Latest / Winning With Winans! / Chris Good, known as “The Stock Market Kid", sits down with Ken Winans
Transcript
- Speaker 2: Well guess it's another time for an episode of Winning with Winans. Let's go. Welcome to Winning with Winans Las Vegas newest and coolest financial show. I'm your host Ken Winans and we have an exciting show planned today. One of my favorite people. In fact, I dare say I'm going to call him my stock market kid because he's young enough to be my kid. But anyway, Chris Good, who is my commodity trader, we're going to cover a whole bunch of topics here. Chris, how's it going? Speaker 1: Pretty good, Ken. How are you? Speaker 2: Pretty good, it's been a long week. Speaker 1: Yeah. Easter weekend. Good Friday tomorrow. Markets are closed. Speaker 2: of good stuff going on. Well, listen, we've got a lot of things to cover here. So why don't we just jump into it? Hey, look, it's like you and I, as we often do have a bar or drink at a bar, glass of wine, a cigar, and we just talked about things. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, what do you want to talk about? Nothing's really been happening the last month, right? ⁓ no, nothing. pretty quiet. Yeah. Speaker 2: terribly boring. Trump years are always boring. Speaker 1: Yeah, no volatility at all. Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the war, because you're a commodity guy. So here we have some of the biggest commodities on planet earth are in the front of this thing. What do you, what's your take on? Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, which is a problem. ⁓ And, you know, Trump is trying to figure out how to get it open. I think really, you know, markets, all the markets boil down to one question right now, which is when is the oil going to start flowing again? Because that, you know, 20 % of global supply goes through that strait. So it's... Iran is really putting a squeeze on global energy markets, which is what they wanted to do. ⁓ But yeah, that's all that matters right now. Speaker 2: I kind of worry a little bit about those buffet ships, the cruise liners. They've lost one of their main places to have a meal. Bad joke, I know it's funny. Very bad joke. Okay, know, what's really pretty funny about this, and you and I talk about a lot of different things, I find it comical that NATO, we pay a massive amount of the NATO budget. And from what I've read, the NATO Navy's Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. Speaker 2: are not willing to come and help open up the straighter moves that will allow their oil to come back to Europe. Now, isn't that crazy? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is interesting that, ⁓ you know, none of the NATO countries ⁓ want to come help. But, you know, on the other hand, ⁓ we did kind of start this conflict. it's not, you know, the NATO countries aren't required to come to help us. But like Trump has said, we don't need their oil, which is not entirely true. for the most part, yeah, we'll be fine. And the rest of the world is going to suffer greatly without that oil. So yeah, it's definitely in their interest to get the straight open and, ⁓ you know, the leaders of the UK and Europe are inept and they've proven that long before this. ⁓ You know, we didn't need this crisis to know that, Speaker 2: Chris, how do you really feel? Come on, you're holding back. You're holding back. You're really not telling the whole thing. No, we're back into a lot of the same discussions that we often have now, but from a commodity standpoint, because look, this is your bread and butter. You have to do this every day. How do you handle a geopolitical play in the commodities? Because you and I, talk seasonality, we talk about things that statistically are relevant. How do you deal with this? Speaker 1: Well, we were long oil going into this. So we kind of got lucky, I guess, that this happened for our luck. Speaker 2: It's pure brain. yeah. Pure brain power. Speaker 1: Yeah, but we were long for a lot of other reasons and there's all those reasons still exist. you know, the oil market is very interesting in that the physical market right now is trading at a huge premium, even the front month futures, know, front month WTI, I think is at like 110. Speaker 2: And WTI stands for what? Speaker 1: West Texas intermediate. That's our benchmark in the U S it's delivered into Cushing, Oklahoma. So it really reflects what a U S or North mostly, mostly U S but North American producers can get. And then Brent is the global benchmark, which is kind of what, ⁓ like North sea and, ⁓ rest of the world is kind of priced on, but, I mostly just trade WTI and look at that, ⁓ which could end up being a problem actually, which we can talk about. anyway, yeah, the physical market has basically just disconnected from the paper from the futures market, at least in, in, especially in the Middle East. you know, if you look at the futures curve, the oil futures curve, the, you 12 months out, it's trading at like $68, $70. So what that's saying is, You know, nobody is really willing to go out and bid up those back months and pay more for oil in the future because they either think that this will be resolved or that, you know, the, the, the oil market's going to be able to figure this out ⁓ by then. ⁓ But in my opinion, it won't be. ⁓ And, you know, we were long oil at $68 before this. So you're saying, ⁓ well now you can go buy. oil 12 months out at 68 and all this has happened and all the reasons to own it are still in place. It's like the, the market's disconnected, I think from reality of the situation. ⁓ Speaker 2: I'll just throw this in there too. I I think that we work off of historical norms. You know, I'll tell you a funny story. I was at, when I was at Merrill Lynch and we went into the first Gulf War, I remember me and a bunch of guys were at the office. It was like 12, 30 in the morning because we hadn't started bombing, you know, the whole campaign yet. It just hadn't started. So we thought for sure oil was going to take off. We were all going to be able to just retire. Not what happened. Oil went down when the bomb started dropping. It didn't go up. For the same reasons you just talked about, short-lived. And the same thing happened in the last campaign when people had already known that, we already pretty much announced we were going to invade Iraq. We already pretty much announced this was going to be happening. But then by doing that, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Emirates were already prepared for what they had to, assuming the straits stayed open. They could do that. So there's a little, what you're telling me is a little different flavor this time because of the Hormuz situation and this might not get resolved quick. Speaker 1: Yeah. mean, exactly what you said, like, you know, in the previous conflicts, OPEC was able to just open the spigots and dump barrels on the market, right? But this is like, OPEC is, cut off from the market. You've got like 12 million barrels a day that have actually been shut in, in Kuwait and Saudi and these, these OPEC producers are actually shutting in wells now, which takes, you know, months to reopen it. So. to get those wells flowing again. ⁓ So yeah, I don't think it's going to be resolved as quickly. I hope it's resolved as quickly as possible because there's some pretty bad things that could happen if it stays closed for, you know, every day that it stays closed is 20 million or, you know, call it 15 million barrels that just don't get to the market, which means that those barrels have to be made up somewhere else. or in the future. it's just going to put a bit under oil for a while, I think. it's not the end of the world, but it could be. Speaker 2: The same thing true about natural gas, because natural gas prices have not moved up nearly at all. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's interesting you said that natural gas has actually gotten hammered pretty good this week. you know, that's in in with Kuwait or not Kuwait, Qatar losing, I think 20 % of their LNG export capacity, but it actually makes sense because number one, there's a lot of North American natural gas. ⁓ And number two, we can't export it. So it's just trapped here. So until we have the LNG capacity to, to export that gas. It doesn't matter. Yeah. mean, America is in a great spot. you know, we, have a lot, like prices are going to go up except for, for maybe natural gas, but for gasoline and, and crude oil and diesel prices are going to go up, but not like the rest. Like there's actually shortages. There's already shortages in Australia where they just don't have jet fuel. There's already shortages in Southeast Asia. there. Speaker 2: gas prices will be fine here for a long time. Speaker 1: ⁓ you know, the rest of the world should be panicking and should be, ⁓ sailing their ships to the straight or whatever they have to do to get that open. ⁓ Speaker 2: And on that, did you hear that we're now selling oil and gas leases in Nevada? So prices are now high enough, I guess that we're going to go, we're going to go out there and start looking. Speaker 1: Well, yeah, we're already the fourth largest gold producer in the, in the world. So, I mean, if we're, if we become energy independent, then Nevada is going to be a powerhouse. Speaker 2: All right, I want to switch gears here real quick. Let's go into a couple other areas. Yeah. Okay. Your thoughts on the government shutdown, the whole thing, short, long-term ramifications, short-term, or just political noise? Speaker 1: ⁓ well, maybe you can give me a little bit of back because I've been out of the loop with just trying to stay above water with the war and stuff. I honestly, the only thing I've seen is that TSA has been shut down, but is that it? Speaker 2: Well, TSA, well, now come on out. You've been out of touch with our government running efficiently and effectively and using its tax dollars well for couple reasons. Well, we'll talk a little bit later, but yeah, some of our local elected officials continue to vote to keep shutting things down and not pay TSA workers and Coast Guard workers and everybody else ⁓ for ice issues. Yeah, that fun stuff. So you haven't missed much since Minnesota, It's the same. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Same stuff. So you have no thoughts on that at all? Just whatever. ⁓ Speaker 1: Yeah, same stuff. That's what I thought. mean... Just, ⁓ I don't know. Yeah. Pay, pay him, I guess. Just print the money, know, like, like, you know, Powell, Powell financed the lockdowns in 2020. So why can't he print money to, to pay our TSA workers? Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, we could buy more government bonds, guess, you know. All right. Next topic, the tariffs. What are your thoughts on the tariffs? Now, this does affect us to a point. You're a commodity guy. So you start talking about the agricultural commodity. You start with corn, cocoa, coffee, soybeans. A lot of these things are on a tear right now. How did the do you think the tariffs are gone now with the Supreme Court's ruling or? Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. think that Trump has, he's kept them going through other legal means. And ⁓ I think that he'll find a way to keep the tariffs in place. ⁓ So the Supreme Court decision was for a very narrow ⁓ implementation, which they said he couldn't do, but at the end of the day, Trump wants tariffs. He's going to get tariffs. ⁓ But bigger picture, I think that the tariffs are really, it's a change in global resource allocation. You saw when Trump got elected and then announced the tariffs back in April, we're basically on the anniversary date of liberation day, Speaker 2: I think today is one year anniversary of... Speaker 1: You saw sharp sell off in all the markets, right? Commodities included, but then everything just went on a run for the entire year. And I think that's because ⁓ Trump basically told the rest of the world, like, Hey, you you can't, ⁓ you can't take advantage of us anymore. You need to ⁓ localize, which is what I think he wants to do here. He wants to reshore manufacturing. He wants to reshore our supply chains. But that's going to make everything more expensive for the most part. And it's going to force governments to chase those resources and hoard resources. And that's just going to put a bid under it, under everything, right? So. Speaker 2: Well, I think it's funny too, some of the countries actually say, no, no, no, we want to stay with a deal that we cut with you. Yeah. Chris, we're going to take a real quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we will be back with Winning with Winans with Chris Goode as we cover and solve all the world's problems. We'll be right back. And welcome back to Winning with Winans. I am your host Ken Winans. We have our guest Chris Good, who's one of the best commodity traders I know out there. And as I said before the break, sarcastically, we're trying to solve the world's problems. So Chris, what a mess out there, huh? Speaker 1: Yeah. mean, I don't know. It seems like there's always something like, yes. We're going to fly around the moon. aren't they going to land on the moon this time? That's what I was wondering. I was actually wanted to ask you that because you know all about asteroids. Speaker 2: We're on the way to the moon. ⁓ You know, it's not all bad. So we're actually doing the same mission. will know we're actually not doing the same mission. did 1968, which is the Apollo eight orbiting mission. To be honest, we don't have the capabilities. As sad as that sound, we don't have the landing capabilities right now that we had before. You know, we, yeah. And that's, know you didn't want to hear that, but that's the truth. ⁓ the other problem we have too, is that not to get too geeky here on, on engineering. ⁓ When you drop into the moon's orbit, in other words, to slow down the ship so the gravitational pull of the moon can pull it in, you've got to assume that the rocket engines will turn back on so you can get home. Well, there's no backup system for that on this spaceship. So they decided they're just going to do a little, we're going to get close and do some photo ops. But here the good news is we're doing something that nobody else can even do. But you know what? It's pretty cool. Hey, by the way, since you brought it up, I'm going to show this bottle. We both love wine. This is a Beaulieu Georges Latour Cabernet from 1970. It is signed by astronaut Al Worden from Apollo 15. This was year that this was bottled the year they went to the moon. So he signed and gave it to me as a gift. So