THE OIL MARKET HAS SPOKEN (Guest: Craig Shapiro)

Hit it. It's Friday, January 29th, 2026 episode 284 on Patrick Sarasna. And I'm Kevin Muir. This week we welcome Craig Shapiro to the show. We have a fantastic discussion where we discuss the state of macro markets. Where are the opportunities lie going forward? And what it was like working with Steve Cohen. Then Patrick is back with talking charts. And it's a spicy spicy session, so we've decided to go a week early. We had to get we had to get some talking charts, Patrick. And folks, I'm going to have to have a beer here during this session. And Danny normally tell you to introduce the beer, but I wanted to leave it a surprise for you here. I'm having the Sagadish. But look at the size of this bad boy. Today was quantity over quality. It's one of these days in the markets where you're going to need to go big. But what's your call on this beer? When you bring out the litre bottle of sagrash, you know the session is on. That's the way it works. So it happens when gold starts moving in $400 increments. No shit, buddy. No shit. All right. Give us some side effects. But nothing in this podcast should be viewed as investment advice listeners should consult an investment professional before making any decisions regarding topics mentioned in the show side effects of too much. How do I include the gold parabala? Parabala? Parabala. I can't even say it. Psychosis. And I know you're going to leave all that in there. You'll play a whole oil shock syndrome just having trouble with my words. It's just what you do when you make me go on and off week. And finally the FOMC irrelevant syndrome. That one is very relevant to. Yeah. So irrelevant. We relevant. All right. So let's get the guest on. Before we get to our main guest, we thought we'd take a moment to play a brief clip from our Christmas special where Marvin Barth made the absolutely terrific call. The Kevin Warch would be picked as Fed Chair. Well done, Marvin. Do you think the markets got wrong with Scott Beth? Sorry. With Kevin Hasseb eating the leading contender right now? Well, I'm glad they've moved that way. I've been saying that all along. I said it was not going to be a message or or or or or Warch. And you know, when markets were at their peak with Hasseb, I was saying, no, it's going to be a message or excuse me, it's going to be a Warch. Bessent has dropped out for me. I would have thought that he was going to choose himself. Yeah. And a chaining move. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I think we talked about it last time. The reason why I've sort of pulled back on that one is I learned from a variety of different sources that Scott Bessent is really deeply involved in national security policies. Oh. Maybe more so than Pete Hasseb. And that means he ain't going anywhere. One, because the president ain't going to let him and two because he's clearly he sees other things he's doing that are much bigger than anything at the Fed, which is where normally you think a macro guy would want to go. So I think it's going to be Warch. Oh, you think it's Warch? So you think Hasseb is wrong? Like the market's still over at anyone. That lab is absolutely I think it's definitely going to be Warch. And that would be I'm 99% sure it's not going to be Hasseb. All right. It's our great pleasure to welcome to the show Craig Shapiro. Craig is the macro strategist at Ninja Trader Live. Craig, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. You know what? We were chatting a little bit before getting to know each other and I was going through your career. And this is going to be tons of fun. You must have a million great stories before we get to them. Why don't you tell us like where did you grow up? Like did you go and you study like markets or economics to school? Like did you always know you wanted to end up in finance? Yeah. I mean, I grew up on Long Island and my father was an entrepreneur, but he was always kind of in the markets. And so it was kind of an affinity for that. With my bar mitzvah money, I invested into some stocks. I think they generally did pretty poorly. And it's funny because someone actually gave me five shares of Philip Morris from my bar mitzvah, which doesn't really make a lot of sense because I don't know why you give a kid a cigarette stock for. But I think that was by far the best performing stock that I think I had through the following 10 years. But so that was kind of the background. I went to Cornell, graduated in 2001 kind of during the recession. So it wasn't a great time in markets, but was higher into basically credit Swiss's merchant banking group in 2001 and 2002. Not a ton of deal flow going on, a little bit boring. And so thankfully at the end of 2002, I was able to move over. And I joined a hedge fund called Osprey Management towards the end of 2002, which downed by Dwight Anderson and became the largest commodities hedge fund in the world, basically over the course of the next seven, eight years. So great experience there. Yeah. And that was a terrific time to be at a commodity hedge fund because that's like in the midst of the bricks, right? Like I mean, it caught the bottom there pretty well. Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, shift out of dollar, you know, out of dollar assets, you know, into commodities, China entering the WTO massive commodity demand explosion, limited supply response, oil was moving. I need to do a natural gas and copper and everything really. And so it was a great, it was a great run there from 2002 through, you know, really the financial crisis. We had a very well publicized blow up in the summer of 2008, unfortunately, a little bit before kind of everyone else was blowing up, but we had a tremendous basis mismatch trade going on. We were long stocks and short commodities. I'm just a member like the most of the equities kind of did incredibly poorly first while commodities continue to rip through the summer through June and July. And we also had a liquidity mismatch whereby we were a long time of illiquid crap. I mean, real garbage, right? Talking about the end of a, you know, towards the end of the commodity cycle harder to find cheap stuff in the big cap names. So you move down the liquidity curve, you start buying, you know, resources in Sierra Leone and in Kazakhstan and in Russia and a lot of esoteric places with high geopolitical premiums. And so when the, you know, when liquidity starts to tighten up, those things go to zero and that's basically where they went. And so, yeah, unfortunately, the equities fell first and we had to basically stop out of most of our commodity trades, which ultimately really would have paid off through the summer and into the fall of 2008, fun shut down. And so, yeah, I had to find something else to do. I was 28 years old. I was a partner there. I was ahead of research and I had to reinvent myself. So, you know, actually, like what your role there was, so you were the head of research. And so when you first came on, did you come on as like a research associate? I came on as a, as a research analyst covering largely covering equities in commodity industries that did not have a tradable commodity. So think chemicals, paper, steel, shipping. That was my, you know, that was my bread and butter. Obviously, the firm broadly speaking did everything in energy and metals and hags too. And so people covered those and we traded all the commodities. So was there for about, you know, five years and then the most senior analyst and head of equity research left, they went to start their own firm. I got promoted into the director of equity research role, became a partner. Had a couple of good years. We had a good run. Made some good money and then that 2008 experience, you know, for a lot of people was obviously incredibly challenging and, you know, for us, you know, clearly was, you know, it was unfortunate. Pretty young too was youngest partner and my life got trimmed upside down. Just had my second kid in the summer of 2008 and then all of a sudden, you know, it was all gone. So, yeah, you learn lesson, you learn a lot, you know, you learn a lot of lessons at a young age. It's a big help. So, you know, unfortunate for the journey. Well, you have a good attitude about it. And you also, you let your second kid at 28, you had kids young. I do remember that period though and you were, it's funny. You were saying how you were surprised about the liquidity that disappeared. I remember I was playing a lot of like just Canadian, like small cap resource names and a lot of them would come out as private placements that you have to hold for three or four months or whatever. And I remember saying to myself, like, I got nervous about the markets and I was like, okay, I got to stop doing these because I don't want to be stuck into paper that I can't trade. And I thought I had done everything great and I thought I had, you know, really trimmed everything up and that there was no extra. And I was like, how did I lose so much money on so few positions? Like, and it was kind of shocking how quickly they went from like, you know, two bucks to 20 cents. It was really, it was really unbelievable. I mean, because because we had such a large fund, we had a huge public's fund and a private equity fund as well. You know, anybody with a story, anyone with a deposit anywhere in the world, you know, or anybody with a farm anywhere was coming into our office, pitching a story and, you know, we were still kind of in that, you know, tail end of the commodity boom market, but the, you know, things seemed pretty good. And so, you know, we found ourselves becoming three and four and five percent into the investors and a lot of these smaller exploration type vehicles and thinking the China story was gonna continue forever. And so, but in the first and second, first half of 2008, when we saw the liquidity start to move out, we thought, okay, we could hedge a lot of this risk with commodity shorts, we could be long junior copper miners trading, had very, very discounted valuations. As long as we're short copper, we'll be okay. And so, and the mistake, obviously, is that basis mismatch of equities versus commodities, but really it's also the liquidity profile of being long small caps when the liquidity's going out the door, you can't be short enough copper, right? Again, yeah. Again, it's your positions. And then from a timing perspective, a lot of these names started to roll over. And it's in first half of the year, and particularly in July and August. And crude made a new high in July, I think 145 or 148 bucks. And I remember also, we were short, we were short dry freight forward freight agreements. I don't know if you remember those, so it's a dry bulk. And like those were trading, we probably started shorting about $80,000 a day, went through $125 or $150,000 a day. Those contracts ultimately went to basically zero. You know, in September and October, we were gone. We had to cover all, you know, because the losses in the equity book, overwhelming everything. So huge lessons learned there on those basis matches and liquidity profile of your portfolio, your ability to get out. We couldn't get out of five percent positions in junior minors, right? They would just take huge haircuts. We'd bound up having to trade out of a lot of those things. And after we had already shut the fund down, and we gated people, you know, took months, took months, quarters to get out of some of those positions. And back to your point about this, the idea that you can't be short enough copper. The unfortunate part is that if other people are doing the trade with you, and then all of a sudden they start, you know, the liquidity contracts, they're actually covering their, like as they sell their stocks, they're covering their copper. It's actually going opposite way on you. So not only is it not a good enough hedge in terms of it not falling fast enough, in extreme cases, it's actually rising on you. - Yeah, that's that that's that basis mismatch that I can, you know, it could be toxic, right? And so, and the industry is also, at least back then, and I suspect it's this, you know, similar now. It's not that big of an industry. So when people understand that, you know, large hedge fund, New York hedge fund, commodities hedge fund has significant short exposure in XYZ commodity, you know, that news, that news gets out. And obviously there's been well publicized, you know, other funds that have gone through similar types of things in different commodities, whether it be not gas or copper or whatever. And so your positions kind of get out, you kind of get, you kind of get screwed. So, yeah, that was the story. - The story from long-term capital that I love in the book, when genius failed, and it's when Maryweather's in all sorts of trouble, and he calls his, you know, his ex-ball street, you know, broker from someone and he says, "It's how he endured the comes, and he's been on the street forever." And he tells Maryweather, "Okay, show me your book." And Maryweather shows it to him and he says, "Well, what are you down?" And he says, "We're down 50." And he goes, "You're done." And he says, "Why?" And he goes, "Well, I got, we got profit, we got this." And we go, "Look, all these things, "you're trying to say, it goes once people realize that you're in trouble, "they're gonna squeeze you the whole way." And then he was bang on correct. Okay, so that was obviously traumatic experience, but you end up going to another terrific shop, and I'd just, I'd love to hear the stories about this next one, and tell us where you end up and kind of give us some flavor about what it was like moving from Osprey to this new place. - Yeah, so after Osprey trying to redefine myself, I wound up joining an ex partner of Osprey for a couple of years at a small fund, and then was able to actually move over to a SAC spin-off fund, first, and then when that fund didn't make it, I was able to kind of move over to SAC. And so I worked with Steve towards the end of 2012 through really the end of 2015. And so three, very good years at SAC, with then transitioned to.72 while I was there, running a commodities, equities portfolio across those same industries, industrials, materials, energy, had a team of four analysts working with me at the peak, managed a good deal of capital, had three very good years with Steve, it was an incredible experience. And the low net community often, at least back then, it was harder to find long short portfolio managers that could be successful, because the correlations are not necessarily in the idiosyncratic, right? You need to get the commodity, right? You need to get the macro, right? You need to get the dollar, right? And a lot of folks who traded these bases kind of didn't do that. They were busy trading Rio versus BHP or IP versus packaging core or per Dow versus Lionel, whatever. But Steve allowed me the opportunity to be a bit more directional, which was great, which is why we were pretty successful, because my prior experience of nailing the commodity cycles was very helpful. So we had very good years trading these commodity related equities in a more directional basis. And we're able to balance the risk, balance the net, balance the data with using index hedges or at times commodity hedges. So it was great. We had a great run there. I sat for three years behind Steve in his trading row in Connecticut, learned a ton from him and really just a tremendous experience. So what would you say was the biggest surprise going there? Like you say you learned some things. What was the one thing you were like, oh, I never would have thought about that. And that was kind of a big shock. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I didn't necessarily appreciate just kind of listening to Steve and overhearing him is kind of his myopia on execution, on trading. I mean, I had thought it kind of been an investor, been more of an investor than a trader. And so more thematic, more not really caring is much about exit and entries. And so when you learn, when you manage a large pool of capital, and at one point we were north of $1/2 billion of capital, getting in and getting out of things really matters. And there's a lot of slippage if you kind of screw it up. And Steve was obsessed with execution. And so he kind of definitely drilled that into me, just making sure I was aware of that. The other thing too is booking profits. You know, you're up, you book, you know, make sure you're booking profits. Always putting P and L behind you. And so, you know, he didn't really love drawdowns. No one does. But I mean, if you've been on a good run, and then you have any drawdown, you kind of take it all back, he's not tolerant of that. Right? And so you've got to have, you know, he's happy to let you let your winners run. But when the trend starts in the other direction, you need to de-risk, you need to gross down, you need to have booked some of that P and L so that you could keep growing your portfolio over time. And so, you know, those risk management things were very helpful for me, particularly from my prior experience where, you know, the fund blew up. So I definitely didn't want to, I definitely didn't want to do that again. But, you know, Steve was great in that regard for me. And so what, are you a met's pin? I am. He's been a met's pin, a met's pin, much to my, you know, much to my chagrin. I think it was, yeah, I think it was in 2015, we were last in the World Series against the Royals. And I brought my daughters to Game 5 and the met's lost at home. And I had to carry my daughter like two miles back to our car. This is before Steve bought the met's, but, okay. But, yeah, it's a labor of love. I've at least I'm a John, I'm a New York Giants fan, which at least for some years had been good and I'm a jet fan, that would be horrible. But more recently, the Giants of-- And so what do you think about Steve's moves recently with the met? I think, look, I mean, he's trying to, you know, I think they've been, you know, they've been good. I mean, he's doing what he can. I think he's trying to run the team at a little bit more like a business in some degree. But, I like the moves, they've, you know, but look, something, and he's, I think the other thing too is when he bought, you know, he makes, if he makes mistakes, he cuts risk, right? He makes, he makes an investment. It doesn't work, whatever. He's paid a lot of money for it. But he's like, this isn't working for us, like how to be cut it. And I think that, you know, that portfolio, the risk manager philosophy, you know, it's hard to say that you could do it with people too, but when you're the owner of a baseball team, you can't. So hopefully, hopefully the next couple of years will look at the job done there. My favorite Steve's story is in the GFC, I think he was having all of his traders, and a lot of them were kept trying to buy the dip and they could be running over. And eventually, I don't know if this is true or not, this is the story I heard. Eventually, he just said to everyone, "You go home, it's me and whatever, this guy, we're trading the book for now, and for like six months or whatever, as they kind of went through the really terminal at point points, they just, he took over." And I think that that, you know, discipline in terms of the risk is really truly what made him different. - Yeah, he's just maniacal about risk management, and execution, you know, trading execution. You know, I think Jimmy, look, he gets obviously, you know, he's got 100 plus portfolio managers delivering him great ideas, you know, kind of all the time. So he's got, he's playing with, you know, the better names or worse names if he's on the short side, but still, you know, exit and entry and reading the tape. I mean, he's been doing it forever. He's probably the best that's ever done it from that perspective. And so, yeah, when it's time for him to take over, he just, you know, he takes over and probably the same thing with the match, right? Like, he makes, you know, he's like, he's not afraid to make the decision. He's not afraid to make hard decisions, make cuts, reord, read, you know, and redistribute capital and kind of keep him moving, keep re-inventing himself. So, you know, yeah, it was a good run. And basically, what went on of happening at the end towards the end of 2015, I went with him to the idea. And so, like, I want to run a little bit more directional, a little bit more volatility. And we'd love to do that, you know, with you internally, and the firm at the time, I'm going through some transitions and he was like, yeah, I look where, you know, that's not the real direction I want to set a precedent, but I'm happy to have you, if you wanted to launch your own fund, I'll support you in doing that. And so he did, he gave me his blessing to do that, I was able to take my track record with me and one of my analysts with me and became a partner. And we tried to run a more directional strategy in 2016 and '17 and '18. And it didn't really, you know, look, it didn't really go according to plan. I wish you would have went better. Messed up the Trump election night scenario to some degree. And so, looked, you know, the made a bet, tried to get the fund off the ground, it did, but it didn't really work out. And so by the end of 2017, we shut the fund down. And then I've just kind of been bouncing around to do a bunch of different things. Yeah, basically for the last few years, kind of just been trading my own account, my own family office money. And then more recently, I've been doing some more financial consulting, more strategy work, very active, obviously, on social media and on my substack. And then, you know, very recently kind of joined up with Ninja Trader, which is the largest futures retail broker in the country. And I've become the macro strategist there. So I've been there for, you know, as a consultant for the last three months and then joined full time earlier this year. And, you know, trying to just give expert guidance, cross asset macro guidance to, you know, the retail trading community. I'm on the live show in the mornings and do a Sunday show. And so, yeah, it's been very, continue writing. And so it's been a very, you know, very good experience. All right. So there's lots to talk about in terms of the market because it's quite a week that we've chosen to have you here. It's perfect. I guess let's just start with the gold and the silver. Today, we're taping this Friday after the market closed. I would, is that the largest one they move ever in silver? I was, someone reminded me today that the, that the move lower in silver today is equivalent to where silver was trading at a year ago. So, you know, basically, we, we, we, we, we wound up being at one point today. I think we were down 40 bucks. And silver was 40 bucks. So last, who was in the mid 20s? There in the mid 30s about a year ago. So, I mean, what a historic run in silver in precious, you know, even more commodities lately. I mean, it's been kind of wild. And, you know, look, I mean, part of it obviously is supply demand driven fundamental base. Part of it is the dollar debasement, you know, phenomenon going on. Part of it is just leverage and speculation and everything that's going on there. So it kind of has hit the, hit the trifecta of, of euphoria. And the volumes have just exploded, right? Futures volumes, options volumes today. I don't know where they clothe. I saw one point SLV had treated like over five million options contracts, mostly for expert today. So it's been a, it's been a pretty crazy, pretty crazy run and huge reversal now. We're seeing in precious. So now, do you feel that the rally, you know, obviously it became the spectator of, you know, frenzy towards the end. But let's, you know, one of the things you mentioned was the debasement trade. First of all, do you think that that was a legitimate worry? And then with Warch coming, is the debasement trade off like off the table? Where do you stand in terms of like, how much of this is just a correction in a, you know, larger move that we should be, you know, expect these sorts of corrections? Or is this the final end of this kind of frenzy? Yeah. I mean, look, I do think that there is, and obviously, precious as an asset class trades highly correlated. I do think there are some differences between the gold component and the silver and a set of component of it. Now, I think there is, you know, I think silver really did kind of drive a lot of this, you know, higher because of the supply, demand and balances and, you know, how much silver is needed in solar panels and in AI. And so there's a dynamic in play, I think about the needs for silver in the future and the physical needs and, you know, whatever China is doing on export controls or not. And obviously, there's been a shift and the mentality of countries wanting to procure and hold their own resources. So there's some dynamic, you know, further dynamic in play there, potentially in silver. I think silver is less of a debatement trade. Gold is clearly more of a fiat debatement trade. Look, we've seen, you know, really since, you know, probably the first quarter of 2022 with the Russia move on Ukraine and the sanctioning of reserves. We've seen how gold has been reintroduced as a neutral reserve asset and treasuries and sovereign bonds have declined in that role if governments can just come in and expropriate your reserves. As a country, you're going to hold rest reserves in that country. And so I think that dynamic really surprised probably the rest of the world when the US and the EU kind of decide to do that to Russia. And so I think gold has disconnected from, you know, real, the real rates trade because of that. And that trend has been in place for the last, you know, the last whatever close to four years. And I think with respect to what Trump has been doing more recently, look, he's in favor of a weaker dollar in order to bring back manufacturing, re-short America, bring back jobs. And Elon Musk, we're going to do that as with a much weaker currency. He wants rates lower. He wants to, you know, put up export barriers and trade and tariffs and so in order to do that. And so we're seeing, again, another reason to have the dollar be debased. And so gold kind of picks up some benefit from that as well. More recently too, this move in Venezuela, of coming in there and just kind of taking the oil. Right? Well, I mean, it wasn't really our oil to be taken, right? Other countries have investments, including China, have investments in Venezuela. And so if the US is going to be more aggressive in just going out in the world and taking things from other people, well, those are the people who own things in dollars are going to think, well, you might need to own less dollars. I think I have to have my access trade balances stored away from anything that's tied into the dollar. So gold really picks up the incremental from that too. And so I think gold was-- silver was driving gold higher. And then gold helped drive silver high. And kind of was just packing forth dynamic in play. And then look, I think the comments earlier in the week from Trump about being OK with the dollar moves kind of led to this-- I don't know, just led to this kind of maybe this final-- not this final, but certainly it's what seemingly a blowoff top in gold the other night. And I got-- I don't know, was that last night? It was a turn to go this way. But I think we got up to like 5,600 in the Asia session. And clearly what we've been seeing, right, is we've been seeing Asian demand for precious has been strong. Like every night we come in and the prices are up. And then in the US, it's-- we kind of check back a little bit. So clearly the metal is flowing east. Asian countries are trying to cure more resources, store more wealth away from dollars into precious. And so is it over? I don't think it's over. But man, I mean, the moves today are you have to be clearly more historic. And the volatility has just been face ripping, right? And so if you're a risk manager and you're looking at guys and who trade these metals, you're telling-- you got to take your risk now, right? And the Varsha potential is elevated with volatility. And so I think you just kind of got to the point where the risk, which you know, my friend who trades this up pretty actively, is something like they'd ask spreads and silver options or just you could drive a truck through them. This is happening in natural gas also early in the week. So volatility across the commodity space has just gone through the roof. And so I think that through the course of the week, we've probably started to see risk managers giving taps on the shoulder to folks that start de-risking these portfolios, which when there has been such a highly correlated move to start the year between weak dollar trades, precious metals trades, EM equity trades, kind of all moving together, you start to now have a little bit of a