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ANOTHER RED DAY … STOCK MARKET TALK
Recorded: March 30, 2026 Duration: 2:44:03Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. what is up what is up everybody how are you all doing
and then stock market news here we got another interesting week ahead in the stock market here
i'm sure this is going to be nothing but riveting content on
stocks on spaces as we are moving a little lower today if you start look at the earlier part of
the day my etf portfolio was up one percent and now we're pretty much down one percent
quite the the reversal today i see we got mr scott red there joining us up here but yeah
a day that started green a day that is shifting red a market that is focused on
macro it is a very very different market than we've had a lot of times over the past couple years
it's an interesting one mr scott how you doing sir i'm doing well how are you i am doing fantastic i
well i was doing fantastic this morning now i'm'm just doing good. We're still going great.
Why were you doing fantastic?
Well, listen, I looked at my portfolio.
I was seeing my green.
It was nice.
It was like, ooh.
Now I did think of the meme of that full red line down,
small green line up, and the person goes, let's freaking go.
But it's better than that, than intraday reversal.
So I don't know.
I'm also, I was watching a, I saw this note from Morgan Stanley this morning.
They were talking about the S&P 500 correction being in the latter half of it.
Bill Ackman putting out the post yesterday saying,
hey, I think this is a buy opportunity or something like that.
So, I don't know.
It was a nice market morning that I felt maybe...
An intraday pullback feels pretty ugly compared to letting it happen tomorrow
in the top market it was for the last couple weeks.
So, I don't know.
I said words.
I've got the Wolf account joining us up here.
wolf account joining us up here i'm curious your take i i i let me give you the let me give you
I'm curious your take.
the perfect let me let me give you the professional uh active trader take on it everybody woke up this
morning you might have been like all excited because it's green we're up 40 handles maybe
it's a temporary little oh my god i'm up a little bit you know there's green on the screen but every
trade i guarantee you trader mike and some of the others on here woke up pissed. They're like, we were down 45 handles.
Now we're up 40 handles.
Scott, you are 1,000% correct.
I looked at this this morning.
I kept going up.
I'm like, I wanted to curse.
You're exactly right.
This does absolutely nothing for the technical complexion except for money is going to sell into it.
money's going to sell into it. It's going to work off the oscillator and it's going to make this
It's going to work off the oscillator.
take longer to get to a much better spot where maybe we could really be buyers for something
for more than a day to three days, if that. So anyway, so I don't mean to say that at the start.
I'm just saying like, I know for me, I know for a lot of traders, risk is, but we've had risk down.
We're below the 8 in 21 day.
You know, stocks are getting sold into every rally.
There's no names really acting so special.
We've gone over this many times.
Last week, everyone was talking about how the last Monday, you know, rally was very unimpressive, which was true, which led to lower lows on Friday.
lower lows on Friday. So we needed some, you know, by the way, you always, you don't always get
fear into panic and a crescendo if the market's not ready for that. Because who knows, the market
might know that this market's not making new lows that are going to stick until, you know,
six weeks from now, you know, so it's just distribution selling. But, you know, to get
something that could last for more than a week or two weeks
that that gives you a little bit of room you needed like a big gap down you needed um vix
spiking you needed a bunch of things to happen for traders to be able to make money long
you know you know and so some guys were actually excited someone like red dog what's the matter
with you friggin nvidia's broken short the bounce until 169. Google is broken, short the bounce.
Amazon is broken, short the bounce.
Sometimes it's hard when you're that oversold to short the bounce
because the last thing you want to do is have them push it in your face
and then you'd be right short a few days later.
So for me, I did short the spies on the open, made peanuts,
and I've been just sitting out of the way,
and I'm actually happy that this is taking place. Now what you need to do is they can't do a cute little rally to
revert to the mean in the last 15 minutes we should close on the lows let's open down you know
uh 75 100 handles tomorrow and then we can make money long then you could probably sell puts for
thursday friday maybe go out and buy some calls, you know, and and hopefully be closer to a different area versus where we were today.
Because obviously what looked like is they were trying to buy the futures all morning.
They were trying to buy the indices, but they were selling stocks everywhere.
Looked like they were trying to do a little bit of a window dress, but the socks were that weak.
So now that's telling us that, you you know we're not at the spot that you
could actually put um money to work and some people did put new money to work like two weeks ago
when we closed around 6 47 i know when i talk about the blood in the street account i just posted
the the weekly chart which you guys can look on my twitter and i talked about how i went tier one
um which was a friday two fridays ago seven and.5%. If you wanted more new money to work,
you can't put it within a percent or two of a buy.
You have to like wait four or 5%.
And that really would be around 6.10 to 6.14,
which would be like the tier two,
which would be about 12% off highs.
So, you know, I'm trying not to get baited in.
I'm trying to, you know, keep my cool.
And sometimes it's easier than others to do that.
So, you know, I hate to call anyone a novice who was so excited when the market was up.
Some people might have taken a little bit of longs on Friday saying, hey, you know,
the oscillator is minus 41. But if we, you know, I want to have something on just in case,
like what happened last Monday, and then they kind of got bailed out
versus, you know, being down first. So now, hopefully, again, we close here or lower.
And then tomorrow, you know, we get some kind of disorderly move that will create at least
a better spot to be able to make long, you know, to make a little bit of money long.
Because, you know, buying up open in the first 20 minutes,
the highs were put in the first 20 minutes.
All you did is lose money and, you know,
gave guys a way to distribute more stock.
Yeah. You know, Scott,
it's so counterintuitive to what I would say are civilians, right?
I said this on Friday for my daily update. I said,
we need a big gap down open on Monday. And the idea being, hopefully we get a gap down flush in
the first hour to see some stability and then see buyers step in, hopefully getting a reversal day.
And the news flow over the weekend felt like it was leaning that way. Like if you look at hyperliquid over the weekend, which is probably not super accurate,
but it was showing that we would probably have a down open.
Even Kramer got on the bandwagon and said it would probably be down 150 handles by the open.
And of course we weren't.
And the opposite, what I said, the best thing we can get is a gap down open. The worst would be a weak bounce. And of course we weren't. And the worst, the opposite, what I said, the best thing
we can get is a gap down open. The worst would be a weak bounce. And that's what we had. We had a
weak bounce. So I'm still waiting for that big gap down. The reason it's important is because
until you get that big flush where people just go, forget it, I'm done, I'm selling,
you can't find a short-term bottom, or at least it's very hard to do.
And you just get this slow bleed,
which is very frustrating,
like in the words of Brian Shannon,
if it doesn't scare you out, it will wear you out.
And so that's kind of where we're at right now.
Yeah, and the oscillator, by the way,
is not even where we were on Friday.
We're down 40 on the oscillator.
We were down like 42.
And the time that we had that little bounce
from Friday to Monday, we were down 51. So by opening up like that all it does is we're out buying and and it
makes you notice the vix is not even above friday the vix is not even above friday's high
right so maybe maybe tomorrow the vix is not i'd love it i'd love a gap down to like 620 ish you
know what you could do there is you could sell some puts, 615, 610s.
There'd probably be like two, three bucks.
You know, you could then go a little bit lower, buy some calls actually in the hole for maybe, you know, for new flows or for something a little further out.
Like today, there's no money to be made long, even though it looked like it was going to be a bullish day.
And even if we held up, they would have sucked out all the premium, you know, and we would
just went into a, they just took all the meat off the bone unless you were a good short.
And again, it wasn't an easy short either.
They wore you out a little bit until like, what, 11 o'clock before they rolled them down,
really?
And the other thing is, I think if you, I don't want people to get the wrong impression,
right?
Just because you get a gap down, I'm not saying people should buy, right?
Like you get a gap down, you need to find some intraday stability, a base you can trade against.
But also, you want to look at other indicators to see how they're acting.
The first one I'm looking at, and I've just – we've all had our eyes on this for months now, is XLF.
our eyes on this for months now is XLF. As long as XLF is weak and continuing to make lower lows,
it's very unlikely that this market is going to find any footing and start to go back up because
it's very hard to get the market in a bull mode when XLF is dropping. So you're going to look at
XLF. Of course, you'll look at the VIX. You'll look at IGV. I feel like this story about software Armageddon is way overdone.
But guess what?
The market doesn't feel that way yet.
So at some point, I think we're going to get a massive snapback when I start seeing some firmness in those names.
So you get the gap down.
You get the flush.
Everyone starts panicking.
Kramer cries.
Ackman cries.
Whatever.
Then you start putting the pieces together. How's the XLF doing how's the vix doing how's igv how's the other
things that's how you put the odds in your favor you don't just shoot you know you just don't shoot
your shot because the markets gap down one thing to note on today uh or on this week might i say is for anyone trading it is a shortened
week as well the stock market is closed on friday for good friday for anyone who doesn't know that
this is one thing to also describe maybe that's a good thing on this week
i'll tell you it will be a great if we are still doing this mode at thursday when we close i will
be so glad it's a three-day weekend.
I myself will be out in Vegas this weekend, so I will not be thinking about the market.
But yeah, traditionally shortened weeks like this tend to be bullish, but right now it's not looking like that's how it's going to end up.
Is Scott up here? It looks like it's saying he's down as a listener right now.
I think we lost him for a second. We'll get him back up here? It looks like it's setting you down as a listener right now. I think we lost him for a second.
We'll get him back up here.
I did see.
I did a little write-up on IGV today, and you can catch that off one of my links.
But we're at a triple bottom on it for the year, as of this morning, yesterday when it closed on Friday.
And I'm with you.
I think this is overdone, and it's on one of my things to buy.
And the nice thing about IGV is,
if you're worried about which software name to get into,
you get the top 10 right there.
You get a lot of the big names.
So you don't have to pick the exact right one.
And IGV moves well.
It's not like some other ETFs that don't move as well.
That one has to have power to the upside.
So I like that one as well.
You know, IGV reminds,
the narrative around IGV and software and AI eating the world reminds me
very much of the narrative we had at the Lowe's last year. I guess it would have been April
during the tariff tantrum. And let's all remember this because a lot of people were here,
and I was saying this at the time, right? The narrative at that time was, it's over for the United States. Our century of greatness is over. We've now aligned ourselves against the world, and we blew it.
And the fact of the matter was, like it or don't like it, this is not an opinion, it's just a fact.
We were the 800-pound gorilla. The world needed us more than we needed them, and we ended up having an amazing year.
I feel it's the same way with software now.
They're talking about software.
These names are going to go to zero, and AI is going to come through and change the – okay, maybe.
But it just feels too hyperbolic.
It feels too much the sky is falling.
Until you can see some confirmation in the numbers and the technicals, that is a fact.
But it just feels too extreme right now.
Well, the other thing with it is AI is going to kill all these companies,
but they're also terrified that AI is never going to live up to its potential
and be able to recruit the money at cost.
It's like the exact opposite of the way this market is trading on right now.
They're kind of opposing each other.
And what's going on with software kind of reminds me,
remember you've been trading for a while remember when amazon was taking over the world anytime
amazon was mentioned as getting into somebody's um backfield or anything else all the stocks in
that sector were dropping went through this about 10 years ago and they everybody was saying you
need to break up amazon you need to break up amazon and look at this amazon hasn't taken over
the world it's a great company it does great don't misunderstand me but hasn't taken over the world. It's a great company. It does great my email and you think, oh my God, it's going to take over the world.
That is so different than legacy companies that have Salesforce integrated into the DNA of their operating systems.
They are not just going to go in there and rip out Salesforce over the weekend and say, hey, Claude, take over all these things.
And if you extrapolate that through all the different things that software does now in
companies, especially like regulated industries, we just had this report last week that so
many of these AI LLMs have no security or very lack of security.
You can't do that in HIPAA regulated industries like healthcare.
You can't do that in FINIPAA-regulated industries like healthcare. You can't do that in FINRA-regulated industries like financial services.
So I'm not saying that AI isn't going to have an impact.
But the idea that you're just going to wave a wand and overnight it's going to go from buggy carriages to automobiles is just ridiculous.
Well, I mean, again, people forget CEOs are generally risk-adverse.
And if it's working, don't break it.
It takes a lot of money to write your own code, even with AI, and maintain it.
And there's a lot involved in that.
So I agree.
I think this is overdone.
And at some point, these are all going to be screaming buys.
The question is just when.
You have to wait for it to show.
Yeah, you still have.
I'm just saying a lot of – I just wanted to – someone asked me if I could repost the weekly chart of the spies that had the, you know, the levels on it.
So I just put that back and it kicked me off just because I'm an idiot when it comes to technology.
But listen, I also put the thing on, you know, with IGV, but I kind of put a little caveat saying like everyone's like, you know, IGV double bottom, IGV this, IGV that.
And, you know, and I just was like, be a little careful. We just came from a lot higher, right? The IGV came from 87. So obviously
you do get a bounce when you get back to the lows. So you could do, you know, a double bottom type of
trade. And that's what you had early on in the morning, you know, but people were starting to
chase it. I'm like, wait a second. Like, this is just, you know, this has to prove that it's more
like you just had a good bounce.
It's back here.
A lot of people got really hurt with Microsoft.
You had that bounce up.
They thought it was over.
And then when it broke 381 about a week or two ago, you're now looking at Microsoft at 357.
For investors, it doesn't matter that much.
But for a trader, it said said microsoft bottom they thought because of the move that happened that first move which failed on march
6 that they could just buy microsoft and get bailed out and now here you are microsoft 356
um but anyway um micron down 10 today see this is there's some interesting moves here
yeah no well micron at least micron went went red early like like memory names were up and i was like all right it makes a little sense
you know they tried to bounce on friday they were the strongest and then all of a sudden micron went
red like within the first 10 minutes i'm like hmm and then a guy's like we're gonna buy micron
it was strong on friday i'm like well if it stays below 350 which is that level you're not buying
micron and if sandus gets below 598 which was the low from
from friday you get the hell out of the way and then literally you start going back and forth
all morning and then finally and you just couldn't get back above 350 and then that pulled down
sandus so at least and you gave you clues not to go back to sandus because it was okay on friday
and that's what traders have to look for You have to look for the clues of the action, not whether or not memory is done or one chip has more memory. And I understand, I love your guys'
macro about software, but nobody knows the true effects. And as of right now, it's been dangerous.
Some guys are like, I'm buying service now, I'm buying CRM. They're holding the low from that
prior time. I'm like, well, if Microsoft continues and they break the low, there's another leg there.
So what I'm saying is just be careful and know that, hey, I remember when Meta, you
know, remember in 2022 and when Mega Cab Tech got really, they came back, but Meta went
to below 100 before coming back, if you remember.
You know, so some of these names that people got very used to um have
like a false sense of security just buying them and then sometimes especially if they're on margin
hopefully no one's on margin out there really except for if you're on trading margin and you
get flat at the end of the day sometimes um but there's uh you know there's this
anything could always happen and and the s p is down, like in the chart I posted, it's only down, now it's down maybe 10%.
Last year we were down 20%.
We are two bucks above 10% here on the S&P 500.
You know, because everyone's like begging me, when are you going blood in the street account number two?
Because people base one of their accounts on my blood in the street account.
I'm like, you can't do it yet.
You just can't.
I'm like, in the pandemic, I started a little early because it yet you just can't i'm like in in in the pandemic
i started a little early because everyone was you know bullying me into getting involved and
meanwhile the pandemic went down over 30 and i started too early and it didn't work as well
last year i started a little bit better but we still went down 21 so here we are on march 30th
like why do we think you know this will be the low of this complicated sequence?
It might be a trading low, which is what we're trying to catch this week by getting the right dynamics of it,
but it doesn't mean it's going to be the low of 2026.
So you just have to space it out if you're doing something like that.
Where was your first buy? Where could be your second buy? Where could be your third buy?
Because if you space it out well, you could do really well.
