June 22nd Episode
01:15:09 Share

Welcome to Money Talks. I'm really glad you're with us. And I think this is one of those shows you should tell your friends about. Why? Because we've got Tony Greer teaching macro. He's joining us now. I just want to give you a little bit of background. Tony, on November 14th, put the all clear sign for the markets and more than that.

He was incredibly aggressive in telling people the signs are there. You should get into the stock market. Further on, he also doubled up on that, obviously done exceptionally well. So, I mean, the question is what's going to happen next? I think you're going to find the interview with Tony Greer absolutely fascinating. Plus, though, we're talking about the capital gains exemption, you know, the change in the taxes, all of that stuff. Well, I've been distressed that we have not talked about the impact on the medical community.

And I think, you know, Canadians tell me, hey, I care about medical stuff. Well, you should be caring about the impact of the capital gains increase because it has a direct impact on what 60% of our doctors plus some other things about the impact of taxes on

On patient care, though, that's the key. Dr. Kevin MacLeod is going to be with me. And I'll tell you, it's going to be an eye-opener for a lot of people. Plus, we've got Ozzie with me. I've got Mike Levy. I've got, of course, Victor Adair batting cleanup for us. I got a goofy award, shocking stat. You know the drill. Stay with us. But first, once a debate over any issue becomes politicized, I think meaningful dialogue ceases.

I mean, but then again, you know, usually in these political debates, the goal isn't really meaningful discussion, but rather it's to manipulate us. And I think we're seeing another vivid example with the capital gains tax debate. The government continues to mislead the public by stating it only impacts 0.13 of a percent of the population. Well, that's simply not true, as many analysts and economists have pointed out. But it doesn't stop the finance minister and the prime minister for continuing to repeat it.

And they're doing it with the most pejorative language in order to stoke class warfare divisions. But the thing is, I think this debate over capital gains reflects so many profound political and ideological divisions in the country.

I mean, some people feel it's unfair that some people have ended up with more money and assets than others. For them, merit and hard work, entrepreneurship or sacrifices for training for years doesn't figure into the debate. Others are outraged by what they perceive as the government punishing success.

And I think that's one of the pejorative that comes out when they say one group of people isn't paying their fair share. And by the way, when you talk about the top income earners, this is despite the latest numbers from StatsCan showing that the top 10% of income earners, and that starts at $106,000. I don't think many of us think that's rich, but $106,000 pay 54.4% of all income tax collected.

And this is the environment that we're working in. The point, though, is that there's not going to be any reconciling those two sets of opinions, those two groups. And by the way, but there's another sizable group that so far is ignored, I think, by much or most of the commentary, if not all, and economists. And that is there's millions of Canadians who oppose paying even a dollar more in tax

And it's because of the relentless evidence of government wasting and waste and inefficiency. You know, this week, the RCMP stated they have numerous ongoing investigations into how our tax dollars are spent. I mean, a rive can immediately comes to mind, but so do questionable relationships like this week's revelation that Stephen Guilbeault, the environment minister, is a current shareholder in the venture capital investment firm Cycle Capital.

whose companies got over $200 million from the Sustainable Development Technologies Canada Fund. By the way, this was on top of one of their directors having to resign last November after it was revealed that she had approved a payment exceeding $200,000 in subsidies to a private firm she led. I mean, billions of dollars are spent without following the government's own contracting rules. And they do it with politically connected businesses

They get hundreds of millions of taxpayers funded contracts. I mean, think about this. Audits found that 186 conflicts of interest by the board of the government sustainable development technology Canada fund.

I mean, there's other things too. There's other things that people consider a white race, like $6,000 per night hotel rooms, or they take offense that $223,000 tax dollars was spent on in-flight food on the Prime Minister's six-day Asian trip last year. I mean, there's no shortage of other examples. But some people are saying no more, no matter what the tax.

They don't want to give any more. If it's a carbon tax, a capital gains tax, a net tax, no more influences. Not another dollar to government. Hey, by the way, I check out a lot of economists in academia who are weighing in on the capital gains increase. They don't show any sign that they understand that sentiment. But let me repeat, no reconciling the different sides.

There is no meaningful dialogue, but there will be consequences. As Harley Finkelstein, he's the president of Shopify, one of Canada's most successful firms, says, this isn't the way to unite and move us forward. This is divisive and political. Well, that's consistent with the playbook that Joel Lightbound, he's a liberal MP in Quebec, he said, from a positive and unifying approach, the decision was made to wedge and divide.

Well, I mean, that certainly was apparent during COVID, but it continues with this rhetoric surrounding the capital gains increase and suggestion that some people aren't paying what's the fair share amount. But we're talking about 14.6 million Canadians, as University of Calgary economist Jack Mintz says.

One key last point, though, to note. The philosophical divide is even further illustrated by the finance minister who thinks that Canada's social safety net is secured through taxation. Specifically, in her words, getting the wealthiest Canadians to pay their fair share.

And maybe that explains why the government has paid far more attention to taxation and wealth redistribution than putting policies in place that enhance productivity or attract capital. On the other side, there are people like myself who think that a strong economy founded on capital investment, productivity per capita, entrepreneurship, innovation, that's the foundation that will support our social safety net, our standard of living, our charitable giving.

So as I say, I don't see any reconciliation between these various sides that I think the capital gains taxation issue has certainly brought to the forefront. Hey, stay with us. There's so much more planned for you. I want to remind you to go to Mike'sMoneyTalks.ca and sign up for five minutes with Mike. Also, I want to invite you to go to Money Talks tweets, but see us on Facebook. Yeah, Facebook, Michael Campbell's Money Talks on Facebook, but join us on Twitter.

We have our own YouTube channel. We put up everything up there. So go to YouTube and just type in Michael Campbell's Money Talks. You'll see my old face smiling back at you. But all sorts of ways to access what we're doing on Money Talks and the excellent guests. And speaking of excellent guests, we've got several coming up. ♪

After over 40 years of doing this, one of the things I love about Money Talks is getting a chance to talk to some true experts. And Tony Greer is right at the top of my list. He founded TG Macro, by the way, in August. I think it was 2016. But the thing was this, independent research firm, but he got to combine 25 years of trading.

15 years of writing a daily newsletter and he put it on the one platform. And I can't tell you how important I think it is to obviously have the analytical background, but to have the trading background that creates a whole bunch of other things. I mean, I hate to use things like feel for example, but, but,

recognition. I've seen that pattern before. I've been in this story before. All of those kinds of stuff. So he takes this fundamental approach, a technical analysis approach, behavioral analysis, you know, and looks at the big picture and drills down into what he thinks his subscribers should be doing. Tony, thank you for finding time. Mike, I'm always honored to be on your show. It's great to see you, man. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. Thanks. I'm doing well. Better for having you on as summer hits though. I'm always happy. The warmer weather's finally hit, you know, and everybody kind of lightens up in a better mood. You know, it's interesting with the markets though, too. Look,

look at this huge sea of uncertainty that we're looking at. You know, one of the things I, you know, risk factors. Well, I mean, what's going to happen in the presidential election would be an easy one, but geopolitically has me worried, you know, and whether it's Ukraine, whether it's China, Taiwan, whether it's Gaza. So that's out there. We've had a really interesting move in the market that I know at TG Macro, you guys and the Navigator have been on top of. And let me start with that. I mean,

Look at Nvidia. I mean, come on. That's one of those stocks you look at and you go, God, I wish I bought it on the IPO. What was it? 1999. I know you've written about that. Yeah. Well, you know, it's up 590.