crescendo effect here, right? As the dollar stopped falling and start to have the will of bounce, then you get volatility in precious and some turnaround there. And then today, you're finally starting to see, oh, that's a couple of days, EM equity is starting to underperform, Ozzy had a blow off top of their night as corrected. Mexican peso, blow off top, right? So you're starting to see a little bit of a crescendo here of risk off mentality. Oh, let's say over the course of the last 48 hours. I think that's likely to continue into next week. The worst stuff maybe has a little bit to do with it, but I think really more it's about portfolio, de-risking, de-leveraging. Similar to what we saw in August of 2024, with again, carry trade on wind or even February of 2018 with the Volma Getten, right? Just these episodic, vol events that force system de-leveraging over a very short period of time to cleanse positions. I think we're in one right now. Do you think it expands to even equities? Well, look, I mean, I, I mean, how are you, I tweeted this early today, I was just kind of thinking, like, if you're a business that buys the needs to buy commodities and commodities are whipping around with 100%, you know, 100% realized volatility, well, how do you make, how do you make decisions about how much you're gonna buy this next month, the month after? And so I think you, you have a little bit of an uncertainty, dynamic, reintroducing itself. So I do think that this commodity vol, which is filtering now into FXV, is likely to filter into equity vol. And so under the hood, look, it didn't really, it hasn't really shown up yet in NASDAQ and the S&P and they're both trading, you know, still up on the year, but under the hood, of course, the last several days, there's been violence in meme stocks, in the most shorted names in unprofitable tech. Things that led to start the year when people were believing in a broadening out rally have been face planted, right? Because these are the things that are, people don't really know as well. They are beholden to a low-vol, they need a low-vol environment to work. And so when you start to see this ball pick up, these things have been destroyed. And so that rotation to start the year, now's been going kind of back the other way, right? NASDAQ has outperformed the Russell now for, you know, I think six days in the row after, basically, three weeks of the other way. So I think we're starting to see that the bleed into equity markets, and I think as we come in next week, I think we're gonna see more of that. - Okay, I wanna go backtrack to the dollar, 'cause you made a comment and I thought spot on correct, and I get a lot of pushback when I make the same arguments, and I just love to hear your thinking. I do think Trump wants a lower dollar. And even though he says, oh no, no, I really want a strong dollar, ultimately, like if you listen to what he believes that in terms of, you know, selling to the rest of the world and what's happened to the manufacturing base, all those things need a lower US dollar. And so although we have gone a lower US dollar against some currencies, it's actually been pretty, like yes, there's been some volatility, but it hasn't been as, there hasn't been as much friction on the dollar as I would have figured. And I'm wondering if that's actually the next round of real effects, sorry, the real volatility is gonna come in the effects markets, and we're actually gonna get for currency wars. And I was just wondering what you're thinking about that. Yeah, look, I mean, I don't know, I thought that I have a couple of things, but what Trump comes to mind is Trump makes this, you know, the announcement about this whole Greenland stuff, right? And so, you know, we're gonna tariff Europe if they don't just give us Greenland. And then he goes to Davos and, you know, gives a reasonably hawkish speech about the state of the world and where the US fits in. And has some meetings, I suspect with, you know, leaders and wealthy people and market makers and movers and everything. And then ultimately a few hours later, basically decides, okay, we're actually like, we're good, like we're not gonna take Greenland. And I'm not gonna tariff anybody. And I'm just gonna go, I'm just, you know, it's all good again. And so, and I wonder, do he, you know, is he walking away from Davos, like in a position of power or to the rest of the world, kind of tell him to f off? And I'm not really sure, but the reaction from the currency market was that the rest of the world is kind of telling him to f off. Or that there's a, that there's a consolidate, coordinated effort now across multit, you know, a multitude of the West to allow for a weaker dollar. Because the reaction of the DXY and basically every currency since last Wednesday up until today was dollar week, right? And very weak, right? I mean, so we saw a very big breakdown in the dollar over the course of the last, you know, week. So I don't know if it's because, you know, there's a Davos Accord or a Marlago Accord that was reached, or if it was the rest of the world, kind of fed up with Trump and just saying, let's start the process of selling U.S. dollar assets now, because this guy is out of control. I don't really know what the reality is, but I do know that the president has a view about what makes America great, what makes America strong, and it's making things, right? And he believes that we can reshore manufacturing imminently and that we should be able to get, you know, a restoration of manufacturing jobs like tomorrow. And really, we meet in order to be competitive globally, the dollar needs to depreciate massively, right? And so-- - It's a percent. - Yeah, so I don't know that, you know, if he knows the numbers or not, but what I do know is what he wants. And so the only way to get what he wants is to have a reasonably weaker dollar. - Okay. - Now, I think the issue is, if we get an accelerated pace of dollar decline, then you get weeks like this where commodity prices roof, right? And so then you bring back inflation expectations, you bring back worries about the future state of the dollar. And I think the American public is, you know, maybe, you know, American public understands, I think this week dollar story, and they know what happens when the dollar is weak and gold prices rip and oil prices rip and natural gas prices have the kind of week that they had, people see that the dollar weakness is gonna bring back inflation. And so maybe we can't have a massively deaccelerating dollar quickly, but I think the trend will be lower. And so I don't know, I do think it's interesting that he made those comments. The dollar kind of makes a new low. And then, you know, immediately, almost immediately laughter, best thing comes out and it's like that, you know, that's not true. - Yeah, yeah. - We've always saved our strong dollar. It's got a, has it was out this morning, kind of saying they say we've saved our strong dollar. And then the worst pick, I don't know, I mean, I don't necessarily think the worst pick has much to do with the dollar move today. I think that, you know, it's really more about online. But if you think about, Worsh, I think he's for lower rates, but a smaller balance sheet, right? But he's also, he's also been at the Fed. So I think there's a dynamic in play here where Powell, who is largely threatened to stay on for another 18 months because he was concerned about the Fed pick. Now I think has a really more difficult time staying on and justifying that decision. Because Worsh is clearly qualified. He's already been at the Fed. I think it would be bad form in practice for Powell to stay on just to fight independence when the guy who's being put in there was already at the on the Fed. So I think that, you know, I think potentially what happens here is there was some sort of deal that was made, has Worsh's picked, Powell leaves, they also dropped the DOJ case, Powell goes off and into the sunset. And then Trump's able to, you know, bring Miren back in for Powell see, you know, later on. And then you have, you know, a larger component of the Fed where there's dobs and they do drive the front end yields lower. And they do work to actually lower interest, you know, lower interest expense and bring down, you know, the budget deficit that's associated with interest. And so, but again, and I think that that, you know, helps kind of lower rates will help bring the, I think will help bring the dollar down to in their mind. So I see the dollar as continuing to weaken. I mean, I look back to where we were in, you know, end of 2017 and DXY was under 90, right? I mean, so we're at 97 change now. I think, you know, I wouldn't, wouldn't be surprised if we saw, you know, a reasonably weaker dollar here over the course of the, you know, let's say the next six months or so. - One of the things about Worsh though is if you look at the history of where he's been, he's generally on the more hawkish side. And so it's kind of a lot of folks were scratching their heads going, why did he pick them? He doesn't seem like it's really what Trump's looking for. Any theories? - Oh, any conspiracy theories or any just theories in general? - Or just comments like about, look, I mean, I think, I think Hassett was a very tough pick because he, I think he's seen as more of a lackey for the president. And I think the bond market was more, would be more concerned about him. So I don't think he was, and I think, I think Reader was probably an interesting pick, but I don't think he knows, I don't think Trump knows him, per se, and so I don't think, I think Trump kind of feels like he was kind of forced into Powell, even though he didn't know him. And I think he regrets that decision. And so, and I think, look, he put Waller off the Fed too, but I don't know, not get the sense that there's much, much affinity between Waller and Trump. And so, Worsh is a Trump guy, right? There is a long history between Trump and Worsh's father-in-law, and Worsh is kind of in the know, and Worsh knows Dracameller and doesn't work with Dracameller. And so there's a reasonably insescerous relationship between all of them. So I think Worsh was a pick that Trump could feel very comfortable with. And look, over the course of the last several years, Worsh has shifted from that original hawkish bias into something a little more different. I don't think it's necessarily because he was advocating for the Fed share exclusively. But look, I think he brings, there's an interesting dynamic here where if you lower rates and you bring down the balance sheet, that you're actually achieving more of a main street, over a Wall Street dynamic. And if you believe that that's what Trump is actually wants to do, and we could argue maybe he doesn't really want to do that. I think he was elected to do that, but he did get concerned about that in April, right? With the follow on of Liberation Day. And so he did taco on that view. But I do think he wants to be seen as more of a populist and wants to make more strides for main street. So look, I think part of the issue for main street Is that acid? prices are way too high. Right. And so you can't, like, you can't make mainstream win without Wall Street losing because of the pricing of the stock market. Right. So I think there's a, there's an argument to be made that if you can bring interest rates down and lower the cost of borrowing for the government and also for people that you'll reduce the deficit, which can help control the long end. And you reduce the size of the balance sheet, you take some of the froth out of the asset markets. And I like, you know, look, is it going to work? I don't know, but it's better that we've seen tremendous, you know, the case shaped economy is growing even wider, right? I mean, the disparity between the 1% and everybody else is growing to never before seen levels. So it's not clear that continuing on a path of trying to just push the stock market higher and have more and more people fall into lower shape, lower case, lower part of the K is going to work. So this is another work. And so I think, Warsh, a plan to reduce the size of the balance sheet would also bring rates down actually, you know, could fit in with what the, the president is wants. And if you think about what Besson can do, right? If you think about the shifting the size of the balance sheet lower, people are concerned, well, that means the long end is going to blow out and yields going to move higher. But if Besson controls the supply of duration, meaning he doesn't ever really turn the dead out, he stops issuing 30s, he issues less 10s, then the, you know, will be a little bit more starved for the long end. That should put a bid under the long end. So you can actually kind of, you know, down, you know, phase shift, the entire curve, lower. Um, maybe, maybe we can, maybe, maybe it would work. And I think that in that environment, the dollar probably will continue to grind lower, but it won't collapse. We won't have this hyperinflated commodity environment that people are concerned about. And so I don't know, I think, you know, for 24 hours of thinking about it again, I'm like, I don't know. I think this is a, I think this is a good pick if you are of the view that Trump wants to care about main street over Wall Street wants to address the affordability issues and wants to get reelected because right now the polling data is not working in his favor. And so he needs to do something to help address that polling data. Can he pull off a asset price decline that doesn't really screw everybody over? And that what I don't know. Um, but is it worth a try? I mean, I think so. You know, the funny part about it is I just, I was smiling because this idea about starving the long end of duration was what, uh, bests and Moran were having fits about in terms of yelling, doing it. And the ironic part was she wasn't even doing it at the time. The balance, she, the, the treasuries, the stock of treasury debt was the longest in history. And she was just trying to pull it back from this extreme longness. And now so they sit in there shitting all over her, talking about all that, you know, how she's irresponsible. And now they're going to do it, which I have no problem with them doing it. I just, I, the hypocrisy bothers me. That's what bothers me. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I agree. I mean, but I think, and look, as a country finances itself more in the front end, um, that's going to be, that's going to be bearish for the, for the currency, right? So it actually kind of serves, it serves the purpose, right? And so as long as they can control inflation, which is a tough ask, but they, they'll have to, you know, feel like what's Trump trying to do? Right? He's coming after profit margins, right? He's coming after the drug companies. He's coming after the insurance companies. He's coming after the banks on credit cards. He's coming after defense companies, right? Again, the hypocrisy though, if imagine if Biden had said, you know, like, isn't Elizabeth Warren all four of the 10%, you know, limit on the credit card because it's a very leftist policy. And I have no problem with it. Fine, choose it, but just be honest about, you know, don't be against it. Just because someone else is against it. And, you know, it's only when you're in power. Anyway, so let's, let's, let's go move it away from politics and let's go to back to the stock market. Let's let you add some really interesting things about the pain that's happening below the surface and like underneath the covers. What do you see there? What are you worried about and what are you watching? Yeah, I mean, the, what we had, you know, obviously the AI story has been the, the story, or at least was the story last year, um, mag seven and, and affiliated names. And so look, as we kind of entered 2026 though, the narrative on the AI cap X story had begun to shift, right? We've moved from an environment of funding all this growth with internally generated free cash flow to one where hyper scalers are hitting the debt markets more. Um, and so we are, you know, needing more capital from external parties to finance this growth. The markets have figured this out to some degree and a bit a little bit more discriminating in the way that they are buying the, you know, the mag seven or tech broadly speaking and are truly trying to focus in areas where the profits are going. And so we've seen, right? Software has really gotten hit. Microsoft's gotten hit in a big way. Oracle's gotten hit. And we've seen some transition into memory names, which have done really well, uh, micron and, you know, in sandisk and some of these other names, right? So we're moving up the value chain to some degree where the profit, where the profits are. Um, but the other thing we saw is just a broad shift out of tech into other areas, right? And a broad shift out of, let's say, the dollar US exceptionalism trade to EM equities to commodity related equities, to energy related equities, to power, right? Things that are going to power and grow the AI cap X materials part of it. Um, I have been big winners this year and also, uh, EM equities and dollar weak beneficiaries have really, you know, performed exceptionally well this year as well. And so those have been really the, the leaders, you know, for the lab, you know, really for the last three, three weeks or so. Um, but this week, I thought was a interesting transition week. And we started to see a little bit of a shift back into, uh, quality over crap, uh, into some of the mag seven into Nasdaq out of Russell, but really under the hood, what we've seen as some of these leaders have really gotten, you know, destroyed. I mean, unprofitable tech, um, is now down 12% on the year after being up 12%, um, high data momentum today was down five and a half. I'm just looking at my screen right now. High short interest names, down 5% today, um, low value down 5% today, said profitless tech, meme stocks down 4% today. And this trend has been going on now, you know, for the entirety of this week. And I think it's a reflection of the fact that volatility kind of cross asset volatility is starting to pick up. Um, it's picking up in commodities, picking up a little bit of FX. Uh, it's not necessarily showing up to the degree in Nasdaq and, and, and, uh, S&P yet, because those, those are driven day to day by the exorbitant amount of capital that's in the zero data expiry, sell-vol strategies, right? So you have this kind of weird dynamic where the indices day to day are driven by this sell volatility trade, but under the under the hood, we get kind of, you know, violent rotations and violent dispersions, um, imply correlations have largely been, you know, through the floor low, um, because we get, you know, the indices are kind of paying at a certain level and day to day. One stocks up, one sector stuff, the other one's getting killed and it kind of creates this balance of the overall indexes. But I think we're starting to see in this week, in the last couple of days with the indices being a little bit weaker. I think we're starting to see this cross asset volatility seep into, uh, the equity market. And I would expect that next week, if the dollar continues to rally, then the crowded trades that have worked this year are going to continue to underperform. I think you're going to start to drag down everything else, right? Week dollar trades, precious metals trades, EM equity trades have been highly correlated. It kind of all started to break this week. And I think next week in the dollar continues to rally. Uh, we're going to see a broader kind of fall up environment, uh, that is more concerning for equities as an asset class, uh, you know, of course, in the next couple of weeks, I think. You touched upon the dispersion trade there and the fact that the, the, the, we've had this extreme low correlation amongst the index. And I've been fascinated by it. And it's truly just like dominating the way the things trade. Do you have any theories on what's causing it? You mentioned zero DTs. Do you think that that, you know, obviously, you think that's a factor? Is that the main factor? Are you worried about those auto callables or is it just a larger macro issue? And more importantly, what do you think might cause this low correlation, low index, fall trade to break? Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't care. I don't, I rise myself as an expert. It's more of I'm, I'm watching it and seeing it. I know Jim Carson talks a ton about structure products, issuance, um, and the dynamic in play there and how much money is tied into, you know, the S and P, uh, and the index. And so, um, and I think zero data, X-Bery has a big impact on this because every day, you know, we have crazy amounts of capital that are just in selling, you know, selling volume of all strategies and selling options. And so it kind of makes it more difficult for the indexes to really move in a large way. And clearly there are certain times of the month when these flows matter more than others. As you get closer to X-Berry, the pin risk is even higher when we get through X-Berry. The window of potential weakness where other things can matter is higher. And still, it makes it more difficult for the indexes to break. So I don't necessarily know what's going to break it. But what I do know is that what you need is a pick up in volatility. And so the question is, where can we get who are the volatility accelerators? What are the actors in the global economy that can help reintroduce volatility back to the markets? Which we get volatility moving higher than the impetus to just sell volatility every day, gets the client. Those people start to lose money. Volcontrol funds who are tied into volatility, de-leverage their portfolios, that can lead to some selling pressure. And so where are the volatility accelerators? Well, Trump is one, right? He clearly at times will introduce volatility into the tape. And I actually think to start the year after four or five months toward the end last year, where he was a volatility suppressor, he's actually become more of a volatility accelerator now. I think it's because polling data is terrible. And so he's trying to do things now to shake things up, whether it's, again, the credit card caps, the defense stuff, the home building stuff, even the geopolitical stuff. Obviously, that's not necessarily markets, but that does introduce volatility. And then Treasury has the ability to introduce volatility. I don't think they're really doing much, right? They kind of have their plan for issuance. They announce another QRA, quarterly refunding announcement update next week. I don't suspect that they're going to do anything there to increase or decrease the supply of bond, but we'll see. The Fed is another potential. But as we saw earlier this week, Fed's not cutting rates, Fed's not raising rates. They're not really introducing much volatility. The place that I think you could get more volatility isn't the oil market. And so I think it's very interesting that oil prices have been grinding higher, moving higher. Obviously, a very high correlation between oil price momentum and yields. And I think it's interesting, three weeks ago, oil companies, CEOs, we're all summoned to the White House to speak with the president about investing capital in Venezuela. And I think he thought he was just going to force them to do it. And most of them came back and said, yeah, we're not doing that for you. And by the way, when you keep talking about oil prices in the low fifties, we're just not going to drill at all. I'm sure you saw Harold Hamm has talked about shutting production in the back end for the first time in 30 years, right? I mean, Harold Hamm is a Trump guy. And so I think the oil industry has spoken and has informed the president that oil prices are too low. And so he, for the course of the last couple of weeks, he don't really hear him talking about getting oil back down to 50 as loudly as he had been before. Now some of the oil stuff is probably tied into the war premium from Iran, who knows what will be the ultimate decision there. Part of it's probably tied into the cold weather. Heating oil has followed natural gas over the course of the last few days. So part of it's that. But I think it's a, there's a growing realization that if you want the oil industry to actually invest capital, 50 is not the number. They need higher prices. But higher oil prices are going to make it more difficult for the feds to ease. It's going to reintroduce inflation expectations moving higher. And I think that's a type of dynamic where that's a type of volatility that could disrupt some of this kind of constant cell volatility dynamic in place. So that's one area that I'm watching that can help break this kind of cycle of lower volatility equity market and selling volatility every day. That's a great answer. What are their opportunities should investors be looking at? What are some of the other things that might be not getting the attention they deserve? That's a good one. You know, I think that there's the low part of the K-shaped economy. The story is well known, I think. And so I imagine and I haven't really done a ton of work yet. And I've been focusing a little more on the sector and macro level, having gone into the micro individual idiosyncratic names. But there are probably a lot of very beaten down consumer facing, value oriented names that have struggled because of the association with the lower part of the K. But we're moving into an environment where Trump realizes that dynamic has to stop. We can't just keep crushing the lower part of the K-shaped economy. And so maybe there are some opportunities there on the consumer staple side or low end retail side. You know, dollar store is what things like that where can benefit from an eventual flow of capital away from some of this high consumer facing names and lower consumer facing names, a shift out of the AI CapEx story into some value oriented names. I think that's an interesting area that's beginning a little bit of a, that's not really discussed all that much. Because look, I think the AI story is discussed at Nazim. I think people do understand the resources, the resource constraints from power, from materials, from copper, for you know, your rating. And for so people are discussing these things. I think there are opportunities here because I don't think the story is going to end. I think people kind of know about them. So, all right. One final question I have for you is if you were interviewing yourself, like what would it be the question that I missed that you would ask yourself? I mean, we talked about, we talked about the dollar, but I think, you know, the understanding of the, like what's going on with, I don't have an expert in Japan, but I do think it's important to have an understanding of what, you know, dollar yen and the dynamics there, you know, are we, are we, you know, do for dollar yen to go to 200 or are we going to check back here to 100, the dynamics and play there between the US and Japan. I think your paramount importance, certainly as it pertains to, you know, also China. We haven't really talked about China all that much. It was interesting because China's a big economy. I mean, so, you know, we really haven't hit on that. We just, you know, and look, I think China has been kind of operating a little bit in the background here, not too many headlines, not too much, you know, but they're kind of just doing their thing, right? You know, I think people would have expected them to have more of a reaction to what happened in Venezuela and they just, you know, haven't had an outward reaction. I suspect they are doing things behind the scenes, you know, expert, expert controls, restrictions, different things with the R&B and such. So, you know, those are probably some areas that, you know, we should talk about or we can talk about it in a minute. Sure, let's get into it. So, China and Japan, are they both investable? I mean, I think so. Yeah, I think we're going to continue to see capital shift out of US assets because of what the administration wants and is doing and also because of the allocation to US assets across global portfolios, it's just way too high. And so, you know, it's, and as we move small bits of capital out of NVIDIA and Apple and other names, it can create large percent returns in some of these other markets. And so, I think of what could happen here in the course of the next few weeks is if we get a check back, you know, in the dollar, whether dollar rallies for a period of time, kind of cleansing out some positions, people should be thinking about, you know, buying the dip in Japan and maybe Chinese equities, you know, sooner than they're looking to buy the dip back in in Mag 7, let's say. And so, I mean, Japan has deficit spending going on, you know, reindustrialization, military, you know, variety of things. And repatriation