Forget Valuations. Hard Assets Go Higher (Tony Greer)
Summary
Hard Assets Focus: The guest strongly pitches a hard-asset portfolio centered on gold, industrial metals/miners, uranium miners, and rare earths, driven by monetary debasement and policy tailwinds.
Debasement Trade: He sees the ongoing debasement trade as intact, with gold and silver benefiting from fiscal deficits and currency erosion, and advocates buying dips and riding rallies.
Resource Nationalism: A central thesis is resource nationalism under the current U.S. administration, with military-backed supply-chain security and government alignment with mining/rare earth firms supporting the multi-year resources bull case.
Energy Setup: Elevated energy prices and portfolio frameworks like 60/20/20 (stocks/gold/energy) are highlighted, with oil strength joining metals; he expects higher-for-longer energy to support resource equities.
Uranium Miners: Bullish on uranium miners amid growing nuclear support, power demand from AI data centers, and a widening supply deficit into 2030; he trades trends tactically after technical breakouts.
Rare Earths: He favors rare earths as policy-backed supply-chain priorities, noting government partnerships and increased capital flows into specialty mining as AI and defense needs rise.
Gold Dynamics: Despite unusual wartime behavior, he views gold as resilient and expects the bull market to resume once geopolitical de-risking fades, with gold miners set to outperform on renewed monetary focus.
AI vs. Resources: While acknowledging the crowded AI trade and semis’ strength, he prefers reallocations toward metals & mining and energy, seeing better risk/reward versus overbought tech.
Transcript
Money miners, Jonas, you've lined up a very entertaining guest for us today. We've got the wonderful Tony Greer, founder of KG Macro, an old school trader, and uh he he just interprets markets very very different to us. He's very tuned into the flows. >> 100%. That's why we got him on. We uh like to challenge our thinking, like to expand our horizons a little bit. And Tony, like you said, thinks about the markets so so differently to us. A technical guy, a real traders trader. And with that different sort of framing in mind, he still comes to the same kind of outcomes, hard assets, debasement trade, these sorts of things. So we get into all of that uranium, rare earths and and these sorts of things. And I was just super curious to learn it how he'd come about that, how he got to that same end product that we had come to from a a much more valuationsoriented perspective. So I'm sure the money miners are going to love this conversation. >> Let's get into it. Travis Ricardo. We are blessed to be with Tony Greer today. Tony, thank you for joining us. >> So thrilled to be with you guys from all the way on the other side of the world. This is pretty awesome. >> I listened to a recent episode and you said I think you said after college you spent a bit of time traveling Australia four or five months. Is that right? >> Yeah. I went there in the summer of 1990 and went to the west coast to Perth where the World Games of Lacrosse were being played. Ah, no way. >> Yeah. And I had probably three of my really good friends, three of my college teammates were on the USA team, which is why we went all the way over there. And we spent the first two weeks of the trip once we got all the way to the west coast of Australia in Perth at the World Games. Um, I'm trying to remember the name of the stadium they played it at, but it was at a big like rugby stadium, I suppose. And we went to the Aberdeene every single night. >> That's that's amazing. >> They had a total blast. >> Oh, that is that is fantastic. 1991. I can't even imagine what Perth because because Perth is such a mining town which we maybe get into one way or another in the chat >> and that China boom just transformed Perth but but Trev and I were both young kind of living through that. So I can't imagine what Perth would have been like in the >> I can't imagine Perth is ever being a a lacrosse capital of anything. >> Yeah, it was amazing. I mean there was a pretty big crowd for some of the games. Um, but the US is pretty dominant in that and it was a far, you know, it's a long way for a lot of countries to go travel to see lacrosse. So, >> I can I can imagine >> that's remarkable. >> That's very cool. That's very cool. Yeah. Many many of the people we speak with have have barely ever heard of Perth. So, >> yeah, I know. I know. I'm really blessed to have a little bit of Australia history. Tony, I've been listening to some of your stuff lately, and you come at the market from a very different lens to the the kind of more fundamental approach that we tend to, you know, value investing oriented approach. We tend to look at the market. But you're coming to the same kind of conclusions on on a lot of kind of things. And you've been all over this this hard asset trade, this this Halo kind of trade, all over the natural resources trade for for quite some time now. So I'd love to hear just to start the conversation how you came about this the the debasement trade plays into that as well. What is the attraction to you for all those things and we can kind of kick off from there. Yeah, sure. Jonas, if I were to group all of that into how it feeds into the trade, I would say, you know, somewhere, I guess that was October of last year when the analyst at JP Morgan um called it um the debasement trade, right? And at that time, you know, last year, the three winning the the three top performing sectors on the year for most of the year were gold miners, industrial miners, and uranium miners. And I'm really just I'm really dialed into the year-to-ate performance race as part of my analysis in the markets. I kind of put it on myself to have my clients in the sectors that are winning at the end of the year, you know? So we try to navigate into the sectors that are winning and figure out the right technical points to get into them. And we got a couple of opportunities to get into gold miners and industrial miners while that whole industrial while that whole debasement trade story was playing out if that's fair. And so last year we saw stocks made their highs. This year we saw a pullback in gold as it's become a risk asset during the Iran war. the the US Iran conflict and I think now we're going to see the resumption of those bull markets because all that's happened with the Iran war is that oil started performing alongside metals and mining and there's short covering going on right now in technology but not much has really changed I don't think in terms of that underlying current of debasement trade the underlying current of a bull market in gold and silver and then the underlying current of Trump's very abrupt resource nationalism that he has changed the whole supply chain game with if if I may and I'm not an expert on all of that but it's very clear that resource nationalism is the way we're going forward in the Trump administration where we're going to use the military to secure all of the necessary supply chains that we need to secure The government has obviously partnered up with a number of rare earth companies and a number of mining companies and been a direct um a direct force in guiding them toward what they want produced and a lot of it is directed toward our military and supplies for the military. So this seems like a trade where you know natural resources have come to the foreground. securing your supply chain has never been more important. And so I'm still staying with these sectors that, you know, may not be at the top of the performance board right now, but continue to remain in a bull market and be very tradable that way. and tradeable by tradable. I mean, you know, when I get into the sectors that prove that they're bull markets, part of our jiu-jitsu is to sort of upsize on dips and then let that upsize out into rallies. And so, we try to capitalize on, you know, both the percentage and directional move by being a little opportunistic and taking chances to upsize along the way. And so sometimes that's really successful, sometimes it's not as successful, but that's what's kind of behind the money-making process here at TG Macro, if that's fair. >> That that uh resource nationalism component is really interesting. And sometimes I feel like we're we're in a bit of an echo chamber here here in little old Perth, Western Australia, because the the mining sector is so so relevant to everything that goes on in in the city and and in this country. So I'm I'm curious from from your seat, how how widespread and how pervasive is that view that we're coming into an era where resources are going to be one of the dominant if not the the the biggest growing sector of the S&P 500 or whichever index you're kind of following. >> Yeah. You know, I think it's it's it's gaining popularity. I think, you know, I think it was a big deal when Morgan Stanley last year said that your portfolio's got to be 60 2020 now. And it's no longer 60% stocks and 40% bonds, but it makes more sense to be 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% gold. So, that was a major vote for the resources sector. I think that that helped contribute to the bull market that was going on at the time when they made that comment. And then it's still going on. I think the bull market and gold is very much intact, but it doesn't feel quite honestly like plain vanilla mutual funds have made a big portfolio shift yet. And I think that that's coming because it feels like there's more quite honestly retail and sort of I'd call it commodity commodity space or commodity ranger popularity with this trade. It doesn't seem like when I talk to stock guys that they're that focused on we've got to be in the mining stocks and we've got to own rare earth stocks and we've got to be in ENTP and so you know I think the stock guys are still a little bit mesmerized by the mag seven performance that we've seen over the year the last 20 years and think that that is going to continue. So to answer the question, I don't think, you know, I really don't think that it's the most popular trade on the board. Certainly, you know, the AI trade is certainly sucking up a lot of capital right now and definitely in some form of a bubble. And I'm not saying that it's about to pop. The bubble can get bigger and it can continue, but they certainly have to find a way to make that whole entire ecosystem profitable for everybody that's so heavily invested. And it seems like that's going to be a challenge. But I still think that that we're going to be in a year where, you know, once we do Well, I there was I read it really interesting. I'm I'm friends with Lewis Gav and the last one of the last notes that he wrote was about how um you know, Trump has destroyed a lot of basic assumptions out