Vincent Daniel: Unplugged with Intent
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On the Tape.

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They are also the people behind the alternative investment industry's largest and most exciting in-person events. To find out more about iConnections events and members-only platform, visit iConnections.io. A warm welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. Guy Adami, always joined by Dan Nathan. Indulge me for a second. As we do.

famous duos like Abbott and Costello. Simon and Garfunkel. Simon and Garfunkel. Sonny and Cher. Right? Yes? You with me? Yeah, yeah. Who else is like a famous... A-Rod and Jeter? Not really. They didn't like each other. But like a Joe Namath. If you think about Joe Namath, he had some great wide receivers on his team. Troy Aikman.

Michael Irvin. Michael Irvin. See, the Michael Irvin of this just spoke. And that is, of course, Vincent Daniel. He of Seawolf co-founder. Now, typically you hear Vinny with Porter Collins is sort of attached at the hip. Correct. Like Siamese twins.

But this today, we have Vinny unplugged by himself. Solo artist. Yeah. And by the way, so Danny, Porter, Vinny. That was the threesome. It's Vinny and Porter for me. Right now. Okay. Danny sort of circles that. Before we bring Vinny in, and we promise we will. So Danny is running the On The Tape podcast. The first episode that he did a few weeks ago was Porter and Vinny. And it was epic. If you haven't.

Go on and listen to that. Go do that. Follow the On The Tape podcast in the podcast store. Those guys are going to be frequent contributors. Vinny, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. Before we even start this, it was last summer when the volatility index was like a young teenager, like a 14-year-old, ninth grader. Yeah.

Then Vinnie and Porter came on and they had a mantra. You know what a mantra is? Sure. It's like a saying. Yeah. And they said, this is going to be the year we make volatility great again. And I was nodding my head. I'm like, I see what you're seeing. Yeah.

Didn't play out for a while. Then as the summer progressed, obviously August 5th happened, and we saw glimpses of what volatility can be. When we saw vol, then he spiked above 60, came back. But we've seen now vol for the last couple weeks north of 20. We haven't seen this in years. So let's start there. What did you see last summer that was so prescient today? Well, it's basically we have a new administration, right? Yeah.

First off, thanks for having me on. Oh, come on. Stop with the thanks. We're four minutes in. I feel like I'm here in the markets and turmoil that CNBC does. MIT. And so you bring in the bear to talk bearish stuff. Except that, hold on, that's not true because there were times last year where as much as I want to be bearish,

I can't be for a myriad of different reasons that were proven to correct. So you get labeled all the things you want. Correct. But you're a pragmatist as well. Well, and I think that's what has changed or what has transpired since August. We have a new administration. And I said I said this when we were down in Florida. Right. I go.

Trump is the one that is the stir the straws the drink right? I said that right I think straw that stirs the straw that stirs the German Munson could only stir it bad he that was Reggie's words anyway, please continue and He's the most important figure in the room And I think it's the reason why what the primary reason why we're seeing what we're seeing So I came in today and I always try to come in with the word of the day. I like words of the day, right and

And the word of the day is intent. - Aha. - Right? So can you imagine, you know guys like us, Porter and Danny, have worried about things probably way too long. But one of the things we worried about all the time was the deficit and the out of control spending. Could you imagine if you got a treasury secretary that worried about the same thing you did? - It's like, oh my God. - And then all of a sudden,

says, I'm going to do something about it. And it's the most primary of importance for me to do something about it versus make sure the market goes up. So his intent, Besson's intent, and it seems like Trump is on board, is to get the 10-year treasury down. And how do you do that?

Well, you sadly tank the economy. Right. And you tank the markets. I keep hearing this. And by the way, I mean, like, I love you to death. I keep hearing it. And from people that are like a fraction as smart as you. Okay. So it's like... Which are most people. I know. But it's kind of worked its way into like, you know, like the... Yeah. Yeah. And I just don't believe that because Trump is not...

He's not nuanced enough to do that. And he's not going to give, he's never, ever given any of his cabinet people that amount of leeway that has the ability to reflect very poorly on him. I agree with you. Let me say that I did not think so that he would have the stones to see this. Right. But there's also additional things that he's trying to do. Right. Which is,

He's trying to reorient the entire. This is Besson. No, Trump. Oh, come on. No, no, no. I mean, like, come on. As I said, I go, I'm being extremely objective. I'm not, I don't like him. I'm just telling you what I see. And that's all that really matters to me. And I'm trying not to get emotional about it. Is he's trying to reorient the U.S. economy from less Wall Street to more Main Street. And again, you could take that as a positive.

Trade deficits are an issue for him, and he wants to reorient the economy. And to do so after 40 years of the way the economy worked is extremely painful. Now, the reason why I believe that they're trying to slow down the economy is because you have trillions of dollars of debt that are refining this year.

You cannot extend the duration of that debt when 10-year treasury is at 5% or 6%. You can't do it, right? So you've got one of two choices. Either issue bills the way Janet Yellen has been doing, right? And so hopefully the rate goes down. But Besant's going one step further. And he's saying, I'm going to issue bills and I'm going to try to engineer a 10-year that has a three handle. But in order to do that, I got to tank things. No one...

I would wake up every day, all of us would wake up every day, and somehow, someway, there would be a government policy that would keep the crazy continuing to go up, right? You don't have that anymore. And every day, it seems like you have the opposite. So I didn't think it was going to be the case. I'm going to play the game with you because I'm with you in like 85% of this without question. So-

embedded in that or part of that is the belief that they can get rates lower and they think by tanking the economy, rates will come lower. But let me push back and say, the bond market can sniff this stuff out as well. So over the last couple of days, we've seen a CPI print that was soft, a PPI print that was soft.

every, every opportunity for 10 year yields to go below 4.1%, which is where we recently saw the low yet they've done the opposite. So my question to you is, will they be able to do it if the bond market sort of calls bullshit on this whole thing? I didn't say I advocated for this. And I've been noticing too, that lately the bond market is not going down to the extent that it wants to. Probably one of the other reasons why the markets get it yields, yields. It's

It's probably one of the other reasons why the market's getting wobbly. So, and I have to tell you, if you do this and the bond market doesn't go down, holy crap. Yeah, that's right. Holy crap. So you're playing a high stakes game of poker right now. Correct. Thinking, I'm going to let the stock market go lower.

I'll get interest rates to where I need them to be to issue all this debt. And by definition, with lower rates, the stock market at some point will cooperate because historically that's what it does. That's the pushing all the chips in the middle of the table bet. Correct. And you might have pocket aces, but somebody might flop 227 sitting with a 27 offsuit and you lose. I mean, I don't want to get too wonky here, but that's really what we're talking about. That's exactly what I'm talking about. And so again, what I see-

is a government that has the intent to make sure things are not going up anymore. And I kind of laugh during the day when markets are going down or you have a rally and the tenure explodes up and I just...

