Speaker 1: AI is something we're all going to have to deal with.
I did an AI experiment this week, and I wanted
to talk to Zach Abraham because Zach said something.
Speaker 2: AI is going to be a job destroyer that isn't
economically beneficial. AI is going to be a massive deflationary pressure,
massive which ironically could help out quite a bit with
the it's a product productivity surge, which will help out
quite a bit with the inflation in its own right.
But think about the amount of people that are going
to be out of work now.
Speaker 1: So that's just part of what Zach said. So AI
job killer, inflation fixer, society changer. Do we really want
to invest in this? Talk about this with the help
of Bulwark Capital Management. That Know Your riskpodcast dot com
ends God Almighty, but.
Speaker 3: Todd Herman shows disapproved but big pharma technocrats and tyrants
everywhere from the high and a free America. Here's the
Emerald City Xie tied to her Man.
Speaker 1: Today is the day the Lord has made, and these
are the times to which God has decided we shall live.
And the guy who spoke those words joins me. Zach Abraham,
Chief Investments for Bulwart Capital Management's my brother.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, sir, how are you?
Speaker 1: How are you good? Yours right and high? We were
chatting before the show about your Mariners and apparently they're
good Christian men and a bunch of Christian Jesus lovers
on the team, and yeah, and before we get to
the AI stuff, that's really cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's funny because my boys are both athletes,
and my daughter doesn't she couldn't give a plug nickel
about sports, but but she's a singer. But the boys
are athletes. They both been baseball players, and I wasn't
really a baseball player growing up. But you know, anytime
you watch your kids do something, you get into it.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm a sports fan in general.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: My wife loves to watch her son's play, but not
into sports anyway. Obviously, the Mariners are doing really well,
which if anybody knows anything about Seattle, it's a very
complicated feeling because marin or fandom. I've equated it a
lot to like the Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 1: So I was.
Speaker 2: Kidnapped at birth and I've been mistreated and kept in
a basement for forty three years. So when you're when
you're let out, You're you're you're really enthusiastic, but you
also don't fully believe it, like you're waiting for the
other shoot to drop right. So no, but it's really
just it's really captured, and I think the Jesus aspect
of it, so many of the guys being Christians and
being outspoken about their faith. It's just kind of captured
our family's imagination. So my wife got on and got
the whole family tickets and we're going to the game.
We're gonna brave the belly of the Beast. Like I
was joking with you, my kids are probably going to
see their first fenty Lean explain.
Speaker 1: That people know what that is. That's the people who
look like zombies leaning over the middle that no human
being can lean over head, just about touching the round,
arms touching the ground, leanding back and forth, moaning.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, or just not even making any sense. It's
it's literally as if they've been folded in the half
and there and and they're passed out but still standing
up being folded in half. It's it's very bizarre. It's
very dystopian. That's the best way I can describe it.
Where you're walking around going people don't think this is
a problem. It's it's it's it's bizarre. But anyway, I
hope you have a fun time with the with the kids.
And I've never been to a never been to a
baseball playoff game, and I guess most people living in
Seattle haven't, so it'll be a first for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for real. And you get this, uh, this little
AI bit. I get the bart about jobs changing who works.
Some jobs are good to fan of Vanish. I need
you to explain to a degree the relationship between inflation
and AI. And I got the productivity game part of that.
I want you to do that in a second. And
then I, I don't know, did you see the Walmart
stock in what happened to it? With a did you
see this bump? To me, this is insanity in itself.
This is insanity in of itself. So we'll talk with
Zach about this in a second. Hey, don't have this
happen to you. Is this is the thing you never
ever want to happen. Is you think you have something
you don't have and you really really need it, such
as driving through the desert. So let's say you're driving
Los Angeles to Vegas, not a long drive, but it's
two o'clock in the morning. It's flat tire, No big
got the spare tire. But you don't. Don't do that.
Do not arrive out of the country somewhere and get
off the airplane and walk into customs and they say
passport please you to go.
Speaker 2: My what?
