Mike Howell RETURNS: The Dollar Fix Is In — The Playbook for Gold, Tech & Bitcoin

30:28And that's really been a function of the fact that Chinese have been trying to match a strong dollar and they've been tightening liquidity on that basis. but that's caused them you know economic woe and what they need to do is to get that debt liquidity ratio down well you can do it two ways you can default the debt well fat chance of that happening or what you can do is to expand liquidity and that's really what they're doing so you've got to think about put this in context and this is showing the next chart is showing the growth of liquidity going through Chinese money markets this effectively is the conduit from the pboc the people's bank and chinese data is notoriously seasonal uh so what i've done here is look at year-on-year changes to give you some sense as to what's going on but it shows that there's a clear stimulus underway uh as of um you know these year-on-year changes as of 2025 and that's pretty much coincident with the rally the strong rally in the shanghai market so you're getting the this impetus coming through which i think is very significant does it change much if you do year on year um in terms of percentage change as opposed to r &b change because it can also look more dramatic over time yeah you can i mean look at it this way i mean it's these are the programs this is breaking down china you can see they you can see the effect so if it was a percentage you can work out the percentage change from this probably what this is showing is the various programs and the flows of money that are going through Chinese money markets from the PBOC.

32:03So you've got their repo purchases, the new program, which is the black area called the outright reverse repo. You've got medium term lending and you've got overall PBOC liquidity injections. And you can see how that's built up. But I mean, it's pretty clear that something's going on. They had a brief attempt at that in sort of 23, but they phased it off because of the weakness in the yuan and now they've they've kept going again so i think the weak dollar allows everybody to stimulate yeah absolutely look at europe i mean that's exactly the same thing so you know what's the end game here the end game is sort of shown here with our index of chinese liquidity over the long term in orange and that's showing with projections the projection we put in But it's charted alongside commodity prices where we put the CRB index annual change in black.

32:57And the dotted line is the CRB without energy products is to make sure it's, you know, there's there's there's general truth there. So that seems to show that if you get this big Chinese stimulus continuing. And the dotted line is showing the continuation, that should mean that you get stronger commodity markets. Yeah, which suggests a business cycle pickup because China's been missing from the economic equation of the world for a while now because it's been in a debt deflation. I think absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so if you go back to where we are, this is a very normal cycle in that from an asset allocation point of view, from a market point of view, from a liquidity standpoint, everything's normal.

33:38What's abnormal is the business cycle. Yeah. So just for completeness sake, we didn't talk about what Japan is doing in liquidity terms. We talked about the bond market itself. Is Japan adding liquidity, neutral liquidity? Where are we on that? Well, generally, it's expanding. I mean, that's for sure. It's been stronger, but generally it's going up. I mean, we tend to think of there being two components in liquidity. One is looking at what the central bank is doing. And the other is what's coming out of the private sector. The central bank still seems to be injecting decent amounts of liquidity.

34:17What is less strong is the private sector. And that is largely a function of two things. I mean, one is the banks. Bank lending is beginning to pick up a tad in Japan. But the other thing is the cash flow of the corporate sector, which is largely under a cloud because of the weaker Chinese economy. And Japan is now more and more sort of adjunct of or warrant, if you like, on the Chinese economy. So a slower Chinese economy and obviously the tariff impacts generally in the world are putting a sunning to some extent cash flow of Japanese corporates. So, you know, that could clearly change. But for the moment, that's where we are.

34:58I mean, sorry, Japanese liquidity looks pretty good. But, you know, if you look at if you look generally at the world, the quality conditions in Europe, in Japan and in the US are pretty much, much, much less. They're all expanding pretty strongly. Europe and Japan have caught up a lot in the last couple of years. And they've caught up recently because of the weaker dollar, as you rightly say. And they've all got the same debt refinance issue. I mean, everyone's in the same boat. Correct. They've all got the same ageing demographics, the same debt issue. And so they're all having to manage it in this kind of global cycle.