A thousand percent since the IPO, but it's had massive, it has had massive drawdowns since the IPO. I think one of them was 70% from high to low. Right. And nobody can live through that, you know? So the idea that you could have been in it was interesting to entertain and, you know, those aren't really terribly accurate things.

But what's cool about NVIDIA now, Mike, is that your muscle memory is waking up if you live through the dot-com bubble, right? Because we've got stocks going to irrational levels for the sake of going to irrational levels because that's what securities do. So we just had NVIDIA take out the market cap of Apple and Microsoft at $3.3 trillion.

after it splits 10 for one. And then just today, as we speak at two o'clock on June 20th, has shown the potential of having an outside day in NVIDIA, right? Where we open up at a new high, carve a new high, and then settle below the previous day's range. Now, the jury's still out on whether it settles below yesterday's low, which is around 130 and a half. But

Your muscle memory is waking up from this because this is how tops form, right? When we've got the 10 for one split, we've got everybody in retail following this thing, piling in. Everybody's piling in for every reason under the sun. And now we've got this outside day, which oftentimes shows a technical reversal. And we may see NVIDIA go sideways to lower for a little while now.

Jury's still out on that because there have been a couple of outside reversal days down during the rally. So you can't necessarily say that this is the top either. But it's really interesting now that we've eclipsed the market cap of Apple and Microsoft and everybody is remembering back to the 2000 dot com bubble when Cisco, you know, briefly was the biggest stock in the stock market and then collapsed from there.

Right. So, you know, history usually doesn't repeat. It does rhyme. And, um,

This may rhyme a little bit and it may rhyme a lot, right? It may be the peak in NVIDIA and it may be a 20% pullback and you've got a chance to buy it at trend support and then it's gone again. You never know. But when markets get to the sort of absurd levels super quickly, you would think that this is an opportunity for the tradable pullback. And if we've got MAG7 leading everything and taking up such a huge portion of the S&P, we may finally be

For the first time since I went bullish on November 14th and then upsized my bet, we may be at a little bit of a tradable tactical turning point. And that is if this turns out to be the big one in NVIDIA. There's two hours left. We'll still see. But that's how I'm looking at the tape, Mike.

Well, it's interesting, as I said right at the outset, having that kind of background, you know, 25 years, 15 years, you know, you've been in that game a long time. And I do remember the 2000s. My best advice, Tony, nice little anecdotal story. My best advice, my business partner, God, he had a gift for just not getting too much information in his head and he'd just buy something. So he owned Nortel.

And he happens to phone me. And I said, do you still own all your Nortel? He says, yes. I said, hang up. Never phone me again until you sell it. And it was about, so we got one 1850, you know, close to the top.

And, but I had been writing about that too. I said, no, this is insane. You know, when I think three, no, was it three comm that owned Palm Pilot? Anyways, Palm Pilot was worth more than three comm, which is of course ridiculous. Yeah. You know, but I told him to hang up and of course Nortel went to zero. And I bring that up though, to remind people how abrupt the moves can become, you know, when the air comes out of the balloon. And as you say, if you've been around, you sort of go,

Uh-oh, it's getting pretty enthusiastic out there. And then, you know, the old question is, who's left to buy? You know, the 10 for 1 split brought a lot of people in. And I think that was understandable. You know, it's more affordable, feels like it's more affordable at least. And you go, well, who's left in this parade? Is there anybody even negative on this parade? So, yeah, it's just interesting that you say that.

I mean, the whole semiconductor industry, which you've been writing about, too, has been, you know, fascinating. Yes, I'm you know, I'm writing. I'm no expert in semiconductors, Mike. Let me start with that. But I know what's you know, we know what's leading the sector. And I do watch the sector and I've watched it, you know, trade, you know, lag, you know,

And then I watched NVIDIA lead the way. And it's been interesting how the dynamic changes. And it was funny to see post 10 for 1 split, we saw Taiwan Semiconductor take off to a new high. And so Semiconductor sector was kind of outperforming NVIDIA for the last couple of days, which was really, really weird.

And so it's interesting to see now all of a sudden NVIDIA has got this big, you know, huge bar range now that could be an interim top that we might be looking for if the close turns out to be that way. But it's just interesting to see how that pans out versus the semiconductor sector. And all I'm saying is like, I look at the semis like any other sector. Like I look at it like pattern recognition, like that's breaking out. It's following this thing. And these have shown no signs that they're at a top yet.

So you got to kind of just stay with the idea that they can still go up until they demonstrate the ability to go down. And that's why I have my kind of nuts and bolts analysis of –

screening performance at the end of every day, week and month. Because if you look at the performance of Nvidia on every, you know, across all the whole spectrum from every day, week or month, it's only been in the green, right? Double digits up double digit percentages. And by how much is the question. So eventually that thing will start to put in a few negative down days in a row, and then it will have its first negative week in, in,

however many weeks now. And then all of a sudden it'll have his first negative month. And then you'll see like, Oh, I think I see what just happened.

Right. So, so we'll see if that transpires. I'm not saying we're there yet. I'm just saying that the opportunity is the door is open right now, which is a door that hasn't been open at all for months. So that's why I'm kind of really keyed up and excited about it while I'm talking to you here. I've got a position in it. Um, I've been trading it like a maniac and it's been a lot of fun, but that's my muscle memory from trading in the.com bubble waking up. Let me switch gears for a second. Uh,

you've been following the oil market and of course ETFs on that. Just give us your take on the oil market these days. I mean, we had that dip, and was it significant? Was that a buying opportunity? What's the market telling you about that at this point? - Okay, so the dip to me was when we priced in, we had rates falling off of their peak because we had to price in a bit of sort of non-existent inflation.

Again, right. And we had a little bit of a slowdown in manufacturing. And I think we had kind of weak employment data the last time. We just had an air ball in CPI and PPI. Right. So that inflationary sting has been taken out of the market. We just had U.S. two year notes back off, you know, from the high yield of around five percent to four and three quarters during that preseason.

pricing in of deflation period. And during that period, what happens is what I call deflationary hocus pocus. And that's where nothing that you buy changes in price. Your grocery bill doesn't go down. Your gas bill doesn't go down. Your education and your healthcare bill is not going down.

commodities are going to go down for a little while because rates are backing off the highs, right? And if the Fed is leaning towards doing nothing, but they're talking about a potentially data-dependent rate cut

being next, right? So that takes a lot of the sort of sting out of the bond market. And that to me is one of the positive catalysts of the equity market. If there's no downside risk in the bond market, as in dislocation risk on a huge inflation number, the stock market loves it.

