THE NEXT PERFECT TRADE (REDUX) (Guest: Alex Gurevich)

His Friday, January 23rd, 2026, Episode 283, I'm Patrick's Resonant. Now, Kevin needed a day off, but before he did, he recorded a great interview with Alex Caravage, author of the next perfect trade. They discussed Alex's 10 years of lessons, poker game theory, and why he thinks rates may go down to 0%. And in Kevin's absence, we invited Chase Taylor to join me to smash through some charts. So, Pat, what are you drinking today, bud? All right. Well, listen, I found this really cool Ukrainian shop, selling some great different goods from Ukraine. And they were selling the white lion wheat beer, and it's all written in Ukrainian alphabets, so I don't know exactly how to read all the details, but I'm going to give this a try, and maybe I'll go back for some more if I'm showing it. Nice. Nice. Listen, give us a disclaimer, buddy. I'll try my best. Nothing in this podcast should be viewed as investment advice, this, and this should consult an investment professional before making any decisions regarding topics mentioned in the show. Side effects of too much, that will may include Davos delusion disorder, taco trade Tourette syndrome, dollar breakdown, de-realization, and the precious metals, parabolic panic. That's all true. That's definitely suffering from all of those. All right. Let's get to Kevin's interview. Hey folks, Kevin Muar here, and I'm pleased to be joined by Alex Gervic, author of the Trades of March 2020, and the upcoming second edition of the next perfect trade, a magic sort of necessity, which is available Tuesday, January 27th. You're going to be hearing this before. It's very important you don't go buy it before because that's the first edition. Second edition is much different, and do not buy it until Tuesday, January 27th on the second edition comes. Alex, thanks for coming back on the show. Thank you. I'm very excited to be back. All right. So, you have this new book. We'll talk about it, actually. Let's just start with the book. What prompted you to write this new version? There we go. I had the, I was fortunate enough to read it, and I loved hearing all the different kind of a decade later, wisdom that you had. Is that what kind of the impetus for doing this is that kind of the, it felt very much to me, like George Soros, when he did his book where he had a real-time journal of the trades. It felt very much the same way to me, you know, this current book. You know, it is interesting that somebody recently just made the exact same comparison with George Soros, but so it is a definitely great minds thing to like. So, I feel it's like, when people don't read strategy books, like my book that when I originally wrote the next perfect trade, it was just basically capturing what I've experienced up to that point. And the strategy that worked to me, for me up to that point, I was talking, is it happened in '99, 2002, 2007, 2000, all of 2014, right? And clearly, by just survivorship bias, as I was sitting at that seat in 2015, they must have worked for me. And then I'm laying out a set of, right, because otherwise nobody would buy my book, right? No, we don't care if I was doing losing money, right? So clearly it somehow worked, or at least more often than not, right? Right. And for those who don't know Alex's background, I encourage you to go and listen to our January 2022 interview on the huddle, where he came on in with his second book. I'll just read this little blurb here from the Amazon. After earning a PhD in mathematics out from the University of Chicago, Alex leveraged his passion for trading for strategic gaming into a lucrative Wall Street career. He's been hailed by the Wall Street Journalist, the Star Trader of JP Morgan, where he served as managing director in the charge of global macro trading. And in 2020, was leading Hantes, by saying that right, Hantes, macro trading strategy, where he ranked second by net return according to Berkeley hedge, Alex is the best author, selling author of the book so we know. So those are the, you know, you're very much a quant, you trade a lot of fixed income, but it's not just fixed income. And I guess let's get to this because you said something interesting to me that I know a lot of people will be chomping at the bit to hear more about. You said that we've moved from gold to silver, and now you have a new medal that you like better. Tell me what your framework is when you're thinking about precious metals and your investment opportunities right now. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about precious metals, but I want to also like feed it in with just talking before about the second edition because I want to see how like I want to think about how my strategic principles apply to precious metal trading. So as I said in my first book, I outlined this set of strategic principles, right? But they were backward looking. That was what was working over long periods of time in the past. In the past relative to 2015. Now the question any reader should have asked, but then is it going to work in the future? And now the reason I'm doing the second edition that I want to look back at this last 10 years and see how has it worked. That's why I didn't really change very much except for a little bit of like cleaning up the language of my first book. I want to say here, you say all the things I was saying back then and then add the comments how it has worked out. So if there is a forward forecasting power to what I was saying, but also devalue my psychological and intellectual discipline of following my own principles because if you read the second editions, you will see the points where I veered where I failed or at least was not perfect and where I succeeded. I'm not saying it was all a failure. There were some great successes, but there were also some diseases there. So over the last 10 years. And the 10 year horizon is really interesting because this is how long the precious metal cycles are. The upper rate, no three four year cycles, that's, there is a reason why we're there. 10 year cycle for precious metals. If you the last big peak and gold was in 2011 and then it was sitting basically not doing anything for a really long time and then it started to really move in 2020's. And the gold move and the gold move was like forever, like for years we were saying, I remember they are laughing. Gold is dating with 1100 candle or 1200 candle. If gold goes 1800, that's like a crazy price over it, right? It was just really in a very narrow corridor and Platinum was stuck at like 900 or $1,000 announced forever and suddenly gold started to go away. The reason he has it quadrupled and silver for a while was a lager and everybody said what happened silver gold ratio at all time highs and suddenly guess what silver started to move and totally outshined also to say and people are for the only for the second time in history announced of silver is worth more than a barrel of oil. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that last time that was happening is on 79. But right now it's worth a lot more than a barrel of oil, right? Like 95 versus like 60, right? So it's a pretty big difference, right? So, but historically it's a very different ratio, right? So silver, silver started, made a big move and Platinum was lagging. But in order to really clock those moves, you need to be able to think of the Kate Long investments, which very few people have patience for and a lot of people say like, well, I don't have capital or ability to wait like five, six, seven years for my trade to work. What I always say, it doesn't matter whether you trade for one second or for five years. The important question, are you getting good return on capital? Now, from my perspective, quadrupling your money on silver and gold is a good return on capital. You have even if you had to wait a decade for that, I mean, even if you don't use, even if you're not a leverage trader, it's still a good return on capital, right? And people sometimes compare S&P to gold returns and it's a little off because gold has storage costs and S&P has dividends, so it's not quite the same. But the point is that it's worth being, it has been worth being in stock market, it has been worth being in precious metals, it has been worth being in cryptocurrencies. All those things have done well over the last decade. So it's better than not being invested, let's put it like that. And now you've said we've gone from gold and then now we've had silver, and so you mentioned platinum. What do you think about its chances going forward? Well, I think platinum is just waking up, okay. And I'm not saying that it's very early stage because platinum did rally a percent from the lows, but I just think that there is more, more that rotation, palladium rotation is a little more tricky. And I'm not right now have strong opinion on palladium, though I use palladium very closely and I used to trade it. Okay. I mean, the one pounding my fist on the table when palladium was $200 an ounce in 2003. And why do you think, why do you think platinum, why do you think we go through these periods where no one cares? Like it's interesting because silver, like you hit upon that is that it was, it was, it was quiet even as gold was taking off. And I said to everyone, well, central banks don't buy silver, they buy gold. And that was to me why it was, but I be curious why you think silver was laggy and then what changed? I have a confession. It's a complete mystery to why precious metals actually move because people make all those stories about central banks buying speculative bubbles, liquidity hedging. Some people say people buy it to hedge inflation. Some people say people buy it to hedge deflation. That's just, they just give you the realm of how big is the range. Some people think that there is a popular conspiracy theory that banks somehow try to suppress the price of silver. Oh, yeah. I mean, I just like, look, I was in the current, I was in a management committee of currencies and commodities group at JP Morgan. If somebody was trying to suppress the price of silver, I probably would have heard about it. Somehow that pulled this around me and I never heard of it. And why and for what reason I have no idea, but it's always like floating rumors about people. So, I'm not really a chartist, right? I like to think in terms of, like, if you read my book, it's not about charts. It talks about trends, but mostly I look at things like carry, valuation, pool, kind of dominance in terms of trades that work in the wide range of economic scenarios. I look to correlation of global growth and economic development and just historical patterns. But if you look in a very broad sense, precious metals, they're almost like easier to think of in terms of charts. You just have to look at very long-term charts, right? You just look at where they went last time in this situation and if you looked at previous spikes, I kind of set myself 50 to 60 silver price target many years ago. And of course, retroactive, it was very conservative. I should have set it higher. Right. My gold price was only set at 3000, again, I was very conservative. But I should have set it higher, right? So I'm, of course, like, I don't know, like it's a being conservative, like you don't get fired for being conservative on price targets. But it's good to keep your trades run. So I'm trying to have my good trades run, even though sometimes I take profits too early. But looking at the charts, you can kind of set minimum price targets for the next cycle and you can estimate the duration of the cycle. And I think that's like really, when I started to look at cryptocurrencies, for example, it's not because I had any idea about the technology or math behind them, it's because I started to see the patterns of trading, which are similar to precious metals rotating rotation. And then I saw, like, oh, well, if I can trade precious metals, maybe I can trade digital currencies as well. I mean, the point is to buy low and sell high, right? So. So one of the things that I always liked about you, Alex, is that you were very insistent on people not putting charts on Twitter that were not total return charts. Like there's