永远别做空股票、巨大的空头陷阱,以及加密货币为何疲弱——Tolks
两位嘉宾都认为,反复被价格证伪,应当压过逻辑上自洽的看空论点。 Qs因战争新闻下跌约0.3%,随后在1分钟内反弹0.5%,Tolks说“最终你得听市场的”(“you have to listen to the market eventually”)。Thread Guy则表示,复活节前周四开盘后的另一次反转让他决定停止做空股票。
未来几周,Tolks认为跨资产市场最重要的变量是原油。 WTI约$108.50、Brent突破$113、30年期美债收益率升至5%时——他对时点用了“我认为”——预计油价可能测试$120。油价持续走强会立即打击风险资产,并可能在数个季度后造成更深的损伤。
加密货币疲弱,部分原因在于它选择跟随黄金,而不是股票。 黄金近期与原油反向交易,导致在股市无视战争、原油上涨时,加密货币暴露在不利一侧。Tolks已经看空两三周,但仍对其保持结构性兴趣,因为价格远低于8个月前的高点,而重新出现的平静可能是非对称结果的前兆。
机构采用可能验证加密货币,却未必让流动性代币敞口变得有利可图。 Tolks将当前的兴奋情绪与他2022年的稳定币判断作比较:市场规模可能增长25–30倍,但除私募市场外,很难捕获这部分增长。Schwab推出加密货币交易,或Meta使用Circle向网红发放稳定币报酬,都可能带来好处,却未必能让Solana或Polygon受益多少。
Tolks做空BTC、ETH和SOL,同时保留少量BTC、HYPE和ZEC现货敞口。 他几乎确定被锁定的FTX SOL已经在约$80被拍卖或买走,但表示需要再确认;Thread Guy则回忆,$65一直是市场共识中的支撑位。Tolks认为,SOL可能成为上一轮的ETH/BTC:人们多年反复试图做多,却始终无法成功。
随着反应式动量不断自我强化,市场越来越“像加密货币一样交易”。 Thread Guy将这种趋同归因于期权、移动端交易、更快的信息传播,以及LLM不断从相同股票和行业中提炼出相似观点。他们的平衡方案是持有那些“从基本面设计上就是长期上涨的”(“fundamentally designed to go up over time”)指数,有选择地交易动量,同时记住Thread Guy的警告:惊人的盈亏表现可能像“在‘06、‘07年卖房地产”(“selling real estate like ’06, ’07”)。
两位嘉宾都不认为,投资者必须精准抓住加密货币下一轮周期的最低插针才能参与。 Thread Guy可以接受错过BTC从$76,000涨到$80,000,或SOL向$100靠近的行情;Tolks也同意,一旦区间向上突破,机会仍然充足,因为“领涨者几乎肯定还会是领涨者”。市场平静时应当做基本面研究,而不是强行交易。
1. 股票不断触发空头陷阱
Tolks在4月19日的框架从被动资金流开始:随着原油、美元和VIX飙升或回落,趋势跟随者被迫买入或卖出。他预计这些资产即使短期恢复正常,结构性水平仍会偏高,使市场对每一次跨资产波动都异常敏感。
Thread Guy提到,一则据称有关伊朗防空升级的新闻令Qs下跌约0.3%,随后在1分钟内反弹约0.5%。Tolks认为那是假新闻,并表示自己只有在加密货币大规模清算后见过类似的剧烈波动,而不是在股票仅小幅下跌后。
更 निर्ण性的反转发生在复活节前、特朗普举行一场简短记者会之后。Thread Guy持有看跌期权,股票开盘下跌约1.5%,当时感到“欣喜若狂”,随后却眼看市场在15–20分钟内反转。他说,这次经历让自己决定停止做空股票。
Tolks后来指出,尽管大型科技股财报表现分化,买盘仍在持续:Google上涨7%,估值约4.2万亿美元;Meta下跌7%,Amazon下跌约3%,Microsoft下跌约2.5%。他的结论很直接:当价格反复否定逻辑上有说服力的看空论点时,就应当调整先验判断。
2. 原油仍是悬而未决的宏观账单
对话期间,WTI在$108.50附近交易,Brent从约$112升至$113.50,单日上涨约10%,此前一度冲高至约$117。Tolks认为油价“可能”会测试$120;Thread Guy还提到,伊朗议会议长曾放话称油价可能达到$140。
Tolks形容,相关市场此前基本关闭了约2个月,之后又称这笔交易关闭了约1个月。特朗普正在讨论“只要有必要就维持封锁”,报道则显示,各方正为长期中断做准备。股市上涨期间,市场基本已经忘记了这件事。
