软着陆是否已正式死亡？
- 真正重要的宏观转向是：下次美联储会议上，5%的尾部概率已从降息翻成加息。 Avi敲响警钟：PPI环比上涨1.4%，高于预期的0.5%，同比上涨6.0%（“12个月涨幅为2022年12月以来最高”）；总体通胀率3.8%，霍尔木兹海峡仍关闭，油价卡在100美元上方；但市场里没人恐慌——“我没看到市场因为这件事出现太多恐慌。”他的基准情景是，未来3–6周内会出现真正的恐慌，“很多这类资产的价格可能会低于今天”。
- Avi在两天内把现金仓位从0%提高到约30%，目标是50%；伊朗战争以来，一切资产“差不多都涨了3倍”。 Jonah表示，他的投资组合年初至今收益率为+60%。逻辑是：“其他条件不变，某样东西价格上涨，只会让它变得更糟，而不是更好”；存储股的表现已经跑在营收前面，而“波动率越高，现金的价值越大——V上升，也意味着V下降”。整段观点原话是：“今天需要比一周前更谨慎。”
- Jonah仅凭上涨统计就减仓7%：过去约200年里，唯一一轮涨得更猛的主要资产行情是1999年的NASDAQ。 但他认为加息周期只是一次虚惊，根本不会发生。Avi反驳称，关税会得到退还，而且“AI具有极强的通缩性”。如果判断错误，OpenAI和Anthropic“每6个月都得申请一次继续存在”，资本进不来，数据中心支出放缓，演变成滞胀危机；而这场崩盘对于手握闲置资金的人来说，将是“世纪级买入机会”。
- Micron是“有使用场景的memecoin”：按过去12个月盈利计35倍，但盈利“可能真的会、或者大概率会”翻3倍，对应远期市盈率不足15倍；Jonah预计DRAM价格将在18个月内或更短时间翻4倍。 存储芯片在供给瓶颈中就是实打实的大宗商品——类似Cushing之于WTI；不同于2022年供给冲击制造的假需求超级趋势，这次是真正的需求超级趋势。SK Hynix经营利润率达到72%：“他们在那里制造坦桑石，而且没有任何竞争。”
- 尽管CEO代表团已赴北京，Jonah认为Trump与Xi达成芯片协议的概率只有15%。 Xi围绕台湾和稀缺性的战略，依赖于美国诉求的反面；Jonah说：“我实在看不出Trump会为了再来一轮20%的糖高式拉升，把美国股市的未来抵押出去。” Avi的峰会标的是Illumina（ILMN，市值220亿美元，已被踢出中国“不得做生意”名单）——此行最小的标的，股价几乎没动，只持有股票、不买期权。
- Bitcoin看起来“有点[脏话]”——60多、70多的价位时他们一路看多，本来希望涨到90，但它没能站稳82上方。 Avi暂不出手，并称Clarity“不会对Bitcoin起任何作用”。Avi表示，他减掉的仓位约三分之二是BTC，具体是GBTC，并希望在更低位置买回；但他仍称BTC是未来10年风险资产中最容易实现10–15倍收益的标的。下一集预告：“Saylor开始真正成为这个资产的问题。”
- 结构性背景交易是加杠杆做多SPY、做空VXUS。 欧洲搞再分配（“做一个普通人是好地方，但做一个上进者是糟糕地方”），美国拥有过剩流动性；一家瑞士经销商的古罗马钱币客户如今完全来自中国、中东和美国，而20年前买家还是欧洲人。
1. 尾部概率翻转：5%现在定价的是加息，而非降息
- Avi认为最令人恐惧的单一数字是：“我们现在有95%的概率下次美联储会议什么都不会发生。但与其说有5%的降息概率，不如说现在有5%的加息概率。”触发因素是PPI环比上涨1.4%，高于0.5%的共识预期，同比上涨6.0%——12个月涨幅为2022年12月以来最高——叠加3.8%的总体通胀；他不认为这全是油价造成的。
- 他用自己的话回顾这段转变：“我一直坐在这里说，我太看多了，已经看不清了。什么都买。每只存储股都碰。放胆做多。”伊朗战争以来一切都涨了3倍，而现在“人们把这些数字都当成没什么大不了。我开始紧张了”。如果通胀升至4.5–5%且开始加息，“这对债券将是核爆级别”，并会掐断这些AI扩张赖以获得的债务融资。
- 关于刚获确认出任美联储主席的Kevin Warsh，他说：“坦率地说，他过去很少判断正确……我们会等3周，然后他就改变看法”；这不同于Jerome——后者有原则性的长期观点，但“反应确实很慢”。Avi宽厚的解读是：“快速失败、及时翻篇，可能是市场里最好的事情。”
2. 油市：霍尔木兹海峡仍关闭，9月前将出现运营压力
- Jonah的库存图显示：霍尔木兹海峡关闭时，全球每天短缺1000万–1500万桶；如果没有这一因素，油价“应该是40或50美元——市场就是供给过剩”。可见库存正逼近68亿桶的运营底线，“到了这个水平，油价真的会暴涨到200美元”；按当前速度，9月就会触及。
- 他的押注是，这件事会先得到解决。“我是个赌徒。我押很多钱，赌它会在9月前解决”——国务院、战争部，以及“Trump不想在历史上成为有史以来最糟糕总统的希望部”，都在盯着这件事。
3. 交易剧本：趁上涨卖出，为恐慌买入留弹药
- Avi在昨日反弹时把现金仓位提高15%，今天再提高15%——总计30%，目标50%——此前他是全仓投入。Jonah称其投资组合年初至今收益率为+60%。交易员永远在问“下一个重大恐惧是什么？”，而现在的共识答案是“基本没什么……大家已经转向了”——这正是为连锁抛售创造条件，因为“这些仓位里有很多人现在都是短线交易者”，散户还在把存储股越推越高。
- 杠杆规则是：“如果你想让组合仓位达到150%至200%，就该在没人站在你这边时这么做。所有人都站在你这边时，千万不要过度杠杆。”一个例子是韩国市场的杠杆仓位已经“翻倍”，超过200亿美元——“市场只要打个喷嚏，你突然就会亏30%”。而且，“世界上最糟糕的感觉，就是在行情上涨时爆仓。”
- Jonah在两天前凭直觉、而不是因为通胀，减仓7%：这是“NASDAQ有史以来唯一一次这样的上涨”，1999年除外——约200年来最凌厉的主要资产行情——“我以前在这类上涨中看得过于乐观，最后被担架抬走”。
- Avi给出的“保持多头、同时对冲”方案包括：做空3倍杠杆ETF，赚取alpha衰减；做空债券，或针对通胀数据买入短期限看跌期权；继续持有铀仓位（“Trump会加快一些核许可审批”）。你可能一觉醒来发现“Intel跌回100以下，而如果没有现金，你就没戏了”。
4. 存储芯片是供给瓶颈中的大宗商品——“不是郁金香，也不是Cardano”
- Jonah的核心估值计算是：Micron按过去12个月盈利计35倍市盈率，但按照他们对DRAM价格的估算，盈利“可能真的会，或者大概率会，在未来一年内翻3倍”——对应远期市盈率不足15倍。他的预测是，DRAM价格将在18个月内或更短时间翻4倍，因此按任何合理PE，Micron“可能被低估”。“这是一个有使用场景的memecoin……不是你我在2024年炒的那类memecoin，比如Slerf和Boden。”
- 大宗商品这个框架才是重点：在元器件行业，存储芯片本来就被直称为“大宗商品”，而这次瓶颈“和WTI卡在Cushing时一样严重”——当需求不肯放缓，价格就会呈抛物线式上涨；“人类想要替代程序员，或用自主编码智能体增强程序员能力的欲望，没有任何放缓迹象”。SK Hynix的经营利润率达到72%，Avi对此说：“这简直令人作呕。”
- Jonah反驳称，Samsung工会罢工（5月21日–6月7日）推高Micron的逻辑不对。按照FFF（form-fit-function，即外形、适配、功能）可替代性，重新设计一块电路板需要数周到数月，因此“我不认为Samsung罢工时Micron会赢得业务”——这只是短期供给冲击；考虑到“韩美那件事”，他不会碰Samsung–Micron配对交易。
- 节目直播中进行了更正：他们此前一直按Micron 7000亿美元市值计算——有评论指出，按最新价格走势已经是9000亿美元。这正是Avi的全部担忧：“未来两年的预期，有多少已经计入当前价格？”
5. 不是2022年——但仍要推演加息情景
