Ep. 32: Tony Greer – Founder of TG Macro & Longtime Wall Street Trader

Tony: We've got this AI thing here that's not going to go away. It's going to change, you know, how everything operates. And what's the next thing? What's the next tech thing? Biometrics, chip in the wrist, things like that. And it is my belief that humanity is going to dramatically reject it.

Intro: Welcome to Yallstream. Today, I speak with Tony Greer, the founder of TG Macro. 100% legit. So Chris, you want a cup of coffee? I just want to be the best.

Tarek: Tony, Evan, you want a cup of coffee?

Tony: I'd love one.

Tarek: Look, I got you this anchor for the navigator.

Tony: How did you know? I'm a nautical fan like this. Thank you so much. I have an anchor tattoo on my arm.

Tarek: There we go.

Tony: I'm a fan of the anchor. Thank you very much, Tarek.

Tarek: So we're here in Nashville at your inaugural TG Macro conference with just an all-star lineup of speakers. Tell me how this came about.

Tony: How did it come about? Well, it started off. I was about to have one, a local conference and just try to do a small scale thing, a 2019, uh, what year was COVID, the shutdown?

Tarek: 2020?

Tony: 20. Okay. So, sorry, I missed it by the year, but it was supposed to be 2020 and COVID wiped it out, but I was going to do a small scale in my hometown. There's a great hotel on the water. And I was like, all right, I'm just going to throw it here. I got Shannon to come out. Here's the organization. This'll happen if we get 50, 60 people, whatever. I just want to do a gathering and start it. COVID blew us out of the water. And then I was like, I come to the Nashville, I come to Nashville quite often. And my manager Mohit is like, we get, we, we got to rekindle this conference thing, you know, and I'm very busy just trading markets. What, you know, writing newsletters and doing the whole thing. And I was like, you know what? You're right. We let, let's get back on this. And it's perfect for the 10 year anniversary of my firm. Like I founded it in 2016. So this is 10 year anniversary and the beginning of like the next leg of, I want to be able to do 10 of these in a row. Cause I truly believe what Elon Musk says about live events being like actual luxury items. My whole life, I've been a road trip, concert, sport event, aficionado, pursuer, you know? So I was like, yeah, let's, let's put it on the tape. And I literally jotted down. I was like, all right, who would I have speak at this? Boom. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people. I'm like, all right, let's start at the top and start making phone calls. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And when I got six people say yes, I was like, oh my God, we have to do this like right now. So we had June Bird, Brent Johnson, Jared Dillion, John Johnson, Grant Williams, and Cuppy and Cuppy. I mean, just solid. They were so great. And the thing that was cool was that they presented different views, right? That was different, totally accountable views. Some of them totally in the opposite direction, but which is great. Yeah. It's great for conversation and analysis. Yeah. It gives people something to lean on either way. Right. You know, you like to be able to understand why you think somebody's wrong if you're the other side. And if you can't figure out why, then you challenge your own idea, you know? So that was great. And just the general, the powerhouse of those six different angles really tweaked people's brains because the feedback that I got last night was like, dude, that was an unbelievable roster. Like, Holy smokes. It reminds me so much. We were talking last night about John Maldon's SIC conference. He used to put that on every year and there were like seven, 800 people there. The lineup was phenomenal and they stopped doing it during COVID and made it remote. And I feel like there's been a real gap in these type of conferences. So I'm hoping that this TG Macro conference becomes like the SIC conference. That's what we're trying to do. There's a lot of demand for it. And I was actually pretty shocked with the turnout here today. I was thinking, you know, maybe there would be a hundred people at the conference, packed house, coming from all over the country. So congratulations. The world.

Tarek: All over the world. There you go.

Tony: I was saying hi to a group of four guys having lunch out there. One is from the UK, one's from South Africa and the other is from the Netherlands. And I'm like, you guys came just for this. And they're like, how could we miss this? It's fantastic. Yeah. I'm just blown away. You know, it's why Nashville is a good spot to do it. People, people don't hesitate to come here. And, uh, it's fun as hell for, so when we're done, we can go out and listen to some music. That's what we were saying last night.

Tarek: I hadn't been in Nashville in maybe 20 years and we were walking, we were walking down the street. I'm like, this place is amazing.

Tony: It's amazing. It's such a bull market city. It literally feels like New York in 1992 when I moved in there, you know, like it is booming everywhere. I've been coming here for seven years and there was nothing on this block downtown. And now Amazon has their headquarters built there taking up the whole entire block in a skyscraper.

Tarek: Yeah.

Tony: It's that kind of progress.

Tarek: And the, the AT&T building looks like Mordor, right?

Tony: The old, uh, the old castle.

Tarek: Right.

Tony: That's so funny, man.

Tarek: Speaking of navigation, let's, um, let's kind of navigate through your history. How did we get to this point? So you're from long Island, New York. Uh, just kind of take us through your journey to, to really 10 years ago when you launched this.

