Top Trader Insight

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Welcome to Top Trader Insight. Hi, I'm your host, Norm Zeta.

[00:00:05]Each Friday after the close, I will be asking the best traders I know for their views on the market. Today, I'm delighted to have with us Mark Menerveni.

[00:00:18]Mark is a two-time United States Investing Championship winner. He's entered twice, he's won twice. His sidekick, Bob Weisman, entered one time and won that competition.

[00:00:32]Pretty incredible. Mark's students consistently finish at the top of our rankings. He's got a number of excellent books that he's written, must-read books. He has a number of wonderful programs. And the last thing I'm going to say about Mark is that he knows more about the market than anybody else that I know. Was that okay? I >> I guess if that's what you said, >> that's sufficient. He's still here, so I guess he's happy with what I just said.

[00:01:00]Okay. We've got Dr. Tito Adakari.

[00:01:04]And if I'm pronouncing your name, doctor, it's too bad.

[00:01:08]>> No, that that's good.

[00:01:09]>> That was good. Okay. Y Okay. So, Dr. Adakari has a PhD from Harvard. Okay.

[00:01:15]He also holds the all-time record in our competition up 2,115%.

[00:01:24]Which he established last year and this year he's struggling. He's only up 427%.

[00:01:29]So my my my best wishes to you, doctor. We have three other managers that are really outstanding.

[00:01:38]We have George and I'm going to pronounce your name wrong. George, [laughter] can I call you George T? No.

[00:01:42]tax it.

[00:01:44]>> It's Kachuk.

[00:01:46]The CZ is like a ch and the T, you can skip the T, like a K. Just say Kachuk.

[00:01:52]>> Okay, so we have we have said your name now. Okay, so I'm not going to try to say it anymore. Of RCM Wealth Advisors, we have August Heim from Gravity Analytica and we have Andrew Oonnell.

[00:02:06]Okay, I want to welcome you gentlemen.

[00:02:08]You all look very attractive to me. Hope you don't mind my saying that. I'm very, very proud of you. Okay, >> I'm gonna start with Tito. I'm gonna ask Tito a couple questions. First of all, Tito, do you have any positions going into Monday?

[00:02:23]>> Yeah. Uh, mostly all uh, you know, long positions. Um, have a position in some software names. Um, you know, software sort of really started to make its move higher this year, particularly today.

[00:02:38]Um, so I have some Microsoft, I have some uh Service Now. Um, I'm also eyeing um Tesla as it sort of bases. It's still in a big range, but that's another stock I have my eye on in the coming um weeks.

[00:02:54]Um, other than that, it's it's it's uh whatever I have left from a lot of the positions I bought in the last, I would say, 6 to8 weeks, semiconductor names.

[00:03:03]Um, yeah.

[00:03:06]So, uh, could you tell us some of the stocks that, uh, have caused you to make such a high return this year?

[00:03:15]>> Yeah, I think, um, you know, I think I personally, uh, struggled the first two months, uh, because, uh, you know, there was not a lot of momentum. The indices were in a in a range. Obviously, we rolled over in in March, right? Um, so that was um that was a time I was really having a hard time getting any traction on my on my uh positions. Uh, since the market bottom, however, uh I think you know I think we all know it's it's just been a historic rally by all all metrics uh considered. Um so yeah, I bought um memory names. So uh MU, SNDK, um obviously you have um other names like STX, WDC within that basket. Um in the broader semiconductor names um you know you had stunning move from AMD um you had moves from like Dell, Intel, I mean endless, right? So I I participated in that semiconductor rally uh for sure. Um and then um some of my more longer term buys that I made were Microsoft um in when it was in the 360s um and then sort of added to that position as as we recovered uh 400s um and uh yeah so I I would say I I was I was selective uh in the start of the year but then once the market bottomed you had pretty wide I would say participation and it's broadening out from what it looks like but a lot of it was fueled by the um uh the semiconductor names.

[00:04:48]>> All right, Mark, how about you? What what what is your general positioning going into Monday?

[00:04:53]>> My general positioning going to Monday?

[00:04:55]Uh I've been pretty um conservative, if you will. Uh sort of sold a bunch of positions that were into strength. I sold MU way way way too early. Um a number of stocks I sold too early, but I made nice profits on many of them. So, the stocks that ran up and got extended, uh, I moved out of or at least lightened up on. Um, AVGO was one that, uh, has just been moving up pretty strongly last couple days. And so, that's a the biggest position. Um some of the other positions that we've already had is uh uh MS um Viking Vik uh MSGS which is U um uh Monster uh Monster Beverage is a fairly new position. Uh so yeah, so that's uh you know that's that's basically some of the positions that we have now and I have uh some of them. Uh but yeah, I'm kind of light as far as uh exposure is concerned. Uh a lot holding more cash now than before, but I still think the market can grind higher because sentiment actually got more bearish as the market went higher. You look at something like the investors intelligence numbers that they're diverging. They're actually making lower highs while the market makes higher highs. And that's actually very strange.

