first to flag it. But I'm saying the opposite. Welcome to Thalphamoney. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. The freight industry has long been thought of as the circulatory system of the economy. How things bought and sold through commerce get from point A to point B in the real world. When today's gas last appeared on this channel back in November, he warned that freight volumes had fallen dramatically due to tear-off uncertainty and economic sluggishness. A recession in the economy of real things looked imminent. But the situation now seems to be experiencing a sharp and welcome turnaround. Freight volumes are up and US manufacturing is on course to enjoy one of the best markets in years. What's responsible for this happy development? How sustainable does it look to be? And could the ramifications of the war in Iran and the resulting oil price shock derail this recovery? To discuss, we're fortunate to welcome back to the program Craig Fuller of freight waves. A price reporting agency focused on the global freight market and it's the leading provider of high-frequency data for the global supply chain. Craig, thanks so much for joining us today. Adam, great to be here. It was funny you mentioned. The last time I was here I was bearish because I'm as bullish as I've been in many years. And it's such a, the fact that that was five months ago. And frankly, we were at the tail end now that we know this. We were at the tail end of the, of the slowdown. You know, freight was in a recession for three plus years and we were seeing a pretty exhausted economy, goods economy, and now we're seeing anything but it is absolutely roaring in freight. That is such a great surprise to hear. So I really wanted to delve into exactly what's causing it and what's making you as bullish as you are. If I can, I think I did this last time. I'm going to read something you wrote. It's going to take maybe a minute folks, just bear with me, but it's going to set the table for what we're going to talk about here. All right. You put this on next the other day. The American manufacturing renaissance is happening. We're now getting confirmation from multiple freight and supply chain data sets that the industrial recovery is real and manufacturing is on course to enjoy one of the best markets in years. The domestic freight market strength is not just capacity. It is an industrial renaissance bringing real volumes to the freight industry. It's not just trucking data. The railroads are seeing strong volumes with shipments up four and a half percent year of a year. Several volumes are more stable than trucking, so this level of increase is remarkable. Car loads, excluding coal are at the strongest March since 2008 in chemical shipments are the highest levels ever measured. Other data sets which track trucking but lags, so on ours high frequency data are also reporting strength. Truckstop is reporting the highest load board posting since 2022. ATA truck ton of gindex highest levels in three years, Bank of America Shipper survey, 18% increase year over year in the highest since 2022. I SM manufacturing PSI highest levels in three years. Bottom line flatbed and rail strength confirm that the US is experiencing some of the strongest industrial signals in years. So obviously this is the environment that you're talking to that's making you so bullish. Craig, what is causing all this? It's a good question and the cause. We know there's a lot of catalysts which I think is easier to sort of look at. What is the catalyst for this? And I think it's the industrial sector that's coming back and I think data centers are probably the primary contributor to the industrial surge that we're seeing. And a lot of that is because of some of the tax benefits that companies get this year for investing in buying American manufactured goods. If you're building a data center under the big beautiful bill that was introduced last year and really went into effect this year, we get the full benefit for the whole year. I think a lot of that is that data center developers are looking at the United States to source the material. And when we think about data centers, we're not just thinking about semiconductors because that's what drives the headline numbers is how many chips are going into a data center. But really it's about transmission lines, the copper, aluminum, it's the steel, it's all of the components, the generators that you need for backup, the cooling systems, the concrete. All of that is these are huge capital expenditures that these companies are laying out. And I think what that's happening is it's creating a catalyst of demand that's happening to the center of the country. And that has a supply chains have a compounding effect. So when someone puts one dollar into the economy for purchasing industrial manufacturing, there's this multiplier effect. Economists would argue that for every dollar spent manufacturing, just three dollars that are spent into the economy because you have the suppliers that are also supplying goods to those companies. And you just have this multiplier effect, the people that work at the factory are going out to eat and that adds restaurant demand, your power and utility. And so because we have so much stimulus directed into the industrial segment, it is creating a bunch of additional demand. And I think look, a lot of these are the data sets that we're starting to see is, you know, things like heavy duty trucks. And I'm not talking about the semi trucks that I typically are traffic and in the class eight trucks. We're talking about a lot of the heavy duty trucks with Ford and General Motors, these F-150s, F-250s, F-350s. They're seeing record demand in terms of heavy trucks. They're actually adding shifts and even not doing their typical season shutdown to change out the tooling for the next year's product because of such high demand. That is all bonus depreciation likely. That your local plumber, your local farmer, your local HVAC repairman, he gets a free truck every year. He gets to go buy it, write it off. It's a great benefit. So I think it's some of that. I think if you look at some of the chemical sector and the plastic sectors, which are both a year over a year, a lot of that is just the strength of our natural gas industry and our energy supplies here in the United States. And so, you know, a lot of people, you see this when they talk about like plastics and they talk about petrochemicals, we assume when we have the word petro that we're talking about oil, but 80% of the industrial, of the of the of the plastics and petrochemicals that come from the United States actually come from natural gas. And natural gas prices continue to drop despite the war in the Middle East because the US is such an island in terms of natural gas production and natural gas supplies that it isn't reacting to foreign markets. And in fact, it has an inverse relationship to oil. So as oil prices go up, natural gas prices go down because it's essentially an exhaust gas. It's an associated gas that's an exhaust. So as there's a belief that more oil drilling is going to happen in the United States, the natural gas prices, the future curves will actually come down. And that's what we're seeing. And so this is an exciting time. The oil sector, the energy sector is a huge contributor to industrial demand. And so the United States, we have heavy equipment, heavy drilling equipment, all of that is benefiting our industrial goods are cheaper relative to the rest of the world because as they look at higher input cost and oil and natural gas to get supplies and even may not even be able to get them, then it makes our goods, you know, a lot of the, when we talk petrochemicals or we talk, you know, plastics, these things are required whether you want to buy them from the United States or not. And so if it becomes more competitive, if our products on the world stage are more competitive than our foreign competitors because we have a surplus of energy, then it makes our industrial sector better. And I think even in the inflation report that came out this morning, the headline number is high, but if you actually take the components out of it, gas, the lane was driving the predominance of inflation. We're not seeing runaway inflation and things like food and other parts of the economy. And I think industrials are really, are certainly seeing some strength that we haven't seen in years. All right, so much to dig into there, and it's so interesting. And it really is shocking to me how different this all is from when we talked last back in November. First off, I just want to clarify something for people. So you were talking about bonus depreciation. So that's one of the things that was passed in the, you know, the acts last year was to return bonus depreciation. And basically, as I understand it, that lets somebody who makes an investment in a new property plan or equipment, you can, you can depreciate the full value of that investment in year one. So to your point, it's almost like getting it for free. That's not getting it for free, but I can buy a new truck and I can, I can basically depreciate the full value of that truck on my P and L for that first year that I buy the truck, correct? That's correct. So you get, so let's say it's $100,000 wrapped because really the, the definition of what the government classifies is pretty broad in terms of it. It has to be in utility. You have to be able to demonstrate the IRS is going to make sure that that product, I mean, a consumer can't go buy a truck and then depreciate it. Like my wife, suburban