Tolks不愿预测股票最终何时会作出反应,但传导链条很清楚:油价越高,黄金承压越大,收益率上升,并在短期、中期及多个季度的维度上打击风险资产。30年期收益率已经升至5%,他认为这是自2025年春季以来首次达到这一水平;一些国家和航空公司开始限制燃油使用,人们也在减少通勤。
Thread Guy认为,市场似乎无法为当前时点以外的未来定价。Tolks部分同意,认为跨资产相关性已经变得更加反应式;但他也指出,美国股票正在无视战争和油价,仿佛“AI就是一切”。海外的损害尚未直接传导至美国市场。
3. 加密货币的采用不等于代币价值捕获
Tolks有意维持两个时间维度的加密货币判断。他已经看空两三周,但自己的文章重新出现,反而说明加密货币市场“什么都没发生”——这种状态可能是未来非对称行情的前兆。价格也显著低于8个月前的高点。
他将机构的兴奋情绪与自己2022年的判断作比较:稳定币规模可能增长25–30倍,成为全球最大的市场之一。这个判断正在逐步兑现,但除私募市场之外,从中获利仍然困难;行业增长并没有明确指向某个能够捕获经济价值的流动性公开资产。
Schwab推出加密货币交易、Meta宣布向网红发放稳定币报酬,正好说明了这个问题。这些进展长期可能有利,但Tolks强调,眼下最直接的受益者似乎是Meta和Circle,而不是SOL或Polygon。Thread Guy用一句话概括机构叙事:“所有其他人都在发财,只有你没有。”
4. Tolks广泛对冲,但集中表达加密货币判断
他披露的仓位包括加密货币空头、大量OXY看涨期权——此前曾表示该仓位上涨152%——在VIX约17–18的波动率底部附近累积的VIX看涨期权,以及IWM看跌期权。小盘股落后于Qs、对利率更敏感,因此IWM可以对冲科技和AI敞口的反转风险。
Thread Guy质疑VIX交易,因为Tolks表示,只要VIX不上升10–15%或更多,他基本可以接受这笔仓位归零。Tolks说自己不会建议别人交易VIX。被问及为什么还要做时,他开玩笑说,这是“精神疾病——为了感受点什么”。
除BTC、HYPE和ZEC外,Tolks几乎没有其他现货敞口,同时做空BTC、ETH和SOL。他对Zcash的判断结合了隐私属性、向L1发展的路径,以及其作为“最后一个未被污染的真正L1”的地位。他认为量子叙事部分只是一个meme,因为如果BTC真的受到量子计算影响,他怀疑还有什么能幸存下来。
关于SOL,Tolks表示,他几乎确定大量锁定的FTX供应已经在约$80被拍卖或买走,但承认需要再确认。Thread Guy记得的共识价位是$65。Tolks说,自己曾在2020年或2022年靠SOL“赚到了大钱”,如今则认为SOL/BTC图表很像上一轮的ETH/BTC:人们多年不断试图做多,却始终无法成功。
5. 等待领涨者,而不是强行抄底
Thread Guy认为,市场正在趋向加密货币式的动量结构。期权和更广泛的市场结构会放大波动;手机将执行交易压缩成“5秒、3次点击”;信息传播更快;LLM研究则会把关于相同股票和行业的相似判断分发给更多人。Tolks补充说,这种加速如今也影响市场、政治、体育和其他资产类别。
Thread Guy看到的矛盾是:不断轮换到“最好的东西”,与每个月出现红色K线就买入Google之间,究竟该如何取舍。Tolks的答案是区分交易与核心持仓:保留广泛的指数敞口,因为股票“从基本面设计上就是长期上涨的”,再用较小的仓位交易动量。
Tolks提醒朋友,通常不要做空,因为他们最可能被轧穿。Thread Guy则另行质疑,Serendipity等账户的惊人动量盈亏,以及Ansem成功押中的meme币,是否可能像“在‘06、‘07年卖房地产”——在下行阶段到来前,所有人看起来都像天才。这是风险约束,不代表他判断反转会立即发生。
Thread Guy宁愿错过BTC从$76,000涨到$80,000,或SOL向$100靠近,也不愿为已经失去动能的资产抄底。Tolks表示同意:利用平静期进行真正的研究,等待市场揭示领涨者,然后跟随市场信号。时间应该还够,但最终对于投机性AI股票和meme式交易来说,“音乐会停下来”。
完整逐字稿
Yo, what’s good? What’s up, man? Tolks, welcome to the stream. Brother, how are you?