35:34Everyone kind of knows the game. What is what is going on with France in the UK? Because, you know, it's shocking me to read. It's probably sensationalist. Oh, well, we might need the IMF to help us. I mean, it's like sounds kind of extremist. But what is going on? Well, the fact I mean, the fact is that both are in a very similar situation, as you as you allude to. I mean, I'm not going to say that Germany is out of that net because Germany equally has a problem in terms of debt. I mean, the great paradox, if you look at Europe generally, is that the big losers out of the GFC, countries like Italy, Spain, Greece, are the ones that are actually winning right now.

36:18And the winners, if you like, the countries that were pretty well off at the time of the GFC are the ones that are really under the cosh, you know, countries like France and actually increasingly Germany. Now, what are the problems particularly? It really comes down. I mean, part of this is the China effect because there's been a spillover, given the fact that Europe is so connected with the Chinese economy and a slower Chinese economy is adversely affecting Europe. But then on top of that, embroidered on top, you've got this debt problem, which is really one about far, far too generous welfare state systems.

36:50And you will be you know, you would have read in the last day or so that the German chancellor is actually talking about paring that down, which I mean, they have to do it. I mean, there's no way these bills can be afforded in the long term, but it's easier. It's easier saying that getting there, as we know. Now, specifically, what you're what you're seeing in the case of France and the UK is that the debt markets are selling off. Yields are rising. They're rising for different reasons than yields arising in Japan and China. They're rising because of supply issues, not because of demand issues.

37:26And it's because you've got this big weight of supply coming in and that's forcing term premium up. And if you look across the curve, it's not simply the long dated term premium that are rising as in Japan. It's everything. So, you know, the problem is this is a sovereign debt crisis. Look at the UK. You know, I mean, people poured scorn on Liz Truss, what, three or four years ago for what she did. But I mean, the latest Chancellor Rachel Reeves has done that. I mean, she's bested Liz Truss easily. I mean, yields are suffering yields in the UK. I'm the line term premier up over 100 basis points in the last 12 months.

38:07And this is a big financing. And what did the Bank of England say about this? Well, the Bank of England, there's not much in truth the Bank of England can do. I mean, what are they going to do? You're going to get them to they can cut interest rates. But then the UK's got an inflation problem, which is emerging. I mean, if one country, as you will recall, you know, the two countries that always use the feature first in any inflation pickup with Britain, number one, and Australia, number two. And Britain is really a bellwether to that process, probably, because inflation is sticky and it's picking up.

38:39There's not much the bank can do. Today's video is sponsored by VeChain, the leading layer one designed for real world adoption. Live since the 1st of July, Stargate is VeChain's new VET staking platform, built around their updated tokenomic model, which forms part of the Renaissance upgrade. Stargate reduces barriers to entry, improves yield for all participants, and provides a user-friendly staking experience. Simply stake your VET, mint a Delegator NFT, and collect VTHO rewards every 7 days. Base rewards can be claimed anytime, and it only takes 10 ,000 VET to get started. Right now, there's a 5.48 billion VTHO early bonus pool being distributed every week to stakers through to December.

39:30That's about$10 million available for the rest of 2025. And with yields reaching up to 9 % APY, the earlier you stake, the more you stand to earn. This is a limited window, and the countdown is on. The best time to stake was yesterday. Second best time is today. Put your VET to work to stake, delegate and earn on Stargate. Visit stargate.vechain.org today or see links in the description for more information. so so what are they going to do about it because they're going to have to do something right we don't we're not in a world where we can allow interest rates to become unanchored and so there's something that either the the government has to do or the central bank has to do eventually to quell this and it can't be it'd be unlikely to borrow money from the imf if it is it's just another liquidity injection from a different mechanism but you know what other answers do they have?