Speaker 1: Don't let that happen. Do not get caught with that
your corporate veil. If you've been in business five ten years,
I'm here to tell you I don't care if an
account set it up tax lawyer. You may not have
that corporate veil to protect your personal assets from lawsuits
or losses. You might have your bank not tell you
the shay you don't actually have corporate credit. So here's
how you find out. It's a website. It's gobvisible dot com,
renew Obligation consultation. They'll tell you if you have the
corporate veil. If you don't, in seven easy steps, they'll
fix it for you. And the cost on that is
negligible in comparison to the ROI of not getting caught
with your pantalones down with no passports in a foreign
country and no spare tire. Go visible dot com. So Zach,
explain this to me. The AI get the job killer thing.
But you talked about the relationship between AI and inflation
productivity gain, So fill us in on this.
Speaker 2: So if we think about inflation, so oftentimes we think
about it from the monetary side, right, or the government side,
the treasury right, government degradation of currency value too much
to all that kind of stuff. But if you think
about it, let's say we looked at the process of
building a home, or refining oil, or any type of
process that makes any type of good that we need
on a regular basis. If we had some type of
technological breakthrough that reduced the cost of production in that
good by let's say thirty to fifty percent, that is
the massive deflationary pressure, right, because while the currency may
be being degraded because of this technological breakthrough, the cost
of this good still went down thirty percent. That is
a right There's because, like I said, we never think
about that side of inflation. But if you can bring
down through technological innovation, the cost of production faster than
the currency right debasement, then you can actually have very
large currency debasement and not have significant inflation. Does that
make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that does, right, So it's.
Speaker 2: But you're you're addressing it. It's just odd because we
don't usually have a lever to pull like that, right,
there's not usually a lever that we can just pull
in the economy and increase productivity by fifteen or twenty percent.
AI appears like it's going to do just that. Now.
Where I think that there's a lot of conflating going
on is right now the markets. Now, I think the
guys we've got to look at AI in kind of
two different lenses. Right, there are investors that are buying
the stocks. Then there are the hyperscalers and the tech
companies that are making the hard investments. Okay, they're two
different worlds. The tech companies and the investors making the
hard investments. They don't really care what they're paying. They
know they're overpaying for a lot of these assets, and
you know the VC model. They're like, hey, we're going
to make nine, we're going to make one hundred bets.
If ninety four of them don't pay off, that's fine.
We can't afford not to be involved in the four
the do right, right, So that's the way they're playing it.
So what they're doing makes sense to me. I think
investors are really making a mistake because a they don't
realize that is going on. And I think that's proof.
And you hear Jeff Bezos say that, yes, AI is
a bubble, but the tech is real. But yes, he
said it's a bubble. Okay, then you hear talking heads
like Kramer on CNBC saying it's not a bubble. I'm
going to take Bethos's word a lot more. I'm going
to listen to bethos opinion on that far more before
I listen to the nit twit. You know, Kramer and
his ilk on CNBC and why he said it's a
bubble is, of course it's a bubble. These guys know
they're paying way too much for these assets. It's the
endgame that they're concerned about, right. I don't think investors
realize that. Meaning. I think investors are looking at this
like this is the Internet where it's going to be
Because if you think about the Internet, the Internet was
probably only bad for a very small fraction of businesses.
One that comes to mind would be travel agencies, right,
but if you look at virtually every other business, it
immediately opened up that business to sell its product to
everybody in the world at one time. So it really
was this all benefit virtually no cost. Development. AI is
completely different. AI is going to benefit as many tech
companies as the REX. Probably less companies will benefit from
AI than at REX. It's going to erode motes around
companies because all of a sudden, this great technological innovation
and these great programmers, right, we now will have access
all of us will have access to a programmer that
far exceeds the capability of the best programmers of Microsoft. Yep. Right,
So that is that is not a competitive advantage for Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's crazy because it was Alex put up
a video of a bomber back in ninety nine or
two thousand, I think it was, and he was on
stage addressing with peoples.
Speaker 4: What's a what's let's sick you growlt of Microsoft?
Speaker 1: How do we turn it around?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just a developers, developers, develop person.
Speaker 1: He's just stomping around the stage, just sweat trip from
developed person.
Speaker 2: You like.
Speaker 1: People are shattered because they're afraid he's gonna hit him
in the front developers.
Speaker 3: And that was.
Speaker 1: He's he's a nice guy. He's a nice guy, but dude,
he is he gets wacky gorilla?
