The Macro Trading Floor transcript – 01 May 2025

Alf

Hi everyone, welcome back to The Macro Trading Floor, Alf, and as always with me, my friend Brent. How are we doing this week?

Brent

Hey, Alf, I’m good. My son’s back from school, which is always nice. He’s back for a few months. So that’s a good time for my family. And I guess in markets, it’s kind of been like the worst nightmare for the consensus.

Alf

Yes, as always, I mean, markets have some way of like finding the most harmful path for consensus. It’s always been like that. So if you asked yourself two weeks ago, what was the highest consensus position, it probably would have been long gold, short stocks, whatever. The dollar is dying and all that. And here we are a couple of weeks later. Dollar JPY is almost 145 as we speak. So five big figures almost from the low.

You know, the euro is holding on much better. Also, the Canadian dollar is doing better, but gold, for example, is taking a big dump as we speak. Still elevated on the year, but you know, I think the intraday highs were almost 3500 and we are at 32. So it’s 300 dollar points, which nowadays in gold don’t seem like a lot, but again, $300 down. It’s not like a small move.

So you know, question is, what do we do next? Because the past is always easy to predict. Just look at it.

Brent

Yeah, very good at predicting the past. I mean, the one really interesting thing I think from the last couple of weeks is how there were so many indicators on the micro side. So it was kind of a victory of micro over macro because anyone that was taking the macro view, you know, still has options that are decaying and probably is getting stopped out of dollar yen and gold and all that.

But then anyone that’s like looking at the cover of The Economist or like, gold got to record overbought on a bunch of metrics and things like that, or even just the technicals in dollar yen, and 140 was a huge level and it was like where all the gamma was and we went to 139.88 or something like that. So I think it’s an interesting, I guess not really a lesson, but it’s a vote for micro over macro, or it’s a vote for combining both into your process.

And like, I’m not sitting here saying like, I caught all these moves, especially in equities. Like I was leaning way more bearish until 5500 broke and then now I’m long and doing okay. And I caught some of the gold short because the setup was just so easy risk-reward wise, but I never really gave up on the short dollar view and even with three Economist covers all saying that the US is about to fall into the ocean.

So I think also the reason that like I didn’t get killed here is because, and I’m not the only person saying this, but it does remind you, even if you’re like raging bearish, the setup is kind of similar to ‘07 and to 2020 when it was pretty obvious that the shit was hitting the fan and we made new all time highs both times. And actually kind of the same in ‘99, 2002, there was like a really big crash in NASDAQ and then we went almost back to the all time highs again.

So I guess the problem is that bear markets need bad news and we’re in like this interregnum between the announcement of Liberation Day and then the potential impact. And I guess that’s maybe what we can talk about is the timing and consequences of the economic impact and when that might happen.

Alf

Yeah. It’s key to understand. I mean, if you look today at measures of equity vol, so the VIX, for example, the VIX has gone down the main contract to 23 and a half, which is still well above 20. And it’s you know, still well above what the equity market normally realizes. But the measure Brent of how much people are still holding on to their catastrophe hedges is if you look at stuff like 10 Delta put vol in the S&P. So you go into the 10 delta strikes for the puts and you can see that that volume is almost 30.

So people are still holding on to their out of the money protection in S&P. They have given some of it back, but if you want to buy today, you still have to pay 30 vol to hedge.

Brent

Just a question. So I know when, we’re at the all time highs, VIX is usually like 12, 14 area. Where would the 10 Delta puts be at that time? Like 17 or something?

Alf

I’m just opening them to figure out what are we talking about here? I mean, right now we have gone and the peak extreme in the panic was this this stuff through that 60 vol, six zero. Proper nice melt up involved. But before the Liberation Day, for example, let’s say somewhere in March. End of March, we were at 21 vol. We were at 20, 19, and now we are at 30. That’s a lot more vol that is still priced up there.