40:26Well, I think the first thing they'll do is at the upcoming budget, they're going to start increasing taxes as best they can. The ability to come back on expenditure programs is limited because in Parliament, the socialist sort of backbenches are voting out any attempt to cut spending. So that's tricky for them at the moment. But it may be that you have to force a crisis uh to actually get those cuts put in place and clearly if there is any deal with the imf the imf would be uh the baton that sort of is wielded to actually be down um spending um that's what they would do uh the third alternative is the bank of england just basically monetizes the debt uh let's not say never for that because that's almost inevitably what's going to happen almost always what happens right but that is the chosen path and by what mechanism would they do that yield curve control well yes i mean it could be or they just basically start to buy up they do another sort of qe program but you know these qe programs can be dressed up as support for the for the bond market in times of crisis as they've done before so i think that that's the mechanism all they do it you know is you whatever one calls one on what label one puts on it but if you get the banks to try and buy more debt that's another way the private banks to buy more government debt that's another route out um and they could try and loosen up some of the controls there i mean that's been spoken about and you will note that you know that it's not just the us which is talking about issuing very short-term debt and bills but the us the uk treasury as well as the japanese are talking about doing the same thing so all these governments are sort of seeing what scott besson has done and you know lit up their eyes and say well what a great idea why didn't we think of that first.

42:14The trouble is it's monetization. And yeah, it's been my opinion, probably your opinion too, that they're all in cahoots with each other. They all know that the problem they're facing, they're all facing the same problem. And they all tend to do the same thing at the same times. Like, you know, when I go back and look at, let's say, 2022, 23, 24, it seemed like they all decided to try and raise GDP growth via immigration, which then backfired. And now we've got the reverse of that you know they they do everything together really i think that's right i mean you know i mean the the the problem i mean the immigration problems are becoming really a major issue here for sure yeah as they are in the place the other big factor in all of this uh in global liquidity and maybe the big daddy of all is the dollar itself now it's been clear that besant wants a weaker dollar the u.s wants a weaker dollar the world needs a weaker dollar does that continue weaker?

43:09Because that's a very important factor in all of this because the dollar is the funding currency of the world. Well, I think the answer for the Oswald is yes and no. It depends against what. So this is looking at the trade-weighted dollar. And this is the way I tend to think about the dollar anyway. I like the real trade-weighted index that the BIS does. And this is really showing what I think of the underlying currents in the dollar. So what you've had, you have the long downtrend in the dollar broken around the time of the GFC. And then you've seen this upward channel. At the moment, we're having a cyclical correction in that, in my reckoning.

43:49There's no evidence the dollar is this is the paper dollar is really being undermined. And ironically, if you look at the following chart, which is looking at net inflows into the dollar, they still seem to be very strong. There's no evidence that we can find in the data that money is leaving the dollar. And this this to be 100 percent accurate here or complete. This is not looking at the of the US data, the TIC data, which is notably rogue and not that accurate. This is looking at what all other countries are saying they're actually putting into the dollar. So presumably it may have biases, but it's it's a more accurate readers to what's going on.

44:34And it looks as if money is still flowing. You can see what happened after the GFC 2010 and after the eurozone banking crises. Money, a lot of money flows into the dollar. And that's really been a mainstay of the US market. It's still there. So I think that if you look at the paper dollar, I think that that still looks reasonably robust. I accept the point 100 % that I think the administration wants to get it weaker. But I think it's a bit of a challenge for them to get it weaker, given these dynamics. But I do think they want to try and talk it down. And that's the evidence that one gets. Yeah.

45:08And I think on a cyclical basis, I don't think we're at a, you know, the full plaza report called nuke the dollar basis. We just don't have that much stress in the system. And listen, I think it's over 50 percent of world debtors in dollars. A weaker dollar allows people to refinance their debts. So it tends to be cyclically weak to allow this mechanism to happen, allows everybody to stimulate, do what they need to do. that ends up being the debasement of currency, even though you get dollar inflows, people get confused by this. It's like, no, the dollar is still fundamentally strong and is gaining as the world's reserve currency, but its purchasing power via debasement is actually decreasing.