Blurt to myself. Best is not going to like this. I'm getting what would you call a word that you use? Exorcise. Exorcise. Apoplectic. And I love you to death. You are giving these people way too much credit. And you just said that Trump wants to get away from a Wall Street driven economy to a Main Street. Well, who the hell did he put in front of Treasury? Who the heck did he put in charge of commerce? These guys only know Wall Street.

They don't know Main Street. They are totally disconnected from Main Street. They are billionaires. And you know what is all the times that we have talked about make volatility great again, you know, over the last call at nine months or whatever, you know, think about the fact that, you know, these guys

billionaires who made money on Wall Street and why would you expect them to give a crap about the deficit? Those dislocations are the very things that made them billionaires. All right, let me, because we're having a conversation. Yeah, we are. So it's

It's interesting you say that. So Scott Besson is a billionaire. Correct. He's a really bright guy. And if you recall, when he was appointed or when his name was sort of out there, I actually said on the show, that is a spirited, I love that pick. It's like good for him. Like they're going in the right direction. And if you listen to some of the things that he said, he has talked about the wealth gap in this country. I've never heard anybody in any administration talk about it. They pretend it doesn't exist.

So as much as he was sort of born and made his money in Wall Street, I actually believe, and you can say I'm foolish too, but I actually believe that he's trying to sort of bridge this gap and trying to take the 1.5% that owned everything and the lower end that's been getting squeezed for the last 25 or 30 years. I don't believe that those guys have that in mind whatsoever. Okay. You might not believe that, but I see what I'm seeing here.

On the table. Okay. All right. So then my question is, you know, and Guy kind of just alluded to that, playing chicken with the U.S. economy, which also means the global economy. And, you know, we talked about the wealth effect that's been created by the stock market, the housing market, that sort of thing. All of this stuff, if yields don't go down, then the housing market stays locked. Then the markets have sniffed it out. Do you know what I mean? And the stock market goes down 25%.

Agreed. Again, this is what I'm seeing. I'm not saying it's all going to work perfectly. I don't think it's going to. But what I see is...

And now think about if you're a money manager. Think about if you're a corporation. How in the world do you put capital to work knowing that every day, like today, what did we get? That Bordeaux and Italian wines and champagne are at 200% tariffs? So he's starting to pivot to Europe. We haven't even solved Canada and Mexico tariffs right now.

And we all know all roads lead to China sooner or later. So how in the world, if you're a corporation, how do you put money to work, CapEx budgets to work, knowing that the rules of engagement have yet to be sown? You can't. Because they haven't even asked for concessions yet. Correct. So let me ask you this. Well, I assume they are behind the scenes. Although sometimes we see behind the scenes in front of us, as we did with Zelensky. But I assume behind the scenes, people are working feverishly.

But I'm not sure if they're in a rush to do so, at least not yet. So what are they trying to do? Just weaken the Canadian, the Mexican and the EU economies? Like, because that doesn't make a lot of sense. No, I think personally,

It'd be very interesting to have a conversation with them over beers to think, did you think Canada was going to fold and Mexico was going to fold immediately? Because they're not. Yeah. Right? They're fighting back, interestingly enough. And I assume Europe's going to fight back as well. Well, think about what Germany's just announced. I mean, they did a complete 180 in terms of the spend. I mean, they basically said, you know what?

Clearly, we have to go this alone. And the defense spending, I mean, they're throwing caution to the wind. I mean, that's something we haven't seen since, I don't know, 80 or something years ago in terms of... And it's not just Germany, by the way. So these countries are, for better or for worse, they're going to start to sort of pony up. And, you know, be careful what you wish for in terms of having these people pay for things because...

there might be somebody left out in the cold. And at least right now, it feels like it might be us. Wouldn't it be quite ironic that making America great again and American exceptionalism tells us to go and buy stocks overseas? Yeah, well, that's what's happening. And that's what's happening. I mean, look at the German index, look at China, look at what's going on in China in terms of stocks and performance. And these countries are actually starting to... It's almost like I'll bring up a pop culture reference.

The Karate Kid. See that? I'm not... Ralph Macchio... No, no, I didn't say I like Macchio, but I did watch it a lot. Outsiders, maybe, although he was miscast in The Outsiders. Yes. Like, I don't see... Like, Patrick Swayze and Cruz and Rob Lowe. Even Emilio Estevez. I mean, exactly. And how do you... I mean, they could have found somebody better. Agreed. In my opinion. But I digress. But he got bullied. And then he had a choice. Right. Do you just sit there and take it?

Or do you train? And I think a lot of nations outside the U.S. are going to train. And it's not going to happen in six months. It's going to take five, six years, but they're going to rebuild their countries. So that's my question about five or six years. There are no fixes to the deficit. That can happen because we have midterms every two years, right? We have a caucus, the Republican caucus,

you know, yes, they're all falling in line right now. We see this continuing resolution. There used to be like 20 of them, which would not participate in this sort of stuff. So he owns every lever of power in the government right now. Right. And so they're going to do some stuff, but then when they got to go back into their districts and explain why there's an assault on social security or the VA or the list goes on and on there, they, they,

they're going to be out. You know what I mean? And they're going to lose the house. They have such a narrow sort of thing right now. So how do you do this? Why, if you, if you're going to be a lame duck in your Trump in two years, and then you start focusing on your legacy a little bit, this could be a total disaster for two years. It could be, it could be. But then again,

If you are of the belief that the bigger issue was status quo and continuing to run six to eight fiscal deficits just to keep the market up, if you thought that was the bigger issue than what you're doing right now, what would you do? And now, I'm not saying Trump felt that way. Yeah.

And I don't know Scott Besson, so I'm not going to speak for him. But I know people who have spoken to him. He has been saying this for quite some time. Yeah, 100%. He's been concerned about the same things that we've talked about. By the way, Steve, who's been on our show a number of times, completely dismissed all of last year. And now it'd be...

Again, he's not here, so I want to speak for him. But it'd be interesting to hear his take on things now, to your point. Do you want me to call him up right now? Where the seemingly the worm has turned. No, we don't need, but you follow what I'm saying. So maybe they've mattered all along and now somebody is actually going to try to do something about it. And it's creating the disruption that we're seeing here. I apologize, but I'm obsessed with this. It always mattered.

- I agree with, listen Vinny, you know I agree with you. - The thing, the reason why no one thought it mattered is 'cause government moved heaven and earth to make sure that everyone didn't feel it. And so that created a system where stocks can go to the moon

on valuations above and beyond. Concentration could go so high without any implications. And we actually started thinking it was normal. All right, so let's play this out. Let's play best case scenario. The best case scenario is we continue to see a sell-off in the market. Bear with me. The economy is slowing. Rates go lower. They're able to issue the debt they need to issue and get around this thing and duration stuff. Fed cuts about 100 to 150 basis points. Fed cuts because we're seeing a slowdown. Yes.

the market perceives the lower interest rates, and then on the back half of this year, you have a market that starts to cooperate. You've refinanced whatever. You get debt to GDP, hopefully a little bit in line, and then you're back off to the races. It's that latter part I don't agree with. Well, that's what I was going to ask you next. How do you get the debt to GDP in line? Because the GDP portion is not going to cooperate in a slowing economy. You're really not solving the issue, right? Yeah.

because you're really not reducing your government spending. What you're doing is engineering a temporary reprieve that allows you to create a housing-led refi boom to create economic growth. We'll be in the same place that we are if they don't do more than just this. - Okay, worst case scenario.

