Trading the Markets: October 22, 2025 | Kris Bullock and Bijan Maleki

0:00Hey, everyone. As you know, on this podcast, I bring the best guests in the world at that nexus of understanding of macro crypto in the exponential age of technology. If you're enjoying the show, a quick five-star rating goes a long way. It helps us grow and keep these conversations coming with the best guests in the world. Thanks a lot.

0:53Happy Wednesday, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Trading the Markets. Of course, we're joined by Chris Bullock, a.k.a. BlastoPlast. This is the show where we come to you weekly. We take your questions live and we talk about any trades and trends that we're looking at in the market. And speaking of taking your questions live, RAL is back for another Drinks with RAL AMA tonight at 6 p.m. ET. So make sure you tune into that and make sure you sign up to Real Vision. You can join us on the Connect tier, of course, where you will get Chris Bullock's crypto portfolio. You'll get Joe Bland's equity portfolio.

1:38And if you want to ask Ryle a question, your best bet to get him to answer it is to sign up to Real Vision. So make sure you head over to Real Vision, sign up and join us. Of course, every week you can join us in Discord Live and you can join us on our Wednesday shows. Chris, happy Wednesday. How are you doing today? Doing well, doing well. Kind of a boring market day. Everybody's just sort of getting, I think, pretty antsy. Really what I'm seeing is the big story continues to be just a stagnant liquidity environment. I mean, across the board, basically. And it's impacting all markets. Yes, it's impacting crypto more because crypto is smaller and liquidity is so fragmented that it's going to have an outsized impact in the crypto space.

2:20You're going to see some wild price action specifically in the alt sector. But it's also impacting stocks and everything too. And so I have a couple of charts here I wanted to show just to kind of highlight what I'm seeing. But we can see here on this first chart. So I've shown this chart a lot. This is basically a Bitcoin chart in the background. The candles are Bitcoin. But this yellow line is just the global M2 aggregate liquidity. and we can see that it has leveled off and has pretty much kind of gone sideways, you know, since June or so. And so too has Bitcoin and so too have stocks for that matter, which I'll show here in a second.

2:58But basically, everything is being impacted by this just, again, very generally stagnant liquidity environment. There's not a lot going on. There's not a lot to sort of juice the markets. And that's what we're seeing. And these lines down here below are the various sort of rates of change. We have a three month, a six month and a 12 month rate of change. And we can see really all three of them have been generally going down for a good chunk of this year too. Now, the red one is the annual, the yearly rate of change. It seems to have bottomed and is bouncing back up. But the three-month and the six-month are still generally crunching along to the downside.

3:34So we're waiting for that. And then if you look at it in the stock market, it's effectively the same thing. Here's the S &P futures. But if you add the liquidity over the top, you can see that it's been, again, just plotting sideways. And the market has very much just generally been tracking right along with it. And so, again, just to show the story is liquidity, it's going sideways, and thus everything else is going to be going sideways too. Now, we know there are things potentially coming down the pike sooner rather than later. We know in Powell's most recent speech, he talked about QT being stopped soon.

4:08Ideally, that happens this next month. Also, rate cuts will help too. Ideally, that starts to happen again next month. We've also seen, you know, this story doesn't seem to want to go away either. I have Trump continuing to say, we'll probably distribute some tariff revenue, in other words, stimulus checks to Americans. I know, you know, he says this and everybody laughs it off, but he's probably said this a dozen times now. I've seen quotes pop up. I've seen headlines pop up. And again, just today, Again, it popped up talking about this very thing. We're going to provide some tariff revenue, whether it's$600, whether it's$1 ,000, whether it's$2 ,000, we don't know.

4:46But the point being, this is not even so much a rumor at this point. This is Trump continuing to say this out of his mouth that this is something we'll quote probably do. But we know when he says that, you know, when he continues to say something like this for months on end, it's it's I think the odds are pretty high of that happening. That's going to be a significant bump in liquidity as well. It all sort of comes back to just money coming into the system. So I think that's helpful. In addition to that, we're seeing volatility as a result of this low liquidity environment. we're seeing basically volatility get very, very squeezed.

