What's up how you doing it's been a minute dude, it has been a minute. Thank you so much for coming on man dude. What is going on out there, man dude the uh. The market looks pretty pretty awful.

It's dark! It's dog! This is uh. This is not a good time to be in unless you're playing puts uh. Unfortunately, but it's man, it depends on how deep you want to get i've been uh. I've been really diving into the last sort of 100 years of macroeconomics and i think there's a lot of parallels between current.

You know economy and what you saw a hundred years ago, even down to as well as it sounds henry ford compared to elon musk, sort of leading different revolutions wait 100 years ago, you're talking about leading to the great depression, correct! Oh, i don't think we're there. Yet, though kevin, i don't think we're there, so this is. This is kind of my thesis right. What i see right now is the parallels between a few things.

You can see that we had an issue with a pandemic back in the 1900s right. You had. The spanish flu now you've got covenant right. It causes this short-term sort of uh recession.

You get a nice little bit of growth and now we've entered into uh sort of a supply and demand chain issue. Here we have too much demand, not enough supply and what i think you're gon na watch happen is an overproduction in the coming years of uh supply, which won't be able to meet demand. So right now we're watching sort of the effects of stimulus and of this incredible demand. Uh inflation's going up you're seeing rates start to rise.

I think that's going to cause a little recession and then from there i think you're going to get another a couple. Good years of roaring 20's esque sort of uh stock market, which is which is pretty interesting - that's a that's a piece of it, but i don't think this is the end of the world. Yet i think it's a blip, so we we had a recession in in the early uh like before the great depression, but it was sort of more minor short term, and then then we had this rally period. Are you almost suggesting that potentially we could see a mega kind of collapse towards the end of the decade? I think that's kind of the direction this is going.

So if you look back into sort of the last great depression, one of the things that i noticed that i think you are going to see again is deflation, and that sounds kind of weird right, but yeah when you think about it. You've got massive. I think incoming hyperinflation on the horizon and that's going to lead to what i think is going to be. Like i mentioned earlier, uh too much supply people are going to overproduce for the demand.

That's currently rocking because it's so easy and accessible to borrow cash uh, and when that time comes, i think you really have a risk of seeing deflation sort of take root again, and i think that's uh, something that could obviously lead to another depression of sorts. I mean you can't look at uh the us economy and see that 40. Something percent of money was printed in the last two years and pretend that's not gon na have an effect on things uh. I think that's kind of where we're sitting, but i don't know i'd like to hear your thoughts kevin.

It's been, it's been a minute since i've been able to sit down and chat with you, let's uh, let's have a talk. Well, thank you for that. Uh, i mean that's, it's really interesting. You say that because i i just pulled this up.

I drew this on my whiteboard. I was talking to a few different people about this and i was talking about this a little bit earlier. I feel like, and i want to hear your thoughts about this. I feel like the the economies on this teeter-totter balance, where we we can go in three directions.

One direction we can go is extreme growth and hyperinflation, but that's going to lead to recession because they'll raise hikes like they did or raise rates like they did in the 70s extreme growth hyperinflation, not good uh. If we go in that full deflation, massive slowdown, we'll also go to a recession. Um. The bliss where, where like the hope is, is that we get a disinflation so less of this high inflation and just slowing down and then just chill the f out uh, and so i think we're on this insane teeter-totter.

What do you make of that? Well, i got ta be honest with you. My my faith in the fed is is not great. I don't know it's kind of hard to uh. It's kind of hard to have faith in jay powell when, when your solution is sort of this is maybe controversial.

I would say it's not, but he just seems to to kind of bow down to the masses right, whoever is kind of talking in his ears saying. Ah, you should probably tighten things up. You should loosen things up, it just goes back and forth and that's not accomplishing all it is is, is halfway doing something and it prolongs the inevitable effect of what i think is going to be a necessary uh recession. You know and for worse, if it's not taking care of a depression, so yeah, i guess it really depends on him picking a direction.

You know that's uh. At the end of the day, what it comes down to are you gon na tighten we're gon na loosen things up. We can't play this in between no kidding. I i honestly, i feel, like you know to me.

It really pissed me off that he was so consistent with the it's going to be transitory. It's going to be transitory, so consistent with that which you know that's laughable itself, but it was only after his job was threatened, that all of a sudden, the federal reserve and and the the december minutes were the most bearish we've ever seen. Jay powell got his job back, it's almost like biden whispered in his ear, a uh. You know i need this inflation under control, so i could get build back better plan done and i can get reelected right and all of a sudden.