Speaker 2: Is he is so okay? So that was all I
was going to ask you. I look at him, and
I'm like, you're weird me out, man, Like you're weird
me out? He is? You worked for him though, you
think he's a you think he was a good boss.
Speaker 1: I mean I worked some levels down from him. But yeah, yeah,
I was in more than one bomber meeting and yeah,
good boss.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, really cool guy. Uh. He came
up to me once and they presented some data that
a research team I had to do on on television
viewing habits, and one of the execs at MSN said, Hey, Steve,
this is Todd Herman much you mean him? Because you
know what Juliane told me.
Speaker 4: You're thinking about leaving the company. You're not going anywhere, man,
You'll love having you here. This is good, this good
stuff you're doing over an emision video.
Speaker 1: You're not going anywhere. Shaking me by the shoulders. Good
to meet you, Todd Herman. And I'm like, damn, he's
so that's not an act, No, that's real. And then
later he's like, what's the guy's name again? This because
and but he's a very exerbertant dude, I'll tell you this,
and then we got to get back on track.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Now, this came to me from a very senior executive
who worked next door to him and did deals with
him that he at one point took a unopened can
of diet coke and and threw it full force boom,
smacked this guy upside the noggin. And this was a
deal over AOL And Steve, to his credit, said oh,
I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that. And Yo, man,
I'm sorry. I was like, what are I And then
there was one big senior lawyer in the room, and
the senior lawyer said, I think actually, what you meant,
Steve is you now have a job for life and
as much equity as you'll ever want in anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So that exuberance apparently could go the other way.
Speaker 2: The guy who told me that, and that gentleman's name
was Sati Nadala.
Speaker 1: Nope, nope, nope, nope. Okay, So now that's interesting because
Yeahbamba was screaming, developer, developer, developer, no longer competitive advantage.
I saw this thing with Walmart, and I had to
I almost called you, because I almost felt like you
because I was giggling and laughing about this. So let
me bring this up in just a second. I once
asked Tim Krukshank about Walmart. I asked him, Hey, Tim,
if Walmart came and said, hey, we'll sell your coffee,
but you got to remove the God part of the
God Country team, what would you say? And Tim said
non negotiable. Nope, that is a no. We'll never do that. Now.
Would he like to be in Walmart? Sure, he thinks,
until Walmart comes along and says, is, so, you know what,
we need you to sell the coffee for ten cents
a bag, and he can't do that because it's such
high quality coffee. Tim's team is mentored by a coffee
legend named Dave Stewart, who started Seattle's Best Coffee. That's
why it's such which camera huge hike dis quant okay,
huge high quality. Hey, look it's as this is my
ninth cup of coffee today, A right, so give me
a break. That's why it's such high quality. He mentors
the team. On the other roasts. Here's a little secret
for you. I am all into the Golden Age roast.
That is a creamier roast to me, I think my
wife loves it too. We're visiting on this. But if
you want to get juiced, full on juiced like in
your let's say that you choose caffeinated gum or something
that's like really high energy gum. Because I have a
friend of mine who choose gum like that.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who does that. Then get door Kicker,
the door Kicker brand, Light Roast, Huge Kickbonefrog Cooffee dot
com slash tide. These Pumo code tied to get ten
percent off your first purchase, fifteen percent of subscription coffee
Bonefrog Coffee dot Com slash Todd so Zach, I almost
called you because I was giggling. Walmart stock hits all
time high after announcing partnership with open Ai. And here's
here's the big plug. Walmart stock rows nearly five percent
on Tuesday in an all the time closing high of
one hundred and seven dollars twenty one cents. Every of
the company we can the latest to announce a partnership
with open Ai. Walmart said customers be able to shop
and purchase items directly on the chat GPT platform using
instant checkouts Additionally, on the flagship Walmart website and Sam's
Club's website, customers be able to interact with chet GPT
conversationally the search bar. I'm grim Milestone. There's stock rows
because people can chat with the chatbot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't I'd have to look at the
market cap. But to put that in perspective, their stock rows,
let's see five six hundred thirty to forty billion dollars
because they did a deal with open Ai. Now, remember Walmart.
Walmart sells things.
