Hello and welcome, everybody. This is the morning show. Special show today, special edition Strazza show. I am the host, Steve Strazza, chief market strategist at All-Star Charts. No JC today. JC is in New York City for a conference. We'll talk about that in a little bit. And no Spencer either. Spencer, big day for Spencer. I think he's at the hospital, maybe having a baby. So we'll hear more about that tomorrow. So exciting. And JC will be back as well for the rest of the week. I have a special guest joining me today. Jason Pers is joining me, so he'll be co-hosting the show. Todd Sohn is coming on at 9:00. That should be a great chat as always. So without further ado, let's hit it. Run that bumper. Let's go, baby.
My man. Hey, what's up, Steve?
So I got the news yesterday. It was like 2:30. I'm like, you're telling me now? And then I realized, okay, baby, special circumstances, that it's okay. But I'm like, really? You're letting me know now. I got to do the show by myself tomorrow. He's like, 'Well, have somebody on.' And I thought to myself, who would I rather talk to right now than Jason? Because all we're doing these days is writing about and talking about commodities. I feel like, oh man, by far the most in a long time that I think all of us, the analyst team together, is just all over commodities, even the equities guys. What do you think? Is it too much?
It's just a cycle, right? You know, when you look at it and you understand the cycles, like I, you know, you had a great report on the SPSW stock, great trades. And what do we do well here? We find the cycles, we figure out where the primary trends are, and then we leverage it by finding the stocks inside of it. And I think that's what we're all doing right now. And I think it's all, as long as we're all making money and our clients are making money, we're all happy. I, you know, I saw the double from, you had the SLV trade, you had a bunch of different commodity trades on lately. So I mean, I think it's just been a good time to do it.
Well, I was thinking about you specifically yesterday. Did you see my note?
I didn't see the note yesterday.
So you inspired it, so you should read it. I said, I think I said the way I learned it is gold goes first, and then copper, and then crude oil. And if I had to like shove silver into that equation or that routine somewhere as a little quasi-precious industrial metal, wouldn't you stuff it right between gold and copper? Right? So wouldn't it go gold, then silver, then copper, then the energy stuff?
Usually, like sometimes it's gold-copper, sometimes it's gold-silver, and I think that's a... and we could throw up this... funny you say this, I brought up slide 33. So if we got slide 33, I actually brought a slide of this. There's going to be so many commodities charts today, Christos can't take it anymore. He said so much commodities talk in my inbox. I'm telling you, it's got to be some sort of signal.
When we're talking about commodities, it's not a... like once again, we're all very, very flexible. So that means we could go long, we could go short, we could trade anything. Steve will trade the craziest meme stocks you never heard of. I'll be trading some obscure power market in Germany. Like there's all types of things that we trade. And if we're talking about commodities, it just means they're obviously moving. Something's going on there. And so if you look at this... Go ahead, Steve.
We will do anything, Jason. But there are certain people who will be like only growth stocks or only value stuff. Like we'll go anywhere. We're just looking for a trend.
Well, the biggest thing is when we're doing stuff, we always have to think as traders, like this is just generally as a trader. One is go around, figure out what's going on in the macro landscape. If you can figure out what's going on in the macro landscape, then you figure out where to go. Something like international stocks. Okay, the dollar's moving down, international stocks are moving, we're gonna go kind of into these areas. So I think it's just something to keep paying attention to here.
So let's go to slide 33. I'll buy palladium. I'll get down with a little platinum. If anything, it drives me crazy sometimes as somebody who prefers to just live in my equity account and not have to dabble with futures and have to think about how to position size different futures positions and how that works with what I'm already holding in my equities, right? So if I can, I'm going to do it with an equity vehicle and with commodities, and I'm going to talk about this. It's going to be the first question we ask Todd Sohn today. There's just still not enough vehicles. Maybe finally they're coming if these things keep working, but the amount of vehicles that we have to express a thesis in commodities markets and the equities market continues to be lacking. It actually used to be better five, ten years ago. We had more options. We had less today.