Tony: Sure. All right. So, I mean, you know where I have to start at the dinner table when I was a kid, my dad has been a wall. My dad was a wall street trader. He traded over the counter stocks for 30 years at Dean Witter Reynolds and was a managing director for Morgan Stanley when he retired after Dean Witter bought them. So I had bids and offers in my blood. I remember the day my dad got assigned Microsoft new IPO on his pad. You know what I mean? So these were conversations that we were having at the dinner table in junior high school, high school.

Tarek: And what was he saying to you? Give me, give me an example of those conversations making and losing money very quickly.

Tony: Either way, some days good, some days bad. But what I loved about it, what is that? It was a competition. It was, you know, that I picked up. And what I also picked up was that he came home from work every day after a one hour commute with the biggest smile on his face that you've ever seen.

Evan: Could you tell when he had a good or a bad day or?

Tony: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could, he was, you know, the thing was that, uh, good days were exciting and bad days. Part of the job, you know, it was like shrug it off. You got to come back and report the next day. But what my dad had going for him was that he wasn't a, uh, he was a street smart kid and not like a properly educated kid. You know what I mean? He only had a, um, he only had a, uh, what a two year degree. What, what is it called again? A, uh, associate. So that's it. So he didn't go to like a formal college and wound up getting a job, getting hired on wall street as from it being a, uh, parking cars. That's literally how it starts. So I didn't mean to spend too much time on that, but that's where my DNA is. So to make the longer story a little bit shorter, I started at Sumitomo bank at a college and the world trade center in the North tower of the world trade center, which was cool as an FX trader with Bruce Willis. Yeah, right. I cut my teeth there. Um, learned a lot about the markets, got a great opportunity at UBS to go over and trade spot FX and went over and did that. I was doing a good job for them. They sent me to Zurich to their treasury department to trade precious metals. And that was where my first exposure to that was from there. I got poached to Goldman Sachs. I was doing a lot of business with them. I got to know traders there had guys were like, you know, you should come here and work with us. We'll find a spot for you on the desk. And I wound up on the commodities desk there had a great six year run. I was investing in tech stocks before the.com boom bubble burst.

Tarek: So let's pause there just for a quick second, because, um, you mentioned that your dad was trading equities. Had he presented you with any exposure to commodities at all? Or was this pretty new for you?

Tony: For me, I was like, I want to be a trader. Like he's a trader. I get that. He's competitive. It's lucrative. You know, he went from making no money to making money as a trade. Once he got into wall street and things like that. So I was attracted to that. I knew that it put me through college, you know, and I was like, this seems like a good way for me to make a living. And he was very much, you know, he was very much like, look, we got to get you a job on a trading desk. You know, I really don't want you working in a back office. I really don't want you doing, you know, middle office work. You know, you will find somebody that needs a coffee guy on the, on the trading desk though. So that's what I did. And I went through headhunters and this and that, and I finally got Sumitomo to hire me. And it was a great spot to work. It was great first job out. They gave you a lot of responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. I worked for a great mentor. Guy named John Spallanzani who now works for Lynch.

Evan: Who Merrill Lynch?

Tony: No, no, no. Lynch. The, the, the renowned investor. Yeah. Yeah. He works like for his, yeah. He works for his group. So I learned a lot from him about the beginning, the basis. It's great market to learn because you learn the basics of the money markets of funding things, you know, of the cost of carry of things and you learn interest rates and you learn how interest rates morph out the calendar and that there's interest rate swaps that go on. So you kind of learn a lot about the backbones of the business kind of thing.

Tarek: Do I remember correctly? Did you also go to Switzerland during this time?

Tony: Yeah, I went to the UBS Zurich. I worked in the head office for six months there.

Tarek: And how old were you when you did that?

Tony: 27.

Tarek: What was that experience like for you?

Tony: It was amazing. You know, I was really, uh, I always wanted, you know, I had two of my best friends, one of them moved to Paris to work for Turner Broadcasting. And I was like, man, what a good hookup that is. You know, he just went to Paris and spent time over there. And then literally it was probably less than a year later that my manager was like, would you consider working, spending some time in the Zurich office? You're doing a great job here. We trust you. You know, we're going to promote you to vice president and go over there and we need help on the metals desk. And I was like, are you kidding me? I was like, I'll leave in an hour. So we went over there and spent six months and had, it was just an amazing experience. It's cool to be in the middle time zone trading right with Tokyo in front of you and New York behind you, you know, you get, you get to see, you know, both markets and who's, who's a buyer or seller in Tokyo and who's a buyer or seller in New York, you know, and you kind of pick that up and figure out this times that you can play them off of each other and make money. Um, so that was a cool perspective. And then it was back to New York living in Greenwich village, working at 85 broad street for six years with my head down at Coleman sacks. And you don't have time to do much else when you're there. I met my wife there.