all this crap where you'd see people would go like, I bought VIX and they don't realize that in the meantime, you know, they claim that they were long, but they weren't using an actual properly rolled VIX and there was the carry was huge. And one of the parts of your book is it's called Swim with the Tide. And I love that. And I think it's a great kind of moniker for what you should do. And you say avoid trades that are expected to lose money if held for the long term, no matter how compelling the shorter term arguments for those trades are. And then you said, first, catchy trades phrases like don't trade against the trend are not automatically universal truths. I prefer don't trade against the trend in a market, which appeared to be trending. Talk to us a little bit about positive carry and the problems you see with people buying assets that are kind of have a mathematical, let's just say a mathematical edge for them losing. And that's kind of how I think about it. Like if you own VIX for long enough, you're going to lose. And there's all sorts of trades like that. So I would love to your kind of, you know, expand on that, talk to us about what you talk about in the book about swimming with the tide. Yeah. I like to think of it one other way, you actually summarize some of my, you gave some very good quotes from my book and that's the book that's getting released. And I like to think of it a lot in terms of like all else being equal principle. Imagine that I don't know anything about an asset except the fact that it earns 2% carry that is the funding cost less than the profit I'm getting on an asset. Well, then I'm all likely to buy I don't know anything about an asset which has negative 2% carry, right, like that is just that if you, what they've been some studies, for example on foreign currency performance, currency performance, like if you sell one currency and buy another currency. Yeah. It's like one of the best predictors of long term performance of a currency trade is just nominal whichever one yields higher. Yeah. I don't want to hold on with you one yellow slow you want to borrow it because the speculative aspects of this when you try to like kind of get speculative edge and people try to get them based on market positioning seasonality if flows a sentiment, it's so fickle and so hard to pin that I tend to not even try. Oh, I see. So you're just like, I'm not even going to try playing that game. I'm just going to look at something that carries positively and assume I can hold this for the longer term and that's my edge. Well, I look, yeah, but I want to not just look at carry, for example, golden silver called carry negative, right? Fair enough. So there could be other, like, but then the trend is strong and as I mentioned, like certain markets you can recognize a trend and roll with a trend or you look at valuation, too. Is it like cheap right now likely to get more expensive? But if the asset is expensive and carries what I tend to do, I tend to maybe like get out of trends when I feel that the asset is too expensive and has negative carry, but also like I want to see like, okay, what is happening is the world helping this asset or hurting this asset. Like, for example, copper electrification is positive tailwind for copper. I even have has negative carry, but there is a tailwind for copper prices globally. It's not surprising that copper has been doing well. It's not surprising that, for example, if there was a technological shift in Europe that they're going to not switch to EVs as quickly as they thought that it's a tailwind for platinum. Incremental one, but it's a tailwind for platinum. So you look at global growth and technology development, you look at those factors which are kind of as objective as possible, as incontroversial and possible and try to kind of forget about speculative factors as much as I can, not always fully. Right. And just kind of assume that I don't know anything, assume that I'm an alien coming to Earth and I'm trying to buy an asset and I'm like looking, okay, which asset is historically cheap, which asset carries positively? I got it. I got it because it just that tailwind really makes a difference. One of the things that you that we were chatting with about before we started is that you have historically been a big bond bull bear, you know, a big bond bull. And one of the charts that you always showed that people mistakenly didn't look at is the positive carry that we have when the front end of the curve is lower than the long end of the curve. And I used to be at a bank and I remember going and I was the equity derivative guy. And I also had the same sort of positive carry like the reality is that we funded in the overnight and the reality was that the curve was upwardly sloping. And so as long as the Fed or for in our case, the bank of Canada didn't raise too much, we would win. It would always be long that carry that we would be borrowing at the short end. And I was always shocked when I would go talk to the bond guys. They were always long. And I was like, jeez, you guys are always long. And I realized the reason they're always long was the curve was normal shape. And therefore they were picking up carry every night as long as it didn't go down. But one of the things that you said earlier to me before we started was that you are back on the bond bull side or not even the bond bull side. The front end of the curve, you have a very bold prediction. And you think that we are this era of higher rates. Isn't it normally, I guess, and you think we're going back to lower rates. And you actually used the zero word, which I haven't heard in a while. So tell me about that. Yeah, let's talk about that. I want to be doing it with a caveat you pinned me correctly that I tend to be a bond bull. And in my book in the next perfect trade, I have the chart, which I call the one chart, which was the chart of bond futures, that they were like in a perfect trading corridor for decades. Now one of the notes I made from 2025 is where I went wrong in the last few years. And one of the thesis I had for a long time and long before the straight, not before the volatility of 2020, always said that the steady bull markets, like very steady long-term bull markets, they never break down, they break up first. Okay. So first they go vertical up and then they can rush. They never like go go in straight line and then suddenly go down. They say this very steady thing because this very steady thing eventually it convinces people that there is no risk in the trade they go along, get them to the bubble, go straight up and then there's a crash. So bond, classical bond futures on a total return basis were in a trading corridor for decades. They broke this corridor. They broke this trading channel on the upside in 2020 in the middle of COVID crisis. And I did not take my own cue in and the student now they're going to break this channel. And I have to get you to know you're very honest about that error that you made in staying long fixed income too much in the 2021/2022 bear market and you you're quite honest about it in the second edition of highlighting that that was a that was a problem. Yeah. That is, well, I guess we'll have to learn some things again, as I said, it was not all bad. I made some too, but all right. This was an error and the worst, sometimes it's the worst error. We don't listen to your own wisdom like, oh, isn't that the worst? All right. Yeah. There was so many times in this book that I was listening to reading it and I was like thinking about my tagline that I say all I bring to the party is 25 years of mistakes, although I have to change it to 35 years because you do make mistakes and you hope to make new ones. But I find that even after this many years, Alex, I'm still making some of the same mistakes and I'm like, I know better than that. The famous Stanley Druckemiller line where they asked them after the dot com bubble, they said, you know, what did you learn from that? He goes and he says, absolutely nothing because I knew it was the wrong thing when I was doing it, but I couldn't stop myself. Yeah. So, yeah. So, you know what? All we have to hope for is just be right a little more off on the road. All right. So, let's go back to you have a feeling that we're going back to zero, which I was quite shocked with now. I heard you say, why do you feel that way? So again, the caveat I've held it away for a while, and it's been definitely not happening on my schedule, but I think it is beginning to happen. So, my original thesis had nothing to do with AI, even though I didn't know the AI timeline, the AI timeline did not surprise me. I've been following the timeline for a while. I thought it would be like a little slower, but for people who follow singularity, everything is proceeding exactly to the Ray Kurzweil and singularity plan. So that we should have expected all this LLM stuff. It still came a little bit as a surprise. So that's not what I was thinking about. But what I did see is, I did see the big inflation whipsaw. I saw in 2021, in 2022, inflation go high rates were low, real rates went to like negative 9%. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised that inflation was persistent and pernicious because in the environment of negative 9% real rates, like the money creation will just keep going like crazy because people have incentive to borrow if they borrowed negative 9%. Right. So money will just be created. Right. So they just kept self. It didn't matter that inflation, original inflation post-COVID inflation impulse was transitory. It was there anyway, and it created more or less transitory inflation. But then what we saw is inflation coming down and getting some wind to the normal area. We saw rates go way up, rates go back into the positive real rates, scenario and typically when real rates go positive, it incentivizes people to contract balance sheets and that leads to labor losses. And guess what? We're beginning to see labor losses. Right. Slowly, maybe not on the schedule, I thought I will be the first one to admit, but we're beginning to see gradual deterioration labor market. But now this AI arrived, not completely out of left field, but it arrived, right? And we're beginning, and it's possibly, possibly I'm still seeing possibly accelerating labor losses. And I just really don't see this thing not spiraling. Meanwhile, the headline inflation is definitely not going up, it's just kind of stabilized, but that's almost not important, whether it's 2% or 3%. If we're heading into massive spiraling unemployment market, if we're looking at the whole categories of labor beginning to disappear and this is all with a background, this hasn't even started yet. I think actually honestly the impact of AI so far was minimal, we're just beginning to guess it in terms of labor loss. So far, it takes as many people to implement AI as people as the jobs it eliminates, right? Right. Definitely happening and productivity as dev growth will definitely be really strong. And I don't even know if it's so positive to GDP because certain areas of economic activity are just getting eliminated. Like what I give as an example, always like going to a lawyer and getting some document drawn, which is cost $500, now you just take GPT, draw this form in, or whatever, brock or whoever you like, or going to a doctor for a second opinion, people now go to second opinion to a low lambs, right? It's just like that much less economic activity is happening. And so at the same time, there is people that are reluctant to hire because they now, people who do startups, no longer need like patent lawyers and only the accountants, they do a lot of thing. Occupers, a lot of stuff is being replaced by a lambs, it is still on the margins. And meanwhile, we have positive real rates and the positive real rates incentivize contraction of balance sheets. So what I think is what I think is going to happen is I don't know what's going to happen to stock market, but the history shows that sooner or later stock market goes down, it just goes up till it goes down. And just when everyone, I see no reason for stock market to go down, by the way, I see absolutely zero scenario in which