Markets Right Now: Tony Greer on Stocks, Commodities & More
Summary
This week, Patrick welcomes back to the show, Tony Greer. They discuss the market conditions today and get Tony’s big picture …
Transcript
It's Friday, May 23rd, 2025, episode 265. I'm Patrick Szna. Now, believe it or not, Kevin's still stuck in jury duty. Now, at this rate, I'm convinced he's either solving Canada's crime backlog single-handedly or secretly running his own Netflix courtroom series. But, uh, fear not. I've called Tony Greer to help me co-host and, uh, dive into some charts. So, Ton Tony has promised to uh bring uh the sharp analysis and I promised uh to take all the questionable takes and all the bad jokes only I find funny. So, let's uh get to it here, buddy. Tony, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me, Patrick. How have you been, man? H I uh I'm down here in uh Orlando. Uh I'm uh down south here and uh enjoying like 31 degrees temperature. I you guys I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit for you guys, but it's hot. Yeah, it's uh but uh but it's all good. Uh how how are you? Where are you where you at now? Good. Up in Atlantic Beach, Long Island. It's a freezing cold spring day here, but the markets are awesome. So, we got something to talk about. All right. Well, let's uh let's jump right into it, buddy. So, listen. I'm going to I'm going to get us going by just doing uh the typical macro rundown of all the different charts. So, uh, here, uh, let's start off with the, uh, chart of the S&P 500. Um, I'm going to just keep a 50-day moving average on here. If you want me to throw a couple of other moving averages on here, you let me know, uh, if you're trying to make a point in there, put the 100 day up today. All right. Sure. You want me just the 100 day or you want to leave 50 and 100 is good for All right. So, uh, we have the S&P 500 having more or less, um, more or less we've seen, uh, the markets here go through a correction over the last couple days and, uh, and so what's your take here? Like, uh, are is is this market correction uh, still a bull advance, ready to go a little bit higher? How do you size this up? Yeah, Patrick, I think it it still looks okay. You know, I'm operating off of the trading assumption that we have seen the low down at 4,800. Um, I get a little bit of confidence in that looking at the monthly April S&P candle that went down a thousand handles and back up a thousand handles essentially. So, that gives me a little bit of confidence that maybe that's a good low. When I see where we are now, we are kind of in the retest zone for a potential blue sky breakout. And I could call it Blue sky breakout. What the hell is a blue sky breakout? I've got That's not in my wheelhouse. What is this? No, that's okay. That's my own No, that's my lingo for when a security in a bull market resumes the moving averages and can therefore trend back towards the highs is a blue sky breakout and the S&P after coming back a thousand points before coming after coming back a thousand points. Um the S&P got above all of its moving averages, traded up to 6K, and now we're kind of back and filling and we just retested the 100 day, right? We dipped below it this morning, got back below it this afternoon. So those things, you know, that recovery this morning on another incremental Trump headline was really important to me. So this afternoon's comeback, I should call it, is really important to me. With the S&P settling now back up above 5,800, I can say that this is just a back and fill retest of the 100 day support level and that maybe we can keep going from here. If not, we've got support below at the 50-day around 5620. And you know, I'm still looking for the S&P to make a higher high, Patrick, without stealing the microphone for the whole afternoon. No worries. Well, listen. Okay. Now, the previous bull market was very much led by uh the Mag7s that you had the um the leadership come in there. They were also uh during this decline uh some of the most uh savagely beat up securities as we saw the MAG index, MAG7 index down like 30 some odd percent in that period. in your mind if this S&P 500's going to go in this blue sky kind of uh breakout uh what's the leadership is does the MAG7 reume leadership in this scenario or is this going to be a broader rally like do you have a thesis on this yeah I don't really think you know the leadership doesn't have to change all that much you know what's pretty wild is that you know gold miners are in the lead we're seeing uranium stocks just have a big um a big comeback rally um aerospace and defense are on top you know momentum stocks and then you get to the technology stuff which is up you know maybe 8 to 10%. Some of the sectors that I mentioned you know gold miners are up 50% on the year uh you know uranium miners now up 20% aerospace and defense up 20%. So the leadership can stay as is. Patrick, I would imagine that we'll see a little bit more catchup on the technology side if we get better economic data at some point. Um, you know, I would expect semis to come alive and things like that. But I feel like, you know, we're going to have, you know, healthy bull market to me is a rotating baton handoff of leadership. So sometimes it'll be tech, sometimes it'll be cyclical, sometimes it'll be material, sometimes it'll be energy. And I feel like the market can be set up for that type of leadership again which is kind of a continuing changing hands. So uh what um what's your take on uh the small caps on a relative basis because they've obviously been materially underperforming? Do you think that they continue to dog it on a relative basis or is this a comeback trade? You know, I I could be wrong about this, Patrick, but I'm kind of, you know, blaming a lot of their stress on the stress in the bond market. You know, we we've just had a a big race up in yields, broadly speaking, before pulling back from the highs in yields today. So, I got a feeling that that that move higher in yields is what's putting all the pressure in small caps. Obviously, they haven't been able to rebound as well as NASDAQ or as well as the S&P. And so I'm gonna say that it's going to take maybe until we get yields turned back lower a little bit before they can catch up at all. And that that's my best guess. I may not be the best trader in the world at trading indexes versus the other. So all right now like uh now to me one of the things that makes me a little more um bearish than you in a sense of uh more concerned let's call it uh about the markets is the uh the fact that we remain uh at uh more elevated levels of implied volatilities. And we did get down to like 1617 on the downside. But generally uh when a bull market resumes you have uh that that kind of mid to low teens uh all structure and usually in past bare markets when there there was bare market rallies volatility stayed a little bit higher as they wouldn't allow you know the cheap insurance to be bought on the markets during those kind of periods. like how how do you size up the current uh places we're at with volatility? Is this a concern for you at all? It is a bit of a concern for sure. Right. And and I do see the point that you're making. You know, when I look at the VIX, what's clear to me is that it is in a very subtle uptrend if that's fair to say. Like we made a low around, you know, 1415 in December. Then in February, we made a low around, you know, 1617. Then in April, May, this last time down at the end of the um you know mixed uh VIX melt on this side of the liberation Thursday selloff, we got to a low of 18 only, right? Or 17 something and now we're back up, you know, we trade back up to 25 and now we're trading I guess uh around the low 20s again. But yeah, there is a clearly clearly a set of higher lows being made in the VIX. And I think that there's two things in play. Sort of one, the VIX is making higher lows because it realizes that Donald Trump is going to continue to make statements that move the S&P intraday, intra week, intra morning, you know, god knows when. So I think that that's fair that the S&P commands a slightly higher level of volatility, right? And then at the same time, you know, I think that the kind of VIX is melting down and it's going to start making lower highs as well because it the VIX is just getting incrementally less return out of Trump tariff headlines, right? You know, today was the 25% on Apple and 50% on the EU and we got to a high of 25 and then backed off. So, I just got a feeling that as time goes by, the more we get into the tariff discussion and have more of negotiating, I think that'll be good for the markets. And what's confusing to me, quite honestly, today, Patrick, about his back and forth with Apple is Apple already pledged a $500 billion investment in the US, you know, several months ago, and most of it was about bringing production back on shore. So, I'm not sure why, you know, that thing with Tim Cook this morning was so impactful. Um, I think probably did a little bit more damage than it should have. And that's why I think the S&P is coming back this afternoon. So, incrementally less bang for the buck on the tariff calls out of Trump, I think, is why the VIX is going to continue to calm down. Right. So, uh, the let's let's talk about Apple here for a moment since, uh, you brought it up here. And what we clearly have is a chart that's still below its moving averages, still making lower highs. Uh, what's your opposite of blue sky? It's uh, what? Yeah, you know, this is a bare market. Yeah, this is a bare market that's failing. You know, I I I don't disagree that Apple is in trouble, you know, and and you know why that doesn't shock me, Patrick, is that I'm approaching this year of a position that everything is regime change. Yeah. Right. Everything is regime change. And if Apple and Google and Mag 7 were the best performers during that whole 10, 12 year run at globalism that was all the rage, then those stocks are going to, you know, probably be lagards while we maneuver into something different. And I'm not exactly sure what to call it if it's America first or, you know, Trump's golden age agenda or what, but it sure is going to be totally different than what we've seen in the last decade. Yeah. Well, let's let's uh let's go to these individual stocks and stuff uh towards uh the end after we go through review. I want to go and briefly just touch on the currency markets because today on that news essentially the dollar almost down a full handle on the uh on the Dixie uh and a stone throw away from that April low very clear downtrend in the dollar. Now, uh my um speculation is is that I mean the dollar sold pretty much uh too far too quickly and I'm I I'm kind of fishing to see whether or not this is just like a retesting of the lows and and establishes a a trade range down here uh or whe or obviously it could just be a