there. And this is Lewis's work, not mine. Okay? I don't I'm not claiming this at all. You know, but in Lewis's work, he's saying that you now need an energy portion of the portfolio. So, you know, the way he's saying is now you need 60% stocks, 20% gold, and 20% energy because you have to have some kind of energy hedge because of the way Trump has changed the trade tables around. So, no longer are treasuries immediately translatable into oil, right? It depends on where you're sitting to be able to capitalize on that trade. No longer does the US command and keep safe the all of the shipping lanes. We can see that with the problems the strait is having right now. And I guess the third component that Lewis wrote about was that the US is no longer this beneficial hegeimon very gently walking around the world. that we are now in the interest of resource nationalism more likely to you know go and militarily secure whatever part of the supply chain that we want to secure for ourselves. So I think that that that I feel like that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of people gaining awareness on uh okay like you know the the international trade tables have changed. My my cheap gas supply is now probably going to be threatened for the foreseeable future. And that could change but for the foreseeable future it looks like we're going to have some elevated energy prices. is the straight looks like it's been closed for several weeks. Really difficult to tell what the truth is. Um, but it's also not something that anybody has to panic about because there has been no kink in the supply chain and in the US gas has gone from three and a half bucks to four bucks and I haven't even heard anybody say a word about it and so I feel like that's going to be something that's going to be a little bit part of our future for longer. So, I did I guess to get back to the question, it doesn't seem like we've seen a full-on mutual fund rush to get into that commodity space. And I'm talking about where maybe they change their allocation from gold miners to 50 basis points of a natural resources portfolio to 5%. You know, or even if they go from 50 basis points to 2%, that's a lot of buying of gold miners and the prices will go a lot higher. because there's just not enough stock to go around. So, I still think it's in the early innings of this. And if I had to make a bet, I would say that we are in the first of a first year of a potential 10-year cycle in commodities. And that's not to say that commodities are just going to go up and to the right for 10 years. It is to say though that it should be a pretty tradable bull market in the mining stocks which will continue to benefit from high commodity prices that we're seeing. So, it's a really it's a tricky uh it's a tricky game right now and it's hard to have a ton of confidence in anything that you're doing because the markets are so volatile and a lot of it is based on posts coming out of the White House. You know, whether we like it or not, that's what's moving the markets and you know, the markets are starting to believe whatever comes out of those ship posts. So, you know, it's amazing. I'm I was just trying to say I'm trying to like you know get to the reality point where we only have $90 crude oil right now but the straight has been closed for almost two months. You know it seems like the price of oil would be higher. It seems like there might have already been this supply chain issue and we haven't seen any of it. So until we get to that point there's no real insane urgency um to do anything other than prep your basement. you know, the stock the stock market is really kind of readressing the risk. You know, we we we had another, you know, we had another shakeup with the Iran war and the market comes flying back to new highs and like I said, all that's really changed is that energy has joined the natural resources rally and software is short covering like crazy, right? because everybody was short software for the SAS apocalypse and we got to a level where retail was inhaling it down 25% from the highs in IGV and that stopped the slide in software and then when you have a de-risking hedge funds are short software long resources so what you see is the resources stocks go down and short covering in cloud storage um internet stocks and software and social media so that's really the only dam dynamic that's changed this year with the Iran war. And so I kind of feel like a resolution of that is going to lead us towards a return to performance in the metals and mining sector. >> Jada, you know, one asset class that is unaffected by the ship posting out of the White House. In fact, unaffected whether the straight is closed or open or closed or open or closed. >> Enlightenment, what are you thinking about? >> Commercial property, mate. I'm thinking of commercial property in particular. I'm thinking of Exceed Capitals, the collective. This is the flagship fund from Exceed Capital, the property investment group based out of here in Australia where they target cash distributions of 7 8% peranom. They sure do. >> On top of that, there's a capital uplift on on on the fund as well. >> Yep. You're talking about the collective, their flagship trust. This is a diversified portfolio of commercial property. And the best thing that we love that we've touched upon in the past, it is led by an aligned team. They only get paid if the fund works out. They are rowing in the same direction as you and the founders are all invested in the trust alongside you. >> It sounds brilliant, mate. Uh money, check out Exceed Capital, the collective. It link is in the show notes. Back to Tony. >> Go Exceed. >> I find it so interesting how the um the stock market is the barometer of of risk. And you're a brave person to to say that you've got any more information than the the collective brains of the the you know, the stock market. But I can't help but constantly think about that meme that's that's been so pervasive the last week and it's the meteor coming to earth and uh you know it's very close and and uh someone's just looking to the other person being like don't worry it's priced in already. >> Yeah. >> The risk can be right in front of you but it's priced in. Don't worry. >> Exactly. That's what I said. I said that on our macro dirt podcast Jared Dillan Dillian the other day. I said, "Until an analyst at JP Morgan can't get toilet paper or fill up his Beamer, there is no supply chain problem, and it's not something the market is going to react to. Until the guy at JP Morgan can't fill up his car, and that's the only time that there will be a market reaction to that type of scarcity. until it happens, we are going to be, you know, I guess floating around blindly wondering what's going to happen next and what headline is going to happen next and what drone is going to blow up what tanker. And it just seems to me like as much as the president wants to say that straight is open and he's negotiating that I just I I can't in my heart of hearts believe that we're going to go back to business as usual tomorrow. >> It's very very hard to believe. The the point on fuel is really interesting because as as Trump has been at patents to to point out, America doesn't get most of its fuel from from the Middle East these days, but there's plenty other places in the world, namely Australia, where where you're starting to feel the pinch. And fuel hasn't increased by sort of 50 cents. It's it's doubled over the past kind of couple months. So, yeah, where I mean the the pinch is being felt quite quite a bit down under. But that that doesn't seem to to change the perspective, does it? Because it's a it's a very America first kind of approach. >> Yeah. You know, I think that that if if he's done anything that you can try to make sense of, and I'm talking about President Trump with his military action of, you know, snagging Maduro out of Caracus and making the Venezuelan oil available and then going and attacking Iranian infrastructure and cutting off the strait and cutting China's supply off their their immediate, you know, China and India's immediate supply is cut off. And then there's all of the rest of Asia which you know and and you in Australia which is the sort of knock-on effect of you know you guys are getting some of your supply from directly from there. And if a fifth of the global supply comes out of there that's that's the squeeze that you guys are feeling now. And I can't decide whether or not Trump is doing something smart where we're just going to drill baby drill here in the US and really ramp up production and become the global source and then gas prices are going to go down or if he's eventually just going to open up the straight and everything is going to flow in every direction and prices are going to eventually come back down. So, I don't know the angle that he's trying to get there. And I I do I feel for, you know, all of you that are seeing, you know, more severe price spikes than we are here because I don't know what the resolution of this conflict is. And it seems to get murkier every day. And that I I literally have been watching the Iranian memes to get the most clarity on what's going on in the world. And I can't even believe that that's the truth, but it is. I I I if I like if I try and think of the this is an incredibly complex system and there's so many different things going on but like in in very simple simple person language I like simple things oil prices are going up globally albeit less in the US and when when you do have oil prices going up well you do get inflation and when you do get inflation you do get interest rates going up and when interest rates do go up equities come down so like what's wrong with my simple person synthesis of the future. >> You're not accounting for the facts that while you have all that information and it has it creates a congruous logic path in your brain, the markets don't give a >> Tell me more. >> Because when the market opens up every day, the money goes to where the money's treated best. And if that's still the stock market and if that's still US stocks and if that's still the there is no alternative trade. You remember the TINA trade that we were in for the longest time because you couldn't buy bonds because they yielded zero, right? And there was no alternative but to get pushed out the risk curve into the stock market. You know, you wake up every day and the money just goes and seeks where it gets treated best. And if you look at, you know, the commodity markets, they're insanely volatile right now. And the only thing that doesn't care it seems is gold. So that that's probably for me that that's tells me that's a good place to be socking away money during this because gold seems to be holding up no matter what. And then it looks around and says there's no trade in bonds because