Speaker 1: Cheap, right, that's what they do, right, So.
Speaker 2: AI will probably help them squeeze a little more margin
out of places at some point. But yeah, I and
and this is Look the flip side of this is
and you know I've been talking about this for quite
some time, but look what's going on in gold and
silver right now. Silver just crossed over the fifty dollars
level for the first time since nineteen eighty, So it's
making a new altime I since nineteen eighty, gold over
four thousand dollars now it's forty two hundred actually as
of today. What I think the greatest challenge at this
point right now is separating wheat from chas, meaning you're
at this point now, and I think that it could
get it could it could get substantially more crazy. You
could also be at a breaking point right now because
when you see retailers adding thirty to forty billion in
market cap based on an announcement that they're doing something
with an AI company like thirty to four Walmart, I
don't think generates thirty to forty billion dollars in profit
a year, So you know these are just ludicrous moves.
It also points to how expensive these corporations have gotten.
Meaning think about it, So if Walmart's stock goes up
five percent, that's like greater than the equivalent of profit
they generate in a year.
Speaker 1: I mean, think make sense from a press release? These
a press release profits on the stock, ye wouldn't you ever?
I know that there's rules. We all know this. You
work for a public company. This rules is how you
can buy and sell if you're senior executive. I was
sold everything that came from the bump on this because
you talk about vapor this. I mean, okay, well, they
may be sell now three for one versus two for
one on some paper tonnels. I'll take the three for
one chet GPT says that's the best deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and look here here's the I would rather
buy anything else too, And I agree with you. Here's
here's the pernicious problem with bubbles. Bubbles always last long
enough to convince virtually everybody, or via desperation, compel everybody
to get in. Once everybody is in, the door gets shut,
the lock gets flipped, and then it's carnage.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is a question I have. Those institutional investors,
those vcs people don't understand the scope of what it's
like to have a three billion dollar portfolio play with.
So hey, you know, four hundred million here, four million there,
buy some you know, smaller investments, and we know we're
overpaying for ninety percent of this stuff, but we get
the five percent bump, we pay ourselves back, and we
get a hundred banger okayndred time return, so we're good.
Do they close the door purposely? Did they say, okay,
that's it, this is now full on bubble. Everybody who's
going to get in gets in. Is Do they come
back and say, okay, time to get out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they say time to get out now. A lot
of times though that, you know, a lot of times
it'll keep spinning right, so the upward momentum will carry it,
and so they'll get out before the penultimate top. But yeah,
I mean they And this is common play in investing,
especially in late stage investing when you get institutional investors,
because this market is very easy to front run in
the sense that if I know that any type of
transaction is coming and that transaction could be correlated to
AI in any way, I know to go along that
stock because the idiocy in this market will bid it up,
just like it bid up anything with dot Com in
nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Right yep.
Speaker 2: And look, just like in ninety nine, some of these
things will be real and will reach incredible heights. It's
just it's going to be much more of am expegged
than nineteen nine. The nineteen ninety nine The technology is
substantially different. But my point in saying this is I
think that this is going to be one of the
most pernicious and perhaps the most pernicious asset bubble of
all time, because I think that the head fake is tech,
meaning in previous bubbles you just had to avoid what
was the bubble. In this bubble, not only do you
need to avoid what the bubble is, but you need
to avoid what the bubble is going to cause. And
I think what the bubble is going to eventually cause
when all of this money and all this nonsensical stuff
starts heading for the exits, it's, in my opinion, it's
going to flow into real assets, and I think it
could make the rises you've seen in gold and silver
look elementary.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that when I look at the US stock
market and I start looking at farmland, I start looking
at acreage up against you know, with rivers going through it,
or up against national forests. I start looking at those
things that I'm like, you know, what's really undervalued in
this mark? Real assets. So here we are, now, what
about nine months into this year, nine and a half
months into this year, gold mining stocks are up one
hundred and thirty percent year to date. Right, you know
that we've been talking about this for a long time. Right,
they're saying, hey, guys, eventually the play is going to
be gold and silver because central banks are going to
have to sterilize their US dollars denominated risk and it's
kind of a mechanical need. How high that's going to
push gold we don't know, but the point or the
opportunity here is these gold mining stocks are priced as
if they are dead and they are about to get
sold for scrap. Nothing could be further for the truth,
the sector is in better financial health than at any
point in the last forty years. We think there's tremendous
upside here. I still think that you're probably in the
first two innings of the move in those stocks, because
they're still despite the factor up one hundred and thirty
percent year to date. They're cheaper than when they came
in the year because of the rise in gold. So
you know, these stocks are people like, oh, it's run
too much. On a fundamental basis, these stocks are dirt
cheap at twenty eight hundred dollars gold, let alone four thousand. Hey,
this is.