full-on next leg down in the dollar here. Which one is more your camp? like are you you think that this uh has another leg down or or that uh we're close to a low? Put it this way, Patrick. I kind of look at it the same way as you. I'm I'm very much on the fence now. I don't have any dollar positions. I have no positions in FX whatsoever. I use that the dollar as kind of a speedometer on my equity and commodity positions. So, it looks to me, you know, that this ferocious move down is real. We're still at the bottom of the range in the Dixie. We're still at the bottom of the range in dollar yen. So from somebody that's trading kind of looking at the currency market more from 30,000 ft up without an intraday tick position, I'm saying we're at the bottom of the range now and I don't need to panic. But I also have to assign a probability in the back of my mind that things may change because it looks like we might break the bottom of the range. Right? That's at least the way traffic is flowing. And I'm certainly not going to stand here and and try to catch a bottom in the dollar. That's not what I do at all. So, you know, if I get towards the area where I can feel the expectation that the dollar is going to have another leg down through this recent low, you know, where the dollar index where we actually get an extension away from this, you know, 100 high and we trade down to 95, then that'll probably empower me to be long a lot of commodity based stuff and probably long gold again, you know. So, that that's kind of how I'm going to look at that. I'm totally game for the dollar breaking down further. In fact, I'd love it because I do much better trading commodities from the bull side with a little bit of wind in my sales from the weaker dollar. So, that's that's a view that I'm wide open to. I I'll agree with this statement that like if the dollar continues to we then it really could spur a commodity bull market. Well, let's get to those commodity charts in a second, but I wanted to get your uh thoughts here on the asset that shall not be named, this Bitcoin. uh what um obviously broke to a fresh high uh and so clearly it's got bull trend. Uh are you uh what are your kind of targets on this? You you're bullish this where where you stand? Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up, Patrick, because this is a beautiful blue sky chart, right? Yeah. just saw that plunge down to 75K. And for me, I started looking at Bitcoin with an a raised eyebrow when it didn't thoroughly collapse in the liberation Thursday de-risking. You know, the stock market bangs all the way down to 4,800. I mean, I thought Bitcoin was going to 35K, right? You know, I really did. The way they were hitting Mag Seven, the way they were hitting the NASDAQ, and we were de-risking, like, I thought the thing was done, right? So since it came back biting, you know, without having any emotion in the trade at all, I bought Bitcoin again when it went blue sky down at 92K, right? Crystal clear through the 50-day, through the 200 day, and then through the 100 day, right at 91,000, right, back in April. And that's when we got in. And that's a good another good way to to kind of illustrate I'm using Bitcoin as a trading vehicle, right? Like I understand the beliefs in it. I understand what it's all about and why everybody wants to be long until a million, but I'm just using it to trade because it trades beautifully. Um, you know, now you've got the 50-day rising up through the 200 day moving average, which might provide even more tailwinds. Um, and I'm bullish as it trades through the high, right? That's the idea of trading a blue sky breakout is that the target is the old highs and then when you get there, if you go through it, you're going to have another leg up. And it sure looks to me that's what Bitcoin is signaling. And what's been amazing to me and the biggest tell that I saw in the March April washing machine turbulence of Bitcoin Yeah. was that whether Bitcoin was up a percent, down a percent, up 5%, down 5%, you know, was consistent, Patrick inflows to the ETFs. Really? Oh my lord. I didn't I didn't uh monitor that at all. Yeah, it was really interesting. Like on days when it went down, you would think that there would be huge outflows and instead of there being, you know, on days that it went up, you'd see $900 million like a billion dollars in inflows in one day. Wow. And on days that went down big, you'd see $180 million in inflows. And I'm saying, wait, what? There's not outflows on days that this thing is going down net. And the answer was no. Right? Every single day in that turbulence down between 70 and 85k or 75 and 85k inflows every day. So that's kind of how I deduced that there was a real institutional commitment to Bitcoin which there is. And that's why the buying flywheel kept going as we went into the Japan mini crisis. I'm calling it because it's not really a I wouldn't call it a major Yeah. all asset class affecting crisis just yet. Right now it's kind of an adjacent to the US bond crisis that we have to kind of pay attention to if not panic about yet, right? Depending on how you feel about it. All right. Well, let's uh let's then talk about the other alternative asset with of gold. And here we are up 70 bucks today. Uh and uh recovering a very good chunk of that correction on the downside obviously above all those moving averages. the dips are being bought. Um, what are you I'm assuming here that you're uh you remain uh bullishly tilted on this, right? Well, I'll tell you, I I'm I'm pretty neutral right here. Quite honestly, Patrick, I I do think here's let me unpack it for you. Yeah. When gold traded its peak at 3500, there was one thing that was obvious. Everybody was talking about it, right? It's no longer It's no longer like an undercover quiet nobody's listening rally like it was down at 2K, right? When it was breaking out from 18800, me and Jared were really careful about it on our podcast, you know, gauging sentiment and we're like, I'm going to tell you that there's nobody talking about it. On the day that it made the high of 3500, there were 32,000 tweets on Twitter hashtag gold. Right? That's something I had never seen before. A little later that week, I got a refresher course on investing in gold from the Wall Street Journal newsletter. You know what I mean? Like it's getting like, okay, mom and pop, here comes how you get into the gold market. And then we got to the weekend and there's [ __ ] gold bars on the cover of Baronss. And now I'm like, all right, it's everywhere, you know? And so with that in mind, I sold a chunk of my longstanding long position, right? So now that fast forward to where we are now, I I would have thought already that I would have gotten a chance to buy this back cheaper and that was my idea. Since I haven't yet and it's kind of right around where I sold it, maybe even a little bit higher now, I'm uncomfortable, right? I feel like I let my position out and I shouldn't have. So I'm going to give it a little more time and I'm going to see. But if it retakes this second lower peak here that I think is at around 3450. If it retakes that peak, I'm probably going to have to get back in and say the dip's not coming, you know, because I mean, if there's one thing for sure, the central banks have stayed with this. China has stayed with this. There's been buying at every price. And you know, the rule with that is that you don't get out of the position until you learn that China stopped buying. Basically, it's the um the interesting part to me like so obviously this came back to a 50-day moving average retest almost perfectly. Uh when you were saying you were looking for a deeper correction, is that one that you were looking for uh something to that 100 day or the 200 day? Like what what is the type of a pullback you look for that uh that you were trying to tactically um uh you know wait to do your buying? Yeah. Well, put it this way. So, I I I sold it on the way up through 3350 the first time on the way to 3500. So, we're still at the level that I sold it. But what I was looking for, quite honestly, I thought I was going to be bidding 2,800 and getting it back in a week. Quite honestly, I thought that it was time for the last of the week longs in futures, which are clearly pronounced leaning to the long side in gold. Now, I thought the last of the longs were going to have to just tumble it into a bidless market, right? And I thought that the dollar was going to provide headwinds for gold by rallying back. And then that that that rally fizzled so fast your head would spin, right? And so gold came right back. So now I'm saying, "Shit, I got a problem. If I wanted to buy this back, I'm going to wind up paying at least the same price, you know, if not maybe higher. I can live with that because I thought the dip was come that was coming was steeper. So, since I got it wrong, I'm going to have to pay some kind of price. But either way, I don't feel bad about what's going on. I'm just kind of impressed that gold is holding in again. And at the same time, it could be it could be in a range trade between 3100 and 3150 for a little while given how popular it's gotten. So, that's my two cents on gold. So, so I want to keep the the conversation going here on this kind of precious metals and and miners and things like this because uh the one thing that I feel was distinctly different when you're talking about the sentiment and how how much people were talking about gold and things, gold itself was in this amazing bull market and you were not wrong at all about your observation. But what was particularly interesting is that it wasn't really participation in silver, platinum, platium, even gold miners were lagards for the longest time until they started catching up over the last half a year. And the thing is is that for me when when I when I'm looking for that kind of blowoff sentiment, it's you I would have thought that we would have seen far greater kind of like a a broader precious metals kind of participation. But uh I I'll let you talk, but I want to highlight like the gold miners not only made it back to their highs, but I just did like a YouTube video uh on my channel uh talking about what's going on here in the um platinum and platium charts. And I wanted your take on this because uh where do I have it here? Hold on a second here. the um but take a look at this breakout on platinum like uh and the platinum for basically six months was dead just trading sideways and suddenly like here I'll put on a weekly chart like that we've been in a a dead zone for how long and suddenly this thing is attempting to actually break out. Then you take a look at platium and uh platium is just starting to to to break out here on the upside giving giving a little bit back but we have a scenario where these things are suddenly becoming active and then you take a look at silver uh