The market continues to sort of be soft. The economy continues to soften. But oh, wait a second. Those bond yields are sticking. They're actually starting to move higher. And oh, by the way, Japan yields are the highest they've been in 18 or something years.

The yen is appreciating against the dollar, which happened last summer and created the whole yen carry unwind trade. I mean, there's some of that that could be out there as well on the other side of this mountain. Correct. And then what the market's telling you there, and this is really scary, and these are words that maybe Dan's going to get really angry with me. The market's telling you that the United States is a third world nation.

in an emerging market, if that happens. And I don't think that's the probable. I'm just saying if that happens. I'm not saying you do. But that talks to, again, the dollars are reserve currency. And when we talk about it and people laugh at me saying, how can you even have that conversation because of the things we're talking about? And it's not a high price. It's a tailed risk type of thing. But it doesn't mean it doesn't exist in some universe. Correct. So speak to that. Well,

It's a function of the fact that if we don't get our house in order and the markets sniff it out that we can't, then they're not going to buy our debt. And then what happens there is I actually think they put

the needle, so to speak, back in the arm, right? And they try and reverse course and QT turns into QE. We start printing again. Monetizing the debt. And monetizing all that stuff that we know. Now, we might get some of that anyway. Under that scenario, even the positive scenario, QT is probably going to end. Someone has to buy our bonds. But, I mean...

And it's like there's a lot of turmoil and a lot of volatility on the way from where we are now to even the best case scenario. Yeah. And I'll just say this. So I wasn't gonna get mad at you. You just spelled out something. And I think that people are afraid to sort of say this, what's going on. And I know it's only been a couple of months, but if you think of all the Trump trades that have resurfaced,

reversed, right? The dollar, you think of a whole host of other sectors in the stock market. You think about crypto in there. I mean, there's others too, right? And you say to yourself, what's being priced in is an end to the American exceptionalism. I mean, that's really what you're saying. And so the fact that the EU

led by Germany, the UK, a handful of these others. They're looking at the geopolitics. They're looking at the assault on their economies by us. We are their longest standing allies. We rebuilt their continent. We basically, if you think about it, we built this post-world country

post-war liberal world order right like you think about that and we're backing off from that and so a lot of folks are going to say listen maybe the dollar shouldn't be the reserve currency maybe we should take our security and there's an irony there because trump spent the first four years of his administration railing against nato and and the eu how they're not participating and all of a sudden they're participating you know they're going to get over their two percent commitments and that sort of thing so like i

I get all that. Let's talk about the stock market because there are sectors, you know, we've been remarking that, you know, who cares about small caps, but, you know, economically sensitive, you'd think that they would do better when yields are coming down, right? The cost of capital and all that sort of stuff. But they're really more reflecting on what folks think the economy is going on.

Think about banks. They retraced the entire movement. And we can go on and on in the sectors. You just mentioned housing. Have you looked at Toll Brothers? Oh, yeah. It's making new 52-week lows. So talk to us a little bit about the unwind of the Trump trades, at least in the markets that we're following. You know what I mean? Not the pie-in-the-sky stuff about getting the deficit and

- Yeah, no, well look, I have a list. - Okay, let's do it. - Over the last month. - Love this. - Over the last month. - The guy loves lists. - This is what these stocks have done. JP Morgan's down 18%. I'm gonna stick a little bit into really our home and where we come from. Citi down 17, Morgan Stanley down 17, American Express down 16, Meta's down 19, Tesla's down 33%.

really upset just in the last month i'm not upset about that one to be honest crowd strikes down 26 percent amazon 15 palantir the darling down 32 percent kkr down 20 percent the private equity guys have gotten rinsed aries good friends of mine down 23 percent walmart down 17 these are stocks that real people own right we're probably starting to get calls

This is not crazy Seawolves stuff that people own. No, no, no, no. I mean, I don't want to do it. And again, you didn't even mention Apple. I mean, again, we, you know. That actually outperformed. But, you know, here at 212, I mean, this was a $260 stock. You know, there's clearly something going on. I mean, the stock was 260 at the end of December. We're in early March now, and you see this precipitous decline, which we've seen before. So to your point, there are things happening around the edges. Correct.

With that said, I want to sort of... We're going to go back to this, but you saw something last year in terms of what was going on with China, and people thought you were crazy. FXI, as we're sitting here, is probably at a three-year high. Alibaba, which you were talking about when it was in the low 80s, has almost doubled. I mean, it didn't double, but it traded up to 145. We're probably 138 now as we're sitting here. And by the way, I think there's more room. I think there's another 40% in this thing. I think you probably agree. So...

How did you figure that one out? That was just pure contrarian looking at single stock names, where they were trading from a PE basis, speaking to people about what they think about China. Everyone hated it. Everyone told us to stay away, which sadly makes us want to buy more. And then the last thing that came out was we had this belief that

that in order for all of Trump's policies to work, the dollar had to decline. And if the dollar started to decline,

then this stuff has rocket ship potential. Now, to be fair, I just want to full disclosure on we have been trimming some Alibaba at these levels. I don't have any issue. I think it is going higher. It's prudent to do that. Just in terms of discipline. Yes. Yes, I agree. It's discipline and process. That's why we're doing it. Right. But see, to me, I take the other side of like another 40%. I'm not, you know, just...

the the chinese economy is so weak so the weaker that our economy gets if they're trying to tank our economy it's not a zero sum you know what i'm saying like china gets worse from here you know if you think about it if our tariffs you don't think that's going to weigh on their consumers right like there's a whole host of things and they've been trying to you know uh stimulate that economy it feels like for years yeah but they're doing they're doing it in a way

That is not a US style stimulus. They don't want to over-inflate assets, right? We seem to love to over-inflate assets. And now for the first time, we have an administration that doesn't seem to want to do that.

Right. Again, it comes back to intent. Right. If the S&P, which is down 6% in the year right now, the NASDAQ is down 11%, 10, 11%. If the S&P is down 15% in a quick, okay, look at how quickly it's gone down from here. And the NASDAQ is just falling apart. You know, they're going to turn tide on all this stuff. I agree. But that another 10% is pretty tough. Markets, the market will split.