You get this massive u-turn and the fed's like, oh no, we got to taper faster and and raise hikes or raise rates faster. What do you think about that is? Is he being politically manipulated? You know, i i think it's undeniable, that even though parties such as the sec and the fed are supposed to be bipartisan, you know they're supposed to just do their job. They are influenced by politics. You know i look at gary gensler, for example, uh, and it's a very similar situation, where i think there's probably somebody whispering in his ear saying: hey look.

This is uh, probably not what you should go after. We should just kind of let this be and it'll fix itself and in the same way that uh jay powell is is kind of just pussyfooting around the same stuff. You know uh, i do think it's political and that's, i don't think you really need to have a tinfoil hat on or a cowboy hat on to to think that uh, that's that's just based on what we see you know people can talk all they want, but At the end of the day, what speaks to me is exactly what you said right. His job was on the line and he completely flipped.

His position from inflation is transitory, which he invented. First of all, i've never heard the word transitory until it came out of his mouth and i had to google it and i laughed, and now it's now, it's the exact opposite you're, seeing the repercussions of what everybody's known for the last nine months. It's it's completely political and it's it's garbage, it's pretty sad trey. What do we do now? Well, this is uh.

I actually made a video about this yesterday and it's obviously never a fun topic. There's a lot of people who are uh, stressing especially long's in the market. Right now i mean you know, i'm the amc. Guy right, i like amc, it's it's a it's! It's a good stock.

I think it still has upside, but in the short term right you can't control what the broad market's doing it's uh, it's a piece of a really large puzzle. So what you got to do is hedge, your positions, i'm a i'm a trader at heart right when i first got into stocks, i swing traded things and the the benefit of that is at the end of every day, when i trade, i sit pretty cash heavy And i'm able to sort of take a look at the market on a day-to-day basis and adjust as necessary. Oh, it looks like things are going to be kind of green. Today i don't really have to hedge that much i don't have to play.

Puts on the spy. I don't have to play. Uh calls on the vix. I don't know you can kind of decide that for yourself you know but uh when it's when it's red, you know you know what you got to do so i think it's crucial for people to hedge their long positions right now.

Otherwise, they're just going to sit there and bleed. You know no one likes that that's interesting because you know so so much of our our uh, the retail culture, has always been so anti uh, shorts and and hedging, and when i think of institutions i i try to there are definitely scummy ones out there. There are many scummy hedge funds out there and institutions out there, but i also do think there is a very large percentage of institutions that they just don't want to lose their clients by doing a bad job for them. So they have to hedge uh as like their net more long, but they have to hedge to make sure they don't lose those customers.

So is that maybe a lesson to learn in the retail community that hey like when, when it's time to go into a down market like what we're essentially experiencing now, maybe it is okay to put on that 10 20 put or maybe even more. You know this is actually something i talked about not too long ago. I think when i first got on the market i'll tell a story. I despised all shorts, all of them they're all terrible people.

I view them all as my enemy, and i said to myself. This is the reason that i'm losing money today right uh, the truth of the matter is there are good shorts and there are bad shorts right. There's shorts out there who abuse the market who abuse the system uh they'll, make it short, sell, they'll, use derivatives, blah blah blah whatever there's a bunch of ways, they can do it uh same as there's bad longs right. There's longs that that buy stocks the right way and there's longs, who pump and dump stocks the truth of the matter is: if you're, protecting your capital you're, not doing anything wrong.

You don't want to be fighting the market, that's not to say that you should cash out of long positions right, because in the end of the day, if you think a year, two years, three years from now, it's gon na be worth more money. Why would you sell you know right, but it is to say in the short term, while you're waiting, it's okay, to make money, that's the whole point or at least to stop yourself from losing money. So i think it's kind of a hard truth that, at times retail has to you know come to grips with. Is that it's okay to to play, puts uh in in a bearish or uncertain volatile market, because all you're doing is protecting yourself you're, not the hedge fund or the institution or the market maker.

That's doing nefarious things, you're you're, a guy! You can't even move the market, you know kevin, i i don't think you and of yourself you've got a decent decent portfolio. You know how? Maybe you can move the market, a penny or two. You know if you play this buy. You know what i'm saying like: we don't make a difference alone, protect yourself, that's it at the end of the day.

