David Hoffman:
[0:10] Welcome, everyone, to The Report. I'm David Hoffman. I'm subbing in for Ryan

David Hoffman:
[0:14] Sean Adams. He is on spring break. Michael, this is our first time doing a podcast together. I'm pretty excited, my man.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:20] Excited as well. Great to be with the other half.

David Hoffman:
[0:22] Great to be with you. Great to be with you. It is a pretty big week to be with you. I'm actually kind of glad that I'm here for this one. There are a lot of things to discuss. Trump and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire to discuss the conditions of a long-term peace. On this news, oil price immediately has dropped by about 20%. Yields have dropped by about 3%. And then Bitcoin is up 6%, ETH up 8% on the news. And so this dropped as of this morning. I think markets are still digesting it. And then there's been a little bit of a pullback as people realize that this ceasefire might not be as rock solid as the initial announcement of a ceasefire actually might have presented itself. Mike, when you saw this news, what was your just initial reaction?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:05] Yeah. And, you know, I'll preface this to say that, you know, I usually draft these reports, you know, a few days before we go out and then we're kind of editing it towards the end. And I had a feeling that this this was kind of going in this direction, but it doesn't impact really any of my more longer term term views. I was of the mind that the markets were already pretty weak before this conflict began.

David Hoffman:
[1:30] And I've also been so independent of the conflict. Markets were weak.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:34] Correct, correct. Independent of the conflict, I was of the view that the business cycle had already sort of played out, the asset allocation cycle had played out, the liquidity cycle was turning over, and Bitcoin was kind of the canary in the coal mine for this, you know, going back to Q4. And then when the war kicked off, it just sort of, you know, layers on to an already sort of slowing growth economy, in my perspective. And then you layer in oil prices and what that potentially means. And so it's just kind of made me a little bit more bearish on the kind of overall overall setup. And my view has been that this war is extremely complicated. I mean, it's really hard to tell what's going on over there. Lots of, you know, propaganda in both directions, theater. And, you know, we had, you know, what looked like a little bit more of a formal or at least closer to progressing towards a formal agreement with the announcements last night. And, you know, like I said, hard to say where this is going, but my view is just that there's a lot of countries involved here. There's potentially competing incentives from some of these countries like that are, you know, close to the action in the Gulf. And my view has just been like, like just be, let's be patient here. And see how this unfolds, we're already seeing that it looks kind of complicated with this current ceasefire.

David Hoffman:
[2:56] Yeah, that's definitely been my reaction. I think before we get in, we've got to talk to our friends and sponsors over at Galaxy. Galaxy One, their retail platform, is launching staking for Solana. Galaxy One is like Robinhood. Galaxy's version of just like a consumer brokerage app. If you're already holding Sol, you can use Galaxy One to just put it to work. You can earn an estimated 6.5% in variable staking rewards on your Sol. Stake your Sol, get rewards. No platform commission charged all the way until December 31st of this year. It's powered by Galaxy Digital's own validator infrastructure, institutional grade, that they're finally opening up to individual investors. It's all integrated inside of the app. So you can buy your soul directly in the app, transfer it there, and once you stake it, it just compounds automatically. And you can also track everything with tax bait reporting already built in. So when it comes tax day, which I know is coming up soon, very soon, too soon, that will already be taken care of for you. Start staking your soul on Galaxy One via the link in the show notes. All right, Mike, I think the bulls are in a moment of bragging rights, of a moment of bull euphoria, because the ceasefire drops, markets immediately jump. The S&P, the NASDAQ are both up like one plus percent, almost two percent, I think. And so bulls are very happy right now. And then we see reports that maybe the Strait of Hormuz is not as open as we thought. It's actually shut down.