Jason has no audio. What is going on? Izzy, help us. I lost my co-host. Oh god. Bear with us, guys. And take a sip of my coffee. I woke up to the most insane allergy attack today. I think my cat's just sitting here taunting me about it. Couldn't stop sneezing. Had an absolute sneezing attack. I hate sneezing on camera. Izzy, are we gonna get Jason back? Because I'm just going to run through some commodities charts. I threw into the deck this morning basically just a handful of charts that we have been writing about, talking about, discussing on our different shows. So let's just go right through them.
FS, I hope my audio is working. Everybody can hear me. Okay. Right.
Okay. So, first one, gold. A lot of my view is coming down to, from a weight of the evidence perspective at least, is coming down to, well, look at gold, right? Look at the other ones. There's a lot of intermarket in the way that I'm thinking about these different commodities charts right now. So I'll look at something like silver and I'll zoom way out and I'll overlay it with gold and I'll say, well, if gold looks this way, right? Look at the way that these two track together over time. You can see the big bases in the '80s and '90s that broke out in the 2000s into another big base, right? Some call this like a cup and handle in something like silver, right? And then if you look at that secondary base there in gold that recently broke out and it looks like silver's going down. So why doesn't silver look more like gold in the future? I think that's one of the easiest ways to think about what's happening right now.
When you zoom in and you get a little bit more tactical, right, and say to yourself, well, how might that move start? This would be a pretty good point, pretty good place and time and level for it to start. Why? Let's talk about it. You got this coil in place. You can see the coil drawn in blue here within a broader, you know, half-year, three-quarter consolidation pattern, right? That breaks out around 35 and a quarter. And if you look at the squeeze indicator, that's just measuring the volatility. That's just showing you the tightness of this current little consolidation, right? So once you get a crossover, a bullish crossover in that squeeze indicator, it tells you expect a big move. Expect a big move to be underway. Then we have to decide what direction is that move going to occur in. Looks like it's already occurring to the upside, right? So I think silver is already on its way right here, right now, to looking more like gold in the future.
Silver-gold ratio. If you look at this next one, a little bull hook in this tells you that the rally in precious metals is being supported by the right kind of risk appetite. So I think this little failure, little scoop and score situation, which is set up perfectly, is about to fire, and that could be the perfect confirmation for building a pretty big position in silver actually over gold. That's going to tell you that leadership is coming, that outperformance, right? The animal spirits, gold bugs start buying silver. So I think silver-gold ratio squeezing higher here. That's a big deal.
And then why not copper? Copper looks really similar to silver in my opinion, right? You got a big base and then a coil inside of it. And just look at what led up to the coil. False start out of this base in March. Big failure, big failed breakout. Slammed right back to the lower bounds. It took like a week and a half to get there, right? So from failed moves come fast moves. That's what that looks like. But volatility was blowing out, right? So it's like decision time. That's inflection point volatility. And I think since copper refused to break down and is now coiling and resolving higher from this little coil, it seems it's going to take another shot at the upper bounds of this base. So maybe copper ends up looking more like silver, which ends up looking more like gold in the future.
If you look at something like palladium and platinum, even that showing evidence of a reversal, platinum looking better. There's some like foreign central bank stuff going on there from what I understand. Palladium, they'll still look similar. And if you look at one of these, just this is a bellwether platinum and palladium stock if they exist. So this bellwether, we talk about this one every commodity cycle, and five and three-quarters, what a big level. That would be a nice reversal. That's what it did. If you go look at this next chart, this is the performance of Sibanye during the last commodity bull run. And just look at the level of outperformance you get over the metals. Jason, are you with me?
Wow. Thought you guys like test that kind of stuff.