stock market can go down. And therefore, I think it will go down. You're like George Costanza, where he does the Contra. So he says that everything I know is being wrong. So I got to do the opposite. And then he goes and talks to the girl, he says, hi, I'm a, I'm a balding middle-aged man who lives with my parents. You want to go on a date with me. So that, okay. One of the things that I'd love to kind of pick your brain about that I've been struggling with is the, I understand the argument that higher real rates will slow down the economy and then inevitably that will result in lower, lower front end rates. One of the problems that being during this last few years, I guess ever since we've had the raise in rates, the curve, like especially at the front end, has been so inverted, meaning that they, they go out and they run ahead and they price in so many cuts all the time. So it ends up being very difficult to hold, you know, one year, so for futures, because they're now carrying negatively. And you need the economy to rule over even more so, do you have a theory on why this is? Do you feel that this is different or is this just, you know, standard for the course? And I was in a strange environment when the curve was upward sloping and that was kind of the golden age of riding the curve and I shouldn't expect that to come back. Well, I think we're a pretty good place right now to ride the curve, by the way, because once you go two years out, you already get off with sloping curve. Okay. I'm not sloping. However, I will say with, I will do a selling caveat. I do think this was unusual because in the past, even when the Fed priced the cuts and inverted the short end of the yield curve, in almost in every single situation, Fed did not price enough cuts. Whenever they priced 50 basis points, 300 basis points would happen. So if you go back to 2001, 2002 to global financial crisis to COVID crisis, they never quite able to price right away as aggressive as the cuts actually are going to be because there is a certain resist mental resistance to really pricing what's going to happen. It's like they do intermeeting cut and then are not pricing 50 basis cut on the next meeting. Well, there is no precedent of Fed making intermeeting cut and not cutting again at the next meeting. Right. What's the going to get the cut and term meeting? Of course, they're going to do another cut, but market is just easy. I've talked about this in my second book at the trades of March 2020, like a market reaction to COVID. So, I'll confess, I was programmed to always expect that, oh, yeah, they're pricing 50 basis points cuts. Right. It's going to be at zero. Now, right. This was a weird cycle because there was a strange resilience in the economy. Like there are many times when by the book economy had to go down. Right. Yeah, yeah. Of course, very strong negative impulse from, and I talk about this in the second edition because I had this like stock bond correlation between like the changing momentum in interest rates. It's a very good predictor of momentum on the stock market and it kind of broke down over the last few years because the interest rate momentum was very negative for the stock market but stock market just kept going up, which has not hasn't been really the case since 90s that that would have. Right. So, it is definitely a different situation and you could attribute that to very high over the range of liquidity from 2020 to 2022. You can attribute that to capax from AI and other things, maintaining the final demand. There are various, you could, you could just attribute it generally to global fiscal dominance. Right. There are many factors that are changing the equation and we definitely, as traders, have to adjust to the pace that, oh, whenever market is just pricing a little bit of easy and you just want to get long and take those eases, yeah, that was not working as well as I did in the past. Right. And I have a quote from your book actually because I highlighted that part and you said whenever the Fed is actively changing the rate policy, the market is reluctant to project moves into the future. The forward rate expectations will decouple from current policy and then you said, so I told myself, never again, while I underestimate the scope of possible shifts in the shape of the yield curve. Right. That's what you're talking about is that it ended up being way more. Yeah. I said, never again, I will underestimate, but I think I still underestimate the last few years. I have to confess, I did not expect all the shifts of yield curve that occurred in 2020. You cracked me up. Okay. I'm going to pick your brain here. Let's talk a little bit about portfolio management and specifically, and this kind of maybe will dovetail into the carry trade. And I'm just going to read you a part that I thought was very interesting from your book and I'd love to pick your brain, see if your thoughts have changed about this. It's actually, you highlight one of the friends of the show, Jim Lightner, before he went off to his other firm and can no longer appear on a show. He was used to come on our show all the time. He's a good fellow and just a good friend and I absolutely just a mention of a human being and I love Jim to death, but you talked about this. You said at this point, it is important to stress that this is my individual preference rather than a universal trading principle. Finally I've discussed this subject extensively with Jim Lightner of Falken Management, a celebrated macro trader. He prefers to use options to express his strong, long, horizon views. Jim is confident that out of the numerous option trades, he will execute in his career, he will be right a large percentage of times. He doesn't mind losing on some of those trades as long as he makes a big score when he hits the jackpot. Jackpot. This is where it comes down to style. Jim wants to have a lot of leverage and sleep well at night. I, however, lose more sleep because of an option to pay when a trade refuses to move in my favor for a couple of years. I feel that perfect trades are such rare gems that I must capitalize on them with full patience and strategic commitment. If I miss one, I may miss another and there goes my year. Then you go on to say yet that is what Jim has said is given good food for thought and so you speculate that this might be a good book to write. Has that changed? Do you still feel the same way? Do you have any kind of updates and what, like, just give us a little bit of color on using options? Well, it is interesting that, yes, that has been a little bit of a shift and I used options a little more in the last few years, as I mentioned in this new edition. I would say that NetNet using options more was a success. Using options was a great success in 2019 and 2020, which it was actually interesting because Eric Agni said, "Very great, miss price and deep out of the money you had all the options in 2019." There was an interview I did. I think it was a real vision interview I did with John Burbank about the use of running passport at that time and we discussed using this deep out of the money options in 2019 and the trade that worked very well then and even better in 2020. Further, I had success using options protecting, like, because when I was long and wrong in 2022, I used some options and it saved me from earlier from collapse because I was projecting what would happen because when I was long, like, December, 2020 to contract, when it was at 99.25, I was only by option, believe it or not, because I thought it would be made in 2022 instead. There was 400 basis points of cuts and it worked so much better using options than being outtracked. All right, so there was an example of how you have changed. However, since I've had use options and, like, the word traits recently that I've used options and the bad things happened exactly what I outlined in my first edition of the book. The use option, the kind of right, you kind of like the kind of grinds and the options decay and this is like the worst case scenario. So I've experienced both like the stellar use of options, both to capture outsize, outsize upside, arguably even better use of options to not blow up your portfolio, but I also used the worst case of options, which they, when your trait doesn't actually go against you so much, is it like grinds to the strike? Oh, that's the worst. You know, for me, I actually had a little bit of a come to Jesus moment in terms of doing the show because I grew up like trading on an institutional equity derivative desk and we traded short dated index options. And generally those all trade fat versus realized and I had a bank's balance sheet. So I was always short, like, and I was always short and it was a great trade and when it went against us, like in long-term capital management, we were just able to sell more and do better and like, so it was great. And so I kind of was always a negative, you know, gamma trader and that's how I grew up. And then I did these interviews and I would talk to people like Jim and Morris Sacks, you know, and other people that were super successful, really, you know, rich guys. And I realized that they use options a little differently than I had ever done. They use long-term options and they don't hold them to expiry. They roll them way beforehand. So it's a completely different thing. So what I've found is that I love trading like one-year options with all sorts of vega. And then so the theta is very limited. And then I roll them at six months and I use it that way. And I attribute like a lot of that knowledge to Jim and to Morris and guys like that. So that's been my experience. Let's talk a little bit. I saw this one quote that I would love to pick your brain about. He said something to the effect that trading is more like duplicate bridge than poker. And I think a lot of people would find that kind of not what they'd expect. Can you explain what you meant? Well, yeah, that what I mean by that is that it is, you basically all dealt the same hand, right? You all come back, you all come to the morning, like how duplicate bridge dealt? You are being compared with your peers who are dealt at the same hand and playing against the other counterparts, you're right. So every at French manager wakes up on Wednesday morning, as is the case today, looks at their screens and decides, what am I going to do with this? Greenland is this that happening, like commotion, I was fading it, I was going with it, right? Now what your dealt is completely random. You cannot protect yourself against all the random events that happened in the world. Every time you crisis comes, you could be positioned for against it. So like whenever some exogenous event happens, event you couldn't predict, it's 50-50 whether it's going to be favorable to your portfolio or not, right? It's completely by definitions. If you forsoy, that would be different, but something you have not seen is going to by definition be random to you, right? So you faced with some random situation and you have to make your decisions based on the situation. You're going to play like, are you going to play for hearts, you're going to play three no trump. That's kind of a duplicate bridge decision. And whoever makes a set of better decisions of a long period of time given as a market is going to win. It's not about like outsmarting somebody else psychologically, it's not about like finding there is no one any me here, right? You just try to extract money from the market. That's why I think it is a like duplicate bridge, well, we'll put in the same table, the table is random, but we're all in the same position. If I got bond market wrong in 2022, and somebody else got it right in 2022, there is nothing I can say. They just outplayed me on that hand. Got it. It means that the better trader, it means that on that particular hand they outplayed me, but maybe next hand I'll outplay them. Okay. Let's talk a little bit in the book. You mentioned, I guess how should I word this, the importance or the benefit of having confidence and like you talk about, it's easier to play when you're up and things of that nature. Like explain what you meant there and what you're kind of where you're