[00:06:22]or or or when that happens, that means that people are not believing the market. And it's been a lockout rally that's just been going for quite a while now with very little pullback. And uh when the sentiment doesn't go along with the market and get exuberant as the market goes higher, then usually the the pullbacks are shallow.

[00:06:41]>> How about you, George? Any positions going into Monday?

[00:06:45]>> Uh yeah. Uh thanks for having me here, by the way. Uh I'm pretty heavy. I mean, I'm I'm margined. I think I'm 160%.

[00:06:54]Uh, and a lot of is because I'm still holding. Actually, my portfolio sounds very much like Tito. I started adding some of the software stocks uh through this week. I've been kind of eyeing them for a while, seeing when they'd make a move. So, I added some of those today and then I still holding some of the memory names. Actually, all the memory names and still some of the semiconductor names. Uh I did, you know, get out of some of uh the semiconductor names, but the pullback wasn't much. So I did get back into some of those names.

[00:07:26]The fiber optics uh names are kind of like looking a little bit weaker. So that's kind of a little bit out of that.

[00:07:33]So it's been kind of memory, semiconductors, and now the software names and looking to see if that, you know, could make a move. It started with CrowdStrike uh few weeks ago, actually.

[00:07:44]you know, that was the first one that really started moving and you had something like Digital Ocean looking pretty good and like then then you had Data Dog and now like you know you've had like Service Now and Microsoft now kicking in uh Oracle >> uh you know all those are kind of coming off the bottom. So that's uh so yeah so uh um the market you know if you look at the index you say oh my gosh it's it is extended and uh it does look that way but a lot of individual names similar you know it's a little uh in a sense unnerving when everything you're holding is almost uh vertical but you know not until the market knocks me out uh you know I'm playing it that way and pretty much like Mark said uh the sentiment those sentiment surveys you look at there. It's like if we're in the bottom of a bare market and the market's hitting all-time highs. Uh the only thing I see that may be uh concerning, you have that uh National Association of Active Investment Managers, the NAIM, that came in at 98% this week. So when that gets to be about 100, markets can top then. But if you look at 2020, you had about they were at that level for about four or five weeks before uh they spilled over. So those are just some of the things I'm I'm watching. August, how about you?

[00:09:04]>> Uh, public equities, we've got 140 positions. I think right now about 95 I would declare as speculative positions.

[00:09:12]Um, mostly in biotechs. Um, the the office that I run is around 60% cash right now. Uh, we've been mostly trading in and out of macro options this year.

[00:09:25]Uh, usually short side. And uh our biggest trade this year was we shorted silver right before it collapsed. Um looking forward, I mean, we're not going to put any new cash into the uh market for a while. Um we're basically going to stick on the speculative sides that we have, but we're going to sit in cash for at least through the election. Um we'll see where the election goes and then decide what to do after that. But um the the opposite I run, we don't run leverage, so we're pretty conservative.

[00:09:55]the family that I work for is uh you know they're going to spend the next three months in South America and they don't really want to stress. So um so we keep things pretty conservative.

[00:10:07]>> Andrew, how about you?

[00:10:09]>> Yeah, what's going on guys? Yeah, I'm primarily an event driven and catalyst trader. And the one catalyst that I'm working on really into the end of the year is uh cannabis rescheduling.

[00:10:23]About a month ago, you're just a drug addict. I'm sorry.

[00:10:26]>> Yeah, pretty pretty much. Yeah.

[00:10:28][laughter] >> So, yeah, it's about a month ago, medical cannabis was rescheduled and there's going to be a hearing to reschedule recreational cannabis and that's kicking off June 29th. Um, one of the themes that I trade pretty frequently is when there's some sort of dislocation in the market, an asset manager is actually can't buy a certain group of stocks. And that right now is these cannabis stocks. They are traded on the OTC exchanges. If the recreational rescheduling catalyst goes through, then those names could be uplisted by the end of the year. So, I'm sitting in this group knowing that there could be bigger investors coming in the tail end of the year. There could be ETFs coming in and purchasing these stocks, RAAS, and really just anyone that wasn't allowed to touch them because they're traded over the counter. So, I'm pretty much working on that one big catalyst trade. And then in terms of the overall market, everything has looked pretty awesome. Today was the first day I did add um some hedges into my portfolio into the close because I just started seeing some things like if you look at the NASDAQ on the weekly chart, there's basically been this this trend line that the NASDAQ has been following for the last like you know decade or so and now we're trading well above that trend line. Um, and then in terms of the options market, we are seeing pretty much at this point a lot of investors are abandoning their hedges because those hedges really just haven't worked.