All right. Okay. Next one. Just flip it to the triple pain energy chart. Figure it out, guys. We're okay. I could talk forever. Going on to in Kenny's room, if any of you guys are Kenny's members, going to be in his room at 11 o'clock today, I believe. So that's going to be awesome. That'll be fun. We're going to do like some live trading and just break it down. I hope the market's moving, you know, so there's stuff to talk about. Be great to put on some live trades, but like, I don't know. There's some days I go by, I don't really do anything.
Yesterday was an interesting tape. I think we're ready to fire back to those old highs. And then I'm ready for Todd Sohn. I've pretty much gone through my charts. But if you look at the energy futures here, right? Gasoline holding in, heating oil just ever so slightly below this little shelf of support, right? But looks ready to scoop. And crude oil is just coiling right there with what could be the perfect little failed top setup. This is a multi-year distribution pattern in crude, and these things have been just sitting on the lower bounds, right, of these topping patterns for quarters now since last year, just hanging out, and the bears cannot break these distribution patterns down.
I think at a certain point, especially when you look at what's going on elsewhere in the market, whether it's how well stocks and risk assets are trending or all these commodities that we're talking about breaking out, do we want to make the bet that crude oil and heating oil and gasoline, right, all these energy contracts are going to be breaking down, resolving these massive tops while all the metals are breaking out and looking more like gold? No way, right? And the fact that they haven't been able to break these tops down yet, I think is huge, right? Tells you they're probably not going. So I think these are going to scoop and score any day now. All three of them, right? And you'll probably see it happen in sequence. So you could kind of make a list as one goes, expect the others to follow. I think these things have bear trap written all over them. So that's all I got. If we can't get Jason back, that's fine. We'll just do a state of the markets.
Okay. So let's look at the futures markets right now. It's about 8:45, 45 minutes to the open here. S&P 500 down almost a quarter of a percent. Dow down a quarter of a percent. NASDAQ 100 futures down 18%. So really nothing here from the major averages. We're coiled up really nicely. Still, we've been in these little multi-week coils for a while now. International equity sleepy out here today as well. German DAX up about 16%. If you look at something like EFA, looks like we're coming in down about a percent here. That's probably due to the dollar strength. If you look at the dollar index, we're up about half a percent here today. Euro down half a percent, a little bit more than half a percent. Yen, which is working on a really nice base. I think this base in the yen breaks out pretty soon. Yen down about half a percent versus the dollar. So dollar-yen up half a percent. And the British pound down a third of a percent.
Over to the commodities markets. Start with copper because I think copper is, it just looks really perky here. They're all giving some back here this morning. And you're starting to see that dollar relationship work in the opposite direction with crude oil and then also the other commodities because as the dollar was down big yesterday, we had big moves across the board in commodities. Now the dollar's taking some back here today. Commodities giving back just a little bit. Copper down 1.36% this morning. Over in precious metals, gold down about three-quarters of a percent. Silver futures right up against the upper bounds of that base. I mean, silver, it just wants this breakout so bad. But down 1% here today, trading around 34.55.
Over in energy, crude oil up slightly, about 6%. So crude back to rallying with the dollar here today after a quick dislocation in that relationship yesterday. Heating oil up 8% today. Natural gas down about 2% and gasoline futures up slightly, up about a third of a percent.
Over in funny money land, save the best for last. Bitcoin down slightly. Bitcoin's been sleepy too, right? Just kind of hanging out. Put in a little retest that shelf of old all-time highs from December and January and that's just hanging out. Solana made a big move while I was sleeping. I saw that up 3% here this morning. I think Solana has a little tactical polarity zone in the low 160s, call it like 164, 165. A scoop back above that level, I think, sets Solana on a track back to the 200s and that would just be huge for the whole crypto space. So looking for that.
Ripple as well, kind of coming in, testing its April VWAP support right here in the 220s. So we're trading around 222 today. I think Ripple looks coiled up and ready to go. You could draw a little downtrend line just from the May highs and play that little flag higher. I think Ripple goes to three soon. And then Ethereum, of course, there's Ethereum. Ethereum is doing nothing here today. And MicroStrategy pre-market up about 1.5%.