yeah. And for those of you who might not know, we went to the moon more than once. And this was the, this was the mission that took a little car with them. So that's kind of cool. But first let's get back down the tariff thing real quick. Cause I think this is important. The, you brought up, it's a reallocation of everything. Here's the thing. And I brought this up to everybody and I that's fine. We can make political, you know, fodder out of this all we want. I don't understand and still don't understand why a large percentage of the U S population doesn't get. the idea that these other countries, that many of them we pay for foreign aid, defense spending, we give them subsidized stuff, and yet they hit us with turps. Now that's kind of like smacking somebody in the face when they give you a gift. And I don't, can you explain it? Why people in this country don't get that? Speaker 1: ⁓ I don't know about, I don't know why they don't get that, but I do understand why countries, other countries use tariffs, right? Like, I mean, so I think the disconnect maybe is that people don't understand that tariffs are actually a very useful tool to protect important industries in your country, right? You want, you don't, as we saw during COVID, all of our pharmaceuticals are produced in China. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Speaker 1: A lot of our, like everything's produced in China, but that's a problem. ⁓ So, and if you just let everybody, you know, run free and, you know, let people chase profits and stuff, then of course they're going to go produce in China because China subsidizes their labor or does, you know, slave labor essentially. So U S producers can't compete. So they're going to move everything over there and then ⁓ we're not going to have any critical industries here. You need to, you need to protect those industries. need to have a defense, pharmaceuticals. ⁓ You know, I don't know what else, but there's a lot of industries that you want domestic. Speaker 2: I would say defense, especially. The biggest worry we have right now, especially about the Iran situation, is that they have highly enriched uranium that if they get desperate enough, they'll sell it. They'll sell it to other countries. We're now in that situation. But Chris, we follow the markets very closely. Are you surprised that the markets are holding up as well as they are the stock market itself? is actually only down 3 % on the year based on everything that's hit. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yes and no. I don't know. I don't know anymore, Ken. These aren't different. Well, these are just- you should run and pause. I don't know anything. Speaker 2: You don't know anything. that. Here's something that I know that we've talked about quite a bit. So what is the stock market? Let's just have that talk. I have been very vocal in my articles. I've been very vocal. We've talked about this. Are the Dow Industrial Average and the S &P 500, do they really represent the market now? Are these really the benchmarks that they once were? Or have they been, for lack of better term, tweaked to become investment products? What do you think? Speaker 1: Yeah. ⁓ Well, don't think they represent the market because they're just so heavily weighted towards currently the mag seven, but that'll probably change eventually. it's just, and then the committees of the benchmarks just make stuff up in order to, like they added, I know. They added, ⁓ what is that? Micro strategy or whatever. What an insane stock. If you look at that capital structure. then it's, yeah, I don't know how you could ever buy that stock, but ⁓ yeah, no, I don't think that the indices are useless for actually gauging what the economic health of the country is. mean, I don't know what you could use to do that, but. Speaker 2: What's scary about it is that the S &P 500 is a gauge used by the Federal Reserve to make monetary policy decisions. The president talks about the S &P 500. Look how well it's done. Here's what's really funny, okay, from my perspective, is that all these, it was almost like a revolving door last year with the S &P 500 with what went out, what went in, and what went in was a whole bunch of like crypto type stuff. Okay. They added Coinbase. They took out... Borg-Warner, which was an automotive concern, had been around for over 100 years. And then guess what's not working this year? Crypt Mag-7. So the problem that I have, what I find actually pretty funny, is that the old companies are actually having a great year. John Rockefeller must be rolling in his grave right now. His old empire, which would be Chevron, Exxon, all these old, you know, part of standard oil. Yeah. That the government broke up, you know, a hundred plus years ago. They're all the energies on a tear right now. All these old companies, you know, would ran by CEOs. You probably don't even know the name of these people. The second group, which I think is just comical utilities. Utilities, are you kidding me? Yep. They're one of the they're the second best preferring group. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's funny you bring up Exxon and ⁓ Chevron because they took, I think they took Exxon out of the Dow at March 2020 or whatever, like right before or right after it just puked to the lows and then it went to, you know, had a great run after that. So yeah, the indices don't reflect. Speaker 2: Well, you know, the other genius move, uh, Yeah. It's up like 23 % this year. They punted it last year and replaced it with, I forget whom Salesforce or, uh, or, or Nvidia something, you know, so all that. But Chris, I do think it brings up the point that the people, you know, that have been so dependent on certain things to say, should I invest money or not invest money? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: Those gauges are not working right now. And I think that's also leaving people very uncomfortable. You know, the other problem, you know, as you know, we have a real estate index. Those government shutdowns really caused a problem with a lot of the government statistics. We've been, we really still don't honestly know where the housing market is right now because the government statistics are months behind. We don't know. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one thing I look at as a commodities guy is I like to price everything in gold, which ⁓ most people probably don't do. But if you look at the price of a house relative to gold, just a housing index or whatever, it's actually at all time lows, which probably. So housing relative to gold is at all time lows. So. Gold. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 2: Repeat what you just said. housing relative to gold. Speaker 1: So basically housing has collapsed in gold terms, which speaks probably more to the run that gold has had than anything else. But what that tells me is, ⁓ Speaker 2: Hmm. Speaker 1: they're going to have to print a lot of money to make this thing work because gold is basically just front running all of that. It's, you know, gold has gone up what two, three X in the last few years. ⁓ basically gold just tracks M2 money supply. ⁓ But, you know, if you look at housing relative to wages and then, you know, where that is like There's just, people just don't have enough money to pay for the prices of these things. So in my opinion, they're going to have to just print the money and give it to people to, in order to make this work. Otherwise we're looking at like just kind of a long slog, like nominal prices won't go up is what I'm trying to say. Speaker 2: Here's the thing, and I've always been worried about how government policies and government agendas affect things. I think there's nothing purer than that than what we see in the Vegas Valley. We have a land shortage. Now we're trying to unlock it as fast as we can. They just released another 200 acres of land, actually this month. There's another 200 acres that's going to be released next month. But you have the problem where this is an artificial... shortage that's been induced by government policies. And it's funny when you ask either a Democrat or Republican or an independent, what's the one government agency, they all hate dealing with Bureau of Land Management. They can't stand dealing with them. I've heard the terms they've used to describe these people is just, they're worried about everything. the idea that, you know, there's areas of the desert not far from here. They won't release it for building. They just won't. This is crazy. It doesn't make any sense at all. that again, I think we have to look at that. Chris jumping ahead here, as you look at the rest of the year, I'd be curious of your thoughts. Would you, would you be surprised if the stock market was plus or minus 5 % at the end of the year? mean, just a sideways malaise of stuff. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's possible. it'll probably be up more than that because my view or my kind of framework that I operate off of is that basically they being the powers that be the government, they can't allow nominal prices to go down anymore because they've printed so much money. The banks are stuffed with so many treasuries. You saw what happened with SVB. ⁓ you know, they owned a bunch of 30 year debt at, 1 % and then blew up because Powell raised rates and it went to 4%. So the banks are stuffed with, with so much duration and so much, so much debt that if nominal prices ever go down, if we ever have deflation, the whole thing just goes kaboom. So, so just print money, make it, everything go up. That's, that's what I think is going to happen. So. Speaker 2: So do you think the Trump coins will be popular? Print a lot of Trump coins? Yeah. Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. But yeah, mean, what other option does Powell have at this point? Speaker 2: Pal's out in a month. He's gone. Speaker 1: Well, they have to confirm more still. I think a lot of the, you know, I forget which senator it was, but he said he's not going to play ball until the investigations dropped. So I think it's kind of a stalemate right now. Speaker 2: You know, I've been, was back in DC last fall and there's construction cranes all over the place there. So yes, what went on at the federal reserve, a billion dollar overhaul when the new ways ballpark was cheaper than what the federal reserve headquarters in DC, you know, something's off, but I have news for you. It's off all over that place. And for what I heard, a lot of it's mold. Buildings are just full of mold. mean, DC is a swamp. Speaker 1: Yeah. I believe it. Too humid. Yeah. That's why we live here. Zero percent humidity. Speaker 2: Yeah. Our team and I, we love to talk about the humidity. Both of them are from parts of the country where humidity actually does pop up. All right. Commodities, your favorite topic. They're on a tear, man. They've been on a, I mean, it's amazing to watch even in spite of the geopolitical stuff. mean, money's being made there. Now you mentioned gold, silver, platinum, your big platinum bug and palladium. You think they're all going to bounce back. You think this is just a temporary lull. Speaker 1: I think so. ⁓ Nothing has changed ⁓ except for the price. that matters, of course. But the fundamentals of silver and platinum, especially, these markets are in deficits. You can't just build a mine, especially for silver and platinum, because number one, silver is produced as a byproduct of copper. ⁓ I don't think there's any pure place silver mines or there's a handful. There's a handful, but there's almost no pure place silver discoveries anymore. then platinum, you know, it's all in South Africa and Russia basically, and they're basically not finding any more platinum. So once, and those mines are old, especially in South Africa. So, you know, these markets are in deficit. They're probably going to be in deficit for a while. And then You know, this whole moose thing actually is extremely bullish for them in my opinion, because if you look at what is required to make electric vehicles and hybrid electric and solar panels, it's all silver and platinum. And all these countries out ex-US are probably rethinking their energy strategy even more, right or wrong, but you know, they're going to invest more in solar, they're going to invest more in electric- electricity, ⁓ know, electric vehicles and that all requires silver and platinum. So. Speaker 2: Well, you just raised an interesting question. mean, maybe there has to be a reverse thinking on the speed at which you try to move into the alternative world. Because again, there's plenty of natural gas. mean, we have hundreds of years of natural gas that's still very cheap to get. Any parts of our country, such as California, won't even use it. They won't bother to try to extract any of it out of their land. Speaker 1: Yeah Yep. Speaker 2: Chris, the other thing too, and know, the unsung heroes of commodities. I mean, I look at what's going on with the agricultural side. I you and I talked about it. I think the farmers in the Midwest are going to have a phenomenally good year. I know you worry about fertilizer, but I mean, I'm looking at soybeans, I'm looking at wheat. They're all on a tier right now. And this is really in the planting season, very early. Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't looked at the numbers for ⁓ where, you know, what percentage of farmers actually have enough fertilizer, but corn is super intensive with nitrogen. And if they can't get the nitrogen, I don't think they're going to plant the corn. think the acre, the, the, corn acres were down. I think the USDA, the plantings, the expected plantings, because farmers aren't going to plant the crop if they can't get the nitrogen. Right, they're going to put soybeans in the ground because they... those... Yeah. So we could see, think corn or yeah, corn and wheat could probably have a good run and soybeans might not because they're just going to plant more of it because it doesn't need nitrogen fertilizer. Yeah. But yeah, I like the ags. ⁓ Speaker 2: Subscribed. me ask you a question. We've talked about this a lot. In a little bit here, we're going to jump into Wall Street themes. You and I always love to talk about the new themes coming up. I'm still just in a mystery of our industry. Why has it literally just, I mean, we're talking about the big investment firms that have all these touted advisors. One, they don't talk about commodities. If anybody brings them up, they try to shuttle them off into crypto or something else. Why? What do you think? Is it a liability issue with these guys? Is