[00:12:03]Um, so today I took the opportunity to actually hedge my portfolio just in case there's any sort of wobble into the midterm elections. I also noticed today um, you know, the president could be doing this deal with Iran. Um, and then we had Dell up 30% today. I think it closed maybe up like 40% somewhere along those lines. And I saw the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 just didn't really respond all that well to really both of those catalysts. So yeah, I'm pretty much playing that uh MSOS rescheduling catalyst into the end of the year. And then today, yeah, I added some hedges um in case the overall market has some turbulence over the next couple months.

[00:12:47]>> What would be your favorite two stocks right now?

[00:12:52]favorite two stocks.

[00:12:54]>> Yeah, my two favorites. Um there's this company GTBIF um which is a large holding in the MSOS ETF. And basically this company is just like spinning off cash every quarter.

[00:13:07]They have a huge cash balance, but investors really can't buy it because it trades over the counter. Then the other name I would say is this company Glass House. They are a California producer of cannabis and if this rescheduling catalyst goes through they're a very lowcost producer because they have the best climate really for agriculture where they don't need like warehouses to do their growing and they could end up being a pick and shovels play for the rest of the sector. So yeah, I really like Glass House right now and then I like Green Thumb which is GTBif.

[00:13:43]>> Tito, what would be your favorite two stocks right now? Um [clears throat] I like uh I like Amazon. Um I like AVGO that Mark mentioned. Uh and then uh TSM was also looking good but don't don't love the close today. But um yeah the the Amazon AVGO um Microsoft was really nice I would say a couple sessions ago and um I participate a little bit today on that.

[00:14:11]Um, and then I'll I'll I'll probably, you know, know more once I scan on Sunday for for the upcoming week.

[00:14:19]>> Now, obviously all of you pretty much use stops, right?

[00:14:23]>> Does anybody not use stops? So, so you would if you didn't like the action on Mon on Monday, you would possibly liquidate, right, Mark? How about Mark?

[00:14:32]How about you?

[00:14:34]>> Uh, so I I don't know if I mentioned it, but uh I recently added Amazon, too.

[00:14:39]Amazon has been a recent buy. just a few days a couple days ago. Um, so AVGO is a big, you know, is a is a big name, um, that, uh, uh, you know, that, uh, we own and I own right now. Um, some of the stocks, like I said, I've already been in, you know, and and I'm and I'm in those names like like I said, Viking, Morgan Stanley, uh, some slower growers and some faster growers. Sort of a mix.

[00:15:06]Um, got it. You might be wondering, you know, I I did I sounded almost like I was contradicting myself. I said, uh, you know, I'm having a high level of cash, but I think the sentiment is bearish and the market could grind higher. Well, that that's true, but I don't really get led by the indexes.

[00:15:22]It's more what's happening beneath the surface in the stocks and there's a lot of stocks that are extended and um, you know, there's still setups though.

[00:15:29]There's still stocks that are acting well. So, um, uh, you know, as the I don't know, I see your your, uh, WA1. I don't know what your name is, but >> George.

[00:15:42]>> Oh, George. Yeah, as George said, you know, um, things, you know, you you ride it and you you play that in uh, when it's working and you stay with it. So that's sort of how how you know we're handling it right now is just riding it and I'm tightening up the stops and sort of backstopping things now because have profits that you know we want to make sure that we nail down and don't give back too much. Um, so yeah, so I would say, you know, ABGO is is one is is one of the the better acting names, but again, I mean, that can change as you said, uh, uh, Norm, you know, on Monday.

[00:16:14]That can all change, [laughter] >> right? You ask me on Tuesday and then there might be a completely different mix of uh, of exposure and names. It can Yeah, it could change very, very quickly. So, we I bend with the market quite rapidly.

[00:16:29]>> Right. How about >> we um, >> go ahead. Yeah, we we haven't used stops in 26 years. Um, we actually run 115,000 lines of code that monitors liquidity inflows and outflows and we have a a custom in-house index which is similar to the VIX but operates on a, you know, a subday. It's close to a subour time frame. So, um, we make changes in macro scale based on what the code says. Um, and we play odds when it comes to positions. So if we're, you know, if we're we're buying a particular biotech in a particular sector, we're going to buy the best stocks that are similar to it and just play the odds on the returns. So we're we're completely happy if something goes to zero. I think in the 15 years I've been doing this professionally, we've had uh three stocks go to zero and we've played literally thousands. So um stops are not something in the dollar volume space that we tend to trade in. Um, stops are a pretty easy way to lose your positions. So, um, we tend to basically do structured buying positions where we'll basically tear out what we expect, what the code says we should be, and we'll increment as we go down. And, um, we just play the odds. I mean, we carry at least 100 positions pretty much all the time, and the code basically just tells us when it's time to leave or when it's time to rotate out.