What about timing? When does this end? Does this end when the federal reserve finally makes a decision in march, or is it going to be their january meeting which comes up uh this wednesday or are we waiting until june or later this year? I think you're going to see a similar situation to what we saw in march of 2020.. I think you're gon na have a couple months, two to three months of pretty uh, pretty harsh sort of up and down volatile conditions in the market and then you're, probably gon na see a recovery, and i think what the catalyst is going to be. If i had to take a guess, is the first rate hike, that's probably announced, because if you look historically right, you can raise rates and still have a bullish market. It's probably not going to be as good as it could have been right, but i don't think we have enough of a catalyst to call this a true crash.

This is sort of like the market finally reacting to what it should have probably reacted to in the last year. You know that's, ultimately, at the end of the day to me, what do you think? Well, i i couldn't agree more. I think that uh, the fear that we have over the federal reserve raising rates is really overblown. I think there's a limit to how high bond yields can go and and the fed could i mean that funds rate could actually be higher than the 10 year which, which historically has happened.

Uh - and so i i don't it does seem like the market - is just really overblowing this fear, but because we have these fed dates coming up. I think everything is going to be a sell. The news, i think, if earnings are good, it's going to be sell. The news because then it's oh well now we're we're overheating, so the fed's going to have to pay for more.

If earnings are bad well, then it's going to be sell that news, because earnings are bad. We look at netflix right. What do you think? How much of a catalyst could earnings really have? I think in the in the market conditions that we're in right now you want to be very careful about a pop in a fade. You know, i think, that's what i've kind of seen across all stocks in the last two to three weeks is.

They can have great news. You can have these. These one-off squeeze plays right. The latest was bbig had a good couple days.

I looked like it had a really solid gamma ramp in the making, and i just kind of faded because the market's not that strong right now so myself, my tendency as a trader. If i'm going to take a position, if i'm trying to play earnings whatever uh, i'm i'm selling the news for sure, because it's just you don't have enough strength. All you have to do is look at the chart by the way you've leveled up your ta. A lot kevin and that's that's freaking cool to see so i'm glad you hopped on that train.

Keep defending please please keep defending ta, because i i fight the same battle but anyways. I appreciate that you can. Thank you so much. You and matt are great.

Everybody should follow: uh trey, make sure to search uh, matt cores and trace trades right now. Y'All are amazing, so thank you for that. Oh you're gon na make me blush man so, but that's actually interesting, because so i've been calling these uh these little micro rallies that we've been getting usually in the first half of the day. But we've had a lot of these over the past six to eight weeks.

These little micro rallies, sometimes they last a day or two conviction - lists rallies. In other words, it seems like they always seem to sell off, and they generally tend to sell off the second half of the day. I kind of can't help but feel like institutions are trying to play us that they're they're, taking advantage of the by the dippers to get out uh or to trade the by the dippers and they always close their positions by the end of the day. What's your take on that? Well, it's no secret that uh that institutions have have specific narratives right anytime.

You look at mainstream media anytime. You hear a big figurehead talk. The only thing that i can think of is is what is actually happening behind the scenes right. So here's an example jim cramer, pumping netflix was he actually bullish on netflix, or was he trying to unload some institutional banks? I don't know the ties that cnbc has with other institutions right who knows it says it's.

You can't know unless you're there but uh. I i tend to just not pay attention to what these guys are saying, because i think exactly what you said. I think that there are institutions that are trying to unload bags. I think, anytime, you have a raised price target, it's probably for a reason.

It's not to help you uh, you know it's! It's too much of a pattern to ignore the spy. The last three or four days has pumped the first two hours of the day and then knifed and that's that's happening across the entire market, so you're spot on the money. Man, that's exactly what i think it is that's incredible! Uh, you know uh and from after the election uh this this california governor campaign that i placed the third in uh. I a one of one of the top news anchors in california.

I won't mention which station they sat down with me for coffee and they said kevin you've got to realize. We sometimes are forced to read scripts that we don't agree with or that we know are untrue. We get told from the executives what to do and what to say and we're talking like all the way up to like the rupert murdoch levels. Right like like way up like that's where the news comes from, and they tell us what to say and if we don't like it, we get fired so uh like that to me was really mind, opening and mind blowing and mind opening, because you know during the Election, i was always so frustrated about why.

Why would the news stations pretend that somebody who's actually pulling extremely well? It doesn't even get a mention on some stations. Like cnn, like cnn, went as far as lying to say, there was no leading candidate in the same party as the governor running against the governor. It was, it was insane. We had to send him a cease and desist letter, but it was when i met with that executive that i realized wait a minute.

It's rigged, man like that more and more it's rigged, and so what you just said about jim cramer, i didn't think about. But you might be right, it could just be. You know the whole investing club or whatever and look you know. This is just full opinion here we don't want to get screwed or anything.