rates aren't going in any all the only thing going on in bonds in the US is the the more rates mean revert the faster and harder they mean revert. Like this is a point that I've been making for years where there is literally no trend in interest rates here in the US, right? We get a little bit of weakness in whatever employment or manufacturing and rates fall to the bottom of the range and then we get a little bit of a inflation scare because we now have $90 oil. So that's going to feed into the data somehow. We get a little bit of an inflation beat and they float to the top of the range. And the reality is the bond market's been sideways for four years and that is bullish stocks because the stock market loves stability in the rates markets. And you know, you're going to have those interest rate sensitive sectors like banks and builders have their own reactions to rates within that range. But broadly speaking, it lets all the other bull markets run. So there's no bond trade. And now you're looking for still every day at 9:30 the bell rings and where's the money going to go to where it's treated best and you're right back in the US stock market chasing the AI trade and the rare earth trade and the metals and mining trade. And that's where the money wants to be and that's the best explanation I have whether it's right or wrong. >> You you mentioned gold is is holding up. Gold has performed kind of funnily like in in the broader scheme of things. It's holding up at a fantastic price level. I mean four 4,800ish bucks is nothing to to complain about. But what have you made about that behavior? And one step further, what have you made of the the relationship between gold miners and the underlying So, it's clear that gold became a front page trade when it got a name called the debasement trade, right? That's what that's where everybody that's reading the Wall Street Journal said, "Okay, I need to have some protection of this fiat currency that I'm trafficking in. I need to buy gold." Right? So, there's you get a little bit of exposure. People, you know, the word gets out. People say, "Oh, yeah, you know, I have to own some gold." Hedge funds are like, "Oh, we got to be in the gold trade because it's a bull market." And what happens is it turns into a risk asset. People wake up in the morning and they're like, "Gold's going up. Let's put money in the gold market." It's now money we can make on a daily and weekly basis and not just sit there with a pile of it and make 10% a year, you know? So now this thing is in motion and people go into the gold market. And I think the Iran war proved during that de-risking that gold is the tip of the risk spear. Right. And you know, all of a sudden, we're attacking another country and gold is going down. That was a first for me in my career. And I've been staring at the screens for 35 years. So, it's not the first war that I've traded through. And it's not the first conflict. It's the first one that I've traded through that gold and silver have gone down upon bombs dropping on another country. And I got a feeling that that's just a testament to how long the market got ahead of that and ahead of the debasement trade. And so the beauty of it is that gold put in a good bottom. It put in what looks like a bull market bottom down at 4150 at the end of March. And it looks like dips to 43 and 4,400 a holding. And conversely, if we try to get make our way back up above the 50-day moving average, the bull market in gold could be back off and running again. And the exact same thing goes for gold miners. And because now their stocks, they already got back above all three major moving averages and they are back in bull market mode or they're trying to. Same thing with industrial miners. Rare earth miners are often running. Uranium miners are at the top of the leaderboard. So whether it's gold specifically or not, the resource nationalism trade is on. We are currently long gold miners, industrial miners, uranium miners, and gold. And those are the four positions that we've navigated into on this dip since the de-risking. I've had gold on the pad forever. But the other three all dipped into prices that I want to buy them. So, I added them to the risk pad and now we're going to manage the risk, but now they're all doing well. So that's how I kind of look at that trade if as it all comes together here is you know getting the Iran US Iran war behind us will be key for the gold mark gold bull market to resume because then we're going to go back to focusing on everything monetary and fiscal that was making gold go up in the first place. You know every time we hit a new trill dog in our deficit you look over and gold goes up another $300, right? gold is responding to the, you know, maniacal spending and currency debasement that's going on. So when those headlines come around and there aren't other stimulus affecting the markets, that's what was sending gold into a bull market. So I think that that is going to be back and the whole resource nationalism thing is going to keep base metals properly bid alongside gold and silver um and platinum and palladium. And so those trades are very much alive and well and they're just facing this little bit of a torpedo from the Iran war if I may where that shook everything up in the risk um you know in the risk basket. And so we'll see how we come out the other side. But my sense is before this year is over, we're going to go back to buying metals and mining stocks and rare earths and uranium miners. And we're going to go back to selling technology because those stocks are not going to have the same 20-year run that they had in the last 20 years with everybody clawing for a seat at the natural resources trade table. >> What's the most crowded trade right now, Tony, that you don't want to be in? I still think it's AI. You know, I think there's a lot of private capital in addition to the stocks that are, you know, semiconductors are soaring along at all-time highs. Everybody and my sister is long Nvidia, you know. I mean, that it's a is just a popular thing. It's working. Um, it hasn't tested you at all on the downside. Like Nvidia, no matter what, tech can get hammered. Nvidia and semiconductors hang in there, right? It's the it's the AI. It's there's still money coming in. what what does uh a stronger US dollar as we've seen in the past kind of couple months do to to the whole resources trade and and what do you make of the future on that front? You know, the beauty is that gold has proven over the years, now I'm talking over the last 10 years, that it can rally while the dollar goes up, right? Clearly, gold has been in in a very crisp rally mode and clear in the last 10 years. And clearly, there have been periods of dollar strength in those 10 years. So, I don't get discouraged by a strong dollar because it's really just winning the dump truck race. right? It's a strong dollar versus the other currencies that are, you know, either in a weaker position geopolitically or a weaker position fiscally or have, you know, terrible balance sheets. And so I think that that's why the dollar is, you know, rallying versus the euro, for example, and the yen obviously. So with that in the background, I can know that at least it doesn't derail my metals trade and I think that I can prove that over time. So while there may be intraday episodes that, oh man, this morning there's a really large magnitude move higher in the dollar, you're going to look over at the metals board and on that day they're going to sell metals without a doubt. But what you wind up learning is that within the trend, the bullish metal trend doesn't give up just because the dollar is going up. So I I I I keep an eye on it and use it as a speedometer and tell me how much gold I can be long on any given day, but I don't sweat that it's going to take that trade away from me. >> Yeah. You had a fantastic line in in a recent pot. I think you said something about that that portion of gold, physical gold in your portfolio is just a tenant of being a westerner. I think it made me really laugh because it's the situation we see across the western world be it the the Aussie dollar the the US dollar and just having that allocation is is kind of sound thinking but when I think about the the narrative and the time frame of of that debasement trade in my mind that's been around a bit longer than the rest of the the natural resources trade the need the idea that you need rare earths copper all these sorts of things stockpiles that feels much more recent than the the gold trade. Gold is gold is up whatever it is up 10 or 20 times over the past 10 plus years, whereas I feel like the last few years is is where we've really started to see the uh the rest of the metals kind of move. Is that is that like a broader sentiment that you kind of agree with? >> Yeah, totally. I think you know I mean you know a lot of this is a function of you know believe it or not I think a lot of it is a function of AI the need for AI data center power generation actually affecting the metals market. I think that that's a big part of the metals bull market behind the debasement trade and behind or alongside the resource nationalism trade. Right. So, it's definitely observable that when Trump was elected that he set off about 11 different bull markets, right? There was the bull market and AI. He's got an AISAR. Now, the US is fully behind this, supporting it and supporting cryptocurrency. >> I think he's left now, >> has he? >> Yeah. Did David Sax David Saxs I think actually did finish his term, but what but what I think that he did was uh I I think that he kind of kept the government's pause off a lot of the AI uh you know I don't know the business deals and the and the rule making so that they could kind of let them function. So I I I'm a big fan of his. I love the all-in podcast. >> Um and I guess what what was my other point? So I think that this is that that's part of what plays into the metals trade and you know with Trump you know the US the White House partners with six rare earth companies right so everybody is scrambling and saying oh we got to invest in these now the government is going to back these you know and as long as it doesn't turn into the department of motor vehicles these companies are going to get a lot of attention and be called on to pull a lot of minerals out of the ground so those are all definitely new and that's why I believe that this has been Even though the markets smooth it out, I feel like it's been an abrupt change for the world to, you know, to kind of see what this shakeout, this post liberation day shakeout is going to be about. Because if you remember, that's where, you know, that was in April of last year was Trump's first year in office. And that's where he literally just pulled the tablecloth out from under the dinner table