David Hoffman:
[4:19] Iran has this 10-point plan. The United States has this 15 point plan. There is a lot of daylight between these two plans. And so while there is a two week ceasefire, I think the jury is still out on how durable this is. I think the market is likely going to swing around based off of its interpretations of the durability of this ceasefire and how hard both sides want to negotiate. I think that's probably going to be the story of the market over the next two weeks is like how hardball is both Trump and Iran going to play with each other.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:53] Yeah, I think I think that's right. And in the report that we published today, really, the exercise was to go through, you know, I've been somewhat surprised at how strong the indices have been, you know, we focus mostly on on crypto markets. But I've been somewhat surprised that the indices have held up so well, there's been a decent amount of dispersion with some stocks in some sectors up and down. But like you said, trading right near all time highs right now. And the view has been that that things are sort of uh that growth is slowing in the economy and now we have this this conflict you know we're at an interesting point if we focus on the crypto markets particularly um i think we're at a very similar stage of the cycle as we were if we go back to like late january and this is when you know bitcoin had initially retraced down to like the low 80s or so uh we then traded in a range up to about 97k at that time if you were you know A bull in Q4, you were probably thinking we were going to all-time highs. And the people that thought we were going into a bear market were sort of staying anchored to that. That was like the first bull bear battle in the crypto market so far of this cycle, of this bear market. And the bears won that. And I think we're in a similar spot now. We've been ranging, you know, at a lower level between about, you know, low 60s and mid 70s now for a little over two months.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:16] And I'm trying to understand the bull case here because my view is really more of a longer term, bigger picture that this, you know, we're really just in the middle stages of a bear market.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:29] And so, yeah, I think we can kind of go through both what we think the bull case is and then the bear case. We have some market structure data for Bitcoin as well that we can get into.

David Hoffman:
[6:38] Yeah, just for the people following along on the YouTube, I'll highlight the sections. The last bull bear tug of war that Mike was talking about here starting in the middle of November and ending in end of January, as Mike said, the bears won that one. There was a 20% drop in the Bitcoin price going down to the $72,000 mark. And then since then, Bitcoin has been ranging between $72,000 and $64,000 for 65 days. And so, Mike, I think you're saying like we're kind of coming to the end of this war between the bulls and the bears. And maybe maybe you're of two minds. Maybe you can clarify this a little bit more. We are either going up or down based on the geopolitical outcomes, maybe. You know, oil prices are down 20% on the day on the news of the ceasefire. Maybe that's indicative of the bulls win the next one. Or what you were saying earlier, which was structurally the markets were weak going into this whole conflict. Maybe the conflict is just internal noise inside of a broader secular downtrend. And the Bears are going to win no matter what. Where are you between these two beliefs?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:51] Yeah, this is this is I think I think the battle here.

David Hoffman:
[7:55] Is that the million dollar question?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:56] I think so. And I think if you're bullish, I mean, if we if we think of like what's going on, I think maybe on the let's focus on the on the trad five markets first. You know, if you kind of look at that and what's the story here, I think most of the market is just really conditioned right now for like these tacos. Right. So that's that's like the most important thing. I think if you think that, you know, if you're in a camp that like nothing ever happens and, you know, the markets will eventually normalize to whatever conflict is going on over there, then I think you can start to build out, you know, a bullish case because of what we're seeing with analyst estimates. And so this is pretty interesting where we've got the projections for earnings growth in this quarter and also next quarter at 19.2%. And I think it was 21.3%. So analysts are meeting with companies, looking at their projections for the health of corporations in America. And they're saying these companies are extremely healthy right now. On top of this, you have the PEG ratios, which is the PE to growth ratio. And if you're an equity investor and you think the war is going to end or be resolved at some point, then you would look at this and you would say, look at this.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:22] Earnings growth is expected to grow, but valuations are coming down. That's like a contrarian bull indicator and like a buying opportunity. So I think if you're bullish, you sort of have to be anchoring probably to these two things. And, you know, my perspective on it is just that these analyst estimates are really primarily focused on the companies themselves. They're not really factoring in the, you know, the business cycle, the macroeconomic picture, the geopolitical picture, rising oil prices. So it's really just focusing on these companies in particular. And like, you know, I think that's makes them these estimates potentially flawed because all of these companies have to operate within this environment. And these these factors will impact, you know, earnings, I think, over a longer period. So that's kind of why, you know, I think you have to be you have to believe that the war is going to end. And then you have to kind of look at these other factors and say, oh, look, the economy is actually healthy. But I think it's just not factoring in, you know, the state of where we're at in this business cycle, which I think we're kind of late, late cycle right now.