So and what happens mechanically Brent, when there is still this amount of vol is that well, the longer you are not right, the more you’re bleeding on this stuff. The longer we go on without a catastrophe in the stock market, the more you’re actually getting hit by decay and by negative mark to market, right? So ultimately, you will need to unwind this either passively or actively. And we have seen some unwind, but I think we haven’t yet seen a bit of a capitulation, maybe even short term capitulation from bears. Haven’t really fully seen it yet, I would say.

Brent

You know, what’d be interesting is like, generally when I’m bearish, I prefer to short single names and have a stop loss. Just because I feel like, first of all, it’s easier to get in and out. But also because I just feel like it’s not as expensive. But it’d be interesting to compare the borrow on like the things that people like to short with the time decay of sitting there long puts. I would assume it’s much, much lower, but… It’s really annoying when you own options and you buy an option for whatever 50 and now it’s worth 16 and you know you should sell it, but you just don’t.

That’s why I feel like there’s what’s it called? It’s when you own something, the bias when you own something. I forget, but when you own something, you tend to overvalue it. And I feel like that happens a lot of times with options is that people, you know, someone might be bullish now and they’ll still own puts because you know, the things trading at 20% of what they paid for it. Whereas with a short, you just rip it and get out. So shorts in single names, if you can risk manage them to me are just more flexible.

Alf

Brent, what would be the top three names that people would want to go short if they’re bearish? Because I can check what is the vol price in tails for these and see whether it reflects the index level 10 deltas that we discussed. So shoot at me like a couple of names?

Brent

Well, Tesla is the one because retail still hasn’t capitulated. Tesla essentially is a meme coin. Like it has nothing to do with car company fundamentals. It just trades… In fact, if you overlay Ethereum with Tesla, you get a way better fit than like overlaying Ford and Tesla or anything. So that’s just a point about frameworks since Tesla came up.

When you see one of those visuals of like the market capitalization of Tesla compared to other car companies, whoever’s posting that has no idea what Tesla trades off of because like for the last three years, you could have posted that Tesla is a meme stock that trades off of retail demand and that’s it. And so people love shorting it because it’s, you know, it’s clearly wrong from like a discounted cashflow methodology. If you don’t believe in the robots and, and robot taxis, but I mean, it’s just meaningless. The valuation means nothing.

Alf

So let’s use this and then Tesla vol 10 Delta is now at 75 vol. Proper nice asset 75 vol you got to pay to hedge yourself long. And but then the average of the last 10 year has been 65. So you’re still above the average of the last 10 year and the low before the Liberation Day was actually 50 vol, five zero. So now you have to pay 75. Which means also in the name here you get the same reflection as the index level Brent. I mean people are still willing to pay quite some vol premium to actually hedge further downside in these popular stocks, which is again a sign that maybe we still need to cleanse a little bit more.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean that the S&P has to go to 6000. It mechanically means that you can have just a very small, short, like small, small grind up as you unwind slowly but surely, all these tail hedges, right? At the end of the day, it could as well turn out to be like that.

Brent

And you know what’s kind of weird about this whole setup has been that something like the AAII, the American Association of Individual Investors, those surveys have been showing like maximum bearish, like the most bearish since, you know, whatever, since Jesus walked the earth. And yet the retail statistics have shown that everyone in retail is just buying every single dip.

So it’s a strange setup. It’s almost like this cynical bullishness where people are just like, it worked all the other times, so it’s going to work again. And that’s a very dangerous mindset potentially because most people, guess now in the market have only been like… if you weren’t in the market in ‘08, what’s that, 17 years… So, if you’re not over the age of about 36, you’ve never actually seen a real bear market, right?

So people just assume stocks go up, Dave Portnoy kind of thing. And like, yeah, they do a lot because they become a political utility and the government just intervenes when they go down. But still, you know, stocks were flat for 10 years from 2000 to 2010. And it’s, mean, it’s just something to keep in mind. I think the only buying dips all the time is just not a good strategy when there’s this much policy uncertainty. You gotta be flexible.