- Jonah对Avi所谓“真正的基本面上涨”加了个注：基本面是供给和需求，技术面是仓位；不同于2022年——当时供给冲击伪装成“需求驱动的超级趋势”，加息抽走了泡沫里的空气，尤其是加密资产——这次是横跨多个垂直领域的需求超级趋势。OpenAI和Anthropic“对美国而言具有太强的战略意义……现在已经大到不能倒。我不认为它们会走上Lehman Brothers的道路”。
- Avi的推演是，如果加息真的到来，别忘了OpenAI和Anthropic“每6个月都得申请一次继续存在”——它们仍然严重亏损，依赖新资本。加息→资本不再到位→数据中心支出放缓→能源瓶颈→“滞胀型危机”，Micron、Samsung、SanDisk暂时喘息，传染扩散。大趋势仍然存在，所以“那会是世纪级买入机会。但如果到时你没有可部署的闲置资金……那就只能怪你自己”。
- Avi认为，周期末端的信号来自动量追逐者（很可能是Coatue，也就是“CO2 guys”）——他们“不知怎么给加密货币标出了顶部”——刚发布视频，宣布智能体将成为大主题。“这就是大家3个月前都在谈的事……跟上吧。”
6. 北京峰会：Jonah认为芯片协议概率15%
- 对Avi而言，Trump带着一批CEO前往中国可能是“极好的”消息：市场就是他的支持率，也是整个美国的储蓄银行，因此开放中国符合他的利益；如果Nvidia获准出口H200，“那就意义重大”。他的峰会标的是Illumina（ILMN，市值220亿美元）——他“纯粹因为这是名单上最小的公司”才买入；该公司做基因组测序，已被踢出中国“不得做生意”名单，股价仅上涨2%，只持有股票，不买期权。
- Jonah的反驳值得完整保留：Xi“先营造乐观和相互合作的可能性，然后筑起高墙……如果你走进他的门，往往就是个陷阱”。他对台湾的布局和地缘战略“依赖于把稀缺性维持在中国控制之下”，这与美国的诉求相反。美国“至少需要10年——如果一切顺利——才能与台湾和中国的供应链脱钩”（读读Apple in China，“这是本十年最佳经济学著作”）。结论是：Trump在摆姿态，没有大交易，概率15%——“我就是看不到Trump会为了再来一轮20%的糖高式拉升，把美国股市的未来抵押出去”。Avi承认：“我确实没有有力的反驳。”
- 伊朗问题的子讨论中，Avi认为中国可以向伊朗施压（中国向伊朗运送无人机、导弹，并提供规避制裁的金融渠道），美国可以用当前一代芯片作为交换，同时封锁下一代芯片。Jonah则反过来认为，中国威胁停止购买伊朗原油“是一个没有牙齿的威胁。10亿年也不可能”——美国却可以“永远阻止每一艘NITC油轮进入你们的任何1个港口”。Avi说：“有道理。”
- Jensen的出口论也被拿出来讨论：“我们希望全世界运行在美国技术栈上……对美国GPU上瘾”——Avi补充：“也许我们可以通过后门搞到一些这类芯片。只是说说。”
7. 做多美国，做空欧洲——以及另类资产的信号
- Jonah的结构性交易是做多SPY、做空VXUS：指数对指数，低波动，“你完全可以把杠杆加上去，这是我愿意长期下注的交易”。讨论背后的宏观图景是：欧洲搞再分配——carte vitale可以报销免费牙冠，年收入超过100万欧元的部分最高税率“超过70%”——所以“做一个普通人是个好地方，但做一个上进者是个糟糕地方”，人才因此外流。美国拥有过剩流动性，同时“越来越不适合普通人生活……直到政治革命到来”。
- Avi在巴黎讲的佐证是：一位经营古罗马钱币40年的瑞士经销商说，如今所有客户都来自中国、中东或美国——“20年前，买家是欧洲人”；现在欧洲人一件也不买。
- 节目开场谈到的另类资产框架是Avi的坦桑石：两年前在Jaipur以9800美元买入，如今可在接近3万美元的价格转售——全球仅有1座矿，预计22–25年内耗尽，实验室无法复制。在这种流动性环境下，“如果你赚了10倍，外面绝对有人把你当小丑，因为他们4年前买了Charizard”。
8. Bitcoin：“看起来不太妙，各位”
- Avi的判断是：“Bitcoin看起来有点[脏话]。”他们在60多和70多的价位一路看多，他“真以为这轮近期反弹能涨到90”，但Bitcoin没能站稳82上方；STRC在除息日前交易于100。Clarity“不会对Bitcoin起任何作用”。Avi暂不操作；TON走了一个来回（1.30美元→2.00美元→2.80美元→2.20美元），这“不是很好的价格表现”，不过如果Pavel认真对待，长期仍看多。
- Avi表示，他减掉的仓位约三分之二是BTC，具体说是GBTC，并希望在更低位置买回；但他仍维持长期判断：按10年周期，BTC是当前风险资产中最容易实现10–15倍收益的标的，即便美中关系回暖会让它在全球范围内不那么重要。
- 下一集的悬念是：“Saylor开始真正成为这个资产的问题。”
And that's currently my take. Basically, I've been sitting here going, “I'm so bullish I can't see straight. Buy everything. Touch every memory stock. Get balls long. Don't worry about anything.”
And guess what? From the Iran war, when we were saying that, to now, everything kind of 3x'ed. Everyone's talking about the memory bubble now, and people are writing off these numbers. I don't like that. I'm getting nervous.
Which number worries you the most, and what did it do?
The number that worries me the most is that we now have a 95% probability of nothing happening at the next Fed meeting. But instead of a 5% probability of a cut, we have a 5% probability of a hike.
How's it going, Jonah?
It's going great, Avi. Nice to see you. Was the podcast so nice they introed it twice? Shut the fuck up.
No, I mean, it looks like you're in a different backdrop, Avi. I dare say I see a little bit of Armenian architecture in the window behind you.
Yeah. Tell me what you see, Jonah. Where do you think I am?
The real OG listeners know the last time that I streamed 1000x from Paris, I had a black turtleneck on, with a mustache and glasses, and I was really leaning into the Parisian lifestyle. It was great. I enjoyed it.
You know why the French Wi-Fi is so terrible? It's because of that wonderful Parisian lifestyle you alluded to just a few minutes ago.