45:49Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, what is it, what could it weaken or strengthen against? Well, you know, if you look at, I think the yen is, you know, my view is I think the yen is deliberately being held down uh i think that uh the chinese yuan has to weaken against the u.s dollar in some form um and i think that if you look at the europeans european units i think the whole fiscal backdrop is so is so ugly that i can't see why the euro should strengthen particularly against the dollar anyway so you know there may be a case for some of the emerging market currencies picking up or the aussie dollar cyclically i don't know but they're tiny in the context of things On the other hand, if you're debasing the main standard of value in the world economy, then you're going to have real assets like gold, silver, precious metals going up and you're going to have cryptocurrencies going up at the same time.

46:41So these are the hedges against this long term monetary debasement. And I know you keep saying there's a trend here and there's a cycle. The trend looks compelling. The cycle, we may be coming to the end of it, but cycles go up and down. The other thing, so just zooming in now is we use our financial conditions index as a lead on total global liquidity. And it has been sideways for a while, but it looks like it's about to expand again because it's the dollar interest rates. And all of those seem to be moving in the favor of that, which then gives us a longer lead on the cycle. So I'm trying to get your thinking on, OK, what what is the next like three to six months look like on a forward basis from what you can see from liquidity?

47:35OK, I mean, my view is I mean, I'm not bearish on liquidity over that time frame. No, I think that there are a number of questions that people will raise. And I think one of those and I'm going to show you another chart, hopefully this one works, is is what's happening to the Fed balance sheet. So that's number one. And this is looking at a concept that I call Fed liquidity, which is the thing that I came up with when I wrote that book, Capital Wars, which is looking at the various components that the Fed uses to get liquidity into the system. Now, that's clearly an important element. It's not the whole story, but it's an important element.

48:16And what this is basically showing is that if you look at the projection period on paper, the growth of Fed liquidity falls and goes negative. And the reason for that is if you come back to the underlying ingredient, which is U.S. bank reserves, this chart is showing our projections through year end of U.S. bank reserves based on… Yeah, everyone's getting really caught up on this because they're like the reverse repo is empty. And therefore, if you rebuild a TGA, you've got a massive liquidity shock. Yeah. So, I mean, the question is, number one, will they rebuild the TGA? Well, OK, if you look at the quarterly refunding announcement, it says they're going to go back to 850.

49:03Well, I would be staggered if they get there because to take that amount of money out of money markets would cause the repo spread to spike. And I don't think they want to do that. There's every indication they're trying to manage the repo spread. So I don't think I don't buy the fact they're going to put it up. Even if they do put it up, you can find other ways of injecting liquidity, as we said, through Treasury QE or getting the banks to buy debt. So I think there are other ways around it. But, you know, what that chart is trying to illustrate is that the dotted line, the red dotted line, is my estimate of what adequate reserves are, minimum reserves in the system.

49:41And it looks as if there was that step change back last August when you got the change and the stress test rules. But basically, what's happened to bank reserves through this year is they've very closely hugged that dotted line. And I think that's deliberate because as we know, the Federal Reserve controls bank reserves in aggregate completely. And I think that's what they're targeting amongst other things. So to see that drop off, which is the TGA rebuild prospectively, I just don't buy. I don't think it's going to happen. So I think that number one is you've got still pretty decent Fed liquidity.

50:14and everything that I hear Scott Besson say and what I see the Fed doing is they want to manage that liquidity they don't want to pull the rug from the markets why should they number one I think if you look at offshore markets in other words international markets I think that Europe continues in the in the groove it's been doing which means adding more liquidity they're going to have to do that anyway and I think all the moves are towards more ease in Europe Japan I think follows because they want the yen to remain soft. And China is embarking on a major monetary expansion. So as far as I can see, the liquidity background still looks to be pretty benign over that timeframe.