Right. Sideways rates, not too much inflation, not too weak a GDP and not too weak of unemployment data. But we're kind of right in the middle and the Fed can stand there with their arms folded. So that's been my sort of thesis for what's going on. So that is why oil backed off. And sorry to go into that. I just wanted to give you the explanation for that deflationary idea. So that's why oil backed off and it backed off into an abyss where it kind of put everybody to sleep. And I think, you know, as.

we tiptoe towards a sort of shakier ground and I'm no geo global political expert, but you know, now we've got Russian ships off the coast of Florida all of a sudden, you know what I mean? And I feel like the oil market has been in a sort of orderly March higher as that has ratcheted up. Right. And we also had this thing where the spreads collapsed into steep

contango when oil backed off this last time when it, when it bottomed at around $70 or so. Right. So the spreads got blown out sort of probably, probably artificially weak with that move. And then right into the last rollover, we had the opposite move happen where all of a sudden front month went streaming into backwardation and

And that's kind of going along in the background as price rallies. So the market's tightened up considerably. We've got, you know, a little bit of conflict going on all over the place. Like I said, you can read the papers about the global political setup. You know what it is. And you can explain it probably way better than I can. I just know what's going on in price. And when you see, you know, we've just got some more data today that showed us that like global gas demand is still firing, you

You know, local gas demand is still firing. So like, you know, that to me is the offset for those recession fears. You know, I don't really start going. We're getting worried about recession unless gas demand really falls off a cliff and energy prices are tumbling kind of thing. So that's kind of what we're feeling out now. You know, and it looks to me like oil is, you know, still marching higher towards the mid 80s.

And I think it feels like it's in that mode where it's maybe wants to be one headline away from a hundred bit again. And we're hoping that that doesn't happen. Yeah. By the way, I just love, and I just want to come back on something. As you said, you hear the story and then you look at this, the price action reflecting it. I just think that's such a key. And again, the combination of sort of the analytical background and the trading background. But you know, I,

I think that's just a wonderful key to, okay, well, let's check out if the market's agreeing with the story I'm hearing. I'm hearing a story every day. Is the market agreeing? Yeah, exactly. You know, when we saw, you know, with rates backing off, we saw gold back off, copper back off, oil backs off with it. And, you know, you take a step back and you're like, oh, okay, this is sort of, you know, the market pricing in a little bit of an econ slowdown, right? That's what the deal is saying. This makes sense.

And then all of a sudden it's like, you know, war drums here, war drums there, but all of a sudden oil 75 bids, 78 bid, 80 bid, you know, and you're like, wow, this is following that narrative now to me, you know, and maybe I'm totally wrong and maybe that's not really what's driving price. But if I can make the excuse that those things are going in lockstep and I can trade it that way, then that to me is what's happening. Yeah.

Let me come back. I should have actually introduced you with this because you've done a lot of really important calls, but I want to come back to you were the guy who put me onto it November 14th. All of a sudden, you were sensing the change, at least in tone, of Jerome Powell, and that became more apparent later, and went bullish. Then you've gone even more bullish. I don't know.

How do you want me to put that? Got even more committed, but made it very clear that you are all in. You told your subscriber, November 14th, I'm in. You re-upped that.

And so when somebody's had their finger on the pulse like that, I think it's important to ask, you know, what do you think now? I mean, I know I'm talking to broad, the general market at this point, but that's what you were talking about. And of course you break down individual groups, but that's what you were talking about. So, you know, I don't know. I'm just throwing it off the top of my head. I can't think of anyone else who was that aggressive at that time with that specific, because people have to remember, boy, we were talking, you know,

about a whole bunch of other stuff, but we certainly weren't arriving at the conclusion. Now is the time. Something big changed, Mike. Something big changed in the narrative, in the data, and the market sent off Roman candles all over my screens, all in one day. So it was really not me being brilliant. It was me just reporting what I'm seeing.

So on that day, if you remember, that was sort of we were battling our way out of some hot inflation data, right? Inflation had been kind of heating up quite a bit again in a resurgence sort of after we got it off the highs, right? So it starts sparking up a bit. And-

We got data that day, headline CPI, that was literally nil. I think it was like zero versus plus 0.2 expectations or whatever. But the market sent a signal like it was saying to the world, okay, inflation, not an issue anymore, completely irrelevant. Because there were two and three standard deviation moves in the treasury market.

And when that happens, you better sit up in your chair no matter what else happens. Right. So maybe nothing else happens. But if there's a two, three sigma move in the treasury market, I am out on the front of the boat, like looking for what is going on.

So we saw that that day. We saw multi-sigma moves in the FX markets, right? Rates went lower. Dollar went lower. Stocks erupted. There were 17 sectors of the S&P that had two sigma rallies that day. Now, if you follow this shit like I do, you know that on a daily basis. Let's see, like today. Let me just look at this because here's the interesting part.

So today there are five stocks with multi-sigma rallies, right? On some days there's several stocks and maybe one or two sectors that have a two-sigma rally, right? Like a really outlier percentage move.

On that day, there were 17 sectors that registered moves like that. So I'm sitting here at the end of the day, looking at my screens going, what the flying fuck just happened? And what that is, is that is the market decided.

That's not a portfolio. That's not anybody blowing up. That is a market decision where the market has got a fuse on this inflation story. And all of a sudden, the economic data comes out and says no inflation and the bomb goes off. So when you look at that today, what are your readings telling you now? I mean, we've had that move, as I say, you called it.

And I think it's interesting your point about you read it, if you know what I mean. You let the market direct it. But what's the condition of the market now? We've had monster moves. I guess I'm saying that because everybody starts worrying about there's going to be a significant correction. And I'm not asking you to put a crystal ball out. It's what the market's telling you about that. I mean, it's on the radar, but the probability, has it gone up there? What have you? Yeah, it's a great, you know, it's totally fair to ask where am I now, right? Because I recently...

As you mentioned before, I recently went to a table max bet on the S&P. I called it right. So I was long for since November. I've got almost a thousand points in it now. And I'm looking for the next best trades. And the next best trades are turning up to me to just be long the S&P.

And there's a couple of reasons behind that. To give you the two short reasons is number one, I think that we are in the middle of the 95, 96, 97 analog.

Where in 94, we had rates going higher to cool off a strong economy, overheating inflation data, strong GDP, reached a high in Fed funds of 5.5% in 94. Stock market was down 1.5% after a really volatile year. That's like last year. And then coming out of that, rates were sideways to lower and we had all these tech tailwinds, right? That was the first internet boom.

So that's the first reason that this looks similar to me, right? We just battled the inflation beast. We saw rates make a high. We are not going to, the Fed is not going to allow that brand of inflation to enter the picture again. Rates are likely to be sideways in my opinion, which is a longer story. But this to me is what's bullish the stock market, right? So we've got bullish conditions for a multi-year rally, in my opinion, with AI being the new tailwind in tech.

But we've got this situation where AI, i.e. NVIDIA and the Mag 7, look like they're vulnerable to a pullback. That's fine. When the pullback happens, I'm going to stick to my guns. I am not going to leave my feet, as you know, when you're playing basketball and somebody throws a head fake. And I am not going to fall for the market crash bullshit.

And I'm going to find a better place to enter the market because this is what's going to happen. Eventually, NVIDIA is going to have its Icarus print, right? Happens to everything. Has a big Icarus print, big range. It may be today, maybe next week. I don't even know where it might be from. But eventually, that's going to reverse and it's going to revert to the mean because that has to happen at some point.

When that happens, there will be a correction in the stock market. It'll probably coincide with higher rates or just rates ticking back higher. That will be something that is a headwind for tech. Tech will have a massive pullback into trend. While rates are going higher, you'll see natural resources perk up.

And so natural resources sectors of the market, like the equity, like the E&P stocks, like gold miners, like industrial miners, refineries, those will start rallying again. And the S&P won't collapse. It'll just have a big giant pullback where tech is in the lead on the way down and maybe some of the other interest rate sensitive sectors of the market. And the inflationary hard assets is where all the money flow goes, gets parked.