Evan: How'd you have time to meet your wife?

Tony: She worked at Goldman Sachs. She worked at Goldman Sachs as an accountant. And, uh, which is like, uh, in the basically where trading desk accountants, you know what I mean? That go over your P and L. And so that's how I met her. She got assigned to our P and L. We became friends.

Tarek: And you did really well at Goldman Sachs investing in tech stocks. And this is, this is a break in the journey, right?

Tony: Yeah. Well, so I, you know, I was on the commodity desk, but I'm a huge music fan, right? And this is around the time when you could first go on Amazon and order, uh, you know, the almonds, the almonds at the Fillmore, and they would send the CD to your house. And I'm literally going to the guys on the trading desk. I'm like, are you guys doing this? Like, I just got like six, sick records. And I just downloaded them onto my thing. I'm listening to. So it's like, what companies do I buy? You know? And so I invested in, you know, in, in Amazon and in a couple of other companies and, and had a great run. And that's kind of what gave me the confidence to leave Goldman Sachs when they went public. Cause for me, it was kind of always about freedom. I knew that I was pretty much owned by them for 24 hours a day. You know what I mean? And that gets uncomfortable sometimes. And it was uncomfortable for me, you know, and I knew that I, yeah, I enjoyed the money. I enjoyed the trading job and things like that, but I didn't, I never felt like it was my final destination. You know, I never felt like this was a place I'm going to be forever. And so when I got the opportunity, I went out on my own and walked into a frying pan in the face, sat down in March of 2000 with the NASDAQ at 5k about to get halved. And then commodities went on a 10 year super cycle after I left. But it was, it was the idea that I was going to go trade these stocks that I was investing in, and it was going to be NASDAQ 20k. And I was going to retire in three years. You know what I mean? And once you start doing that extrapolation, you really lose sight of things. And that's why I call it kind of walking into a professional frying pan.

Tarek: I'm interested if you could go into the details a little bit about when you say I had the opportunity to kind of go out on my own. So you had the financial resources to do it.

Tony: That was it.

Tarek: And what were, what did the steps of that process look like for you?

Tony: So, you know, it was, it was after Goldman Sachs went public, my wife and I were both there for that. And so we got to kind of got handed a safety net, right? Like a, a, something that we earned when they went public. So on top of that and having several good years investing in tech stocks because of my love for music. And I just looked at this pile and I was like, all right, I'm good for a little bit. And I can just figure out what else I want to do. And there was, that's when there was nothing. Day trading was a huge craze, right? Like there were day traders coming in from everywhere. There were all these platforms being built so that you could, they could house day traders. And we had, I started off with, I put in money myself. We had two investors that were professionals on wall street that wanted exposure to this day trading game. And when I said that I was willing to, you know, dive right into that and we could start a company and I'll borrow you some of your capital and we'll hire some other traders. They were all about that. They were into it. And we started a group called machine trading. We just kind of made it up. We rented space in a day trader's office and use their pipes to access the markets, paid them commission and kind of figured out a day to day process of how we were going to look at the world. Right. And it was really very much like figuring out how to play a video game back then. And it was wild because the most successful trader in the room was a kid that went to NYU at the time was a student at NYU at the time. And he was also a video game guru, really smart kid named Bob. And he would come in every day off his bicycle, trade the opens in the markets, trade for three, four hours, and then go to NYU to class and then come back and sit down at the trading desk and trade the last two hours of the day or whatever it was. And I sat down there and this kid's, this kid's making like somewhere between five and $25,000 a day day trade out of thin air going home flat. And I'm like, there's some kind of magic to this. You know what I mean? And it was part of it was the bull market, right? Part of it was like, you know, if some of the, you know, if like a stock like SDLI or that's like one of the big names that was back then in the tech bubble. And it's like if SDLI has a $25 range in a day and you can't make 10 points on a couple of hundred shares, you're not paying attention. You know what I mean? Like this is really happening right in front of you. And so you had to get in there and get your hands dirty. But you realize that when you did and took some risk, it was panning out. So that's typical bull market, right? Everybody thinks they're a genius. I thought I was such a genius. I didn't need Goldman Sachs anymore. Right? So there was my lesson on the look back, you know, how long was it between when you stepped out on your own and the bubble burst? I sat down in March of 2000. That was the high of the NASDAQ at 5k and it got halved over the next six months from there. What was that like mentally? It was insane. The tech, the.com bust, it was hairy. It was really freaking hairy.

Evan: Did you feel like you made the wrong decision?