Speaker 1: Explain something on your Twitter accounts that I wanted to
have you explain further. I'll get to that in a second.
Because you don't often go around calling people. I don't
know if you know this guy, but this man is
an idiot.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, he's a dangerous guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll explained that. Then I want to touch on
in point of comparison gold gold mining gold miners. The
people who sell the pick axes to the gold miners.
To something that happened in crypto that the Wall Journal reported,
and we'll talk about this with Zach Abraham. I was
just telling Zach, we're going back down. We got our
house secured, got the house sitter. One of our guys,
one of our friends, is gonna come over and do
some fishing, et cetera. One of our military buddies I
didn't serve, but he did it is going to come
and take over the house for a little while. And
we're headed down to renew Healthcare December twelfth through the seventeenth.
And I think I chat the other day. I was
thinking about doing something aesthetic, Zach. I'm gonna take my
headphones off. Do you think my ears? I get the
stem cells in my ears to get rid of the wrinkles. No,
it really works. Like just take a look at my ear, Zach.
Speaker 2: I want to I'd rather have I like him doing
jack them straight into my brain.
Speaker 1: I mean, just grow the brain the wrinkles, because I'm
not going to get the cow tosin in my face,
the both tox and I see, I like my wrinkles.
But I was thinking about for the people Zach, it's
for the people. I want the people to see the change.
I'm going to get a bookmark MRI so you can see.
You will literally see the change in my back since
it went down. The new tissue that's grown. I know
it has because my back is insanely better. So if
you can make it down there for treatment, come down
with us. We did this live free webinar and there
were like forty five people in that call, and there
were eighty people who scheduled to go there. Now respond
they want a second webinar because they didn't make the
first one. So there's gonna be a lot of listeners
dash viewers down there. So if it's ed, you don't
need to tell us. That stuff is embarrassing for people.
But simpsos are fantastic and that getting the use of
your hands back arthritis. They've reset people's entire immune systems.
It works on myocarditis and paracarditis because stem cells are
that amazing. Go to renew r e n ue dot Healthcare.
That's renew dot Healthcare. It's support. You're telling me you're
part of the Todd Hermershell family. So, Zach, we got this.
Anthony Popliano Anthony Populiano says gold has been a disastrous
investment since twenty twenty, It's lost eighty four percent of
its purchasing power compared to a finite sound money asset
like bitcoin. Gold has collapsed eighty four percent in bitcoin
term since twenty twenty. And Zach Abram, chief and best
of boer Kapa watchment my friend and brother wrote back,
this man is an idiot. Follow at your own risk,
too stupid to be embarrassed. So I'm going to talk
about bitcoin here and excepter at least crypto help unfold
that little bit his idiocy.
Speaker 2: Well, so, first of all, that guy has been saying
ridiculous stuff that I believe that he knows to be
not true for a really long time. I don't usually
interact with people like that, but when it comes to
people that are todd and I know you're right there
with me, I have a deep anger, resentment, and distrust
and vitriolic dislike for Charlatan's anybody that is knowingly peddling
nonsense to people to benefit themselves. I just my spirit
rages at them. Right, and what he said there is
just a crime on so many levels. First of all,
talking about any asset in bitcoin terms is disgustingly irresponsible.
Bitcoin hasn't been around for more than fifteen years, so
to talk about price appreciation and other assets in it
turns its terms is it's a ridiculous It's just it's
just ridiculous. It is the height of your responsibility. It's
a horrible comp And the reason it's a horrible comp
is because it's central banks that are driving the price
of gold, and central banks purchases of gold have absolutely
nothing to do with the value of bitcoin or the right.