getting with that sort of analysis. Yes. I find that like for traders, this way trading is very similar to poker, in fact. This is a strong similarity to poker between trading. So from yes of playing poker, I've learned eventually I've just designed a strategy that if I sit down to play poker and after say 45 minutes of playing things are not going well. I lost a couple of big fans. I'm not feeling I'm playing well on my left, which is a superior position if people don't know poker, like the positioning staff, personally too much trouble. I just don't like this table. I don't like my play. I'm just going to get up and go. I will never go deep and it took me years to develop this approach. I will never go deep and keep buying in if things are not going my way. But if things are going my way, I would play through the night. I would just go for it, try to build up, which is totally opposite what many people do. They try to take the winnings and recoup the losses. And the reason why I realized, first of all, I enjoy myself more when I'm up money. It is fun to play when you're up money. And if you're up money and you lose a little bit, like say you're like the ingredients part for you. You're up 10% on the year and you have a down 1% day. You're not like pretty upset about this. But if you down 5% on the year and you have down 1% and you're like washing the screens, right? Because what I'm going to write in my next investor letter, it's not going to be prettier, right? So the moment you start being attached to the immediate outcome, it's like a poker being attached to the hand. You already know that this hand is not going well, but you're like, how can I use it? How can I win it? Maybe I can pull out. Maybe I can like hope to draw like a card. Either of those paths, if the situation is not right for them, for the disaster. Same thing with trading. It's like, when you feel like, oh, how can I make some back that I'm down this month? It's the wrong mentality. If you are a lot of, if you have money on the year and you down a little bit, you're like something position moved against, you might even, oh, I can add to this position or you can say, you know what? I don't like the way it's trading. Cut it out. You make those very easy, pleasurable and reasonable decisions. Well, when you're down, especially if you're on the external pressure, and that's very important for a manager to make sure that they do not face too many external pressures, if I lose another percent, my boss will fire me or my investors will pull the money out. There is very little chance that you will be the best trader you can be in this situation. Got it. The other thing that I found fascinating about your book was the idea of that you on the whole, don't use stops or you don't use stops the way that most people use stops. And I, this part just rang so true to me because I use a portfolio stop as well. And I think that's something you talk about. Explain what you mean and why you come to this conclusion and explain what kind of the benefits are to your approach. Yes, I think that the main purpose of risk management, rigorous risk management is to prevent yourself from portfolio ruin. So no matter how good your trades are, if you leverage trading, your portfolio could possibly go to zero or to, it might be not even to zero, but find some other to some point which will be unacceptable loss from perspective of your business. It might cause you investors to pull and cause your banks, your vendors to pull your credit lines, whatever your boss to fire you, whatever it is for you, the unacceptable loss is you. So you need to manage to that. That's why you do need to have some risk reduction procedures if things start deteriorating. So you will have less, because otherwise honestly soon, like you always will get wiped out soon or later. It's just, I mean, if you have like, if you like aggressive trader by nature, if you don't put risk management procedures in place, you will get wiped out soon or later, you'll be super confident that something will be absolutely wrong. It just happens. So, so, position risk management is a very different thing. When you look at the, for example, if I do X versus Z, right, and X goes up and Z goes down, yes, I could have a stop on Z, but then I can make a rational strategic decision. How am I planning to trade Z? Am I going to trade it with a stop or not? And there are many assets that if they go down 40% and value, okay, well, it's just, if there's nothing changed from my perspective about the value of this asset, it's just now even bad investment. Why not keep it? Yeah. And why not, won't possibly add to it if your portfolio risk allows it. Right. So, there are some situations where stop I use fault, because, for example, as I mentioned, some assets tend to trend. And if certain assets started to clearly trend against you, I would, for example, give you an example of oil in 2025. I've been long oil and oil started deferred oil contracts. It was not really a big loss, because I was not playing with front oil, in the, the accreditation was working in my favor, but in 2025, oil just started to trend down, okay. And eventually, I was like, you know what, I don't like the way it's trading. I'm just going to get out of it. It was not because my boss told me you have to cut oil and your portfolio has no risk. Just because I just didn't like the way it was trading. And maybe in the long run, that actually might prove to be an error, because maybe in 2026, it's going to go up, but it continued to go down on 2025. And if I want to be long oil, I can buy it now cheaper than when I sold it. Right. So, or at least similar to where I don't remember even I think I can buy it now cheaper than I sold it, or at least I had chances to buy cheaper than I sold it. So if I, if I don't do it is because I wanted to own something else now, right? But there are times when you just, I want to have that freedom to see like, I don't like the way something is trading. I'm going to be out of it. Oh, I completely agree. I always tell people, if you're having any doubts, just get it off the sheets. You can always buy it back or sell it back or whatever. And just your brain, it's, it's clearer once you don't have a position. All right. A little bit, a little bit about the book and what would you say was the biggest surprise in doing this, you know, a second edition, what, you know, you went about doing this and you probably had some ideas going into it. What was the thing that shocked you the most? Well, I think it was interesting to review what I said and said, like, oops, I said this and that's not at all what happened or conversely, like, oh, wow, I nailed it. The worst and great moments when I said, for example, at the moment, I say, I really hope next time this happens, I'll nail it. And I even said at some point, there is a good question, whether next time when this happens will I'll be able to nail it? And I could say this question is answered. I nailed it. That's always nice. But the opposite was kind of interesting to go through this, look at my, my, both predictions and recommendations and see which one of them, especially it's kind of hilarious with regards to because I used my, my dollar to do stock market predictions from some individual stocks in the first book. And I really individual stocks. It's not the one part of the mandate. The only reason I have a trade, almost the only reason I trade individual stocks right now is as part of my commodities views, like I could be trading my, so something I don't, I'm not a stock analyst, right? But I did, I, I, examples of some stock just to make it more accessible to public. And it's just interesting, stocks went like totally randomly. This one I was totally right on, this one I was totally wrong one, this one I was right for like three months and then totally wrong. It's just like all over the place. Okay. So let's, we'll finish up with a couple of questions about the markets. What do you think will be the biggest surprise for markets in 2026? Well, it, it, it, from your reaction, it appears that if rates go to zero, that would, well, that would be my biggest surprise because I don't like, like, most people would say the terminal rate is three or whatever, right? Like nobody has one in their cards. Like there was a period when people used to think that and then they've just, it's gotten be none of them. So it was just fun to hear again, because I haven't heard it in a long time. Yes, I think zero is a very likely outcome. It's, it's, I'm not saying that it's a hundred percent outcome. Yeah, no, I understand that when I say that something is very likely, I generally mean that it's disproportionately likely relative to the current probability assigned by the market. It doesn't even mean that it's the most likely. It's just, no, I completely understand. You believe that your, your assessment of it of that happening is a higher percentage than what the market has, assisted at. Yes. And if that is correct, that is, that is kind of the surprise I could predict. And I think the other thing that might happen again, for some reason, none of us could understand when stock market at last decides to correct, right? But that would be honestly, if that happens, it probably will happen through some chain of events that none of us can pursue your envision. So like the biggest surprise of 2026 could be a surprise to me. That's right. By definition, that's what I always tell people that by definition, crisis is always like a surprise because if they weren't a surprise, we would have hedged for them, right? Yes. And they don't happen in schedule. They never happen on a given year, on a given month. Yeah. That's right. They never on a schedule. You're absolutely right there. Okay. So we'll end with some fun stuff. Generally, I've been asking and I didn't prep you for this. So I'm going to put you on the spot. Let's see how you do. I asked them, there's this BBC show called Desert Island and you have to pick 10 albums and then in the like a celebrity, say what albums, they would be left on the Desert Island. I make one called Trader Island and in essence, what I do is I say, give us your top three bands that if you were stuck on a desert island that you'd want to listen to, like music bands and it could be anything. And then one other is you're allowed to take any trader from history, anybody like you know Jesse Livermore, whoever you want and have him on the island him or her on the island with you to trade. How do you pick? So you up for it? I know I'm putting you on the spot. Do you think you could do this? Well, let me see. With music bands, I'm kind of really handicapped because I have no musical education at all. So I'm probably what you listen to, though, do you listen to anything fun that you would you take? Like if I said you're going on a desert island, what three bands would you take? I'm like listening to like Lord of the Rings music when I listen to the music. So it's funny. You see that? I actually found on one of my blogs or something someone said, oh, I listened to Lord of the Rings to study. And I actually did it when I was writing a post and I found it very good. So okay. So we'll take the music off. We'll just go with the traders. I'm just really flanking that question. I'm telling you no problem. Well, it obviously shows you why I should have prepped beforehand, but I take it on the trader. You have a person in mind. Well, you know, who was the greatest trader in all history and I'm afraid to veer a little bit out of the range, but Joseph from the Bible. Oh, really? Really? Why do you feel that way? You're the grain squeeze. Yeah. Remember, there was like seven years of really good harvest and he accumulated grain. Yeah. And then when they were lean years, he was just like, Kalta Faru, the purchase, all the property in Egypt for the grain during the starvation years, that was the greatest commodity speculation in the history. Regardless, I really don't want to like project in religious views or offend anybody religious views, but just as a story. That was the greatest commodity straight in the history of humanity, the grain squeeze engineered by Joseph. I love it. That's