and, you know, let every all the glasses and the plates go flying and it scrambled the S&P. And if you remember what came out of that on top, gold miners, industrial miners, uranium miners, solar stocks, right? Everything natural resources and involved with creating power. So, that I think is a trade that ties into it. And they are definitely new trades, which is why, you know, I've got I've got a lot of chips stacked in that direction because I think that we're just getting started with that. And then the charts kind of say that as well. You know, we're we're in rally mode. We're well off the lows. The market holds consolidation on pullbacks. And I'm talking about rare earths, uranium miners, industrial miners, etc. Right down the list. So, I don't want to go on too long without listening. You ask another question. I feel like I'm flapping my gums. I um I I I want to like I want to tease out you know how you you view markets differently to well to to us and um and and these are like these are themes which have trend they've got momentum behind them they've got like you know clearly a lot of of government support however I think of uranium miners I think of rare earth and I think like what like I can't help but think of the the the way I was taught to value these companies which is on some sort of price to nav basis and um you back it out and you're like oh My goodness, what are these things trading on? So, like your your your disconnect from valuation versus just trend, like how do you how do you actually come up with a a positive view on on a on a sector irrelevant of the the implied valuations? >> Yeah. So, I've never been a valuation guy. I worked at a couple of equity shops along my career after trading commodities at Goldman Sachs. I I that's when I got into the equity world. I left Goldman Sachs after they went public and had a safety net to go out and trade on my own and I wound up doing a couple of different things, right? So, I wound up being an equity sales trader and dealing with a lot of equity analysts selling research to hedge funds and mutual funds who were my clients. And it never made any sense to me watching and and and back when I started valuations were way more important even than they are now. Like if you didn't know what PE is sector traded at, like you couldn't dare dip your toe in it, right? You have to know where everything is on the matrix and this and that. And then like the dot bubble came around and just leveled all of the ideas of traditional valuations and and it was like, okay, you can sit here and be picky about valuation or you can make money. Which do you want to do? Because you can't do both, right? And you watch guys, you literally I watched guys sit there and bang the table that stocks should not be this high because the valuations were getting outrageous. And I'm looking at them going, are you watching? What the is going on out there? They're buying them hand over fist at this level. They don't care about you telling them that the valuations are so high. So that's where I completely abandoned as a trader. I was able to do that. You know, I had a whole trading background behind me. Now I'm combo of the salesman and the trader because I'm executing. But I fully understood the fact that while these guys were saying Delta shouldn't be more than a 15 or 20 times earnings and I'm getting 17 million shares of Delta to buy from a plain vanilla mutual fund over the course of the months and they're not particularly price sensitive. It's like I don't know what you guys what game you guys are playing, but it has nothing to do with the way I make money. And so I completely abandon all I just don't even look at it. I don't even I don't want to know how many times earnings a company is trading because it just limits my thinking. I'm a technical guy. I'm a price action guy. I read sentiment very well. I know things were when things are frothy and I know things when things are left for dead. and valuation just doesn't have any kind of place in that game. >> And if I if I just tie it in with um portfolio construction again, tell me about PGMs, like you mentioned platinum, you mentioned you mentioned palladium and um and the other precious silver. Is that all just like part of the same trade as as gold to you? Just derivatives? >> I think that they're along for the ride. I think that there are, you know, some probably some, you know, future supply deficit stories that help them go along for the ride. And I think, you know, having been, here's the dynamic. This is maybe very personal and may not apply to the world, but when I worked at Goldman Sachs, I I traded the gold book and the silver book and on occasion would have to, you know, get stuck watching the PGM book. And it's a really difficult book to trade. And all I could tell you was that whenever I positioned myself to be going along what was going on in the precious metals markets, I always got my head kicked in. Like it never worked. It never worked in in platinum and palladium to try to be running these up a flag pole while gold was going up. And it never worked to try to be knocking them down into a hole when gold was getting sold off and silver was going down. And now we're talking about gold being $300 an ounce and silver being five bucks. Right? This is we're talking in the late 90s. This is not right now. So once I learn once I kind of figured out that dynamic, I was like, "Okay, these things are in a world of their own." Like I understand that they're metals by by the science of it, but they are not doing what these things are doing and they don't feel like they're in the same basket. So I have to stop associating them. So I've kind of done that. And while the whole world has, not the whole world, a lot of people have, especially on Twitter, have become PGM experts, you know, right, just with their rally and they bought it and it's going up. So, they become an expert. I'm okay being in the trade that I think is real. And I think that the only trade is really real that I have a lot of confidence in is gold. It would it wouldn't shock me if any of the other metals got hald tomorrow morning. It would blow my brain apart if that happened to gold. And I and you know it's just one of those things that that's the way my brain is trained and it may not apply to the whole entire world but that's where it comes from for me. >> That is that is super super interesting. Tony the the other one you've referenced a bit there is the bucket of uranium miners and they they play obviously heavily into that that energy theme that data center theme and all of that. So I'd love to get your take on on the sentiment you're seeing there right now. You know, it's they get they get uranium is a wild trade because it's not my trade. Even though I'm in it, I never consider it my trade because I had guys telling me about uranium five years ago. And I was looking at uranium and looking at the uranium miners and looking at the charts and they're all flat lines at like this zero bound. They look like a dead body, you know? And I would go to the guys that were putting these stories in front of me and I'm like, "Dude, I love you and thanks for thinking of me. I don't see anything happening in uranium." Like, I don't see anything happening. So, we went from that to I'm trying to think it's I don't have the history down very well, but once the bull market ignited and I'm sure it had to do something to do with the precious metals rally and then the AI power generation that really got uranium into this position. I'm a I I I'm good at riding trends and catching trends and identifying a trend and deciding, okay, this price is a price that I'll get into that trend and I'll wait all day, all week, all month without having a position until it gets to the level that I want to trade it. And then I sit up in my chair and I trade it like a wild man, like I think I know what's going on and manage the risk. So once those woke up and I was able to get into them that way, you know, once they started landing on my own technical screens like, "Oh, uranium is the leading sector this week. It's got to be on the radar screen. Finish the month, the leading sector of the month, got to be on the radar screen, right?" And that's when they make it to my pad and I start noticing and start noticing what's going on with Kamo and how that's the leader of the pack and how some of these other ones are also volatile stocks to trade but maybe not as important as Kamo. Tamo has a bigger waiting and so you kind of just learn the nuts and bolts and the timing of things and see how it you know as a macro trader you're always looking for correlations and while uranium is not well correlated to things it has been fairly well correlated to this new resource nationalism bull market in resources broadly speaking. So that was kind of wild story for me to watch this whole sector with guys putting it in front of me left and right and me going, "I hear you, but it's flat on the year. I hear you, but it's still flat on the year. Like I don't even know what to do. What do I do? Buy and hold this thing and pray that it goes up? That's not what I do for a living. So I'm not in this trade until it gets going." So from there you get all the way to a, you know, to to I guess a level where it got overbought with alongside the need for AI data center power generation. And now we've just got a good oldfashioned bull and bare market case in uranium. And broadly speaking, there's a supply deficit and an increased usage story that I can get behind and want to manage the risk from alongside it. Right? We're going to have a bigger deficit by 2030. There's going to be more implementation. Trump is definitely well behind nuclear usage. And I think Chris Wright, the energy secretary, is has got unbelievable history in uranium. So, all roads lead to that becoming a more popular source of power generation for me. And if that happens, the price of uranium goes up and all of the miners wind up making more money. Tony, it's been incredibly entertaining speaking with you and um an absolute delight to get get your way of thinking on our on our podcast. You think differently to us, but it's it's certainly value additive. >> Thank you so much. I'm really honored that you guys thought of me and and um had me on and adjusted to the time zones from all the way around the world. I can't thank you guys enough for doing that. >> Thanks to Tony for jumping on and sharing his technical view of the world. And a massive thank you to our awesome partners, Sanvic Ground Support, Exceed Capital, Intral Links, Focus, the platform by Market Tech, and Metalsshub. >> Hudoo. >> Hudoo. >> Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD is an idiot. If you thought any of this was anything other than entertainment, you're an idiot and you need to read our disclaimer.