For the next couple of weeks, months, quarters, whatever it turns out to be. So that's how I'm going to play this, man. I'm going to stay bullish. I'm going to pick a spot where I first get out of my table max bet.

Yep. And that'll be when I think that the Mag 7 have turned and need to pull back. Haven't really seen that yet. If today is the outside day in NVIDIA, maybe it's today. Got another two hours on the tape. But I'm going to adjust accordingly, right? We'll take the table max bed off the table. Maybe we'll be flat the S&P again. And we'll find a better place to get in when everybody's talking about the big crash that's coming. And I don't see that coming for any reason at all.

That's a wonderful summation, by the way. And it's how a professional approaches the market, though. No, it's important and answers exactly what I was wondering about. And I want to tell people, of course, you are the editor of the Morning Navigator, but you can find Tony at TG Macro, at TG Macro on X. But I'm not letting you go yet because I got one more question. I'm not going anywhere, Mike. For you, I have all afternoon. Okay.

That's fantastic. But just a quick take on gold. Now, I know you park it and I just so you're not influenced by what you're seeing in the market. It's sort of an forgive the word, an insurance policy. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of how I look at it. I do have a trading position on. Right. I've got Fizz on my pad in my view matrix. I'm timestamped to when I put it on years ago, literally. And I have no intention of taking that off either.

Right. That's kind of a core position. That's gotta be in everybody's sort of human portfolio, if that's fair in some way, shape or form. So yeah, we've got the physical, let's put that to one side and talk about the trade. Right. Um,

Gold, now what we got to do, Mike, is switch gears from talking about semiconductors and NVIDIA. And we've got to slow the truck down, right? We're talking about gold now. It's a slow moving, barbarous relic, right? But what it is doing, in my opinion, is checking all of the boxes for a multi-year breakout as well.

So I don't mean to be too, I don't mean to be like salivating over it too much, but my two most bullish views are the S&P and gold. And so now we're talking about number two. The breakout through 20, that triple top at 2080 has been textbook, right? Take the timing, take the timer and throw it out the window for a minute. Just forget about how long ago that was, right? I would have loved to have seen it get to 3,500 by now, to be quite honest with you. So I'm tempering my...

expectations. And I'm just playing this 2080 breakout like it's going to rally for another year or two, because we had two years of rallying in 20 and 21. We had consolidation in 22, 23 and into 24. And then we had the breakout early in 24.

And when you take a step back and you see that gold rallied for two years, consolidated for two years, you could easily see with this technical breakout and the reasons that are behind it, I could see gold going into a multi-year bull market again. A slow moving one that may only tack on 25% to the price and get it to 3K, 3,500 at the end of it.

But to me, it's checking all the boxes and making all the right moves of everything that it has to do. Central banks are buying it. It's kind of a fade to the whole fiat currency losing purchasing power as the West borrows itself into oblivion. It's just a natural...

a natural investment home for your dollars, right? If money goes where it's treated best, it's being treated pretty damn well in the gold market lately. And it's being even treated pretty damn well in the Bitcoin market lately, right? That thing got back up to 70K and looks like it was going to curl over four times and does not curl over anymore. So maybe that's another thing that's expressing, you know, kind of displeasure with

the rate of the Western borrowing and things like that. That's kind of how I frame gold, if that's fair. No, it's a great explanation. Look,

Time's up, but I could go on all day. But here's what people can do. They can go to at TGMacro, TGMacro.com, everybody. We'll put all that stuff and all our info, but TGMacro.com, the morning navigator, great reading. I really, I highly recommend it because it gives you can hear with Tony's analysis. I mean, there's so many different moving parts in the market.

But you get the advantage of decades of experience here in both trading and analyticals. And it's just, I just think it's such a key time. You always say now is the most difficult time to invest. Well, you know, that was on the stock exchange when I was a kid down in New York, you know, but boy, it's never been more true in my opinion. And being positioned in the right groups

positioned in the overall market, understanding what's going on. And Tony, you do a brilliant job. It's really worth my while. And I don't say that casually. I got 40 years plus. So when something's worthwhile, it's worthwhile. Tony, thank you for finding time for us here on Money Talk.

Mike, I don't take that compliment lightly from a guy like you with your experience. It makes my day every single time I hear something like that. So thank you very much for giving me a platform to speak in addition to my writing. So you're the best, man. Thanks very much.

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As you can tell from the editorial, I still think the capital gains increase is a hot topic. After all, they only gave us the details a week ago or so. And then the date, June 25th, when everything changes, the inclusion rate.

But one of the things I've been distressed about is how little attention the impact on the medical communities it's had. It's going to have a significant impact. That's why the Ontario Medical Association warned five seconds into this Canadian Medical Association. And I'm going to bring on Dr. Kevin McLeod. He's an internal medicine specialist. Kevin, first of all, thank you for taking the time.

And I want to just bring people up to speed and make them aware of the impact. And there's several other things I'll get to, but we're just going to talk about that sort of thing that, you know, it's not only a love to do medical care and a love to treat patients, but there's a practical reality of it's my lifestyle, it's my business, et cetera. So let's start with this. Tell me the first reaction when you heard that they were going to change the inclusion rate, you know, up to 66%, in other words, raise the capital gains taxes.

Well, Mike, thanks for having me on. I mean, there's a few things with it, right? I mean, my first thought was, you know, this is actually going to affect patient care. And bear with me with explaining this. But, you know, if...

There was sort of this grand bargain made years ago, you know, more than 20 years ago that government came to physicians and said, we're not going to give you a pension, but you guys can incorporate. And, you know, you save some money in that corporation and then you pay that money out in retirement. Right. So you save within your corporation. But in exchange for that, taxpayers aren't on the hook for a pension for you.

And so now that the rules have changed at the 11th hour for a lot of people and they're going to be taxed at a much higher rate on what they've saved. And, you know, you hear governments say, well, there's a $250,000 threshold. That's just not accurate. Right. I mean, that's only accurate for individuals. It's not for physicians who are incorporated or other small businesses who are incorporated.

is they're going to pay the higher rate right from the get-go so you know in effect their their some of their pension savings have been now wiped out and they're going to have to earn more and and i really think that has an impact on patient care because i've seen it as our tax rates have gone up what if physicians do they say well i've got to maintain a certain income um so you know if my if my fees that i get paid from the government are fixed i either work more

or I start doing private care, right? So you see the number of physicians who will do Botox on Tuesday, Thursday afternoons, or there isn't an incentive to look after the complicated medical patient. There's an incentive to, okay, well, if I've got to pay 10% more tax and I've got to do some other work that brings in that income to maintain that sort of level, if that makes sense. And that really impacts patients.

Well, the other point that you've made that, again, I think you have to work in it to appreciate, as you say, the incentive is not to treat people who are complicated cases. They may have several things wrong with them, you know, at the same time. So the incentive, especially, again, people should understand if you're seeing your family doctor, there's sort of a fee schedule.

you know, there, and there's an appointment time, a 15 minute appointment time. Well, you know, you're going to get paid the same, whether you treat four in an hour or one in that hour. So I think that's an important thing for the public to be aware of.