it. It's a takeaway. You get a line. You get like a line to divine. That's right. Obviously, I can run with that. I got it. All right. Okay. So I'll just repeat here for those that are I want to read the book and you should. It's the where are we here? The next perfect trade, a magic sort of necessity. Again, it is the second edition and the second edition will not be out till Tuesday, January 27th. So do not go by the first edition. It is the second edition and it is vastly different than the first edition. Alex, is there anywhere else that you want to send people like to do you have a blog or Twitter or something you want to promote? Well, thanks. Well, I have an ex account and I could be pretty easily found on ex just. Okay. 23, but just if you just use my name, you'll find me. And then another way is just to go to my company's website, hunter dot envy. Now it's important that it's a we only. To get inside and get any like investor information, you have to be qualified purchases. So I'm not advertising that I am only talking, but there is stuff on the website with my publicly accessible blogs and certain articles that I've written over years. So if people want and books, if people wanted that kind of public access portion of my company, I welcome to go there and check it out. Great. Alex, it's great to see you again. Thank you for making time for us today. All right. Thank you very much. So joining me for talking charts is Pineco macros, Chase Taylor, Chase, you're a great friend of the show and thanks for pinch hitting for Kevin who needed a day off. And, you know, I can't think of someone more interesting to talk to these charts because there's some crazy asher going on and I'd love to get your take on so much of this. And so let's just dive into it. So let's get in there and talk some charts starting off here. Let's talk to this S&P. Obviously, the tariff tweet comes out and we start on a long weekend with markets gapping down a conveniently Davos is a day later with Trump meeting all the people he's threatening to tariff. It was like if there was ever going to be a taco event, it's the fact that Davos was right there and we got the down day and the reversal right in there. We're going to look deeper together at what's making this market up but like, how do you size this up? This market is a little bit heavy. Are you still leaning in the bull trend or are you starting to lighten up here? What's your take on the broader market? Yeah, this probably sounds weird but the funny thing about the S&P for me now is I just don't care. It's boring. Like you said, there's crazy shit going on and in the S&P, I mean all the indexes really in the US just aren't, they're not it, they're just not doing anything. They can't break down, they can't break out. To me, it's just boring. There's so many better opportunities. I had a tweet out yesterday showing all the XUS stuff just blowing the US out of the water out of the, as of yesterday out of the 45 country ETFs, only I think three or four are doing worse than the US so it's just, yeah, what's the point like all of a sudden, you know? So it's so it's interesting here because let's let's just highlight a couple of things. Number one, the breadth of the market's been improving since December. So after that little November event that we've gotten back to about 70% of stocks participating, which has allowed things like the S&P equal weight index to actually do relatively well. You can see there's an underpinning sector rotation going on in this market. And while the equal weight index is rising, there's been some rock and roll advances in the small cap space that's doing well, but it's all at the expense of the Mag 7s. So the Mag 7s, you know, got to the stage of literally being 1/3 of the S&P 500 market cap weighted index, 2/3 of the NASDAQ 100. And so without these stocks participating, the analogy I keep giving is it's like throwing an anchor off the side of your bow and asking why you can't go full speed, you know, and so this is probably the drag. And so the question I have for you is what's your take on the Mag 7s? Like we got earnings next week and it's like the pick in the Python moment of where they're all going to report within 24 hours of each other. What's your, what's your pulse? Do you have a bias that you think they're going to beat or something or where, where you stand on this? Yeah, I mean, I think they'll probably do fine in for the last few years, really that for me personally, the only one I've liked is Google that honestly pretty much holds for me. Like still the only one I like and I like it less because it's done so well lately. But yeah, the funny thing is like you mentioned, like the Russell, the Russell's been awesome so far this year. But the funny thing is like the Russell is worth like a trillion dollars less than Justin Vitya. So like all this little stuff can do whatever it wants in the S&P, just like shrugged its shoulders, you know? So let's talk to me to meet like the big thing is like the CapEx side and if AI is making any money yet, like I think that's what people are going to key in on. Right. So, is the chart of NVIDIA and you know, there's no shortage of people on X or any of these other platforms that are trying to call a head and shoulders formation, developing on NVIDIA. Well, in fairness, the one thing that I kind of am observing is NVIDIA, which is like one fifth of the in the market cap waiting of the SMH semiconductor index. You have the Cospi ripping higher, the Nikkei ripping higher, the semiconductor index ripping higher and NVIDIA not even getting an uptick. Like you're seeing that it just never participated whatsoever in this advance. And so, you know, with the fact that we've seen such big advances in semiconductors and in the Cospi and stuff, what's your feeling on NVIDIA? Do you think that NVIDIA is topping out here? I mean, it's very possible, like, but I will say, I do remember the last time I highlighted a head and shoulders on NVIDIA and that was probably 250% ago. It kind of reminds me of just the S&P on the chart though, it just looks like it can't go up or down. Like, clearly, you've built the structure that if you break below, it looks terrible. But at the same time, like, if you have a 5% update after earnings, the chart also looks really good. Yeah. Well, the one thing about NVIDIA, the one thing about NVIDIA is that earnings are going to get punched out all the way to the end of February, right? So, we've got more than a month still before we're going to hear from NVIDIA. And I think that there's going to be some clarity on these markets long before NVIDIA is reporting. And so, we'll see whether that plays out. The one thing I want to touch on though is this Cospi. Because Cospi has been the hottest kind of AI way to play this, obviously, Samsung and China's S&P, you know, are rocking and rolling, they've become, like, I remember back just to show my age. But like, I remember back when Nortel in Canada was, you know, made up with BCE 30 plus percent of the Canadian market capitalization, it was just like the index was there. And here, I think that the two stocks make up like 40 percent of the Cospi, like the concentration, like, this is just a real play on those two stocks and they have been on fire. Like, this is where everyone's been playing this on the upside, like, what's your take here? Is this something that can still sustain? I mean, obviously, I think it can. The memory side and the chip side, like, they haven't like going for them. But for me, that concentration is just, it's too much risk. I wrote a lot about South Korea last year, I was super bullish, wrote it pretty well. Although I, for me, I like their KDEF ETF more than anything because it had a lot of ship builders and defense contractors and stuff. That was what I really wanted, but even that stuff went straight up. So like, for me, everything Korean now is too high and too concentrated. Like you mentioned, Cospi super concentrated, if you go to the ETF, the EWY, like, it's like 45 percent in those two names. Yeah. And like 30 percent, like, is too much, but like, whatever, I can hold my nose, but half almost, like, now I'm just subjected to a drawdown and a couple, a couple of things. Yeah. Those stocks drop down. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. But like, this has been what's been driving that, right, like, but the fact is that semiconductor index in spite of 20 percent of this SMH being in video, it's been one of the stronger markets here, right? Like, everything from financials or lagging and, and, and a number of these different sectors dragging that it's like, even with Nvidia not participating, the semiconductor is still getting a lot of love and you can really see that, that investors still are not done with the AI story yet. And the thing, but now, is it, what, do you have a broader market call like that, that, you know, we enter some prolonged kind of AI correction phase where, where this kind of bubble will burst inevitably and do you think it's like a story for this year? I think what, what the market shows us now is kind of what I expect to continue. Like, you have some AI, an AI, Jason stuff doing great, like, you know, towers semiconductor, like, there's some, there's some names out there that are doing great and, but then you look over at something like Oracle and it's, it looks terrible, you know, so like, I, I, I think we're going to continue that where people that are taking out too much debt and doing too much capex and, and, and, you know, having too much of their future earnings tied to, you know, the success of, of just like basically open AI, like, I think some of that stuff will struggle mightily and the bubble, I would argue, is already burst in something like, like, that company, but then, you know, you look over and there's a lot of the picks and shovels, X and video that are still doing well, but it's also going to keep evolving, like, the, the new and video chips really talked about, like, how the cooling needs are like, way less. So you see all the, all the companies that have gone parabolic on cooling needs, like, get smashed just on that one little comment and it's like, as the tech evolves, you're going to keep seeing that. So I think it's going to be a bunch of stuff, winning and a bunch of stuff losing in the space. So, honestly, Alpha and the AI trade is going to be the nerds that are staying ahead of, of those, like, real life fundamentals and that is not going to be me. Well, you know, the, the, the part that, I always looked for the canary in the coal mine, like, when, when we're going to enter some sort of market correction, um, I'm, I'm, I don't have a chart up on it, but like, we haven't seen credit spreads or junk bonds start to crack or a lot of those kind of areas that typically would be warning signs. But we had pretty clear gap downs on financials on their earnings, uh, JP Morgan, Bank of America City, Wells Fargo, you name it, they all negatively reacted on their earnings. And you see the XLF here, the financial ETF clearly break below its 50 day moving average. And, you know, this is your quintessential beta one asset that, like, basically is supposed to be going lockstep with the S&P 500 and, you know, to me, I, I, in order for me to feel comfortable making a call that the S&P is heading to 7100 or higher, to me, the financials should be just lockstep working with this. If we see, in my opinion, uh, the financials continue to distribute, uh, I'm looking at it like a warning sign that, that the market's just not healthy. Do you have a different take on that or is that, uh, kind of, line with your thoughts? No, I think that makes sense. I think, you know, that the talk of making them cap credit card rates and stuff doesn't help either. That would be very bad for their earnings, their margins, you name it, uh, and the economy, which is bad for banks, obviously. I think, I think it's sort of a, uh, underlying thing here that a lot of you aren't talking about is like the global economy and the US economy are really starting to pick up. And I think you can argue that that might not be great for them, even though that sounds weird. But. Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's go through these global, global indices. I'm going to, uh, just start off here with the Nikkei, but like the Nikkei has not been as hot as the Cosby, but it's been structurally bullish, obviously a week yen as a tailwind, um, uh, but making higher highs, old dips being bought, not violating a 50 day moving average, like overall, um, the Nikkei's been behaving well, but Japan has been a stress point with, you know, JGB markets under a lot of stress and, uh, and even a move in the end today, which we can talk about when we get the currencies in a moment. But, uh, are you, uh, generally bullish the Nikkei here? I am. I like, I like Japan a lot. But if you look over the last year, two years, like it's done well, but then you compare it to a lot of other countries, I mean, you can almost throw, throw a dart at something in Europe or whatever, and it's probably beating Japan, like, it's kind of middle of the pack, maybe even a little, a little worse, and I think you're kind of still there. I, I still think it's possible that they bring a lot of money home someday, uh, and, and it can become, you know, really nice, like bubble again in Japan, but so far, it's just kind of been, uh, a boring grind higher. Right. Uh, now, one market that, uh, was quite boring for almost all of last year was the Eurostock, uh, which was just trading sideways, but obviously, uh, all of this defense spending and other stories started coming life, but it is definitely, uh, maybe I would argue more boring than the Nikkei, uh, on, uh, on that some individual European countries, certainly have been rocking the rolling. Um, but, but at least as a, uh, a broad Eurostock, it's been a laggard, but generally higher highs, higher lows, finding support at 50 day, uh, it's been working well. I mean, do it, would you state bullish Europe here at this stage? Yes, but I think that the country picking part of it, uh, definitely, definitely matters whenever it comes to, to Europe that, like, as you pointed out, like these 50 have been, you know, pretty boring, but you look at something like Austria or something like EWO, just a beast, like, um, and there's a lot of these, a lot of these names that have been, you know, the Polish markets and all that, they've, they've, they've all been, uh, running in, in a, in a big way. But what is interesting, uh, to me is, uh, when we go to look at the, uh, China A50, and, uh, while there's been an uptrend, uh, what, as the old emerging markets were generally doing well, um, what we're clearly seeing is, uh, the China market under a little more stress and even the India market under a lot more stress and a lot of the other emerging markets. Um, do you, have you been watching this and know what's in your mind on what could be causing us here? I'll just quickly show how the sensec is, um, in, um, the Bombay market has been really also, uh, under a little bit of stress. What are your thoughts here? Yeah, India has been terrible. It was one of the worst performers last year. It's one of the worst performers so far this year. I'm super bullish China and, and, and, you know, the really medium long term, uh, as much as short term. Uh, if you look at like CQQQ, like that, that chart has been very solid in my opinion. Um, so same, same with China, where you got to be in the right, in the right place to get the move. But, um, I, but I think you have seen some weakness lately and a lot of it, it comes out of policy. Like they want the market up, but every time it has these like four percent updates or like 10 percent, you know, over two weeks, they come in and find a way to kind of put their foot on it to make sure it slows down. So like they've, they beefed up margins where you got to be basically a hundred percent. Like you can't, you can't be levered up stuff like that. Like the, yeah, everyone likes to highlight the national team whenever they're buying equities. People forget to highlight when they sell it back. So you've had some of that at times where they're selling back into these ribs. Um, they wanted it up, but I think they wanted to go up at a measured pace, which makes sense because if not China has some crazy blow off, you know, moves in the past that they obviously want to avoid. But I'm, I'm incredibly bullish. So, uh, what, uh, what I want to move on to is let's touch on Latin America and, and South American markets. Uh, and what we, what we can see here is, uh, Brazil just, uh, rock it. Like this, the, uh, Ibovica is just like on fire here. Like not only was the consolidation and election worries, like brushed off within weeks. Uh, but this thing is, is just gone full parabolic. Uh, obviously heavily resource driven. Um, so all your valleys and stuff like that are ripping. But even, uh, Mexico, this is the EW breaking to new highs and, uh, and look at the way Argentina broke out of a, uh, a multi month trade range, like it's ready to go. What, what's your thoughts here on, um, on these Latin American, South American markets? Yeah, they've definitely been the leaders so far this year, uh, Peru and Colombia and Chile have been kind of the three leaders of all of them. Uh, but you can kind of see the rest starting to come with it. Uh, I mean, you look at like the, the, the, the, the reow, like the chart, I mean, it's breaking out in a big way versus the dollar and that's super helpful for, for Brazil. That's like always, kind of always the worry because they have a giant, you know, deficit and stuff that, that the currency could become a problem. But hey, if you guys, if you run a giant deficit, but you also have really high real, real rates, like you can get away with it for a while. Um, so all this stuff looks great. And, you know, if you think about it, all of it's tied to commodities and metals, and on, you know, if you're Peru or Chile, you kind of overlay the chart on, on top of copper, and it's like, oh, yeah, what's about the same chart? And, and that, and that makes sense, kind of like South Africa and platinum play, and like, like, there you go. Yeah. Well, so listen, let's, let's use this as a segue to talk currencies because there's, there's some serious action going on here. You know, I was looking at the dollar, even just the earlier in the week, still being in a very neutral quiet zone. But really in the last few days, the dollar is really woken up. And, and so really we had the, the first half of last year, a pretty decisive bear market in, in that US dollar. And, um, we went through a pause, a consolidation, often retracements, fibs, whatever you want to measure it out, a consolidation period. There was even room for the dollar index to spend some time above 100 temporarily in the reversion. But after a failed rally that couldn't even clear 100 here, we're, we're now attempting to make a lower low. Um, and on the surface, that's, uh, well, let's actually pump it to a weekly chart and really zoom out here because it's important to highlight that we, this entire consolidation of, of, of, uh, 2025 was materially under the, um, uh, the lows of the last few years. And then there's that old adage we have in technical analysis where, where previous supports become overhead resistance, right? And, uh, and so the dollar has already been in a structurally vulnerable spot all year, uh, with this breakdown. But you see this weekly breakdown candle, what's happening here? It begs the question as to whether the floodgate, uh, on another US dollar decline is imminent. Like we've literally rejected that 50 week moving average repetitively. Uh, and, uh, and it's like that structural downturn seems to very much be in place here. Um, now we'll look at some of the individual currency pairings. But, uh, what, how do you, uh, size up the, uh, the dollar market here? Yeah, I, this, this move, especially the day is when I did this, you come, excuse me. Um, you know, we kind of went from looking almost like a rounding bottom the last few months to looking like it was just, uh, a bear flag that, which is very notable. Um, and I think, uh, you'd obviously all the Greenland back and forth. Obviously next year, you had, uh, you know, a couple pension funds in Europe talking about like, uh, we're going to get rid of some treasuries. You had Australia talking about like, you're lighting up, uh, lighting up on the, on the dollar dollar, like assets we hold, like, so you, you start to see some of the rest of the world thinking more, you know, more and harder about getting out some assets out of the US because the rest of the world has over, I think, 20 trillion more invested here than the US has invested abroad. And that, that means, you know, it doesn't take much for, for US assets to have some of that time if, if foreigners just take a little bit of money out. So I was definitely tactically worried about him move higher, um, just even a few days ago, uh, but now all of a sudden, it looks like, yeah, that's kind of longer. And that's, that's, that's in a complete, I mean, in complete agreement, right? Like, yeah, uh, and what I look for is when there could be a potential emotional, uh, uh, kind of pivot where most traders were caught off guard, not expecting something to happen is when the reaction function becomes that much more of the volatility and the liquidity can pivot the most, uh, in the, in those kind of periods. And this is why we want to pay attention. Like, look at the way the euro working back to its 52 week highs on the upside. Look at the pound sterling broke to a higher high going for a retest of those levels. Uh, yeah, and another huge one was the Aussie dollar. Like, just massively clear trailer. Uh, yeah, like, just took off parabolic like if, uh, if it's a silver chart or something. Like, uh, just like, uh, the Kiwi got, uh, blasts it off on the, on the upside, uh, even the Canadian dollar. I'm going to look at the, the CAD US, uh, you can see the, the Canadian dollar rising against the US dollar here. And so, you're, you're basically seeing that almost all the currencies are lining up. But the one that I think is the most important one to watch is what's happening on that yen. I'm just going to look at the yen futures here. Uh, and now, because I want to look at the, uh, yen chart as opposed to US dollar against the yen. And the yen has been in a bear market all, uh, since the second quarter, right? And, uh, a clear downtrend, but look at today's reversal candle. Uh, after, uh, retesting that low, I mean, that, you know, do you want to count as a double bottom when it's only five days of parse, what technicians can, um, debate till they're blue in the face. But bottom line is, is, is like, you got, uh, uh, a very clear reversal. And, and now we're going to test the direct 50 day moving average to it. Like, if we see the yen, joy, the party, then you have literally all the currencies rallying against the US dollar simultaneously. And that's when I pay attention. You know, like, if you've got a couple of them going up and a couple going down and there's a mishmashed and, you know, the trade range is likely the most prevailing outcome. But when all the currencies are all lining up for a bull move against a weakening US dollar, that's when I pay attention. And the fact that the yen made this reversal means that it's potentially in play. And, uh, and if, if we see this, obviously one day doesn't make a new trend. But if we see this actually get built upon in the next little bit, then this becomes something we can't ignore. How do you size up all of these currencies? And which one do you want to look at? I mean, you went through a lot of them and the funny thing is, is I'm, I'm short like six or seven different things versus the dollar. Mostly it's like, I don't know which one's going to really win. I, I, I think my favorite at the moment might be the limiting, but like, Polish Lodi, I like, I, I, I, I mean, the, there's a lot in kind of Northern Europe that I like. It's hard to pick. It's hard to pick the wrong one right now. I did feel strong about the Australian dollar because I think the liquidity cycle in China can, you know, just kind of naturally spills over their quicker. And obviously, I like the Aussie and the loony both because of the commodity