And I will say this. We are right now, currently, if you look at technical indicators, we're extremely oversold. 100%. And this is what makes this so difficult. I'm not pressing shorts here. If anything, I'm afraid the next 2% to 3% or 4%

is a 50-50 chance of being up versus down. And we're not advocating that either. And I don't want to press it. So if you're trying to get a benchmark, I think on election day, the S&P 500 was like 57.10. Let's call it 57 and a quarter, just to sort of... As we're sitting here now, we're like at 200 handles below that. So we're getting into the zone where as much as they say they're no longer focused on the stock, they're focused on the stock market. So I think I agree with you in terms of that. But to push back on Dan for a second,

I don't think the Chinese, this is just, I'm not saying I'm right, but the Chinese economy and some of these stocks, I don't think there's any correlation between the two of them. So I agree that the Chinese economy is probably shitty, but I also agree that these stocks are still ridiculously cheap. And if there's a pivot in terms of the dollar and some of these other things, and if dollar flows go to some of these other markets, they're going to find their way into some of these names without question. Agreed, agreed. And-

To me, I also think that the people, right now I think is a flow issue and we didn't get to speak about something that I think we should, right? Which is in our world, in institutional capital worlds, specifically in hedge fund world, the largest hedge funds in the world

employee strategy called volatility targeting strategies. Right. And what that allows them to do is because they're pairing up like kind longs and shorts. I apologize for for being wonky for a second, but I'll get to my point. They pair up, say,

JP Morgan versus Bank of America. And that allows them to reduce their volatility, which allows them to lever up and manage more capital than what their NAV is. So if I have $100, I might have $500 to $600 of capital at risk, long, short, not 500, 500, like 250, 250. The level of volatility, volatility, and I speak about this a lot,

Volatility levels dictate whether they can expand their balance sheets or contract their balance sheets. Well, holy shit. When volatility does this, they have no choice but to de-growth. Zero. They have to do it. And the quants, forget about the pods and working at, say, a Millennium or Citadel. The quants have to do the same thing. Our concern, and again, is...

is I think the fulcrum, the place where I'm most concerned about is not in private equity. I'm not saying private equity is great, but I'm not worried about it. They don't mark to anything, so it doesn't matter. What I'm worried about is where is the levered capital deployed? And it's deployed in securities and capital markets

And if they don't get this, not now, but is it possible that the next long-term capital management is sitting in publicly traded securities and levered capital? Think about this for a second. And that's why when you talked about volatility last year, it resonated with me. And what we've seen over the last few years is vol has been a one or a two-day event. Huge spikes.

Five days later, it's right back, if not below where it started from. So they can, what you just talked about, they can stomach that and they can endure that. But a prolonged vault of 25 and over, and that's what we're seeing. That's where things start to get problematic. And that's where the machines start to take over. And whether or not you think J.P. Morgan is cheap or not, it doesn't effing matter. And I will say, just...

the Millenniums, the Citadels, and my owner, Point72, have world-class risk models. They get this better than anyone. I'm not really, I do worry about them degrossing. I don't worry about them going under. It's the 25 also-rans that have followed them because that was the easiest way to raise money. You mimic and you don't have nearly, obviously, all the things in place to handle what potentially could happen. I'll say this as well. You know,

It's fascinating to me, and people don't necessarily understand this, but all the places you just talked about, they're market agnostic. They don't care if the market goes up or down, I mean, to a large extent. I mean, they're trying to take advantage of the things that you try to take advantage of. And these options that everybody was enamored by when the market was going up every day, those are as agnostic as anything. So they work on the way up. Now everybody's blaming them for these moves lower.

But well, we'll see. We'll see government inquiries on that sooner or later. No doubt about it. So you're saying the zero. No doubt about it. So here's something on the options side and our main man, C.C. Lagerter, who writes our newsletter, comes out every day. Do you subscribe to our newsletter? The risk resource. I get it. It's really good. So, C.C.,

He wrote about this, I want to say on March 6th. So there was a huge put spread collar, okay, that was done. Well, actually it was just a collar, right? So some big investor in the SPX, okay, was probably hedging a position. They were selling an out of the money call. They were using the proceeds of that and they were buying an out of the money put.

The put strike was 5565. 5565. Right now, the S&P is trading like 5530. So this is Thursday afternoon into the close. So if you were buying that collar, you were buying that put, right? And a dealer, and I guess it was JP Morgan, had to sell $40,000.

of those puts. Okay. So if you're short put, that's a bullish trade, right? And what do you do to hedge it as the underlying moves lower? You have to sell stock. Correct. Okay. And so that's one of those positions. Everybody knows that's out there in the market. It expires on March 31st. So you're through that strike. Okay. So now it's greater than a 50 Delta, right? So we can do that math. And so every opportunity, every opportunity, it goes lower. You have to keep selling or JP Morgan does.

Right now, they might have hedged that. I'm seeing some vol, vol, you know, volume in the fifty five hundred. You know, some. But that actually makes for a really difficult situation in the market. And when do they do a lot of that hedging? They do it into the close. Right. So are you guys tracking stuff like that? And by the way, CC was early on that. Bloomberg wrote it up yesterday. Generally speaking, no. Like we've been spending more money, more time.

on the stuff I spoke about, which is the intent and what do we do if we believe that if this is what they're employing, what do we do about it? And so we've been more and more on the sidelines. I mean, I was saying, well, what have we been doing? What do we own? We own gold, right? - So thank you, because I was just gonna say, we're 30 minutes into this conversation-ish,

and you haven't mentioned gold haven't mentioned gold and people got to be saying guy guy vinnie dan when are you going to mention gold all roads lead that's what's been going on all along i mean these central bankers as much of the dipshits that i think most of them are i think they were smart enough to realize that wait a second we have to hedge our ineptitude and how do you do that it's in the gold market three last three four years central banks have been buying gold in record amounts so that to me has been a tell now

It's been a tell for me. It hasn't obviously manifested itself in any of the volatilities or broader markets. It's starting to now. But this has been sort of the game all along. Yes. No, and for us, we loved gold because we hated fiat more, right? And we hated what they were doing to our currency in terms of the amount of money they were printing, the fiscal deficit spending, all of that. Yeah.

I'm actually frankly pleasantly surprised that gold has been outperforming as massively as it has because now I think people are really nervous and uncertain and they're realizing it's acting like what it's supposed to. The great news is that

The price is so high relative to the cost to extract it out of the ground. Even these dumbass miners are actually working, right? Some of them are. I mean, like Agnico Eagle, for example. But Newmont, you know. And you guys know the right ones to own. I mean, it's amazing, though. We've been actually dipping, though. Meaning, we own Agnico and we own Alamos. They're the best in class. Absolutely. But we've also been starting to dip.

under the it's so easy a caveman can do it, right? Like, OK, so because it's going to be hard for them to screw this. Well, you would think you would. So Newmont Mining, I don't want to get too again wonky here, but this stock, I mean, everybody's I think most people have heard of Newmont Mining. This is a stock that made its all time high. I want to say in the spring of 2022, when the market was much lower than it is now, when the price of gold was much lower than it is now, stock was north of eighty five dollars.