up uh 43 cents trying to break out here is what's your take on how the entire precious metals market is trading here? So, I guess to address them once at a time, Patrick, you know, I'll get silver out of the way first. I don't look at silver as a precious metal at all anymore. I look at it as a base metal because of the use that is it's so widely used in the EV trade and in the solar trade, right? So, like I'll expect silver to rally when nickel starts rallying, right? Oh, and and I don't really ever expect silver to rally just because gold is rallying because I think that that is literally the most popular misconception in metal trading is that oh, gold is going up, therefore silver has got to go up with it because it's precious metal. And like I think you could bang your head against the wall trying to prove that correct. I I don't think that that's correct at all. So silver I haven't been trading. I expect it to lag. I expect it to disappoint. God forbid gold goes down big. Silver's gonna get hald, but there's no doubt in my mind. Platinum, however, is really interesting. And it is JJ, Sir JJ's idea, who writes under the name Aliosha on Substack, writes one of the best commodity reports there is. His idea is that platinum woke up because the Chinese started buying platinum now since they can't get their hands on all the gold they want up here. So, that is a totally reasonable theory. Um, I will not be chasing the PGMs. Once again, I'm just kind of gonna going to kind of use them as a gauge to how much gold I should be long. Um because I think that they're really difficult products to trade and they've often disappointed and lured people in and then disappointed people very very frequent frequently. So, I'm not going to fall for that. But I am going to let them say, "Okay, you want to take platinum to the moon?" You know, that's going to give me a good idea that gold might go with it this time, you know. So, I'm just going to use it that way. And palladium, I really have no idea. I mean, maybe it picks its head up. I have a feeling though, Patrick, that maybe there's a there's some chance that some of this latestage PGM buying is just happening because the dollar is getting so weak so fast again, you know, that we finally woke up some some PGM buyers that couldn't take the weaker dollar anymore. And that's just a theory that I have. I could be wrong. So let's let's circle back to the gold miners because you mentioned them earlier when we were at the start of the show and um and like this has been obviously a beautiful chart quick pull back to the 50-day once again edging towards the those 50 uh sorry to a 52- week high. Do you think that um we could have a scenario where gold miners uh actually outperform gold at the at this juncture? Like do you have a a thesis on this? Is this something that it can march the beat of its own drum? Yeah, you know, Patrick, everything for me is a race in performance. It really is like my my job as an equity analyst is to make sure that my clients are sort of in the sectors that are performing best at the end of the year, like for the whole way there or as much of the way there that I can get them in. And you know, gold miners got out ahead really fast, really, really early and really quickly this year. So, I wasn't able to latch on to them because I kept missing on the bid, right? They they just weren't dipping well enough for me to get in. I recently left the 47 bid on the board at the 50-day and got in. And so, now I'm managing the risk. And the reason that, you know, I'm going to chase the gold miners is for the very reason that they are the best performing sector in the S&P and gold is in a bull market. So, what does that leave the danger of? That leaves the chances that mutual funds will maybe increase their allocation in gold miners at some point, right? As we know, like you know, those of us that have been bullish metals for such a long time are like banging our heads against the wall saying, "How is it that mutual funds only have a 50 basis point allocation of freaking funds to gold stocks?" Yeah. What's gone on in gold? And they still, that's all they've really got. you know, god forbid that, you know, serious mutual funds choos that allocation to 75 basis points or 100 basis points. That's going to materially move the minor market. So, I've got to make sure that I'm in them in case that happens. You know, I've kind of got the insurance of gold being a in a bull market in case they back off. I'm going to have some confidence that there's some buyers on the dip. Um, but that's how it's working out for me, you know, and, you know, it's taken me until, you know, May to get into this sector. And now I'm going to hope that I'm not a late comer and that we stay in this bull market and that gold does finally lift off the moving averages and leg up again. But I kind of have I have right now I have on I'm a little nervous because I have a lot of risk on my pad now that the S&P recovered. But what I'm happy about is that I've navigated everyone into what I call the stores of value trade. And for me that's just being long gold miners, gold and Bitcoin. Why? Because if you look at the year-to- date leaderboard, those three are right up at the top. Right. Right. Gold miners are up 50%, gold is up 28%. Um, uranium miners are up 19%, aerospace and defense is up 18% and Bitcoin's up 16%. You know, and it's a kind of my idea that as these trade as the year goes by, these trades are going to keep working for the same reason that they've been working for the first quarter. So, that's how I'm looking at it. And I do think that there is potential in the gold miners. I'm hoping that there is that change in allocation in the at at mutual funds and then we'll see a real move. All right. Well, let's let's talk uh uranium here for a moment since you brought this up. Uh a big gap up today in uranium. The interesting thing is is that the uh spat physical uh which holds the the yellow cake had a big gap. There was clearly the news that um that Trump was uh um favoring uh you know supporting the expansion of nuclear. The uh interesting part here is is that uh this uh the the actual price of U308 didn't move. So this is clearly closing the gap on the uh on the discount that it trades. But this caused some serious movement right across the board on the uranium plays themselves. like and this is the U uh so URRA which is the ETF and uh this thing ripped from 28 bucks to 32 just in one fluid motion like this like outright new bull phase. Uh what um you think this is just the start of the next leg here? I do. You know I I want to believe in the uranium trade, Patrick. I've been in and out of it. I still got it on the radar screen and I'm looking for signals to get back in. Right. Obviously, I mean, I didn't I didn't chase it from 20 to 30. Um, what's interesting to me when since we're talking about blue sky stock trading, call up the Sprat uranium trust chart today, SR UF. Yeah. Right. That sucker is trying to go blue sky today. Right. And that's something that's been in a bull trend and just spent all of 2024 pulling back. Yeah. It's been a one-year bare market. Yeah. Exactly. Like a one-year bare market within a bull trend. What's interesting to me is that we got back to the levels that it traded in 2021 and 2022 when SRUF traded around, you know, in the low teens. Yeah, we held that level and now we went blue sky back up above all the major moving averages. So, to me, that's a potential buy. I don't know that I'm going to chase that trade and add it to the pad just yet, but that's high on the radar screen for something that can recover and resume trend. And at that point, you know, let the trend be your friend. you know, buy it and put in a trailing stop and see what the market gives you. All right. Well, let's uh let's uh move on to crude oil because uh crude has been in an awful bare market and remains in a primary downtrend uh here. But uh is is it uh just simple for you as in that look, it's in a downtrend, I'm leaving it alone, or uh or do you are you speculating at some point here that this could be, you know, where prices are getting cheap enough to start paying attention? What's what's your take here on oil? So, my bias is to the downside quite honestly and and that that is based off of, you know, just being a long-term technician and saying that if this thing was in a range between 64 and 90 from 20 all of 2023 and 2024 and now we've broken the downside of that range. I'm gonna say that we're gonna still have to test numbers lower than the 55 low that we've seen so far. Right? That's my basic premise. I think that that I'm hoping that that is going to be good for the stock market, right? A little bit of a, you know, energy form tax cut kind of thing, right? Good for a lot of sectors like airlines, aerospace, and miners and things like that. So, cheap energy is good. I'm hoping that this trend continues. Um, but right now, I think it's held, Patrick. It's kind of it's kind of fenced in. It won't break down because Israel is about to bomb the daylights out of Iran in some capacity and it won't rally because there's plenty of refined products in the harbor and plenty of storage and the spreads aren't blowing out anywhere, you know. So that's the give and take I think in the oil market right now. But I think that over time if we dare see any stretch of kind of weaker economic data, I'm expecting WTI to test 50 bucks. Wow. Okay. I mean like it's still in a downtrend. I mean the path of least resistance is uh for the prevailing trend to dominate. I um I'm cautiously trying to observe here technically as to whether or not this forms a a major support line. So whenever you have some double bottom retest of some sort, we at least can start kind of fishing as to whether uh the buyers defend these levels. Um but there's no evidence that they've started buying. Like so this is the thing is that there is no you can only speculate on a support line. That's all that's all that's there right now. Exactly Patrick and for me you know being a trader with no position on you know that kind of is a position of strength for me because I can think about it freely and not have to you know marry a bias and and just kind of go with the flow. What what is a real trade for me is should spend you know this some some amount of time below that range between 55 and 65 say we recover that and then god forbid recover the moving averages like that's a buy for me because then we just rejected a breakdown and if we just rejected prices in the low 60s then we're probably going to test prices in the high 60s low 70s right so then there there's a trade that I can kind of go after if that turns so we'll see if it happens and and oil comes back biting very obviously and quickly, but if not, I'm going to kind of just lean to the downside and go with the flow. All right. Uh what's your