I’m good, man. I’m good. Long-time watcher, first-time interviewee.
Dude, I’m a big fan. I was just giving you a little glaze before you came on, but for a lot of the things that I’ve been talking about, I feel like you’re one of these guys who really understands the background markets and equities, but you have this crypto-first-principles mindset through a lot of it. I resonate with a lot of your writing and the things that you talk about. I’m into your whole bit, so I appreciate you coming on.
It’s a good day to have you on, too. There’s a lot happening.
Man, when is there not a lot happening? That’s the problem these days, you know? It’s funny: last night at dinner with my girlfriend, she was asking me about my day, and it took me 15 minutes just to get through what happened in the market. I looked at her and said, “I can’t fucking wait for the day when I can just say, ‘You know what? Nothing really happened. Everything was just kind of chill.’” But it’s probably going to be a little while.
Nothing ever happens and everything always happens. Look, we could start with today, which is kind of a crazy day. I’m trying to figure out where to start.
You wrote a pretty good article back on April 19th, I think, and you were relatively bullish, all things considered, on equities and how things were playing out. We had the V-shaped recovery, and things have done very well from there. Now we’re in this crazy spot. We just had all these earnings. Google looks really good; everything else, not so much. Crypto looks terrible, while stocks are at record highs. It’s ridiculous how strong some of these tech stocks and semis are.
Oil is also going crazy. I have Hyperliquid up on my computer right now. WTI is at 108.50, and Brent is around 112. The speaker of Iran’s parliament just threw out a $140 price prediction for oil on Twitter. What the fuck do you make of where we’re at right now? Specifically, do you care about oil and the war, or not? Stocks are going higher. What’s your general read of where we are?
I think, as you can see with the bearishness and bullishness, what I wrote back on April 19th was about something you see discussed a lot on FinTwit. I’m a little less versed in it, but it’s the CTA buying and forced buying or selling that happens when certain assets trend higher or lower. That’s mainly what I was writing about when it relates to oil, the dollar, and the VIX.
Heading into that week—or going back to the 19th—we saw a massive spike in those assets, and eventually they were going to come back down. But I think we’re in a structurally higher environment for those assets, so we’re just waxing and waning between the two.
We came into this week with oil starting to trend a little higher, the VIX back down around 17, and the dollar still grinding higher. Those are the key assets. The interesting thing is that crypto has been following gold very closely in recent weeks, and gold has had a very strong inverse relationship with oil over the past few weeks. I’d have to pull up the tweet, but I drew lines on that relationship.
I think that’s a lot of the crypto weakness we’re seeing now: crypto is unfortunately choosing to follow gold instead of equities. There are times when it waxes and wanes between the two, and right now is a bad time to be following gold.
As far as equities go, I haven’t really seen too much about the earnings that happened today. I was prepping for this and getting the dog out, so I’ll catch up on that later. But as things weigh from bullishness to bearishness, it was cool to care about oil and the Strait of Hormuz during the first week of the fighting, and then it was pretty easy to forget about it—or that’s the wrong word—to trust that equity pricing was right and that you’re not going to fight that type of momentum.
Now I think we could see a case where we’re back to oil being at 110 while the VIX is beaten down. You have the 10- and 30-year; I mean, the 30-year just hit 5% for the first time since, I think, spring of 2025. Eventually, I can see these things weighing on equities. But until higher powers start weighing on equities, they’re going to keep grinding up because, as Bessembinder said on Monday, it’s imperative to chase China. That’s the thing. Every marginal dollar—
Oh my God. You know, I don’t understand a lot about markets, but I do understand momentum and when things are getting fucking slammed.
You wrote a couple of posts about it, whether it was Friday, Monday, or maybe last Thursday. I think it was late last week when SPY went down to around 703 or something. SPX 73. There was a war headline, and there was just buying at a level that didn’t even make sense. It was the most generational slam. I was watching these charts thinking, “What the fuck is going on?”
When you see that, you have to say, “Okay, the war’s not over, but I have to mentally ignore it and pay attention to what’s in front of me”—what the charts are saying on equities. It was a generational bid. You had some good tweets about it.
Yeah. I’ve never seen a low-timeframe bounce like that, other than mass crypto liquidations. We’re talking about something that felt like mass crypto liquidations, but that’s when stuff sells off 10% or 15%. This was, I think, some type of war-escalation headline.