The stock market has done nothing but go higher until recently. Gold has done nothing but go higher. And this stock has been cut in half. That's a pretty shitty operator. Tell me about it. It's really bad. We didn't buy Newmont. We bought Barrick, which you could throw it in the mix as well. And then I'm going to give a shameless plug to something I found in social media land.

It's this thing, I'm not getting paid for this, but I actually think he does great work. It's something called CEO Watcher. It's really cheap. He provides a service that tracks all of the insider buys, and the insider buys are, to me, one of the most important things. - A great tell. - It's a great tell. And then he ranks them based upon the past performance of buys that the company or the underlying management made.

And one of the names that came out was this ticker CDE, Core, which we happen to own. Coeur d'Alene, right? Core Mining. But it used to be Coeur d'Alene, I think. You might be right. And now it's Core Mining. Yes. I think in Idaho. They're domiciled in Chicago, but you're probably right. They acquired a company that we own, Silvercrest. Yes. And the CFO-

started buying stock. So I said, shit, call him, right? And the funny thing is like, okay, what are you guys going to do? And they go, we're going to get our net down, net debt down to zero. We're just going to take advantage of the excess profits. We're not right now trading at four and a half, four to four and a half times EBITDA and Agnico trades at nine. If you just cut that in half, meaning he gets closed that gap,

It's a 50% upside. And I said, the only thing I don't want you doing, if you're going to go out and buy something in freaking Indonesia or in Africa, please let me know. Not insider trading, but if that's your intent and philosophy. Then I'm out. Then I'm out. Like, I don't want that. But if you're going to be right-sizing your balance sheet,

and you're trading at this with the price the underlying kpi the price of gold and silver where it is i want that well you mentioned silver crest what do you i mean again people look at gold and say okay gold's working silver's starting around the edges to show some signs now the downside of silver if there is a slowdown silver is an industrial metal so what works for gold

doesn't necessarily work for silver in a slowing economy. But with that said, I mean, there seems to be a catch-up trade underway right now. We agree. We agree. And we get a little bit of that in CDE, right? That's 30% of their pro forma operations is silver.

What should we be watching? And I ask this question a lot because if you watch the network, if you watch any of the business, they all talk about the same shit seemingly. And I'm part of the problem. I'm not... I am. I'm trying...

But there are other things, obviously, that are out there that might be a little esoteric, under the radar, nobody's paying enough attention to. I continue to think it's dollar-yen. I've been sort of waving that flag for a while. But I'm sure there's some other things. German bond yields, I think, are interesting. I mean, there's some things around the surface that potentially could be a catalyst here, up or down. Correct. Well, first off, I mean, what I get not concerned about, what keeps me up is...

a Trump tweet or social, just whatever he's on, saying, "Making progress on tariffs. Stay tuned." Right? You see that the market's up 3%, 4%. Right. Right, like there. So it's really hard to feel like you have your fingers on the pulse to know what's going to happen, particularly at these levels. So pressing shorts could work, but it could be a very dangerous thing. The other thing I would track intensely is credit spreads right now. Which have been deteriorating. Correct.

really all of a sudden seemingly out of nowhere. And that's something, listen,

I thought that was going to be a problem two years ago. That was not right. It doesn't mean it's not inevitably going to happen. I mean, if you look at sort of, I mean, delinquency rates have been going up in a meaningful way in a non-recessionary environment, which typically doesn't happen. Now, we can play the game. Are we about to? I don't have no idea. But the delinquency rates around credit cards, around mortgages, around things, autos, they've been on the rise in really a meaningful way. And

In terms of consumer delinquencies, they've been rising, but controlled, contained. I'm not concerned about it. However, if unemployment kicks up, they're going to kick up. Perhaps just as important, I'm talking about securities yields on credit spreads, on the securities that people buy, the residuals and the like. If that starts going up and credit starts blowing out a little bit, then there's another leg down in this market. And then, then I think you will see

and everyone changed their tune. All right, so I'm sorry, Dan. So for the lay person at home, the first thing I'm going to look at is the HYG. I don't suggest that you should be trading it, but what are you watching to indicate that the wheels are falling off the bus here? I look at CDS spreads, right? And I also have conversations with people that are trafficking in the space. Like yesterday, I spoke to a pretty well-known person

person who buys credits. And here's the bullish part. He was recently down at the securitization conference down in Vegas that was famously depicted during the book in the movie. And he said, I couldn't find a bear, right? Fine. But the wall of money that's still going into credit

is ginormous. So any ounce, like, so there was some positive news the other day and credit spreads tighten like that because the money's there, right? It hasn't left and it's still looking to find a home investing in something yields because the world needs elevated yields.

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Let's talk about that tweet. So let's just say, you know, the stock market doesn't have a bounce, a meaningful bounce. We've been kind of talking about the bounces over the last week and a half or so. They've been really anemic, right? And so, and they fade really quickly. So let's just say you get that tweet. We're making some progress, but there's nothing like material there, right? Are you selling rallies, right? Because again, you know,

If you put all this pressure on corporations, on the consumer, the uncertainty about where we're going to be, we've heard from Costco. We've heard from Costco that folks are trading down that sort of thing. We know that that was the trade for the last couple of years in Walmart. So the idea of turning this uncertainty about the economy around really quickly based on a tweet or based on some sort of deal that he's going to take a victory lap no matter what happens here,

But we've lost a lot of trust. I think a lot of the policy suggestions that they're making are those sorts of things that, again, our allies are going to be very weary about. And so we know that China is always going to be that way. So what is the thing that actually puts a bottom in? It's not going to be a rate cut. You know what I mean? Like if they're trying to take care of what they think is a weakening economy. It's a good question. I think it would be the end economy.

of this tariff nonsense. - Yeah, but they have multiple fronts right now. - I didn't say it was coming quickly. And I think we have to, and really to me, it settles with China. When we see a, I hate to use it, Mar-a-Lago Accord or some agreement, then I think this comes to an end. However, until we get there, my question is, are we gonna see that Sunday night

five standard deviation event that forces them to reverse course. I don't know that, but I but I'm concerned about it. We've been saying this, though. They've done things kind of ass backwards. If you go back in 2017, Gary Cohn went in there. All he wanted to do is get that corporate tax cut.

And then obviously for the massively rich donor class, that sort of thing. They got it, it kind of goosed the economy, it goosed the stock market, then they went after trade. But they only went after China for the most part. And so to me, what they've done here is gone the opposite way, but they've even made it worse because they went after our two or three biggest trading partners

And you know what I mean? And so like to me, like I just don't understand that. - I can't justify his actions. I was, I mean, and also the political climate in this country just sucks, right? And I was laughing at some of my friends who are big fans of MAGA and all that. And I was like, when did we become,

deadly enemies against Canada. I go, I remember the exhibition game they were doing. It was Canada versus the US in hockey, right? Everyone was plugged in to hate Canada. It was almost like Rocky Balboa fighting Drago, right? By the way, the other side was rooting for the Canadians. What?