take here on the vicious bare decline in the long bond? Man, you know, everybody's got to have a the ultimate amount of respect for the bond market as usual. Um, I'm kind of in the phase where if we're reading about insurers belly aching about how much the move in bonds has hurt them and hurt their portfolios, I'm going to tell you that global central bankers are now listening. Yeah. You know, so I got to, you know, I'm not while I respect the bond markets and and I I, you know, have to in price in some probability percentage that they can keep going down, right? If they start breaking ranges again, then we may have an issue on our hands. That'll be negative for equities. That's something that I have to keep in mind, right? So, given what we're seeing though, I think that we're closer to a point where we'll see central banks talk about yield curve control than we are to a point where it's going to go down another 5% and we got to really worry about another VIX spike because of the bond market dislocating. if that's fair. I just kind of think it's definitely a vulnerable it's definitely a vulnerable spot because in the end uh it's right along those lows and it's uh been very aggressively distributed and if uh if any kick below these previous lows comes in there, that's going to be a huge psychological hit that may actually create a negative feedback loop that that even accelerates things. You know, there was a lot of questions asking are we about to see our like Liz trust moment uh for the uh for the US bonds and and could that be something that at least drives maybe a short-term pullback in the stock markets, right? Like there a lot of lot of uh questions here. There's no denying that this trend is is very distinctly down and all you can see here is one support line. Like you've got one previous low and we're going to find out in the in the coming week whether or not uh this becomes a stress point for the markets here on the short term. You know, Patrick, let's not leave out the idea that, you know, we this has been, you know, in the last two days potentially rever like a two-day reversal, right? I mean, I would have preferred it to be one candle, but seeing, you know, yesterday we c we come in at a new low, carve a new low, go positive on the day, come in today, carve a higher high, hang in, close positive, it's not a beautiful reversal, and I wouldn't hang my hat on it, but it may be one developing. So, let's see what happens next week. I would have, you know, I have to think also a lot of times if you look at the calendar, you know, if you're European and you have US bonds to sell, you know, you're going to sell those before you get through Memorial Day weekend. So, I'm thinking that maybe they got that done midweek and now we're kind of seeing the end of the weekend bounce out of the out of the lows and maybe it holds here. That's all. All right. So, listen, uh, that's the macro stuff I wanted to talk about. So, let's fire off some of these things that you're interested in. I wanted to first start off with talking about these defense contractors. So this is the ITA which is the ETF. Now, in my mind, there's the defense contractors are really down the center split because, you know, Boeing is ripping. You know, you've got your Rathons that are uh doing incredibly well, but then you have your Loheed Martins, right? Like, so let's let's kind of go through. So, like obviously Boeing has been a huge contributor to this recent advance, right? Like it it's been in there. uh Rathon uh was made a fresh high when it when it poked up there just uh a few days ago. Uh and uh but and then let's say even um let's take a look at like the dogs like for instance Northrup Grumman still down along their lows. Loheed Martin still stuck in a a trade range since losing that contract to Boeing. Like do you uh you have a scenario where it's they're not all participating. Now, do you view that the dogs of this group are going to catch up and there's an opportunity to peel on them or are you just um playing the broad basket? How do you how are you looking at this? I'm I'm, you know, you defined it for me, Patrick. I'm strictly a basket player because I'm not smart enough to figure out which one is going to be the, you know, the leader. You know, you didn't mention though that, you know, General Electric is still the biggest. Um, look at that rip, which is, you know, obviously that thing is on a bull trend up and to the right. Same thing with RTX. Same thing with Axon Enterprises. So, you've got the top four holdings of that ETF in a really serious bare market breaking out. I mean, excuse me, bull market bull market breaking out and pressing the highs as we speak. You know, I'm sure there's going to be lagards in there, but if I just trade the ITA security for in and of itself and know that what the bulk of that is is Boeing and GE in my pocket, you know, I I can say that I'm kind of looking to buy the thing on the dip because I like the prognosis for both of those two stocks, right? You know, that that's the only way that I'm looking at it. And, you know, you look at it just go look at it going back to the to the lockdown low of 2020. It's been straight up for aerospace and defense contract. Yeah, straight up. So, you know, if you want to just jump on the broad range, you know, five, 10 year trend, you're doing the right thing, buying dips. Absolutely. It's it's it continues to be where there's relative strength. Absolutely. So, what other sectors should we look at? You want to look at semiconductors or something? Yeah, semis are interesting. I think that, you know, that's going to take a little bit of a a bump in in economic data if you want to get them all the way back into performing again. You know, they've been sideways since, you know, uh basically been sideways since Jensen Wang was signing breasts for Nvidia, right? That that was like back in like June, July of 2024 when it was making the highs, but we're right back below those levels now. and um and then have come all the way back off of the liberation Thursday lows into the range that we traded last year. So my point I guess with semis is that's going to take I think economic performance for that trend to resume otherwise they'll probably be sideways and not great performers. You know remember we just had a 78% year in semis in 2024. So you know I'm not going to look for that to happen again this year if we're in the middle of regime change. Right. Right. So, what stock or or ETF have uh I not got to here that you want to talk about? Nothing, man. You know, I'm concentrating down the power alley of those stores of value trades because that's what's working right now. You know, I'm I'm I'm focused on gold. I'm focused on the miners and I'm focused on Bitcoin. And you know, it's kind of one of those Stan Ducken Miller things now where I see what's performing and it might behoove me to have a lot of eggs in those baskets and watch those baskets really carefully and not have, you know, 10 or 12 positions now, but be in the three that are working and treat them all individually the same. See what comes out on top. But that's how I'm looking at it, man. Not to just go back to stuff we talked about. That's the real strategy for me. Well, the one I just wanted to mention uh and wanted to look at here is the biotech. Now, the the pharma story uh has been a dog for for last six months and they've all been trending down quite considerably, but uh the biotechs uh and they still rejecting 50-day moving averages are still in a primary downtrend the way you you would look at it. But um what's interesting to me was that uh we're seeing them actually stop declining on bad news when when uh and uh and so I'm starting to wonder whether they've been or the bloodletting has already played out. Like you look at stocks like Fizer uh would stop making lower lows in this recent period. But then you take uh the ones like uh uh Novo uh like the uh Nova Nordisk uh well still these are very ugly charts like I'm I'm just it's a very early speculation on this but Biogen uh these things have been in the vicious uh bloodbath and I'm I'm trying to think as to when do these things turn into buying opportunities or do you even bother? uh what what are your thoughts here on this? So, I don't I generally stay away from biotech, but if I'm looking at IBB, if I'm looking at that ETF chart and having seen it just fail 50-day moving average resistance twice in May, you know, it does look like it's trying to make a higher low off of that April low. So, you know, a way that I would approach that is maybe kind of buy it on successive settlements above the moving averages. So buy a settlement above the 50-day and if it gets above the 100 day at 130 buy it you know add to that and then if it gets up to that flat top resistance level at 140 sell it there right you know that's a perfect world for me but you know that also that chart is very difficult to make a bullish case for other than mentally because it hasn't given the bulls anything to hang their hat on at all yet. Exactly. So it's still it's still a a distinct downtrend. So, it's early spec early speculation that the that some new accumulation is uh kicked in here to to kind of turn the tides. Yep. That's it. That's so far. Listen, bud. Thanks for stepping in and covering Kev, but before I let you go, uh you know, I know you have a a new uh pod, not new, you've been doing a podcast there with Jared. Uh why don't you give a quick plug? What do you guys do? Uh so that our listeners can uh tune in and uh and where can they find you? Yeah, thanks for that, Patrick. We just started, well, just 47 episodes ago, we started the Macro Dirt Podcast. Just he and I having our conversations online instead of on the phone with each other. And um it's gone great. You can subscribe on YouTube or to the Macro Dirt Podcast or for free at tgmackro.substack.com and or follow me at TGMro where I post it on Twitter every day as well. Um so we're doing really great there. We've got 5,000 Twitter subscribers. We just did a bomb of a of a conversation with Ral that got over 300,000 views in total across platforms. So, that's what we're really, you know, working on growing that and growing our voice and growing our presence. And with that, we will have you on for the first time in very short order. We haven't skipped over you. We're just kind of going slow with our guests. There you go. We'll get you on the show. All right. Well, listen, uh, thank you again, uh, for joining us and, uh, I for the listeners wondering where Kev is, I I do believe it's officially wrapping up. He'll be back for the next episode. But, uh, Tony, uh, you did a great job and it's always a pleasure shooting this [ __ ] with you about charts. It really is, man. The pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me, Patrick. I'm glad I ke have a good one. You, too.