I remember watching the Qs go down maybe 0.3%, and then they bounced half a percent in a minute. I was like, “Holy shit, this is outrageous.”
It was a fake headline that Iran’s air defenses were going off. I’m a complete idiot: I longed Bitcoin. I was looking around thinking, “What do I long? Stocks are going down a lot, and Bitcoin is flat.” I was on a stand-up preparing for the stream, thinking, “Guys, I have to trade something. What should I trade?” I decided, “Fuck it, I’ll long Bitcoin.”
Bitcoin was a complete piece of shit, and then SPY, Intel, and all of these names just went straight to all-time highs.
Yeah, it’s crazy. The other day that fully changed my mind was the Thursday before Easter. I was still a little hesitant about equities, but I remember Trump had that press conference Wednesday night at around 9:00 p.m. His tone and how short the message was—it was like, “Damn.”
Bitcoin sold off, equities sold off. I want to say they were down 1.5% in after-hours and then again premarket that morning. At the time, I had a bunch of puts. The market opened Thursday down for maybe the first 15 or 20 minutes, and I was euphoric. I thought I was about to print.
It just straight-up reversed. That’s when I decided I wasn’t going to short equities anymore because, at some point, you have to listen to the market.
No matter how real the situation is, the worst time to be bearish is when you constantly see the oil charts and can construct a picture where it makes so much sense to be bearish. But when price consistently and routinely moves against you, that’s when it gets really scary.
I think you wrote about this on April 19th: the hardest part of being a dirty bear is when you have every good reason to be bearish and the market is moving the other way.
Yeah, that’s what I was saying. When all of it makes so much sense, and there are a lot of times when the bear case makes sense, it’s easy to say that over the long term the market goes up, and there are a lot of reasons for that. But a lot of times, the bearish case can sound so smart.
Again, when you’re tracking a market that has essentially been closed for two months now, and before the war I remember reading people speculating about what would happen if it were closed for four weeks, you’re just staring at it thinking, “Dude, this makes sense, but you have to listen to the market eventually.”
That time last Wednesday and the Thursday before Easter are really good examples of an insane bid. You have to say, “Okay, whatever I previously thought, I should adjust it if I haven’t already.”
You wrote this in there, and I’ve been doing a lot of short-term trading recently, partly because I’m so dialed in for the stream and thinking about the short term every day. Something you wrote was—and I’m misquoting you, but paraphrasing—“It’s impo—”
It's impossible to think about positioning more than a week out. And it is seemingly impossible to do that because you flip-flop every which way, every direction. What I'm trying to figure out is: is that just a skill issue, and the actual problem here is thinking you should be trading every intraday move, whichever direction, instead of just picking a long bias, sliding the leverage down or, God forbid, going spot and letting it play out on a higher time frame? Am I just the problem here?
No, no. I don't think so at all. That's what I tell friends, family, and everyone: just don't even look. Just let it be, buy what you want every week or month, whatever, and don't even look at it. I try to tell them not to even look at it.
You kind of have to have the two mindsets in your head. I was explaining to my girlfriend that the market is just kind of an environment like that. It's been a month or 2 of close to absolute chaos, but I don't think what we've experienced over the past 2 months can be extrapolated to a more medium- to long-term thesis. You should still have some of those in your head.
I've been pretty bearish on crypto for only 2 weeks or so now—2 or 3 weeks—but when prices are down a good amount around these levels, I've still been picking and choosing spots to buy since the first airstrikes. I'm just like, okay, buy a little here and forget about it. You just kind of have to balance those 2.
Which is a difficult thing to do. You've been tweeting bearish crypto, but I think you said in the article that, on a higher-timeframe structural basis, you're the most interested in crypto you've been in a while. I don't want to misquote you on that, but I was a little bit surprised to read that. I was surprised to read that, honestly. Why?
Honestly, I was. I think it's partially because I started writing again, and that tells me that there's nothing going on in crypto. That generally leads to some type of asymmetric outcome in the future. Also, prices are down a lot from the highs of 8 months ago, so it's natural to start being more interested at this time.
I go back and forth on it because one of the prevailing things you see on CT now is the bullishness of institutionalization and how all of it—and it's true. But the problem that I struggle with, outside of really BTC and ETF assets, is that it reminds me so much of stablecoins and when I used to write about them in 2022, just being like, holy shit, stablecoins are going to 25x, 30x. This is going to be one of the biggest markets in the world.