5:24Oops, wrong chart. We're seeing volatility get very, very squeezed. And what I mean by that is, so here's Bitcoin, this shaded area here. Essentially, these are the Bollinger Bands that it's reflecting. Like if I turn the Bollinger Bands on, what we can see is it sort of just measure, it sort of highlights and calls out when the Bollinger Bands are very, very squeezed. And when that happens, that generally means everything is coiling. And you typically get a pretty decent breakout off of super coiled Bollinger Bands. And at this moment, they're the tightest that they've been since all the way back in July, August of 2023.

6:03So it's been quite some time where price has generally been moving. And now we've got these super, super constricted bands again. And I think that this is a reflection again of the low liquidity environment, but it's also a signal that a breakout is likely looming. And I believe it will be a breakout to the upside because of the larger macro picture that we continually talk about. And we know that liquidity is coming. We know that we're not in a sort of contraction type regime. Excuse me. Have you ever wanted to trade Bitcoin but haven't dared try? With Plus500 Futures, you can trade crypto without the hassle of opening a wallet.

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7:14With over 20 years of experience, Plus500 is your gateway to the markets. Visit us.plus500.com to learn more. Trading in futures involves the risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Not all applicants will qualify. Plus500, it's trading with a plus. And also, I think... Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. I wanted to point out too, briefly, that we've had basically a full sort of sentiment reset in the market based off of this kind of last few weeks in this last crash. We've got the fear and greed index all the way down to 29, which I think is a good sort of basis to build from. You're not going to get a huge sustained rally when the fear and greed index is up around 60.

7:57And so to have it flush all the way down to 29, I think is, again, a good reset we need to sort of kick things off. So I like that as well. Sorry, go ahead. You were speaking about this on Monday as well, talking about, you know, potential of another Trump stimulus check coming. And you know what? We saw what happened the last time we got stimulus checks coming out of the pandemic. We just we witnessed one of the most historic, the most historic crypto bull run in history. Right. So, well, let's maybe maybe some of us are hoping for those tariff checks, if you will. So I guess we'll monitor the situation and see what comes of it.

8:35Chris, I know offline we were also talking about, you mentioned breakouts, and I wanted to kind of start this off before we dive into some specific questions. I want to start this off looking at the SWE versus ETH chart, kind of to just front run the questions that we're going to get about SWE. If you can tell already, it's a community favorite, right? So Raul was on an AMA today with Julian. Definitely recommend you check that out. It's for our pro tier. So if you're not on pro tier, you definitely want to check those out because you get AMAs and ask Raul and Julian questions directly. So Raul noted way back in the beginning of 2024, we saw SWE versus that SWE versus ETH chart.

9:24And we saw SWE losing to ETH, right? You saw that dip coming out. Chris, if you can just draw that line there. Yeah. Absolutely. Right there. Yeah. And you saw the traction that SWE lost against ETH. But look when it hit that bottom, look at just the rocket that it shot up, right? Right there. Now, if you look to where we are today and where kind of suey started losing traction versus eth again pretty similar pattern there so rao pointed out that it's forming an almost identical pattern and uh it looks like we could be we could be uh seeing a breakout soon versus eth uh with suey so just wanted to point that out to everyone that are you know myself and mostly for myself you know uh that that are worried about suey and you know, worried about how it's doing.

10:18I mean, obviously, there's some other concerns that Chris has pointed out in the past with SWE and where they're going. But I just wanted to put this out there so we can see like, hey, you know what, maybe something's right around the corner with SWE. So just throwing that chart out there. Curious to hear everyone else's thoughts. I do see also we have a bullish divergence flag here, which is signaling that momentum is starting to shift back to the upside for SWE. So that's a good sign as well. Awesome. All right, Chris. So I know this is trading the markets, right? And we like to talk about some trends and some trades that we consider taking ourselves, whether that's you or myself or someone from the community, whether we're highlighting a great trade idea that someone had.