Yeah, I mean, you're sort of right with that. I mean, you get a set fee. So I'm not a family dog, but you know, the family dogs get $33 or something to see you as a patient if you go into their office. So, you know, if business costs have gone up, if property taxes have gone up, if rent's gone up, if your, you know, your marginal tax rate has gone from 42 to 53 and a half percent, if your capital gains tax has gone up,

But your fee hasn't really kept up with any of that or inflation. Well, then what do you have to do? You've got to see more people an hour because you're paid per patient. So instead of four people an hour, you're trying to cram in six or seven. Right. You're going to be able to pay your staff like you run in a business. Right. You've got to be able to pay the nurse and other things out of that.

So your take-home pay goes down, but your throughput's going up, and that decreases quality of care. But you're not really left with another option. You can't see two people an hour and take the time because you can't run a business at $66 an hour. You're not...

going to pay your secretary, let alone the property tax and the rent and everything else, right? I mean, your hourly costs are certainly in the lower mainline at least $120, $130 an hour. You've got to see four patients an hour to break even. And

And let me add, you know, back, you just slightly alluded to it, but, you know, then we had, we have to remember that in 2016, the government raised the top tax bracket, you know, significantly, you know, it was a new tax bracket from 29% to 33%. Well, if I'm a medical specialist,

you know, and by the way, another thing that people don't understand is your skills are in demand. Your skills are in competition. And I, again, anecdotal, I know, but I, I happen to know a couple of people who moved down South because they thought the opportunity is better. They weren't suffering with the same weight lifts. They wanted to practice their orthopedic surgery in one case, you know, that kind of thing. So I can't see that raising the top income tax bracket, uh,

was helpful either to attract, you know, specialists or, or anyone else for that matter. Well, it wasn't right. So if, if,

You know, and I don't think there's been enough attention paid to how our tax system impacts our healthcare system. I mean, everything's interrelated in this world, right? So, you know, if I earn $1,000 in a day, I'm paying about 40% of that in overhead to cover my staff and rent. So there's $600. But if I'm losing 53.5% of that in income tax,

Right. I mean, I'm keeping like three hundred dollars of that. Right. And eventually time becomes more valuable than money. You know, you sort of step back and say, well, why? I don't I don't want to work this Friday. Like I want to spend time with my kids. And, you know, so that the incentive to work has really diminished. And you see this. I mean, everybody will give you anecdotal stories of.

doing some part-time hours or maybe reducing their hours, having more of a focus on that work-life balance. And that's good, right? But the pendulum sort of swings a little bit too far the other way if you remove the incentive to hard work. And that's not unique to doctors. I mean, that will be the same for anybody.

Right. I mean, if somebody knows that, that, you know, upwards of 70%, when you factor an overhead of your, of your paychecks kind of disappear, well, you know, you kind of say, forget it. I'm not working this other weekend. And, and I see this a lot. I mean, I, I,

do some administrative stuff for Vancouver Coastal. And it's really tough to get people to do night shifts and weekends and other things, right? And ultimately, it screws the taxpayer because, you know, as you, as the incentive goes down, well, then the positions when there's scarcity of them are in a position to go and say, hey, you know, I want to be paid more.

And who does that impact? I mean, taxes go up because you're paying guys like me more and more to try to incentivize us, but then you're taking it back on the other side in taxes. Right.

It makes so much sense. I mean, everyone's experienced some decisions based on work-life balance, and it doesn't actually remember, you know, doesn't be determined directly by what income level. I mean, somebody may say, I want to go to that rock concert. I want to go to that sporting event. Yeah, I could get some hours at work, but I'm not going to take them, let alone, as you say, as you go up and you realize how much of that next patient is going to go to government and

you know, depending on the province, but 54% plus the operations, you know, go on to that. And I think it's very understandable that people say, you know, my kids are growing. I want to be part of that. I don't want to work on a Friday when they get a pro DJ, you know, all of those things. But the

point is it impacts medical care. It impacts the availability for people to get medical treatment. And again, I'm going to come back to this to finish, but it's literally, you know, when I see the change to the capital gains without any

understanding that it impacted so many, you know, like 60% of, you know, family doctors, at least, you know, who had incorporated under the guise of the encouragement from government. I think that's another key component. They encouraged in order to avoid putting you part of a permanent pension plan. So they encourage you to do that and then change the rules. And as you say, yeah, the people I've heard from are four years away, actually from retirement. Well, they moved it up.

Right. And Mike, what's going to happen when physicians who, you know, governments have completely under-trained and underfunded the university positions, right? So you're, you know, there's scarcity of a product or service. And, you know, so they're in a good bargaining position and they come back to government and say, well, you've changed the rules, we want a pension.

You know, that's going to cost taxpayers billions of dollars, right? And so the federal government, in effect, has downloaded a cost onto the provinces. And I think that's not given enough attention either, right? I mean, you know, this is going to ultimately cost patients and taxpayers money. And I'm not sure you're going to bring in a lot of revenue with this.

Yeah. Well, in fact, the revenue projections, I think just for two years out are like $360 million. You know, I mean, it's, they think it's all front loaded as people scramble to sell stuff before that January or sorry, rather the June 25 deadline. So that's what their projections, but man, people better have a long look on a broader scale. Is it worth it? But in this particular case, you know, people tell me they care about our healthcare system.

Well, if you care, you at least have to address this issue. You have to be aware of this issue. And as I say, it's enough problems. And I worry, Kevin, last word, though, I worry this will be the last straw for a lot of people.

They've seen their working conditions more difficult. It's been more expensive. They've seen other changes like you can't sort of income split with your wife working in the office near as easily, things like that, the raising of the top personal tax. And I just wonder if this won't be a last straw for several people, let alone trying to attract somebody to come here. I think so. I think you're right with that. You'll see people move away. I mean, it's not going to be huge numbers, but it is going to have an impact, right? And

I mean, I'm a big believer in, hey, you earn more, you pay more. That's fair in my view, right? You know, not everybody's given the same deck of cards in life. But, you know, there has to be some limits with that because if you take away the incentive to work, you ultimately weaken your economy and you weaken your ability to have public services, right? I mean, you need a robust economy to be able to provide these public services. And

And by doing things like this, you take away that incentive to invest. You take away that incentive to take risk. And that's really like the countries where people take risk tend to do better economically, right? The countries where it's all controlled and everybody's the same, you know, they don't tend to do as well, right, over the long term. That's well put. Dr. Kevin MacLeod, thank you for finding time for us. Appreciate it very much. Mike, anytime. Thank you.

I'm doing something a little different this week because I've got a shocking stat of the week and a quote of the week, and they're all rolled into one. You'll see why in a moment. You know, there's so many practical aspects of the net zero by 2050 agenda that's been ignored. I mean, with the overall cost of getting there at the top of the list. I mean, for all the talk of climate change, Canada has yet to do a full analysis of what it would cost to achieve carbon neutrality in the next 26 years.

Maybe that's not a surprise. Come on. The parliamentary budget officer, Yves Giraud, found that government had not done a cost benefit analysis on a single program of their, what, $60 billion in the green climate agenda? I mean, simply put, they don't know which ones work, which ones are more effective, less effective, all of that stuff.

But that brings me to the quote of the week by Wade Davis, a Canadian you should be aware of, professor of anthropology at UBC. He's the author, though, of 24 books, winner of the Samuel J. Jackson, or Johnson, rather, Samuel J. Johnson Prize, the top nonfiction award in the English language. My goodness. I mean, The Guardian and a heck of a lot of other people called him one of the foremost thinkers of our time.