It's a good lifestyle. Everyone—I walk outside at 2:00 p.m., and all of the cafés are bustling and full of French people and a lot of non-French people, but a lot of French telecom engineers who should be locking down that Wi-Fi at their desks, but they're not.
Interestingly enough, the best school, if you're a quantitative person in France, is called École Polytechnique. That's where the crème de la crème go. But if you're not one of the 10% of people who get in there every year, you go to this second tier of also extremely elite, MIT-level schools. The second tier is basically CentraleSupélec and Télécom Paris. It's very evocative: This is the one for electrical engineers; this is the one for telecom engineers. Then the 2 merge.
1. Paris Wifi & Gemstones
My former business partner is from Supélec. My father-in-law went to Télécom Paris. You would think if the MIT or Caltech of France is called Télécom, they would have their Wi-Fi ducks in a row. They're just too much lifestyle there.
It's really genuinely incredible to experience what I'm experiencing right now, which is, again, a nice hotel with great staff and great service. My God, do they make the bed properly, but they can't deliver a good experience when it comes to Wi-Fi. But that's okay.
There's actually a reason that I showed up to Paris. One of my side hobbies is gemstones. I really love them. I love jewelry, I love gemstones, and I love collecting all sorts of things.
So I came to Paris very specifically because I work with a jeweler here, a phenomenal jeweler called Mellerio. They're the oldest jeweler in the entirety of Europe. They've been around for 400 years. They sold jewelry to Marie Antoinette. They got really big because they sold jewelry to Joséphine, who was the first wife of Napoleon, for those who like their history.
They also currently make the Roland-Garros trophy, which is pretty cool. They're big sponsors of Roland-Garros, and they also make the Ballon d'Or, which, for non-Europeans, is the trophy given to the top soccer player every year.
May I interject?
Yeah, please interject.
It's pronounced “Ballon d'Or,” or, as they say in England, “the Ballon d'Or.”
Yeah, I like it. I'm an American, so—
What? Did these guys sell gems to Louis XIV?
I have no idea who that is.
Louis XIV, the Sun King, the longest-reigning monarch of all time—the GOAT of extravagance and the builder—
Here's something crazy: The Place Vendôme used to have a statue of Louis XIV. It currently has the Column of Napoleon, a statue dedicated to Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz.
This jeweler used that statue on its logo because they used to sell to Louis XIV, and because that's where they were located way back in the day, in the 1700s and 1800s. So there's a ton of history here. They're just really cool people.
But I picked up this tanzanite.
Pretty gem.
It's really, really nice. I actually picked this up a few years ago in India, and I had it sitting with them for a bit because I wanted them to come up with some designs, but I didn't come up with anything that I really liked.
I talk about the tanzanite specifically because it's a really good investment, or it has been a really good investment. I bought this tanzanite for $9,800 2 years ago in Jaipur. If I wanted to, I could probably resell it today for about $30,000.