or Denali that she drives around town to pick up kids. Right. I would have a hard case making that claim to the IRS that's for business. But if I went out and bought a truck and I used it in business and that, you know, there's a, but that definition's a little bit looser, right? Like as long as I can demonstrate to the IRS and I look, I'm not giving tax advice. I'm not going to, certainly not want to. the IRS comment and be like, you can't say that. We're going to audit you. But the reality is like, if you're in the business, if you're a plumber or a contractor and you're using a work truck, there's an incentive to go buy one this year because you can ride off 100% of that truck in the first year of use. And so this is true in any heavy machinery or equipment. And again, we talk about equipment. We're talking about heavy-duty trucks, which can include F-150s, F-250s, F-350s, a Silverado, all of that qualifies. And I think this creates an incentive for companies or entrepreneurs to say, hey, at the time, I get a new truck. And they haven't enjoyed bonus depreciation for many years. One of the things that happened with bonus, there had been periods of 100% bonus depreciation. I believe we had that in 2021 or 22. But it was going down to, as pastures, a 40% of, so you could only ride off 40%. So it means that I'm having to basically depreciate that 60% over years for the life of that equipment, not short-term. The nice thing is, I could go find, conceptually go finance the truck to buy it today, finance it with a bank loan, and then write it off my taxes. And I'm going to get the benefit of that right off upfront. And yet, I'm actually paying out over the course of years. And it's a great gift by the IRS. One of the things, and again, I'm not giving tax advice. I'm very careful. I'm not a CPA, so I'm not here to give tax. But it basically asks this because it provides a great incentive to make capital investments now. It does. And it's not just vehicles. This is data centers, the building itself. That's right. The CPUs you buy. That's right. And one of the sort of provisions of that bill, and there's a lot of things beyond bonus depreciation. But bonus depreciation specifically made it so that I can write off that equipment. And that, as I understand it, is not tied to whether this product is made in the United States or not. That just exists. That bonus depreciation is a gift by the IRS to say, go invest in the business. There are other parts of the big beautiful bill, which did specifically target manufacturing. And they gave an enormous amount of tax benefits for people that are investing in production assets that have to be American-made, an American-sourced product. And that's why we're seeing, I believe, so much demand come out of the center of the country. One of the biggest and most interesting data points is we look at not only the volume of data, but where transactions and freight transactions are coming out of. And it's all coming for the center of the country. So since we've had our data up on freight waste since 2018, it was always the ports that drove the pulse of the freight market, the imports into the United States. These were coming from China, coming from Asia, India. And you could see the freight market. What happened at the ports would eventually flow into, think of it like a vein network or an artery network where you got the heart of the center of the country, which is sort of the consumer and their buying product, and they're pulling in all of the stuff from the coast and around the world into the heart of the country because they're consuming it. And what we're seeing is the opposite happen now, is the center of the country that's producing the product and sending it out. So in many ways, if you go back to, at least since we've had this data since 2018 to 2025, the center of the country, the country was receiving freight, not sending it out. And now we are sending freight out, and we're still receiving it, we're sending out far more than receiving it. And that is what I believe is creating this really tight market. And it was like we woke up in late November, right after Thanksgiving, someone just fucked a switch and all of a sudden it was like this machine is starting to work and it's gotten better and better. Well, that's what's really surprising me here. Well, at least it's so pleasant to see. So when you and I were talking, which I think was when you were sort of in the depths of your despair, we'll put it that way right before that flip, which switch was flipped. You were saying, look, these tariffs have been placed out there and nobody knows what they're going to be and everybody's basically waiting to see, waiting for more clarity on them. And so that's creating this shrinkage of commercial activity. And this is really, kicking and already beaten down freight sector in the teeth. And correct me if I'm wrong, but there was kind of a sentiment that like, hey, look, you know, Mr. President, if you're going to be selling this on this golden age of America, it better start pretty soon. And it seems perhaps like it is, like a lot of the tailwinds that the administration was saying, hey, have faith, this stuff's going to come. And at the turn of the year, folks like the president and Lutnik and Bessent and stuff are saying, hey, we're going to see positive impact starting now. Now what's interesting is we have this war going on in Iran that I think has really obfuscated this understandably for a lot of people because oil prices have gone up and there's a lot of things in the here and now that make people worried about the economy. But a question that I have had and I'm really excited you're coming on now here to kind of clarify on it is, is there potentially almost sort of like a stealth recovery going on that is just massed right now by all the dust that's up in the air about the Iran war? Cures to hear your thoughts on that. Now obviously we don't know what's going to happen with the war and one of the things I want to talk about with you is could it persist long enough and get bad enough that it could overwhelm the positive momentum that you're seeing. But right now, kind of putting the war aside, sounds like you're actually pretty bullish for the economy of real things right now in 2026. So I think a lot of it is just I think we have to be very careful with context. So when we met back in November a lot of what the US freight economy since we've tracked it wasn't true when I was younger because you know my dad was in trucking and I grew up around the industry. It used to be that the Midwest was sort of the heartbeat of the US trucking business. It was the Midwest in the Southeast where manufacturing drove the freight market and it was like freight came out of the middle of the country and went elsewhere right that's the way it worked. And over the last say two decades, particularly over the last decade, it all was import activity. Import activity set the tone for all of that. And it is true and it's still true that imports are way down. So if you take if you're an international ocean expert, it feels pretty bad right now because import activity is is is very very low relative to where we were two years ago. It's it's you know it's not catastrophic but it is not great. It is a sort of a dog of the market right now. And it's because we're not seen as much import activity is what we have over the last two years. And so therefore it feels much dire and the ocean container ship lines have added a lot of capacity so it's just it's an additional problem the ocean guys have. So if you're on the import side of it and you're importing products into the United States, it kind of feels like the economy is in rough shape. However, if you're in the production part of the economy, you're waking up from a slumber that you've been in for at least a decade. And you're like what has happened? It's almost like someone gave you a a nice shot of of testosterone or adrenaline and you're just like waking up from this shot. This is the slumber that we've been in for the last decade and you're starting to see activity that you haven't seen. And this is a very unusual freight market from from history. At least recent history because it's no longer import driven. And it is all domestic or predominantly the pulse of it is domestic. The momentum is on the domestic side. And I haven't seen that. Like since we've had so-nars data since 2018, we have not seen the US domestic market drive the freight market and it is actually happening right now. And the question then becomes we know it's happening and you're starting to see it not just in our data but other data points are starting to affirm this. Our data is high frequency. So it means it's really on the leading edge of this stuff. And it will pick up signals that are months, oftentimes months in advance of other signals, particularly government data. But what we're seeing is that the confirmation is now starting to show up in other data sets. That what we are what we saw back in November and what we continue to see now that we're in mid-April is that the goods economy, the manufacturing economy is roaring right now and ways that we haven't seen in many years. And so if you are on the sort of mega side of the equation, you're celebrating because this is exactly what you were told when you went and voted for Donald Trump. If you're on the other side of the ledger in terms of your voting preferences, you probably find it a little hard to believe considering how bad things were last year. And I get a lot of hate about employment data and