it that they don't have the infrastructure in place anymore to really offer commodities to their clients? What do you think the deal is? Speaker 1: Hmm. Maybe I was thinking about this because we set up ⁓ our fund for this reason is that, you know, the, the, the partners aren't liable for margin calls, right? If that ever happens. So maybe these firms just don't want, you know, I don't know how they could structure it. with a futures account at least, I don't know how they could structure it outside of a fund, right? They would have to be a separate account and then the end client is responsible for margin call. I don't think people want that, right? Speaker 2: But also margin calls are highly rare. tell somebody, like I get just hypothetical, and many people, many of the audience might not know this. So when you open a commodity account, you're basically putting a down payment down on a railroad car of wheat or soybeans or cattle. You're only putting down a down payment and one of two things have to happen. Either when the contract comes due, you're going to give all the money to go buy that carload of whatever. Speaker 1: If you were to... Speaker 2: or you are going to sell the contract off to somebody else. So it nets itself out. I just can't believe that in an industry that's now promoting crypto, which is a lot of unknowns, that they can't come up with a ⁓ regimen to allow somebody to have a commodity account with maybe, I don't know, 65 % cash. I mean, there's a limit on how much they'd actually allow the exposure, but I just find it odd. I find it very, very strange. Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. ⁓ I think people are just enthralled with stocks. you look at the retail behavior, it's just buy, you know, why, why do you need commodities when you can just buy every dip dip in the NASDAQ, right. And get paid to do that. Speaker 2: I think it's just one of those great mysteries of our business that we used to do this. This was a common area to go into and now we don't do it at all. Okay, other themes out there. Let's just talk about the wonderful Wall Street themes that our industry loves to come up with. What are your thoughts on crypto? I mean, they're doubling down on crypto. Vanguard just launched a whole bunch of new ETFs. What are your thoughts? Speaker 1: I think crypto is a limited supply of nothing. ⁓ I've owned crypto, I've traded it, whatever, but ultimately it's a very convenient ⁓ liquidity sponge for governments to basically, when they print too much money, it goes into crypto. You see Bitcoin basically go up and down with the liquidity that's in the markets. ⁓ Speaker 2: And aside to the NASDAQ, mean, they all, they're, they're, they're insatiable cousins because NASDAQ and Bitcoin and Ether all have been closely correlated, not day-to-day correlations, but I mean, if you go month to month, you see it pretty clearly. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. know, it's, ⁓ ultimately would the, would the powers that be rather have you in crypto or would they rather have you in gold and silver and platinum? They'd rather have you in crypto because it's not anonymous. You can trace all of it. You can see everything. They're literally building a digital prison for you by if you're involved in, you know, if you own Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever. You are going to be subject to their digital prison and I'm going to be sitting there with my gold, you know, and my bourbon and my guns and I'm going to be happy and you're going to be, you know, you're going to own nothing and you're going to be not happy. You're doing all this. I'm going to be in Nevada after we take... ⁓ Speaker 2: So. So here we go. our famous stage here are, are you going to have you and the desert tortoise kind of hang out then? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, as long as, yeah, you know, we got to protect the desert tortoise. We do love wildlife here. don't know, know, conservatives get a bad rap about, you know, not protecting, but Teddy Roosevelt, you know, one of the greatest conservative presidents of all time. He was a conservationist. Like, yeah. Speaker 2: Now, you know this, went and I got my hunting license. I went through the whole process. There was a three hour online process. And what's funny is they're claiming there's a record number of people getting their hunting licenses now because cattle prices are so high. It's cheaper to go out and hunt a deer. Assuming you know what you're doing. And it's not a real fun process, but yeah, I mean, there's a law of substitution. Speaker 1: That's a good meat too. So. ⁓ yeah. Speaker 2: Especially around here. It's yeah, it's really good. It's pretty funny that I was gonna get a mountain lion permit. They said no All right other themes AI Okay looking at the AI thing. Do you feel that Chris good is gonna be replaced? by a computer next year Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no, definitely not. think, well, what's funny is I always- Speaker 2: Wait, hold it. We better take a quick break. I totally forgot you and I get going on this. Okay. Listen, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we'll come back and we're going to talk about how a robot might replace Chris one day as a commodity trader. This is Ken Minans. We'll be right back. And welcome back to Winning with Winans Las Vegas newest and coolest financial show with I am Ken Winans. I'm your host and with my guest, Chris Good, who's a good buddy of mine, one of the top commodity guys I know in his field. He's also a CFA charter financial analyst, which Chris, do you think analysts are going to be replaced by computers? So you're, you, what you trained to originally do, you feel is going to go the way of the dodo. Speaker 1: Yes. Very likely. mean, we don't need, who needs analysts anyway? What do they do? Other than just make up stuff. They pontificate and then, ⁓ well, the only reason I say that is, you know, as a trader, you and I both know there's a big difference between analyzing and trading. You can do all the analysis you want, but most analysts can't trade and most traders aren't analysts. So, but yeah, I mean, you know, I think any kind of like, you know, it's going to be interesting because I think white collar jobs are going to get hollowed out here. ⁓ you know, all these, the two coasts are really going to understand what it's like to be, ⁓ you know, to be in a flyover state. You you guys might not have it so easy for a while while the farmers and the ranchers and the commodity producers, ⁓ you know, do well. So, but I think the white collar jobs, yeah, they're going to get replaced because AI is very good at doing ⁓ computer tasks, right? Repetitive, ⁓ anything like that. Speaker 2: Well, here's the theory concept. Okay. We've talked about it a couple of times, this idea that we're going to somehow use crypto technology to have things like the S and P 500 trade 24 seven, you know, which I have some real concerns because I have been around long and remember what happened when you in a world of no circuit breakers, a world where, you know, indexes and stocks and just run amok and nothing shuts them down. Like imagine a commodity world where there are no limits. which means what, for many of you might not know this, if you have an extreme move in the stock market, the market actually shuts down for 30 minutes. It just shuts down. It gives everybody a moment of pause. Suddenly, if you're talking about this stuff trading at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, know, there's going to be nobody around to do this. I think that's a thing. also too, Chris, you know, I, many of us have known, because I started as an analyst too. And When you have a bad market, a bear market, and Wall Street starts laying people off, who are they laying off? Their top traders? Their top money managers? Who the clients turn to to talk to? Or are they laying off back office people? I don't think there's anything new here at all. This has gone on since Wall Street's existed. When you are no longer relevant, you're gone. Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't No. Yeah. Well, so yeah, I wanted to get back to, you you asked if I thought AI could replace me as a trader. No, I don't think so. And what's interesting is that I was having this conversation with a, with another buddy of mine who was a commodity trader as well. And, know, he was going through and having AI build him, ⁓ you know, a system to basically pull in all these news items, you know, all the data, all the reports, analyze it. And he was like, Why am I doing this? All the hedge funds already have this. Everybody already has this. This doesn't give me an edge. So I think what is, where is your edge going to be? It's going to be your intuition. It's going to be you as, you know, what has Ken seen? What, and what, you know, what do you know as a trader? You know, when I, when I see this, yeah, that means I need to get out or that means I should, you know, go buy this. Speaker 2: proprietary. It's whatever a proprietary system you've developed. Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's no, you know, you're not going to get an edge from any of the stuff that AI can do. And you know, as well as I do that, you know, your intuition as a trader or a money manager is, you know, the best ones. That's what they rely on. Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the day, I agree with you on a percent. mean, look, it's not an issue of training, but there are certain simple facts. Certain people are better at things than others. It's a competitive world. Look at athletes. Look at military campaigns. Somebody wins, somebody loses. And it's the same in the markets. Chris, I'm going to have to bring this up because I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal and Barron's over the weekend. I have to show this. This is just kind of cool. So this is the Barron's list of the 1500 top financial advisors. And I love the title says an advisor's shopping guide for the aspiring millionaire. Yeah. Okay. So take a wild guess what's not listed in here. All these advisors, 1500 of them across the country, Chris. Performance. There's no listing of how they Speaker 1: What are they basing it off of? Speaker 2: typical stuff, wealth management, financial planning, all big firms. So the thing I wrote down, no independent thought, no performance. And I just found it comical that this is our industry is still operating in this herd-like mentality that just you build some kind of an age-driven model, tell the clients that they're going to invest. And I don't know if you read my latest Forbes article, the article talked about, look, state to state investing is different. If you're a Californian with your lovely 13 and a half percent income tax on top of the Fed tax, you cannot invest the same way in Nevada does. I'm sorry. And it's not to make any money. Yeah. Not going to. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, for sure. mean, as futures traders, know, you're taxed. Everything is marked to market. So I pay taxes every year on all my gains no matter what. ⁓ you know, yeah. But ⁓ yeah, can't like taxes matter. Taxes matter a lot for your performance and it sucks to have to write that check. So ⁓ I may have to learn how to invest in stocks. Speaker 2: to market. Yeah. No, no, just open a foundation. ⁓ yeah. I'll help you with that. Chris Good Foundation for the betterment of the desert tortoise. I shouldn't pick on the desert tortoise. mean, come on, it's a friendly little creature at all. So, all right. So jumping ahead here, looking at the rest of the year, ⁓ there's going to be things in the commodity world that we can buy into. mean, clearly we'll find some trends at work, things that will seem to make sense. I still think that Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Everybody's assuming things are going to calm down. don't think they're going to. I think we're going into an election year. I don't see that changing anything at all, except it's going to get more cantankerous. They're going to be fighting about everything known to mankind. think getting back on the crypto thing, I think that ⁓ there have been certain agendas that have come out of Washington lately and they keep pushing crypto into 401ks. private equity into 401ks. I worry about the alts. I mean, we can say commodities are an alt, but it's an alt that actually makes sense. But like, when you see what just happened recently with this private debt blow off, and that they really think this makes sense to have retirees jump into, I just, I'd like to know who's pushing this. really would. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's the, you know, it's the big wall street firms that need somebody to dump it, you know, dump their position on. So, ⁓ you know, for the people watching this, don't buy it, don't buy their garbage. Don't bail them out. You know, don't, don't let them out of their positions. They are, you know, they don't have your interests in mind and they're not good people. So just don't bail them out. You know, keep your, keep your money in things that you know. You know, not private equity, not private credit. You know, I worked with a lot of private equity people in my prior job and, you know, most of them don't know how to, don't, couldn't trade, know, couldn't do it. You know, the reason they exist is because rates are low and the Fed prints money, but, know, throw them into the bond pit, throw them into the cattle pit. They can't, they can't trade, you know, different skillset, but. Speaker 2: Well, now this is what's interesting because you know, as you know, we work with Stephanie Larson and she takes care of the fixed income side. What I find comical about this whole thing is that bonds for publicly traded companies that make some widget in the Midwest, they're fine. They barely move this year. They're still paying their six and a half, seven percent preferred stocks. Same deal. They're doing great. But this area that all these financial planners and wealth managers were telling everybody they had to jump into private credit that maybe was giving you an extra 1%. It blew up. And I go back to the same thing I've always said, and I know you know this as a commodity guy, folks, if you get nothing else out of this show, remember this, stay away from over leverage and illiquidity. You get in any of those worlds, you're gonna get toast every time. It's eventually gonna blow up. stay liquid and stay in areas that you know, and even if you do have leverage, have it be contained. I mean, but they keep doing