That's on its way to being true, but the ability to profit from that was so hard outside of private markets. That's the unfortunate thing that reminds me about all this. The bullishness you'll see is that the institutions are here, and it's true. Schwab is launching trading, and Meta announced today that they're going to have stablecoin payouts to influencers.
But again, it's Meta and Circle. How do you know what I mean? It did nothing for Solana and, God forbid, anybody's bidding Polygon. Those types of announcements are beneficial and good over the long term, but in the short to medium term, they don't really do anything, and you can't profit from them in the liquid public markets. That just really sucks.
This has been the hardest part about the institutional narrative: everybody else is getting rich, and you're not, but all of us are not on the crypto side. I'm sitting here watching this chart. It's—I mean, bro, I don't know if you have it on your computer.
The oil chart is unbelievable right now. Brent crude is 113. It's actually unbelievable. I don't have you pegged as an oil expert or oil trader, so I'm not necessarily looking for supply-chain intricacies, but when you see this, what does this do? I think you've been pretty on the money with your short-term bias. What does this do to how you're thinking about equity markets and crypto? This is a pretty nasty candle it's putting in right now.
Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty sick. That's a pretty sick candle, dude. I assume 120 is probably tested at this point, and it's anybody's guess what it's going to do to equities because, again, they just haven't given a shit.
But I would think it continues to weigh on gold, and yields keep going up. That is just bad overall for risk assets. There's no sugarcoating it. When oil is up, it's just bad. It's bad in the short term. It's bad in the medium term. It's bad in terms of the ramifications down the line—a quarter, 2 quarters, 3 quarters from now.
We'll see what U.S. equity markets do. Another thing I've been writing about is how a lot of the rest of the world, for better or worse, has it 50 times worse than the U.S., which just has rising gas prices. There are some countries and airlines limiting fuel. People are driving into work maybe 2 or 3 days a week instead of 5. There are very serious things happening in the rest of the world, but a lot of times that stuff doesn't matter for equities until, for better or worse, it hits U.S. markets. It really hasn't hit here yet.
Yeah, it feels like—I think this is in the Chumba article. You guys have some similar takes, but the market's ability to price in forward-looking stuff right now feels like it doesn't exist. It's like you can only see what's happening in this exact moment, right? There's like, oh shit, oil's up. There's not a lot of foresight on a lot of this stuff. Does that feel new? What is that?
I do think the market has become much more reactionary. Another thing I've written about a few times over the past month is when I was referencing those cross-asset correlations between VIX, oil, and the dollar. The market has become much more reactionary: when those go up, risk was going down, and when those were down, risk was going up.
So I do think there is much more of a reactionary nature to equity markets than there had been in the past, compared to just looking through. Though you could say that equities are very clearly looking through everything having to do with the war and oil and just being like, AI is everything. From that aspect, there is definitely some look-through. But it hasn't spilled over to crypto yet.
This is a scary candle it's putting in.
[Laughter.]
Yeah, I mean, were you looking at the earnings and stuff, by the way? Like I said, I'm in a bit of a time crunch.
I was. Everything beat, but Google is the big winner. Let's see where Google is at right now. It's up 7% on it. Google ripping up 7% is crazy for a $4.2 trillion stock.
Meta got crushed even though it beat by a lot. It's down 7%. Shout-out to Ape Wood, my GOAT, in the chat. Amazon put in a nasty one, recovered, and then kind of put a nasty one in again. It's down 3%. Microsoft put in a pretty nasty one as well. It's down like 2.5%. So, not great. The sprint candle is fucking gnarly.
Do you have positions on right now other than crypto shorts? You just short crypto?
I'm short crypto. Long—let's see. I still have a pretty sizable OXY call position, which is an oil and petroleum company. I mentioned that in the article from 3 weeks ago, where I was like, yeah, the calls are up 152%. About 2, 2.5.
I really should have longed more oil and stuff. If you look at anything related to it, it's been straight up for 2 weeks. But other than that, I started buying VIX calls pretty much all morning and then some IWM puts.
You trade the VIX? How does that work? Why do you trade it, and what do you trade it in place of?
I wouldn't advise it.
How does it work, though? Why do you do it?
For me, when it's down at the levels it was at today, around 17 or 18, that seems like the base, the floor to me. I just use it like I'm fine with it going to 0, and most of the time it will go to 0 unless VIX is up 10% or 15% plus. I would not ever advise trading the VIX without some—
So, why do you do it?
[Laughter.]