You know we got the don't sue me bro mug here, okay, but what you're saying kind of makes sense, like hey institutions, got to unload some netflix bags before earnings, hey, let's get that cramer pump going. You know, he's done some really good pumps, man! All you have to do is look at his track record. You know you look at bear stearns, you look at netflix, you look at peloton. He liked he liked uh palantir at 28 dollars, but he didn't like it at 23..

I i don't know, there's just too many times now, i'm a pattern! Guy right. If you see a pattern three times right, you see something happen. You should raise an eyebrow, that's that's at the very least what i think people should be doing, because these guys do not want you to win. I view the stock market in this sort of way right when you win it's because somebody else lost and institutions want.

You to lose, that's it at the end of the day, they've got a whole bunch of new retail investors on the market as of about a year ago, because of the gamestop and amc saga and uh. You know stimulus, money and uh. The market was just ripping like it's never ripped before, and how can we get that in our pockets is sort of what these guys are thinking, in my opinion, right who knows at the end of the day, but you can look at pattern. You can look at trend, you can look at what people say on mainstream media, which is why, personally, i'm not going on mainstream media these days, you know uh and just start asking questions.

You know it's uh i'd like to hear more about this executive story. Man. Ah, that's so cool that you can make that sort of stuff happen. Well, uh.

You know it's uh, i don't know uh. It was probably one of those things where it wasn't worth the amount of time and effort that went into, but i probably spent about two to three hundred hours, doing interviews with different news agencies and and some of the the reporters they they just. It was almost like we built a relationship, some of them i mean i'm talking like mainstream reporters on on fox or fox business or whatever they're like hey. We should go to lunch sometime, they're, inviting me right and uh it, and it's interesting because uh there it it it's all.

It's all a game and they're willing nobody's going to say that on air right, but behind the scenes it's like. Oh they'll they'll tell you what it's really like and it was just eye opening. I guess that's that's. As far as i can really go with saying it's just eye opening it and the suspicions, the difference, there's a reason we have the suspicions.

No certainly, you know i it's interesting because you were talking about being censored and this is sort of on topic, but uh a little different, anyways uh. I find it fascinating that you aren't able to get that that twitter verification badge and i want to tell you a story so my my stepdad passed away five years ago, but my biological father's still around he's uh, he's actually running for uh a political seat in Florida and what he is trying to do or trying to do for a very long time was get a check mark on twitter, and i actually texted you about this with my own personal experience, but he couldn't do it and i finally got one on twitter uh. After jack had resigned from twitter, i i applied the next day. I got it within five minutes.

He then applied a day after and he got approved within five minutes, so i find it fascinating that you're not able to, because that's a different level of censorship right. It's a different level of of uh sort of what you're being spoon fed and told, but i find them to be kind of connected because, to be frank with you, my my father's uh, a republican and uh, it's different sort of stuff happening. You know i don't know, what's your take on that, that's a really good point. Uh yeah, i mean it's.

It's uh, it's mind-blowing, i think uh. Look! Every republican that ran in this race against the governor in california got verified because it's just the right. It's the right thing to do. It's like.

If you've got big political candidates running, you verify them uh. The problem was uh. The democratic party in california, which i would just want to be very transparent. I consider myself like extremely in the middle.

I did one of those political aptitude tests literally 51 uh left 49 right and like halfway down to the libertarian side so and i think that's where a lot of us sit uh but uh but anyway, so i'm running as a dem, because i think that's the Only way to get things done in california because they got this massive super majority, but i'm running against the governor who said we want no other candidates, so here they are trying to rig the system. No other democrats are gon na run. It's just gon na be a republican recall. It's just gon na be dems versus republicans and i'm like f, that dems deserve the californians deserve another option.

That's somebody in the middle who cares about the damn label? Let's talk policy, but no instant censorship. Facebook deletes my posts. Twitter just rejects us every time. We've got lawyers talking to twitter, we're getting nowhere, it's nuts.

So now, let's reconnect the dots huh. So if you want to take together sort of your your political campaign, you tie together stocks uh. You tie together sort of the current state of the economy. Now this is put on your put on your hat real, tight right now.

Okay, i think there are certain parties out there. Oh there we go there, it is there. It is. I think there are certain parties out there and individuals who will screen through uh retail investors and what they're saying what they're doing what they are interested in.