currency aspect and because the commodities are doing pretty decent at the moment. But to go to the end real quick, like, this is, I find the end super fascinating from a macro standpoint right now because you, you, you sort of have like a debate on whether or not they're in total, you know, fiscal dominance, where the interest cost becomes such a problem that all, everything has to go down. Or if they're outside of that, you know, it should, it should honestly be rallying with the rates going up and all this stuff. And then sort of as a side note, I have this weird view that if Japan goes out of its way to QE up their, their bond market again because the yields are getting unruly. Or they shove bonds down the throats of, you know, their pensions or banks or whatever. They do something to, to cap yields. Typically, people view that as very currency negative. I have this view that if they went out and QEed up, you know, 10% of their bond market tomorrow, that the end would actually rally on it. Like, yeah. So, so there's nothing more interesting maybe than macro right now than how the yen handles where they're at. I mean, they're, they're, their debt's GDP is actually falling lately because their nominal growth has been good. So in that sense, you should look at that and be like, well, they're not really in fiscal dominance. But then again, like, you know, their, their inflation and their rates keep going and they don't care. So they're going to do more fiscal. And so it, it's fun whenever you can make a really solid argument in two different directions to watch how something plays out. And I think that's where the yen is. Yeah. It's, and I think, I think it's the, the marginal player here that will decide what the trend of that dollar is because I like, if it goes like, you knew earlier, you know, mentioning the Brazilian that real and you basically have this currency working higher. And, you know, like, is this going to be where they finally have another leg up on the upside is is is another one the watch, right? Like, just it's right now. I mean, in the end, the US dollar weakness is what at least administration has advertised as they want and it really seems that they're getting it, you know, and, and the interesting part and we use it as a segue to kind of discuss like, well, the one outlet that is a huge benefactor of US dollar weaknesses, the commodity market and and the big winner at least in the last little bit has to be the precious metals market. And let's go through the four precious metals and and like highlight what is going on here. Let's start off with the big one and gold and and here we have like gold futures today. I had a high of four thousand eight that's a nine hundred and eighty nine like eleven dollars away from a five thousand print. And, you know, so here we have a scenario where where gold as, you know, I've been keep I've been talking about this five thousand target. But now what? Like in the end, this this thing has gone full on parabolic. I was talking a hundred dollar silver and we're one hundred and one. Like, and so like, what do I do? Pull a Goldman Sachs and just raise my target. Like, you know, like in the end, these a lot of these were my targets for for the year and they're being achieved in January. And like, first of all, how do you size up these precious metals markets? And what's your path that you think of? You know, I mean, it's easy to make a long term bull argument. But the question is is like, what is what's your pulse or your feeling on how things can play out on the short to in turn period? Yeah. I mean, obviously when you're in a parabola like this, you can keep going up. It can be one 50 and two weeks or something who knows, right? Well, for me, like for as a traitor, as a looking at risk reward, like I especially am petrified by silver at this point, I mean, I've taken two little shots at shorts along the way that, you know, just paper cuts, stops. And I'll do it again. And again, probably like, I think silver badly needed to re-rate higher. I wrote a very bullish piece about it like two years ago. And how solar was demand was if it combined with investment demand was going to create a bonafide squeeze, the kind of squeeze all the dumb people on Reddit or whatever kept calling for every year, like that we, hey, we could actually get that. Well, obviously, we're now we're actually getting that, but I didn't think we'd get it to a hundred. I think, I think this fundamentals back up a lot of this, but not all this. I think, you know, the last leg of this is just too much. It's just, it's a lot of speculation. It's a lot of, you know, force buying kind of nonsense, non-sensical stuff. But, you know, one of the points that a lot of people make is it's just so hard to get a response from miners like they can't give you, they can't give you more metal in any short time frame. But people like me can, like I've been stacking physical silver for, you know, the last 15 years. And I'm literally going to go sell something this weekend for the first time in my life. Like, and there's no way on the only person that's that's willing to, you know, cash in here. There's a lot of silver that's going to start getting recycled. The solar producers are going to start moving the copper. Like the demand destruction will be real and the supply diversification will be real. Like, so, so do I want to buy it here? I do not. Now, if it, you know, goes back to 55 bucks or whatever, like, yeah, like time to party again. But up here, it scares me, if I'm wrong, for sure. If anyone is long and not expecting to have to eat, you know, a drawdown of at least 30, if not 40, 50, I think you're going to be welcomed to how commodity markets work before long. But it may be after it goes to 150 because that's a parabola. It's interesting because like, I was, I'm still actually Delta long silver. But back around $80. We had some really deep in the money calls. We were riding that were very close to Delta one. So we were synthetically long, the thing like almost like it's equity. But been basically resetting my risk reward by converting it now to just bull call spreads out of the money. So, I've been participating with a much more smaller outlet. And so, basically, a risk that when the, when reverts, you're only out of small amount of capital, all the meat on the bone has already been profit taken. And so it's, I'm not short, but definitely not going to get hurt when this thing finally turns around. But what a move. But overall, what's your take here, though? Like gold at 5,000. I mean, look, anyone can go out there and say, oh, gold will be by the end of the decade, seven or 10,000. And they'll probably be right. So we're again, we're technicians here. Talking about the short term path in here. But is this also in your mind getting a little bit a little overextended on the short term? Yeah, I think, I think gold's also, you know, too high overbought all that. But I think gold has way more underpinnings, kind of like, called medium term, than silver does. I mean, if central banks want to keep buying it, then it really, it's just going to keep going up. It's a little different from some of these other metals that have more industrial side that can dominate, you know, the supply and demand angle. So I think gold's going to be better off, you know, here medium term. But this is a way precious metals bull markets work. You get gold going and then silver goes and then you start getting some of the other stuff participating. I would feel way more comfortable being in gold over the next six months than silver from like the drawdown risk. I think it's going to have a drawdown. But it's not going to, it's not going to be one that just wrecks some people the way I think silver could. What worries me about gold is that story is such a convincing one. Central banks are buying, it can't go down. And what what reconfirmed that was that literally every correction in the last two years that we've had in gold was sideways instead of down, right? Like it was all these horizontal triangle consolidations, which basically means that now everyone has been rewarded for remaining highly levered up in gold. And a psychological reinforcement that like you, it can't hurt you. And I find that when you become convinced of something to be absolutely true is when the market has the best chance of separating you from your money. And the fact that that is just such a consensus view that it just makes me like what could go wrong? I don't know. I'm not going to predict that gold's going back to 4,000 or something stupid. But it just bugs me that everyone is so convinced that that that it can't hurt you. It's like I hate being in a consensus like that when when that becomes the prevailing thought. And this is where like, you know, I reminds me of like the uranium story. Like uranium was so bullish. But back, you know, like I'm just going to like go back to let's say URA. But like there was that time where no matter how bullish uranium was in the story was great. Back in 2024 and early 2025, there were 30, 40% haircuts even though the primary long-term bull market was quite intact. There was a lot of great news in those pullbacks. Yeah. I don't know. Is there one big gold margin call coming? One thing I will say about the risk side of it is if you chart it against like global money supply. Which I think is a fair way to think about gold. Obviously, like it just went nuts. So like even versus low money supply, it just went nuts. So like obviously, central bank demand is so big and there's just not that much gold that as long as that bid stays there. Yeah, it stays there. But there's nothing, you know, it's not a law that says that they won't take a break from buying. And if they take a break from buying, it's going to it would feel it, you know, not to mention there are so many people in it now that would have to puke along the way lower. Right. So like it's just you're right to think of the risk side of this. Like anything that's going straight up and no one can think of a reason it could go down. Nothing could be more risky than that. Like the price is always discovered by the marginal buyer or seller. And when one is convinced that you can't lose money, the only logical thing is to be fully margined. And and the amount of money people are making on being fully margin is like a positive feedback loop that has them consistently leaning into this thing over and over again. And inevitably, you know, that that margin situation and the highly leveraged becomes the marginal seller. And this is where you know, and you know, a lot of people listening to this. Oh, you guys are just idiots. There's there's no way like that, you know, gold is it's a new new global regime and the world is dynamically changing. But the thing is the one thing that hasn't changed is the nature of liquidity and market and a live auction pricing that happens in the market and dynamics such as margin are huge players on the field that that will drive flows. I mean, every CTA is loaded up on this max long every, you know, so systematic strategies are long, like there's going to be a point where it's just going to trigger a negative feedback loop that is going to drive a correction, right? And, and you know what, it'll just be amazing buying opportunities. It's not about being bearish gold. It's it's just the fact that you have to expect some sort of volunteer. And I'm going to stop writing. Let's talk about platinum plating. So like because platinum plating them is just doing the same shit, right? Like platinum look at a rock and rolling almost like it wants a top 3,000 tomorrow. And it's just a full on parabolic rise. And then the pladium just broke to a fresh new high once again, looking like 2100 is going to happen tomorrow. I mean, is your feeling that they're all going to probably correct at once? Yeah, probably. Like, I mean, I, I was a, I turned into a mega bowl on platinum pladium in May of 24. And it's funny. I posted a thing about this yesterday, but I did this and I didn't realize it at the time, but I did it. I bought this literally the same month that JP Morgan had downgraded. Spiny is still water one of the equities. Yeah. And guess what