But if this turns into
something that lasts longer than we all think then all of a sudden your blood in the street
account has no more bullets then you didn't save it for blood in the street you saved it for right
now we're just in market correction we're not even bear market definition yet in any of the indices
besides some stocks so i'm not afraid i'm not a big fan of shorting. I sometimes will scalp short, but my philosophy on shorting is I wait until I think it's the perfect spot to short. And then I wait longer and I wait longer and wait longer. And then when I think it's absolutely the right spot to short, I wait longer. And that's how I feel like.
in the street right you when you think you know it's and here's the thing right if i'm understanding
you correctly i mean this isn't trading money anyway right i mean it's money that you right so
you you're okay holding it if it still goes lower which is why you're dividing it up into four or
five whatever so yeah so the longer you wait yeah three or four so the longer you wait the longer
the band's going to stretch the better the chance you're going to get to snap back but and i look i
always worry about this because i know we talk in shorthand here because we're traders.
We've done it so long, and I worry that people are going to hear just half of what someone says and then act on it.
I know you dropped off there, but what I was saying about IGV and software is that I just feel like the narrative about software I feel is overblown.
Obviously, the technicals are still confirming it, but I feel at some point something's going to happen where we're going to go, okay, that was a little bit over the top, and we're going to see a rebound in these names.
I don't see it yet, but that's how it's starting to feel to me.
I get it.
You're a thousand percent around, and I look for that, too.
The last rally was pretty good.
The last rally, if you remember, you rallied.
You had that first move on, what was it?
It was February 24th.
And then software acted better than the market.
You know, on every dip, it was viable while everything else was getting sold.
So that helped support the move to like Microsoft 413 before you had the reversal.
But then if that was going to continue, it should never have broken like 394.
And then it broke 394. And then it broke 394.
And then it broke 381.
And here we are down here.
So you have to have that whole new rebuild bounce cycle attempt go all over again.
So anyway.
So part of what I'm doing here, and I'm not buying it, is I'm making my list.
I'm putting together and sharing some ideas.
This is where you've got to start putting your list of what you want when this is over.
Because at some point, this is going to be over, whether it's tomorrow or a week or whatever it is.
At some point, the market will turn around and come back.
And you have to have ideas of what you want.
And that will change the longer this goes on, right?
What I like today, I may not like a month from now if this is still going on.
Right, exactly.
It could change.
Memory kind of changed.
It's not as strong as it was.
The optical names changed a little bit. like it could change like memory kind of change it's not as strong as it was you know uh the
optical names changed a little bit obviously the name like like three weeks ago or two weeks ago
actually last week nbis looked awesome nbis looked like it was weathering the storm looked like you
could buy it verse you know 112 but once it broke 112 that trade changed once it lost that gap pivot
of 104 it no longer went from best in breed,
like it's holding up as soon as the market goes, it's going to make a new all time high.
They said, you know what? Market's not going to be bouncing so fast. We got to take some profits
in that. You saw the same thing in ASTS. ASTS, like you just said, like it looked great. And
then it looked like it was holding up. It looked like there was relative strength. And then look
at what happened on, what was it? It was March 26th when it totally engulfed that strong day that there said, wow,
this isn't as strong as it was. This isn't showing as much relative strength. The trade just went
from relative strength to like, you better be careful. And now three days later, it's already
below that whole inside range. So yeah, so what you want to buy when a market bottoms could change when the market
fine gives you the bottom, you know, so, but having a list is definitely good because, you know,
takes the emotion out of it. So what you should do is write down levels of the names that you
might want. So when it gets to those levels, you can look at it with, with no emotion and say,
why did I write down that letter level? Okay Like I wrote down 610 to 614.
I wrote that down a few weeks ago. If it gets there, I might be like, well, now I can't be
buying 610, 614 because it could go to 595. But then I have to say to myself, why did I write
down that level? Oh, I wrote it down because, hey, it's 12%. Hey, it correlates to that other
spot over there. So writing down your names is good, but writing down spots for when those names get to those spots, you then look at where the market is, how it's reacting, and see whether or not the reason why you wrote down that spot makes sense.
And it's important that people are lining up their risk parameters with their timeframes.
And let's just stick with NBIS because when NBIS
gapped up a few weeks back, right, it got to 130, I'm sure there were people that didn't buy it,
right, that had wanted to buy it earlier, like, damn, you know, I missed it. It's up here at 130.
Now, it's down at 90 now. So there's probably a lot of people that said,
damn, I was upset that I didn't buy it at 130.. Woo, I'm glad I didn't buy it at $130 because now it's $90.
Okay, that's one way to look at it.
But another way to look at it is like, do you still have the same fundamental?
And I'm taking my trader hat off here, right?
And I'm going now into active investing.
And I define active investing as names that you want to acquire to hold long term like
you would for just a buy and hold.
But you use trading techniques to get into them at better prices over time.
So for example, if you think NBIS is still a potential long-term winner,
I'd be looking to buy it maybe by selling some puts, right?
So that if it does get down and you get a sign,
you get a lower cost basis.
If it rallies, you get the premium.
And so you maybe take how much you'd be willing
to invest in NBIS, divide it into four tranches,
find those spots Scott was talking about
on the charts that make sense, sell puts there,
or when price gets down, there's sell puts,
and then wait till you get your first tranche filled
or till you collect the premium, then take the second one. There's no hurry, right? Because
you're going to be buying this position that you think is going to be higher in 5, 10, maybe even
20 years. But that's the way you have to think about markets like this is strategically. You
can't just go, wow, it sucked that I didn't buy it at 130. Wow, I'm so glad I didn't buy it at 130.
It's at 90, and then take it off your radar right can i can i add one thing to that too because sometimes if if i 130 it could
have been better than it was a 112 as a trade you know what i'm saying some people like oh i missed
it at 130 let me buy it back at 112 and if it goes lower i want more sometimes like no no no you don't
want it to go lower breaks 112 it's a it's a different name, at least actively.
Longer term, yeah, it could be different if you have a thesis and your thesis is correct and it just takes time.
But, you know, when it broke 112, some people are like, oh, wow, now I can buy this at 104.
I'm like, but if it breaks 104, it breaks in that gap, that gap no longer protecting that price, it can go to 100 or lower. Like, so sometimes people are wishing for lower prices and be careful what you wish for because then it's a different trade.
It's not the same complexion.
And that's another one of the counterintuitive things
about trading slash investing
is people think that narrative drives price,
but it's the opposite.
Price drives narrative.
When NBIS is at 130, everyone wants to buy it.
Right now that it's at 90, nobody wants to buy it.
And so being able to understand that bias that you have in your head about price and then stepping back a little bit, being strategic and saying, what do I want to accomplish here?
I mean, look, there's only five types of strategies, okay?
There's a scalp.
There's a day trade.
There's a swing trade.
There's an active investment.
And there's buy and hold.
Buy and hold is simple.
You DCA, you go into index funds, that's simple.
If you're doing scalping and day trading.
By the way, on that, everyone should be doing that.
If you can't be doing that, that's 100% should be one strategy that everybody has.
Unfortunately, some prop traders don't have that because you just make money monthly.
Especially if you're young, you don't have a 401k yet because prop trading firms, a lot
of them don't provide that but if you're trading on the side of your job make sure no matter what you have a 401k
matching even though it's not sexy that's what's going to make your money long term and 529bs and
all the foundational stuff 100 so if you're long-term investing that's simple if you're
scalping and day trading okay this is the the market to to do it, but it's a tough market to do it.
If you're swing trading, there's no trades for you right now, right? So that active investment
right now is you have to know what, you know, we're not all swing traders. We're not all day
traders. We're not all investors, but each position we put on should have one of those
five strategies attached to it. And you have to know what strategy you want to put on for that position because the strategy dictates the management.
You don't manage a day trade the same way you do an active investment.
You don't manage a scalp the same way you do a swing trade.
So you have to know, A, what environment the market's in, which of those strategies works in that market.
And then make sure you're not flipping back and forth. I see sometimes people go, well, this is a day trade,
and then the stock breaks a support level and they go, well, I'm going to swing it now, right?
And then it turns into an investment when it goes below that.
That's an investment, right? And then it turns into a tax loss harvest when it goes to zero.
The house of pain.
Everyone rationalizes it the same way
but you know what like i just and we're laughing because we've all done it scott we're not saying
yeah right yeah like let me just say one thing to that because like it also goes mentally like so
i spoke to two different people who love mbis one actually stopped himself out at one you know 112
and is so excited.
And I said to him, why don't you sell the $80 puts?
Go out a bunch of months.
That's a whole other level.
And he was excited to do it.
The other person who didn't sell at $112, I said, why don't you sell the $80s?
I can't have any more of this now.
Because he kind of put himself in the penalty box because he didn't stop himself out at the $112, $104.
So sometimes mentally you have to, you know,
I guess do it a little bit differently too.
But you also don't want to have too much of something just in case you're wrong.
So if you manage…
That's why blindly DCAing at any price is stupid.
Say again?
I said that's why blindly DCAing at any price is stupid.
Right.
Run out of capital then.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
Definitely, definitely. And by the way, yeah. at any price is stupid right running a capital then yeah yeah no no definitely definitely and
by the way yeah so um time frame is key risk management's key knowing what you can handle
is key and just following your process and executing because it's when you don't execute
like you said it goes from a day trade to a swing trade to uh an investment to a tax loss harvest
because you're rationalizing
all the reasons why you didn't follow your own rules.
And I'm going to add one thing that I think is super, this may be the most important thing,
especially if you're not someone who has to trade because you need a paycheck. I'm going
to give everybody listening permission to not do anything. You don't have to do anything
in this market. I know there's this narrative like, oh, I'm a trader and the market's moving, so I should be in there. I don't agree with that. I agree with
waiting till the odds are in your favor, especially, again, if this is not your profession.
So I give a dispensation to everyone out there to just sit and watch, to wait until this market
proves that it can stop going down, till it can firm up a little bit until you can get some setups where you can manage your risk until then chill out i mean it's it's spring it's beautiful
out there it's going to be a four-day week but you don't have to be in there fighting slugging
every single turn in the market and if you do do that right now you're just going to get chopped up
yeah i didn't i didn't do one trade in my swing account and i've done like three or four you know
trades in my in my and i have hundreds of people that want ideas and i'm like i'm not doing it i'm
like i don't i'm not buying this gap up and i don't love shorting a gap up that is oversold
work i'll be so much more pissed if i lose short so i did one or two shorts i tried one or two
areas on the buy side just in case and and i've been sitting here doing nothing watching saying
okay this is getting closer to a better setup for my style,
which is what I'm looking for.
If tomorrow we gap up another 50 handles, I'm going to be like, wow,
this frigging sucks, and I'll have to sit back again.
I did one trade today.
What?
I did one trade today.
I caught Netflix out of the gate because I had strength.
Just grabbed it with stock, ran it up, made some money, and that's it.
I haven't touched a thing all day because I
wasn't comfortable shorting this market, and I
certainly wasn't comfortable being long it today either.
This is a great litmus test for people out there.
If you want to know if a trading
service or a trading person is legit,
right now, are they feeding you tons
of ideas that you should be
jumping on? If they are, they're not
trading. Seriously. Yeah, yeah. No, no. And I actually, ideas that you should be jumping on if they are they're not trading seriously
yeah yeah no no and i actually i have a product called power plays and
you know there are no power plays like i finally got a power play short i shorted in the video i
had to buy nvidia puts because uh you know i was like um there's no power play as much as people
wanted one like red dog we we signed up for power plays power plays and i tried it a few times and like i actually put on nbis as a power play when i was
at 115 and then when it when it broke 112 i'm like it's over like what do you mean we just put
it on i'm like it's not a power play anymore it's not holding up showing relative strength it's
different we got out of iron also iron got out you know i put it on as a potential power play
when it broke 39 i'm like it's over it's no longer
in a base acting well the fucking trade's over you know so it's it's so hard to like a control
my own trading and then keep everyone else at bay um that's my job and that's everyone's job
and that's what your your service should be doing for you um and then you know part of the service
was oh we promised to give the best play a week. I'm like, well, you know what?
Sometimes it's not a great play of the week, but in a great market, when we find our spot, you might have seven in three days, you know, because that's the time.
I wanted to say one thing that I'm starting to do today.
I think I told you guys the last time when we were having an oversold bounce, I was selling premium higher.
So, like, right now with the spies at $629.58, what I started to do is just so I was selling premium higher. So like right now with the spies at 629.58,
what I started to do is just so I could see the premium for April 2nd, I'm looking at the 615s,
which is 15 points below. They're $1.75. I'm like, oh, you know what? It's money. That's kind of juicy. I'm like, let me just see what they want for the 615s here and then see if we
accelerate into the close where they are. and maybe I sell a little bit or
if I want to be perfect I wait till tomorrow because we're down at 620 I feel like maybe I
could sell the 610s for the same premium and that's the real area that I want to spies besides
if we open lower buying calls and stuff like that so what I do is I start to see the premium sometimes
the option guys are a lot smarter than the equity guys where you see them start juicing the premiums higher and the and the indices aren't doing anything you know they're
like okay they they they you know they don't want you to buy that or where they you know or something
like that meaning we're going to go lower so um it's just something i start to watch things that
i might want a little bit later in the week um so that's something i'm thinking about going back
that's all right you're going back to that thing about being active.
One of the, outside of the trading world, I always respect someone when they are confronted with a really complex question or situation.
And they say, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that.
And maybe I'll look into it.
I hate it when someone gives a snap answer to something like, how would you solve the Middle East crisis?
Oh, it's real simple, right?
It's the same thing with trading, right?
When somebody says there's nothing out there right now or there's nothing out there that puts the odds in our favor and so I'm not going to be doing anything.
that is in the business of trading
and they just have to feed their people
stuff that's going to just chop them up
and lose the money.
And look, and that's why Mike, you and Scott
and I have been doing this for decades, right?
I see these people come and go.
They take advantage of every bull market.
They're gone in every bear market.
And yet we're still here, so.
You know what? Another thing, just thought even the wire house like what
like when wilson came out this morning saying i think we're closer to a bottom than we are from
the top i'm like what the fuck value does that add so we're we could be two to four percent away
from a low versus you know just he's trying to always he's trying to make up for that short call
that he was so stubborn and stayed with for a year and a half. Now he's been trying to be like an active bull and he's framing things
differently, but it's like, okay, that's, you know, that's very general.
I do still think of him as a bear because of that.
It's funny.
And somewhere in the back of my mind is there.
Right.
Cause he, he was stubborn the whole time and he kept saying, nope, nope,
nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
And then near the top, he like switched gears.
I'm like, you're not allowed to do that.
But anyway, so now he's trying to be like somebody's going to call
the bottom of this down move.
I'm like, all right.
Anyway, because you were just on the whole thing about communication.
You know, you look at the macro and you look what's going on
and you see these reports that the White House is trying to understand
what will happen with crude 150, 200 barrel.
I'm like, that's a scary thought.
I mean, if that happens, it's game over for the economy for a little while, right?
Everything's going to go through the roof.
People are going to cut back on their spending.
We're going to probably see some type of recession.
The market won't handle the shock of oil being above $150 a barrel.
being above $150 a barrel.
I just don't see that happening in a good way.
I just don't see that happening in a good way.
If oil stays, forget about $150,
if oil stays above $120 a barrel for a month,
a month and a half, you'll get a global recession.
Yeah.
So I look at that,
and then you look at the market
no longer really reacting to what the president says.
Even this morning when he posted that-
The market believes the IRGC spokespeople more than they believe the president of the
United States.
It feels like it.
That's the point of fuck up that we've gotten to.
The IRGC parliament head is telling people to fade the US market and the taco pump isn't
working anymore.
I mean, that's the level of delusion we've gotten to at this point.
And that is not a good thing. That is not a good
thing. And it's not a good thing for US credibility either. It's not a good thing for stability of
the dollar. It's not a good thing for stability of Forex markets, stability of commodity markets,
the ability for the United States to put a put under equity markets globally, which the U.S. has always been able to do.
That's been an ongoing power of the United States for many decades,
that the United States can simply just say that things are okay and markets respond to it.