Alf

Yeah. So let’s move the discussion for a second to rates and FX I think just to cover the whole ground. So on FX, there is a bit of a dichotomy that is showing up. I think for a bit we witnessed Euro, JPY, Swiss franc, Gold, they basically were all doing the same thing, just all going. And over the last seven to ten days, you start to see a bit of a differentiation. For example, the Swiss franc and the yen have actually gotten much more beaten up. Gold in vol-adjusted terms even more.

But there are two currencies that are holding their ground pretty well despite this, which are the euro and the Canadian dollar. So I have a couple of ideas about why that is the case, but it doesn’t look like that we’re back to an environment where you just short the dollar. It doesn’t matter against what it is. Just choose a grown up currency and you’re fine.

It actually seems like the market is willing to reward a couple of currencies, especially by stopping them from going down a lot and fast. And so that’s the Euro and the Canadian dollars to my eyes. Do you recognize the pattern and do you have an idea why that is Brent? Or I mean, I have an idea, but maybe I’m wrong.

Brent

Yeah, those are the two places where the pension funds have been selling the most equities. So partly, I guess it makes sense from that point of view. But, with equities up here, it’s interesting that there hasn’t been a correction in euro or in Canada. And just talking about like frameworks… So, you know, if you have the wrong framework, it’s just impossible to trade. Like if you can’t explain the price movement, you can’t forecast the price movement. Right? Like with Tesla, like if you’re using a market cap compared to Volkswagen framework, obviously you’re just completely lost.

And I feel a little bit lost right now with Canada specifically, like normally you can kind of do some kind of PCA analysis and come up with, you know, oil interest rate differentials, broad dollar, whatever Canadian growth, whatever, you can find factors that are driving Canada. And right now, honestly, like if you told me, if you took the eight other biggest asset classes and securities in the world and told me where they all went, like S&P, bonds, Canadian bonds, whatever, I would have no idea where Dollar CAD was.

Because all it seems like is there’s just a flow. There’s non-price sensitive flow almost every day selling dollars. So if the trade was sell America and that’s why the dollar went down, well, you know, NASDAQ’s gone from 18000 to 20000. Palantir’s gone from 65 to 120 in the last three weeks. But Dollar CAD hasn’t moved. And Euro dollar basically hasn’t moved. So it’s, it’s to me, it’s a little bit confusing. And right now I’ve kind of stepped back. Like I don’t really have anything in FX because I, if I can’t explain what’s going on, then I definitely can’t forecast it.

Alf

Yeah. That makes sense. For me, actually, it has been very interesting to write that analysis I did on the pension fund and sovereign wealth fund and insurance hedging of their currency because then, first of all, a lot of people came back, which is normally when you write a good piece and you will see that Brent, is like… When you write a piece, you get feedback from clients. When you write a good piece, it’s like 30, 40, 50 people like, hey man, I saw this and this is very nice. I have a question on Korea now. Yeah, thanks.

But you get that type of feedback for two reasons. Either it’s a good piece or you wrote a trade idea which is completely out of consensus and then people throw shit at you like, dude, are you drunk or something? So this was the case of a good analytical piece. And what I figured out there is that the pension funds that came back to me said, interesting, but you know, for example, that for the Aussie dollar to actually, I mean, the superannuation fund is hedged something like 25% of their equities, 25%. That’s it.

And why have they hedged that low Brent? It’s because their correlation model says that the Aussie dollar is possibly correlated to the S&P 0.5 pretty stable over time. So they told me in Canada and in Europe, what has been changing is not that much that the Euro and the Canadian dollar became a safe haven asset, it’s not proven yet by data, but is that the correlation sign has flipped. So it’s not that the correlation went from, you know from it went to minus one, it’s not minus one yet.

But the Canada and the euro had a positive correlation with the S&P a small positive like 0.1 0.2 0.3. And now over the last two weeks it’s actually negative, you can actually start seeing in the data and it’s that sign flip they told me that actually puts their models completely offside.