50:55Yeah. I mean, we look at both the Fed net liquidity of this, and this is what a lot of people are talking about is, oh, my God, this is going to be a liquidity shock. But when you look at total liquidity, because it takes into account what's happening in the banking sector, it's a different chart yeah and it seems to be that it's the total liquidity dominance now and this has become more of a steady as she goes factor same with the balance sheet so they've moved away even though the balance sheet's a component of this but they kind of move away from these things over time it now seems to be it's it's the banks and you know there's other mechanisms they can use the pension system and the insurance sector as well at various points because they're all the big buyers of bonds.

51:38Yeah, yeah. I think this is, I mean, I think they, you know, Scott Bresson, as we know, is a clever guy. And I think he's thought these things through. And he is conscious of the fact that liquidity is critical to markets. Yeah, exactly. It helps having a hedge fund manager as the Treasury Secretary because we all speak the same language. So we kind of know what he's up to. So where do you think, where is your, to go back to where we started, your best guesstimate right now of when liquidity peaks? Is it Q1, a bit longer? I'm in the camp of Q2, but obviously it's probabilistic and it can change, but it's not this year.

52:18No, it's not this year. That's a big important factor for markets. Yeah, I mean, in my view, it's at least six months away. I mean, the estimates we came up with, we use leading indicators. Those leading indicators are based on factors like what the business cycle is doing, what's happening to things like oil prices, what's happening to volatility in the bond markets, I mean, a number of things. But that actually comes up with the latest figure that we saw, I saw, was March of next year. So it's not, it's pretty much, you know, close to where you're saying about that sort of timeframe. That's what I would think.

52:56Now, it may be extended by a number of factors, but that's what I think the, you know, the cycle is pointing to. Yeah, I do too. And what's really interesting to me is, Dan, go back to asset markets. The two big assets that I look in all of this is really obviously cryptocurrency and technology stocks because they seem to be outperforming debasement more than anything else. They're in a log trend channel, which means that basically over time, if the cycle's extended, the price goes higher. And I think people don't really understand this mechanism because of what happened in the kind of stunted cycle of 2021, that we've kind of got the opposite of 2021 at play here, which is that time is being extended and therefore price likely gets extended upwards.

53:42Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me. I think that at the end of the day, we should be investing more and more in liquidity-sensitive assets. I think that makes sense. One thing we did do, and I just wanted to get your thoughts on this, Gold has been an interesting market. It kind of does what it's supposed to do right now. But what we found is gold seems to be highly correlated with financial conditions, not real rates and all the other things it was linked to. But it now seems to be pretty much real-time financial conditions. So, you know, it's been in this kind of wedge pattern recently. Let's assume that the dollar weakens a bit more from here.

54:24Rates come down a bit more. that'll break out gold because that's the majority of financial conditions, which kind of leads everything we found by that nine months. So gold has become really interesting to watch. And for me, it's now quite explainable. It goes from periods of being explainable to not explainable. But, you know, that patterning gold, I think, is an important one. I know you look at gold as well. Yeah, no, I think I endorse that. I think that if you look at real interest rates, real interest rates and the gold price moved very closely together for a long, long time. And then until they didn't.

54:59And they didn't basically from 2022 onwards. Now, you can argue that that was a lot of people say, well, that's because of the Ukraine invasion. That was because basically people got disillusioned with the dollar. They wanted a safer asset. That may be the case. I don't think that lines up exactly. I think what's the bigger driver is that was really the period where you saw that was the time when you saw the beginning of this monetary debasement so gold basically began to be moved much more uh by monetary factors by the flow of liquidity and a lot less by essentially the cost of carry interest rates so i think that's the that's the you know people are buying gold as a protection as a monetary hedge now in the same way as i think a lot a lot of people are by i mean people bought bitcoin because they didn't they didn't really know why, but they bought it.