That's great. The reason is that, specifically with tanzanite, there's 1 mine—there's only 1 mine in the world, in Tanzania, that actually mines these things—and it's estimated to be depleted in about 22 to 25 years.
They haven't figured out how to replicate them in labs. It's a very unique gemstone, and it's getting more demand in China.
All of this is leading to the world of alternative assets. Part of the reason that we do this podcast is because there are so many different places where you can park your capital now. You can park it in the markets, and if you park it in the markets and make a 10x, there's somebody out there who's absolutely clowning you because they bought a Charizard 4 years ago and made 10,000.
Yeah.
There's just so much liquidity right now, specifically in the United States and for things that people in the United States like. This is very important because I've been talking to a lot of Europeans here and taking a lot of meetings, and the constant lamentation of the European is, “How do the Americans have so much money? How are they spending on all of this stuff? Wow, we're actually kind of hurting here. We can't buy all of the stuff and things that Americans have.”
We have a better lifestyle, and we wouldn't trade it for those stuff and things. But I met this 1 Swiss guy who's actually going to come on the podcast because he's a really cool guy. He's 1 of the number 1 collectors of ancient Roman coins and Roman artifacts in general. He resells them, and the guy's worth a lot of money. He's doing very well for himself.
He's telling me, “Every single 1 of my clients that wants to buy from me is either based in China, the Middle East, or America.” He's been in this business for 40 years, and 20 years ago, that wasn't true. 20 years ago, the Europeans were buying. Now the Europeans aren't buying any of it at all, in any way, shape, or form. They just don't have the liquidity to go spend on random Roman collectibles. They're not making money in the same way.
This just makes me even more bullish on America, and very bullish on all the liquidity and all the profits that have been generated by all the incredible companies that are built here. I'm very, very, very bullish on American liquidity. I'm basically long America and short Europe into the ground right now.
And you lived there for a long time, so you probably have a great viewpoint on this.
I guess London is geologically and geographically part of the continent of Europe, but it was only politically part of the continent of Europe for the first—let's call it—7 years that I lived there. Then there was that divorce: Brexit.
I would say 1 of the reasons why Europe is kind of sclerotic and why European stock indices underperform American stock indices is that 1 of the best trades is long SPY, short VXUS, if you're ever going to do a highly leveraged trade.
You basically want to be long U.S. equities and short the rest-of-world equities. It's an index-to-index trade, so it's super low volatility. You could really lever that up, and it's just something that I would bet on for a long time. Why? Because in Europe and most of the world in general, speaking to my broader thesis that I've hammered on in many previous podcasts, there's redistribution.
2. Micron @ $900B
You get great lifestyles. To your point about France, where I probably spent a year of my life—my wife's French—they give health care, really excellent, let's call it top-decile health care in America, that's just free for everybody in France. You can get a crown, which in America would cost $1,000, get your tooth replaced, whatever, some crazy surgery, and it's free. You just walk in, swipe your Carte Vitale—it's basically a green health care credit card—and walk right out of the dentist without paying a dime. In America, that would never happen.
So basically, they spend a lot on social services. They redistribute a lot from businesses to the poor. The top tax bracket where you're sitting in Paris is going to be north of 70% on anything over €1 million worth of income. However, continental Europe is a great place to be a normal person, but it's a terrible place to be a star, an up-and-comer, somebody who's brilliant or hungry or entrepreneurial, or all 3.
And that's why there's this tremendous brain drain. Everybody I know who's incredible, with possibly 1 exception, has left France, right? The U.K. is a little more on the ball, which is why that isn't the case there. But for the most part, France is a great place to be normal, and that's wonderful for most people, but it's terrible for parking assets and terrible for innovation.
3. Fed Regime Change
America's kind of a shittier and shittier place to be normal, which is why I'm so bullish on American liquidity, American excess liquidity, American companies, and American innovation until the political revolution comes and it becomes more like Europe. But I don't think it's going to happen for a while.
Well, I don't know, Jonah, because I'm getting a little bit nervous, to be completely honest. This wholesale inflation number that just printed, oil is still jammed above $100, and we've got Kevin Warsh coming in. He just got confirmed as the new Fed chair, which is, by the way, great. He used to be an adviser to GoldenTree. Candidly, he was almost never right about much. He never got a lot right.
No, I don't know. Every time he would tell us something, we would wait 3 weeks, and then he would change his opinion. He just doesn't seem like a particularly principled person the way Jerome Powell was. Jerome Powell had long-term views and principled views.
Jerome Powell was a real slow reactor to things, like—
But he was, and so—
And the lag moves 6 months later, you know.
Yeah, that's also very fair, right? So maybe a good part about Kevin is his willingness to change his views. That could be very valuable, especially—
Fail fast and move on is the best thing in markets.
4. Is Inflation Back?
Brad, can you share my screen? I just put up a chart here. Avi, you mentioned oil and inflation. We just have to touch on this quickly.
Okay.
Hormuz is still shut. The world is short somewhere between 10 and 15 million barrels a day. I'm not in it the way I used to be, but basically, this chart tells you: visible oil inventories in billions of barrels. As you can see, we were building and building and building inventory, building stock. The oil should be worth $40 or $50; it's just oversupplied. And then Allah went and bailed out the Middle East, or most of it, with this incredible Hormuz closure. Actually, Allah picked favorites. Iran's not so happy. But basically, the whole point of this chart is to show you—
It just goes to show that the Shia are not the true—
Yeah, it's the Sunnis—
Sunni party.
Talk religion—no more religion on the podcast. You keep doing your Jewish thing, trading gems; I'll keep doing my Jewish thing, training my dogs to rape my innocent prisoners who did nothing wrong. Let's get back to this oil chart here. Sorry, I digress. Anyway, we're at operational stress levels here. The operational floor where oil legitimately skyrockets to $200 is 6.8 billion barrels of storage. We're going to get there by September at this rate.