And when you start losing that ability, that is a slippery slope.
And we're getting to that juncture now.
And last year it worked, right?
Last year you put the tariffs on.
A month later, Trump said, you know, we're signing deals.
The market loved it.
It was all fine and dandy.
Markets roared back to the highs.
I'm sure everyone had a great year last year.
Now we're in a situation where you, I just tweeted this,
you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
This is not like, anyone ever tried doing that? Go to your bathroom right now, put the
toothpaste out, try putting it back in the tube. You know, it's not easy. Yeah, but here's the
thing, right? Every time we have a market like this, the reasons are always different. They're
always different, right? But the resolution is always the same. So what you're saying right now is 100% true.
But what's important is that people don't think that's based in amber.
It could all change in a week.
I'm not saying it will, but I'm saying you have to say, okay, it sucks where we're at now.
We're going in the wrong direction.
But you also have to be open if you start seeing things in the market that show that that is resolving.
And that would, in my case, be technicals.
But you have to have a methodology and you have to be open to something changing.
But you're right. Right now, it's a pretty dark spot.
And we're also missing out the Fed.
The Fed is not there for us right now because they are afraid to lower rates into this and to do more QE with inflation going back up.
to lower rates into this
and to do more QE with inflation going back up.
So, I mean, it puts, you know,
it's a very tough spot.
The European Central Bank rate watch tool,
whatever you want to call it.
It's for raises.
It's for hikes.
It's for hikes.
68% chance of a hike from the ECB
at the next meeting.
55% chance of a second hike in June.
Like, we were talking about rate cuts a month ago
from all the central banks globally.
Now, if Europe pivots,
Europe is already going to be in an energy crisis
because of this, okay?
European EU energy commissioners
are meeting tomorrow morning
because they realize that they're fucked.
Because they haven't even gotten rid
of the inflation problem.
Rates are too low in Europe. We're sitting at, I don't know what their equivalent of the Fed
funds rate, I think is sitting at like 3%. They have plenty of room to raise. And then what
happens with the Fed? Then the Fed has to sit there and play sitting duck because they can't
cut into that in that type of economy. And now the AI spending, the AI data center spending, who is fueling two to $300 billion
of that? The Saudis and the Qataris. And now what? Now Trump is asking them to pay for part of the
war. Do you think they're going to meet those commitments for data center spend? On top of that,
they have a lot of their own damage. They don't need to put money back into their country. We're
not getting a clear picture, but we know they've been hit pretty hard in a lot of places, especially their infrastructure.
It's all one big trade.
The data center spend buoyed the economy in the first month of this year and the back half of last year.
Almost half of our GDP growth came from data center spend.
And now the Saudis and Qataris are very, in my opinion, very unlikely to meet their commitments for data center spend.
And then on top of this all, you have a demand destruction equation here.
Like, look at some of the oil stocks today and some of the nat gas stocks today.
They're not ripping as much as they would on a down day for equities like this,
at least in this last month of regime change.
No, they're detaching from crude, which is 140%.
They're detaching. Why? Because now demand destruction is a real is a real concern
right and now you're talking about the idea of okay even if oil prices do go higher at what point
is it does it become an effector for the everyday consumer and we're getting pretty close to that
point too well you know and and american savings are not where they were in when we were raising
rates the first time around in 22.
The American consumer
is not as strong as it was in 22. You layer on top
of that the burgeoning credit
crisis, which has yet to crack yet.
You look at the CDS for
Oracle, some of these names. There's a lot
of foundational things. The problem
is a lot of these things are okay
as long as there is an engine that's driving.
But then when you start getting a crack in it, whether it's the AI data centers, whether it's oil, all of a sudden things that were okay below the surface can exponentially break and break very fast, right?
And that's the risk here.
That's what the oil over 120, that's what the oil 200 does.
You think, well, what does that have to do with credit?
It has everything to do with structural because it's all liquidity. It's all about liquidity
Yes, when there's a run on things you find out really what what's underneath the surface
Happy Monday everybody
No, but again, but this type of stuff leads to really, really awesome opportunities if you're not caught in it.
If you're not caught in it, every corrective phase has led to wealth creation.
So we're talking everything that everyone is saying is real and could sound scary, but only if you really depends on if you're trying to be right and quarterly, or if you're a little over your skis, if you're on margin, other than that, you know,
you stay the course and stay positive and do the right thing with your, with your mentality,
and it'll be just fine. If you're a trader right now sitting on a lot of cash, you might,
you know, be bored, but you're, you, you, you will be ready to go if, you know, versus someone
who's not, if you're an investor, again, and you are excited about your statements
in January, you shouldn't have been because you're 42 years old and you're not going to be
touching your 401k until you're 70-something. So it's perspective. And sometimes you got to
get uglier before you get better and it washes out a lot of the excess. And excesses always get
washed out at some point. It's just a matter of when.
And it's some of these things that are starting to, you know,
the armor has been chipped, and now you get to see under the surface
of the things that have been kind of hiding.
And they do that until it's cleansed.
And how long does that take?
Nobody truly knows.
But you have to have the endurance and the wherewithal to stay the course.
And we shall see right now, what is it, 344? The spies just rallied from, you know, 629.80 to 630.80.
The VWAP is 634. I'm hoping it does not get there. That'd be annoying. That would then have four or
five dollars before a point of reference for tomorrow. If we're trying to get some kind of
low risk type of inflection point, you don't want this to bounce much more than this,
and you want something that people aren't expected overnight to happen. So it really
does put a little bit of a disorderly scare. But we'll see. Until then, it's just nickel and dime.
Stay the course and stay sane.
Sane, safe, and
safe.
Because tilt costs you a lot more money.
I am curious
everyone's different tactics
for avoiding
that overtrading.
I'm sure it's more different.
Do nothing.
Well, here's the thing.
It's human emotions.
I mean, this is...
People treat it like a casino, for better or for worse.
People feel like they need to take a trade.
Other people have their reason.
Like, even just being on these spaces,
I'm sure running a service.
A lot of this conversation was talking about,
you know, being not afraid to say,
hey, this isn't the time. Save your cat house.
I feel like that's a difficult thing to do. So I mentioned that I do.
I mentioned that I'm going to Vegas this week. I'm not kidding.
Like I'm going to Vegas. Like part of it's to get,
get just get away from the screens. Right. I'm going to go with my family.
Like there's a world outside the markets. And, and so it's like this,
like when you have an issue that you're trying to get rid of and you empty the
basket, get it out. You can't leave the basket empty.
It will just fill it back up.
You've got to replace it with something else.
So if you don't want to be focusing on the market, if you don't want to – you're not a short-term trader and you just want to avoid over-trading, get that out of your basket.
But fill it with something else.
Go on a hike, work out, hang out with some friends.
Like you've got to do something.
Otherwise, it's going to seep back in.
You're going to hear news.
You're going to have an idiot friend that's going to tell you about what's going on.
And it's going to be a temptation to go back there and futz around with something.
And that's how you get in trouble.
Scott, do you have any thoughts, any tactics that you use for yourself that work?
Yeah. Well, that's why every day I do the 25-20.
I'm in a sauna with 100 people doing the Walsh workout.
So this morning when I woke up and I saw the futures up 30, 40 handles,
I'm like, damn it.
I'm like, that's not what I wanted.
I'm like, guess what?
I'm going to go do my workout, same workout.
I'm going to sweat.
I'm going to think clearly on where we can go,
maybe if things are viable, where we could
fade if things are going to be rejected and sweat it out and go in my ice barrel, think to myself on
how I need to chip away at the small hole that I'm in and say today wasn't the day that I wanted.
So maybe there'll be another day later this week that is more than just a scalp pick your spot
trade and more of a money trade.
Lunchtime, I tend to get off the desk.
I put my stops in.
I have the thing called the push-up club.
I do six minutes of push-ups.
I've been doing that literally for, I don't know, decades where I'm not on my seat at lunch, so I don't have to trade.
I miss a few things, but chances are things that you miss don't outweigh the amount of bad trades you put on at lunchtime that would wear you out. So when a trade is ready towards the last hour, you miss it. And then again, like you just said, on the weekends, I post a picture with me and my dog in the reservation going for a run
because that's what I do. I just put a race on the calendar for next September, the Rim to Rim,
which is a cool race, a little modified race that I'm used to, but it's something that I'll look
forward to.
You go from the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
You walk down, walk across, walk up.
It's like 22 miles.
Did we lose that?
Yeah, sometimes I give it a second, though.
I did see Larry unmute there.
What's up?
Hey, Larry. How you doing, sir?
I'm good. I'm good.
I will just make fun of those guys
being older than me for a second.
Just say...
Is he back?
Yeah, you did cut out there.
And then Larry
chose to make fun of your age. No, I'm kidding. Sorry. You cut out there um and then larry chose to make fun of your age no i'm kidding sorry
uh you cut out there for a second oh that's right i just um i don't know where i cut out
um just that it's good to put things on the calendar to look forward to so if you're happening
to you know if you're having a tough time trading wise at least you know you take your mind somewhere else besides the day-to-day
grind you know that you have to like the day-to-day grind but sometimes it can get to you so you have
to do other things to release the tension of it so this way when things are ready to go you're
you're not a shell of yourself and i've seen lots of traders become shells of themselves because
they feel like they have to be involved they don't know what to do if they're not trading when the
market's open and you got to figure out some of those things because you know last last speech
that i gave for uh traders for a cause i've known no one no one cared about my my moving average
rules or my chart patterns they want to how the hell are you still here for 30 years i'm like
because there's a process and part of the process is you know the best there's three months of the
year that are awesome. The rest,
you better just take your trades and be disciplined. And then there are three years in a
decade that are awesome. And the other seven years, you better have some hobbies and like your life,
like your spouse, like your kids and do some things to help you just when, you know, it's just
the average. So it is the balance of the situation that'll keep you thinking clearly and give you
the longevity in investing and trading.
It's not exactly how smart you think you are or how great your system processes.
It's one big formula.
I do know we're towards the time when you normally have to head off here.
I don't know if there was anything you wanted to make sure, wanted to get out here, anything you would want to leave the people with.
We always appreciate you for joining in
Every single Monday, 3pm Eastern
We got Mr. Scott Ruther joining us here
For around 45-50 minutes
Sometimes a little longer
Giving his thoughts
We always appreciate it
We had 1,200 people in here for a little bit there
We're up to 1,100 now
I appreciate you for joining in
Definitely should make sure you're following Scott
But anything you want to make sure
You get out here,
leave the people with?
Yeah, just go day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year.
Whichever one of you really caters to your process,
just focus on more and let's learn how to do a few other things.
Every day at 6.30, I do a 20-minute 6.30 club.
It's for free for anyone on Twitter who wants to tune in.
I talk about levels.
I talk about keys to the mark.
I talk about the narratives, some of the divergences, some things that act different,
some things that don't. And I'm up early to make sure that I'm grounded enough so I could execute.
So I would say, if you're not having success, get up a little bit earlier, get a little bit more
prepared, and just do a little bit more work. And a little bit more work doesn't mean a little bit
more trading. But also, a little bit more work doesn't a little bit more work doesn't mean a little bit more trading,
but also a little bit more work doesn't mean do so much work
so you're scared to trade.
Just try and do the right thing and have your mind right
so you can execute.
And at this point, I do have to jump.
We are getting a little bit of a bounce.
We now have a new point of reference.
Every day gives you a new point of reference.
Now you have 629-28 in the Spies.
So we'll see what happens tomorrow. In the queues, you have a new point of reference now you have 6 29 28 in the spies so we'll see what happens tomorrow you know in the queues you have a new point of reference
um you know something to notice is that you know microsoft these guys are talking software actually
was the first one to go green and it's a little bit more bouncy than it's been so maybe maybe this
little area of software wants to hold for a day or two you know notice little things same way last
week we noticed that memory was getting a little weaker.
It wasn't like when the spies were down $4, you know,
and you would still be up 25 and that was like three weeks ago.
Then all of a sudden last week spies are down a little bit and,
and Mike runs down a lot.
So it's noticing the little things that will help you make better decisions.
But, you know,
it doesn't mean you have to trade the little things. You notice them and write them down.
Notice the action, not what people say about the action.
And that's it.
I got to jump.
I appreciate you guys.
Thanks, Scott.
Appreciate you as always.
Larry?
Sorry about that as well.
No, you're good.
Scott's cool.
Yeah, the only thing I would add from
just because obviously what Brian and Scott said about when the market's messy or what they do is
obviously right. So there's not like a disagreement to be had. The only angle I would take from it
that's slightly different. And like I said, is me making fun of their ages. I'm a little bit
younger than them. So there's still a lot of
learning to be done. I think that can be an undervalued part of this. I didn't get into
the markets because I enjoyed trading. Like I don't enjoy looking at a screen and hitting a
button. I really just enjoy the puzzle pieces and trying to understand the frameworks to be good at
this game for a long period of time. So when the market's messy and I don't have to trade as much,
I genuinely enjoy that period of time because that's when I downloaded a new backtesting
software and then I've realized that some of my data wasn't great. So then I went out and
purchased some new data from Norgate Data last week and you have that time to learn.
So there's like a new trading book that I like, Stock Market Logic by, who is it, Norris Fosbach, written in, I believe, the 90s. So you can use that time to refine yourself. So it doesn't have to be, I don't know, it doesn't have to be anything outside of that. You can still be looking at your charts and looking at the information,
but you can just maybe take that time to learn something new or something different.
I do a lot of trend following. Okay, what does a mean reversion strategy look like? What's the
basis for a lot of this mean reversion strategy? How can I pair that with some of my trend following
so when the market is choppy, maybe I am a little bit more active to a degree. So I think that's another thing you could just do is like literally learn.
AI tools make that a lot easier.
But that would just be the one other, not that they're not doing that, right?
They're just older than me and probably have already learned a lot of stuff that I'm curious about.
Maybe you learn some stuff is too gazy.
And so, yeah, that's just another thing I would recommend.
And if you want, reach out to me,
DM me. I'll send you a list of books that I think are helpful depending on kind of the background
that you want to utilize for the market. But that would just be the other piece is like,
if you enjoy this stuff, go learn something new. Go learn a different way to look at the market.
Might add to your process. If not, you realize, okay, I at least turn that stone over.
So when someone tweets like,
I look at deep volume shelf pockets,
and you're like, what is that?
You actually know maybe, hey, maybe that's a Fugazi.
Because I looked at it that one time when the market was messy.
So that's just my other piece of advice.
Has there been anything interesting for you in the markets at all um obviously we were talking
there about you know how stuff's been looking like i i think for me it's i've heard about this
over the weekend i'm a perma optimist and a perma bull like i think it's really cool for people it's
like it's like this sexy culture in the markets to lie and be like, oh, I have no bias.
Well, one, if you say you're a human and you don't have bias, boom, they're already a liar.
So why would you trust anything after that that they say?
So one, they're a liar.
And then the second thing they do is they tell you, I make money in every environment.
So then they just put a lie on top of a lie.
So you can just filter those people out.
So for me, I root for the market to go out.
And right now, I just, I see so many charts that just, I'm looking at pharmaceuticals
right now.
It's like failed breakout, breakdown, rallying to formal polarity and reversing lower.
It's like pharmaceuticals looked really good.
So I'm just, and so the other thing too I'm seeing is,
I'm seeing a lot of talk about capitulation in the bottom,
in a bottom, in a bottom.
And I'm seeing a lot of talk about taco and how we're just one tweet away.
And to StockTalk's point, one,
like you guys have to think about what people are saying.
People are talking about a taco
and we're in an eight and a half, 9% drawdown in the S&P 500.
He didn't taco until 20% down last time.
So people can't even look back one sample size to look at the last time he tacoed and
realize it was another 10% lower.
It's just like grasping at straws for a V bottom because we have a president that used to be able to just send a tweet.
So I'm not seeing the same capitulatory action.
We saw a ton of defensive rotation to start the year that we didn't see last year.