manufacturing. I've been getting this for months. There's no way manufacturing is improving because employment isn't showing up. But I'm like, "Appointment's a lagging indicator. You have to understand if I'm moving manufacturing, find building something. I got to bring raw materials in. Even if it's an existing plant, I'm going to bring my raw materials in first before I hire my staff." And so you see it in the freight data. It's upstream to employment. And that's why you'll start seeing over the next couple of months. And I'm very confident in this. It's just start to see firm enough manufacturing employment data as companies start to feel a confident in expansion, be the order flow is coming in and see that there's room for investment because they haven't been willing to make investments for many years, that they're going to start wanting to make those investments. Now you asked about the war and I want to talk about that. There is nothing to such that there's a freight industrial demand. In fact, it's the opposite, is being sat by the war. Nothing, absolutely nothing. And I want to repeat that. Nothing in the data that says the war is having any impact on the US-Fraid economy. Nothing. Like, in fact, the data would tell you it's the exact opposite. Now, there will be people who, who counter and say, "What's too early?" That's not true. We know from looking at freight cycles, when there's an event in the data, it shows up really quickly in the freight data because it's such a leading signal. And what we're seeing now is the opposite. We're seeing farming. Well, why would you see farming in the US industrial economy when oil prices are shooting up? Because most of our industrial economies built on natural gas, not oil, first of all. That's the first thing you should know. Second is, you've got to remember that there's two primary inputs into the industrial demand. One is AI, and those are the least price-sensitive consumers of. Right. An AI, open AI, is not thinking about, "Man, the short-term price of oil prices is going to really sap us and we're not going to pull back an investment." They are called price agnostic to construction because of the way their business models work and the free flowing of capital. And so, when you're building a data center, it's not just the GPUs that you need, it's also the transmission lines, it's also the HVAC systems, the cooling systems, it's all of the fiber and lines that go inside that data center, just a lot of stuff that you've got to build. And that's one driver, but the other part of our industrial economy and the numbers are astounding, is 8% of US manufacturing is tied to defense goods. And we had just. We just blown up a lot of stuff. And the Department of Defense, the Department of War, has asked for 200 billion more to replenish our supplies of weapons. And the great thing about weapons, whether you're a pacifist or, you know, you're someone who's not a pacifist, is that a lot of US manufacturing, a lot of weapons are made in the United States. We have not outsourced our weapon production. We are arms dealers, the Americans have always been arms dealers, we're still arms dealers. And a lot of that is dollars are going to show up in US manufacturing. Wow. Okay. So you're basically saying in large part, you know, in less things, the metastasized into some truly horrific level, the war is sort of a non-issue and maybe even sort of a tailwind to what you're observing. I have been asked this, and we talked about it before the war, because it's very clear as America is building up supplies, what happens with that ran? And we back and looked at it, in every single military engagement that the United States has been involved in, at least as far back as our data would go, is the United States freight market, the goods market, increased freight demand when we went to war. Like to hate to sound like a war monger, war is good for the US domestic economy as it relates to industrial activity. It just is. Even when you have the byproduct of oil shooting up. Now, one of the, I've heard people counter this and say, "Yeah, but oil prices." You've got to remember, the United States is the world's largest oil producer by multitudes bigger than the next largest country. Like, we produce so much oil and natural gas in the United States that we have the ability to export it. And our exports in terms of exports and natural gas have doubled since the, since the Ukraine war started. Like in 2022, we were exporting 10 billion cubic feet a day. We're now exporting 20 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas. And look, the reason that I'm so surprised that people are sort of missing this is, the America hemisphere is the only place that you can buy oil and natural gas and petrochemicals that's not in a war zone. So, like, why wouldn't we be bullish? Right. And to that point, I've been raising this question of late, but you're kind of providing a direct answer to it is, you know, does trouble in the Persian Gulf actually mean greater demand for US oil and gas? Absolutely. I mean, I think Japan announced that it was a tweet. I don't know the whole context. It's something like 100%. 100% of their shipments were going to come from the United States over the next year or something. It was, so there's all these noise, but we have such great oil and natural gas supplies here in the United States that is untapped. And one of the catalysts, I was at an energy conference this week, I call energy freedom. And it was probably the top 200, the energy secretary was there, the EPA secretary was there, the Nuclear Regatory Commission was there. And it was probably 150 of the top most influential people in the oil and natural gas sector that were in there. A CEOs of the largest companies. And they were bullish not because of high oil prices, but because of the catalyst that a war like this brings to make it real for everybody to realize that we need faster permitting and faster approvals. And we need to get this done because energy is life. And so, you know, having these conversations, I'm not an oil and gas energy expert by any stretch, but you know, the question was, are you worried about high oil prices? Or are you guys super bullish? And they said, from their perspective, it is nice to see high oil prices. They don't believe high oil prices are sustainable long term, because the market will correct as it always does. These geopolitical events always correct themselves. And that's, you know, the best, the best, pure for high prices is high prices, they like to say. Right. And so, I'm saying, you know, other producers increase production, other way prices. And a lot of it is not, a lot of people look, again, I'm learning a lot of this stuff, but a lot of people look at the drill count and what they would say is that the technology has become so much better, that the drill count number doesn't actually tell you about the production quality of that drill. Because the new drills are more efficient. The AI, a ton of applications around the AI, is they're using AI to become more efficient. And so, a lot of this is, as we, and we have a lot of wells that are already drilled, that are just not producing right now, because the recovery cost of that oil has been historically higher, that can be turned on really quickly. So they don't think this is a long term sustain, but one thing I'll say about gasoline prices, because this is always the view, is, well, guess the consumer. So let's say that, let's suggest that I'll make this argument that high energy prices are good for the US industrial sector. And I believe that's the case. Because of largely because of natural gas. The consumer is the counter-argument of that. What does the consumer do? And so I went and looked at what is the current price of oil? And when we, of course, I have to be careful, because when you post this, it will have changed. We don't know who's now. But $98 a barrel for WTI. What is that doing around gasoline prices for consumers? It adds about $50 a month for consumers at a pocket spending. And I would argue that, yes, while there are consumers that live paycheck to paycheck and $50 a month is a huge increase, there's one is that a lot of those consumers got substantial tax refund checks from the federal government. Yeah, there's an offset. And that is offsetting that far greater than $50 a month. The second thing is when consumers, if even if they pull back on spending, they don't necessarily pull back on the quantity of goods that they're purchasing. And so think about it for this perspective, is when consumers are stretched financially, they lower the dollars that they're spending, but they tend to consume the same amount of goods. So if I go to eat, I'm eating a meal. If I am wealthy and I'm doing well, I may go have a filet mignon. I may go to Whole Foods and buy a filet mignon. I may go to the most expensive steakhouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee, or Dallas, wherever. If I'm not doing well, then I may go to go over to the croaker and pick up a $12 flank steak. I'm still eating steak. I'm still eating a meal. It's a quantity of one. The quantity hasn't changed. And so consumers will either lower their spending by going from Whole Foods to Walmart to Dollar General, but they're still buying the same quantity of goods. From a freight standpoint, we hear about the quantity moving the economy, not the dollar spent. So the only counter argument to that is, yes, but what about big ticket housing and auto? What are your listeners, which I'm sure have known this, is that those same consumers