Tony: No, because I was really, I was really high on the freedom. After you worked for Goldman Sachs for six years, which is essentially, you know, you, we used to call it, there were no trading days. The days were only the baskets to report your P and L along the way. What you worked for was the market is open on Sunday night in Tokyo and it closes on Friday afternoon in New York. And you're responsible for everything in between, you know, you're the gold dealer at Goldman Sachs. So anytime anybody has to trade gold, it comes through you. Okay. So the prop guy wants to buy 500 share of 500 lots of gold futures. Okay. You're so you're filled here and I managed the risk out of my book. Now we, you know, now you say, you know, I'm a little bit short here. So you called the sales desk and you said, you want to get some producers to sell me some gold here, please. You know, when they make calls, blah, blah, blah, you want to make a price on 25,000 hours of gold. Okay. You bought them, you know, like just being an inter dealer broker or inter broker dealer, whatever the right word is, I forget. And it was really, I mean, it was a really rewarding experience, but it was full time. It was complicated. It was high risk. It was constant. You know, it would be like, I would go out to like, I would, my mom and dad would come into the city for dinner and take me out to dinner. And somebody would call me and I'd be like, Oh, gotta go, gotta go home. Like leave. You know what I mean? Like, you know, Lloyd Blankfein is about to trade, I don't know, half a million ounces of gold. So I have to be sitting at home on my phone and my pad next to me, you know? And so that was really hard. And I was, so the freedom that you feel when you relieve yourself of that is like, Oh my God.

Tarek: It's interesting because when you look back on that time, this is not a time when everybody had wifi in their house. You know, at home you had dial up. So you actually physically had to go back home. You weren't working from home placing trades.

Tony: No, no. It was like, you know, I had, I went back home, like not even to trade on a computer, but just to go back home and concentrate, I would get my yellow legal pad out. I would take orders from guys at the shop just to see what they needed to do net net. And so I had an order now, like these guys are buyers. So I have to buy whatever six, 700, they would always talk in futures contracts though you convert it. Okay. So I need to buy 600,000 ounces of gold tonight, get on the phone with Tokyo. Hey, make me a price on this, you know, and kind of Bob your way around, get a fill, call them up, say you're done here. Then they'd hand you a stop loss, right? And then you'd say, Oh, what if I got to get these guys out? And the thing that you learn about that that's really cool to wreck is that you learn how to be, you learn how to provide liquidity, right? So the kind of thing is like when you're the dealer at Goldman Sachs, you can't have a big position on your own. You have to be able to will, you have to be willing to go at any moment from super long to super short. So everything is just kind of like you staying alive, you know, when you're in that middle of the day swings and things.

Tarek: So, so a lot of stress associated with it as well.

Tony: Oh yeah. A lot of stress.

Tarek: So you're, you're out on your own, you get hit in the face with that frying pan. It's not working out and it's your first entrepreneurial venture. And most entrepreneurs, their first venture, you know, is a learning experience. So where did you go from there?

Tony: So then I went to the sell side and equities. I went down to the floor of the stock exchange. Well, first I worked at a place called Burlington capital for a cup of coffee. Cause it was a Cornell graduate. And the guy was like, look, you want to sit here and use my phone. We'll pay you to draw whatever you get. You know, if you get some orders in great. And so I had my phone, a turret and no customers to start off. And I dug into my real, my Rolodex and I'm like, okay, who's where, who's doing what? And found some guys that could trade stocks with me.

Tarek: Now, did you actually have a Rolodex like a physical Rolodex? I did have a physical.

Evan: What is a Rolodex?

Tony: Yeah, right. Exactly. What is a Rolodex? But it was, um, the cool part was digging into my Cornell network and finding people on the street that could pay me, you know, so I'd find a buddy of mine works at sack and he's an execution guy. So he and I are now about to become best friends. And I have another friend that said a big mutual fund in California. And now he and I become best friends. And all of a sudden he lobs a million, you know, a million share order over the system. And I'm like, you know, so, cause I say that, I guess I skipped them. You know, you're, you're kind of, you're, you're fighting for scraps from these guys at the start and you're getting orders for 5,000 shares to get started and 25,000 and getting a three cent commission and you get a share of that. And you're like, man, I got to do a lot of this to make a living. And then all of a sudden you make some connections and some guys trust you and some guys with real flow trust you. And that's why I say, and then all of a sudden the million share order comes over. What that is is a guy saying, I trust you. I have a lot of to do, do a good job for this, for me, buy me a million shares of this. Right. And so there's pressure there too. You know what I mean? Because it was always like, okay, we bought 200,000. It's getting away from you, you know? And then you're all of a sudden you're in a fight with a guy cause he wants to know, why is it getting away from me? You telling everybody I'm a buyer with, what do you do? Cancel the order. You know, and you, you know, you have this back and forth with one of your good friends. But he's like, dude, you can't, you can't mess with me. You know what I mean? And things like that would happen. So you're like, I'm not messing with you, dude. The S and P is rallying. I just can't buy all this stuff. So yeah, that's a battle. You know, that's a battle, but it's a fun job. That's the, that's institutional sales trading.

Tarek: And so you started building up a book.