I'm pretty sure everybody in the State Department, Department of War, and the department of Trump's hope of not going down in history as the worst president of all time has this on their radar, right? So basically, I'm a betting man. I'm betting a lot of money that this gets resolved before September. We're not going to get to operational—
Yeah. But the issue, I think, is that it's clearly showing up in inflation in some way. I'm not so sure this headline—3.8% year over year—isn't all just because of oil, right? You have PPI, which came in 3 times the consensus: up 1.4% month over month versus 0.5% expected; year over year, 6.0%, the largest 12-month gain since December 2022.
I mean, these are the types of numbers that I've been warning about. Not that I was calling it, but I've been warning about: if we see these types of numbers, you probably have to start lightening up on risk. That's currently my take. Basically, I've been sitting here going, "I'm so bullish, I can't see straight: buy everything, touch every memory stock, get balls long, don't worry about anything." And guess what? From the Iran war, when we were saying that, to now, everything kind of 3x'd.
Everyone's talking about the memory bubble now. People are writing it off. I don't like that people are writing off these numbers. I'm getting nervous.
Which number worries you the most, and what did it do?
The number that worries me the most is that we now have a 95% probability of nothing happening at the next Fed meeting. But instead of a 5% probability of a cut, we have a 5% probability of a hike. What I'm nervous about is that if inflation keeps coming in high, we're going to start having to raise rates, and that's going to hurt the market. That's going to be nuclear for bonds.
More importantly, it's going to be tough for these companies right now to continue to raise debt to fund expansion. It's just going to cut in. Basically, the question is, if we start seeing 4.5% or 5% inflation, we're suddenly in a really bad spot where I think we could see the next fear priced into the market.
Probably what ends up happening is that there's a period of time where things really sell off, whether it's this month, next month, or the month after. In my personal opinion, we probably see lower prices on a lot of these assets than we see today. So I went from 0% cash up until basically yesterday and today. I raised about 15% cash yesterday on the rebound, and today I raised about 15% more. I'm sitting at about 30% cash relative to the 100% deployed I was before.
I'm probably going to look to get up to 50% and then basically try to buy on the next fear. As a trader, when you're in the markets, you always have to think about what the next major fear in the market is. What might actually turn the tide of this market? The answer right now is everyone is saying basically nothing, like we're going to ignore everything.
People have sort of flipped, and I didn't really believe that until I saw the PPI come in today. Basically, nobody—I'm not seeing a ton of fear in the market because of this—and I'm starting to think that at some point over the next 3 to 6 weeks, we're going to start getting nervous about these numbers.
That's my take: you just need to be more careful today than you were a week ago. That's literally the whole take. It's interesting you bring that up. I mean, I was 100% allocated for a long time. I actually took about 7% of my portfolio off the table 2 days ago.
And why'd you do that?
My gut. I didn't have an inflation concern; I was more just like, "Man, what a rally. This is bananas. It's time to trade around the position a little bit."
5. Soft Landing Officially Dead?
This is basically the only time the NASDAQ has ever rallied like this. I have a great chart that I'll share later while you're talking; I'll get it on the screen. Basically, the only time the NASDAQ has ever rallied more—or any asset has ever rallied more than the NASDAQ just rallied—was when the NASDAQ rallied in 1999. That's the only sharper major asset rally in the last 200 years.
I wouldn't put Bitcoin in there, but basically, this is almost unprecedented and so violent that prudence and my gut tell me to trade around the position.
I've gotten too bullish on these sorts of rallies before and been carted out on a stretcher. I do think this one has legs for reasons that I can get into, but let's just war-game. Let's get into it.
Yeah, let's war-game a scenario where rates go into a surprise hike cycle because of tariff moves and a few other inflationary factors. I don't think that's going to happen. Let me start with a very quick sound bite: tariffs are getting refunded into businesses. A lot of the inflationary things that should be happening are not. AI is tremendously deflationary.
But let's say that we go into an inflation spiral and they hike rates. The first thing that will happen is that the major hyperscalers, whose revenues we look at 10xing every year, will stop getting us all excited and euphoric. But remind yourself, Jonah, that OpenAI and Anthropic have to raise capital to exist once every 6 months. They have to go and raise more capital because they're still unprofitable as shit.
Basically, that capital will not come. Data center spending will slow, there will be energy bottlenecks, and we could end up in a stagflationary crisis where the big-money flywheel of chip spending slows down for a second. Then Micron, Samsung, SanDisk, and all these stocks that are moving take a breather, and that leads to broader contagion and an equity-market pullback.
The megatrend is still intact, so that would be the buy of the century. But if you have no dry capital to deploy when that happens—and that would be a violent thing to happen—shame on you.
So, basically, this is the first time anybody's ever put this inflation thing on my radar. I still see a hike cycle as a fade. It's just never going to happen. But it's worth monitoring that situation, isn't it, Avi?
No, I mean, we definitely need to monitor it. I think that everything is about probabilities, right? The question that I have as a trader is always, have the probabilities of success changed? Right now, yes, they have changed, because, all else equal, if something goes up in price, that makes that thing worse, not better. You want to hold less of it.
If you have an asset and it doubles, unless the revenues have doubled, unless something fundamental has doubled, you want to own less of it. Intel, Micron, AMD, Nvidia, and all the memory stocks have gone up more than the revenues because they're pricing in a tremendous amount of future growth. That growth, I think, in some capacity requires a lower-rate environment.
If we go into a rate-hike environment, if we start hiking, and maybe we're at 4.5, if we hit 5, we're in big trouble, in my personal opinion, and the probability of that has gone up. Therefore, in isolation, with the probability of that going up and nothing changing on the AI front, I do think that there's still massive growth. I do think that we're probably still going to continue to go up. But all else equal, with this new risk vector, I would like to own less.
Basically, everything is still at the highs. Nothing has really sold off that much. Maybe we're down 3% off the highs. We're up 300%; we're up 200% to 500% from when we first started talking about this during the Iran war. There's no shame in locking in some profit and protecting yourself against this potential scenario, and just monitoring to see how it plays out.