that $50 will put them over the edge, have not been buying houses and are not in a position to buy houses, nor have they been buying cars. So the reality is, in terms of where I live, which is all about quantity of goods, it does not matter. What does matter is the additional volumes that we now have in the economy that we're starting to see. The other thing, there's also this interesting element that we see, as consumers get more stretched, they actually buy more freight, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that is, when I go to a restaurant, those logistics networks are fairly efficient, because there's not a lot of packaging. If you go back into the cook, you'll see everything's in a white box, and it's all ordered, and it's an olden book. When you go to the grocery store, a lot of what takes up space is the packaging itself. It's not the food. And so, we saw this during the toll paper crisis of 2020. The reason we had a toll paper crisis in 2020 was not because we didn't know what it was. have enough toilet paper is because the supply chain that drove the commercial toilet paper industry is a very different supply chain that drives the grocery store industry. And so when consumers are buying food at the grocery store, that actually consumes more freight than when they go to the restaurant. So they pull back on spending. And arguably food is the most discretionary. It's not discretionary in terms of I have to eat, but it's the most price discretionary of something that somebody consumes every single day is that you and I are still consuming one unit of food, but I may be spending $200 at a meal and you may be spending $10 at a meal. It's still we're consuming a unit. And so as they eat at home more often, which they tend to do when they're stretched, that actually drives more freight. Interesting. All right. So let's see here. So let me just. Do you believe so. Again, the administration has been telling us get ready for this boom in the economy from the investments we've made in 2025. Do you attribute much of what you're seeing to that? Two actual policy changes, like bonus depreciation and other things that are now manifesting in the real industrial economy or is it other drivers? Well, I would say yes because they a couple of things that the administration has done. Let me ask this. How much credit would you give the administration if any for what you're seeing? Look, it's quite a bit, but let me explain. Let me qualify that statement. And so the reason that you can be very pro at the administration has done to drive the industrial sector is a couple of things. One is they are lowering the regulatory burdens of people wanting to make investments. And this is something we saw back in the first Trump administration. We continue to see is they're lowering the burdens where companies can feel confident that they can make investments because the regulatory permitting process is more streamlined. The EPA is lowering some of the requirements. Uncertainty too, right? It's the well, they certainly. I mean, one thing about covering the Trump administration from what I do is they certainly have brought more uncertainty and aspects of the economy. So it's a little hard to say this less uncertainty because that I would actually argue that there's more uncertainty in a Trump administration than you had in the Biden administration because you absolutely knew what was going to happen with the Biden administration, which was a morass of regulations that were going to make it hard to do things. And this is adding transmission lines, adding data centers, wanting to make investments and manufacturing because these were industries that were viewed as old industries that were bad for the environment and bad for the economy. They need to be moving to new upscaled industries. Everybody needs a college degree and you're supposed to go into STEM. And I'm not discounting that. I'm just saying that one thing about this administration is they understand the need for the industrial might of America. And that is something they deserve a lot of credit. And their bill, their tax bill, certainly drove that. I think they should get a, so in terms of what we're seeing right now, I'd give them an A. If you go back a year ago, I would have given them an F. And the reason I gave them an F was the noise was so significant that it outweighed all of the other positive things. One thing I think you would also have to say is, look, I don't want to sound like a war monger because that's how I'm going to be portrayed. But I'm glad Donald Trump has something else to focus on on the terrorists. The war has distracted him to, we don't get a lot of tariff announcements every, I mean, we get these threats. I'm going to put 50% tariff on anyone who sources material to iron. But he is so focused on his military expeditions, if you will, that we're not getting the day-to-day tariff nonsense that we got a year ago. And I think they deserve a flat F for their tariff policy and rollout. And maybe not even the policies with the rollout. But I think they deserve an A for actually doing things that are actually impactful, which is helping companies make investments and manufacturing. We are starting to see a lot of new announcements and manufacturing come out. There was a big rush of those very early Donald Trump's second term, a ton of announcements of investment. They all kind of went away around April. And I don't know if you remember this, but back in February of 25 last year, it was like every CEO around the world or every leader around the world was in front of Donald Trump, a big announcement with lots of zeros about some investment they're making. You got to April. And all those announcements went away. It was a reason for that. Nobody was willing to write checks because they wanted more certainty. And I think what is happening is we already had a lot of pent up demand coming into 25. It was very clear from our data that there was a lot of demand ready to be deployed in the freight economy, in the manufacturing industrial sector, coming into 25. And it all got sat through all that noise. And I think that money was still there and the desire to make those investments were still there. And now what's happened is the administration is letting things just go. And they've created a really nice framework that that capital would be deployed and invested smartly. And I think that's what's driving it. And then compound the energy, the US energy system, which is an enormous contributor to industrial defense spending, which is a big contributor to industrial and AI data centers. If I were, I don't trade stocks because I have influence over the markets. But if somebody were to ask me what sectors would they be investing in, I would be investing in the hard goods economy. And the reason I believe that is that's what we're going to start seeing for the next generation of our economy is an economy where we're building things, where heavy industry is coming in, we're building infrastructure because A, it's a national security issue, but because it's also an economic priority one. And if you have cheap energy, that is what every factory around the world is running on. It's not running on human energy anymore. It's running on actual watts. And so you have to have the transmission lines. You have to have the systems that can transmit that. And that's, that is a really exciting thing that we have such great supply of energy in the United States. So there's a guy named Peter Chur, who I interview from time to time, who has this framework for investing. He calls the ProSec economy. And that ProSec, I think, stands for production and security stands for, sex stands for security. And so it's basically saying, you know, we should really invest in the things that the U.S. is reshoring for, you know, national interest reasons. And then national security is going to be a big factor going forward. So you want to invest in things that are going to benefit from investment in national security, defense stocks, all that type of stuff. Sounds like you would see the world kind of similar to him from an investing standpoint. You know, I have some ETFs that for my kids' trust, and I moved them from the Mac, you know, the Magnific 7. And this was about two years ago. It was a little early to some of the reinvestualization ETF. I can't remember the name of it. But I moved my kids into that because it's very clear that the policies are going to be very pro-American investment. And I think this is going to stay. Yes, if the Democrats win, we could see more environmental distractions. But I think it's very clear from an national security standpoint and a lot of the investment that we need around these AI data centers that this is here to stay. Now one of the sort of risks to all this is that, you know, all of these states are starting to pass laws that won't let them put new data centers in. That is certainly a risk that we should highlight because that could end the party in some ways. Okay, so I'm looking at the time. Unfortunately, I've got less time than I would like to go with you here Craig, which obviously just means we'll have to have you back again soon. Let me thank you a couple of other things here though. So first off, just the reason why I was kind of pressing you against how you would grade the administration here is is, you know, they've been saying for a good while they're trying to create this golden age, you know, for the American economy. At the turn of the year, Scott Besent was in the media a lot, as were guys like Latinac, who's funny. They've