David Hoffman:
[10:28] Yeah, I think I think what you're saying, maybe this is by definition, but if you are a bull here, you must be an optimist. You're seeing cheap valuations in the equities markets. You're seeing growth in the equities markets. And then maybe you also, if the stars aligned, you get an ending of the Iranian conflict, lower oil prices. And what you are seeing is depressed prices over a materially more valuable asset with an idiosyncratic event coming to an end with the Iran war.

David Hoffman:
[10:57] And you're saying, I see a discount here. I see a buying opportunity because I'm an optimist. If that's the case, what's the pessimist say? What's the pessimist perspective?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:08] Yeah, I think the pessimist perspective here is... Kind of what we were talking about just with the complexity of this war and what that can mean. You know, I think the war can go on. I think markets can generally look through geopolitical conflict. They historically do. In this case, I think it's particularly concerning just because of what this can mean for the global oil markets and then how that feeds through into the economy. And so I think it was Bloomberg that put out an estimate that for every $10 increase in the oil price, that equates to 30 basis points of a drop in consumption from consumers. And consumers in the consumption economy, that's two-thirds of GDP. So I know oil has already come off significantly after the news last week, but even if you're at like $100 oil or so, you're close to like a 1% hit to GDP. And so this is why, like, if this continues to go on, this is absolutely going to impact consumption in the economy.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:20] And like I said, I was already bearish on sort of slowing growth and kind of late stage dynamics in the business cycle and the asset allocation cycle and also in the liquidity cycle, So that's kind of my view is like, if we are correct that this is complicated and it's going to take time, then that just means that these elevated oil prices will eventually bleed into the economy. They're impacted liquidity conditions as well, which we can get into. And that's kind of the other thing that I'm really anchoring to is just the global liquidity indicators that we follow, which is coming from Global Liquidity Index and Michael Howell's work. But that's the other big piece here is I think that's turning over. We know what that typically means for risk assets, crypto markets. And so that's kind of, I guess, the offset to the more bullish view.

David Hoffman:
[13:12] Right, right. So it sounds like the pessimist could even take the zoomed in optimist perspective, which is, you know, the war could end. Maybe we can get oil flowing in the Strait of Hormuz. But nonetheless, the liquidity condition when you zoom out is still negative. And so we have to swim upstream against liquidity conditions, you know, the broad business cycles. And we have to overcome that in order to have the bullish scenario. Now, I'll just add in some more commentary here.

David Hoffman:
[13:44] Trump and the United States, when in the middle of the Iran war, has done a lot of what they set out to do. They demolished a lot of the military capacities, the drone stockpiles, all the military stuff. Maybe the unexpected thing was Iran's just grip over the Strait of Hormuz, which, as we understand today, is not necessarily open. It's between Iran and Oman. They're charging $2 million per ship to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That was not in place before. It was an open international seawater. And, you know, all ships were free to sail between that. And now, despite maybe the military success on the United States side, we have this economic loss on just the oil, on the oil side of things. And so this is the, as negotiations go between Iran and the United States, the subject of Hormuz is going to be the thing. It is the Achilles heel on the Trump side of things. And it is the last shield that Iran has over its sovereignty. And I don't know if Iran can give that up because that is everything to them. It's their only thing that they have. And so you could imagine it's going to be very difficult for the United States to get what it wants out of these negotiations.

David Hoffman:
[15:00] And this is, I think, probably going to cause, at the very least, volatility in the oil prices because this is the point of contention here. And it seems unimaginable that Iran just gives this up because if they give it up, then they have no more shield.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:15] Yeah, I think that's right. And it's just, it's fascinating to me that, you know, the big picture here to me really is where this ultimately leads to. And I think you're right. They're not going to give up their sovereignty.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:30] And we're looking at like kind of what China's doing in the background. My view is that this is like ultimately really more about like the two global superpowers and like China gets a lot of their oil from Iran. A lot of that is at a discount. I think we are also in a trade war separate from this, you know, now hot war. And so you know we're trying to make it difficult for china to produce goods at at reduced levels and part of that is the oil story so i think i think that's potentially the next wave of this and like, We've had two ceasefires now, and if this one does not go well, then at what point does the market actually capitulate on this? And it gets actually much more messy where people start to just not believe in the bluster that this is going to get resolved. So I think the longer these ceasefires go and they don't really work, how many times does that play out before the markets decide, like, okay, this is actually going to be a much longer drawn out affair.