That's a good question. It's like mental illness—to feel something. But then I put on some IWM shorts today too, just to hedge a lot of tech and AI stuff because it's small-cap stuff. It's been trending much weaker than the Qs, and if the Qs—if equities turn at all, then I think it will turn pretty hard. It's a lot more sensitive to the overall rate environment. I started putting that on this morning.
What's up, Smacks, in the chat? What's up, Smacks? He said, “Ask Tolks why he doesn't own ZM.”
[Laughter] I actually bookmarked it yesterday. I was coming back from somewhere and saw somebody retweet the bull case for Zoom, so I have to look into that. I think a large portion of it is that they own a lot of Anthropic, and they might get bought out by Anthropic. I could have that wrong, though. I think that’s true, actually.
That’s actually on my agenda to look into. That’s a D-Nap-ass stock. He loves that stock; he brings it up to me all the time. What crypto are you short? Are you still heavily short crypto? I know you were long Zcash for a while. I think you closed it. It doesn’t look good. Man, Ryan is just killing me. Zcash is one of the things I’m most excited about, and every 3 days he tweets, “I’m short Zcash again.”
By the way, I am, but it just looks terrible. The thesis on that is more obviously privacy. The quantum stuff is kind of a meme, in the sense that if BTC is affected by quantum, I don’t think anything is going to survive. But there is a little bit of that narrative.
Then it is becoming somewhat of an L1, and I like it obviously for the privacy aspect. It’s also the last non-tainted, real L1. By “tainted,” I just mean Saylor, Tom Lee, the Solana dots, all of that. That’s the main thesis there.
I’m just short BTC, ETH, and SOL right now.
Tell me about the SOL $80 level. It’s just been a meme forever. It used to be the SOL $120 level.
Yeah, that sounds right. Then that finally gave. The $80 level—I’m almost certain there’s a ton of FTX-locked SOL that was auctioned. I think a lot of it was bought around there when SOL was back at, I want to say, maybe $150 or $200. I’d have to double-check on this, but I’m almost certain that a lot of it was offered and bought around $80, so there’s a pretty strong wall there.
It’s the main level: $65.
$65. Okay. That would make sense. SOL was kind of where I made my hay back in 2020—or 2022—when everybody was saying it was $65.
I think SOL will become what ETH/BTC was last cycle, where once it is, it’s probably time to get out of some positions.
The new ETH/BTC? SOL/BTC?
Yeah. If you look at the ETH/BTC and SOL/BTC charts, they’re pretty much spitting images of each other. SOL is heading into the part where everybody tried longing it for 3 years, and it just didn’t work out. At some point, you have to stop, right?
You would think so, but that hasn’t stopped the ETH/BTC bulls. You tweet a lot about a topic I love—wow, Brent oil, bro. $113.50. Holy shit. That’s up 10% today.
Yeah, it’s about to make new highs, right? At least I’m looking on Hyperliquid.
On Hyperliquid?
The top wick is $117. This would be the highest close on the daily. Dog—oh, what even happened? Am I missing news?
I have my computer open. I don’t even think I’ve missed news.
Early reports indicate that air defenses near the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad were working to intercept a number of drones flying over the area.
Wow. Interesting. I guess we’ll see.
It was up pretty much all day. This was one of those things that people forgot about while this trade has been essentially closed for a month. Trump has been talking all day about how we’ll have the blockade for as long as necessary, and there was a report last night that he was prepping aides for an extended blockade.
In hindsight, I probably should have gone really long oil this morning. The way this is trading is probably what I wanted to ask you next, because I love this topic of everything trading like crypto. You talk about it a lot; I talk about it a lot. It’s one of my favorite topics. I don’t know if it’s good or bad for the world—probably bad—but it’s fun. It’s very fun. It’s fun to trade because it’s familiar to me.
How have you evolved your trading strategy around that? Are you just plowing into the new thing when it starts getting crypto-style flows?
I would say it depends, but generally, yeah. Like I was talking about, the market seems to be becoming more reactionary and momentum-based. That’s very crypto-native.
You start throwing in LLM research, and everybody is spitting out the same general thesis to the same people—the same stocks and sectors. That compounds pretty massively, too. You have those dueling factors, and obviously options and broader market structure play a role in the momentum-based environment.
I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Markets are converging to trade more like that. It’s a function of access, more people being online, and everybody being able to do it from their phone. It takes 5 seconds and 3 clicks.