Forget Valuations. Hard Assets Go Higher (Tony Greer)
Summary
Transcript
Money miners, Jonas, you've lined up a very entertaining guest for us today. We've got the wonderful Tony Greer, founder of KG Macro, an old school trader, and uh he he just interprets markets very very different to us. He's very tuned into the flows. >> 100%. That's why we got him on. We uh like to challenge our thinking, like to expand our horizons a little bit. And Tony, like you said, thinks about the markets so so differently to us. A technical guy, a real traders trader. And with that different sort of framing in mind, he still comes to the same kind of outcomes, hard assets, debasement trade, these sorts of things. So we get into all of that uranium, rare earths and and these sorts of things. And I was just super curious to learn it how he'd come about that, how he got to that same end product that we had come to from a a much more valuationsoriented perspective. So I'm sure the money miners are going to love this conversation. >> Let's get into it. Travis Ricardo. We are blessed to be with Tony Greer today. Tony, thank you for joining us. >> So thrilled to be with you guys from all the way on the other side of the world. This is pretty awesome. >> I listened to a recent episode and you said I think you said after college you spent a bit of time traveling Australia four or five months. Is that right? >> Yeah. I went there in the summer of 1990 and went to the west coast to Perth where the World Games of Lacrosse were being played. Ah, no way. >> Yeah. And I had probably three of my really good friends, three of my college teammates were on the USA team, which is why we went all the way over there. And we spent the first two weeks of the trip once we got all the way to the west coast of Australia in Perth at the World Games. Um, I'm trying to remember the name of the stadium they played it at, but it was at a big like rugby stadium, I suppose. And we went to the Aberdeene every single night. >> That's that's amazing. >> They had a total blast. >> Oh, that is that is fantastic. 1991. I can't even imagine what Perth because because Perth is such a mining town which we maybe get into one way or another in the chat >> and that China boom just transformed Perth but but Trev and I were both young kind of living through that. So I can't imagine what Perth would have been like in the >> I can't imagine Perth is ever being a a lacrosse capital of anything. >> Yeah, it was amazing. I mean there was a pretty big crowd for some of the games. Um, but the US is pretty dominant in that and it was a far, you know, it's a long way for a lot of countries to go travel to see lacrosse. So, >> I can I can imagine >> that's remarkable. >> That's very cool. That's very cool. Yeah. Many many of the people we speak with have have barely ever heard of Perth. So, >> yeah, I know. I know. I'm really blessed to have a little bit of Australia history. Tony, I've been listening to some of your stuff lately, and you come at the market from a very different lens to the the kind of more fundamental approach that we tend to, you know, value investing oriented approach. We tend to look at the market. But you're coming to the same kind of conclusions on on a lot of kind of things. And you've been all over this this hard asset trade, this this Halo kind of trade, all over the natural resources trade for for quite some time now. So I'd love to hear just to start the conversation how you came about this the the debasement trade plays into that as well. What is the attraction to you for all those things and we can kind of kick off from there. Yeah, sure. Jonas, if I were to group all of that into how it feeds into the trade, I would say, you know, somewhere, I guess that was October of last year when the analyst at JP Morgan um called it um the debasement trade, right? And at that time, you know, last year, the three winning the the three top performing sectors on the year for most of the year were gold miners, industrial miners, and uranium miners. And I'm really just I'm really dialed into the year-to-ate performance race as part of my analysis in the markets. I kind of put it on myself to have my clients in the sectors that are winning at the end of the year, you know? So we try to navigate into the sectors that are winning and figure out the right technical points to get into them. And we got a couple of opportunities to get into gold miners and industrial miners while that whole industrial while that whole debasement trade story was playing out if that's fair. And so last year we saw stocks made their highs. This year we saw a pullback in gold as it's become a risk asset during the Iran war. the the US Iran conflict and I think now we're going to see the resumption of those bull markets because all that's happened with the Iran war is that oil started performing alongside metals and mining and there's short covering going on right now in technology but not much has really changed I don't think in terms of that underlying current of debasement trade the underlying current of a bull market in gold and silver and then the underlying current of Trump's very abrupt resource nationalism that he has changed the whole supply chain game with if if I may and I'm not an expert on all of that but it's very clear that resource nationalism is the way we're going forward in the Trump administration where we're going to use the military to secure all of the necessary supply chains that we need to secure The government has obviously partnered up with a number of rare earth companies and a number of mining companies and been a direct um a direct force in guiding them toward what they want produced and a lot of it is directed toward our military and supplies for the military. So this seems like a trade where you know natural resources have come to the foreground. securing your supply chain has never been more important. And so I'm still staying with these sectors that, you know, may not be at the top of the performance board right now, but continue to remain in a bull market and be very tradable that way. and tradeable by tradable. I mean, you know, when I get into the sectors that prove that they're bull markets, part of our jiu-jitsu is to sort of upsize on dips and then let that upsize out into rallies. And so, we try to capitalize on, you know, both the percentage and directional move by being a little opportunistic and taking chances to upsize along the way. And so sometimes that's really successful, sometimes it's not as successful, but that's what's kind of behind the money-making process here at TG Macro, if that's fair. >> That that uh resource nationalism component is really interesting. And sometimes I feel like we're we're in a bit of an echo chamber here here in little old Perth, Western Australia, because the the mining sector is so so relevant to everything that goes on in in the city and and in this country. So I'm I'm curious from from your seat, how how widespread and how pervasive is that view that we're coming into an era where resources are going to be one of the dominant if not the the the biggest growing sector of the S&P 500 or whichever index you're kind of following. >> Yeah. You know, I think it's it's it's gaining popularity. I think, you know, I think it was a big deal when Morgan Stanley last year said that your portfolio's got to be 60 2020 now. And it's no longer 60% stocks and 40% bonds, but it makes more sense to be 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% gold. So, that was a major vote for the resources sector. I think that that helped contribute to the bull market that was going on at the time when they made that comment. And then it's still going on. I think the bull market and gold is very much intact, but it doesn't feel quite honestly like plain vanilla mutual funds have made a big portfolio shift yet. And I think that that's coming because it feels like there's more quite honestly retail and sort of I'd call it commodity commodity space or commodity ranger popularity with this trade. It doesn't seem like when I talk to stock guys that they're that focused on we've got to be in the mining stocks and we've got to own rare earth stocks and we've got to be in ENTP and so you know I think the stock guys are still a little bit mesmerized by the mag seven performance that we've seen over the year the last 20 years and think that that is going to continue. So to answer the question, I don't think, you know, I really don't think that it's the most popular trade on the board. Certainly, you know, the AI trade is certainly sucking up a lot of capital right now and definitely in some form of a bubble. And I'm not saying that it's about to pop. The bubble can get bigger and it can continue, but they certainly have to find a way to make that whole entire ecosystem profitable for everybody that's so heavily invested. And it seems like that's going to be a challenge. But I still think that that we're going to be in a year where, you know, once we do Well, I there was I read it really interesting. I'm I'm friends with Lewis Gav and the last one of the last notes that he wrote was about how um you know, Trump has destroyed a lot of basic assumptions out there. And this is Lewis's work, not mine. Okay? I don't I'm not claiming this at all. You know, but in Lewis's work, he's saying that you now need an energy portion of the portfolio. So, you know, the way he's saying is now you need 60% stocks, 20% gold, and 20% energy because you have to have some kind of energy hedge because of the way Trump has changed the trade tables around. So, no longer are treasuries immediately translatable into oil, right? It depends on where you're sitting to be able to capitalize on that trade. No longer does the US command and keep safe the all of the shipping lanes. We can see that with the problems the strait is having right now. And I guess the third component that Lewis wrote about was that the US is no longer this beneficial hegeimon very gently walking around the world. that we are now in the interest of resource nationalism more likely to you know go and militarily secure whatever part of the supply chain that we want to secure for ourselves. So I think that that that I feel like that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of people gaining awareness on uh okay like you know the the international trade tables have changed. My my cheap gas supply is now probably