David Hoffman:
[16:33] So it's hard to have the maximum bullish perspective here. It's hard to be a complete optimist. I think people could be allowed to be somewhat of an optimist. But nonetheless, we have to have enough optimism, enough bull case to overcome the liquidity conditions. Let's talk about this chart right here, the global liquidity full and flash and also Bitcoin's price as it relates to liquidity. Now, I remember the weekly roll up that I was doing with Ryan, maybe two months ago, so a while ago, six to eight weeks ago, we were talking about this, the Bitcoin and global liquidity chart, but it was before there had been a divergence. We were talking about how Bitcoin and global liquidity trend with each other and global liquidity is going up. And so therefore we're bullish. Right around that moment was the divergence. And so Bitcoin has now peaked and global liquidity has continued to go up. Talk to me about this divergence in these two charts.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:34] Yeah, what's interesting here is for the past cycle and also the 22 bear market and also the one we had back in 18, actually Bitcoin peaked just before global liquidity peaked. And so Bitcoin is almost like telling you where liquidity is going, which is kind of fascinating.

David Hoffman:
[17:57] And you think we have enough data to draw an extrapolation here?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:02] Yeah, I almost view, and I think this is like almost becoming a tool for people that have their eyeballs on both the crypto markets and the traditional markets. Because, you know, if you're operating in the traditional markets and you're not paying attention to what's happening with Bitcoin and crypto, I think you're missing a signal in the market. I think Bitcoin is almost becoming somewhat of like a liquidity index in some ways. It's kind of a canary.

David Hoffman:
[18:27] A liquidity canary.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:28] Yeah, liquidity canary. It's kind of telling you what's coming for TradFi. And this has played out now three times. And I think we're kind of early in the process of TradFi maybe catching up. But what historically happens is Bitcoin peaks first. And then global liquidity rolls over. It has historically taken about a year for the liquidity cycle to bottom out and then come back. And Bitcoin tends to bottom around when that liquidity cycle is also bottoming. So I'm sort of anchored to this just because we have enough data points to suggest that this is where it's going. I think there's some contention in the markets with like where people stand on this. So we anchor ourselves to Michael Howell's framework for global liquidity. It's just the one that I understand the best. I think it's historically been a good signal. I know people like Raupal at Real Vision have different liquidity indexes and he disagrees with what Michael Howell's framework is right now. So there's contention in the market over this. But what historically happens is it takes about a year for this to play out. We're about, you know, six months into this process, maybe a little bit less than that since liquidity peaked after Bitcoin.

David Hoffman:
[19:42] Six months into the divergence between global liquidity and the Bitcoin price.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:46] Correct.

David Hoffman:
[19:46] Okay, so we're halfway through.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:48] Yeah, halfway through. And if I was bullish on this chart, like if we were maybe coming out of a, you know, the bottom of a global liquidity cycle and we had the Fed that was easing and maybe we had more supportive fiscal impulses and the conflict in Iran was going on, I think you could kind of look through it, potentially, you know, look through that. But when you have all these other layers added on where, you know, my view is that this cycle has, you know, peaked and we are now rolling over and then you could ask yourself, well, why is that the case? Well, we, you know, almost every major central bank is either not cutting rates right now or contemplating hiking rates. The Fed is basically on pause right now. Their hands are somewhat tied because of inflation related to oil prices. is, And China is the only major economy that's actually easing policy right now. And so it's hard to sort of look forward and see, you know, develop a case for liquidity where maybe this isn't like a structural, you know, decline and it's just a little bounce. It's hard for me to kind of anchor myself to that unless I see a change in monetary policy, fiscal policy. Maybe we get a huge spending bill from Congress for the war. Something like that would have to happen for me to come out of this view that liquidity is actually rolling over. And oil prices are now exacerbating that move.