really receded given the war. I haven't really heard from them much at all recently. But they were both Besent and Latinac were saying, hey, like you should be expecting like 5% GDP growth this year and maybe even more. And I was cautioning people just to say, hey, look, you know, you might not like what the administration is doing or whatnot. But some of the things they're talking about do seem to be started and manifest. So don't be surprised for the economy to surprise to the upside this year. It seems like you are in the camp of taking the over on whatever the GDP is going to be this year. Is that true? Well, I had to be careful because I don't traffic in GDP numbers. But you know, 60% or even higher than that, 70% of the GDP doesn't move freight. So one of the realities of GDP is that a lot of that historically has been healthcare, education, government. That doesn't move freight. So I care about the 30% of the GDP number that is freight related, which is the goods economy. And I would say I'm incredibly bullish about that. So when it comes to economic activity in goods consumption or goods production, I would be very bullish on that. And so I got to be careful because the GDP number is so weighted with sectors that have nothing to do with freight movement. But we're talking specifically about goods, physical things. I am as bullish as I've ever been. And I think we're on the cost of a super cycle and trucking. in the transit. I mean, the railroads, the crazy thing that I cannot believe no one has figured out or even flagged. And I happen to pick it up because we cover the railroads. But when you have insane stats like this, so let me give you a couple of these stats is, chemical shipments were at the highest level in history. Petrochemical shipments on rail. And the railroads are where you see petrochemicals highest ever recorded. And this was not war related. It's actually in February is when it was the first time they broke a record in February and they came in broken again in March. Grange shipments were the highest since 1993. And that was farming exports. And it's funny you listen to the media talk about tariffs and how they're destroying the farmers. We have the highest level of grain exports in fact since 1993. And in fact, if you got rid of coal out of the railroad number and you strip the coal number out because coal is just on a sort of perpetual decline, it was the highest level of railroads shipments since 2008. And the railroads are the heartbeat of the industrial sector. So it's not just trucking. It's isn't a modal thing. It was pre-decel surges and oil surges. This is the we had this setup for the greatest industrial recovery. We have known that was taking place from November through where we're at today. Okay. I very much appreciate you being that specific. And again, just to reiterate why I'm being so specific on this is, you know, I see a lot of people, especially since the start of the war, you know, saying, "Guys, select as a thousand reasons to think that America's going into recession and this war is just going to accelerate our way there." And, you know, depending on what news source they listen to, we're losing this war or whatever. And so people will make investing decisions based off of that. And all I'm saying is, is folks don't ignore in your factoring of what could happen. I mean, I use the word "vetisance" that appears to be happening in the industrial goods economy right now that Craig is telling us about. Yeah. And look, I don't have any of these positions. And disclosure, I'm not here to pop stocks or even talk about them because we do. The transports are such a thinly traded sector that if I comment on something, it can actually move the sector. Yeah. And I've learned that over the years. So we stay away from, we actually have a policy against, like, like any fund would have a policy against their analyst. We do the same thing, just to keep us out of trouble. And look, it's not fair for us to do that. So I'm not here pounding stocks, but I can tell you the what we are seeing right now are COVID-like charts. And I've said this on Bloomberg and CNBC. It is COVID-like charts in freight. And this is not driven by consumer activity. It's industrials. And we're seeing a complete remaking of the goods economy. And it's not slowing down, Adam. There is nothing. And I mean nothing to suggest that the war is hurting US industrials in fact it's the opposite. And let's be honest, if anyone was priced sensitive to energy prices, it's people that are in my business. It's the transportation companies. It's the industrial companies. It's not the services, the finances and healthcare. It's the part of the 30% economy that I focus on is related to energy is related to energy purchasing as a primary input in what we do. And I'm as blushes have ever been. So if we were going to see the economy tank because of high energy prices, I would have been the first to flag it. All right. It's criminal that I don't have more time with you here. So Craig, we're going to have to have you on again relative soon. We're quick. Let me just I just got to ask because you blew my mind last time. We were talking about the woes of the trucking industry, which now seem to have dramatically improved. So I want to get your input on that in a minute. But you blew my mind because we had this quasi tangent where we were talking about the huge number of illegal immigrants that were being given commercial drivers licenses. And you educated us on really kind of what a scam is being run right now in a lot of states with issuing those licenses. And what a huge just public risk it was with these guys driving the road. Perhaps can't even read the signs and don't know our traffic laws and stuff. It's been interesting is that that's been in the media a lot since we had that conversation. It seems like states are getting serious about pulling those truckers off off the roads. Be curious to know how much progress they've made. You think they've made if you have visibility into that data. But we do. You were saying, look, it's a soft industry and they're going to start pulling all these bodies out. And that means truckings really going to have some some challenges ahead of it. But it seems like it's been the very opposite. Correct. Well, we think to be clear trucking's a commodity. So pulling bodies out of it is a positive thing for the freight market. I guess the left over. Yeah. Yeah. Because of supply and demand. And so as you as you pull supply out due to regulatory compliance reasons. And you had this endless lot of truck drivers coming to the industry that that has largely been, you know, the new entrance into the industry that are illegal immigrants or non documented that that pipeline has been cut off. Which is actually a, you know, the turnover of the industry is like 115%. So we've cut off a lot of new entrance into the business. And that in itself is showing up in the data. That's why trucking date rate data is so strong. And that's been one of the pushbacks I get in terms of my bullishness is, well, this is just lack of supply. It's not the case. And I have data to prove that. But the railroad being the best example that regardless. The administration is direct response for 18,000 truck drivers being removed. But there's 3.5 million. So very small piece of it. But by cutting off the supply. Then that's help. But there are some acts that are in front of the in Congress called the Delailles Act, which will take at least 200,000 trucks off the road. And here's why you should be bullish if you're in freight. Because if we've seen the impacts of 18,000 trucks off the road, wait till you get something that's 10 times the size of that in terms of a reduction of capacity. It's going to be epic. We are in the midst of a trucking super cycle. And look, trucking companies have been uninvestable assets. The truckload guys have been uninvestable assets for many years. Because there's no there's no bearish entry. The government, they're the regulatory compliance as it eliminated the bearish entry because it's all truck driver driven. That's the that's the capacity glut. They've ended it. And now we have hard industry coming in. It is a great time to be a trucker. All right. You are not bullish enough and no one on this call is bullish enough unless you're in freight. Well, I love this because people are always saying, you have to bring more bullish people on. All right. It's hard to find a guy more bullish, at least about his part of the economy as you hear right now. You should do a take of light my before and after. I know. I get accused of being, you know, if I go pro or anti last year, I got a lot of hate mail from the die hard magas because I wasn't. You know, out there supporting the tariff roll out and this year, I'm just getting a lot of hate because they think I'm die hard maggots like. I just I follow I'm a single issue voter. I vote who's ever going to help the freight industry. And that's what I support. And I don't care what the means of how we get there. My job is to talk about the industry. And I'm as bullish as you could ever be. Well, and you embody the type of analyst I like to bring on this channel, which is somebody who will change as the data changes, right. And that's what you're doing, right? You know, you're not tied to any ideological mass. All right. You don't give out investment advice, but in general, you said, hey, look, this is a good time to be investing in the hard goods economy for all the reasons that you mentioned. Thanks so much for everything here Craig. For folks that