of capital that's going to be going back, the yields on JGBs now are enticing for Japanese insurance companies versus, you know, currency adjusted yields in US Treasury. So, I think we're going to continue to see that kind of flow that can, you know, help finance what the deficit spending in Japan is going to do. And I think the NEC probably, you know, does a lot better over time after, you know, 30 years of doing not a whole lot. So, I think there are interesting opportunities globally, which, you know, as a more of a US focused investor, I need to get smarter on, right? And I think more people need to do more work or, you know, find managers who are focusing in those areas and the capital is going to continue to look to shift, you know, out of the US and into some of these overseas markets. So, that's great. One last question we'll get you with here is, instead of doing my traders desert island, we're going to do an old one. We're going to do, throw your career. If you could tell us a story about one point, somebody that was kind and helped you and, kind of, just share that, you know, what they did for you and why it was important. Yeah. No, I think I mentioned, so after the whole Osprey experience, I bounced around a little bit. I joined a firm called Plural Investments, was run by a guy, his name is Matt Grossman, who actually had worked at SAC prior. he tried to launch and ran a multi-management portfolio, he gave me the first opportunity really to run my own portfolio by myself. And so, you know, probably I had Asprey, I had run a carve out, but, you know, Dwight was still the overall portfolio manager, Matt gave me the opportunity to run my own portfolio at Plural. In his industry, he's kind of taught me about risk management, taught me about portfolio construction. And then when he wound up shutting the fund down in the summer of 2012, I was one of the three portfolio managers with him kind of at the end when we tried to, you know, run a centerbook portfolio. And he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. I was like, look, I mean, I need some help. He said, don't worry, I'll make a call for you. And he is the one that called Steve and said, I have one portfolio manager from you, you have to hire him. And Steve hired me without ever meeting me. And so, it was, um, Matt, I owe a lot of my career, you know, to that transition of events, Matt calling Steve, I eventually did meet Steve and we did talk, but he really did hire me before we ever met. I met several other people internally at SAC, but that decision making process and Matt's generosity, even though I didn't work with him, him kind of paying it forward and helping me get land on my feet. You know, I'm forever grateful for that. Oh, that is a great story. All right. So before we let you go, why don't you tell us about your current gig, plug what you want to plug. You have a sub stack. You're on Twitter, as you mentioned. Give us the whole spiel. Yeah. I recently mentioned I recently joined Ninja Trader Live. Ninja Trader is the largest futures broker in the country for retail investors. And what we have is, you know, I work as the macro strategist for Ninja Trader Live, which is our media facing presence. We host a, you know, live streaming trading channel on YouTube throughout the course of every trading day. I'm on in the mornings from 8 to 830. We do a macro panel every morning, me, Anthony Crudelli and Shy girl. The most people are probably familiar with. And we have a, we talk macro every morning and then throughout the course of the day, we have traders live streaming their trades and their ideas. I also host a Sunday show, kind of a market prep show with a couple of traders. It's great. I'm also on on X at CES 921. And I occasionally write on my sub stack. It's called the Alitha narrative, which is named after my wife. And it also means truth in Greek. And so, yeah, come find me. I love to mix it up on Twitter. Get into some, you know, of a hot fin tweet debates. And I really appreciate you. You have me on here. It's been a conversation. It's, I've really enjoyed it. And my trouble was I was sitting here going, geez, I agree with too much of it all. We very much think of like Craig, thank you very much for your time today. Thanks. All right, Patrick, time for talking charts. Lots to talk about. Kevin, I'm going to need to get the neck brace from the serious whiplash that is, that is, that is occurring. Like, is this not insane? Okay, first of all, I'm just going to do a courteous shout out to you, right? For what? You made the bold call, which you inevitably had every chance of happening, but you always made the bold call that there's going to be a week. We're going to rip like a $1,000 announced. Yeah, we didn't get. Well, you know what, we're close. Here's, here's where I'm going to give it to you. Okay, it was a thousand in nine days. Okay. Right. Like, okay, so that's right. You know what I mean? Like a thousand in nine days, thousand in five days. I mean, yeah, I get it, but we did have a 500 point move, you know, incredibly short window time on gold. So anyway, courteous, like we finally have seen like this parabolic move and precious metals. You know, I want to save it. We'll talk. Do you want to start with precious metals? We might as well start with it. Like, this is where the action is like, unbelievable. It started first with silver. And let's let's start with silver because that move happened on in the Asian session going into Monday morning, where silver went up to like a hundred and seventeen bucks on the upside. It was insane. Just like, I'm going to put on four-hour chart, but like in this bull impulse from from a trough to peak, it was a $27 advance in four days, including that one last kind of blow off impulse push. But it was insane how silver was being pumped that last day was a $14 update, a $16, $17 high. And when it was up at that one point, it was crazy. Something like it traded, I was reading somewhere, it traded, spy volumes. Yeah, it's crazy. Even today, by the way, we're we're we're recording this. I'm having trouble with the words today. We're recording this on Thursday. And I saw something that one of the my brokers sent me said that GLD has already traded $25 billion worth of shares today, which is a daily all-time daily record. And it's only one PM. Yeah. Like that's volumes out there are just obscene. It is like this is this is gone full mental. Everybody needs a piece of the action. And everyone's trading it and it's it's going so silver had and this is the crazy part. Okay. So after that move on Monday, I'm going to put on a one-hour chart, but after that move on Monday, it blew off that peak at on Monday and then sold off $16, 14% from peak to trough in three hours. Yeah. It's about three hours. It like absolutely insane. And then you know, when you think that oh, shit, you know, you're getting that blow off top. No, it's right back up. Like it's just unbelievable. That is actually the most surprising part of the action. Know you think? Yeah. It had every it looked like that was it. It looked like a climax that you know, was going to be and then boom, it just sprung back right back into action like the 16. You know what? I'm wondering and I'm curious if could be one of the contributors was that when silver made that reversal, gold didn't and kind of gold kept going up. And it was and I wonder how much it played a role from a sentiment perspective where people are like, no, clearly, a precious medical is having things just silver while too far sub by and dip. Like I'm just wondering how much of that could have played? No. I have no idea. People are asking me now like about stuff. And I see like the reality is that this is pure emotion. There is like, I have no value add to actually add because the truth of the matter is that nobody really knows what's going on out here. It's just it's the it's the history of the masses and where it ends, who knows? Like we could be recording this at the day of the top. We could do the same thing could happen to us like right now. It looks like we have this big huge emotional update today and gold. And then it went down a couple hundred bucks or 400 from the highs. But now like what have we just ripped back tomorrow? Who knows? So again, but then it repeated again today. So today, silver was ripping to 120 bucks and hitting a high after the market open near 120 plus on the upside. And then a peak to trough drop in like an hour and a half by the time I was finished my webinar for what I do for big picture trading members. The thing dropped 15 bucks in an hour. In an hour. The other one took three like this. This is like this is insane. Now what's what's going to be the big tell here, Kevin? I'm going to get some market timing right here. This rally on silver was just a Fibonacci bounce on the upside. And it's rolling if the the silver bowls here need to make a save the way they did back over here, which is they got it above the fib zones and then got it out of the danger zone to imply that the prevailing bull trend remains intact. And like you notice every moving average test was supported. Every Fibonacci zone was supported. Dips were being bought. In other words, it was one day like a three hour drop. But then the price action actually went back to an accumulation thing that we're about to get the tell right here. Maybe even while we're recording this live, we can come back to this in 20 minutes. And we'll see. But like, but if this thing rolls over, my call here is if we're under 110. And we're by the way, recording this Thursday in the late afternoon. So if Friday, we're breaking below 110 on the downside odds are we're going to potentially tomorrow, be even at 100. Like like it's one of these things where if this was the swing high of this parabolic move, these things don't correct sideways and the drops are often twice as violent and fast as the rises. It's just that old adage of markets rise on an escalator and drop in an elevator. And when everyone smells that the blood is on the streets and they can't hit that exit fast enough and it creates that liquidity air pocket that always blind sides everyone. All I can say is that's not an escalator that I want to be on because that's one steep escalator. You got to hold on and be strapped into this thing. But anyway, back to gold. So silver had this move. Gold joined the party goes like we were above 5600 this morning. And then down to 5,100 within a couple hours. Again, like it was almost in one hour. I mean, we hit 5,600, but we were down about 5,550. And one hour we were down to 5,100. Just an insane drop back on the downside on precious metals. Now, look, I'm a long-term bull in gold. The obviously the theme behind gold is that there's generally a debatement drift of currencies over time. The gold rises over time. It's bullish long-term as a preservation of capital asset. But this is not a capital preservation move. This is a speculation move. And you have to differentiate the long-term drift higher versus short-term speculative peaks. And these things overshoot, mean-rovert, find that kind of average point over a little while. And then go back to resuming. So I'm not in trying to boogie man people out of their long-term physical bullion holdings and stuff. But speculation, if you're using any degree of margin or leverage in the futures market here, you have to be very delicate here. Like this is the kind of shit that where the widow-maker shit happens. The NatGas market behavior comes over here to the gold and silver markets. Any comments you want to make before we move on? - No, I was just telling the folks in my chat, I was saying this morning, I think I was saying, time stamp a ticket and keep this in your mind because this is a period that you're in to look back and be able to tell your grandchids about. It's gonna, it's like when the market-- - Grandchids. - Yeah, it's that big a move. I don't think people appreciate the enormity and the craziness of this past month or two in precious metals. - It's funny that I said that similar statement to my members to write it down and look at it in six months. I wasn't telling them to look at it and go for a grand, a grandchid. - Oh, but I think it's gonna be a story you tell your kids, a grandchid's about. - But we were on the same track. I just, my time horizon was just a little bit more narrow than your grandchid storyline. But you're almost a grandfather. So I mean, it's not-- - No, it's not. - It's not for a while yet. So let's talk some of the other crazies of, we'll talk equities in a moment, but we have to just go to the commodities that are moving. We have to talk about geopolitics and this little bump in oil and the interesting, so by the way, no, sorry, reverse. Gold volatility. This is the, the implied on gold and we're at 45. - It feels like it's not high enough though. - Yeah, but no, what is insane is when I put on a weekly chart, this is the same level we traded at during COVID. But that was because gold was going down, not up. This is a crash to the high. - Honestly, it feels like vol is cheap. Like COVID, vol was either COVID vol was too expensive or this one's cheap because I agree with you that this is nowhere near the same sort of danger market in terms of gold that we saw during the COVID. - Yeah. - But that was a downside danger, but this is an upside meltup. This is insane. - I know, but there's going to be less. And there's still, you just talked about how it's going to correct. And it's going to correct, you know, $500 in a day. And like there's big moves happening. These are large moves. I'm with you, the VIX isn't high enough. Sorry, the VIX of gold is not high enough. The implied volatility. - Well, you know what was insane. Let's take a peek at it. But this is the implies on the SLV. But what's more, even more insane is you go to the very short term options like this Friday's expiration. We hit 140% implied on Monday on the weeklies. - That's right. I bet you'll be moving those things. - I bet you'll move $15 in an hour of, yes. - Yes. - I haven't done the math, but I bet you those aren't as ridiculous as they sound. - They're probably right pricing. But like, you know, the part that I'd like you to kind of give me your take on it. Because to me, when Vol gets this high, like I feel that a lot of people seek to participate in bubbles through the convexity they get in being long gamma. So they'll go and buy these options to participate on the upside of markets, using