David Hoffman:
[21:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think what you're saying is you don't really see a catalyst for easier money in the future. And in fact, despite oil being down 20% on the news of the ceasefire, You know, it's still Brent is still up 40 percent since the start of the conflict. And so in order for an easy money regime to be reasonable, we need these oil prices to go down a significant amount and stay down for a significant amount of time from current prices before we can start talking about Feds, you know, cutting rates because oil is such a huge input into inflation.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:58] I think that's right. And, you know, we've seen instances where the Fed has actually had to hike rates because of this. I don't think that's going to happen, but like it's also possible. I think what is ultimately more likely to play out is the markets get very volatile and then the Fed has to step in at some point. I don't know, you know, I don't have any time timing on that or anything. But that to me is kind of where it's more likely to go, where liquidity just actually, you know, really starts to impact the markets and the Fed has to step in. So we'll see, you know, but that's really the view is that, like, I don't see a catalyst for this changing like in the near term.

David Hoffman:
[22:38] Yeah. Yeah. And it also just goes back to why Iran must retain control over the Strait of Hormuz. Because, once again, the United States is so weak and sensitive to oil prices that, you know, I called it an Achilles' heel. It really hurts the United States, and it really constrains what we are able to do because we have so much debt. We will have an economy that is dependent on low oil prices, and so you can imagine that, you know, if there is ongoing tension over this rate of horror movies, that the conflict would just not be able to be settled under the conditions that Iran loses that. But Mike, as you said, we're kind of halfway through this projected drawdown on global liquidity. Why one year? Why do we believe that it takes one year? Is that just with the data that we've seen in the past?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:29] Yeah, I mean, it's kind of just the way business cycles and these things work. I mean, what tends to happen is rates come down. That creates demand for loans. Like this all kind of takes time to play out, but rates come down, that creates demand for loans, the banks start lending, you know, more liquidity enters the markets. That kicks off typically like an asset allocation cycle where people start to go, right now people are leaning closer towards cash and bonds. You know, they'll go, there'll be more inequities and it kind of goes all the way up the chain up to commodities, which we've seen, you know, that's typically a late cycle thing when you see commodities popping off. And then if oil is the last thing to go, that typically means the cycle is, is kind of ending. So, you know, roughly this is a, this is a rough thing. I think, you know, four to five, five to six years is like the full liquidity cycle. And then these sort of like periods where it just stagnates or comes down a little bit typically takes about a year or so. So that's kind of what I'm what I'm angry to. I try to kind of have a framework and then I look for something to that's that's in the market that's telling me that that's that's changed. And I don't see anything telling me it's changed just yet.

David Hoffman:
[24:37] So when we talk about the stars that must align for you to get bullish and to actually pile on positions, take some risk into the market, it sounds like there are stars out there. They're not aligned yet, but they are moving into position. Talk to me about the stars that you're looking at, where they are in their alignment, and the time frame that you're kind of the zone, the window of opportunity for those stars to align.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:05] Yeah. So, you know, we, you know, we went risk off in Q4 and we kind of called for like 65K or so Bitcoin, which, which we hit. And we were buying in early February. And I actually made an update to my portfolio on Sunday. And I know people are probably used to us talking about exactly what we're doing in the portfolio on this podcast. we unfortunately are going to refrain from that just because it's not fair for the paying customers. So we can't share that. You got to sign up if you want to see what we did.