We've seen a ton of breath deterioration that's taking place.
Like this has been a slow and orderly sell-off
in the S&P 500. Just look at the chart. It's been slow and orderly. It's been breakdown after
breakdown after breakdown. And I just, it looks rough. And I just don't like saying that because
obviously a lot of times the roughest it looks is when the market can rebound. But
I only hear people talking about
looking for a bottom, which is fine. Because duh, if you look at the data over time, it's much
smarter to be doing that than looking for a top. But it's so obvious that stocks are topping
that it makes me nervous. It's just these are such clean. If you invert the charts,
you'd be buying these all day. But we're not because they're tops and because we have a president who we think can just send a tweet and reverse the market.
So I just that's the piece for me that I'm just struggling with is everyone wants everyone on here is talking about software today.
Look at fucking semiconductors. Sorry, excuse my French. Look at semiconductors.
They look like crap.
So everything's broken down.
Semiconductors were one of the last things left.
And now semiconductors are down 3%, 4% today.
It's just, that's the piece that I'm just like, ugh.
I see the triple bottom potential in IGV.
Guess what?
We need to see follow through.
We've seen a lot of one green tick up days.
Get two green days in a row in any one of these charts and maybe I'll start to be happy.
We haven't had two green days in a row in weeks.
Yet we're talking about bottoms.
So I just, we're talking about playoffs.
So I just, I'm struggling with that from, I'm a hopeful guy and I don't see a ton to
be hopeful for right now.
So people are coming up with crazy ass ratio charts that I've never seen before.
This ratio chart, people last week talking about a two-day performance of staples.
And because staples were underperforming for two days, you shouldn't be bearish to the market.
So I don't see capitulation yet.
I don't see rotation that looks bullish yet.
I see software that was in a 40% drawdown up a percent
today, and I'm supposed to be excited about that. That's the piece for me. It's just like,
I hate sounding bearish. I'm not seeing anything yet to be excited about. And when I do, I'll
obviously be here talking about it. I just, what if this does
take longer than people think? What if we do have like a slower bear market and we don't have a V
bottom? I just, I don't hear people, you hear the perma bears that say the world's going to end.
Sure. But I think that easily gets dismissed by the average intelligent person. What doesn't get
dismissed by the average intelligent person is everyone trying to predict the bottom. And I think what does get dismissed
from the average intelligent person is like a six to eight month bear market. And that can happen.
So it's just, can we think through that, right? Can we look at technology today? Look at the
technology chart. Perfect, just consolidation that failed to
break out. Now it's breaking down. RSI is in the bearish regime. This is beautiful topping patterns.
So I just, I'm not that short. And I'm like, should I be shorter? Should I be like, why am I
ignoring as much technical analysis as I'm ignoring? And it's probably because I'm hopeful.
Because if not, I would be short a lot more stuff than I'm currently short. A lot of people I respect, Steve Straza
being one of them. If you don't follow Steve Straza, I don't know anyone better than him.
He's shorting stocks out there and he's making money. So yeah, I just, I'm not seeing what I
want to see yet. I'm not seeing as much capitulation as I want to see yet. I'm not seeing what I want to see yet. I'm not seeing as much capitulation as I want to see yet.
I'm not seeing as much turmoil.
Like, look at the percent of stocks above a 200-day moving average.
Right?
Everyone wants to share the short-term bottoming signals, but no one wants to zoom out and look at something about, like, the percent of stocks above a 200-day and see that in April it was at, like, 20%.
We're at 40.
So this could continue for a while.
And I just, I don't think a tweet can change this market.
Like it just seems so impractical to think Trump can say,
we have a peace treaty
and then oil demand just resumes in a day.
Like tariff stuff is, that tariff is just paper, right?
It's just numbers made up.
This is real world physical demand implications.
So yeah, I'm just struggling to have,
I'm struggling to say the bottom is coming soon.
I guess that's my differentiation right now.
It's like, I don't see anything that's signaling that.
Sure, is there people that are saying
the world's gonna end?
Duh.
You could get on this space every week and someone is quoting
that as the bottom. Two weeks ago
people were saying that. Three weeks ago
people were saying that. Six months ago
people were always saying that.
I hate to sound
bearish, but I just don't know what's bullish
right now. That's just kind of my thoughts.
That's fair but listen we are not normally a uh a bearish space here normally the perma bears do get kind of uh not they kind of leave after a little bit is what's happened here so um
yeah it's definitely not not the thing but that is this market right now.
And the other thing I'll say too is like you can build a lot of intellectual honesty this year with your following, okay?
And that's to me one of the biggest brand things over time is intellectual honesty. It's hard.
It takes a lot of time.
But this is where you can go back and look at people three, four weeks ago who were making fun of people who were cautious.
And now those people are talking about capitulation.
So you're telling me those people were making fun of people who were cautious, and now they're talking about capitulation.
And they didn't say shit in between, so they just sat in this drawdown?
Right?
So it's like those people are going to get weeded out.
Build your intellectual honesty right now.
Go watch.
I record a YouTube video every Friday, eight weeks in a row, back to Brian Shannon's point,
I've been talking about being cautious. And it's annoying to talk about it because
it's way more fun to run a 52-week high scan and say, I own this chart. Look at my Bugatti.
It's way funner to do that. But intellectual honesty, when you're 30 years old, is going
to build a career for you.
And so that's what I'm doing. I'm just trying to share intellectual honesty. And I'm proud of
what I've been talking about the past six months. And I recommend if you're going to put your money
to work with people, like actually dive into their Twitter, learn the search features,
learn what they've been saying the past three months as they were making fun of people who
were getting cautious, as they dismissed the defensive rotation.
As IGV was in a 40% drawdown, all they wanted to do was quote semiconductors.
As MAGS was about to break down, all they wanted to do was quote breath.
Where are the breath charts right now?
Where are the quotes about semiconductors still leading?
Where did all that work go?
So that's why I love this market because my intellectual honesty will just kind of show through, and those people can get left beside.
But yeah, it's just messy, and that's okay.
It is a messy market, and Stock Talk, I saw your tweets over the weekend.
I know we were talking about different ways this
could escalate and stuff and the other side of the uh the arabian peninsula is getting talked
about now with the bad bellman drape over the last bab and then that's straight over the last
little bit we're an interesting uh market here right now and obviously there isn't much sense
in talking about individual stocks here but i do wonder if there's anything just
of stocks here, but I do wonder if there's anything just...
I haven't bought anything in weeks, and I don't plan to.
Look, market's correct all the time.
There are pullbacks all the time.
There was a flash crash last year.
People who navigated their way through it and survived through it
probably did really
good on the other end of it. Same thing goes for the 22 bear market. If you managed to
survive through that and didn't blow your portfolio up, you probably had a pretty fun
time for the next three years because we went straight up for 23, 24, 25. So if you can survive
through these corrections, that's really what matters. That means capital preservation.
That means understanding what you own. And if you do want to hold stocks through a time like this, you have to have a cost-based advantage. I mean, if you're underwater on names and you're just holding them to hold them during this, that's a really, really, really tough decision to make and probably not a good one.
to make and probably not a good one. And so I benefit from that at least, which is that most
of the stocks in my portfolio, the vast majority, 14, 15 out of 16 positions, I have held for a
long time. And so I can handle an unrealized drawdown on those names further from where
they are. But a lot of other people who are constantly rotating their portfolio, for example, I would say
more of the trader types, don't have that liberty. If you bought stocks, really any stocks at this
juncture, maybe outside of energy names a month ago, you're probably underwater. And you have to
make a viable decision for your portfolio at that juncture to preserve your capital and make sure that at the other end of this, whenever it does end, that you have enough capital to either deploy or to move around.
Really, flexibility is what you're going to need at the other end of this.
So obviously, I'm not optimistic.
I'm sure you can hear that in my commentary.
But it's more so because, yes, we're in a headline-driven market.
I just don't think we're in a headline-driven market where anything can be done with the headlines.
You know, like I was saying earlier, we're in a market that now believes the IRGC more than they believe the president of the United States.
That's a problem.
You know, we're in a market where you have rising inflation.
Rate hikes are being more than priced in for the ECB and other central banks around the world. The Fed hasn't yet moved the needle in that direction, but that remains a risk.
your mic. It's echoing through your mic. When me and Cantro talked about this last week,
I agreed with him on the notion that it is different from 22 in the sense that the consumer
is not as strong. The path for rate hikes is not as clearly laid, right? We were starting at a much
lower base back then. Raising rates from here would be an entirely different proposition.
back then. Raising rates from here would be an entirely different proposition. But the scariest
thing about all this is that what is now the lifeblood of the economy, which is data center
spend, and that is indisputable, that is now at risk too. And it has nothing to do with the war
and it has nothing to do with oil. People will be like, why does data center spend have anything
to do with this? It does because the Middle East is a huge contributor to data center spend,
the Saudis and the Qataris.
And on top of that, compression and equity prices for whatever reason, right?
How much is Microsoft down year to date?
30%, something like that.
I'm sure it's roughly the same for most of the Mag7.
You're talking about the most owned equities in the world
that are down 25%, 30% year to date in a matter of months.
What do you think the management teams
at those companies are thinking?
Do you think that they're thinking,
let's just spend,
continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars?
No, they now are realizing that eventually
laying people off won't be enough to protect earnings.
And when they start reconsidering their spend and their contribution to the economy amidst all this other bullshit that
we have going on, I mean, the TSA workers just got paid two weeks of back pay today.
You talk about all the other impacts to the economy that that could have, the transportation
disruptions, the oil prices going up, rising fuel prices at the pump,
the potential for demand destruction if oil stays above $100 a barrel for long enough.
There's just a number of mounting concerns now. And the market is, and I'm a big believer of the
idea that the market is one trade. Yeah, there's relative strength, there's relative weakness,
you know, yeah, there's relative strength, there's relative weakness, there's tradable
opportunities in those veins in any market. But for the most part, the market is one big trade.
I've always benefited, or my perspective on markets has always benefited from thinking of
it that way. And now we're at the juncture where the inflation boogeyman is back out of the bag, but this time we don't have
room to fight it. We don't have a cash rich consumer and a low base rate by which we can
fight inflation. At the beginning of 22, you had cash piles for the US consumer were at all time highs.
The job market was roaring.
You had rates basically at historical neutral.
And you had room.
You had room to fight inflation.
You're like, yeah, we could raise rates.
And we went on one of the most vicious rate hike cycles in history in 22.
Equities didn't like it, but the economy did just fine.
Right?
And the consequence of that was we got to
the end of 22, and because the economy survived through this vicious rate hike cycle, at the end
of 22, we had blue skies. You know, there was equity valuations, multiples had compressed,
where there was a ton of value. You could pick up stocks at very, very affordable prices. You could
rally them hundreds of percent and still have them be at reasonable valuations. You had rates
that were high and the economy was humming through it. Now you're in a situation where the consumer
is not nearly as strong, where rates are already high, right? I mean, we haven't reduced rates
back down to historical neutral yet. Rates are already high. And now you have all of this
geopolitical and commodity complication. So yeah, it's not a good scenario. Is there a way out of
it? Yeah, but it needs to happen quickly. Within the next few weeks, you need to
see, I don't even know what you need to see at this point. I keep saying reopen the straight
of our moves, but I don't even know what the prospects are for that at this juncture.
The US clearly can't do it forcibly, or if we could, I don't know why we haven't done it yet.
And if that doesn't happen, then oil is going to stay sticky. It's going to eventually bleed
over into the economy. The European Central Bank will raise rates at the next meeting.
And then you're in a pretty fucked situation globally. And yeah, I don't know.
This was a very avoidable set of circumstances, I think.
And if you had shooting yourself in the foot in the dictionary somewhere,
there should be a picture of the events of the last month right next to it.
Because the market was set up for a potential Goldilocks scenario, in my view, just a month and a half ago,
where you had the AI trade, the AI bull trade expanding into other verticals like photonics and memory.
You had a bid very much alive in those categories.
You had inflation falling broadly, goods inflation.
You had gas prices falling.
You had the consumer still holding up, the job market still holding up.
And now you have the job market beginning to show cracks, consumer beginning to show cracks,
inflation going back up, oil prices going back up, a war that, I mean, I don't know when it will end.
And you still have two other wars going on too, right?
And you still have, I mean, the conflict in Israel and Gaza isn't over either.
The conflict in Ukraine and Russia is not over.
And now you have Zelensky calling for an additional negotiation yesterday morning.
That kind of slipped the news because everyone's focused on Iran.
He's now calling for an additional negotiation.
Why?
Because he knows that the money from the
united states that was coming from the united states to support the war in ukraine is now
going to the middle east and he he knows very well ukraine cannot fight that war without
economic support from the united states and so now you have another geopolitical situation that's
becoming even further complicated you think the r the Russians want to negotiate now? No, because now we're letting the Russians ship oil, right?
So it's like you've taken the cards out of so many players' hands,
and the backdrop is worse than it was just a month ago.
So, yeah, it's not a good scenario that we're in.
Obviously, I remain optimistic just because being optimistic is a
good thing to be in markets historically. But the worse this conflict gets and the longer it drags
on, the harder the resolution will be, the harder it'll be to put the toothpaste back in the tube,
proverbially speaking. And I think it's a matter of weeks more than a matter of months to where this
gets a spillover effect.
So hopefully the white house has a plan.
I don't know.
I'm not a white house insider.
I don't know what the thinking is from the administration.
I don't know what their, their risk calculus is.
Raymond James, I thought had a pretty good piece this morning out saying that the white
house has not yet decided what to do. And I think the political
pressure probably has a lot to do with that. So yeah, I mean, I wish I had a crystal ball,
but this is just a scenario where I think you sit on your hands, you try to avoid deploying
capital that you don't need to. You try to protect the capital that you do have
deployed if you do have any deployed, and you just wait it out. I mean, it sounds pretty cliche to
say that, but that to me is the best thing you do in a circumstance like this. And it's difficult
to tell people to get short either because, again, you don't know where the selling is going to stop.
You don't know where you're going to get a massive counter trend rally
because that happens in bear markets too.
You go back to 22, you look at the counter trend rallies in 22,
they were vicious.
But if you shorted at the wrong time in 22,
you got buried by those counter trend rallies.
So you have to be careful.
You have to be careful.
And I think you have to, in my opinion, what I'm doing at least is just sitting on my hands.
And I think for different styles and different strategies, that's going to change.
What's up, Larry?
Yeah, I was just going to say, for those that might not be aware, you can run it.
It's pretty easy to run.
Just look at one day rate of change and then look at the S&P 500 and just apply a simple 200-day moving average.
You'll see the best single days tend
to come when the market is actually in a downtrend. So that's one of the things is just to be aware of
because like what you're saying, that's where shorting is so hard because you have these
enticing one-day changes that then actually were a great chance to maybe unload if you were long.
So that's just something to be aware of. That's not a dogma
when it comes to the market. It's actually just factual. The best days tend to happen when the
market is actually in a downtrend. The top 10 best days in S&P 500 history. 1933, Great Depression 29 Great Depression 31, 32
Then 2008, 2008
Then 39, then 2015
Last year's flash crash
33 back to the Great Depression
And then 2020
Which is off of COVID
Are all the top 10 best days in history
Bingo
I was getting ready to make something similar
Yeah
And that's no surprise
And a lot of times that's because
Sentiment becomes so lopsided
That a blip of hope
Can produce a huge counter trend rally
And we're in a scenario like that
Now too where
If there's any traction with the United States
And our grand-grand negotiations
You will get a counter trend rally
The question is how big and will it be enough to repair structure?
And the further removed you get
from the 200-day moving average,
I mean, institutions love the 200-day moving average.
Like this is constantly quoted by legends
like Charlie Munger.
Like the further you get removed
on the major indexes from the 200-day moving average,
the more work and more follow-through
it'll take to repair structure. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
And now we're, I don't know how many percent below the 200-day on spying the queues, but
we're getting further and further away. And that requires a bigger and bigger multi-day rally to
repair that structure. I mean, even if you go back to flash crash last April, the first rally back actually got rejected at the moving averages and fell lower before we resumed.