11:03So recently, you've been really playing in the AI space, not AI crypto, right? But AI stocks and actual companies, we like to call them the picks and shovels. You've really been playing with them. You've made a watch list on TradingView as well. Can you talk us through some of what you're seeing there? What particular AI plays that are really catching your eye right now? So, yeah, there's quite a few. And to kind of elaborate on what you're saying, Most of the AI plays I'm focused on are not the big, the big Mag 7, the big, you know, your metas and your Googles and your Microsofts and that kind of thing.

11:40Like they're not going to be, it's sort of, you're too late to the game. I think to invest in those, what I'm focusing on are more of the picks and shovels, more of the having to do with like the data center build out and the, the huge amount of construction that's going to go into that, the amount of power generation that's going to go into that, the amount of semiconductor build out, you know, heating and cooling and things like that for both the buildings and for the compute, you know, all of the stuff that pertains to the building and the operation of a data center, because that's what's going to power the AI revolution.

12:15And so those are the stocks that I've been focusing on, because many, many of these that I have on this watch list, again, have like multi-year backlogs of orders that are just, they can't keep up fast enough. And so we know there's going to be just a steady stream of like higher revenues than they've had potentially ever in some cases, you know, for some of these companies. And so I've been a lot, I've been focused a lot lately on specifically looking at like the semiconductor stuff. We know Nvidia, we know they've been around obviously a long time. We know their stock is sky high and has been running forever, but there are some, some kind of newer, not newer entrance into the space, but maybe some beta plays, if you will, some other semiconductor companies that will also play a role in this.

12:58One of them is Micron. There are a couple of other semiconductors like Samsung, for example, and HK Hynix. These are companies that make high bandwidth, high speed RAM memory for computers and also like solid state storage drives for computers and stuff like that. The things that will actually power the servers that run in these data centers. Micron is a US-based company. I'm not going to call out Samsung and some of these other ones because they trade on like Korean stock exchanges. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just that they're maybe less accessible to a broader base of this audience.

13:32So Micron is one that has caught my attention because it has a strong order book in terms of like their backlog. They're going to be cranking out stuff for a long time and their stock is continuing to do really well. It's also a little bit high at the moment. Like obviously it would have been much better to get in down here at around 60. but I do think that it's not overpriced even at 194. Another one is AMD, which has been a longtime competitor to NVIDIA. And they just signed a big deal with OpenAI, like a stock sharing, actually, like an equity deal even with OpenAI to help power a lot of what they're doing too.

14:09And so that's where you see this big jump right here. That was basically off the back of this deal with OpenAI. But again, even still, I don't think the stock is overpriced. I think we're barely just getting started with this. I think that the idea that we're in some kind of an AI bubble is not really true. Like, just go and watch Jordy Visser, you know, at all, and you'll kind of immediately realize we're nowhere close to a bubble with any of this stuff. Not for probably a good year or more, you know. And so a lot of these stocks will continue to run. Then there's energy companies in here that I've been focused on, too.

14:40Another one that's been, this chart that has caught my attention to was EOS Energy Enterprises. is again, a little overheated. Some of these are a little overheated and they're going to be because they're getting a little bit of speculative bids along with their actual fundamentals. But it's kind of like crypto. It's a scenario where you're just going to kind of have to jump on. You know, there's, you know, it's a big rally. You know, the price is high. You know, the stock is overbought, but it's not going to dip that much and it's just going to keep running. And that applies to nearly all of these really, especially some of the lower market cap ones.

15:13So, I mean, I could spend the whole show talking about this list, but those are a handful that have caught my attention that I've been paying attention to recently. I actually did buy some Micron a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, so again, just dig into AI stocks. Like if you're heavy into alts and you're waiting for this big alt season to come along, I think you're going to be left holding the bag to some degree because I firmly believe at this point that AI stocks are capturing a lot of the mind share and frankly, a lot of the money that's going that would have otherwise gone into AI crypto or just alts in general in the crypto space.