Obviously, I do think that we are in a massive megatrend. I think that energy, memory, and everything related to the AI trade is going to continue to go up. Really, your job as a trader and investor is to not be overlevered when things start to look a little scarier, like they do today.
If you want to lever up, if you want to be 150% to 200% of your portfolio, do that when nobody's on your side. You never want to be overlevered when everybody's on your side and you're kind of just betting that nothing bad is going to happen. I think of myself as levered at 100% of net worth now, because I think that's a pretty substantial amount. We're talking—it's a decent amount. So—
I have a super-important 10-second thought on that. 10 seconds.
6. Memory Supercycle
Okay, go ahead. 10 seconds.
When you're in wealth-preservation mode, when you have a lot to lose, that's the mentality. When you're in wealth-growth mode, you're not overlevered at 100%. And look, I'm obviously still in growth mode. I'd like to make money. I mean, we're up—I think the year-to-date portfolio is now up 60%, which I'll take. It's pretty solid.
Nice.
All I'm saying is that now, for the first time in a while, I'm just slightly nervous about the market, and I'm going to want some cash to buy these dips in these megatrend assets.
Can you imagine a scenario where the market gets spooked and starts puking out of these positions? The reality is that a lot of people in these positions are short-term traders now. There's a lot of retail buying memory stocks. Everyone is shoving this stuff up, and that means that there could be a cascade.
When I see the potential for a cascade, and also something looming on the horizon with this inflation, you want to be ready to take the other side of panic. My bet is just that there's a much higher likelihood of panic and that, in a high-volatility regime like what we're seeing now, the value of cash goes up.
The higher the volatility, the better the value of cash. That's just always going to be the case, because vol up is also vol down. You might wake up one day and see Intel back below 100, and if you don't have cash, you're shit out of luck. You should probably be buying that. And so—
Yeah. I think there also are some other trades that you can take to offset this. Maybe you want to stay long these assets. Maybe, like I said, go short the 3x leveraged ETF, because you can take advantage of the alpha decay there. Maybe you want to bet on inflation coming—go out there and short bonds to hedge your portfolio. Maybe buy some short-dated puts, or get extra levered on a short bond position just to hedge the book.
You can express multiple different views here. You can say, well, I don't want to give up this upside opinion on Nvidia and memory, and I don't want to sell my uranium here, which again, I wouldn't suggest. I think uranium is in a really good spot. I still think so. You saw some news recently that Trump is going to be expediting some nuclear permits, which is going to be phenomenal. And we're going to get—
Nuclear.
Nuclear. It's embarrassing as a chemical engineer, but it is what it is.
I think we've sort of beaten this to death. Jonah, what do you think?
We haven't.
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Memory, like Micron, trades at 35x earnings. Per the rule-of-thumb DRAM price-appreciation rubric that we set out on the last podcast, earnings could literally triple, or probably will triple, in the next year or less. So, in my view, Micron is trading at less than 15x forward earnings.
I think Micron is super real. Sure, it's trading like a memecoin, and you want to have dry powder to deploy if it sells off, but it's a memecoin with a use case, right? It's not like the memecoins that you and I were slinging back in 2024, like Slerf and Boden.
I do think the memory thing is a genuine bottleneck. Again, it wouldn't be the 1000x podcast if I didn't reminisce about my days as a professional commodities trader. A bottleneck is when things really break out of the range.
To me, Micron stock is just a commodity. Memory is a commodity. Inside the world of components, it's referred to as a commodity. It's not even innovative to say it's a commodity. This commodity is as bottlenecked as Cushing was for WTI at various points in the past, or like any natural-gas bottleneck during a polar vortex from Calgary to Chicago.
Prices can go parabolic in commodities when a bottleneck manifests itself and demand is highly elastic with respect to price, which it is for memory, because there's no slowing down humanity's desire to replace human coders or augment them with autonomous coding agents.
To me, Micron stock is as real as any rally you'll ever see. It is not tulips. It is not Cardano. It is a commodity that should continue to moon.
I don't disagree with you, Jonah. The only thing that I'm saying is that there's clearly a ton of momentum built into this stock, and in the market right now, people are not worried enough about the macro environment.
When that worry percolates, when that narrative percolates—if you remember, Citrini releases an article talking about AI doom, and things cascade a little bit because all these funds are like, “Oh, my God.” Software collapsed and then bounced 15%.
Part of being a trader is understanding where the risk vectors lie and what you need to protect yourself against.
And this is something that I think the average person probably needs to protect themselves against: don’t go all in right now, right here, especially when you just saw these inflation prints and when you saw PPI come out the way that it did. You can’t really go all in here. You need to start protecting yourself a little bit. That’s all I’m saying.
With that said, any dip is a buy because this is a fundamental rally at the end of the day. This is a genuine fundamental rally.
I would add an asterisk to that. There are fundamentals. Technicals are when positioning drives markets. Fundamentals are when underlying supply and demand drive positioning.
This is important. Hear me out.
No, I hear you out.
This is a demand cycle driving the rally. It is not a supply shock. It’s not like all the Micron stuff is stuck in Idaho because of a supply factor.
Although, funny enough, apparently the Samsung union called a strike from May 21 to June 7. That’s another reason why Micron and SK Hynix are going higher, which is kind of interesting.
On that, Micron should not rally on this. In components land, there’s a concept called FFF: form, fit, function. It’s basically a way of describing fungibility between 2 types of components on a board. A 32-gigabit LPDDR4X chip built by SK Hynix and the equivalent chip built by Samsung are pretty fungible. That’s probably top-tier fungibility. There are types A, B, and C.
Just because Samsung calls a strike doesn’t mean that the entire Micron portfolio should rally. That would be a supply shock that doesn’t last long. There’s a lot of friction for engineers to redesign a circuit board. It would take weeks or months, and then there are the flow-throughs and flow-downs to the assembly line.