Washington Post's David Ignatius says that Wade Johnson has the gift for saying the unsayable. Boy, that's perfect. What a heck of a compliment. Now, this is from his most recent book, Beneath the Surface. In this essay from the book, he's focusing on climate change and net zero by 250, in quotes, 250.

New Zealand is one of the few countries that's tried to determine what it will actually cost to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Cutting emissions by just half, now just half of that target, and that includes, you know, you're plucking the low-hanging fruit, has a price tag of $19 billion a year through 2050. Getting to net zero by 2050 will be much more difficult with anticipated costs of $61 billion a year.

more than the country spends on social security, welfare, health, education, police, courts, defense, the environment, and every other part of government combined. Given the expected temperature increase in 2100, this decision to go net zero by 250 would postpone the warming we expect to see on January 1st, 2100, by about three weeks. Wow.

19 billion a year to get halfway, 61 billion to get the full way per year. And the shocker, what? You're only delaying the expected temperature increase by three weeks? Hmm. You can decide for yourself about the money spent.

Well, somebody turn up the stove because I'm about to jump into hot water talking about this. You know, former Liberal Finance Minister John Manley penned a piece, I think it was in the Globe and Mail this week, talking about the cost of supply management and maybe it was time to get rid of it. And, of course, that always, I mean, this has been a hot-button issue for a number of years. I want to bring Mike Levy into it. Mike, let's start with the practical, though. I mean, supply management, obviously, people who are on that side of it, the farmers, etc.,

They support it strongly, especially in Quebec, but it does cost consumers. And that's been a big topic is what does it cost on my grocery bill? Yeah, Mike, you're so right. These farmers, I mean, they just love this because there's only 9,000 of them in Canada that can sell into the market. And we're talking about half a century, 50 years ago, there was 145,000

thousand of dairy producers and it's a protected area in Canada the supply management for poultry and for eggs and for dairy and I just you know we keep banging our head up against this proverbial wall why well again well the reasons should have changed but it was about protecting that industry it's essential but I mean you are talking about give me an idea of some of the costs we're talking here

I mean, Mike, just listen to this. In 2023, general food prices in Canada increased by 7.8% year over year. However, because of supply management,

the government itself mandated a 23.7% increase in the cost of chicken, more than 13% in the cost of milk, and over two years more than 22% in the cost of eggs. People are lining up at the grocery store. The NDP, and I'm saying this straight out, are trying to blame

Big food companies, the Loblaws or whichever, that's where they want to put the blame. But the blame is supply management, and there's just no two ways around it.

Well, none of the parties look good in this because none of them want to take this on. You know, I agree that NDP leader Singh is the one who's been talking about greedy CEOs and stuff like this. Well, at least acknowledge the role that government's playing. Of course, they haven't. But the Conservatives haven't gone after this for all their talk about cost of living. The Liberals certainly have avoided this because, again, their electoral fortunes rest so much with what's going on in Quebec. And they'd lose those, you know, the farmers would be very, very active now.

against them in Quebec, especially though. And as you say, the NDP doesn't even know the name, you know, and it's $2.6 billion out of consumers' pockets, you know. So we're not talking small potatoes. And just the irony is too much when you think of all the talk about the high cost of groceries in

And no one wants to go near this. Well, there's two things going on. I cannot understand why not one of the political parties has spoken out against it. We're talking of Quebec, where the most of the farms are. It's not throughout the rest of Canada, though they are smattered throughout the rest of Canada. And I don't see why one of the politicians, particularly now when we're in such a

political motivated time but mike can we take a look at what happened in australia and new zealand when they cut out supply management and that was about 25 years ago consumer prices came down considerably and australia now without the burden of supply management is one of the biggest producers and exporters of dairy anywhere in the world that would happen with canada also

Yeah, I mean, there'd have to be a transition, which they did in both those countries. And they had, you know, significant government help, you know, and transitioning over a period of years. So it's not like it's not possible. As you say, you come out the other end and consumers are better off. I mean, but the other side, and this is a very small anecdotal, but how many Canadians cross the border into the US and they come back with eggs or milk or yogurt or cheese? You know, why? Because it's significantly less expensive.

or turkey or chicken. I mean, it's whatever is protected and they're going down. And Mike, it might only be a small amount, but you know what? To the people who are going over, it's a big amount. They have to go because they've got to balance their grocery budget, which they can't do in Canada.

as I say, a very hot, heated debate about this, but it should be part of the agenda now that we're worried about high cost of groceries. This absolutely, it's time has come. Glad to see the article written in the Globe and Mail. We should put it back on the table, at least for discussion. And Mike, you've taken the first step with that with us here. So go out and have a great weekend or a great week too. Go.

Well, further than just the weekend, Mike. Have a great week. I'm going to do that, Mike. You have one too. You know, I think of it as the biggest number that we get, the biggest stat because of the ripple effect throughout so many aspects of our living, our standard of living, but also, you know, what it's like. And that is the population number. And I'm going to bring Ozzy Jurek in here right now. You know, Ozzy, for all the talk, and even the prime minister said, you know, the...

uh temporary visas are out of control and they do have a cap putting in but it hasn't hit yet and my goodness uh you know the housing has been where it's sort of most people are focusing on but there's so many other aspects so

You know, I'm not saying I was surprised, but I think it's incredibly noteworthy. This time last year, a full year ago, we'd be talking about crossing the 40 million mark June 16th last year. My gosh, we've added like 1,337,000 since then. It's, you know, and there's just no way different services, social infrastructure, but especially housing can keep up.

Yeah, no question. I mean, you think about the rule of thumb is we need about 50 units per 100 increases in population.

And we want to have 550,000 to 700,000 just to say what the government is proposing. Our big record, Mike, was 274,000. And last year, we actually had only 223,000. So we are way behind. Plus, we are way up in terms of population. It's interesting also, I just did a video with Ravi Jain. He is the leading immigration lawyer out of Toronto.

And he says the student visas have exploded to 2.7 million. Well, all these people have to live somewhere.

Yeah, and again, just we're going to do something on immigration coming up shortly, you know, in the next couple of weeks, because people don't understand. I mean, there's 2.7 million student visas, but the implication about family reunification, others coming, you know, the work aspect of it, all of those things. And by the way, some of it's very bad news for the most talented people.

of those students. But I'll go into that at another time. But the number, as you say, Ozzy, the raw number, 2.7 million student visas, and of course, they've got to live somewhere. And this was just so unanticipated by governments, especially the feds. But it's a provincial who have the, you know, a lot of jurisdiction over the temporary student visas, the work visas, you've got the immigration target itself.

You've got asylums, all of this stuff. This is just a monster. But this is where, as I say, we felt the impact is at the housing level. Yeah.

At the same time, we are attacking builders and investors that built this stuff, right? And so we have new taxes on investors. In fact, the investors are being – we are sort of the villains. Anybody who wants to invest in building something or creating something is, oh, no, we've got to tax that, you know, and –

The gamble on being a developer nowadays is just immense. And every week there seems to, particularly in British Columbia, but right across the country, every week there seems to be a new announcement. I mean, this next week, Mike, you have two of the biggest changes tax-wise and income-wise and anti-developer-wise that we've ever had.

Let's elaborate a little further. I think most people are aware that we have a change in the capital gains exemption inclusion rate, which has now gone from 50 to 66, 67, whatever it is. And that, of course, that's a negative for attracting capital. But what else is changing?