[00:17:51]>> Interesting. George, how about you? Um, favorite two stocks. Okay. So, uh I have to give it here with a little bit of a caveat. So, for now, Micron's my favorite, but it's also kind of a little bit of the canary in the coal mine for me. Meaning, it's it may hit $1,000 and get rejected right there. It's getting pretty close to there, you know. But on the other hand, it has the one trillion valuation. Uh I think it's about $870 somewhere right around there. That would kind of be if it can't hold that level, that might tell me maybe the whole memory play, you know, it's a little too obvious, maybe it might be over with, you know, but you don't know. It's it's valuation actually, even though it's skyrocketing, it's actually keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. So, that makes it kind of interesting. So, that's my favorite. And it is a canary for the coal mine, but I'm not married to it because if it reverses, I'll be out of that and I'll probably be out of all the other memory names I'm holding. Now, as far as something new, you know, started nibbling on Tesla again. Uh Tesla I like just has a very very strong narrative narrative going forward. Finally got above all its moving averages and now it's kind of a little bit retesting it approaching a breakout level. So I'm kind of looking at that, you know, and then then I'm going to, you know, throw in I know you asked for two only, but the software names like Service Now and Oracle, those look very interesting as well as possible new plays. August favorite two stocks.

[00:19:19]>> That's gonna be hard because it's going to be the last two that I looked at today. Um so the two stocks that were moving today were C4 Therapeutics which is moving on uh it's a conccominant move with another drug company that released a similar um trial results. And the other one is ASIT which um we're expecting to run into their we we think that they're probably going to release the phase one data at the end of June.

[00:19:44]They've got a Jeffre conference at the beginning of the June. We think they may hint at the data, but we're expecting that to run through that data release.

[00:19:51]So, um, those are the two stocks that I just happened to be looking at before I sat down here. Um, but like I said, we carry a lot. I mean, we carry over 100 positions, so it's kind of hard for me to keep track. Um, but, uh, that's the two that I would think right now. All right, let me let me uh switch gears a little bit and ask all of you if you can explain. Anybody who wants to answer, please answer.

[00:20:17]Why do you believe that the market has gone pretty much straight up since roughly March 30th of this year?

[00:20:24]>> Um well, I mean share buybacks for first quarter were pretty much at an all-time high. You had Salesforce, which bought back uh I think 27 billion shares just in the quarter. So you're getting a rally but the rally is I maybe 10 or 15 stocks is driving all the move and those stocks are most of the ones are doing share buybacks. Um and then from another perspective uh if you look at the last SFO data most family offices are running between 25 and 40% cash. Like we're running 60 65% right now. Um and there's no stress in this cohorts like the high net worth and the ultra high net worth. There's no worries at all. So there's not really a whole lot of reason for them to, you know, take uh any anything off the table in terms of public equities. So why would you want to sell now and wait? You're just going to pay the tax burden on what the returns you've got for the past couple years. And you're already sitting in cash. If something goes down, you're going to be there to profit off of it anyway. So >> does anybody else have any thoughts on this?

[00:21:25]>> I'll say something. I think uh you know, the market's gone up and we can find the narrative. So, I could say, "Oh, okay.

[00:21:32]Well, the earnings, they're increasing.

[00:21:34]The forward estimates are increasing and so forth." But is that really what's driving it? You know, I don't know. And you never really know. And what I mean by that, if we look back to last late October and early November, you know, when the market kind of topped right then and everyone's talking about is it going to be three rate cuts or two rate cuts, you know, it should be wonderful.

[00:21:53]Why is the market going down? and the market kind of trickled down until into April, you know, and now it shot up and we're talking zero rate cuts and a possible rate hike sometime. Now, we don't know if that's going to happen, but the the point of all this is that we don't know why the markets do what they do. And at least for me, my system's a trend following system. We just kind of ride it and until it's not working.

[00:22:19]>> Anybody else? We lost Oh, okay. Mark, >> I've had a pretty good track record. I have a very good track record of calling tops and bottoms going all the way back to the 1990s.