would like to follow you and your work in between now and your next appearance on the show, where should they go? At free the alley on X you can also go to freeways.com, which is our website and you can read all about the ins and outs of the industry. All right. Fantastic and Craig as usual when I edit this. I'll put the links up there. So folks know where to go. Folks, the links will be in the description below this video as well. Can't thank you enough Craig. This was awesome. Look forward to seeing you back on soon. Thanks. Have me Adam. Take care. All right. Well, now's the time of the program. We're bringing the lead partners from New Harbor financial one of the endorsed financial advisory firms by thoughtful money. I'm joined this week by Mike Preston. John Lodder has the week off. Mike, how you doing? Good Adam. How are you? I'm doing great. And definitely feeling, you know, somewhat optimistic now after listening to Craig. Who knew? I got to tell you last time I talked to him. He was, I mean, really just in the depths of the spirit felt like in terms of what was happening to the transport industry could not be a different tone. This time versus last time and of course it's nice to hear him feeling so positive about the direction, at least of the industrial economy. I'd love to hear your thoughts and reaction to that. Mike. Yeah. Craig was super bullish today. His energy was unmatched and he had a lot to say. And you know, ironic that it was only five months ago that that he was actually bearers. But a lot of things have changed in his viewpoint. And I guess I'd like to encapsulate or summarize a few of his points that I thought were interesting. He talked about data center buildouts. He talked about tax benefits and how those tax benefits are incentivizing companies to invest now. And individuals, individuals that run small construction companies, for example, you guys were talking about pickup trucks and machinery like that. There's a huge incentive to buy those and get a hundred percent right off this year. I'm not a tax expert. I'm not an accountant. But you know, we do know about that and we know what's happening and obviously that makes some sense. as to why that's driving industrial demand. Industrials are doing very well. We have industrials in our portfolio, and we've had it there for quite a while. Take a look at XLI for example. It's the industrial sector ETF happens to be in our model. Definitely not a specific recommendation for anybody, but I put these tickers out there, these symbols, so people can take a look at the shape of the chart. Everyone's situation is different, but XLI represents industrials. It's been in our portfolio, and it's been really, really strong. So that matches what Craig's been saying. If he talked about all kinds of things, truck tonages up, chemical shipments are up, rail shipments are up 44.5%. I think chemical shipments were at an all-time high, I think you said, a record. It's amazing, right? It's really amazing. So what's going on? How do you take all the knowledge that Craig just talked about? And if you agree with him that all of this stuff is really rosy, and it's very positive, what do you do about it? Well really it all comes down to what's going to happen over the next year or two. What are you going to do about it as an investor? How are you going to invest in that theme? What's your risk control going to be? That's the hardest thing to do is how to come up with an idea, a bullish or a bearish feeling, and then turn that into something that actually works in your portfolio. How do you place that in your portfolio? How do you know if you're wrong? What do you do if you're wrong? These are the types of things that an individual investor has to do. We're happy to talk to people about that, because a lot of investing is emotion. It's not just knowledge. It's one thing to have knowledge. It's another thing to have that knowledge, and then apply it to your psychology. It's only something that you can do over time. And then how do you react if things go wrong? How do you react if things go right? Because a lot of people in the last week or two will take a look at the S&P 500 chart in a little bit, have been absolutely chewed up. Over the last month, maybe, maybe even two months, the market reacts downwards. They stop out. The market reacts upwards, they buy the top. The market goes back down. They sell the bottom. It's emotional control that's the most important. So take that, you know, as you will. But if you're super bullish after listening to this, or even not super bullish, you'll be bearish. How are you going to translate that into your own investing? So he talked about the multiplier effect, what dollar manufacturing eventually triples, you know, different ways suppliers, labor spending, restaurants, that type of thing. And he talked about how we're most manufacturing efforts in the United States run on natural gas. We're extremely rich in natural gas. It makes a lot of sense. But, you know, why now? I'm not sure. Why now? The Iran war surprisingly. Maybe that was an escalate to de-escalate type thing, where a lot of bearishness kind of came out of the word work quickly. And then as that dissipates, it fills the tank again. This wall of worry. The wall of worry might very well fill the tank to push us higher. But the Iran war. It started interjecting too. But I think one of the things too is. He was really back in early November. He was really frustrated with how the administration had communicated its terrif policies. And one of the things he was noting back then is that. A ton of companies were just delaying all their investment, because they didn't know what terrifs they were going to have to pay. And I think one of the things that changed the send is we got a lot more clarity on what the terrifs were, and that money started freeing up. Well, that's true. Last April with 25 was that whole. Is the Independence Day, the Tarrif's Day? Well, sorry, yes, Liberation Day. And so six months after that, there was all this uncertainty. That makes sense. But now, there's a lot less uncertainty. We've had and still have the Iran conflict, but the market at least seems to be thinking that that's going to be resolved. And again, with that bullish backdrop that you just talked about, the Tarrif's certainty, and perhaps Iran getting better, it could very well be a springboard to lead us higher. In fact, I think that's probably likely. Sorry, and speaking of which, so you mentioned the S&P. Dave, we're talking here, Mike. It is back pretty much at its all time high, or within a point or two away from it. And so, yeah, markets begin to feel frisky. What do you think? I mean, I know you have said for a long time, you've still got to, I think, a lot of concerns about sort of where all this ends in the longer run, but it would not shock you to see, not only maybe the economy gale, but better here, but the markets run up to some sort of blow off top or whatever, before some of the longer-term issues you think start to manifest. That's still the case. It is. I mean, the market hasn't made sense for a long time in terms of valuations, Adam. In fact, at least 15 years. It's almost this relatively permanent high plateau. There is no permanently high plateau, nothing's permanent. But valuations, as we've talked about a zillion times on this program, are hugely overvalued, probably three times overvalued relative to historic norms. But it hasn't mattered. They haven't been allowed to correct. Certainly not here in the United States, and elsewhere in the world it's super overvalued as well. So each attempt to try to correct has been rescued with more and more money printing. So investors and money managers have had to live in that environment for a long time. It doesn't make sense, but here again, we've had the liberation day last year. That was a V-shape recovery. COVID was a V-shape recovery back in 2020. And of course, this Iran conflict so far has been a V-shape recovery all while the macro has been horrible. All while valuations have been at least three times overvalued. And that means we would have to lose two thirds on the S&P just to get the fair value, just to have expected returns of 10% or so over the next decade. So will we ever get there? I don't know. I think we will. But if you take that knowledge of relatively permanent overvaluations with all in thinking, with every central bank in the world, and you compare that to fourth turning theory, and where are we in this fourth turning, which is a climactic, all hands on deck, full effort cycle for those that don't know what that is. And you realize that that started back in 2008 and goes on around 20 years. You realize that we're entering the end of a cycle at a time when everybody is all in. At a time when valuations have never been more extreme. And yet we as money managers and investors have to live in that regime and produce results. And for individual investors that are managing their own money, they not only have to produce results for themselves, they have to overcome their own psychology, which is really, really hard. And I think it's going to be tested. I really think it's going to be tested soon in the next big decline. Having said that, we're not sitting on our hands, and we don't think people should sit on their hands and do nothing. Have some type of system, have some type of viewpoint, and then figure out how to apply that to the market or talk to professionals like us that can help you do the same thing. Well, all right. We'll look like, so we've got the market kind of part in here. I