Brent

Actually, you know what? That completely makes sense then. Sorry, I interrupted. Because if you say like after Liberation Day, Canada pensions and Dutch and whatever, all were selling equities and then obviously that was pushing the dollar down. And then finally they got out what they wanted to and maybe now they’re just increasing hedges, but they’re not selling equities. So that actually, your explanation is perfect. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.

Alf

It actually would make sense because Canadian pension funds and Dutch pension funds I’m speaking to, said, yeah we have, of course, the risk a little bit, but the main intent also from a career risk perspective is not to sell down all our US equities because what if we are wrong? I mean, being long US equities has worked wonders for the last 15 years. So we’re not going to risk it by selling our equities down to zero.

But what’s much easier to do from a career risk is just look at your correlations, look at your models. And I told them, yeah, but you know, open a chart of Canadian dollar and S&P. It’s not like the Canadian dollar is the new safe haven. They said, yeah, that’s fine. But the correlation has turned slightly negative from positive. And that sign flip actually is what makes them worry that their hedging is based on a sign that is completely outdated.

And so it might be that this really helps them to come in every day and say, okay, you’re missing some Canadian dollars to buy because if the sign is, you know, minus point two now going forward, then I might as well have to increase my hedge ratio mechanically.

Brent

Right. And if you don’t love the dollar, then you know, why not just increase the hedges, leave the equity position the way it is. And I remember there was a big stir in like 2013, 2014 when Canada Pension in their annual report basically made the statement that when stocks go down, Dollar CAD goes up. So we don’t want to be hedged. I mean, it was that clear. And so if stocks go down and Dollar CAD doesn’t go up, like you’re saying, then maybe that’s what’s going on.

And then I think the Euro as well, underneath that you also have like 16 countries, that might be the number, 16 countries have applied to the EU for an exemption to the debt break in order to spend more on defense. So like the dream scenario for long Euro is joint defense bonds from the EU because the taboo was broken in COVID, so they could easily do that. Well, not easily, but it’s possible. But the less sexy, but still good option, I guess, would be if every single country breaks the debt rules in order to spend more on defense. And then you kind of almost get the same thing, although you don’t get the joint EU bonds, which would be very attractive to reserve managers.

Alf

Yes, mean, the joint defense spending is by far the most convex outcome. And frankly, it would also be the thing to do. But Europe is not built overnight and especially Europe is built in crisis. So as always, you probably need some sort of escalation in the war or something along the line of that to convince Europeans to really act. But I mean, as a second best alternative, having most countries apply for different spending and spend more doesn’t hurt. So I mean, there are reasons I think why the euro and the Canadian dollar are more resilient than anything else. And this correlation comment was very interesting.

On bonds, I also have a pension fund telling me something quite interesting. So on bonds, they basically said, okay, well, but for the last 10 years, every time the US showed up with a fiscal package, then what happened is that yeah, the bond market had a small reaction, but it was never vigilantes-like. It was never punitive. So basically their point is bond yields went up, but merely reflecting the increase in nominal growth that you should expect from fiscal, right? It’s just a natural adjustment.

And they say, okay, but what if Trump decides to do another round in 2025? I mean, he had promised. DOGE cuts. There are no DOGE cuts. The implied probability on Kalshi and Polymarket that DOGE is going to save 250 billion, which is like, what is it, a fourth of what Musk promised, is priced at 3%, Brent. Imean, there’s like, nobody believes in this thing anymore.

So there is no savings and the market is nervous. I mean, we had an article in Financial Times yesterday when I think Stephen Miran was supposed to soothe a few hedge funds over the risks in the long end. And it was reported that behind Dorsey, not nearly succeeded in doing that. And so basically the pension fund is saying, look, I don’t know if I feel that 10 year plus bonds are actually going to serve as a hedge anymore. So by not knowing anything better, I’m actually going to switch them for something else. Now, this is just one anecdotal evidence and I don’t want to make a theme out of this, but it’s interesting to see this action in bond markets.