Tony: Yeah. Build up a book. More guys, more guys here. Figure out, learn that he's out there. Go out to dinner with these guys. Oh, you can pay me too. You have a hedge fund, things like that. So it was literally my premise was always like, look, if I can help you make money, will you pay me? And my way of helping them make money was providing my level of analyst analysis on the markets and then providing them all the real time color that you can.

Tarek: At this point, are you still at Burlington or do you split out?

Tony: So I got hired to the floor of the stock exchange to work for a direct access broker, which was a friend of my old boss at Goldman Sachs. Quite honestly, it was like, all right, go, you know, you can probably get a spot down there if you want. So I started with them. And that's where I really built up a significant book. Like the New York stock exchange is cool. Certain guys need floor brokers. You know, they need it for the information. They need it to trade listed stocks. You got to have guys down there. You know, it's not the NASDAQ that's just going in the wood chipper. So you had to have a contact. And so being a rep from the floor, it was kind of like being a Cadillac salesman, you know, you're like, Hey, I'm down here. If you need to do business in a professional way on the stock exchange, we're direct access brokers and we'll take good care of you, you know, and you, the people trust you and you get some more orders and you build businesses and you make clients and lose clients when, you know, for different reasons. But yeah, the book built and eventually Turek I built a book. We had four, a total of me plus three other sales traders, and we could do anywhere between 10 and $15 million in commission business in a year.

Tarek: Wow.

Tony: Yeah.

Tarek: Incredible.

Tony: From zero.

Evan: Was those, those hours, were they easier or slower than it was Bell to Bell?

Tony: It was Bell to Bell, which was cool. Well, you know, it was kind of the thing where you say, you know, Bell to Bell is my job and going out at night is my career. Yeah.

Evan: You know, making a relationship. Yeah.

Tony: Yeah. Cause that's really important. And I mean, you know, any, any bank trader job on the street, you have a lot of relationships with people out there that you need to have good relationships with because you need help.

Tarek: And that dovetails well with what you enjoy too, because you're saying you like going to concerts and going out, that kind of thing.

Tony: Yeah. So you had to say, all right, I'm going to become an institutional equity broker. And so then everything changed, man. You know, then as electronics crept in, things got more competitive. You know, I took my book and went to a couple of different shops. You know, I was at the four of us that I mentioned in my group were at Dolman Rose for a good run, like five years. And I would still be there doing that job today if I could. It was a total shark tank of type a traders, men and women, but great salesmen that could get orders on the desk. We were busy all day long. You know what I mean? And like, you know, you go out at night after that and people would be like dead day today, huh? And you'd be like, yeah, dead. Nine million shares of stock today on our desk. Sorry, buddy. You know what I mean? So that's when you realize you're like, Hey, we're making an impact, right? Like let's keep, let's keep this ball rolling. We had, I had super, super resourceful people working with me. I had a great assistant plus two other sales traders. And as a group, we had a lot of relationships and got a lot of big business on the desk. So it was, it was flourishing. And then, like I said, as what happened with that job was Cowan bought Dolman Rose and Cowan hired all the bankers and analysts and told all of the sales traders that were making seven figures, Hey, we'll give you guys a hundred grand salary plus bonus. And all of the sales traders went, yeah, okay. See ya. Right. So now all of the good sales traders went to all different shops all over the street. So that's when I started what I call the agonizing pickup basketball phase of my career, where I had these precious relationships of some of the biggest commission paying accounts on wall street. And I'd go and take a job at a Canadian bank and say, Hey, I think I can do X, Y, Z million dollars of business. If you pay me this commission, I can do that here. And I do what I expected to do plus 20%. And at the end of the year they would say, okay, but for next year we're going to cut your payout down. So you're going to make a little bit less cause you'd find doing more Mike and more money. We just, we need a little more margin for the firm. And I'd be like, I was about to ask for a raise. I said, I was, I could do what $2 million, $3 million in business. When I came in here, I just did four and a half and you're going to tell me that I'd get less of that. What are you talking about? You know what I mean? It would just inevitably become a, well, we're cutting your payout. And I'd be like, you don't understand. I'm not going to come to work. The, the business will not go on your desk. It comes with me. They trade with me. They don't trade with your shop. And so three years in a row, I went to three different shops. And at the end of it, at the third one, when I decided that I was not going to leave this place and go to another one, I like pulled my closest mentors in the business together. And I was like, look, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going to try to go out on my own. I'm going to make the note that I write to people in the morning, my product, what was cool about that was that as a sales trader, you need like a calling card. And I was pretty good at writing a morning note. Hey, this is just like a play by play. This is what I see. This is what went on in Europe. These, these things are doing this. Technically I see this and this happening.

Tarek: And this is around 2015, 2016.

Tony: This was in the no early two thousands. This is probably after the, this is probably Oh five to 15. Okay. Right, right. Before that, that, that whole run that I just described there is probably Oh five to 15 from the time I folded up the day trading company and moved on to institution.