[00:22:30]But I really don't try to call tops and bottoms. You know, that's not my goal and that's not what I trade on. Um, and I [clears throat] don't really look at the market itself much to when I say the market, I don't use the indexes to predict the indexes. I'm using the individual stocks. And um, so it kind of just happens by default. Uh, I've gotten there and I've gotten bearish when things aren't working and stocks are breaking down and I've gotten bullish when a lot of stocks are forming bases and breaking out and it's just coincided with turning points very well. But I also have a I started off as a quant when I first started in this business. I was purely quantitative and I would make a big big case for the market and I look at the industry groups and I look for the stocks in the groups and I didn't make any money. Uh, so I flipped it around and and went bottoms up where the stocks would lead me to the groups and then the stocks and the groups would lead me into the market and everything changed and that's where I've gotten all my success from. But if we look at it like from the big picture, a quantitative picture, first of all, we're in a Goldilocks environment that if you go back and you just look at real GDP and you look at economic sort of tea leaves, you'll see that when they're in a uh a slow and stable period, you get these secular bull markets that can last for a long period of time. If you go pre 19808 82 83 pre pre Reagan, you'll see that GDP is all over the place. It's it's in the 70s and and that's when the market went sideways for you know 20 years and couldn't make any progress.

[00:23:56]You had these wide wide swings. Um and then you know the government and the Fed figured out that they can control the boom and bust cycle and and print money and and all these now you know quantitative easing and you know we've been talking about there's a price to pay for that for like I don't know three decades now. Um and maybe ultimately there will be a price to pay but the government certainly can um you know can control a lot of things with uh w with with uh uh you know with printing money and so forth. Um, also right now it's like a perfect storm because you have that and you have this this monopoly with these companies that Amazon, uh, Nvidia, Google, uh, uh, you know, Apple, um, this type of monopoly hasn't been a monopoly like this since going all the way back to the Rockefeller and Vanderbilts and the rails. And they have huge cash flow and and big capex spending. Um, and that hasn't really gotten, as much as people think it's gotten out of whack, it it's still not really, uh, you know, out of whack and gotten euphoric. Um, and that this can, you know, it could it can continue to to go even longer. you know that people think that um these companies and I I'm one of the people that keep saying you know this is a very narrow market and that the market's being led by a few names but those nifty50 type markets can go to can can can keep going for quite some time far longer than than some think. So there's a it's a really, you know, good environment right now and and there's really nothing that shows a secular bare market is on the horizon.

[00:25:32]But again, that can change very quickly because you don't know what's going to happen when the world and you don't know what h is going to happen with uh you know with business. Things can change.

[00:25:42]Uh but right now you know things are looking still uh pretty pretty perfect as far as the environment is concerned.

[00:25:48]Uh the the economic environment.

[00:25:51]>> Anybody else? That was great Mark.

[00:25:53]Anybody else?

[00:25:55]Yeah, I'll just add that it, you know, kind of to Mark's earlier point, like sentiment is is not really stretched.

[00:26:03]Um, in fact, like I saw like over the weekend, Goldman Sachs came out with a report uh saying that the median S&P uh short interest is actually at multi-year highs, which is hard to believe. Uh but um and then there's also other reports uh about like equity positioning sitting at, you know, neutral levels. um well below prior peaks that have been associated with true euphoria. Um and then as we've sort of moved from the lows in March, you know, through April and then May, I think one of the features of this rally has really been particularly in the last uh you know, couple weeks. I would say um as the um semiconductor sort of let the rally uh you're now starting to see the rally broaden out, right? like you're seeing um you know software strong you're biotech has been quietly really strong under the surface um you know it's hard to be bearish when you know the equal weighted equal weighted um S&P is at the high RSP is good so it's just it it has the look of a um you know very broad rally which uh you know is uh just fueling the market higher >> norm if I could say a couple other things because you brought up a couple good points one the short interest being uh high. That's something that exactly what I'm pointing out is that there's a lot of people that are trying to pick this top. And you know, bubbles don't usually happen when everybody's calling for a bubble. That's the whole the whole um you know uh uh characteristic of a bubble is that you've got everybody saying, "Hey, it's different this time.

[00:27:37]This isn't a bubble." And that's when you get a bubble. Um so there weren't too many people calling for a bubble when I was calling for a bubble in 2000.

[00:27:45]They were when Microsoft came off by 50% and all these stocks topped, everybody was saying, "What a bargain. What a what a what a once in a-lifetime chance to buy these stocks down 50%." And then the NASDAQ went down over 80% and those stocks were down 90% and took 20 years to get back to break even. And that's when you had a real bubble. So, um, that's one thing. The second thing is, you know, when I first started in the market, um, the Dow was trading just a little over 1,000 and and and the thought of it getting to 10,000 was like, oh god, that could be that be 50 years from now or whatever. And and if you just did simple math, you'd see that there was it wasn't going to take that long to get that. And then it got to 10,000. And and then you start talking about 20,000. And then 20,000 start talking about 40,000. You know, now we're 50s something thousand. And you know in in 5 years or whatever 10 years from now it'll be at a 100,000 and people will be talking about a half a million. And so again just because the market's high you know high that that doesn't mean anything if you do the math. Um you know simple growth rate will take you to a 100,000 and not that long you know another you know 10 five 10 years. Um, so yeah, I I I have a perspective, you know, long-term perspective coming from starting my first trade in 1983 and the Dow being at 1,000 and now 43 years later. Um, you know, it's I I I see that this is the greatest growth story on planet Earth.