I don’t think Micron will win business if Samsung has a strike. Meanwhile, if there’s a rising tide of demand, it should lift both ships. But if you were a Samsung-Micron pairs trader—which sounds like a nightmare given the Korea-U.S. situation—I wouldn’t be trading that pair.
Oh my God. Is the Korean market just absolutely ripping, man? This is another thing that makes me nervous because I look at the Korean market, and the amount of leverage in the Korean market has literally doubled. We’re at more than $20 billion in leverage in the Korean market. All it takes is for the market to sneeze, and suddenly you’re down 30% across the board. I want to have cash to buy that.
Candidly, I think if you followed this trade, you’ve done all right this year. The key is that you’ve got to stay alive during a bubble, because the worst feeling in the world, Jonah—the absolute worst feeling in the world—is when you blow up while things are going up. You blew up because it went down 15% and you were overlevered, or it went down 30% and you were overlevered. You have to look for those particular scenarios where that can happen.
Here’s the thing: Micron is at $700 billion. How much of the next 2 years is currently in the price of Micron? How much of the next 2 years is currently in the price of SanDisk at 35 times earnings? What’s a reasonable multiple for you? Maybe you want to see it long term at 20. So we need at least 2 times growth.
It depends on what your projection for earnings is, though, right? When you look at P/E, you’re looking at price times the most recently reported earnings. I’m not a stock analyst. I don’t really understand this stuff. You’re not looking at Avi and Jonah’s projection of future earnings.
Which research outfit just projected that memory is going to rally 46% in the next 3 months? Basically, that’s my projection.
The other thing that I get nervous about is Coatue. You see that Coatue guy?
Which Coatue guy?
Coatue—the momentum guys.
The momentum guys, the chasers, the people who just run after the most recent rallies and try to shove as much money in as possible, and then somehow always end up losing. They did this with crypto back in—
I mean, they exist because they’re profitable. They’ve been around for a long time.
Every time I feel like they enter an industry, they somehow manage to mark near the top. I remember when they came into crypto; they basically marked the top of the whole thing.
I’ve got to look at how they’re structured. I think their actual traders and investors are a different team. They’re long-term allocators, and their actual hedge fund is a different team. Maybe the hedge fund people are just shoveling money over to burn it in the venture-capital, long-only-style vehicles.
They just released a video basically detailing, “Hey, guys, I just want you to know that agents are going to be really big. Agents are going to be huge.” I’m sitting here like, “This is what everyone was talking about 3 months ago. This is why everyone’s buying CPUs, buddy. Get with it.”
Micron’s at $900 billion—the most recent price action, as Scott very accurately commented.
Holy shnikes. Yeah, we’ve got to update the—
Yeah, we’ve got to update that.
Brad, what are you doing? Brad? [laughter] Help us. 10,900.
We had old numbers.
Stale numbers, so—
Stale numbers. It’s okay.
To me, I think we’re at a crossroads here. Obviously, a rate-hike cycle would take a lot of hot air out of this market. However, the last time there was a rate-hike cycle, there was so much more hot air in the market.
That’s true.
What I want to underline here is that, unlike 2022, where prices were being buoyed by supply shocks that people thought were demand-driven supertrends but were not—they were really just short-term supply shocks—rates got hiked, and tons of hot air came out of particularly crypto, but also equities.
This time, we’re in the middle of a demand supertrend across a number of different economic verticals. I think OpenAI and Anthropic are too strategic to the United States. They’re too big to fail at this point. I don’t see them going the way of Lehman Brothers. Sure, there’s some hot air in there, and there’s a little bit of hot air in Micron stock, but my projection is that DRAM prices are going to quadruple in the next 18 months or less. So whatever—as long as Micron’s P/E is less than something silly, I actually think it’s probably undervalued.
And I mean, the operating margins on these companies are freaking insane. SK Hynix is at, what, 72%? That’s just disgusting.
Yeah. They’re literally manufacturing tanzanite there without any competition.
For those who joined late, this is a tanzanite that I picked up. Very beautiful. Look at that. Look at that gemstone. You see how it reflects the light?
It’s like a little galaxy in the middle of it. Beautiful. I know. I’ve got to figure out what to do with it. It’s so much cooler in person. You just spin it around on your finger and you’re like, “Oh my God, this is why I love gemstones, by the way.”
That’s cool for you. Micron cares about—
Sorry, what was that?
Micron makes the gemstones that everyone cares about.
That’s true that they do. Wait, go on. Sorry, what did you say?
What I was going to say—oh man, I totally blacked. I did want to talk about one thing, which is the flip side: if we can figure this out, maybe we’re looking good.
7. Trump-Xi Summit Kicks Off
Trump going to China right now with this group of CEOs, I think, is phenomenal. Hopefully he actually gets there and they have a productive meeting, because the whole point is that they’re bringing over companies that would really benefit from accessing the Chinese market if we can figure out the right way to do it.
There’s actually one company called Illumina, ticker likely ILMN, and I just bought it solely because it was the smallest company on the list. It’s a $22 billion stock. It’s actually doing all right. It hasn’t really moved much; it’s up 2% or something like that. They’re a genome-sequencing company, and they got kicked out of China because China put them on a list not to do business with them. China has been doing this a lot to a lot of our U.S. companies.
If Trump can go there and negotiate some sort of deal, that’s going to be a potential boon, right? I’m just reading this recent comment: “Obsession makes perfect sense with Jewish India [?].” Thank you, Shockwave. I appreciate it.
But if Trump—I mean, watch what happens here very closely. Also, I think the Illumina trade might work out. If he’s successful, maybe they’re going to be able to sell in China again, and that would be phenomenal for the stock.
Just as a short-term trade, it’s not really baked into the stock price. It hasn’t gone up much, so I have a sort of flyer out on that. I bought some stock—I bought a just-stock position, no options there. But if Nvidia gets H200 export approval, that’s big. That’s huge.
I don’t think it’s going to happen.
You don’t think it’s going to happen? Why don’t you think it’s going to happen?