going to be threatened for the foreseeable future. And that could change but for the foreseeable future it looks like we're going to have some elevated energy prices. is the straight looks like it's been closed for several weeks. Really difficult to tell what the truth is. Um, but it's also not something that anybody has to panic about because there has been no kink in the supply chain and in the US gas has gone from three and a half bucks to four bucks and I haven't even heard anybody say a word about it and so I feel like that's going to be something that's going to be a little bit part of our future for longer. So, I did I guess to get back to the question, it doesn't seem like we've seen a full-on mutual fund rush to get into that commodity space. And I'm talking about where maybe they change their allocation from gold miners to 50 basis points of a natural resources portfolio to 5%. You know, or even if they go from 50 basis points to 2%, that's a lot of buying of gold miners and the prices will go a lot higher. because there's just not enough stock to go around. So, I still think it's in the early innings of this. And if I had to make a bet, I would say that we are in the first of a first year of a potential 10-year cycle in commodities. And that's not to say that commodities are just going to go up and to the right for 10 years. It is to say though that it should be a pretty tradable bull market in the mining stocks which will continue to benefit from high commodity prices that we're seeing. So, it's a really it's a tricky uh it's a tricky game right now and it's hard to have a ton of confidence in anything that you're doing because the markets are so volatile and a lot of it is based on posts coming out of the White House. You know, whether we like it or not, that's what's moving the markets and you know, the markets are starting to believe whatever comes out of those ship posts. So, you know, it's amazing. I'm I was just trying to say I'm trying to like you know get to the reality point where we only have $90 crude oil right now but the straight has been closed for almost two months. You know it seems like the price of oil would be higher. It seems like there might have already been this supply chain issue and we haven't seen any of it. So until we get to that point there's no real insane urgency um to do anything other than prep your basement. you know, the stock the stock market is really kind of readressing the risk. You know, we we we had another, you know, we had another shakeup with the Iran war and the market comes flying back to new highs and like I said, all that's really changed is that energy has joined the natural resources rally and software is short covering like crazy, right? because everybody was short software for the SAS apocalypse and we got to a level where retail was inhaling it down 25% from the highs in IGV and that stopped the slide in software and then when you have a de-risking hedge funds are short software long resources so what you see is the resources stocks go down and short covering in cloud storage um internet stocks and software and social media so that's really the only dam dynamic that's changed this year with the Iran war. And so I kind of feel like a resolution of that is going to lead us towards a return to performance in the metals and mining sector. >> Jada, you know, one asset class that is unaffected by the ship posting out of the White House. In fact, unaffected whether the straight is closed or open or closed or open or closed. >> Enlightenment, what are you thinking about? >> Commercial property, mate. I'm thinking of commercial property in particular. I'm thinking of Exceed Capitals, the collective. This is the flagship fund from Exceed Capital, the property investment group based out of here in Australia where they target cash distributions of 7 8% peranom. They sure do. >> On top of that, there's a capital uplift on on on the fund as well. >> Yep. You're talking about the collective, their flagship trust. This is a diversified portfolio of commercial property. And the best thing that we love that we've touched upon in the past, it is led by an aligned team. They only get paid if the fund works out. They are rowing in the same direction as you and the founders are all invested in the trust alongside you. >> It sounds brilliant, mate. Uh money, check out Exceed Capital, the collective. It link is in the show notes. Back to Tony. >> Go Exceed. >> I find it so interesting how the um the stock market is the barometer of of risk. And you're a brave person to to say that you've got any more information than the the collective brains of the the you know, the stock market. But I can't help but constantly think about that meme that's that's been so pervasive the last week and it's the meteor coming to earth and uh you know it's very close and and uh someone's just looking to the other person being like don't worry it's priced in already. >> Yeah. >> The risk can be right in front of you but it's priced in. Don't worry. >> Exactly. That's what I said. I said that on our macro dirt podcast Jared Dillan Dillian the other day. I said, "Until an analyst at JP Morgan can't get toilet paper or fill up his Beamer, there is no supply chain problem, and it's not something the market is going to react to. Until the guy at JP Morgan can't fill up his car, and that's the only time that there will be a market reaction to that type of scarcity. until it happens, we are going to be, you know, I guess floating around blindly wondering what's going to happen next and what headline is going to happen next and what drone is going to blow up what tanker. And it just seems to me like as much as the president wants to say that straight is open and he's negotiating that I just I I can't in my heart of hearts believe that we're going to go back to business as usual tomorrow. >> It's very very hard to believe. The the point on fuel is really interesting because as as Trump has been at patents to to point out, America doesn't get most of its fuel from from the Middle East these days, but there's plenty other places in the world, namely Australia, where where you're starting to feel the pinch. And fuel hasn't increased by sort of 50 cents. It's it's doubled over the past kind of couple months. So, yeah, where I mean the the pinch is being felt quite quite a bit down under. But that that doesn't seem to to change the perspective, does it? Because it's a it's a very America first kind of approach. >> Yeah. You know, I think that that if if he's done anything that you can try to make sense of, and I'm talking about President Trump with his military action of, you know, snagging Maduro out of Caracus and making the Venezuelan oil available and then going and attacking Iranian infrastructure and cutting off the strait and cutting China's supply off their their immediate, you know, China and India's immediate supply is cut off. And then there's all of the rest of Asia which you know and and you in Australia which is the sort of knock-on effect of you know you guys are getting some of your supply from directly from there. And if a fifth of the global supply comes out of there that's that's the squeeze that you guys are feeling now. And I can't decide whether or not Trump is doing something smart where we're just going to drill baby drill here in the US and really ramp up production and become the global source and then gas prices are going to go down or if he's eventually just going to open up the straight and everything is going to flow in every direction and prices are going to eventually come back down. So, I don't know the angle that he's trying to get there. And I I do I feel for, you know, all of you that are seeing, you know, more severe price spikes than we are here because I don't know what the resolution of this conflict is. And it seems to get murkier every day. And that I I literally have been watching the Iranian memes to get the most clarity on what's going on in the world. And I can't even believe that that's the truth, but it is. I I I if I like if I try and think of the this is an incredibly complex system and there's so many different things going on but like in in very simple simple person language I like simple things oil prices are going up globally albeit less in the US and when when you do have oil prices going up well you do get inflation and when you do get inflation you do get interest rates going up and when interest rates do go up equities come down so like what's wrong with my simple person synthesis of the future. >> You're not accounting for the facts that while you have all that information and it has it creates a congruous logic path in your brain, the markets don't give a >> Tell me more. >> Because when the market opens up every day, the money goes to where the money's treated best. And if that's still the stock market and if that's still US stocks and if that's still the there is no alternative trade. You remember the TINA trade that we were in for the longest time because you couldn't buy bonds because they yielded zero, right? And there was no alternative but to get pushed out the risk curve into the stock market. You know, you wake up every day and the money just goes and seeks where it gets treated best. And if you look at, you know, the commodity markets, they're insanely volatile right now. And the only thing that doesn't care it seems is gold. So that that's probably for me that that's tells me that's a good place to be socking away money during this because gold seems to be holding up no matter what. And then it looks around and says there's no trade in bonds because rates aren't going in any all the only thing going on in bonds in the US is the the more rates mean revert the faster and harder they mean revert. Like this is a point that I've been making for years where there is literally no trend in interest rates here in the US, right? We get a little bit of weakness in whatever employment or manufacturing and rates fall to the bottom of the range and then we get a little bit of a inflation scare because we now have $90 oil. So that's going to feed into the data somehow. We get a little bit of an inflation beat and they float to the top of the range. And the reality is the bond market's been sideways for four years and that is bullish stocks because the stock market loves stability in the rates markets. And you know, you're going to have those interest rate sensitive