Brent

Well, I guess the problem is that with bonds is you have quite a few sort of deflationary things going on with potential economic shocks from tariffs and then oil kind of collapsing-ish. But you always have this weird convex tail risk of fiscal flare ups that are almost impossible to forecast and impossible to trade.

So I feel like the bond trade is really hard because you could potentially be entering recession and deflationary kind of stuff. But then inflation sticky, tariffs are inflationary. And then you have this fiscal boogeyman kind of lurking around the corner. So if you’re an investor, like, yeah, and you want to be long bonds, I would think why not just pick a different country? (Alf laughing) I mean, you know that there’s a risk there.

And maybe that’s part of what’s going on in Canada as well is that that bond market’s very small. And so if someone says, you know what, like, we’re 40% US and we’re 2% Canada… Why don’t we go to like 38% US and 4% Canada or something? And you know, those would be huge moves in the Canadian bond market and for FX.

Alf

And you can actually even say that if you are an investor and you buy bonds or Canadian bonds here, you also implicitly get an exposure to the Canadian dollar and to the euro, which might actually save you if there is a fiscal problem. Fiscal problem is double whammy, right? You lose money possibly in the long end of bonds because yields go up, and also, you lose money in the dollar if people don’t give that much trust anymore to US fiscal expansions.

So I think it’s actually a point where a couple of committees might be saying, but why don’t we buy some bunds? And the fight back that I get back is, yeah, but the German is going to issue a gazillion billion trillion… Yeah, OK, but they’ve already announced that guys.

Brent

Yeah. That’s all priced in.

Alf

I mean, hello, like this has been announced two months ago. Do you think people are still surprised when they come with issuance? I mean, come on. It’s like everybody knows this thing is going to be there. So…

Brent

The beauty of that is that the announcement of the issuance created a massive announcement effect. So now you’re getting really nice yields as an investor.

Alf

Yeah. I mean, you could buy bunds at 3% at some point almost, and now they’re 2.45. So there has been quite a rally. Of course, as well, it’s to be thought about other central banks, Brent, because if you are the Bank of England, if you are the ECB, tariffs are really bad for your nominal growth at the end of the day. I mean, it’s not like you are going to have your import prices go up. You don’t have tariff on China as Europe. You don’t, right?

The net impact on you is going to be nominal growth goes down. And so the central banks, of course, are going to be more dovish. And I think there is something to be said about foreign bonds attracting capital more than treasuries as a hedge as well in people’s portfolios. Right?

Brent

Yeah, you know, people don’t talk about central bank diversification and portfolio shifts as much as they used to in the 2000s. Because it was just a very, very active thing and very huge numbers in like 2003-2004. But, I mean, that’s going on. Like when you used to see for two weeks, it stopped now recently, but for about two weeks, every single day when you walked in, central banks just bought gold, bought euros, bought CAD. So as a central bank, it definitely makes sense.

Just switching gears for a second, cause I want to talk about the economic data. So it’s an interesting setup in the US, like you had this badly distorted GDP data. You have claims still on the lows, but then most of the hiring stuff you’ve pointed out, is looking quite a bit softer. ADP was soft and then we’re going to get payrolls tomorrow. This will already be out.

But the really tricky thing is everyone’s waiting for the hard data, but the hard data is still distorted by front loading and weird stuff on imports and all that. But I think we’re going to really enter the big zone here of, in May and June when we get the April and really, I guess, like the May data which we’ll get in June, we’re going to start to see what the real story is on the economy.

Because if you go on Twitter, I feel like some of this stuff is pretty credible. Like people saying like, this is, here’s my small business. Here’s how it works. You know, the imports are so expensive to make the parts that my manufacturing business is going to shut down. I mean, some of it’s hysteria, but I think some of it’s real. And it does seem like all the policies strongly favor large business over small business, I guess as usual. So it’s going to be interesting to see what the economic data looks like.