Still like the Coinbase. I know Sean really likes the crypto brokers. Coinbase, Robinhood too. I think he just put on a Robinhood trade. I like that. I keep watching the miners. You had something like this Applied Digital yesterday just announced some sort of deal. Let me see if I could find it. I saw it come across my newsfeed yesterday, but APLD was up like 45% yesterday. Yeah. No, I'm not going to be able to pull it up. They did some sort of deal.
And then the big news this morning, the big mover is Constellation Energy. I mean, this stock just doesn't stop. Up another 10% this morning. They just announced a 20-year deal with Meta to supply 1.1 gigawatts of power, ensuring reactor operation through 2047. Seems like a pretty big deal. 1.1 gigawatts. I don't know how much that is, but it sounds like a lot.
Who else was in the news this morning? I saw good old Hims and Hers announcing plans to acquire Zava, accelerating major European growth across the UK, Germany, France, and Ireland. Here's what I'll say about Hims and Hers. Everything they do ends up looking like a great decision. These guys, like these operators, just let them go. Right? Let them cook Europe. If Europe, they want to go and sell the ED and hair loss stuff to Europe, great. They should do that. I'm down with whatever Hims and Hers thinks is the right course of action at this point. I have never seen anybody run a healthcare company with this kind of speed to market. It's really cool. So they're acquiring Zava. It was a press release out this morning. Market seems to like it.
That's what ends up happening once the market believes that you're some sort of master operator and you know what the hell you're doing. You know how you're running your company. Then whenever you, you know, make these changes or strategic decisions for your company, right? And in this case, acquire another business. A lot of times stocks go down when they acquire other businesses, right? If you have a CEO that the street believes in and you're acquiring other businesses, market starts rewarding you. Oh, this guy knows what he's doing. Every other deal he's made has been great. Why wouldn't this one be great, too? Stock's up 7% pre-market. There you go. So Wall Street just continues to absolutely love this stock.
Rocket Lab launches the 10th Black Sky mission, hits 65 total electron flights. We could start doing a segment where I have to read press releases that I don't understand with words like gigawatts and electron flight. So Rocket Lab electron flight, that sounds great. Deploying a Gen 3 Black Sky BKSY satellite into 470-kilometer orbit. They've been doing this for a long time. Their 10th mission since 2019, second this year alone. These companies are funky, man. But the market is loving the space and exploration stuff. Rocket Lab up 3% on this news here this morning. If you look at some of the other ones, ASTS getting a little pop, Lunar getting a little pop, SATL, not much.
Okay. NIO reports unaudited first quarter '25 financial results. Don't waste your time reading that. What else in the world of news here this morning? Decent day. Decent day on the news front. China has expressed strong opposition to the EU's recent measures that limit the procurement of medical equipment. Okay, nothing to see there. Had some late-day reporting on the trade war again yesterday. More comments from the China Commerce Ministry about the EU.
Victoria's Secret down slightly here after reporting earnings. Looked like a beat both top and bottom. MARA announces Bitcoin production and mining operation updates for May of 2025. That's what I'm here for. I heard MARA owns more Bitcoin than MicroStrategy. Is that right? It can't be right.
I like Caleb Franzen's take on Twitter yesterday. It's something I've kind of been talking about, which is that MicroStrategy becoming such a major player in Bitcoin is probably more of a risk than anything. They become a systemic risk to the price of Bitcoin. What if MicroStrategy, what if this smart leverage doesn't work one day and MicroStrategy blows up? What's that mean for Bitcoin? Force liquidations from the largest holder of Bitcoin. What would that mean for Bitcoin? I don't know. Everybody's so excited about it. Nobody talks about how it works in a bear market.
MARA produced 950 Bitcoin in May. Super cool. Market still hates this stock. These Bitcoin miners, some look a lot better than the others. Like I said, this APLD looks fantastic. Something like CORZ looks fantastic. Then you got like MARA and Riot and the old-school Bitcoin miners, the ones that have been around the longest seem to be the ones that are struggling the most.