David Hoffman:
[25:37] Link in the show notes.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:39] But what I would say is, you know, what I am trying to do is align my portfolio, with what I think are the sort of probabilities that we go up versus down. And so that, and this is doing the same thing when we were at the top of the market Because there's always risk, you know, in both directions. And what I'm looking for here is some signal that either the markets can get certainty around what's happening, you know, geopolitically, where that's going.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:14] You know I don't want to be a you know a doomer but like it just it just feels like that's a that's a complicated thing and there's a lot of wars going on there's a lot of countries in war like it's almost at what point does the market accept that we're in a world war you know I'm sort of waiting for that and so you know I'm looking for some sort of you know clarity with that where the markets can get some certainty because it's really just comes down to oil prices, how that's going to bleed into the economy and ultimately where we go there. The other piece of this is just that because that's going on, the Federal Reserve can't really do anything. We don't have a huge impulse on the fiscal side. We do have tax refunds,

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:56] which were larger than normal this year. I think some of that's being offset by... Uh these just higher oil prices and what's that's doing on the consumer so i don't see like a catalyst on on the liquidity side and and then when we get into you know bitcoin market structure this is the other piece that we always kind of come back to is what what is going on with like the holder base of bitcoin we've done we've been doing some work on this to to really understand Like basically in bear markets, you have like a rotation of coins held from people that came in over the last year or so, you know, top buyers, tourists, you know, maybe maybe weaker handed market participants.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:41] And I'm looking to see that fully turnover as we typically would see in a bear market. And right now it is turning over. And actually, if you scroll down a little bit to this next, this kind of lays it out pretty nicely.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:57] So this is kind of a cycle-to-cycle view of, um different holder cohorts and what we're doing is we're looking at the holder cohorts at the highest price ranges of each cycle and then we're and we're saying okay at the peak of the 17 cycle this is how many coins that the top buyers held and then we're looking at that again at the bottom of the cycle and we're trying to see you know how much of the coins rotated and we can see in the chart there that like the early cycle um there was a massive rotation right So it was mostly, you know, kind of hot money that came in. They sold their coins to long-term holders at the bottom and the market fully turned over. In the last cycle, we saw a 62% reduction from like the sort of top, you know, the highest cohort, the people that were really buying the top, 62% of those coins turned over. And then if we look at like the cohort below that, this is 47K to 57K, 50% of those coins turned over in the bull market or sorry, in the bear market. And so I'm kind of looking at that, and now I'm comparing to what I'm seeing in the current bear market. And we've had about 40% turnover for like the highest, the people that bought at the top and only about 7% at, you know, just the cohort below that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:15] So, you know, this is just even more conviction to me that like the crypto cycle hasn't actually fully played out yet as well. And it's just like, again, layers on to like the framework for just where we're at, you know, in the macro setup. And so this is kind of like ultimately, you know, I want to see this play out a little bit more. I want to see some sort of catalyst on monetary policy, fiscal policy, some sort of certainty for markets around what's happening in Iran. And I think I can, you know, start to really be bullish. You know the catalyst for those things potentially happening is potentially a leg down and like that's you know that's basically what i'm looking for um for us to get back into like fair value territory potentially deep value territory um so we'll see we'll see how this this kind of plays out.

David Hoffman:
[30:03] Mike i'm gonna call you a process truster i think yes is what you are doing is you're not getting too excited uh you know ceasefire was announced you're not you're not you're not pulling out the guns and start and firing right we have the global liquidity process is underway it's it has started to happen we're six months into it you're saying we need to do it we're going to wait for that to continue to go for maybe six months more uh the the weak hands who bought the top still need to sell we are trusting the process that that is a rite of passage that we know happens in crypto So we are waiting for that process to play out. We are going to wait for the Strait of Hormuz to stabilize. We're going to wait for more clarity with what the Fed is going to do. We're going to just let things settle and we're going to trust the process. And that kind of sounds like what we're doing here.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:57] I think that's a great, great way to describe it. I've been preaching patience. You know, I think that's one of the hardest things for people to do is just kind of sit on your hands, observe the market, you know, not get outraged and triggered by everything you see on social media. Like it just kind of observe, sit back, have a process and then look for like something to shake me out of that. You know, you know, basically I want to have that process. And then what are the things that would tell me that that process is either flawed or something has changed that should shift my view. So yeah, patience. We're still at that stage of the cycle, I think.