55:48But I think now you're getting people who are buying it as a monetary inflation hedge. You know, if you've ever wished you could ask me a question, any question 24-7, well, now you can. The RALPAL bot is my AI assistant trained on all of my insights, macro research, macro views, even wine and travel knowledge. The RAL bot is available for everybody who subscribes to either Connect, Alpha or Pro. It can really change your life. You get me as your mentor 24-7. The link's in the description. I think you're going to love it. Let's assume that most of the world's major central banks know the game is debasement of currency and they're all having to do it together to refinance debts.

56:28Then part of their job is to offset some of that. So if you know you've got to go through a debt refinancing cycle, the dollar has to weaken for everybody. Well, then the most likely outcome is they end up diversifying dollar reserves out into an asset like gold. And we've seen, certainly in the Middle East, Bitcoin being put on various parts of the sovereign wealth fund balance sheets. So it seems very consistent with them understanding. The great one to me, the greatest of all, I think, was the Swiss National Bank, because they kind of figured out what the game was, because they're at all the meetings, but they're too small to matter.

57:06I remember meeting them years ago, and they were like, we can do anything we want, because we're too small to matter. And what they did, instead of kind of managing this process. They just bought tech stocks, which was genius. Because that was the right thing to buy. Exactly, yeah. Exactly right. I mean, that's right. I mean, maybe we look to them first as to be the official buyer of Bitcoins. It's entirely possible. Yeah, because, you know, everyone thought, well, what are they, crazy? They turned into a hedge fund, but they figured out, well, debasement, you might as well just buy the asset that outperforms the debasement.

57:40And their balance sheet's been great, which has kept the Swiss francs strong over this whole period or steady over the whole period. Yeah. But I think, you know, the other thing is, which I'm sure you've got an opinion about as well, is about the role of stablecoin and how this gives a conduit to the Treasury and Besant to actually do a lot more funding. I mean, this could be big. And I think it's, you know, if you start to look at how stablecoins operate, typically, I mean, you could make a case. And in fact, I've sort of argued negatively in one regard to say that a big growth in stablecoin could actually dent bank credit significantly, because actually a stablecoin issue is a lot more constrained than a bank.

58:24And if a lot of funds move from banks into stablecoins, you're not going to get credit growth, which is clearly a possibility. But then you've got to think about it from the other side is that actually it's a wonderful source of credit for the treasury. And so this is what you're going to get is much more public sector led credit growth via the stable coin conduit. And it gives it's really an opportunity in no other words to for governments to print money. What's interesting is those of us have been around a long time. You know, we grew up with a euro dollar market. The euro dollar market was the wholesale funding markets of the dollar.

59:02But that stopped at like the big Japanese banks, you know, the European banks and stuff like that. And then you had to get access to it. And it was restricted down to to others. It was hard to get hold of dollars outside of that. But that was the big dollar funding market. What stable coins essentially is, is a fractionalized euro dollar market down to individual level. So it means you can be in any country in the world and get access to dollars, which is an extraordinary thing. And so what you're doing is spreading the dollar and the issuance of bonds and the holding of bonds down to individuals all around the globe.

59:38Yeah, I think I think it's a revolution. I think you can see why it's so important, given the sort of sudden change of heart by the Europeans, who were sort of dragging their feet hugely on on some equivalent euro currency. And now they're basically going full steam ahead. And are they going to do it by the central bank digital currency route or are they just going to let the open market just build to to try and spread demand for euros? because I think given the fact it's Europe, it's got to be the central bank route. They're not going to let the private state to get in there, but that's what they should be doing.

1:00:15Yeah. And let's see whether there's actual demand for euros on a globalized basis. It feels like it's a dollar world and it's the US. I think they're running scared because they realize that they could be, you know, wiped out or smothered, crowded out, in fact, by dollar stable coins. and even your chart of of showing the amount of money piling to the u.s shows that that crowding out is happening and that's what we're seeing in the uk and the french bond markets essentially is there's not enough foreigners who want to finance other countries debts we're seeing you know whether arguably maybe in japan as well there's not enough demand because everybody would rather finance finance the US.