But it’s just so hard to have a really strong macro view when we’re kind of like, the tsunami wave is way out there on the horizon and it looks like it’s coming, but you don’t really know for sure, right? And then the sort of stupid reflexivity is that once stocks start to rally, people get less scared. And then the narrative starts changing and people are like, maybe tariffs aren’t that bad. Maybe tariffs are good. If stocks make all time highs, people will be making ex post arguments as to why tariffs are good for the economy.

So I was just curious what your thoughts are on the data. Maybe like, what are the three data points that matter the most, do you think in the next bit? And then do you have any comment on GDP? I know there’s like a lot of arguments.

Alf

I’m going to, you know, I’ll wait for tomorrow NFPs and then, you know, write a piece on the state of the U.S. economy. If I look at what I would call the core, core, core components of GDP, so you strip away all the possible tariff distortions you can… Then you’re left, by the way, with about like 20% of the GDP basket. So that’s the problem of stripping everything away. It’s like inflation X. Everything is zero. Basically, it’s the same problem.

But okay, if you try to make an exercise, then what I get back Brent is somewhere around one and a half to 1.6% of real GDP trend. Okay, basically around one and a half to 1.6. How do I feel about that? Well, it’s a slightly below trend. And the last quarter, the same number was 2.6, by the way. And the quarter before, it was 2.7. So basically, you know that you have had some deterioration. It’s no surprise for anyone. It’s much better than the minus zero point whatever that was shown yesterday.

But the market also knows this, by the way. The market isn’t trading as if GDP is minus 0.3, by the way. Otherwise, you’d see something different on the screen. So my data-driven approach is growth is a little bit below trend. It will continue to worsen. That’s for sure. If nothing changes, this is pretty obvious, right? Because what do you expect personal consumption to do? What do you expect fixed investments to be? I mean, of course, they’re going to be less with this type of uncertainty.

But I am not also debating that people know that. So I’m just saying stuff where I’m putting numbers to things because I know that I can extrapolate and make some order. But it’s not it’s already in the price. So you basically need to have a view on are the tariffs gonna be here or not in two months. That’s basically what you should know here, which barely, it’s impossible to know. It’s gambling, literally.

Brent

And a pretty simple and relatively robust forecasting framework, I think for the economy is take the starting point and then use the sentiment data to forecast the rate of change. So like the sentiment data was bad in ‘22, ‘23, but it was coming from an incredibly strong starting point with excess savings and all that.

So now you have very poor sentiment, which is potentially future rate of change indicator, coming from a pretty shitty starting point, right? Like not a great starting point. And then you’ve also got the student loans about to happen on May 5th, I think is when people start up to repaying. And interestingly, maybe this is a bit counterintuitive, but a lot of student loans are actually held by relatively high income people who have a marginal propensity to spend. So that actually might be a negative impact as well.

So to me, the market is so confused that there’s no way you can say recession’s priced in at current levels of where everything’s trading. So the second the market sniffs out that it’s a recession, like if that’s what happens, it’s gonna be an absolutely massive trade. So to me, that’s why like every single data point could be like the important data points, especially in May and June could be massive go-with because once people see that, say we get a negative payrolls print or we get like, I mean, that’s the most obvious one.

Cause the problem with retail sales and stuff is you’re going to get like front loading. Then the roller coaster goes down the hills. That one’s going to be tough. Or Claims, you know, maybe Claims goes to 260 or whatever. But if any of that stuff happens, that’s going to unlock a massive trade. So I think the economic data is going to be really important now after a period when it was really just meaningless and backward looking for ages.

Alf

You’re perfectly right, Brent. And my option implied assessment of the bond market, which is not a subjective thing. It’s an objective thing. I just look at options underneath the so for future strip and try to extrapolate how much people are paying for recession optionality basically in the rates option market… says that right now, a Fed cuts in line with the recession are priced at 20%.