these options to get that extra kick and move on there. But when volatility gets this high, so dealers obviously are short these calls that everyone is buying. And dealers have to hedge and they become a marginal forced buyer to actually contribute to the basic grabbing on the upside of the market. And they're just fuel. They're fuel that's an additional contributor to the overall advance of this market. Now, you have these weekly roll-offs and all this happening, but when Vol spikes to these ridiculous levels, it's very hard and a very bad payoff profile for people to be buying you gamma to replace these calls that are about to expire because they're seeing how expensive they are, widespread, all of these crazy things. Is there that flip moment where the dealers suddenly are now gonna unwind all of their long hedges? Because like the just the-- - No, well first of all, the dealers are short gamma. And you were correct that as it rallied, they were getting short stock. So they had to chase-- - No, no, no, no, they're short calls. So they're long stock. - Look, they're buying-- - No, they're long stock, but they need to buy more as it goes in the market. So they're chasing-- - They're chasing. So they're short gamma on the whole. They're short options, assuming the public is buying them. And I would assume that's probably a good assumption right now. So they're short volatility, they're short gamma. They're chasing on the upside. But part of the reason that you saw this huge sell off today, was that on the way back down, they're also chasing. They're having to sell the stock that they bought. And they're hoping that their amount that they are chasing back and forth is gonna be less than the what people paid for the options. And as they do more of it, and as people buy more options, it actually becomes self-fulfilling that volatility ends up being higher because there's more market makers that are chasing upward and then also chasing downward. So it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. - So it does hit a level where you're right. It makes no sense to be long because it's too much. I would say that it's probably a little more complicated than that. I was looking at one-year option, vol in silver, and it was kind of shocking to me because you could go and sell 180% of the strike call. So something that's 80% out of the money, you could sell a one-year call for that and then you could buy a 20% out of the money put for the same amount. - Yeah. - And that to me was like, - Oh, that's the skew. And that's the second thing. Actually, I wanna talk about the skew, particularly in oil, but the skew 100% is insane on precious metals right now. But we can pull you real long that wanted to keep it but to me that trade makes a lot of sense. You go, you sell 180% out of the money calls, right? So it has to go, let's just assume, oh, let's just say silver is at $100 just to make it easy. So you're selling the 180. So you're giving away upside above 180. - At the same time. - You're giving another 80% upside. - Yeah, at the same time, you're protecting yourself on below 80. And you can do that for zero. - Yeah. - That's the trade that folks should be doing. And maybe I'm wrong. - No, no, no, no. - The coloring is all we're doing at big picture trading right now. Like these skews are so favorable that you need to find ways to secure the profits you've made and continue to participate on the upside because you don't know how stupid things can still get. But there's a point where it's stupid not to sell. If silver went another 80% in a short window of time, that probably becomes a logical place where, if you sold everything, that would be good. The turn to that strategy going that far out, Kev, is that if silver, for instance, got up there too quickly, and that you would be less inclined to want to profit take your position because you're sitting on this big loss in the call. And you feel like you almost need to see the trade through and you might want to hold for another nine months till you get the expiry. - Yeah. - And then a lot of time, so what you're doing is you're giving up a little bit of the flexibility to being able to make your decision quite freely. You feel like it's your almost cuffed in and the time horizon of going out a year, lock can fucking happen in a year. Yeah. I get it. I'm just saying that there's trades like that that exist out there. And in terms of, and the trouble is that over the short run, I think that the silver will continue to be volatile. So I don't want to be selling that much like options, unless I was long, but I wouldn't want to be short any options that that we're going to expire like in like in the other kind of a shorter end of the spectrum because I think that the volatility is going to be large because all these market makers are short this thing. And eventually we'll settle down. We'll have some sort of flush and it'll settle down. And then hopefully it kind of goes back and people stop talking about that. We move on to the next thing. Yeah. I think so. So let's talk about crude oil and the geopolitical insertion of a potential Middle Eastern flare up and a potential attack. Obviously oil markets are responding with now what's been a $10 rise from trough to peak over the last month. And really the biggest part of the move happening in the last few days. And so first of all, do you feel that there's enough risk premium being put in or is this surprising you how little it's moved in spite of all of that what's happening? No opinion. No, I have an opinion. I hear you about the risk premium about the potential of Iran. I also think that people are waking up to the fundamental story that oil is cheap and that what happened was all the different commodities were starting to go. And people were looking at this and realizing, okay, listen, silver is going gold's going copper's going, you know, Uranium is going a lot of these quantities are going eventually oil gets dragged along and I think the oil you can make a bulk case and you know, I did a couple months ago and I'm a big fan of oil. And I think that it's one of the things that you can actually hide like right now it feels scary to me Patrick because all the materials are bit so much and there's a frenzy going on out there. And I don't feel comfortable going out and buying like software stocks because they're look like death and everything looks like shit. So what do you own as someone that's kind of being partial to the hard asset world? And to me, oil is a natural place to hide. It feels to me that that's something that not a lot of folks own and that if we did get a severe like correction in the gold, silver, Uranium, copper trade, I think that oil will do much better. So I think that there's a little bit of a little element of that. So when you ask me about the risk premium, I don't know if it's too much too little. I just think that over the longer term, it's a bull store, a bull market story. And then even though it's rally $10 to me, it's kind of weird. We are always, we are always an agreement on this, that's the scary part, but the point being that I have generally, we've been generally bullish oil about the same time. But the thing that I want to highlight, which is interesting about this market, is literally that same skew you talked about on silver. It exists right now in oil because of that premium. So first of all, let's have a look here. The implies have gone from like 25% to 55% out to the February options on crude oil futures. But there is a very clear, I don't know why there's this kind of weird blip here on it, but there is a very clear fact right tail on the upside of crude oil options that allows you to do some pretty insane option colors, the way that we were talking about on silver. Like we're talking about you could be going up to $75 and $80 strikes out for just a month. And financing is 60 and $55 strike put options below like a total skew where you're having like a $15 upside and a $5 downside near zero cost. And so and that's obviously because they're they're pricing in that geopolitical escalation, knowing that you got to you got to price that right tail to have some some risk premium in it. But that allows you to actually construct some super interesting hedges around this. Oh well, listen, I'll leave that to you. I personally don't wouldn't want to give it away yet. So when I'm talking about silver, we've run from $15 to $150 or whatever the number is, right? Like so it feels later in the game when it comes to I'm talking about a 20 I'm talking about a 22 day option. I'm talking about okay. I'm talking about three weeks of price action. I just will know that there's actually an event that you won't have wanted to give away that right. Yeah. Okay. So if there's an event, if you made $10 to $15 upside and crude oil in two to three weeks, tell me you wouldn't be profit taking no. Oh, um, depending on the event and and depending on what my other parts of my books, I might not be. Yeah. Like if there was like if listen, if we went up $15 because there was no event and everyone was just talking about it and there was all sorts of Finthwit guys talking about the imminent, you know, destruction of Iran and they was just all hype. Then yeah, I probably would be taking profit on it. But if there was an actual like closing of the Straits of Hormuz, I don't know if I would. But okay, that I agree, but it is what's the likelihood happens in a thing. No, I listen, I'm just I'm just telling you me personally and I'm not disputing your trade. I I I hear you. And in this in the grind higher in in the scenario I gave you earlier where I said it's a bull market. It's headed higher. That is a great trade to do. Yeah. Right? Like that is the trade you want to do. You're protected on the downside and you're getting paid to own it. So I hear you and I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that for me, just I'm just it's to me it's early and I'm just not ready to give away any right tales yet. Absolutely. Moving on, let's let's talk uranium. And so we have this this is the U3308 futures contract. I'm putting on a weekly chart just so that it closes that less liquid kind of price action. But we went through what was essentially a 15 month bear decline that was giving back gains all through 2024 into early 2025. And it started to improve through 2025. But really the last five six weeks, we have seen material advance in uranium. And that has woken up the spot and the spot the spot physical uranium trust and things have really started to get going. What's interesting is that while uranium stocks have been buzzing for a long time, this is just starting to wake up and I'm curious whether or not we still have some big upside coming here on uranium from a physical perspective. Any comments before we move on? I think it can be squeezed. I think that the reality is that all of the DGNs that have squeezed, they figured out they can squeeze silver. They figured out that they can move gold. I think uranium is even smaller than both those markets by factor. And yeah, like even more. So it is the potential to get squeezed. And it's an important commodity. And you know, there's another one of right tail. I wouldn't give up. Like the reality is that you could wake up and that thing could double even though it seems like it's gone a long way. It's a very little part, a very little small input part of the cost of running an actual nuclear facility. It doubles and it really doesn't mean anything. So if you get situation where people start stockpiling these things. And I think that Patrick, what's really pushed this recently was for a long time, the Sprott wasn't buying. And they were issuing shares. They were trading above nav. And then all of a sudden they issued a prospectus. And now all of sudden they went in there. And they were the ones moving the actual underlying commodity. And there was it was amazingly thin on the upside. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when there's a technical breakout and the thing trades up to it or above, it's net asset value. Suddenly that discount gone. This becomes a player on the field. Right. And so we're definitely seeing the uranium market waking up. So I want to use Camico as the kind of proxy stock of what's going on in the broader uranium stocks. Now they've been bullish for well over a year or close to a year now. And they've had an absolutely amazing run. Like this, this is Camico has gone from 35 bucks to $135. And the thing is that, you know, how they've almost started going parabolic here. And so while uranium hasn't really been squeezed yet, it feels like it's sort of like uranium is in the third inning of its game. And uranium stocks feel much more kind of seventh, eighth inning of their moves. Is that your vibe as well? I don't know. Maybe I guess I don't really have a view, except that it's part of this this move in the new year that we've seen this huge rotation. We've always talked about this, Patrick, is that when money starts coming out of those big software and mag seven stocks and it starts going into these underlying resource stocks and different things of that nature, they're so small compared to those big stocks that they're going to send them a long way. And if there's anything we've learned from Silver, it's that we should never underestimate the kind of ability for markets to take things way further than we ever could imagine. And so one of the things that I'm going to just be careful about is saying, this has gone too far too fast. Yeah, like of course, as a trader, I said, they go, look, it's gone a long way. It's gone too far too fast. But shit, I thought that it'll at Silver at 90 bucks and then it went another 20. So it feels to me that maybe if the material trade continues and if we continue to see selling of the mag seven and the software's, these things could go even further. All right. Well, let's talk another stock or commodity that's just gone mental and that's copper. Like literally one after another, the commodity space, someone just took billions of dollars and dumped and gave me everything and it's all ripping. Like it's insane, but we saw a move in copper go up to up to 650 and then reverses and drops to like six six 10 in a heartbeat in a whole drop. But like literally as all of these things went mental, copper joined the party. Like at this stage, like when shock me, if we saw seven dollar copper here. Yeah. I look it's it's not and the one of the things I think you should do instead of looking for the ones that are moving, you should be going and scouring the ones that haven't moved yet that might be the next to move. Right. And I really do think and I talked about this way back when I read example. Can I just give that? Yeah, platinum and pladium. Yeah, well, that was one of the yeah, it's good. You go like golden silver started moving first and then it was like, well, these things are just waking up and and when they finally joined the party back in December, they never looked back. And it's like you're trying to find which are these lagers that that have been left behind that no one is talking about that that is going to get you know, join that party. And and I remember talking about that we had used to have these series of rolling mini bubbles. Yeah. I think that you can apply that to commodities now. One of the things that I've been saying is that if they're just going to go through them one by one and they're going to go and whenever all of a sudden that commodity gets a little tight and then there's some extra demand, it's going to go up and it's going to be the commodity of the of the quarter or maybe of the of the year. And then meanwhile six months from now, it'll be something else. Yeah. Well, like one of the things I'm confident about is that six months from now, it won't be silver that we're talking about. That won't be the the one with all the zip that is the kind of the go to commodity where all the speculations happen. It'll be something else. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, let's talk about the widow maker now. What's your buddy Paulo macro that nailed this by the way, he was he was standing on your like he was he was a weatherman. He knew those he was he was sitting there and he was he went against him for a while and he just stood in there like a champ and he's and he's a little bit of a lunatic. He doesn't just play that gas. He plays like like nickel options way out of the money like a complete degen. He was he nailed it good for him. Well, proper degen. All right. Well, listen, what was insane though was that this weather move happened in the what's it called in the February contract. And the biggest part of the move all happened in the final days before it's it was rolled. Obviously, this contract still trades by the way, but like it's insane, but this February contract makes a rip the continuous contract rolled obviously to the March contract. But that's insane that we had this kind of backwardation where we're literally seeing the one contract trading virtually double the other one month apart. And what was really frustrating was that the boil didn't own the feb because the boil is the double or the triple. I don't know what it is, but it's the it's the levered ETF. And I wasn't looking because when when Paulo was telling me I'm like, okay, do I like go do some boil because I was expecting like an XIV situation because if you had that sort of move and with some leverage, you could have a situation where they'd actually the ETF gets stopped out, right? That they just have to they just have to get it in because they are short volatility at the close. So in essence, I was hoping that they would have the the the February and we would have a while situation, but it wasn't it was March and it so it wasn't as fun. It was insane to say none of that lease. Like this is truly this is you know, most people say, oh, you guys called the widow maker, but if there was ever an example of widow maker price action, the thing went to five and a quarter, drop down to three bucks and went from three to seven in a span of like less than two months. Oh, yeah. And it was and it happened because of like one storm. It's like it's a wild. Listen, all right. They're neck gas traders are different breed. They're just I don't really like I don't understand them. And the real problem about neck gas trading, it is that the the the the proper serious professionals, you'll see all of sudden neck gas will get surprisingly weak or strong midday. You'll be like, what the hell's happened? And you don't realize is that they've all gotten subscriptions to this some sort of service. And all that's happened is the forecast for the weather for like two weeks out has changed. So you never really truly know what's going on in terms of trying to figure out what's going on because you need to have that access to the to the weather data. And so you're really trading what people are expecting this forecast to be as opposed to the actual weather to some degree. Absolutely. Okay. We can't we can't go this far into the show without circling back to S&P, the mag sevens and and obviously touching on the FOMC. Well, first of all, let's just get the FOMC out of the way. Clearly, whether Powell stays on or not, there is a new Fed share coming. And at least what the markets are pricing in is that the FOMC is going to take the knee and remain unchanged for the first quarter going into the April meeting. I think that last time I checked the probability it was like a 73% probability that there is no rate cut move. I was thinking at least some sort of guidance could have caused some sort of a move in the markets, but nothing. That was that was truly in my mind. And nothing burger kind of FOMC meeting. Is this paint dry meetings for the first quarter? Well, is Powell going to be there for two more or one more? I thought it was May. So, so the so he's going to be there until the April 30th meeting. I think there's a meeting at the so it is two more so he'll have the March and the April. Yeah, I actually thought that this meeting was a little more hawkish than the market did. To me, that they took the balance of risks and they tilted them back towards neutral as opposed to they were leading a little bit to the balance of risks being to the downside on the economy and they made it firmly more neutral. I'm not saying that's incorrect, but it seemed to me that that was actually a shift from the FOMC. And I guess the stir people they all those traders had already priced that in because it didn't seem to really affect it. I guess also the stock traders just didn't care. They're too busy trading gold silver and just having fun with everything. They just really nobody cared. Like have you ever seen an FOMC meeting that people cared less on? No, no. Well, I personally was paying more attention than I should have because the rates markets have been so dead. The bond markets have been so trade range bound that I was I'm just like what the hell is going to wake them up? What are where it's going to get us moving again? And the FOMC just simply offered something that could have played the role of a trigger. And so I was kind of I'm waiting to see whether something ever starts up because when the currencies are moving this much and and you have the commodity markets moving this much, you think that the rates markets would at least be responsive to the type of intermarket relationships that are emergent and the bond markets just don't give a fuck. No, they don't. And I would argue that even though you said that the currency markets are moving a lot, they perked up a little bit that you ain't seen nothing yet. That was just that was just the start. First inning. First inning. First, you know what? That's just the that's just the warm pitch. That's done my god. It's that's just the warm up pitch. You're crazy. We'll talk about, okay, see it. I want to talk currencies in a second. All right. But just touching on the equity markets, one thing I have been very adamant about when talking to members and other things is that while the S&P could let's say gravitate to 7100 in order for us to have an advance to like 7400, we would need the mag 7s to make a rebound. And I'm not talking new bull market advance in them, but they were so incredibly oversold that even if they just 50% retraced their losses over a one month period, that might be enough to have the tide of the water level rise enough to get the index to an upper level like 7400. But so far, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Microsoft shot the bed here. I have a heat map here showing what's going on. But Microsoft shot the bed down 12% in its earnings. I see it. You shot. It's the same. Yeah. You're not. Can you get that verb for me? Yeah, absolutely. So the and so we had meta do the opposite, up 10% on the upside on that move. And Tesla relatively flat. I mean, it's down 3%, but I wouldn't call it a big earnings reaction on it. So so far, it's kind of a mixed bag. We get Apple in an hour. So when we after we're recording this before the Apple earnings and next week, we're going to have Google and Amazon. And if to me, I think for those hanging on for a bull thesis that the market cap weighted indices have another leg higher in the first quarter, we'll at this point in my opinion need the mag sevens at least rebounding some of their incredibly oversold levels. If we have this scenario where only two of them gapped up like meta and and a rest summary, they're flat or down, there's just not going to be enough momentum to get these indices higher. And I mean, literally, we were down 100 S&P points. All the only thing read on the screen were the mag sevens. Everything else was green. Like literally, we were down 100 S&P points because the mag sevens were selling. And so to me, this earnings is really important. We already just got three of them. But if we don't see at least a solid two, three good more beats that really kind of gets a money flow back in there, I, whether I think 7100 could still be printed, but that we are we're getting to a heavy level that's going to be an upper ceiling on the S&P. Now, whether a trigger to begin a market sell-off kicks in, imminently is something I'm not ready to make, stick my neck out to make a call on. But I don't think there's going to be much money made on the S&P longs at this stage. There's going to be a ceiling and and a lot of distribution up ahead driven by probably that rotation that we keep talking about the mag sevens selling. But the one thing that's interesting is that, you know, whatever I hear different estimates, whether it's 300 billion or 500 billion of all the systematic traders between between CTAs and risk parity and vault targeting funds, a lot of the trigger points on many of these start around the 6800 level on the S&P on a weekly basis where where at least a lot of the CTAs will start flipping. We'll see whether ball realize ball increases to to trigger some vault targeting funds selling. But we could we could obviously at any point trigger systematic selling. And so the balancing act is, if there's a ceiling and the market isn't able to progress higher, the floor keeps rising behind the market. And we get in a tighter and tighter range of making more fragile, which is all it needs is one little push, something that triggers the systematic traders. And we could be in the midst of some sort of a correction. You know, will that happen in the first quarter? Well, I'll tell you this, if the mag sevens can't punch this market to new highs after this earnings, then the first quarter will house a correction. It's just a matter of will it be in February or March or what will be the catalyst, but something will inevitably trigger those systematic cycles and we'll have one of these five to 10% corrections. That could be bigger if all the wrong things or right things are lining up, which depends of your bullish or bearish. But that could get some downside momentum. Do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, so I love repeating the Bruce Coffner line, which is what I'm really looking for is a market that is not confirming consensus. And what's consensus right now? Consensus is that everything's great. The US economy is about to explode higher. You got to own stocks. You got to be all in on risk. Trump won't let it go down. Yada, yada, yada. Meanwhile, you look at this thing. And it isn't like the spooge looks better actually than the cues. Cues hasn't hit a new high for three months or four months. Well, that's because like 65% mag sevens. Yeah. And the reality is that this market is tired. And yet everyone is max bullish. I think there was a chart the other day from the Bank of America that showed how few people are hedging and like buying protection on their portfolio was all time lows in terms of the irony, isn't it? Yeah, the irony. The expectations about the economy are all time highs. I've, you know, I've anecdotally heard of people that are going to conferences. And they were saying how, you know, of kind of macro conferences and how everyone's so bullish. And it reminds me very much of last year in January when I went to the Stonux guys conference. I got there. And I suggested that that stocks might go down and that the US dollar might go down. I felt like I was going to get boot off the stage. I haven't gotten back. We're going to stone you off the stage. Exactly. Imagine the US dollar going down. Imagine US stocks going down. And the thing about the US stocks is everyone keeps, you know, saying, oh, all you panakins that are talking about the US stock market and saying sell the US stock market. The reality is that last year, almost every, you know, country beat the US stock market in terms of returns. And that's just in nominal terms. And then when you convert it to US dollar terms, it's quite obvious that almost everyone beat them. And then when you look at it on a volatile, adjusted basis, it's even more so. So it's just to me back to your point that there's market feels like there's a potential accident waiting to happen. I completely agree. It feels like everyone's bullish in the market's not going up. That's how it feels to me. So let's talk about Canaries in the coal mine that have or have not been triggered on their first of all, the breadth of the market generally has been rising. But it's slightly rolled. But that's nowhere near, you know, alarming that we have serious deterioration and divergences of breadth. But it'll be very curious to see whether breadth starts to deteriorate. We had really nice moves in that equal weight index. And in the small caps, like you can see the money distributing. But will we see this trend kind of diverge back or head back down and not be working as well? That's a canary number one, which has not been triggered. I'm just saying the things that I feel that we need to be watched. The second thing that I think is the credit markets and the junk one market has