[00:29:09]It's the greatest country in the world and capitalism is awesome. It's not going to it's not going to stop.

[00:29:16]>> You know, over the last three months, we've had a situation where oil has gone up significantly. I know it's trending lower right now while gold has seemed to have gone down. Uh would anyone like to explain why that's happened?

[00:29:33]>> I'll throw out an idea. So uh oil's you know the obvious reason because of the Iran war but it's in backwardation. If you look at the forward uh oil crude contracts they're coming down.

[00:29:46]So you know oil probably will come down.

[00:29:48]So why is gold coming down? I think just basically gold and silver pretty much had topped in January. Uh they were probably used as an inflation hedge but I think inflation even though the inflation official numbers are coming out it's going to come down. The reason I think it's going to come down is one of the things the Fed never talks about in the press conference is the M2 money supply. You know it grows at about 6% per year and now we're growing about 4.7% annually. But during the the COVID period when the government just pumped all that money, it was growing at 40%.

[00:30:22]Uh which was insane and that's really what caused the inflation. Now we have oil that's causing a price spike in everything related to oil. But that's not true inflation that that the government causes. So the M2 money supply has come down and it's going below its steady rate. And I think that's probably why gold's coming off.

[00:30:40]Silver's coming off. and and I if things can get straightened out in Iran, oil should probably follow that.

[00:30:48]>> So if if you were to look back and look at my go look at my Twitter feed and and look at some of the uh my comments on gold and silver in particular, I actually called the top in silver. I think it was this the day before uh it was almost to the day. Um, and uh, it's on it's on one of the one of the Twitter posts. Uh, but again, this goes right back to what I was saying before. That's purely from a technical standpoint. It had nothing to do with really understanding the dynamics of gold. And so I stopped trying to predict gold. Uh, I I actually 1993 um, I called the bottom in the gold market and and because all the gold stocks were breaking on a basis and they were taking off. So I got bullish on gold just simply because of the technicals of the underlying gold stocks. Um there was at that time it was Placer Dome and Newmont Mining and I bought a whole bunch of them. They took off. They did this story on me and said uh I think it was called all that glitters is gold and men's got the mightest touch with gold and I didn't even understand anything about the dynamics of these markets. And to this day, 43 years later, I've been doing this and I still couldn't tell you why gold and silver really is uh moving and bottoming and topping. And the gold kind of confounded me for many years. Um, you know, same thing with Bitcoin, you know, trying to figure it out. So, we don't really try to figure out why. We try to figure out what it should happen under certain conditions and then judge if that train is coming in on schedule or not. And what should happen with a Middle East situation like we have right now in Iran is oil should run up and you should get a shock. Uh but if you look at history and the facts, they don't last long. Usually within 3 to 6 months, the market does well.

[00:32:31]>> I don't know if you remember, but when I was interviewing you a while back, we had an interview with Mark, which you can see on YouTube. You were actually talking about shorting silver at that.

[00:32:41]>> Yeah, I shorted silver. Yeah.

[00:32:42]>> Yeah. Yeah. During that interview. Okay.

[00:32:45]>> Um, that's great. Um, anybody else?

[00:32:49]>> You know, if you want to take a look at some of the technicals Mark's talking about, like when especially when silver had a kind of climax top this year, go back and look at the spring of 2011.

[00:32:59]>> That's also when silver ran to $50 and just straight up and straight down. And those charts today, how gold and silver look the same way they look in 2011, spring of 2011.

[00:33:12]So >> yeah, that was actually that was actually sort of like an analog that I used that there was a there was very close similarities between that period and where we were in silver when I I went short and I talked to you about it, Norm, and I tweeted that that was that that 2011 runup was was an analog that we used for the model of where we were.

[00:33:35]>> Where are you, Mark, right now? You look like you're in some sort of a gigantic building.

[00:33:40]>> I'm not. It's a fake background.

[00:33:42]>> It's a fake background. Are you serious?

[00:33:44]>> Yeah, it's a fake background.

[00:33:46]>> I'm just sitting in my office. Actually, you'd be looking out a nice window with the golf course behind me. It's actually a nicer view, actually.

[00:33:54]>> Oh my. [laughter] That's your office. It looks like a hotel.