Pinterest upgraded to overweight. Stock seems to be moving 5% on the news. JP Morgan new price target 40. UUUU plus 9% achieves another record month for US uranium production. This one's interesting because I think Energy Fuels is mostly US-based, which makes them an interesting name through all of the trade war situation here. So it's the UUUU.
But when it comes down to nuclear stocks, I think, I mean, there's the new nuclears and there's everything else. Like sure, you could go buy Cameco or the NXE, something like UUUU, and they have other like rare earth stuff. They're doing other things. UEC's another one. Dennis, these are all the old uranium names. They've been around forever, my whole career, all of them, except for NXE. But then we have the new nuclears, these small modular reactor businesses like the OKLO and SMR and the NNE. And then you got the Constellation and the Vistra like that. I think that's what's really interesting in the world of energy right now. There's nothing better than those stocks. SMR, NNE, and OKLO. I mean, these stocks are waiting for no one. Rallying again here this morning on the Constellation news.
Anyway, ASML downgraded, selling off a little bit pre-market. UEC, there it is. One of those old uranium names up 9% on earnings. They seem to like it. Okay, that's great. Big bases there in those other uranium names, right? UEC, CCJ, monster bases. Some of the biggest, best-looking bases in the market, really.
Nvidia, some Jefferies comments out on Nvidia. I like the semiconductors here. Was talking with the analyst team last night. Somebody said, 'Hey, look out for semiconductors.' I said, 'I think you're right. I think you're right.' This is just one of those groups that you would expect to work and expect to keep playing catch-up, right? And really expect to be home to some of the best stocks in a bull market. It's almost always the case. So I'm looking for a stock like Nvidia to be back making new all-time highs very soon, especially if that's where the indexes are going. And just look at something like Broadcom. Look at Avago. That's been the leader when it comes to semiconductors. AVGO basically breaking out to new all-time highs right now after going sideways all year. Nice little consolidation there.
Freight futures, not interested in that. Just running down the rest of the news here. Google selling off again. Apple wants to discuss cooperation with Perplexity to boost its purchasing power. Google volume drop off of those headlines commentary in addition to Samsung's cooperation with Perplexity. Apple is also reportedly interested.
How much is it selling off? I'm telling you, it's not easy being Google these days. Not easy owning one of these monopoly search businesses that's just been one of the best cash cow businesses in the history of businesses. Now all of a sudden the market hates it. Tough to be Google, but this too shall pass, like it always does for these Mag Seven names. So Google down, I don't know, 8% here pre-market, whatever.
Amazon Pharmacy announces updates to simplify medication management. Medicare Part D beneficiaries can now access PillPack from Amazon Pharmacy for pre-sorted medication packets. NATO seeks... Never mind. Okay. So that's all we got here this morning. If I take a look underneath the hood, I think it looks like we're going to have a pretty decent day for some of the growthier stuff. But then some of the more value and cyclical stuff, not so much. ARK stocks are up 1% here pre-market. Communications being weighed down a little bit by this Google. And again, you know, equity futures pretty much unchanged on the day.
I would love to bring in Todd Sohn and talk about ETFs, maybe even commodity ETFs, maybe even European ETFs, new ETF launches. I'm sure they've launched a couple double-leveraged space and exploration individual stock funds since the last time we talked to Todd S. So we will have to get updates on all of that. Let's go. I like that name, Jason. We're on the bumper. Let's bring on Todd. Is Todd here?
J, we've been friends for a long time. Make the call. I mean, this is pretty professional, guys. Nice. Nice show you got going here.
Todd Sohn. Hey guys, how we doing? Well, I mean, it's always a gamble if my audio will work or not. Most stressful... that was my morning back. It's the most stressful time of the month for me.
Because it's just, I don't know if it's going to work and the crowd gets rowdy.