15:49because some of these AI stocks, I mean, I have done crazy multiples. You know, I mean, this one was, look at this one here, just earlier in July. Like this is a stock, mind you. And it's up, you know, 23X or whatever since July. Like that's total meme coin type price action, you know? So like, this is, again, this is where the attention is going. And I think that the game is changing a little bit. And if you're a crypto native and you haven't dipped your toes in this water, you're going to, I think you're going to be doing yourself a disservice to staunchly sit there in your alt coins and hope that they're going to, you know, be this massive alt rally at some point that's going to kind of, you know, erase all your losses and everything.

16:33I think you need to kind of open your mind and dig into what's going on in this AI build out because this has captured a lot of attention and a lot of mindshare. Now there will be some alts, of course, that will continue to do well, but I think that number is shrinking by the day, honestly. And unless like, you know it's going to be the alts that do well are the ones that make a lot of money or that sort of accrue value value back to the token whether it's through buybacks or token burns and and sort of lower the supply and are deflationary so hence the token value will increase or if it needs to have some very very sort of special memetic narrative that's that's driving it that you think is makes it unique amongst everything else but um just throwing a bunch of money at a bunch of random alts isn't to play anymore, honestly.

17:18And yeah, I really see that's where things are going right now. You know, if you've ever wished you could ask me a question, any question, 24-7, well, now you can. The Raoul Pal bot is my AI assistant trained on all of my insights, macro research, macro views, even wine and travel knowledge. The Raoul 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. And unlike, you know, the meme coin space, and I guess even the AI agents space by extension, utility actually matters in this space.

18:04And what companies are actually building, it means a lot and plays towards the speculation. Whereas in meme coins, it's like utility does not necessarily mean price action as we've often talked about. So that's another interesting aspect of this. Makes it a little bit easier to predict, but again, this is so new. So keep an eye, make sure you always do your research. Chris, speaking of deflationary coins, coins that are doing buybacks and generating revenue, we had a question come in. actually yesterday before we started this show. KP would like to know and hear your view on hype and how it's doing currently.

18:46Yeah, let's take a look at hype. It's had a bit of a wobble, but I mean, so too has everything. Though just looking at my watch list here, most of it is in the red we can see, but hype actually is in the green today, which is a good sign. So yeah, hype, what I do like about hype is this volume profile more than anything. And this is telling me that like, there's still a ton of attention on hype. Yes, it's been a little bit negative attention in terms of price action lately, but this is a weekly timeframe and it's just continuing to go up and up and up. And so hype, I think will continue to be the premier decentralized perp exchange.

19:25I think that really the attention has already faded in terms of like Aster and what is it, Avantis and some of those other competitors that came on and sort of made the big splash last month and took a lot of that attention away from hype. Well, just real quick, here's Aster, basically, and here's Avantis, you know? So, like, we can tell that, like, that was very, very short-lived. It was all just speculative hype in the beginning, likely driven by promotion and KOLs and things like that, and it immediately just dropped, you know? Meanwhile, hype, again, hype is down a little bit, but it's more of a gentle rollover, and it's generally holding well.

20:07It's holding up well. And so I don't think hype's going anywhere. I think that it's, and I've said this all along, it is by far the superior product compared to those competitors that came out. And really what we're seeing right now is just a reflection of the broader market being down across the board. I don't think that this is specific to hype at all. And I continue to think hype is going to be one of the better plays going forward. Well said there. All right. some optimism for hype on on the horizon here so next question comes from uh jean christophe in the discord as well question for uh the live show what's your view on nobody recent nobody's recent price action has it lost momentum would you still hold or would you rotate out of it and if so what token would you recommend for someone looking for a similar potentially explosive high beta play?

21:03Yes, it has rolled over. I mean, objectively, there's kind of no two ways about it. Let me kind of kick on some of these indicators here. So yeah, it's lost all of its major moving averages. It isn't a downtrend. It's trying to kind of fight back. But the one that really has my attention is useless. And useless is just kind of laughing in the face of the rest of the market. I mean, it's one of the, like I had this, let me kind of turn this other indicator on for a second. I had this alligator thing on that I was looking at earlier. And useless was, I think, the only chart in my entire watch list here that had these moving averages in the correct order, sort of green, red, blue.