Tarek: But the time that you decided to kind of go out on your own was around 2015, 2016. Yeah.

Tony: With the newsletter. Yeah. And that was because I had, you know, as a sales trader, you're writing this newsletter and all the other sales traders on the desk are like, Hey, if you want on Tony's note, he writes a really good note, you know, and we'll put you on the distribution of it and you'll get it every morning. And so everybody was like, Oh yeah, put me on that. Put me on that. And just organically, I never advertised it at all. Just from people asking me, I had the last email blast list I had had 1216 people on the note. Okay. So it was going to a huge audience, all professionals on wall street. And I went to my closest mentors, the guys that I've been looking for guidance from for years. And I was like, look, I think I can go out on my own. Jared Dillian just did this and he just started a newsletter in 2008 and it's going well for him. And I think that I can do that. And they were like, dude, you, you, you can do this. Like you know how to do this. Then one of the smartest guys was like, just start doing it. Just start doing it. You'll see how much better you get at this. You know, you need practice at that. That's a different thing. You're going to start your business. It's going to become its own baby and you're going to get better at it. And now I wake up in the morning and the newsletters write themselves.

Tarek: So that transition you're, I mean, how long did it take for you to get your base subscriber base set up? So cause you're going out and you're like, okay, now I have no income.

Tony: Right, right. Exactly. You have no income. So what can, what am I going to do? I'm going to go out to my base and I'm going to say, look, I'm about to start a newsletter. I'm building the, the signup pipes back here. I decided to charge $480 for the first reiteration of the newsletter annually. Yeah. Cause I remember Jared Dillian at the time was charging 600 and I was like, all right, I'm not as good as him. So I have to be cheaper. Um, I don't have any credibility whatsoever. So I got to have guys that are just willing to say, okay, we'll buy this. And so I started off with like 60 clients at $480. I had like $30,000 or 50, whatever it is, $40,000 of revenue. And just figured out how to start marketing it. And then I was saved quite honestly by Doomberg. We were, we overlapped at a conference that we went to. It was in the his professional iteration before Doomberg. Okay. Right. And I have a client that was like, Hey, you should meet this guy. You know, he's a, he's a really smart businessman. He's kind of getting into the markets a little bit. He's looking at Tesla. He's this and that, but just talk to him about your business. I told him that you write a really good note and have a good budding business. So I did a conference call the first time I met Doomberg and I told him everything about my business and what I was doing. And he was like, okay, you're doing this all wrong. You're totally backwards here. This is, this is totally, this website here, garbage. You're doing this completely wrong. What we're going to do is we're going to hire, we're going to point you to this developer. We're going to build you a website. We're going to more transactional, this and that, and it's going to help you. Believe me, right? Sure enough, I did that. And it moved the needle. Like people were like, Oh, okay. I understand what he does. Here's the proposition. This is how I pay. Smooth as silk. Okay, cool. We'll give it a shot. You know? So that was what, that's how I got on the map and he helped develop it. And then I guess quite honestly, from being on Real Vision.

Tarek: That's the first time I saw you. Yeah.

Tony: Yeah. That was, so I wrote, it was pretty cool how I got on that. I wrote a note about Real Vision in my, in my note. I was like, so this is cheap. There's a financial television service out there called Real Vision. I think it's pretty cool because they're democratizing financial information and analysis. And it's kind of the way I'm thinking, you know, like I'm, I just left this old model, the old sales trading model where you have this huge research department that you pay huge salaries and you have these sales traders that you pay nothing, but they survive because they're killers working on commission and the sales traders sell the research to the execution traders and their portfolio managers and try to get paid from them. And I was seeing some of the things that were going on in that market and saying, this is, this is horrible. This is not going to last. They're going to get these people killed and it's just not going to last. There's this room for people to do things better and give better guidance. And that was that, that, that helped me have a have a kind of an attitude and an angle every day on writing. And then from making some good calls on real vision, you know, you just start to build up the book and people are like, Oh, he was right.

Tarek: They find you on Real Vision and then you're on Twitter. So in the thin twit community starts kind of lifting you up a little.

Tony: Yeah, for sure.

Tarek: And you fast forward to today and you had a graphic up on, on the board where you have now subscribers in 40 different countries, 40 countries, all over the United States. Thousands of people are following you. Now you're running your own conference. Yes, it's, it's a phenomenal journey.