guess first question is is, we don't, we don't know if the party is premature. But the war is still technically on. I got technically or in a ceasefire. But right now there's high stakes poker going on there with the US Navy initiating its blockade of the Persian Gulf. Hopefully this brings around to the negotiating table when we get a piece deal out of this, but obviously things could devolve from here. Let's hope this doesn't happen. I assume that that that latter thing does happen where we go back to a kinetic battle between the US and Iran. What would you expect the markets to do that? Would you expect there to be a pretty hard sell off? Or for some reason might stocks remain more resilient at this point? If we went back to a kinetic war with Iran, we're probably going to see a down market. I think that would be undoubtedly what would happen. The question is, would we take out the recent lows and would all come down to what type of details are we seeing coming out of this type of kinetic conflict? Is it a final salvo before some kind of peace deal assigned? Who knows? But let me share the S&P chart and make a few comments about it. The S&P 500 is coming up now on your screen. The high back here in January was 7,000 and 2.28. Look at what it's training at right now. 6,987.22. In fact, the high today, so far, was 7,000 and 1.92, less than 1 point off of an all-time high. By the time you receive this video, I'm nearly certain that we'll see new highs. By then, I hope I don't eat those words, but it's nearly certain that maybe even today we'll hit an all-time new high and if not, it should be soon. But if kinetic war were to break out again tonight or this afternoon, I would expect we'd have a little bit of a pullback, maybe a pullback down to the 50-day moving average, something like that. But the way that this is set up now with all the bearishness that built here and the fact that we went right essentially to a new high within about 10 days. And by the way, look at this gap here. This is almost certainly a breakaway gap. Versus an exhaustion gap so this breakaway gap is really powerful a lot of people will say well shoot that gap has to be filled It doesn't have to be filled at least not anytime soon we could shoot right up to Who knows 7,500 8,000 9 I don't think 9,000 of who knows we could shoot up here and then roll over and fill that Later this year next year what really matters is what's gonna happen now? This has been a super surprise for a lot of people my expectations would be If we get any pullback that would be an opportunity to add our own I should say that our own internal systems and Our indicators have have flipped Excuse me have flipped solidly to bear it over the last few days over the last week We had a hedge on down here at S&P 6500. We took that off a few days ago our system started to improve Relative strength of various sectors started to show You know to show up in our system we had a follow-through day here and we started Did you even increase your equity exposure? Yeah, we started it adding right here a couple days ago on a follow-through day So we had gone from 47% down to 41% equity We had our hedges kick in here the market rebounded strongly all of our indicators flipped up We took the hedge off and we went from 41 to 45% So we just added small caps of 4% the other day So we're at 45% will probably build a little higher maybe Maybe 50% in the coming days as a handful of sectors that we're looking at But we're probably not going to go too too much higher than that Just because of the macro backdrop. I mean this is all You know game theorizing what the what the end of the cycle looks like and so we don't want to get Too exposed, but we have absolutely been adding over the last week Okay, so you've been adding over the last week, but didn't you just say that that in the past couple days more of your indicators returning bearish? If I said that it was it was an error. Okay, you meant bullish. I meant bullish. Okay. Okay. Good. All right. All right. Good That that had confused me a little bit. Okay, so so your indicators are continuing to go bullish You are increasing your equity exposure Let me ask you this so look back to pull up the chart if you can All right, I'll pull it back. Yeah, so you were talking about the breakaway gap that we saw recently on the chart There was another similar breakaway gap right You know in the aftermath of liberation day when the markets picked themselves off at the bottom there so you can see here in Kind of early May Right to go move your cursor up a little bit. There was actually a couple. I'd have to actually back Let me just back it up a little bit. I can do that Okay, let me go to two years then I can zoom in there Looking back at liberation day. Let me at least go to here So yeah, there's a there's a number of gaps here. There's some gaps down the ultimate bottom there was April four April fourth. I'm sorry April seventh and then we had a big up day some backfilling and then you see What gap here and gap here? Yeah, yeah, so I was looking particularly at the second one But so we had that breakaway gap and then we had you know What you know seven months of just the market just just going off to the races Mm-hmm. It is there the potential That we have another breakaway gap and then let's assume for a moment you know in end of the war a declarative end of the war Could we be setting ourselves up for another pretty substantial run here and and maybe this is the blowoff top that you're thinking of but I mean um Right now what do you kind of peg those odds at? I think they're they're more than likely frankly. I think that this breakaway gap here You know, it's produced quite a bit of returns from about 5800 up to around 69 so it's about 1100 Points on 58 was that 15 to 20 percent within a few months and I think that this one could be Faster and steeper And like is it is it is it common that a breakaway gap then has momentum upward momentum that follows then Absolutely nothing in trading is guaranteed but but breakaway gap particularly above the moving averages like this is This is above the 50 in the 200 day moving average is a very very healthy sign And then if you were actually sitting here at that time it probably felt very very risky To enter Right because we had just gone through all this tariffs. They were brand new in fact tariffs were a a drag of uncertainty for many months as you talked about Earlier in our talk and and that's absolutely true But by the time everybody is in in January a short term talk came in and if you remember as we've been talking the last few Weeks or months this market at these levels was really the same as it was back in October So there was this whole rounded top thing that people were worried about but I believe this market is likely to squeeze higher And I know that there's nothing scientific or mathematical that I can point to that proves this but At this point it really Seems like we need some kind of blowoff top Because don't forget the macro. I and where we are in the fourth-turning story I believe that this ends whenever it ends with some kind of firework show in the biggest bear market that we've seen in a long time And then that bear market is more of an L shape move Down in sideways for a few years versus a V shape recovery So that's that's the big point of all of this is that I do think that at some point here We're going to lose 60% of the market value whether it's from here or higher and if I had the if I had to guess I believe we get a blowoff top and And we put it atop and then we have a really bad year or two after that Okay, so you're basically saying folks Looks like this market's going higher for a while You guys are going to play that tactically But you're still as concerned as you've ever been about valuations finally mattering and You know your primary priority here is just to make sure your clients don't lose a lot of money if indeed there is A correction of magnitude that you think could be coming Absolutely and you have to do your best at we have you have to have a game plan you have to do your best to try to Play the game that you're in But I would I think that what's different about our strategy Versus you know, it's certainly a passive buy and hold strategy is that we will be reducing equity exposure on a big downturn Versus either staying the same or adding this is not the regime that you'd want to start with let's say 50% exposure and increase to 80% on pullbacks This is a regime there where we think we'd want to start with maybe 50% exposure and reduce down to 30 or 20 On a big pullback because we're anticipating a move that's much bigger than your garden variety pullback This is kind of like not that this is the end But this is kind of end game cycle thinking that you have to be cognizant about in our view We're at ridiculously absurd valuations We don't think that's going to go on forever if you think it's going to go on forever That's a different strategy, but we don't think it's going to go on forever So we think there could likely be a blow off here. We're going to try to write it If we can but we're also and we do have a plan for what to do if that's wrong and we drop right from here Okay, all right um well mic time went fast today we get to start wrapping up but real quick um Two two last things I want to talk to you about first is just precious metals last time we talked You walked us through the charts and you were starting to get guardedly optimistic that the metals had bottomed and we're beginning to Uh start to build some upward momentum. I believe that is