It wasn't a perfect V-shaped recovery.
And to Larry's earlier point, if you look at historical corrections, it's not always a V-shaped recovery.
In 22, I remember in like March of 22, April of 22, May of 22, there were a lot of people
who were saying, you know, okay, like the selling's been overdone.
There's a lot of selling in the first few months of the year.
Stocks are oversold, yada, yada, yada.
A lot of people tried buying the dip and they got buried alive, you know, and we hit a peak
to trough 27, 28% decline in the S&P 500.
If you get a scenario like that again, not only are you just
going to get washout and fatigue from an equity standpoint, like put the trading aside for a
moment. You have to think about the economy, right? Like, yes, the market is not the economy,
but enough multiple compression and it becomes the economy. You know, then you get layoffs from
a corporate standpoint. You're talking about the biggest companies in the world.
You're talking about a decrease in spending from the biggest companies in the world.
This is a huge contributor to economic liquidity, not just market liquidity, economic liquidity.
The spending from the MAG7, the spending from the biggest companies in the world, the hiring from the biggest companies in the world is the driver of the global economy.
And when those companies see their stock price falling 30, 40, 50%, the C-suites of those
companies are forced with difficult decisions. And very often, those difficult decisions are
not favorable for the economy. So yes, the market's not the economy, but enough of a drop and it will start forcing its shadow over
the economy. And I don't think we're quite there yet. I mean, we're not even in a bear market yet
from an index standpoint. But on an individual stock basis, many, many stocks are. And I think
Larry made this point earlier as well. We still have like 35,
40% of stocks trading above their 200 day moving averages, right? So you haven't seen capitulation
yet. And that's also a concern. Now, there are some positive signs. Last week's outflows was
the third biggest outflows in the last 15 years. The other two were in the COVID sell-off
and last year's flash crash.
And so on a week-by-week basis,
we're getting closer to this sort of puking
in terms of outflows.
But I don't think you're yet seeing capitulation
in the action.
I don't think you're yet seeing true fear
because there are still spots of relative strength.
I think when the correlation starts breaking for the areas of relative strength, that is a warning sign.
You saw that today.
Oil stocks were down today and NatGas stocks were down today.
I don't know, Boyle was down like 10% today.
So that's a concern because, again, demand destruction starts being floated, right, at a certain point.
At a certain point, it's not just like commodities to the moon.
Then you're thinking, okay, what about the buyers of those commodities, right?
You can play out the pricing dynamic all you want,
but eventually it becomes a question of are there buyers left for the commodities in general?
You can tighten supply all you want.
Eventually there's a tipping point.
And so, yeah, I mean, there's just a mounting of just bad stuff.
And yeah, I don't know.
I think you have to either wait it out or, you know, if you're already short, great.
And if not, I think you just wait it out.
Yeah. yeah have you started to raise your cash position at all no i mean i've raised it a little bit on friday i raised it to about like five percent on friday
but i mean it could be higher obviously i've taken a big drawdown from the highs this year, but that's part of the game. I still have a nice cushion on the year. So, you know, I'm sort of
thumbs upping myself for that. But still, I mean, I could have reduced exposure more. The thing is
the stocks that I do still own, I own them hundreds of percent lower. And so, you know, I'm not too
worried about holding them. But at the same time, I do understand and I'm,
I'm open to the idea that there could be a further drawdown in some of the long-term names that I
have. And I'm okay with that. You know, I don't, I don't think most people's long-term stock holding
portfolios are doing too shabby in an environment like this, unless you're full ported in energy,
which I don't know too many long-term investors that are, but if you are, great. But yeah, I mean,
I'm open to and fully would not be surprised by a further drawdown. And if I need to, I'll
deposit cash when I feel like the markets are bottoming, but we're not there yet. I'm not a
type of guy that guesses the bottom. I don't catch falling knives. I think there's people that are good at that. It's not my MO. I wait for recoveries in markets.
And forget about recovery. We haven't even seen a blip of recovery yet. I mean, we haven't even
gotten a follow through green day in what, 40 days? I mean, it's not a good market environment.
And when you recognize that, in my opinion, or what I do with my type of strategies, I just don't do anything until that changes.
And so we'll see.
We'll see.
But I don't like the way that this is developing.
And I thought something would happen over this weekend, good or bad, and nothing really happened over the weekend, which to me tells is a suggestion to me that
the United States is between a rock and a hard place here. I, if you had to, I don't know for
sure. Like I said, I'm not a white house insider, but if you had to put a gun to my head and ask me,
I would say Trump wants out of this. I would say he feels like he fucked up.
I don't know if he does or doesn't, but I would say I would that would be my guess is that he is trying to find a way out of this.
And if you take the IRGC words with a grain of salt, they've said to the effect the same thing, which is that they haven't spoken directly to the United States since the conflict started and that they're speaking through intermediaries who I think are the Pakistanis.
And that the United States is the one coming to them and saying that they want to
negotiate. That's what the Iranians are saying. I'm not just saying, take it with a grain of salt,
but that's what the Iranians are saying. And the market seems to believe the Iranians more than
they believe the president of the United States. And that is not something I thought I'd ever say,
but that's what the market feels like right now. And it feels like
it's giving more credence to what the expectations that they are relaying as opposed to the
expectations that we are relaying. And that's not something you want to see.
I didn't see Monitive, you ended up coming up here. Was there any topics that we touched on that made you come up?
How are you doing, sir?
Well, yes and no, but I've been away for three weeks.
I thought I'd come up, and there's a lot of what I heard that I was already talking about here, worrying.
was uh you know already talking about here worrying the the one thing i've not heard right
start talked about you know withdrawal of uh funding from from middle east you also have to
remember we've barely even you know scratched the surface of finding out what the damage is
we know we don't know how long you know this this could keep going but we know that there's been significant
damage already so there's some permanent you know or at least pretty long-term removal of
capacity in the Middle East so it's not that you know when we stop this capacity is going to come
back instantly it's going to take a long time in some cases.
There have been reports that, you know,
up to a third of Qatar's capacity could be down for greater than two years.
So we have a lot of problems that are going to, you know,
keep burning us, you know, much after this is done.
And when we take stock, it's going to be a you know
it's it's it's it's going to be facing the reality right that's that's one thing i i didn't hear that
i wanted to talk about the other thing is uh look we started this mess well into this uh this
current quarter but for a whole month of the quarter we've had you know multiple disruptions
here right certainly due to the war due to before that due to the talk or possibility of war
the expectations are still very very very very high a nine percent revenue growth and a 14 14.3
percent earnings growth that would be best in you you know, five quarters.
These are not small numbers, right? These are very large numbers against a very large base already
because, you know, we've been growing at a hard pace for a long time to come.
So I also fully expect a lot of, you know, straightforward misses,
but even worse, you know, what it's going to do to
guidance is is a whole different story so so we we've got we've got problems that we need to watch
there you know we are two days from well one day from the close of the quarter so we have two weeks
of pre-announcement season there's going to be plenty of companies that
have significant impacts because, you know, for four weeks of the quarter, they had to
deal with, you know, war and warlike situation.
And there's plenty of companies that have direct exposure to these regions.
So that's another problem that we have to deal with. So I think, you know, in looking at whether there's any kind of recovery expected, if the current situation were to come to an end, I think it's important that there might be a relief rally.
But then you have to take into account what's happened and what it's going
to cost and how long is it going to stay disrupted.
And then, you know, we probably likely go down further before coming up.
The last thing I wanted to say is, um, uh, the last thing I wanted to say is, um, the,
last thing i wanted to say is um the uh when we get out of this you know in terms of what whenever
that is three four five quarters from now i don't know but when we do get out of this
more companies are going to you know bring in that ai to replace a you know a physical worker
and we have to figure out what the likelihood of a jobless recovery is.
And I think that's very high.
So anyway, those are just my thoughts.
Good to have you back, sir.
Definitely hope you will join us more.
Hopefully we get a
market with some more single stocks and interesting tech
stuff that we could talk about because I always am enjoying
that. But appreciate you. Everyone should make sure you
guys are following the speakers. By the way, if some more good
conversations coming up logical though, how are you doing, sir?
I'm good, brother. I'm getting a great chest workout right now.
Listening to you guys.
Thank you for the commentary.
There we go.
There we go.
Hitting the gym.
How's the diet going?
Yeah, man.
I think you got a…
Very good, man.
Yeah.
High protein, same calories.
So I can't complain.
Better content.
I think that's the best thing you can do right now is watching the screens,
watching the tick by tick.
It's just not going to do you any good. It's going to waste your mental
capacity. It's going to waste your financial resources. I think it's just much better to
opt out in some environments if you are able to. Like I've mentioned in prior spaces, like
I had a fat tax bill in 25 because I sold a lot of stocks, booked a lot of games that I,
you know, bought stocks in the April sell-off and I had a fat tax bill. But the advantage is I'm not sitting on a bunch of unrealized gains. So going to cash was a very simple decision for me. So that's what I've been doing.
I've been working on my diet, going to the gym, focusing on work outside of stocks,
letting all this kind of clear out.
I'll echo what a lot of other people were saying.
Like Larry was mentioning about, you know, calls for capitulation.
Yeah, right.
I'm not going to be able to do that.
I'm not going to be able to do that.
I'm not going to be able to do that.
I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'll echo what a lot of other people were saying. Like Larry was mentioning about,
you know, calls for capitulation.
Yeah, right.
Look around you.
There's no capitulation in sight.
You know, S&P is down like 8-9%.
Sure, that's a fair correction.
But considering the risks that, you know,
Stock Talk was just outlining,
is that enough?
Especially if this war drags on.
I don't think so. especially when you've had an index
that has basically doubled off the lows in three years.
Typically, once you get to that 100% return in three years,
that's when you're in kind of frothy territory.
Now, I want to say, Stock Talk also mentioned
we were basically headed for a Goldilocks scenario.
I agree.
I actually thought we would bubble.
But this definitely throws a wrench in things. And, you know, if you just take the macroeconomic data, you know,
jobs data being weak, it's okay. You had, you know, rate cuts coming. You had, you know,
inflation coming down. But now this, it's murky, it murks the waters, you know. So like,
I think it's just from an economic, macroeconomic standpoint, it's very tough. And every day that every week that this drags on,
it just becomes like more impact.
Like Modern was saying, you know,
everyone's kind of saying the same thing.
So I think everyone kind of gets it on here.
But yeah, I mean, over the last month, month and a half,
you know, I got over, you know,
I got cautious because trades weren't working.
I was getting paper cuts constantly.
You know, I take a trade, I take a 5-10% loss.
It didn't work. It'd be a failed breakout. So take a trade, I take a 5-10% loss. It didn't work.
It'd be a failed breakout.
So I was always on these faces like one, two months ago saying,
man, this is not a good environment.
Not a good environment.
The reason for that was I take a lot of trades and they just wouldn't work.
Last year, completely opposite.
So when I get to that point where I'm getting a bunch of paper cuts,
I take a step back.
I don't lean in further.
So that's when I swapped all of my options for shares,
lower the volatility of my portfolio.
Eventually, I reduced my long exposure.
I always run high margin, 120% long, 140% long.
I got it down to 100, and 90, then 60, then 50,
which meant I had 50% cash at one point a few weeks ago.
Then I took it to 88% cash, maybe like two weeks ago.
Today, I closed my last long. I have
a 100% cash and I'm chilling. So, you know, I will say like I haven't had, I definitely screwed
myself in February overextending myself. So my everyday performance isn't like great. But with
the way the index is trending and I have no doubt in my mind it's going to go lower, you know, it'll be a blink of an eye before, you know,
the S&P's performance is far lower than mine.
So, yeah, I'm just waiting it out.
I think that's the easiest thing to do right now.
Agree on, you know, if you're trying to start shorts here,
you know, you risk, you know, oversold bounces that can rip your face off.
I'd rather use, like, the next bounce as an entry point for new shorts.
Because I think even if you get
some sort of resolution
on the Middle East side,
like Monitor was saying,
there's going to be other impacts
that ripple through the economy.
On top of the things
that we've already seen,
like negative jobs growth.
By the way, we have three jobs reports this week.
So there's going to be more info.
And so once we get out of like,
let's say Iran,
assuming Iran can get wrapped up
in the next few weeks
you know best case scenario
then you have to think okay
let's go back to the macroeconomic data
oh wait inflation is higher
oh wait jobs are weak
oh wait valuations still are pretty high
I wouldn't say they're like extreme like bubbly territory
but they're still high
and if you get any sort of like reduction in earnings
weaker consumer
people are paring back data center spend.
I mean, things can change very fast.
Like the picture can change very fast.
So for me, I'm chilling in cash.
Yeah, having a good workout.
So hope you guys are staying safe and, you know,
just taking it easy because that's the best thing you can do right now.
It is that type of environment right now that is the world we're living in
stock talk can i um bring it back to you and just ask like i don't know there you're just probably to shut down the question and just say it's dumb.
It's just simple.
But is there any...
We normally talk about geopolitical stuff here
as more of just
side stuff
just for fun and conversations.
But here it is, the market.
So I just wonder what you're actually watching.
Is it just as simple as an end to the conflict?
Obviously, the straight-up from Moose has been a whole whole conversation i've seen your tweets mostly centered around the houthis
or whatever so i imagine that's what you're looking for is like escalation but like i had
one tweet about the houthis so no my tweets are not centered around them i felt like multiple
did the tweet just do very well so it's like the one i saw i guess maybe but i just tweeted once
with these the houthis are not really part of this equation.
Okay.
They're not the reason we're selling today, no.
So, I mean, just, is there anything you're watching specifically?
Or is it just as simple as the war?
Yeah, it is that simple.
All right.
It's the war and the straighter vermoves.
I mean, the markets are a one-issue organism.
I'm a firm believer of that.
Like, the markets can prioritize and juggle one major issue at a time.
And right now, this is the major issue. The problem is, is that this is not a one lane highway.
This is a issue where, look, I saw a lot of tweets over the last week or so that said, people sort of mocking the idea of war being good for markets.
People saying, oh, well, I thought war was supposed to be good for markets.
What's going on?
Like, that's a stupid take.
War is good for markets because war means more spending from governments, which means more liquidity, which is good for markets.
The markets are not puking on this because of the war.
The markets are puking on this because of the commodity disruption.
And so, yeah, it is a single issue,
but it's a multifaceted issue because there are implications
to the global economy at a very, very sensitive time
time for the global economy.
for the global economy.
We were supposed to be turning
monetary policy at the end of a cycle.
This was supposed to be the end of the monetary policy cycle.
We're supposed to be shifting policy into a new regime, and
that has been interrupted by the
events of this war. And so until the war resolves,
you're not getting anywhere, period. And you're not going to get a confident bid under markets
because the people who are holding this market up, the institutional bidders who are holding
this market up, they want one thing. And that is certainty, a stable backdrop. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers or on equity investment or on whatever, hiring people, building robots, building factories, you know, buying NVIDIA chips, whatever you're doing. If you're spending hundreds of billions of dollars, you want certainty. You don't have to be a billionaire to know this. This applies to
everyone's everyday life. You ever made a big purchase? Did you ever do it in an uncertain
economic times where you didn't know what your net worth was going to look like a month or
what your job security might look like in a month? Do people go out and buy houses or expensive cars
in environments like that? No. So it applies to the consumer too. But when you extrapolate that
to corporations, that's where it becomes an economic problem. And that's where we are.
And look, on the bright side, and again, it's hard to find silver linings here.
One of the silver linings is that there is a lot of pessimism, you know, and that generally
indicates some sort of tradable bottom being close. But,
you know, sometimes the pessimism is well-placed and it's justified.
And I said this at the very beginning of the war when we talked about it in late February,
but this is the first market fear scenario in many years, in my view, that is justified,
where the selling is justified. You know, I think the
selling, maybe not all of it, but some of the selling related to COVID was justified, right?