Well, particularly, most people don't realize if you have the properties in your own name, you have a $250,000 capital gain allowed, so no change. And if you have your wife in there, then it's going to $500,000. You can add your children. But if you have your properties held in a company, then the change, the increase to 66.6% starts at $1. And, Mike, what really is the most annoying aspect to me is that our finance minister and our Mrs. 11,

Yeah, illustrious title. Yeah, illustrious title maybe, but she says it affects only 3% of the people and it will help children get in school food. I mean, how ridiculous is that? It affects farmers. It affects doctors. It affects pension funds. Everybody that has been told by the government, look, if you're a government employee or a teacher, you'll get a pension for life. But if you're on your own, we have this ability for you to create a nest egg.

And now they're taking a big swipe at the nest egg. Yes, we were hearing a little bit earlier from Dr. McLeod about, you know, it's a change, and especially for the doctor's side of community here. You know, one of the things I was thinking this week, Ozzy, is for years I've been focusing on with you and your expertise on, you know, when governments stand up and say we care about affordability, I said, man, if you bought that, I've got a bridge to sell you, you know. Yeah.

Because it's just been the antithesis of that. You know, it's new regulations or taxes and new taxes, both, you know, landlord-tenant regulations. All of these things have really discouraged development and have really discouraged, you know, low cost. When they say they're going to build low-cost housing, when I stop laughing at that thought, I want to know how they're going to do that.

You know, I mean, yes, they can give the land, that'll help. But there's just so many aspects to this. And I guess it's just been exposed, going back to what we were first talking about, by the huge explosion in population and demand. You know, the role that governments are playing in lack of affordability has been exposed.

Well, you know, the old joke is, you know, the scariest words in the English language are, I'm from the government, I'm here to help. But I mean, the big thing that's coming to you, the municipalities in BC, as of June 30th, have been ordered by the BC government to increase units that they can have on any lot, little residential lot, you can put between four and six units, you can put up to 20 units, and if you're close to a bus stop that operates 24 hours a day, you

You can do so with all sorts of goodies that are thrown in like no parking, etc. And this is becoming law. One of the most important aspects of this is that off-site costs, it sort of has been snuck in there as a legislation now. Off-site costs don't need to be disclosed until you get the building permit. Now, who in his right mind, you have to be an utter idiot to buy a lot.

to convert it to, say, a sixplex or a fourplex and maybe make 50 or 60,000, but you don't know what the off-site costs are. So in other words, the day before you build a building, they say, oh, by the way, there's 200,000 dollars to be paid to a hydro and 100,000 for this. You need to know these costs. Even today, that's better. So the changes as of June 30th, first of all, I don't think there will be much because all builders are looking, huh, what, you know, before they can take any action.

And it's changing neighborhoods, et cetera. And let me give a plug for something you're doing, Ozzy, because if you go to your Jurok video, the YouTube channel, go to youtube.com, but it's Jurok video. You've got a really interesting video with Bill. Is it Bill Laidler?

Yeah, he's an expert. I think that's excellent, and people should do that. You'll get a lot of value on these changes that you're allowing four units or six units or 20 units. You know what I mean? It's a massive shift and a massive change. Let me just repeat that. It's youtube.com, Jurok Video. Check that out. I think you're going to find it. I mean, there's just so much happening right now.

Yeah, it's mind-boggling. In fact, you know, the interesting thing is that's what I'm not talking about. The government says to a municipality of 5,000 people, remember the municipality is not totally to blame. They don't have any resources for all of these different services. But now the government says, if you don't want to do it because some municipalities have indicated we're not going to do it, they will appoint somebody from the BC government to supervise that it's done.

Yeah, amazing. Ozzy, you're on the hot seat, but this is a subject that obviously is of great importance to probably the biggest and most important, that and healthcare, to Canadians at this point, not surprisingly, but you've got to stay up with it. And that's why I say subscribe to ozbuzz.ca.

It's free. Put your email address in. You'll get it once a week. But also check out the video channel. There's just so much to explain. We don't have all the time we need on Money Talks because stuff is changing on a daily slash weekly basis. Ozzy does a fabulous job in explaining all of that stuff and a fabulous job with us here on Money Talks. Hey, Ozzy, before you go, though, I've got to say, and I...

I really want to acknowledge this. I kid around a lot, but just so everybody knows, Ozzy has been such a major supporter on Special Olympics. And I can joke a lot about his golf, but what I won't joke about is how he's always there. Always there. You know, Ralph Case is with him. Tony Neumeier was there. But seriously, Ozzy, you know, the Money Talks team is incredible.

incredibly important to Special Olympics. And one of the big reasons is that your continued support and you were there again last Thursday, you know, oh my gosh, it was a spectacle as well. I'm going to leave it at that, you know, because I'm being complimentary here. The golf itself will work on that. But Ozzy, thanks so much for that. Thanks for your appearance and your continued support of jerrock.com for Special Olympics.

Well, thank you very much, Mike. I blush with joy because you obviously did not go out on the course and see me play. But there's one thing just when you get angry, Mike, I have some advice. When you get angry, take a deep breath and then count to 10 and then throw a punch at eight. Nobody expects that. Hey, that's the Jack Reacher approach that I saw in the Reacher series this year. Ozzygerard.com.

The Western Canada Monthly Income Fund is starting pre-sales on its new project called Portal. This waterfront development in Maple Ridge is expected to sell out quickly. The fund is making limited amounts of investment available. If you're looking for a secure investment in real estate and relatively quick turnaround, what would be better than using your RRSP and TFSA to help build much-needed homes for Canadians? It's common sense investing. The

Established in 2018, the fund pays a monthly fixed target interest plus a generous participating profit share. Request your investor package today at easy-invest.ca. That's easy-invest.ca. Conditions apply. Past results are no guarantee for future results. Check the website for details. ♪

I'm going to go live to the trading desk now and bring in Victor Adair. Hey, Vic, here's an interesting one. You are a trader. I'm sort of more a long-term investor. So when I watch stuff like copper or gold and some of those things, you know, drop, I wasn't comfortable when they were at their, you know, highs in May. Now I start getting interesting. But you as a trader are looking at the daily charts and seeing if there's an opportunity to play it down or up.

Yeah, the gold market's down about $150 or so from the all-time highs we hit in the middle of May. Copper had this great run from March to the middle of May. We hit all-time highs there at $5.25 or so in copper. It's given up about 60% of that rally, say a buck and a quarter.

And Mike, speaking of the middle of May, I see a number of markets like copper, like gold and silver made some highs then. But, you know, the Toronto market is down. That's the Toronto stock market is down about 5% from its mid-May highs. The European, pan-European stock index is down about 5% since middle May. Japan, the same story. Mexico down about 10%, but they had that election down there, which maybe changes the complexion of things.

And the half a dozen or so big cap stocks that are, they're like on a trajectory all of their own, not paying any attention to what's going on here. They're, I think when you add up Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia, which is now the largest stock in the world by market cap, the three of them together have a combined market cap of $10 trillion. I mean, you know,

we could get deeper and deeper into the numbers, but big cap stocks are on this trajectory of their own. Like the rest of the world is either steady or turning down right here in terms of asset prices. Yeah.