You get upset? Do you get nervous? Do you get nervous when you do our show?
I do, only because of the audio.
Well, we have missed you. I was just saying before you came on, we got to ask Todd if some more commodity funds are coming, but why don't you start there? Like what have been the new launches? Any cool new launches or closures since we chatted, what, like a month ago?
TMT. This one's just... this one's for you, the junkie in you, Steve. I don't know how big a junkie Jason is.
Not so much. No, listen, Todd, I'm already in the QBTS. I don't need this.
You don't need 2x Tempest?
No, but this is 2x QBTS, right?
No. Well, there's QBTX and then TEMT, that's 2x Tempest AI.
Okay, then TradingView is wrong. It's telling me this is 2x long QBTS daily.
It says 2x long TEM daily. I thought Tempest AI. I mean, so what's interesting is the... Okay. Wow. The single stock stuff that's coming out, they're getting... I have a scatter plot. I can send it to you after this. They're getting smaller and smaller. So you started with Tesla, Nvidia, Coinbase, and now there's this kind of linear move if you put them on a scatter.
There was a filing out there from some random issuers and there were stocks in there I'd never heard of and I wish I could remember the ticker, but it was like a $300 million, started with a ticker S and it was probably some small...
No, but they're doing this with small caps.
Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, the quantum names were technically small caps. I don't know what they are now.
Webull. Webull is coming.
Webull was a small cap last week.
Yeah. There's a 2x Webull coming and that's a $5 billion name.
So just Webull IPO'd a couple months ago.
Yeah. And we're going to 2x it right away, man.
So it's down 90%. So let's launch a double.
Yeah. So they're getting smaller and smaller because, you know, you guys do your Young Aristocrats, all that stuff like that. You know what I mean? It's kind of trying to find the next big name. And if you can catch on to some of these names, like the quantum stuff, you can get a product that gets up to 100 million bucks pretty quick. Do I think it's a little crazy? Yes. But it's also hilarious.
Anything interesting go away recently?
Yeah. Let me grab a list here really quick. Actually, give me 30 seconds.
Are you a Knicks fan, Todd?
Yeah. I mean, they screwed up the first game. That was rough to watch.
That was rough, wasn't it? Changes or no?
No, I don't know. I don't know. So, figure out the Cruise ETF is gone. That's one.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Defiance, really recently. We didn't have it there either. It was only around for a couple years.
I think TRIP, TR may also be... yeah, that's gone too.
Thematic is tough. I would love to bring the restaurant funds back because the restaurant indices stink because they're all skewed by McDonald's and Starbucks.
What was it? BITE. BITE. Long live BITE, man.
So in May you had KraneShares closed their all-China fund.
And then they had this EM strategy that would rotate between EM and EMX China and I think it was a unique idea but no one bought it. LNG ecosystem, Range Global, that closed. And then Simplify.
Yeah. Is their other one still? Didn't they just launch offshore too?
OFOS maybe, is that the ticker?
Yeah. And they have coal too. Coal and nukes, man. Nukes is all the rage.
Oh, is that the new nuclear?
And what is the ticker for that? NUKZ.
I mean, that is pure fire right there.
Wow. Get on board. Other... I mean, do I think there's any other interesting like contrarian closures?
Fine. All right. Nothing there yet.
Nothing there yet. But it's all about single stocks, man.
Now Jason wants to know about the commodity funds. Are we ever going to get some of these commodity funds back that they took away? It's got to be five or six years now, four or five years, shut down their commodity funds.
I mean, there's all you can get. I think the move that some issuers are doing are they're playing around with the roll yield.
That way you're not getting crushed when you have to roll the futures contracts. That's kind of the newer thing. It's been going on for a few years.
That's not hard to figure out for liquid contracts, right, Jason? Like they should be able to do... USO shouldn't look the way it does.
No, can't they do a better job?