I also think that hallucinated AI-yield concept doesn’t get enough credit for how impactful it would be. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that—
When RFK makes an announcement on peptides and everyone sees the headline, the first question is, “What do I buy? Does he buy HIMS?” I think that mattered, you know?
Agreed. Plus, it’s just the pace of information. You see it everywhere—not just in markets, but in every asset class, in politics, in sports, in everything. That’s just the way the world operates now.
On the topic of everything trading like crypto, with hyper-attention flowing from thing to thing to thing, you’re given an opportunity to trade the best thing. You want to be in the best thing at all times, and there are only a couple of best things at any given point.
Then you get narrative violation when you look at the monthly Nvidia chart and think, “Am I fucked? Shouldn’t I just be fine?” I go back and forth on this. I could just be in the best thing at all times, but it’s a lot of work to be in the best thing.
Or you could have bought Google for the last year every single red candle: buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. You do nothing else, you don’t work very hard, and then you’re up significantly. I go back and forth on how to think about this.
It’s difficult. That’s why it’s kind of funny that in this environment, where stocks are up and crypto is down, you see the sarcasm from CT: “Thanks for pointing that out. We didn’t already know.”
It’s not trying to dunk on anyone, but it highlights that you should own some stocks and have some basic index equities. Pull up the monthly charts of this stuff—it’s literally fundamentally designed to go up over time. There’s no reason to be on the sidelines.
You should have the approach that if you want to trade, that’s fine, but you should also have some core assets. Another thing CT does is emphasize and highlight the bottom ticks. It always has to be the bottom tick.
I’m fine with buying some BTC, some ZEC, and some HYPE here and there ever since the initial Iran strikes. Are the spot buys down since then? That’s fine. I’m good with that. I think the levels where we restarted are pretty good, and I’m not sure they’ll be hit again. If they are, that’s okay. If they aren’t, I’m fine with that too. I sleep better at night.
How do you short alts? I’ve never made money shorting anything ever.
[Laughter] You really have to wait until a market environment like we’ve had for the past few months.
You have to—you can’t really leave positions on overnight. It gets pretty dangerous. You have to really think things are stretched or the narrative has run out, or you have to be pretty confident in BTC at least not going up. But, like I said, it kind of has to be this type of environment.
I wouldn’t short in general. That’s another thing I tell my friends who are a little more active trading stocks: don’t ever try to short, because you’ll most likely get run over. It’s also crazy how the bears bring it full circle. Being bearish for long enough, you just lose it. I mean, bro, Chumba just wrote an article saying the Qs are going to 3×. You lose it, bro. You lose it.
I know. I know, Chumba and Player Daddy had an article on that.
And Evan’s, too. They’re all like, “The Qs are going to—”
Yeah, and I was like, “Damn.” These are sharp guys, too. Wouldn’t it be funny if we ended up selling off Thursday and Friday, and then maybe next week, too?
You finally get the 10% red day, the circuit-breaker day.
Finally. Yeah, yeah. But I don’t know. It’s hard to argue against it, especially when it’s laid out like that. The way they’ve traded recently is nuts.
On the more speculative side, you see all the P&Ls, and you see the Reddit account Serendipity, people like that. These are sharp people, but I’m also asking myself—and I try to be cognizant of this when I trade momentum stuff in and out—are we just selling real estate in 2006 or 2007, where everybody’s a fucking genius? What happens on the backside? I try to be cognizant of that, too. I’m not trying to be overall bearish, but you have to balance that.
The Serenity account is tough because it’s impossible. I have a lot of takes. Ansem could have called any 100-million-dollar meme coin in 2024 and been a genius, right? It’s tough when you’re shilling these microcaps and you have all this momentum. It’s tough to know how that plays out. So I guess we’ll see.
Who do you think are some of the best follows right now for crossover between both?
That’s a good question. Let me see. Rhino, obviously. Contra. Contra’s a really good follow.
Bearish.
Yeah, yeah. He’s the last one standing.
But I think he—I mean, his name says it all—but I think he does have really good ideas, whether right or wrong. I think sometimes we focus too much on right or wrong instead of the thesis and what their risk-reward is.
That’s also a reason I’ve been short here, especially in crypto. We rallied pretty hard to essentially pretty easy range highs across the board, and I was just like, look, if I’m wrong here and we flip, say, 80K on BTC, the amount of opportunities that are going to be available—it’ll be fine. But I don’t want to get caught with my pants down if we trend back toward the lows or something like that.