And the reason I can say that is, like, there's
so many hurdles. First of all, you can't compare bitcoin
to even money until bitcoin, until you are allowed to
pay your US federal income taxes in bitcoin, Okay, Like
it's silly to be an American living in America and
looking at bitcoin in dollar terms. If you can't pay
your taxes in bitcoin now, you can still cash it
in and get dollars. And I'm not saying that's a
bad idea to own bitcoin. We own it. We've owned
some very small amount and we've made a lot of
money trading it. I'm not anti bitcoin. What I am
anti is people making these types of statements. The other
thing he's not telling you is that what happened during
bitcoin to bitcoin during twenty twenty, I can't remember how
much it went, but I believe it had a collapse
of eighty five percent. Okay. Over that same period of time,
gold went down like fifteen or twenty. So when you
go to the bottom and you go, oh, it's outperformed
it since then, and I'm like, well, yeah, but it
lost eighty five percent right before. Right, So it's what
we call a chart crime. Meaning there's this old joke
in finance, which is you can pick the debate, right,
you can pick the assets, meaning you can pick the
two stocks we're comparing, or you can pick the two
assets that were comparing. So long as I get to
pick the timeline, I win every time. Right, And that's
what that's what I despise, because what do you own
gold for? You own gold to be a safe haven asset? Right, Well,
if during a tremendous time of turmoil, your safe pat
haven asset loses eighty five percent of its value and
mine loses ten, I in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Plus if stuff gets really really bad and
you onn physical gold, as you said before, you can
throw it at people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well here here's the other thing. Here's another big
part of and look, look, I do not think bitcoin
is a ponzi scheme. I think that owning it in
a small amount it makes perfect sense. But for these
people out there saying, oh, it's one of the same
and gold's not, you know, is bitcoin does all these
things that gold doesn't. Okay, put all that aside, because
that can be true or not. And the reason it
doesn't have to be true is you can have a
hard gold backed cryptocurrency that trades on the blockchain, so
you can get the advantages of both fully, right, So
I don't buy this one or the other thing. But
more importantly, it's it's utility. What is the intrinsic value
of bitcoin. It's zero. Now, there are people that will
want to fight me for saying that, But what I
mean by the intrinsic value is bitcoin does not become
any more useful to anybody using it. If it's trading
at fifty thousand dollars a bitcoin or five hundred thousand
dollars a bitcoin, it doesn't matter. Okay, when you flip
over and look at gold, if gold all of a
sudden started trading at one hundred and two hundred dollars
an ounce. You would see it used all over the
place for applications, yeah right. You'd see it used in electronics.
You'd see it used in maritime things, right, to seal
things from corrosion and saltwater decay and all that kind
of stuff. So they now agreanted, that's a long ways
away from its price. So what it shows you is gold.
Is it this whole idea that gold is valuable because
a bunch of idiots stand around it and say it is.
I mean, look, it takes some agreement in terms of price,
and the fact that we all think it's valuable has
something to do with it. But if it wasn't a
monetary based value, if it wasn't gold, it would still
have substantial value. It doesn't corrode, it doesn't shrink, it
never goes anywhere, right, So there's tremendous value in something
like that, and the applications could be endless. So it's
just that guy is around enough people. I know a
business partner of his, so I'm not speaking out of
school out of turn. I know the guy pretty well.
He is around enough smart people that know better when
he says something like that, he's a bad actor. He
knows it's nonsense, and he's saying it. He's talking his.
Speaker 1: Own book, incredit and talking his own book meaning helping himself.
Got it. Yes, So I want to compare this to
something the Walshirt Journal wrote, and this is very, very
disturbing to me. You and I have made a habits
and when we see frauds in the Trump administration, we're
going to say something. I'm not saying this came from
the Trump administration. I don't know that to be the case.
But you want to talk about controlling the timing of something. Wow,
something happened when President Trump announced one hundred percent tariffs
against China. If you believe those are going to last.