That was a real economic concern, people concerned about the shutdown of the global economy.
Thankfully, then we had the tools in our bag to solve the problem quickly, right? We had the rate tools available to us.
The Fed's tools were available to use because the Fed could cut rates into a
weakening economy. Now, with inflation where it is, that is not really a viable option.
And the same thing goes for hikes.
Like the Europeans have room to hike rates.
It looks like they're going to at the next meeting.
They may for the next two meetings consecutively.
That's what the rate cut probabilities are saying right now.
So it's an entirely different scenario now.
And you don't necessarily have the room to use those tools to help.
Because over the last three or four years, we've had a raging bull market, which has made inflation hard to sort of tuck away.
Inflation was sitting at the start of this conflict at 1.7%, 1.8%.
A lot of these problems would not really be concerns. You'd say, okay, well,
the inflation might even be something that buoys the economy. But now, with inflation globally
above the 2% target, and now you have a tailwind to that inflation, it's a much trickier spot.
It's a much trickier spot.
It's a trickier spot than we were in in 2020.
It's a trickier spot than we were in in 2022.
And that's what sort of prevents me
from being as much of a gung-ho optimist
as I usually am.
That's what prevents me from being
as much of an optimist in this environment
because I really do want to see
conditions change. And I really do want to see some sort of stability in this scenario.
I don't know how we get there. That's what I'm struggling with. I don't know how we get there.
I don't know if the US ships leaving the Gulf is enough. I don't know if the U.S. ships leaving the Gulf is enough. I don't know if, like, because I don't
know if that produces peace. Let's say both the strike groups just pick up and leave today. Like,
let's just say the U.S. aircraft carriers just leave the region. Does that end this? Or does
Iran keep retaliating against the Gulf states? Does Iran continue to shoot missiles or continue to try to disrupt the global economy? Because they know what they're doing. They understand that creating economic turmoil creates political pressure, which makes it more likely that they're able to force the United States' hand.
They know they can't beat us in an all-out war. No one is suggesting that. The Iranians don't
believe that. The Americans don't believe that. No reasonable onlooker believes that the Iranians
can go toe-to-toe with us and win in a war. That's not the question.
But they can put enough economic pressure, aka political pressure, on the table to force an end
to the outcome that is desirable for them. And that's what they're trying to do. And they're
doing, frankly, a good job of it. And to the extent,
Trump said this last week too,
he's like, look,
even if we have 99% of the straight cleared and 99% of it is viable and operational,
and even if we can get US ships to escort carriers,
the 1% probability that a ship gets hit with a missile
is too much of a risk.
You know, you're talking about billion-dollar ships with hundreds of millions of dollars of cargo.
Putting those ships even at a small risk just really complicates the scenario
and complicates the ability for the global economy to just whistle past this outcome.
So, yeah, look, I think there'll be a lot of counter trend rallies,
even if we do continue to go down.
But I'm not a believer in a real local bottom
or even a real bottom at all until the situation changes,
not through words, but through action.
And I've wrapped my mind around it for the last couple of weeks
is to think how you get out of this.
And I don't know how you get out of this.
And that's what my toothpaste back in the tube tweet was about
for people that were confused by that.
That's what that tweet's about, which is like,
how do you put the toothpaste back in the tube?
How do you do it?
Like, what is the step-by-step process
where you just revert the
global economy back to where it was on February 15th or February 20th or 25th or wherever, you
know, the war started, what, the 26th, 27th? But how do you revert the global economy back to where
it was before the conflict? I don't know. I don't know how you do that. And I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm reasonably studied enough in geopolitics and markets where I understand the possible solutions, but none of them seem good enough here, to don't know. And another thing I keep seeing is people saying like, well,
you know, don't be stupid. Remember last year, everyone was peak pessimism and there was a flash
crash. And then we got a recovery because Trump, you know, Trump does this, Trump negotiates,
all these people are saying. They don't realize that like that was just a different scenario.
Putting the toothpaste back in the tube with tariffs is very easy to do.
It's a stroke of a pen, right?
What is the stroke of a pen here that solves this?
Like I'd love for somebody to tell me that.
Which stroke of a pen magically cures this scenario?
What bill signing?
What measure taken by the United States?
Like, what?
What do we do?
I would love to know that.
And for those that say,
well, we keep bombing them
until their missile capability is destroyed
and the strait will open itself.
Like, will it?
You know, or others will say,
well, in a week,
once our objectives are complete,
we'll leave.
Will Israel leave?
Will Israel stop their campaign if we leave?
Because if they don't, then the problem remains.
Will the Gulf Coast, or sorry, will the Gulf states continue to be hit?
Will their oil infrastructure continue to be hit?
Because if it is, then that doesn't solve the problem.
And then on top of all of that,
do we just get a resumption in risk appetite after all this?
After people have been margin called,
people have been wiped out.
I mean, Microsoft's down 30% year to date.
Do you just automatically get people to come back in the market
and be like, yeah, yeah, we're good to go again? Or does this create enough of an air of uncertainty where
you suppress the bid for the foreseeable future? I don't know. I don't know. And I'm thinking a lot
about this stuff recently in the last couple of weeks, trying to sort of game plan and game theory
around it. But I don't have any answers. I't have the answers you know you don't got the answers
sway like i don't have the answers so um i don't know i hope that there is a plan i hope that
there's a plan it doesn't seem like there's one and that's what's concerning i feel like the only
real forward step here is either you fully commit to a ground invasion, that's
option one, or two,
Trump accepts
defeat. And I don't think he can
face it. He
can't say it's a win. He can't
claim it as a victory at all. I think those are really
the only two things.
Commit fully or just pull out?
Yeah, I mean, a full evasion would be such political suicide
yeah no i agree yeah but then also so is taking the l on this probably
either way it's it he's i think he absolutely shot himself in the foot with this one
yeah this is a fuck up
yeah this is a up
this is the biggest fuck up i've seen from him in both of his terms and the people who are defending
it i don't know i see a lot of people defending it saying well the ayatollah was a bad man. And, you know, what do you want? Iran to have nukes? No.
I'm about as patriotic as it gets. I don't like Iran. I didn't like the Ayatollah. I'm glad the
Ayatollah is dead. I'm not a fan of Iran. What I am a fan of is economic stability, though.
I am a fan of that. And I think people don't realize how sensitive the global economy is or how sentiment driven it is. I mean, sentiment has a lot to do with a lot. Credit usage, consumer spending, corporate spending, corporate hiring, investing, especially foreign investment in U.S. equities, things like the Saudi PIF floating U.S. tech stocks,
the Qataris contributing to U.S. data center deals, so on and so forth. All of this is
sentiment-driven. When everyone's smiling and there's blue skies ahead and the biggest problem
you have on the table is the Russia-Ukraine war, which has been raging on for years and the markets
haven't given a shit about it, when you're in that kind of scenario, everyone wants to buy stocks. Everyone wants to spend money.
Everyone wants to build a new data center. Everyone wants to hire new engineers. And then
when something like this comes in the equation, and then oil prices become a concern, and X, Y,
and Z starts making you scratch your head, then you have to ask yourself, what changes the sentiment?
What flips the sentiment back to positive? You need like a really, really, really great,
amazing catalyst for that to happen. And we're getting to the point now where one or two earnings
reports won't cut it. You might get a great earnings report from, I mean, we just had a
great earnings report from Micron's down what 40 since then
right um so you're in a bid list market and i don't know how you fix it
again i remain cautiously optimistic because that is the thing has been the thing to do for the last 25 years in markets to remain cautiously optimistic and to
hope that there's a catalyst around the corner. This is just the first time in years really where
I'm sort of scratching my head asking myself, what is the catalyst? What's the catalyst going to be?
Right. And there's some people in my comments earlier today too, they were saying like,
well, you know, Trump could get oil down and that'd be a catalyst.
Oil was already down before this conflict started.
Like, what are we talking about?
You know, like, oh, bringing oil down as a catalyst.
Oil was chilling.
Nobody was worried about energy prices at all a month ago.
Now everyone's really worried.
I mean, oil is is 30 40 bucks higher now
so yeah i i don't know it's it's frustrating because this was avoidable and um
yeah it was avoidable and we stepped into the shit and now we have to figure out how
to get our shoes clean and yeah I don't see any shoe cleaners.
Sometimes you just got to find some water.
Sometimes you just need to reach out and get some help.
Maybe there's someone with a bucket.
Someone with a bucket.
Yeah.
Someone with a bucket who's. Someone with a bucket who's
cleaning shoes. Yeah. Let's go find
them.
Yeah.
I don't know. It doesn't feel like
anything is going to change over the next little bit.
There was an interesting tone change
in the morning comment.
I don't know if he saw the...
I also wasn't 100% sure if that was a person
from the Iranian speaker
or just like a troller.
But I did see that post.
And the post this morning
was a lot more of
escalatory than the last couple
have been.
So we'll see.
The morning truth social post.
I will say one thing though. His truth social post. I will say one thing, though,
his truth social post from this morning
was actually
one of the more
suggestive
of an end of the war.
He said, either they reopen the
Strait of Hormuz or we will conclude
our operation. He did mention that
in the morning. So that is maybe a silver
lining here that he's thinking about quote unquote concluding the operation although i don't know how
long that conclusory phase will take but anyway logical sorry you're saying
i just think it's important for people if it's your like first time investing in markets if
you're like first year
person or maybe you started and you saw last year's and so you saw your first correction last year
it's just that not every correction is going to be the same i think you already spoke to that of
like what's different now versus last time like last time you needed one person a taco this actually
you need two and not only that but there's potentially lasting implications that have
already been set in stone i think what people if, if you're new in your or earlier in your investment journey, it's
important to know that like different environments, different corrections can have different time
frames.
And everyone is just so used to buy the dip V shape.
This doesn't feel like it's going to be a V shape.
I just can't see the v-shape scenario at this point so if this is driving you nuts just know that it could drive you nuts for two to six months longer
and that wouldn't be out of the ordinary that'd be actually more normal than you might imagine so
just like have patience be able to like last market cycles that requires, you know, being persistent, but not like, you know, wasting all
of your energy every single day when it's a very clear downtrend and there's no end in sight.
Just be ready if this is a prolonged correction, like, you know, you might get down to minus 15%,
then you bounce 10%, then you go back down to 19%. Then you bounce 5%. Then you go down to…
You know what I mean?
Like that can happen.
If you just go look at 2022.
And I'm not saying this is 2022.
It's a very different environment.
I'm just saying not everything has to be 2022.
Not everything has to be 2025.
It could just be 2026.
And 2026 has its own type of correction.
Because every correction is different.
And the reasons for those corrections determined how quickly we recover, how long the corrections
take.
I just wouldn't try to get another timeframe and just slap it onto here and draw an analog.
It's much smarter to just say, what is the current situation?
What is the market pricing in?
What are the roadblocks? What's going on with not just valuations, but what are the market pricing in? What are the, you know, roadblocks? What you know,
what's going on with not just valuations, but like, what are the headwinds? You know, there's
a lot of things, each one is different. And I think it's just easier to instead of like,
trying to be lazy and say, Oh, well, last year, you know, it was a quick correction or 2022 is
10 month bear market. This doesn't have to be either of those things. So just think about like,
think for yourself. Just think. I think that's a very important thing. Think.
One also thing to note, tomorrow is the last day of March, but it's also the last day of Q1,
which means for a lot of companies when they report earnings, it will be as of the end of the quarter yesterday.
When 13F filings come out and they tell you what all the institutional investors own,
it will be as of tomorrow.
Bill Ackman put out a tweet yesterday,
and maybe this will be part of this next conversation,
saying he thinks it's a good opportunity to buy.
It was a tweet that Bill Ackman put out.
And the fun thing I think about this one is the stock talk is like this is one time we'll actually get to know exactly if he's
saying just if he's doing what he's saying or or doing something else but um wait i i gotta say
just on the bill ackman tweet dude stock talk you saw what he said in the follow-up tweet
with the oh i think the fannie Mae's and Freddie Macs
or whatever are going to be,
they're up 10x.
Oh, really, dude?
You're going to say that?
Your fund is down 20%.
Q1 is about to conclude in two days.
And you just, on Twitter, publicly,
pumped your two low-liquidity shitcos,
low market cap shitcos.
They're up 40% just before the end of the quarter.
Holy moly. know someone tagged the sec nah man tag the sec bro what is that yeah that was a joke that was a joke i i actually hate acklin he's annoying as fuck and he's always
wrong with his timing i'm not a fan of that at all that was the second time that was the second
time he did that by the way he does it, by the way. He does it every market correction.
And he's like, he loves to just like remind people
that his obviously owned equities are cheap.
And like, it's just so silly.
I mean, yeah, but I mean,
Ackman is not an alpha signal at all.
Waiting for Druckenmiller?
We got to get him on something.
Yeah, I mean, we're not going to know what Druck did.
We're only going to have lagging cues of what Druck does on his filing,
so we're not going to know what he's actively doing.
But yeah, Druck is a much better signal.
Are you a David Tepper guy?
Tepper's pretty smart. I like Tepper.
I don't think he's on
Drucks' level or Lynch's level, but yeah, he's smart.
Interesting.
What's up, Mr. Adam Patti?
It's been an interesting conversation here today we got we
got a lot of people bearish a lot of people worried about the market oh yeah well today
was a rough one huh I mean yeah turn around yeah you gotta hate that I thought we were uh
we were seeing a little bit of light but you know I know, I mean, it's just, you know, you know, Trump's, you know, he's escalating.
He's de-escalating. I mean, you know, you know, he's the strategic ambiguity is, I guess, maybe good for geopolitics, but not so much for the market.
So we're just going to have to live through it and hope we get a negotiated solution, you know, sooner rather than later.
It's definitely tough it'll be interesting
to watch what these different famous investors uh end up doing here uh given kind of this big change
in the market moving lower here it'll be interesting to see what they've ended up doing i'm excited to
see it and obviously you guys have a we're watching a different bunch of different ones here uh black
was one of them.
Obviously, you heard the thoughts there.
And then Druckenmiller, Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway.
The first time, this will be their first quarterly update without Warren Buffett in charge.
They're sending out, started sending out like the marketing material for their annual shareholder meeting.
Warren Buffett's not going to be there.
Like they're still doing it in the arena.
I'm curious if they're still out. We shall and obviously tepper etc um it'll be really interesting
to see how the different famous investors ended up kind of reacting towards the end of this quarter
tomorrow being the end of q1 being a little interest in there tomorrow's the day we get
to see their portfolios as of yeah i'm really interested to see um berkshire because you know with that huge cash
hoard i mean it'll be interesting to see if they made any moves i'll tell you berkshire um has been
you know in the underlying holdings have been performing really well during this volatility
so you know our etf omah which tracks you know berkshire plus the top 20 holdings. We were up 43 bips today.
We're outperforming the S&P.
I mean, nothing to write home about, obviously.
The S&P has gotten slammed.
But the downside protection of the quality holdings,
it seems to be bearing out over the last month or so,
which is nice.
Year-to-date, really, but particularly over the last month.
Yeah, it makes sense that he's going to be able to thrive in this type of market.
I do want to, as we're going to talk a little more ticker specific here, I do want to read
out a little bit of a disclosure, obviously.
Adam Patti and the VistaShares team, longtime supporters of the Wolf Crew, Wolf team, and
they're putting out some really great products that people are interested in,
crossing over a billion AUM there as a company.
So shout out to them.
People, you guys love them.
We appreciate this to shares.
But I do wanna say,
as we were talking about their funds and tickers,
investors should carefully consider
a fund's investment objectives, risks, charges,
and expenses before investing.
A fund's prospectus and summary prospectus contain this information and more about the VistaShares ETFs. To obtain that, go to the website, VistaShares.com. A fund's prospectus
and key information document should be read carefully before investing. We are excited
to be working with the VistaShares team. But I do want to cycle through a little bit more of these ones.