Brent

Okay. Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

Alf

Yeah, that’s correct, Brent, right? Because normally speaking, a recession should be always priced at like 8 to 10% in these things as a baseline. Because you know, people that I’m looking a year out, so people of course are gonna pay some premium to basically hedge themselves against the recession at any point in time, right? And this probability never goes below five. Even when people are really strong about the economy, there is still like a 5% price. Then seven to eight is baseline. 20 is quite high. That’s what I’m trying to say, right? 20 is high.

But of course, there is a reason why it’s high. Like it’s subject to the information that you know about your starting point and you know about tariffs. Right? So I think 20 is around about correct. And then this is the typical example where it could slowly decay back to 10 or it could go to 50, 60, 70, depending on how bad it gets.

Brent

Yeah. Geez, I would love to be, I would definitely take the long side of that, not the short side. You know, one thing, because I think we’re about to run out of time, is just an interesting kind of sub-theme that has been happening and really picked up last night is you had all these like channel check things and it was all kind of like secondhand. You know, somebody told me that somebody else told me stuff about Microsoft cutting back on AI CapEx and all that.

And when the rubber’s hitting the road here, I mean, last night, Microsoft was saying that we’re going to run out of AI capacity by June. There’s actually, they’re talking about a shortage of capacity and the CapEx numbers are still huge. And we’re right now seeing a big rally and all that stuff. But I think that’s really interesting because there’s been this sort of crescendo of doom on the AI side, starting with DeepSeek, then it accelerated with those channel check stories and all that.

And now honestly, you can make the argument that we’re still… that AI CapEx has not peaked. I’m not saying that’s necessarily right, but you could two months ago that would have sounded idiotic. And now it actually seems like it might be true.

Alf

Yeah. I mean, again, it’s when I start reading stuff like “I read on a forum that an anonymous analyst wrote that, you know, it’s over for AI CapEx,” then I’m always like, OK. So I mean, it’s a it’s a thing that I think is still up there. But it’s so funny, Brent. I mean, have you heard somebody two weeks ago at 4800 discuss about AI CapEx?

Brent

I know, that’s the crazy thing. It’s been the absolute worst nightmare for every single, all the dominant themes on like April 14th. And now it’s May 1st. All the dominant themes on April 14th are basically one by one falling like dominoes.

Alf

This reflexivity thing is huge, right? Even people that are somehow aware. I mean, you wrote the freaking book on this and I am somehow aware as a hedge fund manager of reflexivity. You still want to talk about AI CapEx when the S&P has rallied back massively, but no, you don’t want to talk about it when it’s at the 4800. So yeah, it’s, this is just a good note of caution for people in general about your biases. Because we also have biases, Brent and I, so we try just to be aware you should do this.

Brent

And it’s a very silly game that we’re playing. It doesn’t always make sense.

Alf

Always nice to talk to you guys. As a reminder, if you wanna get access to Brent’s pieces or my stuff or have a chat, whatever, just ping us on Bloomberg and we’ll basically get back and have a chat with you. And Brent also, you can’t see him, but he has a t-shirt with some Japanese stuff. What does it say over there?

Brent

It says, “What time is the BOJ?” Because we get that question so many times. Because the Bank of Japan is the only central bank that doesn’t have a fixed announcement time.

Alf

I love it. Brent, can I have one of these? is fantastic merch, solid stuff.

Brent

I’ll take care of it. And one last thing, since we’re in marketing mode here, in Friday Speedrun, I put a coupon for $150 off am/FX. If anyone wants to sign up for my daily, use the coupon code SPEEDRUN for 150 off.

Alf

Yeah, and Brent by the way, already charges ridiculously low prices, so ridiculously low minus a hundred and fifty dollars is really low.

Brent

And there’s no tariffs if you buy today.

Alf

But only for the next 90 days or whatever it’s left. Okay, guys, we’ll speak again next week.

Brent

Thanks, everybody. Ciao.