[00:33:58]>> No, this is not my That's a fake.

[00:34:00]>> Oh, this is a fake Oh, okay.

[00:34:01]>> That's a That's just a background. Yeah, I'm saying my real If I put the camera on, I'm just sitting in front of a window in my office.

[00:34:09]Let me we're we're getting close. I loved everything everyone has said. I have a few more questions for you. Um has anybody favored a particular international market or are you strictly uh trading US stocks?

[00:34:26]>> Uh we have um macro short position on China which we've had for six weeks or so. But other than that um no. the the family I work for is uh um they're out of Russia and Ukraine. So, we do have some exposure, but right now the only thing we have is a short macrochina trade.

[00:34:44]>> But you agree that in this environment some markets will do better than others.

[00:34:50]I >> I mean, of course, that's that's going to happen. I just don't know that we're in a position to predict that. Um we deal with mostly mechanical and um structural stuff in in terms of markets.

[00:35:02]So we're looking actually at the the way that the markets are trading, not necessarily at the macro factors. Um so we don't actually tap into Brazil or China or the NIK or the Australian markets um in terms of um what the code looks at. We just haven't done it yet.

[00:35:20]Um the China trade was just uh pretty systematic that uh we expected them to close up when oil spiked, which is what they've done, and they've since sold off. So, it's been a pretty profitable trade for us so far.

[00:35:34]>> How do how do you how does anyone can answer this? How do you feel about TN, the solar ETF?

[00:35:41]>> It's certainly run up quite a bit. Um I I unfortunately missed it, but it it looks good. A lot of the individual [clears throat] names I think within Solar 2. um you know you especially this past week um and the week before like um Nphase ENPH um SEDG um FSLR for solar like solar for me I don't know like um in the past it's been a little bit harder for me to predict. So, the week before when they um started running pretty aggressively, I um you know, I I just couldn't time the buy correctly and then I I pretty much watched it watched it go higher this week. But yeah, it certainly looks very strong.

[00:36:24]>> Have any of you been uh following the thing about the once in a-lifetime El Nino that's supposed to hit in the next couple of months? And if you have been, what do you feel about grains say a couple months out? Uh we had a long wheat position during the cold spell that came out of that but we don't currently anymore but we do track um we do track the al the difficulty with that is we don't really understand how the South American grain market is going to affect it so we played a very short position when the cold weather spike took out the winter wheat crop. Um but since then we we've been kind of hesitant to to commit to it any more than that.

[00:37:05]Gentlemen, I have been very impressed by all of you and I want to thank all of you for participating in this show.

[00:37:16]Uh, I'd like to uh remind the viewers that if you like what you saw, please hit the subscribe button.

[00:37:24]Um, I could go on and on and ask you questions forever, but I prefer to wait until next week. Okay? So, next week I'm going to have a similar panel. I can't have all of you on. and I'll have some of you on if you want to be. And until next Friday, thank you all so much. And viewers, thank you for watching.

[00:37:44]>> It's been a pleasure, guys.

[00:37:45]>> Nice being with you.

[00:37:46]>> Nice being here with you guys. Take care.

[00:37:48]>> Yeah.

[00:37:49]>> Yeah. I just The one thing that nobody really answered, even though you were all brilliant in your answers, is you never really answered quite why it happened on March 30th. You know, in other words, I heard the buyback stuff, which I think August that was you. That made a lot of sense, but nobody really explained why the why it happened on March 30th.

[00:38:11]>> I I'm not sure I can answer that question right now, but uh I'd have to go back and look at the code and see. Um I actually don't think that March 30th was the day that we saw the bottom in our our code base. Um, but I don't know what the code necessary is looking at and I wasn't really paying attention.

[00:38:30]Um, but I can go back and check and see.

[00:38:32]Uh, I mean, we we track share buybacks as best we can. And as long as share buybacks continue, I I don't see why the market would sell off. Um, you know, 90% of public equities are are held by just high net worth and ultra high net individuals and they're not going to sell. And as long as companies keep buying, there's plenty of bid pressure.

[00:38:52]So I don't see at least in the near term if buybacks suddenly stop like if um if the AI trade does not turn out the way people think and people have to cut back on share buybacks in order to cover the commitments that they have then we may have an issue but um my biggest concern is the election. uh I do not know what is going to happen there and that's the biggest uncertainty that we have going forward which is why you know we've pulled mostly into cash so far.

[00:39:23]>> Hey AJ AJ do you have any uh data on because right now there's we're at the highest level of stock ownership of households or 55 57%.

[00:39:33]>> Yeah I think it's like 64% actually right now.

[00:39:36]>> Yeah it's maybe even run up even more.