Tony: Thank you, Tarek. I'm really blessed to have it. And it's all, it's a testament to the, I think to the people that I've had around me that have believed in me and given me the confidence to do new things and try different things with my newsletter and be, get better at it. You know, JJ is was another guy that like from the beginning, you know, I learned so much from and was stewarding me on my writing. Cause I like work, when you went, you know, as a trader, you, you need, you want consistency from any, from whatever, whatever source you're using, you want consistency, you know, and you want the same packaging every day, right? You want to read somebody's thoughts in the same form and be like, okay, I'm getting to know this guy and how he thinks. And so when you can become that for somebody and become a voice in the quiver of voices that they listen to, you don't realize how much value you're adding. You know what I mean? And you don't realize it until they tell you, you know, and that's when you get confidence to be like, Oh, okay, we're doing this right here. Okay. I got to write more about this. I got to take the political out of my writing cause nobody likes that. And they cancel when I talk about when I cancel and they talk about what a jerk this is or whatever it is, you know what I mean? But then when you, you know, now that my business has grown, I've lost that urge to be a political live wire, right? And my business has grown and I've learned that like, no dude, that's bad for business. So keep it out of the business. And then you see the business grow and you're like, Oh, that's really a good idea. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Tarek: And I want to get into your process a little bit, so that people listening can kind of understand what type of material you're providing when you're providing it and how it helps the people that sign up for the newsletter. Before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about people who are listening that want to get into understanding and learning about trading markets and how difficult that process is. And I want to talk about it a little bit from my own journey because my, my degree is in electrical engineering. I grew up poor. I never had a financial background at all. And now I'm in a metals business and the learning curve was really steep. And so the fastest way to close the gap on a learning curve was to sign up for newsletters because you're hearing from the best and the brightest in the business, not only what they think, but why they think it and how they arrive at those conclusions. And then you start adopting and absorbing a lot of that thinking and applying it to your own personal trading. So I'm a big advocate for newsletters. We sign up for a lot of research at the company, including yours. And I'd like you to kind of get into your process and how you send out that information.

Tony: Yeah. So I, you know, I start off, you know, from a, from a trading perspective, I'd start off from the position of I watch the year to date sector race like my life depends on it. Right. So I watch what sectors are performing because my goal is to get my subscribers and clients into those sectors to be in the winners at the end of the year. And then we'll decide what we want to do for next year. So for example, last year, gold miners were up 150%. We bought them along the way on a, on a whatever dip it was that I got us into the trade on. And we've been managing the risk ever since. So that contributes to what I do where I run what I call a view matrix of directional percentage point trading, right? I don't manage a portfolio because I don't size trades for people. I just say, buy this. If it goes up 10%, that's plus 10%, 10 points. So now I've got literally a living portfolio in my view matrix of trades that I've gotten into and are either making or losing money. And so we accumulate the percentage points and just put on as many winning trades and calculate how far they go. But the process behind finding that is I'm a, I'm a, I'm a closed junkie. So every at the end of every week of every month and every quarter, I look at the performance of every sector and every security in my matrix and I see which ones are performing. And then I do a technical overlay and say, okay, this is performing, but it's, you know, up in a straight line, you know, or Hey, this just started performing and it's starting to attack moving average resistance. That's more interesting, right? Like that's looks like a trade that's breaking out, you know? And so I'm learning how to trade breakouts in these sectors to get myself and show people how to get into them.

Tarek: Yeah. And you said something really important is you're using the word sector. And what you're saying is you're not a stock picker insofar as I'm looking at Amazon or Tesla or one of these companies, you're looking at ETF and broad ETFs in broad markets and saying this market is set to outperform this other market for these reasons, X, Y, Z reasons.

Tony: Yeah. So the reason I like sector ETFs is because they kind of can trade on a narrative more and you avoid single stock blow up risk. Now you also may miss out on single stock performance, but it's more important for me to kind of, to kind of squash that volatility down, you know, and not have to get buried in a bad earnings report because one company, you know, one CEO made one bad decision or whatever it was. And this company purported a stink burger quarter and it's down 18%. And now what the hell do I do? You know what I mean? It's like, you either put your, you either put your call on the line and you say I'm buying more or you just got to get out. And I just hated that about single stock trading. Whereas the sector trading smooth, smooth out that risk, right? So the sector might be down, you know, say the biggest stock in a sector is down 15% on an earnings blow up. The sector is maybe down five or something like that. You know, so you have a little bit of the smooth volatility out and then you can kind of establish a character that, that, that sector becomes a character. You know, it becomes one of the characters that you follow. And I run a really tight book in terms of line items. Like I follow like maybe 40 or 50 securities and I don't like to have more than four or five or six positions on at once.

Evan: Wow.

Tony: Yeah. Because I'm, I'm not a, I'm more, you know, I'm a trader, like I'm like a Druckenmiller type trader. Like I put all my eggs in one basket, I bet on the basket and then I watch the basket really carefully. And I make sure that if it's going against me that I get out, you know, do you put your own money in this or do you try to stay out so that you can, you know? So yeah, so the view matrix is very much a image, a mirror image of my trading account. Right. So the positions that I have on, it's like this, if it's on the view matrix, it's definitely in my trading account. Yeah. It may not be at the exact same time exactly, or it may not be in the same form, but it's in my trading account. And then there are also other things in my trading account. So I have like four or five or six that I manage on here. And I probably real time trade like 10 positions or something like that at once.