Markets Right Now: Tony Greer on Stocks, Commodities & More
Summary
This week, Patrick welcomes back to the show, Tony Greer. They discuss the market conditions today and get Tony’s big picture …Transcript
It's Friday, May 23rd, 2025, episode 265. I'm Patrick Szna. Now, believe it or not, Kevin's still stuck in jury duty. Now, at this rate, I'm convinced he's either solving Canada's crime backlog single-handedly or secretly running his own Netflix courtroom series. But, uh, fear not. I've called Tony Greer to help me co-host and, uh, dive into some charts. So, Ton Tony has promised to uh bring uh the sharp analysis and I promised uh to take all the questionable takes and all the bad jokes only I find funny. So, let's uh get to it here, buddy. Tony, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me, Patrick. How have you been, man? H I uh I'm down here in uh Orlando. Uh I'm uh down south here and uh enjoying like 31 degrees temperature. I you guys I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit for you guys, but it's hot. Yeah, it's uh but uh but it's all good. Uh how how are you? Where are you where you at now? Good. Up in Atlantic Beach, Long Island. It's a freezing cold spring day here, but the markets are awesome. So, we got something to talk about. All right. Well, let's uh let's jump right into it, buddy. So, listen. I'm going to I'm going to get us going by just doing uh the typical macro rundown of all the different charts. So, uh, here, uh, let's start off with the, uh, chart of the S&P 500. Um, I'm going to just keep a 50-day moving average on here. If you want me to throw a couple of other moving averages on here, you let me know, uh, if you're trying to make a point in there, put the 100 day up today. All right. Sure. You want me just the 100 day or you want to leave 50 and 100 is good for All right. So, uh, we have the S&P 500 having more or less, um, more or less we've seen, uh, the markets here go through a correction over the last couple days and, uh, and so what's your take here? Like, uh, are is is this market correction uh, still a bull advance, ready to go a little bit higher? How do you size this up? Yeah, Patrick, I think it it still looks okay. You know, I'm operating off of the trading assumption that we have seen the low down at 4,800. Um, I get a little bit of confidence in that looking at the monthly April S&P candle that went down a thousand handles and back up a thousand handles essentially. So, that gives me a little bit of confidence that maybe that's a good low. When I see where we are now, we are kind of in the retest zone for a potential blue sky breakout. And I could call it Blue sky breakout. What the hell is a blue sky breakout? I've got That's not in my wheelhouse. What is this? No, that's okay. That's my own No, that's my lingo for when a security in a bull market resumes the moving averages and can therefore trend back towards the highs is a blue sky breakout and the S&P after coming back a thousand points before coming after coming back a thousand points. Um the S&P got above all of its moving averages, traded up to 6K, and now we're kind of back and filling and we just retested the 100 day, right? We dipped below it this morning, got back below it this afternoon. So those things, you know, that recovery this morning on another incremental Trump headline was really important to me. So this afternoon's comeback, I should call it, is really important to me. With the S&P settling now back up above 5,800, I can say that this is just a back and fill retest of the 100 day support level and that maybe we can keep going from here. If not, we've got support below at the 50-day around 5620. And you know, I'm still looking for the S&P to make a higher high, Patrick, without stealing the microphone for the whole afternoon. No worries. Well, listen. Okay. Now, the previous bull market was very much led by uh the Mag7s that you had the um the leadership come in there. They were also uh during this decline uh some of the most uh savagely beat up securities as we saw the MAG index, MAG7 index down like 30 some odd percent in that period. in your mind if this S&P 500's going to go in this blue sky kind of uh breakout uh what's the leadership is does the MAG7 reume leadership in this scenario or is this going to be a broader rally like do you have a thesis on this yeah I don't really think you know the leadership doesn't have to change all that much you know what's pretty wild is that you know gold miners are in the lead we're seeing uranium stocks just have a big um a big comeback rally um aerospace and defense are on top you know momentum stocks and then you get to the technology stuff which is up you know maybe 8 to 10%. Some of the sectors that I mentioned you know gold miners are up 50% on the year uh you know uranium miners now up 20% aerospace and defense up 20%. So the leadership can stay as is. Patrick, I would imagine that we'll see a little bit more catchup on the technology side if we get better economic data at some point. Um, you know, I would expect semis to come alive and things like that. But I feel like, you know, we're going to have, you know, healthy bull market to me is a rotating baton handoff of leadership. So sometimes it'll be tech, sometimes it'll be cyclical, sometimes it'll be material, sometimes it'll be energy. And I feel like the market can be set up for that type of leadership again which is kind of a continuing changing hands. So uh what um what's your take on uh the small caps on a relative basis because they've obviously been materially underperforming? Do you think that they continue to dog it on a relative basis or is this a comeback trade? You know, I I could be wrong about this, Patrick, but I'm kind of, you know, blaming a lot of their stress on the stress in the bond market. You know, we we've just had a a big race up in yields, broadly speaking, before pulling back from the highs in yields today. So, I got a feeling that that that move higher in yields is what's putting all the pressure in small caps. Obviously, they haven't been able to rebound as well as NASDAQ or as well as the S&P. And so I'm gonna say that it's going to take maybe until we get yields turned back lower a little bit before they can catch up at all. And that that's my best guess. I may not be the best trader in the world at trading indexes versus the other. So all right now like uh now to me one of the things that makes me a little more um bearish than you in a sense of uh more concerned let's call it uh about the markets is the uh the fact that we remain uh at uh more elevated levels of implied volatilities. And we did get down to like 1617 on the downside. But generally uh when a bull market resumes you have uh that that kind of mid to low teens uh all structure and usually in past bare markets when there there was bare market rallies volatility stayed a little bit higher as they wouldn't allow you know the cheap insurance to be bought on the markets during those kind of periods. like how how do you size up the current uh places we're at with volatility? Is this a concern for you at all? It is a bit of a concern for sure. Right. And and I do see the point that you're making. You know, when I look at the VIX, what's clear to me is that it is in a very subtle uptrend if that's fair to say. Like we made a low around, you know, 1415 in December. Then in February, we made a low around, you know, 1617. Then in April, May, this last time down at the end of the um you know mixed uh VIX melt on this side of the liberation Thursday selloff, we got to a low of 18 only, right? Or 17 something and now we're back up, you know, we trade back up to 25 and now we're trading I guess uh around the low 20s again. But yeah, there is a clearly clearly a set of higher lows being made in the VIX. And I think that there's two things in play. Sort of one, the VIX is making higher lows because it realizes that Donald Trump is going to continue to make statements that move the S&P intraday, intra week, intra morning, you know, god knows when. So I think that that's fair that the S&P commands a slightly higher level of volatility, right? And then at the same time, you know, I think that the kind of VIX is melting down and it's going to start making lower highs as well because it the VIX is just getting incrementally less return out of Trump tariff headlines, right? You know, today was the 25% on Apple and 50% on the EU and we got to a high of 25 and then backed off. So, I just got a feeling that as time goes by, the more we get into the tariff discussion and have more of negotiating, I think that'll be good for the markets. And what's confusing to me, quite honestly, today, Patrick, about his back and forth with Apple is Apple already pledged a $500 billion investment in the US, you know, several months ago, and most of it was about bringing production back on shore. So, I'm not sure why, you know, that thing with Tim Cook this morning was so impactful. Um, I think probably did a little bit more damage than it should have. And that's why I think the S&P is coming back this afternoon. So, incrementally less bang for the buck on the tariff calls out of Trump, I think, is why the VIX is going to continue to calm down. Right. So, uh, the let's let's talk about Apple here for a moment since, uh, you brought it up here. And what we clearly have is a chart that's still below its moving averages, still making lower highs. Uh, what's your opposite of blue sky? It's uh, what? Yeah, you know, this is a bare market. Yeah, this is a bare market that's failing. You know, I I I don't disagree that Apple is in trouble, you know, and and you know why that doesn't shock me, Patrick, is that I'm approaching this year of a position that everything is regime change. Yeah. Right. Everything is regime change. And if Apple and Google and Mag 7 were the best performers during that whole 10, 12 year run at globalism that was all the rage, then those stocks are going to, you know, probably be lagards while we maneuver into something different. And I'm not exactly sure what to call it if it's America first or, you know, Trump's golden age agenda or what, but it sure is going to be totally different than what we've seen in the last decade. Yeah. Well, let's let's uh let's go to these individual stocks and stuff uh towards uh the end after we go through review. I want to go and briefly just touch on the currency markets because today on that news essentially the dollar almost down a full handle on the uh on the Dixie uh and a stone throw away from that April low very clear downtrend in the dollar. Now, uh my um speculation is is that I mean the dollar sold pretty much uh too far too quickly and I'm I I'm kind of fishing to see whether or not this is just like a retesting of the lows and and establishes a a trade range down here uh or whe or obviously it could just be a