The last takeaway from crypto I’ll say is that I’m getting a lot of shit like, “Why are you bearish on crypto?” or “Why aren’t you talking about crypto?” I’m like, man, I’m down to miss the move to a $100 SOL or 80K BTC. I’m down to miss 76K to 80K on Bitcoin and miss that 15% bottom snipe.
I want to play on the way up because I want to trade shit that moves. I want to trade momentum. I want to trade stuff that’s going up. I fundamentally disagree with the take that when things are the most boring, that’s when you should lock in the hardest. There’s some merit to it, right? If you generally believe crypto is going to matter and do well, you shouldn’t stop paying attention. But you also shouldn’t lock yourself in the asylum chair and lose your mind trying to bottom-tick every 5% move when you could have flipped bullish when it was time to flip bullish.
We’ve been talking about stocks, oil, and other stuff that’s moving and making all-time highs. I guarantee you, with how much we’re covering this stuff every day, when it’s time for crypto, it’ll be time for crypto, and we’ll be right there. If I have to miss an asteroid on ETH before a full-blown alt-meme season, I’m down to miss the asteroid on ETH. If you miss Pepe, did you miss meme coins? No, bro. You had Goat, GIN, Cerebro, A16Z—every single token after that, right? I don’t think you have to be the hero who snipes the bottom wick to actually make money on the trade.
Not at all. I fully agree. What you just described, and what I was saying about being up at range highs, is that if we flip, then it’s party on. That’s more about leading with bearishness than anything else. It’s about protecting the spot that I have and my overall mental state.
I will say that when stuff is really boring, you shouldn’t necessarily be trading it. But if you want to scratch out some time to do legitimate fundamental research and dig into things, that’s when it’s most valuable. It’s not, “I should just buy some shit here because things are slow.” That’s not exactly it.
Especially in crypto, which is such a momentum- and volatility-based asset, that’s not how you’re going to win over time. What happens is, when it’s quiet like this and things are choppy, it goes down 10%, then you sell, and then you’re screwed.
Yeah, I 100% agree. Dude, this has been sick. I’m a huge fan, man. We read your articles, I read your tweets, and you’re always on the stream every day.
Give me a sort of closing wrap. Predicting where we’re going from here is tough, but how should you think about playing the market here, especially if you have a lot of cash? How should you be thinking about the market? What do you think matters? What should people be paying more attention to and less attention to? What’s your general mindset for what matters over the coming weeks? What’s important and what’s not?
That’s a great question. Obviously, oil, like we talked about, is number one. That’s the core focus across all assets right now.
Outside of what you should be buying, I don’t really have much spot exposure outside of BTC, HYPE, and ZEC. My confidence in everything else is waning, and I think that’s fine. We’re also at the point where, when the market does turn, there’s no point in trying to force which tokens you think will do well. Just wait for the market to show you, and then follow that.
I promise you, you’ll have enough time. I promise you, the leaders will almost certainly stay the leaders. There’s no reason to force some token now and think, “This will be the one that leads out of whenever the downturn is over.” Don’t do that. Just wait. Watch the market, listen to what it’s telling you, like we’ve been talking about with the equities bounce.
As far as equities go, it can’t ever hurt to own the indexes. You’ll sleep better at night. If you want to trade, there are plenty of momentum assets, but realize what we’re talking about with meme coins and these more esoteric AI stocks. I don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow. It might not be a month from now. It might not be six months or a year from now, but eventually the music is going to stop.
Just be cognizant that the shit isn’t going to go up forever. There are going to be plenty of winners and plenty of losers. Follow what the market is telling you.
It’s beautiful. Tolks, keep writing, bro. Keep writing, please. We need it. It’s like there’s something to laugh at.
I’ve got to beat the bear allegations. Hold on, look. It’s right here in the office, just staring at you all day. It’s right next to my Saint Nikola Jokić candle, so I’m beating the bear allegations. It’s temporary, I promise. I promise.
Dude, go write another article for us, man. Please.
Yeah, I’ll have one out hopefully Friday, but definitely by this weekend.
Dude, Tolks, you’re the GOAT, man. I appreciate the time. Thanks for coming on. It’s always a pleasure. Hopefully we can do a part two, maybe at oil all-time lows.
Yeah, sounds good, man.
All right, have a good one.
Much love. Peace. Later.
I love that guy, man. He's one of the best follows; he really is. He's on the money with what to trade, like what's hot. He's very Mando. My favorite thing Mando ever told me is, “Hey, you know you can just buy the best coins, and that's it.” You just have to buy the best coins, and you don't have to do anything else.