And i can actually say that with confidence, because if you look from an institutional hedge fund sort of level, a recent study came out saying that 85 of uh of hedge funds are paying attention to retail investors right wow. So from that perspective, i do think that there is a good likelihood that you're being watched on a pretty regular basis by whoever does not want you verified and why. I think this is all important is because there are people above us who, at times dictate uncontrollable factors that we can do nothing about, and that includes the market that includes twitter, that includes uh the state of the economy, whatever all we can do, is be reactionary. Uh - and you know preferably proactive to the reaction that you have to have uh in terms of how you can protect yourself and i think, that's kind of where we're at with the market right now.

That might have been some jumbled thoughts but uh. That's that's kind of where my mind was at i i mean i think you're on point and you know i've tried putting myself and even the audience watching here earlier. I was trying to put all of us in the shoes of a hedge fund like if we pictured that we had a hundred million dollars of aum assets under management right now. Would we be buying the dip now, or would we wait until probably closer to like march 16th right? What would we do, knowing that, whatever action we took would either get punished or rewarded by our clients, and that could mean us going bankrupt, right, uh and and having to justify what action we make and if we're not hedging in this market, we're going to lose Customers we're going to lose clients if, if we're buying the dip too early you're going to lose customers, and so we kind of went through that scenario i don't always is that.

Is that fair to make that kind of analogy? I think it is. I really do you know and i, if i was to run a hedge fund, which i'd never do i don't wan na. I don't wan na be in that sort of seat. I don't want that.

I don't wan na be at that table. You know uh what you're doing is trying to play money in a different way than retail investors do now. There are, i think, some good hedge funds out there and there's probably more uh bad hedge funds out there, the good ones. What i think they're trying to do is make investments without moving the market right.

That's probably a really important piece of it and very conservatively make their investors money uh from just a basic level. So how do you do that right? You have to react to the day-to-day the day-to-day market in a legal way, and i knock on the table real, damn hard when i say legal because a lot of them don't a lot of these guys, i think, have uh hands in the back pockets of some Market makers in the back pockets of the sec at the very least some politicians i mean, if you ever want to have your mind, blown i'm sure, you've done this. Look at uh. Look at what politicians have sent money to certain institutions.

I think it's pretty sad. Uh but that's lost my take yeah, it's it's! It's just disgraceful. What do you think about uh nancy pelosi? Oh man, there's uh. I was playing a video game.

Last night it was phasmaphobia, it's a ghost hunting game and one of my buddies is uh. His name sas, that's what we call him on discord. He was uh, he played this sound bite from donald trump and it was. It was something like nancy.

Pelosi is a terrible person, and that's that's how i die. That's how i'd sum up my my stance on nancy pelosi to say that you think insider trading should be fine. Congressional reps should be trading congressmen. Politicians, while you are a congressman or a politician, is, is ridiculous.

I think if you want to make a comparison, let's say: there's two people that have an interview right: uh, the boss has some sort of relationship with one of them and the one who has a relationship gets the job. It's the same conflict of interest. I mean it makes absolutely no sense. How can you look the other way on that? I i don't know it's to me.

It's silly if, if somebody even defends uh nancy pelosi, because that's just garbage, that's actually i mean that's honestly, a really good point. I mean she's so deep in and the information and the regulation in these companies, whether it's google or the the chip suppliers. It's a good point man. It's a really good point.

Oh man, what a mess? Okay, so uh? How? How diversified are you right now? Uh? You know just to wrap it up like are, are you? Are you cash heavy right now? Are you in like 10 different stocks? Are you in the etfs? What are you? Where are you? What can you tell us so, like i said before, kevin, i'm a traitor at heart, right and uh. The only position that i hold and have held for the last eight nine months is uh amc. That's it. Oh, so you're still like 100 trade yeah, i trade.

I trade and i hold amc and that's it and uh. Thankfully trading's been going okay, i i don't have to worry too much about the downside. While i wait because i do truly believe that there is more upside on this - and i know that you're you're uh diamond ball in the pain uh with a lot of other retail investors - and i appreciate you for that - but uh i i just i sit cash Heavy, that's it i uh. I day trade, i scalp options.

That's uh! That's sort of my cup of tea. I use very basic ta skills like uh, like you have yourself and just take a couple good trades a day, and i move on. It's amazing, dude. Trey.

Thank you so much for coming. This has been so incredibly insightful, really appreciate. It hope to have you gone uh again sometime in the future. Oh shout yourself out, though, how can people follow you all right? Well, i've got a youtube channel.

It's uh trace trades and my twitter is at trades tray it's backwards, they wouldn't, let me have the real handle. Someone else took it but uh, that's that's. Those are spots and, as always, kevin. I appreciate you uh having a chat with me man.

It's always a blast deal thanks. Man we'll see you take it easy.