full-on next leg down in the dollar here. Which one is more your camp? like are you you think that this uh has another leg down or or that uh we're close to a low? Put it this way, Patrick. I kind of look at it the same way as you. I'm I'm very much on the fence now. I don't have any dollar positions. I have no positions in FX whatsoever. I use that the dollar as kind of a speedometer on my equity and commodity positions. So, it looks to me, you know, that this ferocious move down is real. We're still at the bottom of the range in the Dixie. We're still at the bottom of the range in dollar yen. So from somebody that's trading kind of looking at the currency market more from 30,000 ft up without an intraday tick position, I'm saying we're at the bottom of the range now and I don't need to panic. But I also have to assign a probability in the back of my mind that things may change because it looks like we might break the bottom of the range. Right? That's at least the way traffic is flowing. And I'm certainly not going to stand here and and try to catch a bottom in the dollar. That's not what I do at all. So, you know, if I get towards the area where I can feel the expectation that the dollar is going to have another leg down through this recent low, you know, where the dollar index where we actually get an extension away from this, you know, 100 high and we trade down to 95, then that'll probably empower me to be long a lot of commodity based stuff and probably long gold again, you know. So, that that's kind of how I'm going to look at that. I'm totally game for the dollar breaking down further. In fact, I'd love it because I do much better trading commodities from the bull side with a little bit of wind in my sales from the weaker dollar. So, that's that's a view that I'm wide open to. I I'll agree with this statement that like if the dollar continues to we then it really could spur a commodity bull market. Well, let's get to those commodity charts in a second, but I wanted to get your uh thoughts here on the asset that shall not be named, this Bitcoin. uh what um obviously broke to a fresh high uh and so clearly it's got bull trend. Uh are you uh what are your kind of targets on this? You you're bullish this where where you stand? Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up, Patrick, because this is a beautiful blue sky chart, right? Yeah. just saw that plunge down to 75K. And for me, I started looking at Bitcoin with an a raised eyebrow when it didn't thoroughly collapse in the liberation Thursday de-risking. You know, the stock market bangs all the way down to 4,800. I mean, I thought Bitcoin was going to 35K, right? You know, I really did. The way they were hitting Mag Seven, the way they were hitting the NASDAQ, and we were de-risking, like, I thought the thing was done, right? So since it came back biting, you know, without having any emotion in the trade at all, I bought Bitcoin again when it went blue sky down at 92K, right? Crystal clear through the 50-day, through the 200 day, and then through the 100 day, right at 91,000, right, back in April. And that's when we got in. And that's a good another good way to to kind of illustrate I'm using Bitcoin as a trading vehicle, right? Like I understand the beliefs in it. I understand what it's all about and why everybody wants to be long until a million, but I'm just using it to trade because it trades beautifully. Um, you know, now you've got the 50-day rising up through the 200 day moving average, which might provide even more tailwinds. Um, and I'm bullish as it trades through the high, right? That's the idea of trading a blue sky breakout is that the target is the old highs and then when you get there, if you go through it, you're going to have another leg up. And it sure looks to me that's what Bitcoin is signaling. And what's been amazing to me and the biggest tell that I saw in the March April washing machine turbulence of Bitcoin Yeah. was that whether Bitcoin was up a percent, down a percent, up 5%, down 5%, you know, was consistent, Patrick inflows to the ETFs. Really? Oh my lord. I didn't I didn't uh monitor that at all. Yeah, it was really interesting. Like on days when it went down, you would think that there would be huge outflows and instead of there being, you know, on days that it went up, you'd see $900 million like a billion dollars in inflows in one day. Wow. And on days that went down big, you'd see $180 million in inflows. And I'm saying, wait, what? There's not outflows on days that this thing is going down net. And the answer was no. Right? Every single day in that turbulence down between 70 and 85k or 75 and 85k inflows every day. So that's kind of how I deduced that there was a real institutional commitment to Bitcoin which there is. And that's why the buying flywheel kept going as we went into the Japan mini crisis. I'm calling it because it's not really a I wouldn't call it a major Yeah. all asset class affecting crisis just yet. Right now it's kind of an adjacent to the US bond crisis that we have to kind of pay attention to if not panic about yet, right? Depending on how you feel about it. All right. Well, let's uh let's then talk about the other alternative asset with of gold. And here we are up 70 bucks today. Uh and uh recovering a very good chunk of that correction on the downside obviously above all those moving averages. the dips are being bought. Um, what are you I'm assuming here that you're uh you remain uh bullishly tilted on this, right? Well, I'll tell you, I I'm I'm pretty neutral right here. Quite honestly, Patrick, I I do think here's let me unpack it for you. Yeah. When gold traded its peak at 3500, there was one thing that was obvious. Everybody was talking about it, right? It's no longer It's no longer like an undercover quiet nobody's listening rally like it was down at 2K, right? When it was breaking out from 18800, me and Jared were really careful about it on our podcast, you know, gauging sentiment and we're like, I'm going to tell you that there's nobody talking about it. On the day that it made the high of 3500, there were 32,000 tweets on Twitter hashtag gold. Right? That's something I had never seen before. A little later that week, I got a refresher course on investing in gold from the Wall Street Journal newsletter. You know what I mean? Like it's getting like, okay, mom and pop, here comes how you get into the gold market. And then we got to the weekend and there's [ __ ] gold bars on the cover of Baronss. And now I'm like, all right, it's everywhere, you know? And so with that in mind, I sold a chunk of my longstanding long position, right? So now that fast forward to where we are now, I I would have thought already that I would have gotten a chance to buy this back cheaper and that was my idea. Since I haven't yet and it's kind of right around where I sold it, maybe even a little bit higher now, I'm uncomfortable, right? I feel like I let my position out and I shouldn't have. So I'm going to give it a little more time and I'm going to see. But if it retakes this second lower peak here that I think is at around 3450. If it retakes that peak, I'm probably going to have to get back in and say the dip's not coming, you know, because I mean, if there's one thing for sure, the central banks have stayed with this. China has stayed with this. There's been buying at every price. And you know, the rule with that is that you don't get out of the position until you learn that China stopped buying. Basically, it's the um the interesting part to me like so obviously this came back to a 50-day moving average retest almost perfectly. Uh when you were saying you were looking for a deeper correction, is that one that you were looking for uh something to that 100 day or the 200 day? Like what what is the type of a pullback you look for that uh that you were trying to tactically um uh you know wait to do your buying? Yeah. Well, put it this way. So, I I I sold it on the way up through 3350 the first time on the way to 3500. So, we're still at the level that I sold it. But what I was looking for, quite honestly, I thought I was going to be bidding 2,800 and getting it back in a week. Quite honestly, I thought that it was time for the last of the week longs in futures, which are clearly pronounced leaning to the long side in gold. Now, I thought the last of the longs were going to have to just tumble it into a bidless market, right? And I thought that the dollar was going to provide headwinds for gold by rallying back. And then that that that rally fizzled so fast your head would spin, right? And so gold came right back. So now I'm saying, "Shit, I got a problem. If I wanted to buy this back, I'm going to wind up paying at least the same price, you know, if not maybe higher. I can live with that because I thought the dip was come that was coming was steeper. So, since I got it wrong, I'm going to have to pay some kind of price. But either way, I don't feel bad about what's going on. I'm just kind of impressed that gold is holding in again. And at the same time, it could be it could be in a range trade between 3100 and 3150 for a little while given how popular it's gotten. So, that's my two cents on gold. So, so I want to keep the the conversation going here on this kind of precious metals and and miners and things like this because uh the one thing that I feel was distinctly different when you're talking about the sentiment and how how much people were talking about gold and things, gold itself was in this amazing bull market and you were not wrong at all about your observation. But what was particularly interesting is that it wasn't really participation in silver, platinum, platium, even gold miners were lagards for the longest time until they started catching up over the last half a year. And the thing is is that for me when when I when I'm looking for that kind of blowoff sentiment, it's you I would have thought that we would have seen far greater kind of like a a broader precious metals kind of participation. But uh I I'll let you talk, but I want to highlight like the gold miners not only made it back to their highs, but I just did like a YouTube video uh on my channel uh talking about what's going on here in the um platinum and platium charts. And I wanted your take on this because uh where do I have it here? Hold on a second here. the um but take a look at this breakout on platinum like uh and the platinum for basically six months was dead just trading sideways and suddenly like here I'll put on a weekly chart like that we've been in a a dead zone for how long and suddenly this thing is attempting to actually break out. Then you take a look at platium and uh platium is just starting to to to break out here on the upside giving giving a little bit back but we have a scenario where these things are suddenly becoming active and then you take a look at silver uh