I'm looking at the Berkshire Hathaway, the OMAH, which is the ETF that tracks.
You guys are buying.
It is the top 20 largest holdings of Berkshire Hathaway, correct?
And then also BRK as well?
Yep, exactly.
And then we are running a covered call strategy on top of it targeting
1.25 percent uh distribution per month 15 per year uh so even when I'm looking at the the
performance here that doesn't uh include in the uh distributions what is the total return this year
total return I'd have to pull that up I was just seeing the stock it was looking like it's down
like five but with some of these one two fives it might be closer closer to the even obviously spy is down
almost 10. my portfolio do you want to take a guess when my individual stock portfolio is down
what dare I ask uh it is down uh 16 there you go so yeah could have looked different. Yeah. So Omaha, well, year to date as of yesterday.
So it's we're down less than one percent for the year, which is nice.
So Burke B, again, not including today, down seven.
Jepi down to Spy Eye down almost six.
So, yeah, I mean, the performance has been really good because,
you know, we, you know, we've moved a little bit away from that momentum driven market into more
of a quality and value tilted market. And, you know, this is where Berkshire and its holdings
should do very well, you know, for the next kind of cycle, you know, the apples, the, you know,
the bank of Americas, the chevrons, Expresses, companies like those, the solid blue
chip holdings that Buffett himself chose. So far, so good. It was good to see because
since we launched Omaha a year ago, it's actually a year old now. We launched it early March last
year. Performance for Berkshire has been pretty poor. So the product
has done very well because people love the holdings and love Berkshire, but performance has
been poor, you know, versus, you know, the S&P 500 because, you know, that's largely, you know,
the mag seven momentum driven, you know, returns right there. So, but it's turned,
there's definitely been a kind of a switch has flipped.
So it's been interesting to see, you know, pretty exciting.
So, yeah.
And then look, I mean, the whole thing about the income, you know, we have a bunch of different
income products, obviously, but I've been talking to investors just generally saying,
look, you know, you can, everyone's looking for a hedge, right?
The best hedge is stable, consistent income, right?
I mean, if you're, as long as you have a good portfolio underlying it,
obviously, because, you know, you don't want your portfolio going down 50%
and, you know, getting 15% in income.
But if you have a stable, you know, a solid portfolio, you know,
then you've got your, you know, your 15% income on top of that.
It's a nice hedge because, you know know you're holding steady in in the volatile markets and then when things turn and you know they will turn and
they'll go back up you know you get that upside so um you know investors just need to be you know
i i heard one of your um the speakers talking about just being patient and being smart and
it's doing their research you know just don't panic, just don't panic sell. Just don't panic sell. Because,
you know, we could see a huge drawdown any day this week if, you know, Trump comes out and says,
you know, the negotiations aren't going well or something like that. So just hold steady.
I'm looking at the tweet pinned up in the nest above it has the largest holdings
in omah which again it is taking the top 20 largest holdings of brkb in their 13f filing
then it is also adding in berkshire hathaway as well it's running a covered call strategy on top
of them so it's these are the the holdings but apple berkshire hathaway american express
So these are the holdings, but Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, American Express, Occidental, Chevron, Coca-Cola, DaVita, Kroger, Bank of America, Moody's.
So these aren't the names that are, this isn't that Microsoft that's down 30%.
A lot of energy, a lot of these safer type of names on here that you would expect to be kind of defensive names.
So it will be interesting to see how this one performs over the next little bit.
That is the tweet pinned up in the nest above.
You can see the largest holdings there.
I am curious on like how the covered calls
and how writing that over the last couple weeks
has been different than before.
Obviously, it's a different market.
The VIX is higher.
I don't know what that's doing to, you know,
is it making easier your job to get that 1.25%?
Is it making it harder?
What's gonna happen in that direction?
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
I mean, volatility is our friend.
So when it comes to the covered calls,
so it's actually been easier to generate the income.
So, you know, we've actually been shooting for more income.
We're never to pay out more
than 1.25 percent per month uh because that you know we're not looking to shoot the lights out
on the income generation we want to be stable and consistent every month but what we have done is we
are generating additional income because it's just the volatility is there and we're rolling that
back into the nav which helps as well so um I think we generated on an annualized basis 17.5% last month.
So, you know, again, we're still being cautious, but, you know, it's we like volatility and which is, you know, which is good for the options for sure.
Why do you think I think this is the type of market where these income ones would be
working pretty well. And for a lot of people who are sitting in cash or sitting in other
places, I'm just curious on if covered calls and that whole kind of part of it and the
income part, which obviously that has been a very growing space dividends have always been a
thing i think these income etfs stuff that such as your guys's stuff that you guys are doing are
really changing the game in this area and i wonder if it becomes an accelerant over this next couple
weeks and months here as the market is in interesting place right now a lot of fear
and income becomes a little more part of the the conversation. I mean, yeah, I mean, clearly I hope so. But, you know, I think, look, I mean, I think we're in a market now that, you know,
you know, if the war ends, we're going to see a massive upswing.
There's no doubt about that.
But, you know, it could be a sideways market for a while.
So, you know, I think from a portfolio perspective, you want to, you know,
you want to lock in that income, which, again, I believe is a great hedge.
And then, you know, you pick your spots for your growth opportunities.
And, you know, it's not like it was a year or two ago where you buy the S&P and you're a genius because every single stock is going up, at least in the top 10 or 20 in the S&P.
So everyone's getting great returns.
You know, we're in a stock picker's market, I think. And
because of that, you really want to be a little more cautious, a little more research-driven
to really understand what you're buying, whether it's a sector or whether it's individual
securities. But yeah, I do believe the income space is, it's not new. It's been around for a
while, but there's tons of white space. And, you know, so we're eager to continue to bring out product in that space that hopefully fill gaps for investors.
I think you're in an interesting position here.
Watch with the couple funds that you guys do have covering the different investors.
As I was saying earlier, we got the Tepper one, TPRY.
We got the Ackman one, ACKY.
We got the Druckenmiller one, DRKY.
And then obviously the Buffett Berkshire one, OMAH.
Is the Buffett one the one that's holding up the best here so far this year?
It is.
It is.
So, yeah, it's – I mean, yeah.
I mean, ACKY, which is Ackman, and DRKY, which is Druckenmiller,
we're just crushing it, you know, when the market was going up.
I mean, we were, I think Drucken was up, oh gosh, I think it was up 10 or 15 percent before everything got killed.
Yeah, I mean, those are higher beta portfolios.
So when the market's going down, it's going to go down more.
go down more when it goes up it's going to go up more it's just more volatility um ah is certainly
When it goes up, it's going to go up more.
It's just more volatility.
you know a more stable value-oriented portfolio that you know lower beta you know you know you're
gonna have to be patient with it and then you know when the market turns to value and quality
you know that's certainly uh you know it'll respond another product that we have that's been
doing pretty well is uh or actually very well is q QUSA, which is our USA quality ETF.
Same 15% a year, 1.25% per month.
But what we do is just run quality screens on the Russell 1000.
So, you know, it's an interesting portfolio and it's handily outperforming the iShares quality QUAL ETF, which has like 50 billion in it.
It's doing very well.
It's outperforming the income ETFs
that are tied to the Qs like JEPQ or QQI.
So yeah, it's been doing nicely.
Because again, I just think we're moving
into a different market cycle right now
where it's not really about momentum growth.
It's more about quality and value.
We're shifting in front of our eyes here.
It's been quite a wild week.
And we'll see.
Obviously, the market is closed on Friday as well.
So maybe it's a good time to have a good Friday here on this one.
Yeah.
So I was also looking around at some of the other ETFs.
Obviously, AIS and POW are two ones that we had talked about a lot on here.
And I would love to hear more on them.
I don't know what the future holds on this one.
But I was kind of looking through the ETFs.
And I don't want to be – I thought these themes would have gotten hit harder on this one,
but clearly the grid one has obviously seen some pullback here, but past performance also doesn't
equal the future. But POW is still up 16% this year, 16.5%, which is pretty crazy given how the
rest of the market has been doing. So So I mean, the grid and the electrification
part of this, maybe electrification picks up from this. I don't know how that ends up playing out
there. And then AIS was still a little bit green. Obviously, that one's getting a little hit hard,
the whole market is, especially in that area. But it's very interesting that this theme has been
able to at least hold up a little bit better so far this year.
We shall see.
The grid one especially.
Is the electrification part of it really kind of helping to buoy that in the meantime?
Yeah, because, I mean, we're POW.
So when people talk about AI, you know, everyone's talking about electricity generation.
everyone's talking about electricity generation. That is really the bookend, right? So data centers
That is really the bookend, right?
don't work without electricity and our grid is ancient and needs complete overhaul. So when
people talk about the grid, a lot of people focus on energy generation, right? Nuclear or solar or
whatever it is. And yes, that is a part of it, but it's actually a small part of it. If you look
where the CapEx spending is coming.
So when people are investing in upgrading electricity generation facilities, over 50% of your CapEx is going into distribution and transmission type companies.
So it's boring industrial companies that make the switches and the cabling and the energy infrastructure type
technology. So it's not nuclear. So we do have some of that in the portfolio, but what we do
is we follow the bill of materials. We follow where the CapEx is being spent. So the CapEx is
going into transmission and distribution. So those companies have been doing exceedingly well because
again, most of them are just ignored by investors. are looking for kind of the hotter plays or the sexy names.
These are companies that are been around for 50, 100 years in some cases that develop the nuts and bolts of the grid.
And so, yeah, I agree.
So the product has done exceedingly well in a very volatile market.
I think we were down, you know, one and a half today.
But, you know, up 22% as of yesterday, year to date.
So, yeah, I think that one has a long way to run because people are just really starting to talk about electrification now, right?
I mean, it's, you know, it's been all about AI, AI, AI.
But, you know, know again without the electrification
piece there is no ai so people are getting smart on that now and i think that's going to be a trend
that's going to be just massive over the next three to five years on the infrastructure side
and then ais is you know today got hammered uh down about four percent um you know a lot of the
chip names got killed today um And a lot of the South Korean
names also got hammered overnight. So SK Hynix and some of these high flyers that have been
just critical to AI infrastructure, you know, had a tough day. But, you know, as of yesterday,
about 10%, so, you know, cut 4% out of there. So, you know, still a nice return, you know, cut 4% out of there. So, you know, still a nice, nice return, you know, up over 80%
year to day for the one year. So yeah, I mean, AI infrastructure is accelerating the spend on AI
infrastructure. It's not slowing down. If you, you know, it's hard to tell with all the noise in the
market nowadays, but if you're looking at the earnings and you're watching the news about the
actual, you know, what the companies are spending their money on, AI infrastructure, it continues to accelerate.
The CapEx is coming in. It's coming in strong. And it has to because we have to beat China.
We have to, you know, Google wants to beat Meta. Meta wants to beat Amazon.
They all want to beat Tencent and Alibaba. So it's a global arms race.
They all want to beat Tencent and Alibaba.
So it's a global arms race.
I want to make sure every single time we talk a little bit about the,
about whenever we talk about POW and AIS, the investment community behind it.
I really love that this isn't someone, this isn't a group of people who are just Wall Street and doing that.
These are people really in the field.
Can you tell me more about the investment communities behind AIS and POW? Sure. So just in terms of AIS and POW, we use
the same core methodology to create the core portfolio. We use something called Bill of
Materials, which follows where the CapEx spending is going. And's we file the patent on it and it's fully
transparent you can go right on our website and pull it down and see you know what the methodology
is and we do that because we feel like it's important for investors to really understand
how we build the portfolio but to your point the secret sauce is at the investment committee level
so we are active these are all of our products are active ETFs. So for AIS and POW,
what we've done is we've built an investment committee comprised of some of the leading,
you know, intellects, the leading, you know, the luminaries in these spaces, because we want people
on the investment committee that aren't Wall Street analysts. We want people that are actually
in the field building data centers or in the field
you know building out the new generation of energy infrastructure because those are the people that
are seeing the new technologies they're understanding the you know the shifts in um
in where capital is is flowing and which technologies are usurping others which companies
are building their pipelines
or losing pipeline because they have a backlog or their technology is no good anymore.
So our investment committee is made up of John McNeil, who's also the co-founder of VistaShares.
And he is the former president of Tesla.
He was the chief operating officer over at Lyft.
He's on the board of General Motors.
He's the vice chairman of the GM's autonomous vehicle subsidiary.
Just a brilliant, brilliant businessman and technologist.
So he's the leader of our investment committee.
We have Sonny Madra, who was the president of a company called Grok, G-R-O-Q,
which was a couple months ago acquired by NVIDIA. So now Sonny is the head of hardware over at NVIDIA.
Then we've got Justin Lopas, who is one of the world's leading experts in energy technology.
He was at SpaceX, leading engineer there.
He was the head of manufacturing at Anduril.
Now he's a chief operating officer
over at a company called Base Power,
where that's an energy leading energy technology company.
So he's on the investment committee as well.
So they're what we call our subject matter experts
who are our practitioners.
And their job is to identify kind of the risks
and opportunities
across the industry from what they're seeing by actually being in the industry every single day.
And it's invaluable. So nobody that I'm aware of has that type of expertise
on their investment committee. So it just adds such incredible insights. When we do our investment
committee calls, I mean, the banter is insane.
You know, just talking about all these different technologies and where they're going and where the pipelines are being built and which regions are adopting. So very interesting. And then once
they identified opportunities, it kicks over to, you know, kind of the portfolio construction
people, which is myself and Professor Robert Whitelaw. Robert Whitelaw was
the chairman of the finance department at the Stern School of Business and the former dean there,
one of the world experts in portfolio construction. And then kind of bridging the gap between both is
this guy, David, who is John McNeil's right-hand man, who, you know, he kind of bridges the gap
between domain expertise and portfolio construction. So he kind of bridges the gap between domain
expertise and portfolio construction.
So he's kind of the glue between the two sides.
So it's a really interesting partnership.
I think it is important to have people actually in the field doing it as opposed to just having
the Wall Street suited in there.
I think having a suit or two makes it nice, the portfolio construction.
There might be some other people who are missing that that person to do portfolio construction and the
trading and the right part of it maybe they have some good thesis but they're missing some parts
but i think a lot of it does come from the field uh the value there so i enjoy it oh i agree and
i mean sunny well you know what just to give you just one example, I mean, everyone has been talking about the backlog in chips over the last month or two.
Nine, 10 months ago, Sonny, on one of our calls said, guys, we got to be looking at the chip sector a little harder because the backlog is starting to grow.
And there's going to be a major problem in kind of the chip production and delivery sector.
So we got heavier in the chip sector, you know, nine months ago or so. And, you know, people
started talking about it about 60 days ago. So it's interesting. So that's the kind of insight
that we're getting. I love it. Stock Talk. Can I throw a question over to you? I am curious, Stock Talk, if
as we're starting to talk about disruptions in oil and energy and gas and stuff like that,
I do think that, I do wonder if electrification, if the grid, if that's one of the areas
that starts to see a pickup in
investment coming after this. Maybe it's not necessarily even during this, and maybe it's
a wait and see, but that was an investment that was going to continue to need to happen. And I
wonder if it's something that gets accelerated from this. You see your biggest flaws and you
want to adjust from it. But I do wonder if that grid, if that, uh, in the electrification aspect of it becomes something that increases here. Uh, in the short term, I don't think so. I mean, the short term,
you know, we don't really have many alternatives to oil and gas, um, that are viable, but in the
long and medium term. Yeah. I mean, I tweeted this last week too. Conflicts like this highlight that the global dependence on oil and gas
is a tailwind for conflict.
You know, if you look at every major conflict in the modern era,
it's been over commodities.
At the end of the day, like at the heart of the conflict, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Ukraine-Russia war, this war in Iran now.
The lifeblood of these conflicts is oil and gas.
And I would argue that nuclear energy, renewables, energy independence, these are part of the solution.
And so, yeah, I mean, I would hope in the medium to long term that these types of conflicts wake us up to that and that we see more investment in those categories.