21:44This is what you want to see. This is a sure sign of strength. Literally no other asset looked like this. And so hype, I'm sorry, useless looks really strong. Also, again, strong volume. it's funny because it's just a goofy meme. I mean, literally they say this coin is stupid. It's useless. It's nothing. It's not anything, you know, which I kind of love because it makes it hard to fud something like that. You know, like we're already telling you this is the stupidest thing ever, but you're going to keep buying it anyway, you know? So like, it's kind of funny. And again, it's holding up well. Clearly it's got the attention.

22:22It's sort of maybe has taken even some of that attention away from nobody. I don't know what the market cap difference is between the two. I'm sorry. And that does play a role somewhat in the decision. But regardless of that, useless seems to be, I mean, it'll factor into maybe its potential upside. But in terms of what's got the bid right now, definitely in the meme space, useless over nobody for sure. There you have it. And Chris, what do you say to people that are maybe, so I'm just going to use nobody and useless as an example, just because they're so fresh in our mind. But what do you say to somebody who maybe bought nobody and maybe they're down on it right now?

23:01You know, it doesn't really matter how much they're down on it. Hopefully not too much, but let's say they are down on it right now. There is a lot of people that think, let me hold until I'm at least at break even before rotating, as opposed to maybe just rotating into something that's performing so well, like useless and making up what they lost following the trend is your friend theory there. What do you say to, what do you say to that? And kind of to those people that have that, that type of mentality? I mean, it's tricky because I, it's like, on the one hand, I say, don't go chasing everything, you know, whatever, whatever ran this week is likely to not run next week.

23:41And, you know, but at the same time, there's, there's two sides of that coin. You know, the other side is obviously you don't want to, you don't want to follow everything and ride it all the way back down and round trip something either, you know? And so, and it's not always the easiest decision. You kind of have to look at a chart and look at the structure and maybe give yourself like a, you know, get out level, like a supportive last resort type level. And so just, I'm kind of looking at this chart here and I see a level here where we've had a fair bit of sideways price action. We had a close here that I'm looking at as kind of the last dip at it.

24:17You know, a lot of activity here and here too. And so I would say right now I'm looking at this, whatever, 036 level as a pretty important support level. And I feel like, you know, if it does lose that, you're starting to play with fire. I feel like at that point a little bit. And so it's like, there's a lot of ways you can answer this question. One, you want to look at the, like, whatever chart you're holding in isolation and sort of figure out what do I need to do here with this asset? And then And of course, you want to look at the other asset that you're considering and say, what is its potential?

24:53What's driving it? And what's going on over there that isn't going on with my asset? And it's even trickier with memes because really, it all comes down to attention. It's not even like there's some kind of fundamental basis that you can formulate an investment thesis around or anything like that. So it's like you really do have to be nimble with memes and you do have to kind of just follow the attention. and I don't necessarily adhere to the idea of just writing memes down, waiting for the big bounce and coming back up. And so, but also because of this, I also don't put a ton of money into memes necessarily.

25:30I don't go into memes with like a 30, 40 % allocation for this very reason, because that way I don't have to worry about if it goes down lower than I want it to. I can kind of be nimble with it and still sleep at night. So if you have responsible position sizing with memes, it gives you some more flexibility. And long story short, I would say if nobody loses this level right here, this 036 or, you know, a little bit lower, look to get into useless. but also know that useless could turn on a dime too. Like, yes, it's got the attention right now. Yes, it's had it for a good minute, but, you know, it also went down quite a bit from like July to September too, you know?

26:13So it's not like it's immune to downside price action. So yeah, do with that what you will. Well said, very well said. And that's why it's important to, you know, follow these, follow our show, you know, follow, follow your charts. Cause I think the key indicator, kind of like you said, when we were first looking at nobody's, if it's losing, if it's rolling over on it's, you know, moving averages and it's losing those key support levels. I think that's right there. That's a great indicator for you to get out as well. All right, guys, that is going to do it for us today on trading the markets. But Chris, I want to throw it to you for anything that we should look for going into this weekend.