continued since last week um So just want to as we say we do for folks just get kind of your your current snapshot of where you think things are Um, and we'll keep tracking this folks. Obviously is the weeks continue from here All right, so I'm going to use the ETFs to show the shape of the curve um This particular chart package doesn't have the futures So SLV Since we talked last time about a week ago we're up about five dollars So that translates to roughly five dollars in spa. Here's the daily chart big triangle It we kind of we're we're kind of just leaking sideways out of the apex of this triangle We actually took out the February low here, which is I think a good thing to shake out Late longs and nervous people I just wish it would move higher faster. It's it's a positive development over the last Five days, but in my mind we have to clear this 80 level on SM SLV which will by the way be around 90 On spot so spots trading in around 80 right now Spot goes to about 90 SLV to 80 I think you know you got to look at this chart and say it's healed It would take all of this this uh, you know stop chasing out And then revert us above the majority of the trading in the triangle And then I think we could see a real move higher. So watch for 80 SLV 90 spot in my opinion So far so good atom and we're above the moving averages But I think it will be a lot nicer to talk about or I'll feel a lot more comfortable if it's above that level Yeah, you won't give the all clear until we're above 90 spot Nope Nope and but in the meantime it's constructive on gold And I don't have a similar line in the sand there It's gold is above the moving averages as well And uh, we're at about 40 what 48 49 spot I'm thinking maybe around 5200 I'll on gold, it should be somewhere around this line 470. But it's really silver that I think is more of a clear signal and if silver runs through those levels, you can be certain that gold will be moving higher as well. The, look at GDX here, the old high 117. That was just what, a couple months ago, not even. We went from 117 to 80. That's a huge move down. It's about a third, one third loss. So, a lot of people got shaken out and now we're back in this range, the 90 to 110 range. I think if silver and or gold moved higher, we'd start to see minus. We'd see a big green bar here on minors. On the majors, let me just show you the juniors. Let's zoom in a little bit. It's kind of the same thing. And maybe I'll show you SIL or SILJ as well. Here's the silver minors. Kind of all the same thing. If silver prints 90, you probably see SIL go right to 110, which is the silver majors. And once it does that, it's very likely to break through that high and would create essentially another triple top. You might remember last year we were talking about a triple top on spot silver at 35. Triple top, triple bottoms don't normally hold, particularly in these commodities. And so if we came up through there, and I know I'm putting the car before the horse, but if silver hits 90 and this starts coming up towards here, which will likely be, then I think we could see a sharp move right into new highs from there. But watch silver 90 first. - Okay. But kind of the punch line here is, your guarded optimism is continuing. The tape is going in the right direction, just not to a definitive point for you yet. - Yeah, the pot is boiling again. It hasn't boiled over yet, but it's boiling and going in the right direction. Sometimes it feels like watching a pot boil and you're watching some of these things. You can be a little bit too close, but it's going in the right direction. - Okay, so the day we're recording this is tax day. And last week, you and John talked about, some of the things that folks should be doing, if they head time in the last few days before tax time arrived, or tax times now here. So two things. One, as I mentioned last week folks, especially if tax time was a scramble for you this time, don't just go to sleep for 360 days and then have to scramble again in your final week a year from now. Spend time now talking to both your financial advisor and your accountants to say, hey, what can I do at the beginning here of the tax year to make sure that I set myself up the best for maximizing all of my tax opportunities going forward. Either strategies with your account, and you can use to minimize your tax footprint or strategies with your financial planner to maximize your tax deferred investment solutions. So obviously this is the time to do that folks. And secondly, Mike, we're getting, the country is receiving record tax refunds this year and the data has come in and it's proving that, tens of billions more than we had in the last year. So presumably there's a number of people that are watching here that are either sitting on or about to get a nice refund and probably would rest thing with, okay, how do I deploy this? How do you guys help people think through those decisions there at New Harbor? Well, from a tax planning standpoint, there's a few basic things you can do. The biggest one being retirement contributions. So whether it's traditional IRA, Roth IRA, or if you're a business owner, it could be simple or a separate IRA or even a 401k. The first thing you want to do is maximize all your retirement plan contributions. It might even be a defined benefit plan. If you're a solo person, it's pretty easy to do. And if you're self-employed and solo, you can do some kind of defined benefit plan if your income is really high. But even if it's not really high, you can put a lot of money away or a good portion of your income in something like a separate IRA, an SEP IRA. A lot of these plans, not all of them, will allow you to open up and fund for last year up until April 15th plus extensions, not all of them, but a number of them will allow you to do it plus extensions, which means if you go on extension to October 15th, you'll still have time by the time you watch this video. So retirement contributions are the single biggest strategy that most people can do to save taxes beyond that. Not a ton you can do really. I mean, there's still a number of simple things you can do long-term, but certainly no last minute things. Business owners, as you mentioned in this video, can think about doing capital purchases this year and deduct 100%. But that's if you're a business owner and have that type of ability to do that. Have you mentioned people with rebates or refunds and their record amounts? In general, I don't know if people will be calling us about refunds because they're probably mostly in the, I don't know, one, two, three thousand dollar level. But if they do and we've had a couple people, but we'll see if we get a lot more after April 15th, we'll certainly tell them to use that the phone next year's IRA contribution or to start funding it or to pay down a debt or do something fun. Your question actually makes me wonder if that's actually going to be a stimulative effect. Because if there's record refunds, that means we had what, stronger than expected growth last year or maybe it was because of the tax legislation changes. But I would actually think off the cuff here that that might be a stimulative effect to the market and the economy. At least you know. You're just let you know you're correct on that. So I just recorded with Stephanie Pomboi and she had the recent consumer retail sales data. And what's impressive about that is it's up in the face of these higher oil prices. Because the higher oil prices are having an offset, obviously, to the tax refunds because you're getting more money, but you have to spend more money to fill up your car. But even despite that headwind of the higher oil prices, we're still seeing a notable increase in the retail sales data. So to your point, it is stimulating. It's amazing. And if we start to see some positive data and a retail sales and things like that, I can see, again, I can see this market squeezing higher. It doesn't mean it's all clear. It doesn't mean go passive and stay that way forever. But it doesn't mean there could be some shorter term opportunity to the upside here. All right. Well, Mike, thanks so much, buddy. Great update for the week. Did a great job solo. Thank you. Look forward to, though, having John back in action with us as well next week. All right. So folks, just wrapping up here, if you would like to see Craig Fuller come back on the program again in the future and give us an update on what's happening in the economy of real things, please let us know that by hitting the like button. And then clicking on the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it. We're getting real close on this channel folks to hitting 175,000 subscribers. I think we're just like, I don't know, 50 or so away at last count. So if you can, please make sure you hit that subscribe button and help us hit that goal. Obviously, if you would like to get some help from a good professional financial advisor to address any of the issues and opportunities that I've been talked about in this video, maybe you'd like to talk to Mike and his team there at New Harbor directly yourself. And you can easily do that by filling out the very short form at thoughtfulmide.com. Only takes you a couple seconds to fill out that form. There's no commitments involved, just a service. These firms offered to be as helpful to as many investors as possible. Again, Mike, thanks so much. Have a great week and look forward to seeing you here next week. Thank you, Adam. Hope you have a great week too. We'll see you soon. All right, everybody else. Thanks so much for watching. [BLANK_AUDIO]