this over and over and over again and expecting a Speaker 1: What's funny about the private credit thing is the users of private credit, the reason they're getting private credit is because they couldn't qualify for traditional financing. If you can get bank financing, you're not going to go to a private credit lender and take 12 % debt. It's like, yeah, you don't want to own that stuff. Yeah, you don't want to own it. Speaker 2: used to call those junk bombs. No, that's a good point because again, you're a chartered financial analyst. You went through three years of very intense studies on this stuff and you graduated with honors. You're a card counter as well. You're other fashion, playing poker. You're not allowed to go to a lot of places as we know. ⁓ But the point is you're a very smart guy and you're saying that there's no way you do this now. Does this make sense? Speaker 1: No, I mean, yeah, there's, there's so many other options. And even if you find a financial advisor that just puts you in the S and P that's probably better. I mean, at least, you know, if the S and P goes down too much, the government's going to step in and bail you out, but you're not going to get bailed out with private credit. That's going to zero. Like if you make the wrong decision, it's going to go to zero, but S and P goes down 20 % Powell panics, Prince money, and it goes back up. So. Speaker 2: All right. Let's switch gears here. Yeah. My new Forbes article. What'd you think? Did you like it? Speaker 1: The tax one? Yeah. mean, I think you brought up an extremely important point of, you can't invest ⁓ the same if you're a Nevada resident or California or New York or, ⁓ what inspired you to write that? Did you have a client that had some issues or something? Speaker 2: That's a good question. mean, we have a lot of clients, we do. In our pool, we have clients who are Californians and clients that are Nevadans and Arizona's as they call themselves in Arizona. And the thing is that you do find that even though you have a very good strategy, as we went a long track record, by the way, the one thing that does matter if you're going to pick an advisor, go look at Morningstar rankings where performance is analyzed. You do everything right. But the end of the day, the California client is going to have a less return than the Nevada client, although you as the advisor did your job. So I thought, okay, fine. Since our industry is not going to bother to tackle this, is not going to tell those financial planners and wealth managers, you guys should start differentiating with your client base. Then somebody better write about this. And that's what made me think about it. But also to Chris, there's a lot. This is a brain's business. It always has been. And there's things you can do. You can hedge your positions. If there's market volatility, we've had inverse ETS and P 500 ETFs out there for what? 15 years. And the fact that these guys won't use them or don't use them and they'll watch their clients get bludgeoned by selling stuff. I'm sorry. I think that's not doing your job, but it's to think differently. Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to this ⁓ saying, which I'm sure you've heard of time in the market versus. ⁓ timing the market, right? So everybody's convinced, ⁓ you can't time the market. Like you just have to invest for the long-term, which is probably true. Most people can't time the market, but if you're an advisor and if you're managing money, you should at least be able to say, wow, the S &P seems pretty expensive. Maybe I should hedge. Like that's like basic, that's basic stuff. Yeah. Speaker 2: We do it in commodities. Hey, Chris, we're to take a quick break. Okay. Listen, this is Ken Winans with my guest, Chris Good. We're going to take a quick break from our sponsor, hear from our sponsors, and we'll be right back with Winning with Winans. And welcome back to Winning with Wine is Las Vegas newest and coolest financial show. Yes, I am a finance guy who wears a cowboy hat. And yes, I have a hunting license. I ride horses and Chris, I also have a mining claim. So we'll talk about that a little bit because I guess we're to go out there and look for some of that precious metal. But let's talk about what they're hoping to find on the moon. We're on our way back to the moon, buddy, for astronauts. There they go. Would you want to be one of them? Speaker 1: Uh, no, probably not. Yeah. I don't know. See, I might wait a few more years and see how, if Jeff Bezos can get his thing figured out. Maybe just order it on Amazon and then, you know. Speaker 2: You know the toilets already malfunctioned. That's our deal with military toilets. Our aircraft carrier had its latrines all go out of commission. Now our spacecraft has problems. Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. Speaker 2: I don't know, there's something wrong with the toilet manufacturers. Maybe it came from China. Speaker 1: Yeah, we gotta find a new contract for that. Speaker 2: All right. But, but on a serious note, we have something pretty big popping up here this year, which is the SpaceX IPO. Chris, I'm having more calls on this thing. First, you can't get shares. You can't get them unless you're going to go into a spat or a private equity guy who has them. And then they're already telling you a big money here. I've never been personally a big IPO guy because I've always seen the game has been. We'll give you the hot ones, but you got to, if we give you one hot one, you got to buy the other nine dogs. And, and, and we will need to hold them for six months. So what are your thoughts on this? Do you think this thing's going to kind of goose everything up or what do think? Speaker 1: trillion dollars is a that's a big IPO. Speaker 2: Elon Musk gonna laugh all the way to the bank? Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. mean, Hey, he's, he's a smart guy. He's managed to, ⁓ you know, get Tesla from almost bankruptcy to what it is now. ⁓ yeah, I don't know. The, the, test, the space X IPO, it seems like they're rushing it for reasons of which I don't know, but maybe they're just want to get it in while the S and P is, or while the markets are kind of still up here. And there may be, they're worried that, you know, we could see a bigger correction. don't know, but I'll you. Yeah. Yeah. Why. Speaker 2: they're rushing the ice. Do you know how much it cost to put a man on the moon? Back in the 1960s and 70s, the whole space program, they were thinking it was something like 12 to 13 % of the total US GDP to do that. That was, now we can argue it's cheaper today and all that, but I think he knows he can't, he wants to go to Mars. And I've met Elon Musk. He's a, once I've had a really interesting guy, Speaker 1: A lot. Yeah. How much? Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: watch Elon Musk and watch an Apollo astronaut have a discussion, which I actually had the opportunity to see happen. But again, this costs serious money. And now that we are looking at the possibility that we are going to go back to national space programs, it is fanciful to think we would share our space technologies with the Russians and the Chinese. It's not going to happen. So we're not going to, because it could be turned on us in my opinion. So you have that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I think that's part of it of why they're doing it. And I do think there is a national, a new national drive to have this happen. think that, you know, the moon, hey, the reports, you talk about rare earths, you talk about all these minerals. We do know the moon's a sister to earth. It's up there. We just have to figure out a way to get it and bring it back. Speaker 1: So that's ⁓ yeah, you think there's there's mineable exploitable resources on the way. What's up there? Speaker 2: What's up there? ⁓ you know what? Basically, you go through all the metals because it's the same formulation process. The moon went through a lot of it. When the meteorite blew into Earth, blew all that stuff, the moon formed a lot of those minerals, man. yeah, no, I mean, they're talking about this also a fuel source called helium-3, which is because the moon just gets baked by solar radiation. It's basically, if you think about liquefied natural gas, This would be a type of radiation that would be almost an appellate form. There's a lot of stuff there. How do you get it? Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. prices are going to have to go a lot higher to make it worthwhile. Speaker 2: Well, as you said, you do it. All right. We always have a segment on the show called Nevada and the West. So, and then you and I both have spent plenty of time in California. We're both kept refugees from blue states. I'm going to say what it is here. That pisses some people off. I'm sorry. That's the way it goes. Okay. Now, you know, I think I told you, I went and I literally bought a mining claim. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I can't believe one, you know what is so funny people are thinking about buying gold. Go buy the claims. They're cheap. And if you happen to find gold on them, because there's still a lot of gold there. If you think about the mine south of Las Vegas that shut down in, I don't know, 1930, what was gold in 1930? What? Now is it 4,000 an ounce? Now the biggest problem you have is that you have to go rebuild those mines. There's probably a lot of full of water now. Speaker 1: $35 an ounce. Speaker 2: You can't use the same kind of, you know, for environmental reasons, but I actually think mining claim trading could actually get kind of fun. So I joined the mining association. I'm now officially a miner. So we're going to go to some fun events together. All right. Then the other thing, water. Our water, a big article in the local papers, mining, our water negotiator said, I'm going to fight like hell. California pissed him off. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, could be interesting. Speaker 2: They're still playing the big kid on the block saying, ⁓ where we've, we've honored all of our water conservation efforts. You people are still watering freeways. Right. He's getting mad. This guy's really getting dead. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading a little bit about his negotiations and basically how ⁓ we're going to subsidize desalination plants in San Diego, I think, in exchange for more water or something like that. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm from Colorado. So, you know, I've grew up in the West in the Basin States and water has always been an issue. at the end of the... Speaker 2: We went to War River water a hundred years ago. These ranchers went at it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. At the end of the day, mean, the, the water agreements were drawn up so long ago. I don't think they make sense. know, California should, should be building desalination plants and it should be figuring out its own water. You know, they, they think they, they think they can succeed and be their own country. Well, you guys can't even figure out your own water. So Speaker 2: All right. So let's talk about this session, the article in the paper this last weekend, Republicans are leaving and they're coming to Nevada. ⁓ they said Republicans. Now, Chris, I've had more people ask me about this. Why just Republicans? said, you guys don't understand the mindset of the politicians in California. They want a socialist utopia. They want that. They want everybody that doesn't buy into this out. Would you agree with that? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think, ⁓ they're, you know, it's unfortunate because, know, I was born in California. know you were, you were born there. ⁓ yeah. And, know, that was a conservative state for a long time. And I think it really should be a conservative state. It's, ⁓ it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful place. And, you know, the left hates beauty. If you look at what the left does, all they try to do is destroy beautiful things. Speaker 2: I'm a fifth generation. Speaker 1: you know, if that, you know, whether that's transitioning kids, you know, cutting off kids genitals or whatever the fuck they're doing. but Speaker 2: We'll have to blip that, guys. Speaker 1: ⁓ but yeah, you know, the left hates beauty and the right, you know, is about preserving beauty and preserving nature. ⁓ you know, California is one of the most beautiful States and I hope, I hope conservatives can get it back. I don't know if that's possible. Speaker 2: Well, I think there's this, and I know we got to wrap it up here pretty quick, but I'll just leave on this note that I just think Nevada's place in the United States is from a power standpoint between the raw materials we have with the only place with lithium mines. you said, fourth largest producer of gold on planet Earth, still do have silver mines in the silver state. ⁓ I mean, we have ranching. We now have Las Vegas becoming a major financial service. I just think... That's fine. If they want to lose their best and brightest, they want to lose their business owners. Hey, please come to Nevada. We'd love to have you here. Bring your companies, bring all your stuff, bring your bank accounts and come here. Trust me, you'll be a lot happier. Hey, Chris, if people want to get ahold of us, I'm just going to tell it right now. Go to our website, winanscommodities.com. If you have any questions for Chris and I, please email us there or go to our website, Winning with Winans. You know, and Chris, I guess we're gonna have to have you back, buddy. Speaker 1: Yeah, that was great. Really enjoyed it. Speaker 2: I know you're a little nervous here at first, you did well. Hollywood's gonna be calling, buddy. Speaker 1: ⁓ perfect. Yeah, I love Hollywood, Speaker 2: All right, well listen, you have a great weekend, my friend. Happy Easter to you. You you and I are both Christians and you know, it's a special time for us. We'll see you next week. We love you. Thank you. Tell your friends and family about winningwithwinans.com and certainly tune in. We're going to be here every week. Anyway, have a great weekend. Take care now. Boy, that time went fast. I hope you had as much fun as I did during this segment of Winning with Winans. Make sure and tune in next week. for another round of guests and interesting topics. And if you missed this, make sure and check us out on Spotify, YouTube, or go to our website, winningwithwhinans.com, where there's a lot more information for you to follow. So good luck this next week. Look forward to seeing you then. Take care.