Yeah, interesting, though, when you're speaking of election risk and trying to assess what's going to happen. I mean, as you've been telling us, you know, you're talking about the Trump-Biden debate coming. My gosh, is it tomorrow? No, it's not. But you know what I mean. Thursday. Five days away. I mean, Biden is, you know, preparing for this. Trump apparently is not preparing. He's just going to wing it. Of course. Why would that surprise anybody? He doesn't need a study. Yeah.

But it's going to mark the beginning of the election season as we go down to November 5th, I think, with the vote date. And here's the way I look at that. People, whether they're Americans or particularly if they're foreigners and they've been invested, as we know, capital has come to America for safety and opportunity. And that capital has done really well compared to what it would if it stayed home today.

You have to think if you're a German, you know, or Swiss or Brit or whatever, you might say, gee, maybe we should take some of that money off the table and just see what happens after the election. Or even, you know, if the election settles things or that just sets off a whole can of worms. And domestic Americans as well, particularly, you know, it's the wealthy people relative to the whole shebang out there that have been invested and have done so well in the stock market. And where do you go if you don't own stocks?

And it would seem to me maybe the ideal place to go. It's not just cash, but maybe, you know, two years out in GICs or government paper. Let me just dig into the Victor Adair vault here and ask you, what are you looking at right now as a professional trader? What are you looking at to do? Is anything getting triggered on your radar screen?

Well, I'll tell you what, I am absolutely riveted on the Canadian dollar right now. The Canadian dollar speculators in the Chicago market have got their largest ever, by a country mile ever, short position in the Canadian dollar.

And, you know, really, that's been building since March and the Canadian dollar has weakened a bit. But it seems these guys are relentless. They're dug in. And there could be anybody. You just don't know. You know, it could be somebody from Afghanistan, for crying out loud, trading. But it's likely going to be a lot of North American people here that just have a view on the Canadian dollar weakening against the US dollar. Now.

The position is so big. And as I've said so many times on the show, you know, the Canadian dollar usually moves more on things that happen outside of Canada than things that happen inside of Canada. But I kind of have a feeling that this play is about things inside Canada.

Right now, Canadian interest rates are lower than U.S. interest rates. And over my trading career, that's an unusual circumstance. And that can be, you know, make the American dollar look better relative to the Canadian dollar. But it may go deeper than that. So that's definitely on my radar screen. Two ways. Either these guys are right and the Canada, as Kevin Muir said on the show here a couple of weeks ago, Canada falls to a new low, which would be below 62 cents.

or these guys are wrong and they have to cover and we could go up. So Canada, definitely on my radar screen. And also, Mike, really short term, it looked to me like a lot of assets here, the stock market, okay, let's say it that way, giving me signals here this week that it's okay to take a couple of shots on the short side. So I'm doing that.

Yeah, just back to the Canadian, just to remind people that if somebody's playing the Canadian to go down, to lock in a profit, they actually have to buy it. And we see some of those moves sometimes that are quite abrupt on the upside if there's sort of momentum changes or psychology changes. And you can tack on a cent or two and make a lot of money, but you have to buy the Canadian in order to lock in the profit. So that's why we always make that distinction. What about your long-term sort of investment trend or what about your short-term trading trend?

Yeah, if you're short the Canadian dollar, well, while you're short, you know, you've got the risk that you could lose all the gains if it's gone down. So at some point, you have to cover your position is what you're saying. And I'm always, always, I'm probably more focused on positioning than I am actually on price. But, you know, that's...

Those are the two main things that I'm paying attention to right now. And I'm glad you reminded me of this. We've got to keep our time frame in mind. And I'm a short term trader. OK, when I say I want to take a shot at picking a top here in the stock market, it doesn't mean I'm going to stay short until Christmas time. If it's not working, I'll be I'll be out of it.

Yeah, I understand that. No, it's a great point to reconfirm. Vic, you go out and have a terrific week, but I want to first tell people to go to victoradair.ca. victoradair.ca. As I say, so much happening. It's hard to get it in one little segment here, but you can cover so much of it with the charts too on victoradair.ca. Have a great week. Thanks, Mike.

Well, it's time for this week's Goofy Award. And I'm going to start with this. The Cambridge Dictionary defines arrogance as Why am I talking about it? Because that's the word that comes to mind when I hear the constant harangue of politicians saying,

who act as if, man, they're delivering the modern version of Sermon on the Mount and telling us what's fair and what's not. Of course, we've been getting a heaping helping of that recently with talking about the rise in the capital gains exemption rate from the prime minister and the finance minister, talking all about it's not fair that upper income people, or they call them the wealthy, aren't paying their fair share of taxes. Now, come on. They act as if the word fair is not highly subjective.

Instead, it's like an absolute according to their wishes. Or to put it in the Cambridge Dictionary terms, they behave as if they know more or are more important than the rest of us.

I mean, it's meant to manipulate us, but it's also insulting. It's disrespectful to suggest that individuals can't decide for themselves what's fair and what's not. No, it's not a new tactic. I mean, it's been used by politicians for years to rationalize more government intervention. It's kind of like the essence of socialism, where if the outcomes aren't equal, then something's wrong.

But they have to not take into account work ethic or talent or any other variable that produces an outcome. Instead, the government has to intervene.

Now, I got to be full disclosure here. I don't need a politician to tell me what's fair and what's not. Now, you can decide for yourself if you think, for example, the top 10% of income earners who pay well over half of all income collected is fair or not. You can decide whether it's fair that the average Canadian family gives all it earns to government

for the whole part of the year, right up to June 13th, before it starts working for itself. You can decide if passing on record debts, interest payments on that debt to younger generations is fair. I mean, obviously the government does, its supporters do, but that's their prerogative. But the question is, what do you think?

Do you think it's fair that during the pandemic, members of parliament voted themselves three raises? They did it on April 1st, 2020, 2021, 2022, during the pandemic. Oh, they didn't stop there. They also voted themselves a raise in 2023, 2024. Do you think that's fair? When the rest of us are struggling, so many Canadians really having a tough time.

Was it fair that on a six-day trip to Asia, as we found out this week, Prime Minister took it last year with his son Xavier, a regular entourage of politicos, that could be as much as 72 on some legs of the trip to as low as 37. But here's the thing. Was it fair that they could spend $223,234 in in-flight catering alone?

I mean, come on, that is the equivalent of what 1,734 Canadians spend in a week on food. I mean, is it fair that led by the NDP Liberal government, MPs have decided to close down Parliament this week for 13 weeks? I mean, which for the majority is kind of a nice long paid vacation, paid for by taxpayers. I don't think many of us get that.

My point is that government MPs or any MPs are hardly the ones to be lecturing us on what's fair. But if you need the received wisdom of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister and other members of government or any politician to explain that to you, well, so be it. Meanwhile, you've got to forgive me. I find it nauseating.

Hey, I want to remind you to join me on Mike's MoneyTalks.ca. I want you to join me on, or Michael Campbell's MoneyTalks.ca on Facebook, MoneyTalks tweets on Twitter, Mike's MoneyTalks.ca on the broad internet. And boy, you can sign up for five minutes with Mike on that one. Great stuff. We got thousands, tens of thousands of people who sign up. It's absolutely free. Lots of great information. And a reminder, join us on our YouTube channel.

You can join us on Michael Campbell's Money Talks on YouTube. Get all sorts of stuff here. Glad you're doing it. Glad you're with us. But more importantly, I hope you have a terrific week.