1:00:59Yeah, I think absolutely. I think that's the reality of that chart. But it's been the reality for the last 15 years that there's a lot of money flowing that has flowed into the US because the US is the bond market. It's global collateral. And they've got on top of that, the added icing on top is the tech sector. So final question for you. So do you think the rate of debasement or the increase in liquidity, the rate of change increases from here going into this whole big, large refinancing, refunding period. So we should see a spike in all of that. Or is it kind of more as steady as she goes? The way that I think about it is to go back to this chart, which is looking at the ratio between debt and liquidity.

1:01:48And what this is really saying is that over the long term, financial stability demands a stable debt liquidity ratio. This is for the advanced economies if you get debt growth and i think debt growth is um let's take the us as a decent benchmark debt growth is likely to be growing at something like eight to ten percent per annum well that sort of magnitude um then i think what you've got on top of that is equivalent liquidity growth because you need a stable debt liquidity ratio so liquidity has got to grow at pretty much the same rate now what we know is that a lot of those projections and i tend to use numbers that come from the Congressional Budget Office for want of any other source.

1:02:29They give decent long term projections. The problem with the CBO numbers is they don't take into account recessions. And we know the recessions basically lead to big deficits. And in the last couple of recessions, the US deficits blown up by four to five percentage points of GDP. So you could be seeing actually a lot faster potential growth of debt anyway. So I think that these figures of sort of eight to 10 % minimum, sorry, minimum figures. And that's what we ought to be thinking about. So, you know, in that case, you've got to choose assets that are likely to give you that sort of return over the medium term.

1:03:06And there's not that many around. Certainly bonds don't do it. Super interesting. Mike, as ever, look, fantastic to run through all of this with you. I think it's always incredibly helpful to people. And I guess the message is steady as she goes for now, you know the ongoing game for the next few months yeah through year end i think that's right i mean we always know that september is a bad month but you've got you've got to discount that uh historically but i mean generally i i think it's okay uh yeah i mean we will get wiggles and we'll get liquidity withdrawals and all of that stuff but the the the trend is intact and continues for a while there are there are too many bears out there to my mind i mean people want to call the top of the market.

1:03:46And I think that's always problematic. Yeah, totally agree. All right, my friend. Thank you ever so much. Thanks, Scott. Enjoy it. So another great conversation with Mike. Always good. Always good to be able to go around the world, look at what's going on, look at how it plays into assets. Think about not only the short-term time horizons, the medium and the longer-term time horizons, and how this all plays out. You see, these are the tools you need to really navigate this. These kind of tools help you unfuck your future. Now, never forget on Real Vision, we have Real Vision Alpha that has the macro investing tool with myself and Julian Battelle, where we produce all of these charts every week for you so you can navigate it.

1:04:33It's honestly life changing as an investment for your future and how to unfuck it. Anyway, I'll see you next time. Take care. Today's video is sponsored by VeChain, the leading Layer 1 designed for real-world adoption. Live since the 1st of July, Stargate is VeChain's new VET staking platform, built around their updated tokenomic model, which forms part of the Renaissance upgrade. Stargate reduces barriers to entry, improves yield for all participants, and provides a user-friendly staking experience. Simply stake your VET, mint a Delegator NFT, and collect VTHO rewards every seven days. Base rewards can be claimed anytime and it only takes 10 ,000 VET to get started.

1:05:22Right now, there's a 5.48 billion VTHO early bonus pool being distributed every week to stakers through to December. That's about$10 million available for the rest of 2025. And with yields reaching up to 9 % APY, the earlier you stake, the more you stand to earn. This is a limited window and the countdown is on. The best time to stake was yesterday. Second best time is today. Put your VET to work to stake, delegate and earn on Stargate. Visit stargate.vechain.org today or see links in the description for more information. You obviously enjoyed the episode because you're here with me at the end.

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