David Hoffman:
[31:34] So, Mike, that's the long-term view, but tell me what you're looking at in the short term in the next week or just to finish out April. What are the things, the data that you're looking at to inform where we are in the process that we are trusting?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:48] So I think, one, if you want to pull up the, there's a chart in there. It's about two-thirds of the way down, the S&P 500 chart. Yeah, so this is interesting.

David Hoffman:
[31:59] Because the S&P, if you look at the S&P right now, as of this morning, we had a big gap up because of this Seastar announcement, up 2.5%, trading just 3% off of all-time highs. You might be a bull and be like, look, dude, the bears behind us, that was the buying opportunity. We're up and to the right now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:16] Right. You missed it. Right. And I think a lot of people do feel that way. And maybe they're right. This is a chart just showing the 200-day moving average. Paul Tudor Jones, famous macro investor, has a famous saying, you know, nothing good happens below the 200-day moving average. And like we can see, you know, this is just looking back, going back to the last bear market. But you can see that what tends to happen is like the 200-day moving average serves as support. And when you break it, which we did break it on March 19th, it's very common to retrace back to it, even above it a little bit. And then actually have the next leg down from there. And I think there's a decent chance that that's what played out today or over the ceasefire news.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:03] We will see, I think a lot of people are taking their hedges off. One of the reasons the market wasn't going down is because everybody was so hedged. So now everyone's taking the hedges off and maybe this is actually like the moment where everyone takes a deep breath and then we go lower. So that's what I'm looking at is like, are we going to hold that line? If we hold that line, Um, that would tell me and that we're probably going to make a run at all time highs. We're only, you know, 3% off right now. I still would think even if we go back to all time highs, I still think the ultimate direction is lower. And then on the Bitcoin side, we haven't been able to get above like 74, 75K for a few months now. So that's serving as like kind of upside resistance on Bitcoin. And I think if we were able to get above 75K, the next level of resistance is going to be like in the 84, 85K range. That's where all the dip buyers came in.

David Hoffman:
[33:59] It's a 14% move in Bitcoin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:02] Yep. So if we can get up to those levels, the short-term holder cost basis is around $90K. If you get up to those levels and you hold that and you turn that into support, then I can start to say, well, wait a minute, we may actually be heading into a more bullish setup here. But until I see those things happen, I'm still kind of anchored to kind of wait and see and just being patient.

David Hoffman:
[34:27] Trusting the process. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting looking at the Bitcoin price. You can see, you know, somewhat of a green candle for the Iran ceasefire announcement. But if you just really look at the whole range, you don't really see anything there. Like we are just ranging. You can kind of see it in the S&P index. I mean, you can definitely see it in the S&P index. But as you said, if, you know, if we're just like, you know, right above the 200 day moving average, the story is not finished being told here. Like we still are directionless. And it is interesting to see that diversions where you do see the ceasefire announcement in the green candle and the S&P, but you do not see it in Bitcoin whatsoever.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:09] Yeah. So, you know, we'll see. I was watching Bitcoin, you know, as that news came down yesterday to see if we were going to get like a 10% mover. Like, see, there are days where you look at the crypto, you look at CoinMarketCap or something, and you just see green across the board, and it's like all coins are ripping. I'm really not seeing that, you know, right now. And I'm also, you know, we've been watching the altcoin space because there's typically some signal in terms of like, even like longer tail altcoins just related to volatility or spot volumes. You know, we were just not seeing like a real thrust behind this just yet.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:48] So something to keep an eye on. But let's see. I think we're in an interesting moment here. and we should have more information certainly in the next few weeks or so.

David Hoffman:
[35:57] Yeah, we certainly live in very interesting times for the investors who look at the markets. Mike, thanks for just informing me about what you're looking at. It makes a ton of sense to me and I'm with you on trusting the process.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:09] Appreciate it, David. Enjoyed it.

David Hoffman:
[36:11] All right, everyone. We will see you guys in a week. Ryan will be back next week to talk to Mike and I'm sure Ryan will have his own takes and questions as well. But in the meantime, stay curious and we'll see you in seven days. And if you've gotten to see what Mike is doing with his portfolio, There's a link in the show notes so you can sign up for TDR Pro.