up uh 43 cents trying to break out here is what's your take on how the entire precious metals market is trading here? So, I guess to address them once at a time, Patrick, you know, I'll get silver out of the way first. I don't look at silver as a precious metal at all anymore. I look at it as a base metal because of the use that is it's so widely used in the EV trade and in the solar trade, right? So, like I'll expect silver to rally when nickel starts rallying, right? Oh, and and I don't really ever expect silver to rally just because gold is rallying because I think that that is literally the most popular misconception in metal trading is that oh, gold is going up, therefore silver has got to go up with it because it's precious metal. And like I think you could bang your head against the wall trying to prove that correct. I I don't think that that's correct at all. So silver I haven't been trading. I expect it to lag. I expect it to disappoint. God forbid gold goes down big. Silver's gonna get hald, but there's no doubt in my mind. Platinum, however, is really interesting. And it is JJ, Sir JJ's idea, who writes under the name Aliosha on Substack, writes one of the best commodity reports there is. His idea is that platinum woke up because the Chinese started buying platinum now since they can't get their hands on all the gold they want up here. So, that is a totally reasonable theory. Um, I will not be chasing the PGMs. Once again, I'm just kind of gonna going to kind of use them as a gauge to how much gold I should be long. Um because I think that they're really difficult products to trade and they've often disappointed and lured people in and then disappointed people very very frequent frequently. So, I'm not going to fall for that. But I am going to let them say, "Okay, you want to take platinum to the moon?" You know, that's going to give me a good idea that gold might go with it this time, you know. So, I'm just going to use it that way. And palladium, I really have no idea. I mean, maybe it picks its head up. I have a feeling though, Patrick, that maybe there's a there's some chance that some of this latestage PGM buying is just happening because the dollar is getting so weak so fast again, you know, that we finally woke up some some PGM buyers that couldn't take the weaker dollar anymore. And that's just a theory that I have. I could be wrong. So let's let's circle back to the gold miners because you mentioned them earlier when we were at the start of the show and um and like this has been obviously a beautiful chart quick pull back to the 50-day once again edging towards the those 50 uh sorry to a 52- week high. Do you think that um we could have a scenario where gold miners uh actually outperform gold at the at this juncture? Like do you have a a thesis on this? Is this something that it can march the beat of its own drum? Yeah, you know, Patrick, everything for me is a race in performance. It really is like my my job as an equity analyst is to make sure that my clients are sort of in the sectors that are performing best at the end of the year, like for the whole way there or as much of the way there that I can get them in. And you know, gold miners got out ahead really fast, really, really early and really quickly this year. So, I wasn't able to latch on to them because I kept missing on the bid, right? They they just weren't dipping well enough for me to get in. I recently left the 47 bid on the board at the 50-day and got in. And so, now I'm managing the risk. And the reason that, you know, I'm going to chase the gold miners is for the very reason that they are the best performing sector in the S&P and gold is in a bull market. So, what does that leave the danger of? That leaves the chances that mutual funds will maybe increase their allocation in gold miners at some point, right? As we know, like you know, those of us that have been bullish metals for such a long time are like banging our heads against the wall saying, "How is it that mutual funds only have a 50 basis point allocation of freaking funds to gold stocks?" Yeah. What's gone on in gold? And they still, that's all they've really got. you know, god forbid that, you know, serious mutual funds choos that allocation to 75 basis points or 100 basis points. That's going to materially move the minor market. So, I've got to make sure that I'm in them in case that happens. You know, I've kind of got the insurance of gold being a in a bull market in case they back off. I'm going to have some confidence that there's some buyers on the dip. Um, but that's how it's working out for me, you know, and, you know, it's taken me until, you know, May to get into this sector. And now I'm going to hope that I'm not a late comer and that we stay in this bull market and that gold does finally lift off the moving averages and leg up again. But I kind of have I have right now I have on I'm a little nervous because I have a lot of risk on my pad now that the S&P recovered. But what I'm happy about is that I've navigated everyone into what I call the stores of value trade. And for me that's just being long gold miners, gold and Bitcoin. Why? Because if you look at the year-to- date leaderboard, those three are right up at the top. Right. Right. Gold miners are up 50%, gold is up 28%. Um, uranium miners are up 19%, aerospace and defense is up 18% and Bitcoin's up 16%. You know, and it's a kind of my idea that as these trade as the year goes by, these trades are going to keep working for the same reason that they've been working for the first quarter. So, that's how I'm looking at it. And I do think that there is potential in the gold miners. I'm hoping that there is that change in allocation in the at at mutual funds and then we'll see a real move. All right. Well, let's let's talk uh uranium here for a moment since you brought this up. Uh a big gap up today in uranium. The interesting thing is is that the uh spat physical uh which holds the the yellow cake had a big gap. There was clearly the news that um that Trump was uh um favoring uh you know supporting the expansion of nuclear. The uh interesting part here is is that uh this uh the the actual price of U308 didn't move. So this is clearly closing the gap on the uh on the discount that it trades. But this caused some serious movement right across the board on the uranium plays themselves. like and this is the U uh so URRA which is the ETF and uh this thing ripped from 28 bucks to 32 just in one fluid motion like this like outright new bull phase. Uh what um you think this is just the start of the next leg here? I do. You know I I want to believe in the uranium trade, Patrick. I've been in and out of it. I still got it on the radar screen and I'm looking for signals to get back in. Right. Obviously, I mean, I didn't I didn't chase it from 20 to 30. Um, what's interesting to me when since we're talking about blue sky stock trading, call up the Sprat uranium trust chart today, SR UF. Yeah. Right. That sucker is trying to go blue sky today. Right. And that's something that's been in a bull trend and just spent all of 2024 pulling back. Yeah. It's been a one-year bare market. Yeah. Exactly. Like a one-year bare market within a bull trend. What's interesting to me is that we got back to the levels that it traded in 2021 and 2022 when SRUF traded around, you know, in the low teens. Yeah, we held that level and now we went blue sky back up above all the major moving averages. So, to me, that's a potential buy. I don't know that I'm going to chase that trade and add it to the pad just yet, but that's high on the radar screen for something that can recover and resume trend. And at that point, you know, let the trend be your friend. you know, buy it and put in a trailing stop and see what the market gives you. All right. Well, let's uh let's uh move on to crude oil because uh crude has been in an awful bare market and remains in a primary downtrend uh here. But uh is is it uh just simple for you as in that look, it's in a downtrend, I'm leaving it alone, or uh or do you are you speculating at some point here that this could be, you know, where prices are getting cheap enough to start paying attention? What's what's your take here on oil? So, my bias is to the downside quite honestly and and that that is based off of, you know, just being a long-term technician and saying that if this thing was in a range between 64 and 90 from 20 all of 2023 and 2024 and now we've broken the downside of that range. I'm gonna say that we're gonna still have to test numbers lower than the 55 low that we've seen so far. Right? That's my basic premise. I think that that I'm hoping that that is going to be good for the stock market, right? A little bit of a, you know, energy form tax cut kind of thing, right? Good for a lot of sectors like airlines, aerospace, and miners and things like that. So, cheap energy is good. I'm hoping that this trend continues. Um, but right now, I think it's held, Patrick. It's kind of it's kind of fenced in. It won't break down because Israel is about to bomb the daylights out of Iran in some capacity and it won't rally because there's plenty of refined products in the harbor and plenty of storage and the spreads aren't blowing out anywhere, you know. So that's the give and take I think in the oil market right now. But I think that over time if we dare see any stretch of kind of weaker economic data, I'm expecting WTI to test 50 bucks. Wow. Okay. I mean like it's still in a downtrend. I mean the path of least resistance is uh for the prevailing trend to dominate. I um I'm cautiously trying to observe here technically as to whether or not this forms a a major support line. So whenever you have some double bottom retest of some sort, we at least can start kind of fishing as to whether uh the buyers defend these levels. Um but there's no evidence that they've started buying. Like so this is the thing is that there is no you can only speculate on a support line. That's all that's all that's there right now. Exactly Patrick and for me you know being a trader with no position on you know that kind of is a position of strength for me because I can think about it freely and not have to you know marry a bias and and just kind of go with the flow. What what is a real trade for me is should spend you know this some some amount of time below that range between 55 and 65 say we recover that and then god forbid recover the moving averages like that's a buy for me because then we just rejected a breakdown and if we just rejected prices in the low 60s then we're probably going to test prices in the high 60s low 70s right so then there there's a trade that I can kind of go after if that turns so we'll see if it happens and and oil comes back biting very obviously and quickly, but if not, I'm going to kind of just lean to the downside and go with the flow. All right. Uh what's your