There are people who think, once again, this is carrot
and stick Trump. But this requires a little bit of
discussion around krip and what just happened. We'll do that
with Zach Abrahamam just a second, and just a quick
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slash todd, so Zach. This is the Wall Street Journal
writing a historic crypto selloff erased nineteen billion dollars, but
two accounts made one hundred and sixty million, and it's
comparing us to some big days in crypto previously. September seven,
twenty twenty one, El Salvador makes Bitcoin national currency. You
see that bump. November eight, twenty twenty two, ftx exchange collapses,
and now we see this bump. October ten, twenty twenty five,
Trump's surprise announcement of one hundred percent tariffs against China,
and we saw this massive bump, nineteen billion dollars erased.
And then the journal writes this, President Trump surprised announcedment
one hundred percent tariffs against China, and Friday triggered a
cryptocurrency selloff that wiped out more than nineteen billion in
leverage positions. Two accounts that placed bets against the market
minutes before the news broke scored a one hundred and
sixty million dollar windfall. You talk about controlling the timing.
That makes me feel very very suspicious as to what
Jared Kirshner, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that
part out loud about what someone did, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I looked at so to be fair, yeah,
we had been building a short position in our portfolio.
Oh it was you for the no no, no, no,
not on crypto, not on crypto. We've been building a
short position, actually long volatility. So we believed that for
a couple for a couple of different reasons, we believed
that the market was about ready to go through a
volatility about We talked about it on our show quite
a bit so, so starting about two and a half
weeks ago, we started building a volatility position and we
built it fairly large. It was six percent of the
portfolio by the time Friday hit, and that position in
a single day for US was up fifteen percent. So
to be fair to those guys, there were a significant
amount of institutional investors, including ourselves, professional investors, dire for
a variety of different reasons, we're looking for some volatility
to hit the market, and we were correct. It's the
timing of those trades, right. So if you go back
and look at our trades. We were building that short
position over a two week period of time. We didn't
buy it fifteen minutes before it hit, right, So there
is no way, and I will just tell you right now,
there's absolutely no way that trade happened without insider trading
one hundred percent. It just you can look at the
size of it. You can look at the way they
get it, the aggressive nature. They knew something. There were
also tons there were massive amounts of money made betting
long volatility and just short the markets on Friday of
trades that got entered fifteen minutes before the announcement got made.
And so you know, there's grift all over the place.
It's almost impossible to pend it on anybody because you know,
and and here's why. And this is one of the
reasons that I wasn't like some people going off on
the on Biden or Obama when this happens, just because
understanding investing, right, Like, you know, maybe that maybe fifty
people in the White House knew that that was going
to happen, right, And maybe one of them is talking
on the phone to their sister in law or their
brother in law when that news comes across, and they
inadvertently just like, oh, no, we're ramping up trade trade tariffs.
And then that person calls their husband that works on
a trading floor and they're do you know what I'm saying?
Like it it it. It is nefarious and it's disgusting
and it needs to get rooted out. But always be
careful when you point to you know, there will be
people saying, oh, that's because the Trump administration is corrupt.
There are people that would have said it about the
Biden administration. Typically thin like that just get out and
crooked people trade on them. You know what concerns me
more wish what I wish they'd look into is, you know,
the substantial trade short bets that went in on the
airlines right before twenty eleven hit, Right, That's that's some
stuff I'd really like to I'd like to see. But yeah,
I mean it's crooked, but you know, we see this
all over the economy. There's one other thing too that
I've heard and I love a lot of the work
that Tucker does, and I've heard him go off going
off on short sellers and how short sellers are evil
and all that kind of stuff. I really wish that
he would talk to somebody because he couldn't be further
off really, and let me yeah, let me just tell
you there is nobody in the marketplace that is taking
more risk than short sellers. Okay, especially in this market.
I mean, go look what this market does to stocks.
I mean it'll drive you know, it throws it tax
on thirty to forty billion market cap on Walmart just
because they say they're talking it, you know, chat GPT.
I'll tell you what short sellers are. Short sellers are
the equivalent of crawdads or lobsters in an aquarium. Right,
they keep it clean. They eat the dead bodies that
float to the bottom. They keep it clean. If you
go look at the vast majority of financial frauds in
this country, they've never been uncovered by the SEC. They've
been uncovered by short sellers. And the reason why is
because it's so risky at which means what the best research.