they did yesterday? They they upgraded it now that it's up 300% and up and to a new high. They're like, well, we're going to upgrade this bad boy. And then HSBC fall load suit and Paul is getting upgraded. Yeah. So like for me, it's like, well, I'm good. Like I literally sold two day. We hit a new all time high. That's good enough for me. Like it can double from here. It might double in three months or something, right? Like this is what you made this kind of stupid money. You have the risk. The risk you were is just changed. And yeah. And then for me, my fundamental thesis I had has basically played itself out. And in my own internal fair value of where a lot of this stuff should be, it's like, actually, we're probably overshooting it now. Like from a pure demand for these metals outside of, you know, speculative investment demand, that they're real demand that comes from vehicles and stuff. Like, I don't think it's this high. So yeah, I I love platinum long term, but but yeah, same as I love gold and silver long term, but this is too much for me. Yeah. All right. So let's talk crude oil. All right. So listen, here's my thesis and you can shit on it. Like you can tell me whether you agree or disagree, but like for me, something happened at the start of the year, where bad news after bad news keeps coming out on crude oil, it goes down for a day and it's bought on dip. And nothing gets me more interested when there's bad news and the asset stops going down on bad news. And for some reason, everything, like the story is so bearish on oil and oil just don't go down. It's like the honey badger. All of a sudden, like it just like it, it's being resilient. To me, when everyone hates it, no one cares. Nobody's interested in and there is no bullish thesis to be made, but yet the price is telling you some type of, you know, flows have pivoted. I like to pay attention to these stories. What's your take here? My take is literally exactly the same as yours. So, I mean, whenever, last year, whenever last summer of spring, late spring, OPEC comes out and they're like, like no one needs more oil and they're like, but we're going to give it to you anyway. Like it would have been crazy not to get book bearish at that point. Like we, oil was already cheap. We weren't in a shortage and they're like, cool, you guys want some more. So I didn't, I was, I was bearish until literally we broke that 50 day and I was like, because it's the same thing, like no one likes it. I can't make a bull case. I literally can't, like the Splendid Man sucks for the next few months. But here it is above the 50 day and it's like, but it's probably just a ran risk. You know, we get a little higher next thing, you know, like, well, we're not going to bomb a ran and it can't really go back down that much. Like the 50 day held despite the fact that some of that geopolitical risk got pulled out. And here we are. Not that far from testing that ran high. Now, the ran risk is coming back into the market. Because the US is moving assets into the region. So like, don't be wrong. Like there's still plenty of a ran risk in the price. But I'm in the same camp. Like the chart looks good. All of the sudden positioning, like no one likes it, sentiment, no one likes it. I'm sure it's one I ran headline. And this, and like the CTAs will have to flip and you're going to have all sorts of exactly a pivot in the flows. And then it becomes a positive feedback loop. That just basically feeds on itself, right? That could rip you to 70 for no reason other than you have to unwind so much. So many of the forces you got here. Okay. Well, we can't go to any further commodity without touching on the widowmaker. Like, what the hell? Like, okay, I'm going to make an admission to you, Chase. Like, I ate it on that gas this year. Like, I got so bullish back in the third quarter of last year. And I was riding it, almost bragging about how much money I'm making on that gas. And this thing gave me a punch to the solar plex like nobody's business. And it does exactly. That's why it's called the widowmaker. And then like, like, if I could get one position so spectacularly wrong, it's this one. And like, you know, I like cut the losses out of the position. And then in three days, this thing is right back up to the highs. And I've just got ego over my face. Like, I could not have screwed this one up anymore worse. Like, I got so many things right in the last year. And, but this is not the one. Like, this is the thing that just like thing. But like, how do you size this up? And what's your thoughts here? Yep. So I've been a Nat gas bull forever. And that's cost me at times. And it's made me a bunch of money at times. When it came to this, I did a good job in futures of navigating this. But I did the same thing virtually. I have like a 10 by 10 ETF portfolio, 10 ETFs, 10% each. And I totally round-trip the Nat gas ETF all the way up and then all the way down and the same. I may have, I may have bottom-ticked it even worse than you on getting out of that. And it's so dumb because like, I was smart enough to get back into futures whenever it got that down there. But for some reason, like, I could not put that Nat gas ETF back in. So here we are. Like, that destroyed the performance of that model portfolio. And where we're at today, like, I'm literally in a battle with myself. I have May futures of whether and and some crazy May calls for seven bucks. But I'm just in a battle on whether or not to let that ditch the May futures go here or keep riding it. And for people that don't know, like, this was all totally justified by the weather. Like, now December was brutally warm. And then now we have insane cold. So this is just how it works in the winter. Like, weather models shift wrap, you know, that bad. This is what happens. No, it's unbelievable. Like, I can see the argument long-term. Like, this is the UNL. That was the one I bungled up. But like, you go on a weekly. I mean, it's not like, you know, this thing can't still have lots of upside. But what a, what a vicious, vicious cycle on this. Anyway, let's touch on uranium. I'm going to use the very liquid uranium futures on a line chart here to just get a pulse on like what's happening. But generally, uranium has finally started to work its way higher. And while I know trade the futures, it's nice to kind of get a pulse on the trend. But clearly, there's been a uranium bow market in the equities for a while. But it's like, it really feels like the last three, four, five months that uranium has an actual commodity has finally started to join that party. How do you size up the uranium markets? And you think that this is the new bow market here? And where does it go? Yeah, I'll start by saying I've been a uranium permable for literally a decade now. It started for me in 2016. So I'm not a casual observer. I haven't been at all times. But I love uranium. I still do. I still don't think it's anywhere close to being, you know, at fair value. But I will say, when you look at like uranium, it's gone straight up here the last few weeks. And so that, it makes me a little nervous that it might be getting a little bit ahead of the skis. I haven't gotten rid of it yet in that like model portfolio. But I felt better about it buying it when it was in a bit of a drawdown than I do now after it's gone straight up. But even at like a hundred bucks, that's not enough to get enough production that you're going to need. So I think I really think you'd no doubt go to 200 without a problem before this cycle like becomes, you know, defeats itself. But there's going to be more pullbacks along the way. I thought we would get a pullback. I didn't think we'd get a pullback as big. And as long as the one we just got. So I don't know. That's why it's been a decade journey for me. I'm just kind of, I'm just going to be in there and be long until we get to like 200. And then I'm, then I'm going to move on. I sold some at a hundred the first time we hit it. Because there's like, all right, well, you got to take something off. But there you go. So listen chase. We're not, we don't have that much time to, I want to keep it a little more tight. I wanted to talk rates markets. But really there isn't that much crazy shit going on in the rates market unless you're looking at the JGBs. But, but it's been quiet on the US front on that way. So I'd rather do is I want to put you on the spot and ask for three charts that I forgot to mention that you think are interesting that you want to talk about. So is there something that I didn't ask you about or that you want to talk about? So I'll go to a space that I like and you can usually find me in the dumpster looking for stuff. So pull up Dow, just DOW. The chemical space is what what something that really has my attention right now. I feel like you're trying to bottom. No one likes this stuff. If you look at earnings expectations and what they analysts are saying like no one likes it. And there are some potential like catalysts from the from the middle side. So this is something I like and there's a bunch of different ones. You know, you could go CC. Is another one that I've been following closely as my attention. So what was the symbol CC? Yeah, it's key moors is I don't know why it's not shown up there. Okay, well, you know what's another one was a HUN like the Huntsman. They could pretty much looks like the same chart. Like they're all the same kind of thing. They've all gone through like a 70% wipeout and just starting to roll up. Exactly. I'm with you, but I've been looking at these two great minds. Think alike. What else is on your mind? Alright, pull up another single name. I usually don't do a single name stuff, but a company that I like is Rivian RIVN. The company I did not expect the like. But here we are. We kind of had a nice breakout of the long base pull up a weekly on this one. Help probably. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this is my favorite chart pattern is the it died and then it went sideways for years. Yeah, I actually like their fundamentals. It was an absurd IPO crazy valuation. They weren't even making money. But now the sudden like they're selling they're selling a good bit of cars. They're coming out with a new model. They're building a new plant. They're going from wildly unprofitable to only a little unprofitable. Like I actually like the company. So this is one that I'm kind of willing to bag hold for a few years because I actually like where it's heading. And I liked the breakout. Now you're kind of back under that breakout area, which is unfortunate. But I think this is what I like to keep going. Yeah. And let's see. Let me think of one one more maybe that kind of fits this mold. Zillow is or no, no, not Zillow, but zoom ZM. Fits the same chart pattern. This kind of like died in that year. I just love these. And this is another one that I like. And you can see that kind of like 90 area. You get back you get above that. It starts looking really, really good. Yeah. Well, listen, those are all great ideas. I love it. And you know, Chase, we don't do this enough. I'm going to tell. I'm going to tell Kev to take a week off every every couple of months so that we can pick your brain. You know, I love talking to a fellow chartist. And we always love just kind of confirmation bias between the two. There was a lot of that today. Sometimes I could have distributed it today. I was like, Oh, that's exactly how. There you go. You know, the charts don't lie. That's a problem there. But listen, Chase, why don't you take an opportunity to just give yourself a little plug? Where can people follow you? Find you, invest with you. Give us a rundown. Yep. So for obviously, like most people, easy places, Twitter, it's at pinecone macro. My personal website is pinecone macro.com. And that kind of leads to all that I write up a bunch of different stuff. And it's all, you can all find it all there. And then for the investments standpoint, I work in board capitals. I had a research. And that's boardcapitalmanagement.com. Awesome. All right. Well, Chase, thank you so much for joining us, buddy. And I look forward to doing it again with you. Cheers, buddy. Yes. Looking forward to it. Cheers.