sectors like banks and builders have their own reactions to rates within that range. But broadly speaking, it lets all the other bull markets run. So there's no bond trade. And now you're looking for still every day at 9:30 the bell rings and where's the money going to go to where it's treated best and you're right back in the US stock market chasing the AI trade and the rare earth trade and the metals and mining trade. And that's where the money wants to be and that's the best explanation I have whether it's right or wrong. >> You you mentioned gold is is holding up. Gold has performed kind of funnily like in in the broader scheme of things. It's holding up at a fantastic price level. I mean four 4,800ish bucks is nothing to to complain about. But what have you made about that behavior? And one step further, what have you made of the the relationship between gold miners and the underlying So, it's clear that gold became a front page trade when it got a name called the debasement trade, right? That's what that's where everybody that's reading the Wall Street Journal said, "Okay, I need to have some protection of this fiat currency that I'm trafficking in. I need to buy gold." Right? So, there's you get a little bit of exposure. People, you know, the word gets out. People say, "Oh, yeah, you know, I have to own some gold." Hedge funds are like, "Oh, we got to be in the gold trade because it's a bull market." And what happens is it turns into a risk asset. People wake up in the morning and they're like, "Gold's going up. Let's put money in the gold market." It's now money we can make on a daily and weekly basis and not just sit there with a pile of it and make 10% a year, you know? So now this thing is in motion and people go into the gold market. And I think the Iran war proved during that de-risking that gold is the tip of the risk spear. Right. And you know, all of a sudden, we're attacking another country and gold is going down. That was a first for me in my career. And I've been staring at the screens for 35 years. So, it's not the first war that I've traded through. And it's not the first conflict. It's the first one that I've traded through that gold and silver have gone down upon bombs dropping on another country. And I got a feeling that that's just a testament to how long the market got ahead of that and ahead of the debasement trade. And so the beauty of it is that gold put in a good bottom. It put in what looks like a bull market bottom down at 4150 at the end of March. And it looks like dips to 43 and 4,400 a holding. And conversely, if we try to get make our way back up above the 50-day moving average, the bull market in gold could be back off and running again. And the exact same thing goes for gold miners. And because now their stocks, they already got back above all three major moving averages and they are back in bull market mode or they're trying to. Same thing with industrial miners. Rare earth miners are often running. Uranium miners are at the top of the leaderboard. So whether it's gold specifically or not, the resource nationalism trade is on. We are currently long gold miners, industrial miners, uranium miners, and gold. And those are the four positions that we've navigated into on this dip since the de-risking. I've had gold on the pad forever. But the other three all dipped into prices that I want to buy them. So, I added them to the risk pad and now we're going to manage the risk, but now they're all doing well. So that's how I kind of look at that trade if as it all comes together here is you know getting the Iran US Iran war behind us will be key for the gold mark gold bull market to resume because then we're going to go back to focusing on everything monetary and fiscal that was making gold go up in the first place. You know every time we hit a new trill dog in our deficit you look over and gold goes up another $300, right? gold is responding to the, you know, maniacal spending and currency debasement that's going on. So when those headlines come around and there aren't other stimulus affecting the markets, that's what was sending gold into a bull market. So I think that that is going to be back and the whole resource nationalism thing is going to keep base metals properly bid alongside gold and silver um and platinum and palladium. And so those trades are very much alive and well and they're just facing this little bit of a torpedo from the Iran war if I may where that shook everything up in the risk um you know in the risk basket. And so we'll see how we come out the other side. But my sense is before this year is over, we're going to go back to buying metals and mining stocks and rare earths and uranium miners. And we're going to go back to selling technology because those stocks are not going to have the same 20-year run that they had in the last 20 years with everybody clawing for a seat at the natural resources trade table. >> What's the most crowded trade right now, Tony, that you don't want to be in? I still think it's AI. You know, I think there's a lot of private capital in addition to the stocks that are, you know, semiconductors are soaring along at all-time highs. Everybody and my sister is long Nvidia, you know. I mean, that it's a is just a popular thing. It's working. Um, it hasn't tested you at all on the downside. Like Nvidia, no matter what, tech can get hammered. Nvidia and semiconductors hang in there, right? It's the it's the AI. It's there's still money coming in. what what does uh a stronger US dollar as we've seen in the past kind of couple months do to to the whole resources trade and and what do you make of the future on that front? You know, the beauty is that gold has proven over the years, now I'm talking over the last 10 years, that it can rally while the dollar goes up, right? Clearly, gold has been in in a very crisp rally mode and clear in the last 10 years. And clearly, there have been periods of dollar strength in those 10 years. So, I don't get discouraged by a strong dollar because it's really just winning the dump truck race. right? It's a strong dollar versus the other currencies that are, you know, either in a weaker position geopolitically or a weaker position fiscally or have, you know, terrible balance sheets. And so I think that that's why the dollar is, you know, rallying versus the euro, for example, and the yen obviously. So with that in the background, I can know that at least it doesn't derail my metals trade and I think that I can prove that over time. So while there may be intraday episodes that, oh man, this morning there's a really large magnitude move higher in the dollar, you're going to look over at the metals board and on that day they're going to sell metals without a doubt. But what you wind up learning is that within the trend, the bullish metal trend doesn't give up just because the dollar is going up. So I I I I keep an eye on it and use it as a speedometer and tell me how much gold I can be long on any given day, but I don't sweat that it's going to take that trade away from me. >> Yeah. You had a fantastic line in in a recent pot. I think you said something about that that portion of gold, physical gold in your portfolio is just a tenant of being a westerner. I think it made me really laugh because it's the situation we see across the western world be it the the Aussie dollar the the US dollar and just having that allocation is is kind of sound thinking but when I think about the the narrative and the time frame of of that debasement trade in my mind that's been around a bit longer than the rest of the the natural resources trade the need the idea that you need rare earths copper all these sorts of things stockpiles that feels much more recent than the the gold trade. Gold is gold is up whatever it is up 10 or 20 times over the past 10 plus years, whereas I feel like the last few years is is where we've really started to see the uh the rest of the metals kind of move. Is that is that like a broader sentiment that you kind of agree with? >> Yeah, totally. I think you know I mean you know a lot of this is a function of you know believe it or not I think a lot of it is a function of AI the need for AI data center power generation actually affecting the metals market. I think that that's a big part of the metals bull market behind the debasement trade and behind or alongside the resource nationalism trade. Right. So, it's definitely observable that when Trump was elected that he set off about 11 different bull markets, right? There was the bull market and AI. He's got an AISAR. Now, the US is fully behind this, supporting it and supporting cryptocurrency. >> I think he's left now, >> has he? >> Yeah. Did David Sax David Saxs I think actually did finish his term, but what but what I think that he did was uh I I think that he kind of kept the government's pause off a lot of the AI uh you know I don't know the business deals and the and the rule making so that they could kind of let them function. So I I I'm a big fan of his. I love the all-in podcast. >> Um and I guess what what was my other point? So I think that this is that that's part of what plays into the metals trade and you know with Trump you know the US the White House partners with six rare earth companies right so everybody is scrambling and saying oh we got to invest in these now the government is going to back these you know and as long as it doesn't turn into the department of motor vehicles these companies are going to get a lot of attention and be called on to pull a lot of minerals out of the ground so those are all definitely new and that's why I believe that this has been Even though the markets smooth it out, I feel like it's been an abrupt change for the world to, you know, to kind of see what this shakeout, this post liberation day shakeout is going to be about. Because if you remember, that's where, you know, that was in April of last year was Trump's first year in office. And that's where he literally just pulled the tablecloth out from under the dinner table and, you know, let every all the glasses and the plates go flying and it scrambled the S&P. And if you remember what came out of that on top, gold miners, industrial miners, uranium miners, solar stocks, right? Everything natural resources and involved with creating power. So, that I think is a trade that ties into it. And they are definitely new trades, which is why, you know, I've got I've got a lot of chips