These summits, to me, always commence with a sort of air of optimism. Xi Jinping—we know his behavior patterns. Much like, in the beginning, Trump was unpredictable, and now we kind of know how he operates. Xi Jinping has been around for at least 15 years, and the way he operates is that he fosters a climate of optimism and mutual possibility, and then stonewalls. If you walk through his door, it tends to be a trap on the other side.
I don’t think Trump is just going to allow China all the Blackwell chips that they need because of some beer clinking and whatever else is going on at this summit in Beijing. I think what’s more likely to happen is, “Don’t take Taiwan, don’t steal our IP, and we’ll talk about giving you all of the—”
I don’t know. Think about this: He could have done this without all of the CEOs on board.
No, hang on. Hang on. Basically, just to finish what I was saying, I think the United States wants China not to invade Taiwan for at least as long as it takes the West to divorce itself from Taiwanese supply-chain vulnerability and Chinese supply-chain vulnerability.
If you’ve read Apple in China, a fantastic book about supply-chain vulnerability in China and Taiwan, I recommend everybody read or listen to Apple in China. If you read that, you realize it’s going to be a decade, at least, if everything goes right. It’s a quick read, too. You’ll put it away in a weekend. Awesome, awesome, life-changing economic book. Best of the decade, in my opinion.
Anyway, that and The World for Sale, basically. I think Xi Jinping has designs on Taiwan, and his designs on Taiwan and on global economic and geostrategic dominance rely on the opposite of what the US wants. They rely on maintaining scarcity under Chinese control, so I just don’t see him conceding any of these points.
It’s kind of like, hey, Jensen wants to export the very technology that China needs to achieve its goals. Why? How could there be—I take your point. Why would the CEOs be there? I think it’s Trump posturing. I don’t think a deal is possible. I don’t think a grand bargain is possible.
Yeah, I think that’s reasonably fair. I guess let’s watch. That’s the answer. I think you made a lot of very good points there, and I don’t really have strong rebuttals against them.
The only thing that I’ll say is that Trump knows that the US stock market relies on growth, that the US stock market is his approval rating, and that it’s the savings bank of the entirety of the United States now. He has a vested interest in the short term in making sure that market goes up, making sure that by the end of his term that market goes up. One way to do that would be to open up China, right?
That’s not okay, though. Trump does not like “China giveth what China can taketh away,” right? If we start—
What? Hold on. What China giveth, China can taketh.
China can taketh. China giveth and China taketh away.
I mean, how do you say “giveth” and “taketh” in Chinese? If we have any Chinese people out there, hop in the comments and let us know.
Yeah. Anyway, we’ll get there. Also, happy belated Golden Week to all you Chinese fans of the 1000x podcast.
I just do not see Trump mortgaging the future of the US stock market for another 20% sugar-high rally. I don’t see it happening.
You’ve got to watch what’s happening there. You’ve got to watch the news that comes out of there, because this will directly impact the long-term view of the markets.
I mean, if we do get a deal, which Jonah doesn’t like, okay, let’s do that. Let’s put a probability on a deal being struck to allow the export of Nvidia chips to China. Jonah?
15%, and I’ll tell you why very quickly. Xi Jinping is the gatekeeper. Everybody knows that a détente between China and the US would be great for the global economy. He’s literally been stonewalling it because he’s just a paranoid freak.
He’s been closing China ever since he took over. He’s so paranoid that he has people fishing his shit out of the toilet so that people can’t get his DNA. That’s got to be a joke. What are you talking about?
Go read the article about them scrubbing his DNA and spraying the tables that he eats at during these summits. He’s the most paranoid human on earth. He’s purged everybody. Why would he just open up suddenly to get some Blackwell chips and give up all of the scam artistry that he’s been pulling for 15 years? I don’t see it happening, but yes, 15%.
That was Putin, by the way. I just looked it up.
No, no, Xi too. I’ll send you the article afterward.
Are you serious?
8. Clarity Act Markup
Absolutely. It was in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Okay. I do want to hit on crypto for all the people that are asking us about it, really quickly. Bitcoin looks kind of shit, I’m not going to lie. We’re almost at the ex-dividend date for STRC. It’s been trading at 100. We couldn’t make it above 82. Clarity isn’t going to do anything for Bitcoin. I’m staying away right now. I’m basically hands-off.
We were both bullish in the 60s. We were bullish in the 70s.
I really thought that we would be able, on this recent rally, to get to 90 or something. We couldn’t really do it. Not looking good, guys. It’s not looking good.
I’m sorry.
Even TON and all these other things—I mean, TON almost went up 35% after being like, “Oh, Pavel,” you know what I mean? It went up from 1.30 to 2, and then we talked about it when it was 2.10. Then it went to 2.80, and now it’s back down to 2.20. I’m like, you know what? That’s not great price action.
I'm actually still bullish long-term if Pavel really takes this seriously. I've got to make sure that he's staying on top of it. We talked about VVV very quickly, which then proceeded to pull a ridiculous move, and I'm on the sidelines right now because it looks like it kind of popped a little bit, but I'm rebidding that thing because I do believe in it.
Basically, I think Bitcoin's in a tough spot, Jonah. Of what I reduced in my portfolio that I alluded to earlier in the pod, about two-thirds of that was BTC—GBTC, to be specific. I want to rebuy at lower levels. I'm still long-term bullish. I do think that in this world, obviously, if China and America kiss and make up, I don't think Bitcoin's as globally relevant, but I certainly think that Bitcoin will become more relevant over time.
I think it's the easiest 10- to 15-bagger in those risk assets right now over a 10-year time frame. I'm just trying to be nimble and lighten up ahead of what I perceived—what I kind of gut-felt were—the same headwinds you saw: the stock market mooning, the Nasdaq mooning, and Bitcoin trying as hard as it can.
Plus, you have Saylor supposedly buying. I mean, it's tough. It's really tough.
Saylor is starting to really become a problem for this asset.
We're going to talk about that on the next podcast. We're going to do a whole section on why Saylor's becoming a problem. We'll dive into the details.