Oh, for sure. But it's just the way... it's kind of like when things have been done a certain way, they continue to do it a certain way. And also, they didn't expect things like 2020 to happen. You know, 2020 happens, you get oil negative, it smashes the whole fund. Every 2x, you guys remember there's a bunch of 2x and 3x oil funds at that time and those are all gone. So basically it's just a really bad way of doing it. It's the reason why it's much better to kind of just trade the futures contracts, but a lot of people don't do that.
I don't know if like... because I get it, commodities have a role somewhere in a portfolio, right? Whether you're trading it or it's uncorrelated assets. It seems to me like folks are more concentrated on either managed futures, okay, or crypto because crypto's hot. They got to build out their crypto ecosystems. They're kind of just leaving commodities aside. So I don't know how many more launches you're going to get in the commodity world. You know what I mean? Nobody's interested.
Well, think about it more, which is interesting itself, right? Think about it more just the fact that we've been in this strong dollar cycle since like what, since '08 basically, and this just... if we go into a weak dollar cycle, you probably would see more of these pick up, and that's kind of when a lot of these were launched. If you look back at, you know, 2000 to 2012, you saw a lot of these commodity fund ETFs get launched, and next thing you know, commodities are dead for what, 10 years straight basically until 2020, and then finally like they were like, 'I'm done.' And even when they started to move back up in 2020, some of them got delisted right then. The coal ETF, I think the cocoa ETF.
Well, not only did they, Jason, not only did they take away coal when they did, but then they brought it back when they did. And look at it since.
Um, you can get 2x on wheat and corn if you want. I don't know who wants that, but it exists. Uh, that's Tick does that.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they just launched the 2x Ripple. Ripple. Do you know the rules around that? Like, what's up with that? We got to have Sal back on. I got to ask him about that.
I mean, I know that the 2x up there's there's a derivatives framework. So, that's just futures then. So, they could do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's not I mean, it's it's not spot, but it's something and people like it. Yeah. That that's going to be a wild one. That's the XRP. I couldn't tell you anything about Ripple itself. Do you follow the cryp do you follow the crypto stuff though? Like, aren't we waiting for Solana funds? Like, isn't that supposed to staking this and that? That's the whole thing. But I I don't know. Color me skeptical on what the demand for this is going to be.
Yeah. Like 95% of people if they're going to buy crypto, they just buy Bitcoin because they've heard of it. They know. Yeah. But no, I think I think Solana is going to be a hit for these advisers. They're buying these micro strategy funds. Why wouldn't they buy this story of, hey, this is just a higher beta of Bitcoin and it's gonna pay you a dividend and you're gonna get paid to hold this. Maybe I'm naive. Eat that up. They're going to love that. I'm probably being naive because I I don't understand what the difference is. I'm going to quit my job and go around selling Solana to advisor shops. I think it's that good. It's that much of a home run. Who could say no to that?
What's the difference between that and Bitcoin? A lot. Solana's I'm tell you I'm being naive here because I don't know. I legitimately don't know. I need to read a book.
Well, the difference lately has been a lot of underperformance from Solana.
Yeah. I I don't know. I don't know. And Bitcoin already has the liquidity. If you're using an ETF, whatever the Solana, Ripple, Bonk.
So, what's holding that up? The whole staking situation they're trying to figure out. Yeah, I think it's a it's a regulatory thing like like is it a security? Is it not a security?
Well, there's a whole regulatory thing which is like the problem is they lock it up. Fun to read about. So like it's easy to do that with with an ETF when it's based on a dividend payment, but with the staking you got to like wait 30 days to unstake it. So what happens during a bear market if they're holding a staked position and can't get I don't know, right? I I don't know how they I don't I'm so skeptical of
of Bitcoin will always have the most of the assets and then there'll be this little corner for all the junkies like you for Solana and Dogecoin and stuff like that.
You're wrong. You're wrong. Time will tell. So, so I sit here and I watch my newsfeed. Oh, by the way, question in the chat. Somebody asked about um the newsfeed and the chat's funny today. Listen to this one from Christos. Damn, I really needed a 2x TEM. Thanks, Todd.