stacked in that direction because I think that we're just getting started with that. And then the charts kind of say that as well. You know, we're we're in rally mode. We're well off the lows. The market holds consolidation on pullbacks. And I'm talking about rare earths, uranium miners, industrial miners, etc. Right down the list. So, I don't want to go on too long without listening. You ask another question. I feel like I'm flapping my gums. I um I I I want to like I want to tease out you know how you you view markets differently to well to to us and um and and these are like these are themes which have trend they've got momentum behind them they've got like you know clearly a lot of of government support however I think of uranium miners I think of rare earth and I think like what like I can't help but think of the the the way I was taught to value these companies which is on some sort of price to nav basis and um you back it out and you're like oh My goodness, what are these things trading on? So, like your your your disconnect from valuation versus just trend, like how do you how do you actually come up with a a positive view on on a on a sector irrelevant of the the implied valuations? >> Yeah. So, I've never been a valuation guy. I worked at a couple of equity shops along my career after trading commodities at Goldman Sachs. I I that's when I got into the equity world. I left Goldman Sachs after they went public and had a safety net to go out and trade on my own and I wound up doing a couple of different things, right? So, I wound up being an equity sales trader and dealing with a lot of equity analysts selling research to hedge funds and mutual funds who were my clients. And it never made any sense to me watching and and and back when I started valuations were way more important even than they are now. Like if you didn't know what PE is sector traded at, like you couldn't dare dip your toe in it, right? You have to know where everything is on the matrix and this and that. And then like the dot bubble came around and just leveled all of the ideas of traditional valuations and and it was like, okay, you can sit here and be picky about valuation or you can make money. Which do you want to do? Because you can't do both, right? And you watch guys, you literally I watched guys sit there and bang the table that stocks should not be this high because the valuations were getting outrageous. And I'm looking at them going, are you watching? What the is going on out there? They're buying them hand over fist at this level. They don't care about you telling them that the valuations are so high. So that's where I completely abandoned as a trader. I was able to do that. You know, I had a whole trading background behind me. Now I'm combo of the salesman and the trader because I'm executing. But I fully understood the fact that while these guys were saying Delta shouldn't be more than a 15 or 20 times earnings and I'm getting 17 million shares of Delta to buy from a plain vanilla mutual fund over the course of the months and they're not particularly price sensitive. It's like I don't know what you guys what game you guys are playing, but it has nothing to do with the way I make money. And so I completely abandon all I just don't even look at it. I don't even I don't want to know how many times earnings a company is trading because it just limits my thinking. I'm a technical guy. I'm a price action guy. I read sentiment very well. I know things were when things are frothy and I know things when things are left for dead. and valuation just doesn't have any kind of place in that game. >> And if I if I just tie it in with um portfolio construction again, tell me about PGMs, like you mentioned platinum, you mentioned you mentioned palladium and um and the other precious silver. Is that all just like part of the same trade as as gold to you? Just derivatives? >> I think that they're along for the ride. I think that there are, you know, some probably some, you know, future supply deficit stories that help them go along for the ride. And I think, you know, having been, here's the dynamic. This is maybe very personal and may not apply to the world, but when I worked at Goldman Sachs, I I traded the gold book and the silver book and on occasion would have to, you know, get stuck watching the PGM book. And it's a really difficult book to trade. And all I could tell you was that whenever I positioned myself to be going along what was going on in the precious metals markets, I always got my head kicked in. Like it never worked. It never worked in in platinum and palladium to try to be running these up a flag pole while gold was going up. And it never worked to try to be knocking them down into a hole when gold was getting sold off and silver was going down. And now we're talking about gold being $300 an ounce and silver being five bucks. Right? This is we're talking in the late 90s. This is not right now. So once I learn once I kind of figured out that dynamic, I was like, "Okay, these things are in a world of their own." Like I understand that they're metals by by the science of it, but they are not doing what these things are doing and they don't feel like they're in the same basket. So I have to stop associating them. So I've kind of done that. And while the whole world has, not the whole world, a lot of people have, especially on Twitter, have become PGM experts, you know, right, just with their rally and they bought it and it's going up. So, they become an expert. I'm okay being in the trade that I think is real. And I think that the only trade is really real that I have a lot of confidence in is gold. It would it wouldn't shock me if any of the other metals got hald tomorrow morning. It would blow my brain apart if that happened to gold. And I and you know it's just one of those things that that's the way my brain is trained and it may not apply to the whole entire world but that's where it comes from for me. >> That is that is super super interesting. Tony the the other one you've referenced a bit there is the bucket of uranium miners and they they play obviously heavily into that that energy theme that data center theme and all of that. So I'd love to get your take on on the sentiment you're seeing there right now. You know, it's they get they get uranium is a wild trade because it's not my trade. Even though I'm in it, I never consider it my trade because I had guys telling me about uranium five years ago. And I was looking at uranium and looking at the uranium miners and looking at the charts and they're all flat lines at like this zero bound. They look like a dead body, you know? And I would go to the guys that were putting these stories in front of me and I'm like, "Dude, I love you and thanks for thinking of me. I don't see anything happening in uranium." Like, I don't see anything happening. So, we went from that to I'm trying to think it's I don't have the history down very well, but once the bull market ignited and I'm sure it had to do something to do with the precious metals rally and then the AI power generation that really got uranium into this position. I'm a I I I'm good at riding trends and catching trends and identifying a trend and deciding, okay, this price is a price that I'll get into that trend and I'll wait all day, all week, all month without having a position until it gets to the level that I want to trade it. And then I sit up in my chair and I trade it like a wild man, like I think I know what's going on and manage the risk. So once those woke up and I was able to get into them that way, you know, once they started landing on my own technical screens like, "Oh, uranium is the leading sector this week. It's got to be on the radar screen. Finish the month, the leading sector of the month, got to be on the radar screen, right?" And that's when they make it to my pad and I start noticing and start noticing what's going on with Kamo and how that's the leader of the pack and how some of these other ones are also volatile stocks to trade but maybe not as important as Kamo. Tamo has a bigger waiting and so you kind of just learn the nuts and bolts and the timing of things and see how it you know as a macro trader you're always looking for correlations and while uranium is not well correlated to things it has been fairly well correlated to this new resource nationalism bull market in resources broadly speaking. So that was kind of wild story for me to watch this whole sector with guys putting it in front of me left and right and me going, "I hear you, but it's flat on the year. I hear you, but it's still flat on the year. Like I don't even know what to do. What do I do? Buy and hold this thing and pray that it goes up? That's not what I do for a living. So I'm not in this trade until it gets going." So from there you get all the way to a, you know, to to I guess a level where it got overbought with alongside the need for AI data center power generation. And now we've just got a good oldfashioned bull and bare market case in uranium. And broadly speaking, there's a supply deficit and an increased usage story that I can get behind and want to manage the risk from alongside it. Right? We're going to have a bigger deficit by 2030. There's going to be more implementation. Trump is definitely well behind nuclear usage. And I think Chris Wright, the energy secretary, is has got unbelievable history in uranium. So, all roads lead to that becoming a more popular source of power generation for me. And if that happens, the price of uranium goes up and all of the miners wind up making more money. Tony, it's been incredibly entertaining speaking with you and um an absolute delight to get get your way of thinking on our on our podcast. You think differently to us, but it's it's certainly value additive. >> Thank you so much. I'm really honored that you guys thought of me and and um had me on and adjusted to the time zones from all the way around the world. I can't thank you guys enough for doing that. >> Thanks to Tony for jumping on and sharing his technical view of the world. And a massive thank you to our awesome partners, Sanvic Ground Support, Exceed Capital, Intral Links, Focus, the platform by Market Tech, and Metalsshub. >> Hudoo. >> Hudoo. >> Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD is an idiot. If you thought any of this was anything other than entertainment, you're an idiot and you need to read our disclaimer.