been behaving very well. Things have at least on a price level basis. There is no alarm bells being run by the high yield credit stress points showing distribution. That's another canary. And the last one that I'm going to watch is the XLF, which is the financials. So far, when they disappointed on their earnings, they retraced. But it could be just the Fibonacci retracement. That could be still a bullet advance back above the 50 day for another run. But if we see financials putting in a topping formation, we turn around, see mag sevens not participating. We see credit markets start to roll. We see breath start to deteriorate. Then you're going to start seeing I'm getting pretty bearish, Kev, kind of tone. I feel like there's a lot of reasons to be bearish. But we haven't seen any canaries start dying in the coal mine that are the alarm bells that it's imminent. And so I'll push back on that a little bit. IGV. Pull up the software like ETF. So IGV. This is a software basket. This is this is stuff that people are long. This a lot of these names are stuff that you know, we're everyone was telling us we're must-owns before Microsoft, Palantir, Salesforce, Oracle, Intuit, Apploven, Palo Alto, Adobe, CrowdStrike, ServiceNow. That's what that basket looks like. And when you pull up the chart, it looks terrible. Okay. I'm not going to just say I'm not okay now, but this is okay. This is the first canary that's dead in the coal mine, which is no, no, because you you would have to argue that the mags say there's a little herd of canaries or little like there's different things. There's things that are thing like, but what what what what becomes more worrisome is when they start all like dying because like that there's different things. But I would don't worry about that. It's not it's not time to buy your insurance when there's like, you know, eat canaries on the floor, you know, like the insurance company. Yeah, the insurance company isn't very keen on selling the insurance then. So we'll buy your insurance, buy your straw hats, the winner or whatever they say. Now we saved the less the best for last. Okay. What is it? Because what is the most important thing to watch this week? The US dollar. That's right. And we saved it right for the end. Those listeners that were willing to ride it out right to the end of the show. And but kev. Look, back back in December, when the dollar turned up and when it turned up back in October, I was tactically bullish only because I felt from such an oversold state and a basing formation, there was room for the dollar index to do a 50% retrace. So like that we would have just a tactical retrace, not some structural bull market, but rather simply what markets do in ebb and flow. The dollar index couldn't muster up even a 38% retracement. Like it could not even get back to a basic fib zone. Then I'm going to put this on a weekly chart. There was basically a solid base that was established all through the two years of 2023 and 2024 that had the 100 to 100 and 203 level acting like a key support. When this was broken on the liberation day driven drop on the downside, we weren't able to to beat that. And there's a technical saying that what was previously support when broken acts as overhead resistance. This the fact that the dollar index spent six months trying to base and turn and couldn't, that's to me, a sign that this distribution is still incredibly dominant. And the fact that we've broken down this way, it's when the the Yen intervention happened, I want you to talk to about that because I don't know, no, no, the story as well as you do, probably. But when we had all of the cross currency suddenly all moving together, this is a this is when big currency moves happen. At minimum, the measured move is a direct hit of the 2021 and 2018, 2018 lows near 90. And that obviously you you would argue that there's a bigger macro story where they could go way lower than that over the long term. But I think from a trading perspective, a move down like a six handles further down to the 90 level on the dollar index, at this point truly is the path of these resistance. And and the thing is that like the the currencies like you go through them all and I'll let you talk to ones you want by like the euro broke out like we could be heading right to 125 the pound broke out of of its June high. You have that big reversal in the yen. I'm going to look at the yen so that we can see it. Not the US dollar yen, but the inverse. And you can see the yen intervention came in right along where all the previous support lines have come in the past. This could be just the beginning of a of a Yen move. You have the US dollar CAD breaking back down to lows that we saw over the last two years. The Aussie dollar, a fresh breakout like everything is moving. The dollar is getting killed right across the board. You can't ignore this shit. What do you which one do you want to focus on? Listen, I don't. The fact that I've chosen the yen over the last year shows you how useless I am at that because my main point was the US dollar was headed lower and I thought that the yen would be the one that would experience that the alpha and it wasn't in a in a hindsight that was a terrible call. I just want to remind folks though of the fact that they're sitting around and they're looking at the changing nature of relationships with the US dollar and the US bond market in terms of when stress happens in the financial system. Someone said to me today, "Oh gosh, it's weird. We're having a situation where we're going to go bomb Iran, not you and I, but the US because those Americans talking to, we're going to go bomb Iran and the US dollar is going for sale and bonds are going down." And I keep stressing that the reality is that the US is running the monstrous capital account deficit. They need to fund it each and every day and as the world becomes more uncertain, capital is flowing back to the home countries for a variety of different reasons. And I think that this has just started. I really do. And what's interesting to me with the fact that you highlighted the intervention, there's some debate about whether that the, it was definitely done by the Americans. There's some debate if it was fed or treasury. I don't know of that matters. To me, the real question is usually they do it on the bequest of the Japanese and did they do it on their own this time? Did they just go screw this? I don't want the yen any weaker. And that's the part and because we saw a day or two later, Trump said something like, "No, you know, I think the US dollar is fine going down." And at his heart, I believe that Trump does want lower dollar. I think that the problem is that once the dollar starts selling off, US financial assets are going to go with it. And that is the dilemma that they're facing is that they want a lower US dollar to make it so that their goods are more competitive so that they can make tractors and compete against the Japanese in the Koreans. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, like, the world is in balance. The US does have too large of a capital account deficit. And it does need to rebalance. The problem is that people wanted to rebalance without there being any pain in the financial markets. And that's the part that I'm just pushing back on and saying, "No, you know what? It's going to rebalance and the rebalance is going to mean lower US stocks. And at the same time, it's going to mean more jobs for middle America." And it's just that process is not something everyone wants. And people have rightfully said, "Oh, but Trump won't want to take the pain. Maybe he won't." But at the same time, Patrick, people aren't going to continue funding the largest deficit in the world when you go around and you start threatening your allies. Right? Like, that's the problem. Like, they're sitting there running the largest capital account deficit in the world. And then they're threatening the very people that are lending them the money. And so put aside your politics. Put aside what you want to be done. Put aside what you think is fair, whether people say the US has been paying too much of NATO. And sure, maybe that's the case. Put away all those things and just ask yourself, what is the market going to do based upon what is happening? Trade the market. You, not the market you want, the market you have in front of you. And to me, with this sort of volatility and this instability in terms of global politics, it's pretty clear to me that eventually this going to mean a flight out of the US by the very people that are funding those deficits. There you go. You heard it from Kev. All right. Listen, Kev, just one closing thing I want to show you. Look at Bitcoin shitting the bed. Well, but what it was crazy to me is I always actually suspected that there would be some sort of correlation between gold and Bitcoin because they're sort of this alternative to the dollar thing. But Bitcoin is literally selling while gold is going parabolic and the dollars week. It's like it's someone's hitting the bid. Yeah. Another thing is Patrick, have you seen all this like a bruja about how much a gold tether is bought? So tether is gone and invested. I can't remember what the number is. There's an article on the FT. Some crazy number. I don't know what it is. 16 times. I don't know what the it's just some obscene number. Like basically the largest individual kind of corporate or or government buyer has been tethered over the last year of gold. So they're just buying and storing it. So it's kind of funny. Like what if they're turning their their digital assets into hard assets? Right. And like what if that's the transfer that's going? Yeah. And I think that there's more to that story than we then we know and that we should probably all pay attention to because I suspect that the tether was going to like we're going to look back and go, oh tether was a big part of this this precious mental rally. Yeah. Kev, listen, me and you we could honestly talk for two hours. Like there's shit loads of charts. We didn't even touch on but like we got to keep this a little bit tighter. So like I I I'm going to have to just basically stop stop us here and we'll continue talking charts in the next episode. Anyway. All right folks. Thanks for tuning in. Yeah. You know, Bull market bear market. We're just happy to spend some time together on this crazy ride. Before we sign off, though, Patrick, where can they find you? You can find me at bigpitchetrain.com or and follow me on my YouTube channel. Patrick underscore a saresna that's I'm now started kev doing a little macro outlook every morning Monday through Thursday at 9.30 a.m. just to give everyone a live stream of what's going on in the market. So if you guys want to check out my morning updates, check out my channel. It's live streaming every morning at the open. That's awesome. I'm sure Danny's very pleased with that more work for the poor guy. So listen, there's his idea. It was his idea. Okay, we'll have to learn. Find out more about that. All right, bear market bull market. We're just happy to spend some time together now stick around for the after show. Kev and where can they find you? Oh, I don't worry about everyone else. Danny, how you doing, buddy? I'm good. How are you? Does he need help doing the live stream? He must, right? It's much easier on Danny. Yeah, he needs a fluffer. Hey, you say he is an amazing fluffer. This man. All right. What are you guys up to in terms of like anything? I'm heading out to Mexico City. I'm going to do a week alone mastermind out there with my flying in my inner circle of members. I'm going to be trading live for the entire week. And I can't think of a more interesting week to do it in. It's going to be like a lot of action and I'm going to have a lot of fun. It's happened by the way you chose a good week to not be coming home to Canada. Do you see what happens in terms of the snow? We got a lot for Toronto. We got like a couple of feet plus. But the other thing about it though is you know how usually our snow is so wet and gross? Yeah. Kind of like the with slurred terrible snow. Yeah. Send your hate mill to pay Patrick. He hates whistler. All the Vancouver rights are going to be mad at me for that comment. So it's usually really, really slushy snow because it's like by the lake. But this was so cool Patrick that it was the fluffiest like you know rebel stoke high up in the Alpine snow I've ever seen in Toronto. You know what's crazy is my son sent me a video of him. There was a huge snow drift out on his balcony and he just basically went and jumped in and he just disappeared. Yeah. Just like his son right into it like. It was actually gone. I was actually in Ottawa though visiting my daughter and it was so cold Patrick he was windipate cold. Like it was like it was approaching the minus 30 handle. Like without wind chill. Like it was like and that sells to everyone. Yeah but actually they converge at that point. It's not much different. So it was really cool. It was like long underwear cold. It was cool. And he was daddy. What are you up to? Um one of my up to this weekend. Nothing. Not boring isn't it? Yeah that is boring. You're just going to be splicing videos. Yeah pretty much. I mean we've had we've had a bad storm here so there's not really much we can do. What you're in Portugal. What do you mean it's like it's raining? Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. It's like monsoon like hurricane wind. We were doing the interview with Chase and Danny had to stop the interview halfway through because he was traveling when he had when Chase was available. And so he had to do it from his car. Yeah. And the storm was so bad. He thought he was like you tell the story Danny. I don't want to. Yeah so we're doing. That's fine but as you do you know you can do the huddle from from your car to so everybody understands that that is possible. But um yeah the wind was so bad that um yeah the whole the whole car was just like rocking back and forth to the point where I was like oh shit. You were all alone. That's kind of embarrassing. Yeah. That is so good. Okay well anyways listen we'll take you have a great time in Mexico. Danny I hope that the uh the car rocks back and forth for other reasons apart from your snow. Your storm next and everyone's facing about their trade smaller. It's a very volatile market. Be careful out there and thanks for tuning in. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thanks everyone.