I was watching the championship game. It was on a Thursday night. Do you remember that a few weeks ago? And it was really funny because there was a whole cohort of Americans, hockey fans, who were like rooting for the Canadians. Now, what's weird about that is we have, what percentage of Canadians are in the NHL? Correct.

Like, you know what I mean? What if the Rangers or the Islanders have half worth 70% of your team in Canada? So that's not a great anecdote, I guess, in a way. But like, you know, because we're so divided, like you're willing to root for Canada. There's people rooting for Canada right now saying, stand your ground because this bully, you know what I mean, trying to do this is not that productive for our economy, certainly not for yours. And think of it this way. This is an interesting, is this a massive, and I've heard this, a few people say this, and it sort of resonates with me.

Is this a massive regime shift in markets? Okay, follow me. If we've been running massive fiscal trade deficits with other countries, other countries are getting our dollars. What are they doing with it? They're putting it in treasuries, were. Now they're putting it in gold, but they also put it in US stocks. If all of a sudden our trade deficits are significantly less

wide. In fact, maybe we have trade surpluses with them. They don't have the money to put back in this country. Well, Bookvar, our main man from Legally, they were talking, Guy and him were talking about that yesterday. And that was a big driver of the MAG7. If you think about it, he gave an example of Norges Bank. I'm sure all these sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East have been buying these sorts of stocks too. You know, I don't know if they're sellers right now, but

You know what I mean? Yeah, but if it's a flow game and there's lack of more buying, then that just is this massive...

15 to 20 year, 30 year tailwind turns into a potential headwind. Right. And that's not to say there aren't other parts of the market that you can own. I'm just simply saying, would it be different? And maybe that's a good segue. Explain this to me, because when you think of the Mag 7, other than let's say Apple, there's not a ton of consumer exposure, right? Like we can just agree on that. Yeah, Amazon. But it's really trading off its cloud business.

if you think about it, for the most part, right? So it just started getting some credit over the last couple of years in North American retail. I mean, you know, but you can take Facebook, Google, ad business, small and medium-sized business, economy slows. I mean, so there is some economic... Yeah, there's some cyclicality and stuff like that. No doubt about it. But we were on the desk of Fast Money the other night and Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, just dropped a bomb as far as their EPS. And we were talking about it. Like, this didn't just change in like...

three weeks or four weeks, right? Like I'd be shocked if they're doing that. - Actually, you know what? I'll push back a little and say it may have. You know, I mean, I think that's how quickly, you know, you go back to 2018. - The forward order books probably changed a little bit. You know, things happen, people get scared. It's like, wait a second. - Well, you didn't know what Walmart and Costco and all of, and Kohl's and all these guys, they're getting destroyed. There were actually very few bright spots of all the retail earnings. And this is kind of echoing some of the stuff that they've been saying.

Even Verizon the other day, did you see that? I did not see it. The stock was down 8.5%. They gave a soft guy down. They said it's a very competitive market. Now, that's kind of a consumer staple. Yes. Right? It's not exactly like a discretionary. And a bit of an oligopoly, you know, the big three with Verizon. No doubt about it. So, like, talk to us about that, what's going on in the stock market, because Delta was up 100% since August. United was up 200%.

since August, you know what I mean? Like some of these retailers, look at Walmart and Costco looked like they cured cancer or they were like, you know, leading the generative AI trade here. - But to be fair, like look at Costco's multiple, right? - Yeah. - Well, we've been saying that for 10 years on Fast Money and no one's ever cared. - But this is my point. No one cared because the government's intent was to make sure you didn't care, right? Now, all of a sudden Walmart, great company, world's greatest retailer, right?

Retrading it 30 times, that's tough to own. I can't do it. It's just too expensive. Now, someone could counter and say, well, Vinny, Target sucks too, and that's at a low multiple. That would be a guy who says that. Target sucks. But Target's earnings are going down. It's just

- Well, Walmart's down 20% in a straight line from, you know, like I want to say early to mid February, right before their earnings. Okay. And you think about that, the last time Walmart sold off like that was post COVID, right post COVID, right? In 2022, huge gap. The stock was trading, you know, 50 bucks or something like it, probably below that.

You know, this is telling me that they might have a real inventory problem. They might have a demand problem. They may not be able to deal in this inflationary environment. You know, it's interesting because if they're trying to get ahead of all this tariff stuff and right and restock or stock up and then you have a slowdown and people not buy, then you have that same inventory problem you have. So there are a lot of things out there that, you know, people are they're floundering to your earlier point.

There is a... You know, when I hear people say the market hates uncertainty, I want to F and scream because there's never certainty. What I think they should say is the market hates elevated levels of uncertainty because... Or policy uncertainty because, like, think about it. You know, but there's so... Okay, I'll play the game. We also have...

Earnings growth uncertainty. But I think it's elevated in terms of what's going on. That's why you have a VIX at 25, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. By the way, just to tie a bow on that Canada thing, be careful what you wish for because all of a sudden Mark Carney walks in. He's no pushover. I mean, we're in the Bank of England. I mean, this guy is no dope, and he's obviously stepping up and saying, you know what, you want to play the game? We're going to play the game. They are.

I admire that. I admire it. They are standing up and standing firm saying they don't have the cards. They might not have the cards. They might be 2-7 offsuit. But they're saying, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to bluff my way and see if

See if the big bad Trump blinks. We're bluffing our way. I mean, if there's any history, you know what I mean, this sort of thing. I mean, at the end of the day, in Trump 1.0, we ended up with 10% tariffs on Chinese goods that have stayed here the whole time. You know what I mean? So, like, it's not like they achieved some monumental, like, shift in global trade or anything. No, they have not.

What's out there that you and Porter are looking at that you want to talk about? I'm not asking to sort of, what do they call it, undo the kimono or something? Open the kimono. Peel a layer off the underpants. It's funny. We spoke about gold. We would like to increase...

our emerging market exposures. But I'm in no rush to do it right now. So let me stop for a second. So a weakened dollar is a tailwind for a lot of these things. Argentina, by the way, had a huge move last year. I happen to think Brazil might be sort of on the cusp of a similar type of move. Is that something you've looked at? Yes. And I always joke around. I think Brazil is like the Switzerland of the BRICS.

They also have very good looking people. And they are also a country that can fuel themselves and feed themselves and have an export machine with some political concerns, although that-- - There are always concerns. So for the people playing the home game, is EWZ the easiest way to do this? - The easiest way to do it is EWZ. Idiots like us will get into more idiosyncratic names. - As you should. - We do own Petrobras. I've been watching, we've owned, not anymore,

NewBank, which is one of the largest growth banks in Brazil. I'm hoping for a better price. A lot of the stuff we do is analyze, monitor, and then hope for a better price if it comes down. And you always have to monitor to see if the stories are still the same. But Brazil's on our radar. I would love to own more Brazil, but I get concerned that

that given what's going on in the US, like you said, it's really difficult to see other markets really working from these levels. I think we're going to be able to get some bargain prices all over the place. So you and Porter,

And obviously, Danny, back in the day, you guys have been managing money institutionally for a very long time. And this is maybe something we get questions all the time from our listeners, our viewers, that sort of thing. You know, you guys do a shit ton of work. You probably each quarter listen to and I know people like Peter do. They listen to dozens and dozens of conference calls. You guys are digging into all this stuff. Do you ever just say to yourself...

you know what, the idiosyncratic risk of some of these, why don't I just buy the SPY, average in when it goes down, you know what I mean? Average up and in a year or two, I'll be fine because we haven't had a protracted bear market

really for 25 years. So think about that, right? 00, 01, 02, we came out of it. It was a very different environment. But think about even in 08, that was the only year that the stock market was down. Think about, and then we had- 22 as well. Yeah, well, no, 18 and 22. Right. But they were quick.