But in the short term, I mean, you can't really move the needle much.
You can pour a couple hundred billion into it, but you can't really move the needle much.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a nuance.
But yes, the line of thinking that you're presenting with that question, I agree with that line of thinking.
I just, you know, in the short term, we need oil and gas, and that's really what the problem is right now, which is that there's pressure on oil and gas.
And you look at these data centers that are up and running now
and the new sites that are getting built,
most of them are being powered by fuel cells and gas turbines.
And that's not going to change anytime soon.
I mean, you know, yeah, solar has become more of a viable alternative for a lot of places.
I don't think it has enough energy intensity for a lot of the purposes we need it for.
That's why you need nuclear energy.
You know, it's not just about energy production.
It's also about energy intensity.
And solar can't do that.
So, yeah, it's a nuanced problem. And there's a multifaceted solution. It's going to require trillions of dollars of
investment and probably two or three decades. But I think the world will get there eventually.
But the sooner the better. And yes, I do think it'll make the world a more peaceful place too,
And yes, I do think it'll make the world a more peaceful place too, if you have more energy independence. And if more countries don't have to rely on other countries for their energy, it makes conflict less likely.
We're headed towards that future because the thing with oil and gas production is that it's concentrated in a handful of super producers around the world.
You know, there's about 10 to 15 nations that are considered super producers of oil and gas.
Not all of them are exporters, but 10 to 15 super producers of oil and gas.
And the world is really at their behest when it comes to energy.
the world is really at their behest when it comes to energy.
And when there's conflicts that compromise those regions,
it breeds more conflict.
And I mean, you saw this in Russia and Ukraine,
not necessarily as much on the energy side.
You did see it a little bit there
because Russian oil got sanctioned
and Russia is a huge producer of oil.
But you also saw it on the agricultural side, right?
On the fertilizer side, right?
Nitrogen-based fertilizers, potash, et cetera, et cetera.
You even saw it in, you know, corn, wheat.
So commodities in general are, resources in general, are tailwinds for conflict.
And when, you know, when we think about like globalist policy and this
idea of like everyone cooperating
and being kumbaya and sharing with each other
and trading with each other
it's fine and dandy
but globalist policy breaks
when superpowers come into conflict
and in the last
five
to six years
superpowers have come into conflict.
China wants Taiwan.
Russia wants Ukraine.
The United States wants, in some capacity, Venezuela and wants more control over the Middle East, as does Israel.
And that is superpowers being at odds with each other.
Territorially, over the issue of resources.
And that makes globalism a harder and harder sell
because globalist policy is enabled
by cooperation between superpowers.
And when you have this lack of cooperation,
it fuels conflict.
And that's where we are now.
So it's a sad thing to see.
But yes, circling back to your earlier point, energy independence will help solve that.
So I hope we see more investment in things like nuclear energy and renewables and fuel cells and so on and so forth over the next 15 to 20 years to attempt to offset that.
But I don't want my point to be misconstrued here.
You're going to need oil and gas still for the next several decades.
You're going to need it.
I mean, if not for the foreseeable future forever.
But diversifying away from it, especially in the case of nations that are dependent
on other nations for oil and
gas i think is a smart idea and will probably make this stuff less common
hey stock talk how do you uh see this whole iran situation resolving itself over the next hopefully
weeks yeah that's that's what we talked about before
you got here adam and and i you know i usually like to be an optimist as you know i'm you know
i'm usually very bold up but i don't know i don't know how we get out of it this time i've tried to
wrap my mind around like all the exit solutions here you know the the first solution being we leave. We leave the Gulf.
We just pick up and leave.
But if that happens, I don't know if that ends the problem.
I don't know if Iran magically starts allowing US allied vessels through.
Like Australia is about to phase a huge energy crisis.
They have about 30 days of Nat gas supply left.
And Australian ships will not be allowed through
because they are a United States ally.
Iran has made it very clear.
And so if we leave the region,
does that mean Israel stops airstriking Iran?
Because if they don't,
then US allies still won't be allowed through the region.
And even if they do,
does Iran take it as a form of proven retaliation?
Because they know now that this is going to push the buttons of the United States.
They realize now, oh, wait, we don't need to win the war.
We just need to hold the global economy hostage, right?
They're crazy people.
Like they don't, they don't, you're not, we're not negotiating with a logical party here,
right?
It's not like the United States is negotiating with Europe or with China, where, you know,
when we had the tariff conversations with China, China still has economic interests.
As much as they don't like us and we don't like them maybe under the, under the surface,
there's still a willingness to meet.
We had several meetings with the Chinese over negotiations over tariffs.
The Iranians don't have the economic incentive to do that.
The Iranian economy has no dependence on the U.S.
The U.S. has no dependence on Iran.
So for them, holding the global economy hostage pressures the United States.
It puts political pressure on the United States.
Trump knows this is going to be a shadow for the midterms.
And so, yeah, to your question, how do we get out of this?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know if leaving is even a solution now.
And then the other alternative to leaving is you wage a full-scale invasion of Iran, which has 90 million people and no,
I don't know, a single American who wants boots on the ground in either party, right?
And so I don't think that's a viable solution either.
That's political suicide.
And so, yeah, I don't know, Adam.
I wish I had a better answer for you, but the answer is, I don't know.
I had a better answer for you, but the answer is, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how we get out of this.
Yeah, well, let's hope the Iranians, you know, rise up and help out on the ground, right?
That would be a great, yeah, that would be a great thing if we could get a revolution started in Iran.
But that's the other thing is I read a report last week, too, that, you know, we've, the CIA and Mossad are attempting to get small arms in the hands of the Iranians, which isn't really working.
And like, are there enough of them?
Are they organized enough?
You know, can you get, you know, out of a population of 90 million people, can you get two or three million rebels with guns in their hand to overthrow the government?
overthrow the government, that's a tall task. That takes a lot of organization. It'll take a
That's a tall task.
That takes a lot of organization.
lot of help from the CIA and from intelligence agencies to make that happen. And yeah, I don't
know. I mean, yeah, obviously optimistically, we want to hope for something like that to happen,
but there are still crazy people in control. And as long as crazy people are in control,
you're sort of negotiating with a wall, right?
I mean, they don't have an incentive to listen to us,
especially if our stipulations are give up everything,
give up your ballistic missile program,
you can't build nuclear energy, forget about nuclear weapons,
you can't even build nuclear energy,
you can't expand your oil and gas production facilities. You can no longer control the
Strait of Hormuz. We're basically telling them to give up their whole economy and to lay down like a
dog. They're not going to do that. And that complicates this. So yeah, I mean, I'm obviously
rooting for America. I mean, I don't want Americans to die. I don't want America to lose the war. I'll put lose in quotation marks. I don't want the global economy to suffer. But I don't know. The way I've presented this is I think this was a miscalculation. Venezuela, where we could do two weeks of airstrikes or kidnap the Ayatollah or kill
the Ayatollah and that this would be over. But instead, we replaced the Ayatollah with another
Ayatollah. And we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and trillions of dollars and thousands of American
lives. And guess who's in control of Afghanistan today? The Taliban. So I don't know. I mean,
Taliban. So I don't know. I mean, regime change has been a losing proposition for a long time.
And I'm sort of sad that we embarked on this journey again, but it's kind of disheartening
to me as an American that we, that we're back here talking about the Middle East and a war in
the Middle East all over again. But, you know, we don't learn our lessons, I guess, so I don't know.
It's
disappointing.
Not fun.
That was a good synopsis.
All right.
Well, I think when
we're thinking about here is
market participants, though, which is
all we can do.
Maybe in this in-between time, you kind of let the plays kind of come out here and present themselves.
But the energy independence feels like the...
And honestly, the mineral independence is a conversation we've had a lot here.
But the energy independence seems like something that...
Like the U.S. is a net exporter of oil and gas and energy,
but it's still not necessarily enough. So I imagine this is not only going to be a US
conversation coming out of this global one, and electrification and investment in the grid is
only something that's going to increase coming out of this. We'll see. Well, maybe, and obviously when out of this is, but yeah, I, the, the, obviously the data
center is an area that one that has also been immense amount of focus here and I'm sure
will be as well, but I just don't, I just don't see a world where betting on the grid
and betting on increased electrification and clean energy as well feels like that.
Not even clean energy, but just energy that and not even clean energy but just
energy that doesn't come from one part of the world that we don't that the entire world doesn't
have type of thing right so i don't know it just feels like a theme that makes sense
which i mean i know you agree that's why we're here but um it's a good one god i love it oh man
yeah well you just got to stay the course and everyone's just got to just, you know, stick with their plan. You know, like I said in the beginning, you don't want to do anything rash or, you know, make any crazy changes to your portfolio. I mean, obviously, you know, you could trim things down and things like that, but don't lock in those losses because you'll never make them up.
things like that, but don't lock in those losses because you'll never make them up.
Is there anything else you want to leave the people with? I do have a couple tweets pinned
up in the nest above the link to the VistaShares website as people are doing whatever research into
this. We want informed investors, want people who are taking their time, and maybe it's a good time
to do a little extra due diligence as we're waiting for the market to do its thing here.
But as people are looking at the website and digging in, you know, maybe some of the places that they should go in and look at anything else you want to leave the people with.
Obviously, we always appreciate when you join us on the spaces when we get to talk more in this area.
I'm a big fan of the grid investment, and that will be one that centers a lot of the conversations in the future.
But yeah, anything you want to leave the people with as they're doing the research?
I would just say that if you're interested in doing some research, take a look at our website at VistaShares.com.
We just launched several new research papers.
We have a research section right at the top nav.
And we've got some good research that we just – brand new, brand new and very timely.
So on the grid, on AI. So
we've been trying to pump this stuff out and provide as much education as we can to investors
and follow us on X. We try to, we distributed the research on X as well. So, you know, I just appreciate all you guys listening in and you know,
stay safe and stay focused and you know, we'll,
we'll get out of this hopefully soon.
We pinned up in the best above. We'll take you there.
I appreciate it, Adam. There's the,
this is shares account that is also up here. The, the,
go give it a follow. They tweet some really cool stuff as well.
So yeah, follow the speakers.
Appreciate you, Adam.
Appreciate everyone else for joining us in on this Spaces today.
Obviously, quite a crazy market right now.
Hopefully, we'll see.
We see some resolution soon.
I don't know, but we will definitely be here
on the Stocks on Spaces.
We've got some cool, interesting, fun conversations
coming up throughout the rest of this week as well.
We've got some extra speakers to come, and I am excited for it.
So make sure you're following speakers, follow speakers.
If you enjoy live, free conversations just like this one, make sure you are following this account, the host of the spaces.
And we will catch you all tomorrow, same time, same place.
Stock talk.
Whenever I go to you for final words,
it always goes fantastic.
So you got any final words
you want to leave the people with?
Yeah, I give too many.
It's because I give too many words in the middle,
so I can't give too many final words
because I already say everything I need to say.
But yeah, I mean, look, guys,
if you own stuff that you've owned for years
and you're up a bunch on it,
you have a deep cost-based advantage, congratulations. You've earned yourself the flexibility to hold. If you bought stuff
last month, last week, two weeks ago, you are at risk, period. Because markets, cheap can get
cheaper. Markets can go lower. Whatever stock you're looking at, I was looking at people all
over the feed today talking about memory stocks being cheap.
Yeah, sure, they're cheap.
They get cheaper.
NVIDIA is cheap.
Sure, it can get cheaper.
Microsoft's trying to get a 20p or whatever.
It can get cheaper.
Microsoft can get cheaper.
I mean, you can go back in history and see during bear markets how low stocks can really go.
Okay?
Apple has had minus 80% years.
Amazon has had minus 80% years. Minus 80%.
80. 8-0. Okay? I'm not saying that's going to happen again, but ground yourself in reality of
what bear markets can look like, what corrections can look like. Go look at last year even. You
don't have to go too far back in the clock. Go look at the flash crash last year. Look how low some of your favorite stocks went. Look at the 22 bear market. Look how low some of your favorite stocks went. Again, I am not advocating for this scenario or rooting for this scenario. But when you're trading below the 200-day moving average on all the major indexes, you have to open your mind to the possibility of that scenario.
open your mind to the possibility of that scenario. And we are in that regime now. We're
well below the 200-day moving average on both SPY and the NASDAQ, which control basically 70%
of US market liquidity. 65 to 70% of US market liquidity runs through those two indexes.
And they're both below the 200-day moving average,
which means that institutions aren't bidding them either.
Because if they were, they would have been buyers at the 200-day,
and they weren't.
We haven't seen a follow-through green day in about a month.
That means we haven't seen a single follow-through day in about a month
on the indexes.
That means every green day since this war started has been sold into.
There's distribution signs in every major asset, most major asset classes, except for energy.
So just look at what's in front of you. You don't need me to tell you. You can see the
charge yourselves. You can see the action yourselves. Are we getting close to peak pessimism? Are we getting close to a relief rally? Yes. But all
that matters is repairing index structure. And you can get relief rallies all you want. But if you
rally into resistance and get rejected again, that's just a counter trend rally. And the further
we go down and the longer this conflict lasts,
the more work it will take to repair the index structure. The more follow through you'll need,
the more aggressive buying you'll need. And you have to ask yourself, what's the catalyst for that?
Right? What is going to allow that to happen? And right now, me being the guy that's always
been up here for the last five years
with you guys in these spaces, always being an optimist, I don't feel terribly optimistic here
for what it's worth. And I don't feel terribly convinced that we're going to see another V-shape
recovery. I do think markets will recover. They always do. But the time frame may look a little different than it did last year when we had the flash crash.
The time frame might look a little bit different than it looked during the COVID crash, where we basically got a V-shaped recovery within a month with rate cuts.
The central banks of the world don't have the room to act that they did years ago.
They don't have the room.
Inflation is too high still.
It's above target for all central banks globally, right?
We know that.
You don't need a rocket scientist to tell you that.
And on top of that, the consumer is weaker than it was then.
So just look at the data, look at the facts, and then ask yourself, what is it going to take to get us back into a bulled up market like we were in for the last three years?
And it's my opinion, it's going to take a lot.
It's going to take a lot.
So the possibility is there.
I don't want to completely write off the possibility.
The possibility is there.
But the probabilities get worse and worse the longer the conflict lasts, the longer the oil disruptions last.
And the scary part about this is Iran knows that.
And Iran knows that Trump cares about the market.
And they know that he cares about the midterm results.
And they know that he cares about the market, and they know that he cares about the midterm results, and they know that he cares about the political pressure,
and they know how to produce that pressure.
So that's the concern here.
But be patient. I'm sitting on my hands.
I haven't bought anything in weeks. I don't plan to buy anything.
If the markets remain weak this week, I'll probably continue to degross into weakness.
the markets remain weak this week, I'll probably continue to degross into weakness.
And, you know, if I need to within the next month, if this doesn't resolve, I'll flip my
bias entirely and I'll start shorting names. That's what I'm going to be doing. I'm not quite
there yet, but, you know, I'm still, like I said, betting on the idea that we walk away from this
sooner than later. I'm hoping for that idea. I should say not betting on it. I'm hoping for the idea that we walk away from this sooner or later.
But if we don't, things will get worse and maybe even a lot worse. So if you're out there and
you're an optimist and you're a bull and you want this to end, what you should be hoping for is that we find a way to end this quickly.
And yeah, that's what you should be hoping for.
I appreciate your stock talk.
I appreciate you, Adam.
Let's hope we get that miracle turnaround out of nowhere
that no one expects.
Just nice to hear them quickly.
I appreciate everyone for joining in.
Follow the speakers.
We will catch you all same time, same place tomorrow.
Make sure you're following Mr. Adam Patti as well.
Smart guy.
Friend of the show.
Wonderful guy.
Thanks.
Appreciate you, sir. Have a great one, everyone. All right. Take care, guys. wonderful guy thanks appreciate you sir
have a great one everyone
alright take care guys