take here on the vicious bare decline in the long bond? Man, you know, everybody's got to have a the ultimate amount of respect for the bond market as usual. Um, I'm kind of in the phase where if we're reading about insurers belly aching about how much the move in bonds has hurt them and hurt their portfolios, I'm going to tell you that global central bankers are now listening. Yeah. You know, so I got to, you know, I'm not while I respect the bond markets and and I I, you know, have to in price in some probability percentage that they can keep going down, right? If they start breaking ranges again, then we may have an issue on our hands. That'll be negative for equities. That's something that I have to keep in mind, right? So, given what we're seeing though, I think that we're closer to a point where we'll see central banks talk about yield curve control than we are to a point where it's going to go down another 5% and we got to really worry about another VIX spike because of the bond market dislocating. if that's fair. I just kind of think it's definitely a vulnerable it's definitely a vulnerable spot because in the end uh it's right along those lows and it's uh been very aggressively distributed and if uh if any kick below these previous lows comes in there, that's going to be a huge psychological hit that may actually create a negative feedback loop that that even accelerates things. You know, there was a lot of questions asking are we about to see our like Liz trust moment uh for the uh for the US bonds and and could that be something that at least drives maybe a short-term pullback in the stock markets, right? Like there a lot of lot of uh questions here. There's no denying that this trend is is very distinctly down and all you can see here is one support line. Like you've got one previous low and we're going to find out in the in the coming week whether or not uh this becomes a stress point for the markets here on the short term. You know, Patrick, let's not leave out the idea that, you know, we this has been, you know, in the last two days potentially rever like a two-day reversal, right? I mean, I would have preferred it to be one candle, but seeing, you know, yesterday we c we come in at a new low, carve a new low, go positive on the day, come in today, carve a higher high, hang in, close positive, it's not a beautiful reversal, and I wouldn't hang my hat on it, but it may be one developing. So, let's see what happens next week. I would have, you know, I have to think also a lot of times if you look at the calendar, you know, if you're European and you have US bonds to sell, you know, you're going to sell those before you get through Memorial Day weekend. So, I'm thinking that maybe they got that done midweek and now we're kind of seeing the end of the weekend bounce out of the out of the lows and maybe it holds here. That's all. All right. So, listen, uh, that's the macro stuff I wanted to talk about. So, let's fire off some of these things that you're interested in. I wanted to first start off with talking about these defense contractors. So this is the ITA which is the ETF. Now, in my mind, there's the defense contractors are really down the center split because, you know, Boeing is ripping. You know, you've got your Rathons that are uh doing incredibly well, but then you have your Loheed Martins, right? Like, so let's let's kind of go through. So, like obviously Boeing has been a huge contributor to this recent advance, right? Like it it's been in there. uh Rathon uh was made a fresh high when it when it poked up there just uh a few days ago. Uh and uh but and then let's say even um let's take a look at like the dogs like for instance Northrup Grumman still down along their lows. Loheed Martin still stuck in a a trade range since losing that contract to Boeing. Like do you uh you have a scenario where it's they're not all participating. Now, do you view that the dogs of this group are going to catch up and there's an opportunity to peel on them or are you just um playing the broad basket? How do you how are you looking at this? I'm I'm, you know, you defined it for me, Patrick. I'm strictly a basket player because I'm not smart enough to figure out which one is going to be the, you know, the leader. You know, you didn't mention though that, you know, General Electric is still the biggest. Um, look at that rip, which is, you know, obviously that thing is on a bull trend up and to the right. Same thing with RTX. Same thing with Axon Enterprises. So, you've got the top four holdings of that ETF in a really serious bare market breaking out. I mean, excuse me, bull market bull market breaking out and pressing the highs as we speak. You know, I'm sure there's going to be lagards in there, but if I just trade the ITA security for in and of itself and know that what the bulk of that is is Boeing and GE in my pocket, you know, I I can say that I'm kind of looking to buy the thing on the dip because I like the prognosis for both of those two stocks, right? You know, that that's the only way that I'm looking at it. And, you know, you look at it just go look at it going back to the to the lockdown low of 2020. It's been straight up for aerospace and defense contract. Yeah, straight up. So, you know, if you want to just jump on the broad range, you know, five, 10 year trend, you're doing the right thing, buying dips. Absolutely. It's it's it continues to be where there's relative strength. Absolutely. So, what other sectors should we look at? You want to look at semiconductors or something? Yeah, semis are interesting. I think that, you know, that's going to take a little bit of a a bump in in economic data if you want to get them all the way back into performing again. You know, they've been sideways since, you know, uh basically been sideways since Jensen Wang was signing breasts for Nvidia, right? That that was like back in like June, July of 2024 when it was making the highs, but we're right back below those levels now. and um and then have come all the way back off of the liberation Thursday lows into the range that we traded last year. So my point I guess with semis is that's going to take I think economic performance for that trend to resume otherwise they'll probably be sideways and not great performers. You know remember we just had a 78% year in semis in 2024. So you know I'm not going to look for that to happen again this year if we're in the middle of regime change. Right. Right. So, what stock or or ETF have uh I not got to here that you want to talk about? Nothing, man. You know, I'm concentrating down the power alley of those stores of value trades because that's what's working right now. You know, I'm I'm I'm focused on gold. I'm focused on the miners and I'm focused on Bitcoin. And you know, it's kind of one of those Stan Ducken Miller things now where I see what's performing and it might behoove me to have a lot of eggs in those baskets and watch those baskets really carefully and not have, you know, 10 or 12 positions now, but be in the three that are working and treat them all individually the same. See what comes out on top. But that's how I'm looking at it, man. Not to just go back to stuff we talked about. That's the real strategy for me. Well, the one I just wanted to mention uh and wanted to look at here is the biotech. Now, the the pharma story uh has been a dog for for last six months and they've all been trending down quite considerably, but uh the biotechs uh and they still rejecting 50-day moving averages are still in a primary downtrend the way you you would look at it. But um what's interesting to me was that uh we're seeing them actually stop declining on bad news when when uh and uh and so I'm starting to wonder whether they've been or the bloodletting has already played out. Like you look at stocks like Fizer uh would stop making lower lows in this recent period. But then you take uh the ones like uh uh Novo uh like the uh Nova Nordisk uh well still these are very ugly charts like I'm I'm just it's a very early speculation on this but Biogen uh these things have been in the vicious uh bloodbath and I'm I'm trying to think as to when do these things turn into buying opportunities or do you even bother? uh what what are your thoughts here on this? So, I don't I generally stay away from biotech, but if I'm looking at IBB, if I'm looking at that ETF chart and having seen it just fail 50-day moving average resistance twice in May, you know, it does look like it's trying to make a higher low off of that April low. So, you know, a way that I would approach that is maybe kind of buy it on successive settlements above the moving averages. So buy a settlement above the 50-day and if it gets above the 100 day at 130 buy it you know add to that and then if it gets up to that flat top resistance level at 140 sell it there right you know that's a perfect world for me but you know that also that chart is very difficult to make a bullish case for other than mentally because it hasn't given the bulls anything to hang their hat on at all yet. Exactly. So it's still it's still a a distinct downtrend. So, it's early spec early speculation that the that some new accumulation is uh kicked in here to to kind of turn the tides. Yep. That's it. That's so far. Listen, bud. Thanks for stepping in and covering Kev, but before I let you go, uh you know, I know you have a a new uh pod, not new, you've been doing a podcast there with Jared. Uh why don't you give a quick plug? What do you guys do? Uh so that our listeners can uh tune in and uh and where can they find you? Yeah, thanks for that, Patrick. We just started, well, just 47 episodes ago, we started the Macro Dirt Podcast. Just he and I having our conversations online instead of on the phone with each other. And um it's gone great. You can subscribe on YouTube or to the Macro Dirt Podcast or for free at tgmackro.substack.com and or follow me at TGMro where I post it on Twitter every day as well. Um so we're doing really great there. We've got 5,000 Twitter subscribers. We just did a bomb of a of a conversation with Ral that got over 300,000 views in total across platforms. So, that's what we're really, you know, working on growing that and growing our voice and growing our presence. And with that, we will have you on for the first time in very short order. We haven't skipped over you. We're just kind of going slow with our guests. There you go. We'll get you on the show. All right. Well, listen, uh, thank you again, uh, for joining us and, uh, I for the listeners wondering where Kev is, I I do believe it's officially wrapping up. He'll be back for the next episode. But, uh, Tony, uh, you did a great job and it's always a pleasure shooting this [ __ ] with you about charts. It really is, man. The pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me, Patrick. I'm glad I ke have a good one. You, too.