- Correct. - You know, even 2020, we had a black swan event. So my point is, is like, if you just dollar cost average the Q, you got tons of exposure to almost every major secular shift. And I think you could do the same thing right here in a year and a half. You're gonna be very happy with the prices that you averaged into in 2025, before having another bear market. Who knows if we are. - Correct.

I was laughing when you were asking me the question. It's like, well, what else do you want me to do? Because, and here's the real thing is we love what we do, right? And so as a result, but, and it's our own money, but even if it was just our own money, I better be over time beating the S&P 500. And if I'm not, why the hell am I doing this?

Right. Well, but but the process and how you get there, you know what I mean? Like dollar cost averaging. We say this all the time and we hear it. You know, this is like people make horrible decisions at relative tops. You don't know what's going to be a top and horrible decisions. You know what I mean? At relative lows, that sort of thing. I mean, just look at these airlines. A great example. I mean, like, you know, or look at Tesla. Every single person.

who bought Tesla since November 6th is down money on it. How many of the people thought this was an easy money trade and we're not selling it for 60, for 70, for 80, that sort of thing. And now, you know, the stock's down here at 240.

you know those are career-ending sort of trades or they put you behind the eight ball for years and that was a difficult trade i got to give my boy porter credit for that month because we took well we took it off before the election saying it was an if then and said if

if Trump wins, this stock's going up. - But you never in a million years thought it was gonna double. - Never thought it would double, but thank God we were sitting on the sidelines. - You guys came up with Fast Money and Mel asked you guys a question about it. You were like, we're not short it right now. - No, but once it got to 420, because he loves that number, and then 460, we pressed it more.

saying, A, we were looking at the volumes that were coming out from our friends that do their auto volumes, and we were of the belief that he was going to destroy his brand, the Tesla brand. And I think he's in the process of doing it. Now, the stock is down a lot. So we've gone 40 minutes, and we haven't mentioned Tesla. And that last quarter was just a disaster. I mean, the margins were the worst they saw in five years. And the stock actually rallied on the back of that. All right, so how long have you and Porter been together?

Meaning? Seawolf. Seawolf. Well, we started Seawolf in 2011 as an institutional hedge fund. Closed shop at 16. We've been doing this since 2020. Okay. So, okay. Your worst year in terms of return? Down 11%. Best year? Up 170%. Five years average?

I haven't done the five-year average. We have- You probably, you can back of the envelope. Our multiple on capital has been around 13, 14 times. Which is remarkable. Yeah. So, you know, there's, and I'm not, Dan is right. For most people, dollar cost averaging works. But when you guys have this sort of batting average that you have, I mean, you're looking for opportunities and things that nobody else can find. And I'm going to say this, I'm going to blow smoke up your ass.

The reason why is because there's a rigor to your work. I mean, most people are just very, and I'm all guilty of this as well. You know, you're very one dimensional. Just look at maybe the surface, maybe deep, you know, dive a foot deep. You're going a thousand feet deep to find some of these things. And that's not easy to do. And some of the,

inherent problems with that is there's no immediate gratification a lot of the times. Like you go back and watch the movie and that's one of the reasons, as I said at the time, I didn't want to watch the movie because I knew it was going to upset me because I knew I was going to watch a bunch of people that figured it out, but the market continued to work against them because it didn't make any sense. And I'm not...

trying to even come close to doing what, but I've sat in the seats and like, holy shit. Like, I think I understand what's going on, but the frigging market behaves in a way that doesn't make any sense.

There is a solitude to that. There's a loneliness to that. There's a pain threshold to that. And you live it every day. Yes, I do. And look, and thanks for blowing sunshine up my ass. But there are, with that comes volatility within our own book. There are drawdowns. If anyone thinks we were just...

skirting by the last two weeks and everything was great. That's not the answer. A lot of our longs that we love, that we think are outsized returns, got destroyed. Do you guys add alpha? You just said that I think the next 3% or 4% could be higher. Do you guys trade futures? Do you trade options on the S&P? Just to kind of add a little alpha based on market feel.

No, I would try to look at it in terms of single stock names that probably will engineer the same thing. Are you adding to existing positions or you'll basically take something that you think has a beta of two or something like that? Yeah.

we will either add to existing positions or if a new position came into a level that is so low that we're like, and typically where we like to do that is in our neck of the woods, which is in financials, where I know I have comfort and know how a trade's

and behaves more than say, going outside my- - All right, let's talk about that group. Okay, you talked about credit, the securitization. I knew a bunch of guys who were out there and they kind of echoed some of the same thing. It was like pretty bullish. Guy has spent a lot of time talking about this kind of non-bank, the private credit. I know we've done it too. Does that worry you a little bit? 'Cause that's very different than let's say 20 years ago when you were like in, you were very deep in this space. - Yes, it does worry me, although,

I came to the conclusion that was helped supported by the conversation I had yesterday, which is I do not believe back in the day during the GFC, we felt like we were the leading indicator. No one thought we were, but we thought because we were the most levered part of the world, that trade that we were in. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think they're going to lag. I don't I think if the economy goes bad, credit spreads will blow out. If the economy is fine, credit spreads will be fine because the wall of money is there for them. So I'm not

i'm analyzing it but i don't think that's what's going to be the lead is that pension and cyber wealth is that the wall of money for for these products yeah because they've just absolutely exploded you know because they need the yield and that's where they're getting me all right help the people who are listening here um you just said you're deep and you feel comfortable in some of the financial names is it largely money center banks is it like um no where i feel most comfortable now

is in the SMIC-capped regional banks, right? So this is where a lot of people are not playing. And it's not- - Is this an M&A theme or is this- - Yes, it's an M&A theme. And it's also with, if rates decline, the stresses associated with commercial real estate, all else being equal- - Abate a bit. - Will abate a bit, which improves the balance sheets of these companies. And I think with deregulation, you will see

you will see M&A, particularly in the small cap side. I don't know if you'll see it in the large side. And I'd rather avoid, even though these stocks are down a lot, right? The JP Morgan cities, I could see or feel a bounce in them. But