Uh, that's great. No, somebody asked, "Where am I reading all that news from?" Uh, shout out Trade Exchange, just onee, trade exchange. Um, tell Milton Steve sent you. It's It's just the best. It's the best news forum out there. Actually helped him build this many, many years ago. He's a dear friend, a friend of All-Star Charts. That's Trade Exchange that I use every morning. And what I saw yesterday on Trade Exchange was, as I so often do, a new fund, a new micro strategy fund. Did you hear about this just yesterday? It's kind of like the STRK 3 about it, but they're launching new funds around this thing. I don't know. I don't even know. What was it? Preferred stock. I'm going to try to find it.
But it seems like once a week there's some sort of Micro Strategy something strategy. There's secondaries. It's big. It's all big and I don't get any of it.
Micro Strategy now underperforming Bitcoin. What say you? Is it a problem? Just buy Bitcoin, man.
God, you really you won't even you don't care at all. You hate crypto.
No, I don't hate crypto. I just am completely agnostic to it. I don't get it.
No, Michael just nailed it. MSTD it was. That's right. MSTD.
I've been in crypto for years, but at the same time, I'd say like, you know, Bitcoin is the biggest and best. It's the most liquid. Um, you can trade futures on it. Um, I don't ever trade the ETFs, but you know, you can trade the ETFs, whatever it is. I definitely like going to Bitcoin above everything else. Um, but once again, I understand why some people could pick some other ones. You want these huge wins, but Bitcoin's just been a huge win over and over and over again, so I'd rather stick there. I'm not even gonna lie to you guys. Uh, last week I bought Pepe the Frog. I bought Dog Whiff with hat. And I bought Peanut the squirrel.
What's I don't get that. Swear to God. What about the the the smoking frog one?
No, it's Pepe the Frog. I I don't think the smoking chicken. Sorry. The smoking chicken. I don't have I don't see I don't have a smoking chicken. I don't have heartcoin. I have I have a line right that I won't go below. And that's like can I can I make one of Spencer's baby?
Can you name Spencer's baby? I don't know if he'll let you. No, the co the coin you wanted. You want Spencer's Spencer's baby coin. Can we do that?
Yeah. Spencer's gone today, having a baby. Congratulations. I always knew I always knew the movie Junior would actually come. He's been so prepped and ready for this moment. He must be so happy right now. A man having a baby. Who would have thought? He's been going to Costco for months getting ready with diapers and everything. Yep. He's ready, man. They've been like bunkering down, not leaving the house. Like he I think he was so ready. He was psyched when he called me yesterday. Dude, I love it. That's great. I mean, it's a great feeling. So happy for him.
All right. Mazel tov to him, huh? Big mazel tov to him. Mazel tov, Spencer. Go ahead. What's up? Back half of the year. Well, we're almost there. We're five months in. So for the remaining seven months of the year, is it gonna it can it can it could carry on this way with international just whooping US equities butts out here day in and day out?
And I almost wonder if there's kind of this tango going on between Europe and Japan.
Like Japan was the 20 Japan was the 23 story. Europe was the end of 24 into this year story. I think Europe's probably a it's it's overbought, right? I can see Europe just pausing here. It's been overbought, but it hasn't mattered yet.
Yeah. Yeah. At some point it will, right? Just the way mechanics work.
Uh meanwhile, Japan's done nothing since last July or August since the yen unwind and now it's starting consolidation.
Yeah. Yeah. A little frustrating.
Now it's working. Japan's working again, especially in dollar terms because the FX.
So, so I asked the question, well,
I think it can work. I think it can.
So, it's not it's not about international. It's it versus US. It's more about like we could see a lot of rotation there. You're already seeing Southeast Asia wake up, South America uh wake up. So, participation continues to broaden uh around the globe. I I I'm a fan. Um
you have a favorite region?