The guys that know the most out there are the
short sellers. So when your now, are there guys that
will go out there and make a short story against
the company just to drive the stock down in an
illegal fashion and make some money off it. Yes, but
they are the vast minority short selling is incredibly difficult
and it should be legal. It is part of a
balanced ecosystem in the market, and it literally is how
every Enron got uncovered by uncovered by a short seller.
The Harry Bark popolists, the analysts that had the banks
dead to rights as early as two thousand and three
that these collateralized dead obligations were going to go down.
He uncovered Bernie madeoff his early as two thousand and two,
two thousand and three, he was sending letters to the
SEC telling them Bernie madeof was a fraud. You look
at it. Had the had regulators listened to short sellers,
eighty percent of the financial fraud that we've seen in
this country wouldn't have happened. So when you hear people
talking about whoever you hear out there that's in the know,
right if they're in the industry, like he was interviewing
the head guy that Melton, the guy that Trump pardoned
that had the ev company that was running on hydrogen,
the semi trucks. I'm forgetting what the name of it was.
But there was some ways about the way they went
after him that I don't think was fair. But also
like Tucker was not getting the straight story from this guy.
That guy engaged in a lot of shady stuff. Like
at the time, before it even made the news, I
was sitting there going, man, this thing smells like a fraud.
So anyway, I didn't mean to derail as No.
Speaker 1: You that's really interesting. I never thought about that, of
thinking of short feeders or short sellers as bad people.
I never thought that way. I said, it was a
technique that I still to this day intermittently understand really
really well. And then sometimes I have to have explained
to me like I'm two again, because I think it's
a I think it's an art and a science. So
it just it's interesting to know that, you know.
Speaker 2: It's also it's also a tremendous it's also a tremendous tool.
Like you know, one of the things that we talk
to our clients about now, Thank goodness, we have years
like you know, grabbing this year where you're up better
than thirty percent and you're beating the market. But you know,
the vast majority of our clients are retired, So what
do they need. They need good market gains and they
need productivity, but they need to do it in such
a way that you're taking the worst case scenario off
the table, right, Well, last week was a perfect example.
Had the worst case scenario occurred, that's six percent position
we made fifteen percent on in a day, that long
volatility position. Like if you would have looked at that position,
like back during COVID, that position probably would have tripled
in size. So what I mean is our accounts could
have taken a hit, but that short position alone, had
the worst case scenario occurred, would have probably limited that
hit to like a fifteen percent hit. And that would
have been like if the market was down sixty five, right,
So the.
Speaker 1: Hedges you create, it just bowls my mind.
Speaker 2: Hedge upon hedge, it's it's you got to be varied
with them because and here's the other side of it, right,
hedges are just like insurance, meaning most of them won't
get used, right, So most of them will take small
losses on. And what you hope is that you're being
productive enough in the other parts of the portfolio to
make up for that. But when they come in handy,
you know, like during COVID, right, market drops thirty six
percent in five weeks, our portfolios were down seven So
and that is purely due to our ability to shorten.
So when you sit there and you throw this blanket
over a section, I will tell you, generally speaking, if
you show me investors that run a short fund or
a long short fund, but specifically a short fund, I
will tell you that there is a higher percentage of
investors who are good, upright guys running short only funds
than guys that are running long only funds. That's fast, high,
higher percentage of non crook, good honest guys. And so
I just I've watched short short sellers get completely mischaracterized
by a guy that I like in respect, like Tucker,
like Tucker Carlson Night. I think he's getting fed bad
information from bad people.
Speaker 1: It happens, and there's something that happens when people get
freed from the mockingbird media, they can do whatever they want.
The mind opens and they just want to chat about everything.
I've seen that happen time and time and time again.
I went through it early in my career when I
wasn't doing talk radio more in the Internet was wild
and we were cursing and everything on the air, and
that's what we did. So got that. Thank you, my brother,
great to have wise counsel with you. God bless you
and the Bypocks and the family and everybody back there.
Be careful at the game. We do cow tipping and
red neckline. You know, cow falls asleep and you knock
it over and run away. Don't do that to the
fentanyl leaders.
Speaker 2: Oh, we would never do it. Well, there goes my
weekend plan.
Speaker 1: That's the least the least it all right, brother Jo
the game. God bless you. This is the Todd Hermitshew.
Please go be well, be strong, be kind, please make
every effort to walk in the light of Christ.