I'd rather own the things where I think I'm going to wake up Monday morning and get announcements where they're going to be taken out. And some of these are trading at discounts. So do you think there's going to be some folks who kind of test the waters a little bit? Because the concern I would have is that the market's telling you, just look at the KRE, right? The regional banking index. It's down, you know, it topped out like 5%.

three weeks after the election and now it's been down like 20 right it's overshot that whole gap by a bit here so like obviously we had the the capital one and the discover last year and who knows what's going to happen um with that but if we have a protracted trade war if the economy is weaker if the ftc that's what it's gonna if the ftc is not giving up on some of these suits even the ones that were started on the bite administration do you think they will be open to a bunch of regulation or a bunch of um

you know, M&A because they can only do so many things at once. Right. To get the budget, they're going to have to make cuts. They might have to go to, again, some things that are not particularly palatable. We're hearing more and more, you know, Elon's out there talking about Social Security and Trump has said we're never going to touch Social Security. I just think that policy could get really messy and maybe we don't get the deregulation that a lot of folks are hoping. That's why I'm doing this. Mid-cap banks, because I think

Like, for example, the bank we own, yes, did you buy anything today? I bought one thing today. This bank, and you might not know what it is. It's called First Citizens, right? CNCA, right? And for everyone out there, the way it would be known is this is arguably the best regional bank in the country. They're the best buyers of other banks in the country. It's well known for that it bought...

this bank that we will remember that's world renowned, which was Silicon Valley Bank, and bought it out of receivership. It's down, the stock has gone from 2,200, 2,250 to around 1,700 right now. - By the way, I'm looking at it right now, 2,400. - Right. - To 1,700. - To 1,700. Book value's around 1,600, and they have truckloads of excess capital, truckloads of it.

I'm starting to buy that again. We've owned it since the Silicon Valley acquisition. I'm starting to buy a little bit of it again. Am I going all in right now? Hell no. Why is it outperforming the downside relative to, let's say, the KRE or large money centers? I actually think it was initially underperforming the KRE because it is what is considered an asset-sensitive bank, which means when rates decline,

their margins will suffer more. And that is a risk and I will accept that. - When they bought Silicon Valley Bank, the stock was trading at $525. - That's right. - I mean, we just traded $2400. - I don't wanna, that's where we bought it.

- We bought it. - Oh really? - So we, but- - You bought it on that gap? Like because the stock- - What happened was, rewind the clock back to those days, and there were rumors of people gonna buy Silicon Valley Bank. And of course us bank guys started talking like who would do this? And we were like, First Citizens. This is First Citizens all over the place. And so we just bought First Citizens.

We could have this conversation for another hour. Can I ask you one more question? - Yeah, you got a little time, right? - Sure. - What do you think, you mentioned the concentration in the SMP that we call them the fateful eight, right? And you know, listen, it ended up being the right call. - Who's the eighth?

- Avago Broadcom, when it passed a trillion dollar market cap, basically that changed that. And you know, David Koston, did you see his note the other day when he kind of took down his S&P target? I think he went to 6,200 from 6,500. He said the Magnificent Seven is now the Maleficent Seven. Did I say that right? Maleficent. - Maleficent. - Maleficent. - Okay, you ready? Koston said the Mag Seven has gone to the Maleficent.

Maleficent. All right. So David Koston the other day said the mag seven is what guy he said now he's calling it the Maleficent. Okay. And so to me, the whole idea of the fateful eight was that the market's fate is in these eight stocks hands. So how are you thinking about them now? Most of them are down 20% from their highs. Obviously Tesla's down 50%. Yeah.

Nvidia's down maybe 25, 30%, and the other is let's say 20% or something like that. - They're down a lot, but we started looking at Google and Amazon. We tend to, when we want to buy these types of names, we go to Google and Amazon mainly because the valuation, we like the businesses and the valuations are palatable. We haven't done anything yet, but I keep coming back in my head, the great Warren Buffett got to buy Microsoft at eight times, right?

do we get a shot, maybe not eight times, but do we get a shot to buy a Google at 12, 13? - Is 15 times the new eight times? - Correct, maybe. And like if you do, then I think if this continues,

we're going to get a chance to buy world-class assets on the cheap globally, right? And I'm looking forward to that. And it's our job to really keep our powder dry and maintain our NAV. We're not looking to make a heck of a lot of money in these markets. It's not easy. But such that when the valuations finally come down and there's a line of sight that the rate of change on the economy is no longer negative and inflecting, then maybe we could get really long

some of these names that people talk about all the time. But is the line of sight right now so negative? Do you understand what I'm saying? It's like you just said, when you get a sense that the line of sight is going to get better, because that's the one thing. I can't remember the last time I've seen the word recession in such a short manner make its way into the lexicon of market participants.

Right. And then it became mainstream. Just just open up, you know, the front page of The Wall Street Journal. You're even seeing The New York Times write about it. So I'm just curious on and we'll just end it here. You know, there's a lot of talk about a recession. The last time we had that was going into 2023 and we didn't have a recession. You know what I mean? And so I'm just curious what you think, because we had two consecutive years of 25% gains after that. Right. And what caused that to me was the government's intent

to run fiscal deficits six to 8% such that the revenue growth was outsized for everyone. And so the people who were saying we're not going to have a recession was looking at that and saying, we can't have a recession with nominal GDP six to 8%. If you're actually trying to cut government spending, that's a headwind, right? So I keep coming back to

Maybe we do get a recession this time. Now, what will be interesting is we have yet to see the boogeyman that comes out in recessions, meaning something in capital markets that fucks everything up, right? That changes course and makes the Fed do crazy stuff and Trump to reverse course on all of his policies. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but we're definitely on the radar to say we'll see because it's possible. Justin Fields behind center.

I think it was a sadly an intelligent move. We're in rebuild mode. We can't get. We're not getting a quarterback. Let's see what Aaron Glenn can bring, particularly to the defense. And you don't want to go all in on a quarterback when you're not ready yet. Francisco Alvarez shelved for five weeks with a broken hand. I'm not worried about it.

I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about the Mets. I think we'll be more than fine for the first time. Well, not first time. For the last three, four years, I have an exceptional management team. It's all I care about. In the green room, did you meet Steve Cohen? I went straight up to him. Oh, you did? I said, thank you. I watched you. And Danny yelled at me. What?

He yelled at me because I didn't have my name plate on. Right. And your typical Danny, he was looking out for me. Right. And he goes, he goes, Vinny, what are you doing? I go, what do you mean? He goes, get your name plate on. He should know who you are. I go, Danny, he's not going to hire me to be general manager. Like, like it's not going to happen. That ship is safe. So that was a good day. Let's get out. It was Steve Cohen calls you.

and says, I know you and Porter got a great thing, but I need you as part of this management group. Are you dropping everything and going? I won't say no, right? I would ask him, can I do it? Can I moonlight? Can I moonlight? Vinny, you are the, you're a brilliant man. I mean that since I thought that before I met you, I know it now more than ever. You got to come back because this hour went by like that. Thank you so much. Awesome. This was great. I had a great time.