[00:39:38]That's the highest level. And and and when you look forward, you get 10 year 10 years forward, you get negative returns when you're at those levels.

[00:39:46]Only now this the data, of course, there's only a couple times where you've been at those levels, but it certainly there's a lot of stock that's already owned. Um you know, where is this cash going to come from to keep driving the market? Like I'm I'm bullish, but I still think at some point, you know, we at the very least we'll get a big cyclical pullback. Well, the last um report I saw on single family offices showed that the average single family office and the average single person is about one and a half billion 1.7 billion that they're sitting between 20 and 30% cash or cashlike assets right now.

[00:40:18]>> Cash.

[00:40:19]>> Yeah, we're I mean we're sitting at 65%.

[00:40:22]Um the the total >> asset value of the family offices is basically the same, but from a liquid position we're you know in the in the mid nine figures is what we carry. Um But we don't have we're trying to find yield where we can get it. Um this is not related to what most people here would care about, but we're we've got we're actually looking to buy a venadium mine. We've got uh a bunch of private investments in battery stocks for um >> uh data centers like slow drain batteries, stuff like that to keep data centers running. and trying to [snorts] find yield right now is pretty hard in the private credit and private equity sector because there is so much cash that's just sitting there, you know, competing for these deals.

[00:41:05]>> So, um that's one of the reasons why I'm not completely concerned other than the election with the the market right now.

[00:41:12]um if this AI trade doesn't turn profits for the big Fortune 500 companies, like if they start putting all this cap expense into running these AI models and they don't actually see a return in profit, then I think you're going to have an issue with all these commitments, but most of the commitments are canceled on both sides of the trade.

[00:41:33]So, you know, Oracle can get out of their deals. Um the people who would be left holding would be SoftBank who owns OpenAI and those kinds of companies. So there's there's a way out right now. Um but it all depends on the election. Um if that election if Democrats basically take over then we might have some issues. We'll see how contentious that fight's going to be.

[00:41:58]>> Yeah, that's interesting. So you're so uh apart from the election, your feeling is or your data is saying she share buybacks and a lot of institutional cash means support underneath the market.

[00:42:12]Um, I've modeled it two different ways.

[00:42:15]I've modeled both inflow and outflows, and I've also modeled it in terms of liquidity, uh, in terms of bid pressure, like how much new capital showing up and what it's actually moving the market.

[00:42:25]And from that perspective, um, I mean, I've written this up on Substack before, but it feels like we've got at least a year >> um, before things, you know, start to get concerning. And that times out with the AI trade. I think from a capex perspective.

[00:42:43]>> Most companies are going to give it two years, maybe three years, and if they don't see a return, that's when they're going to basically make changes. So that all sort of times out. Um and all all this could change, but um as of right now, that's what it looks like to us >> that we've got at least a little bit. my um the family I work for, they're they're basically thinking that we should even turn off the speculative stuff April next year, probably right before tax season. Um we might go more to cash. Um but we'll revisit, you know, when they come back from South America in August.

[00:43:16]>> I think we at least have to get to the SpaceX and the Open AI and anthropic deals. [laughter] >> Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:22]>> I feel Yeah, you've got Open AI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. you three trillion dollar IPOs.

[00:43:30]>> Uh I mean Morgan Stanley is on the hook for >> quite a lot of Elon Musk debt right now >> and they have to get out of this.

[00:43:38]>> And with the way that that deal is structured >> that's so thin like they're only releasing a very limited number of shares and they're pushing it straight into all the ETFs like the S&P ETF structure, the VO. There's actually I mean theoretically there could be forced buying of more shares than they release. And if you've read the S1 if the I think it's 30% for five days leading into the first earnings they can release another set of shares and those shares are actually some of the early investor shares. So they could easily drive this for quite a long time.

[00:44:15]>> Um the OpenAI one is the one I'm most concerned about. Anthropic is is a is a good tool. I don't know if it can be I don't know if it's ever going to be profitable. Like uh I mean it's very very good if you pay 200 bucks a month for it. Um but I don't think that they can bring the cost down enough to be profitable. But OpenAI I don't actually see how that has any chance at all. So that has to get to IPO pretty quick. And SoftBank is highly exposed because they >> they've been borrowing against their IPO or their their open AI position to buy more open AI.

[00:44:49]>> Yeah.

[00:44:50]>> I I agree 100% with all with all that.

[00:44:53]>> Yeah, I I'm the I have the same same feeling.

[00:44:56]>> Gentlemen, let's call it quits. It was wonderful. Hopefully some of you will be on next week.

[00:45:04]>> Take care as always. Thank you. Thank you everybody.

[00:45:07]>> Great meeting here.

[00:45:08]>> Take care, guys.