Evan: So would you say it's fair to say that because you hold such a small amount of sectors or securities, that's more volatile, but you decrease that volatility by using the sector ETFs rather than specific?

Tony: A little bit. Well, so what I do, the reason I like to just have a finite set of securities is that I can get to know them better, you know, and I'm a big price action guy. So I like to watch markets like all day long. You know what I mean? Like I send out my note in the morning and then I sit there and stare at the table, you know, and try to figure out what's going on, you know? So, um, I guess the most important part of it though is stocks land stocks and sectors land on your radar across a monthly screen weekly, you know, when they land on your radar on a weekly monthly screen, now you're starting to talk about a trade that's happening. You know what I mean? Like when it's at the top of the leaderboard last week and then it's at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the month, you know, you have to give that credit as a trader and you have to say, okay, if I want to make some money, like, let's get into that and figure out how to do that. How to manage the risk, or at least if it's soaring away on a rope, let's put a bid below the market and see if we can get in the next time it pulls back. And that's what I happen to be very good at is saying, okay, here's our target. We're not going to go blast away at it right now. We're going to sit in the weeds and wait until we get a kill shot, you know? And that's what my subscribers have find have found really, really valuable. Right. I think the, I think the sort of uneducated rookie investor probably, probably puts trades on because of what they think. Oh, I think I, I believe this. And it's like, that's not even how I trade. I trade by what the market is doing or what it's actually doing. You know what I think about markets? Nothing.

Tarek: Right. And they tend to overtrade.

Tony: Yeah, exactly.

Tarek: When you get into the markets, um, you, you, your time horizon is a little bit different. And for you, you're trading themes. You're trading big, major directions. And, you know, something that you've said in the past is, you know, strength begets strength. And so we've seen, for example, like gold and the commodities breaking out. And this is the beginning, the early phases of a much bigger move. So don't get scared by the fact that it's up, you know, a hundred percent, because that is communicating that there is an underlying trend that has now initiated.

Tony: Something's going on, man. You know, and you, you know, your, your instinct as like a young person is to see something move far in a direction and be like, Oh, I want to fade that. You know what I mean? And that, that would have been like young TG. And now I'm like, how do I get on that train? Right. Right. Where, where, where do I get on that train? Cause I know that that thing's going. And I want to be in that.

Tarek: And, and the train stops for you are pullbacks.

Tony: Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't ever just, you know, unless I'm buying a breakout, you know, above a moving average, above a trend line, everything is a bit, you know, I, like we just got into the aerospace and defense sector, which has been up a straight line. But everybody in my group, because I said I was bullish, they're like, how are we going to get in? When are we going to get into this? I'm like, we're going to be 225 and we're going to see what we can do about it. Let's give it some time, you know, and sure enough we get hit at 225 and it's 240 bit, you know, but that's been my skill of being able to get in, wait for the pullback, get in. So at my price and then know what my risk is below the close, below the 50 day moving average, I'm out. So things like that.

Evan: I've definitely hit a lot of those young trader issues. And one thing that Tariq has shown me recently that he's kind of mentoring me on is technical analysis. Are you using a lot of technical analysis?

Tony: Yeah. I'm a pattern recognition guy. As you can tell, I'm not a brain surgeon at all. You know what I mean? I was not a good student. I'm not very smart, but I recognize patterns and I'm very diligent about markets. You know, it's, it's really about the patience of getting into the position and being diligent about managing it, you know, about having a process to get in and to get out. But it was really, like I said, like the young Tony Greer would read wall street journal and be done with it and say, okay, the dollar is going to go higher. I'm going to buy dollars. I'm bearish stocks. I'm going to sell the S and P I'm bullish cocoa. We're going to buy some cocoa. And that, like I realized after losing enough money that I was, I had total disregard for what the market was saying. You know what I mean? And I was like, I'm trading because I think I'm freaking smart. I know that I'm not smart. So that's why I'm losing money. You know what I mean? And then when you realize that the knuckle dragger can figure out how to get on a trend and put a stop below the market and let the market do the work. And sometimes, you know, what's interesting also direct is that people ask me, what, what's your timeframe, you know? And I'm like, man, I'm a trader. So anything from two seconds to 20 years works for me, you know, and I don't really choose my timeframes. My, I choose my risk reward, right? So I choose risk reward. I get into a position and then I leave a trailing stop behind it. And one out of every 10 positions is one that trends and trends and trends and trends in the markets are fractal. Yeah.

Tarek: So it's, you can choose your own time horizon and how you want to get in and out. But ultimately what I have found is that the best traders follow trends for long periods of time. It's the Druckenmiller, you know, thesis of, you know, put all your money in that basket and watch that basket as it goes up.

Tony: Yeah. And so as it goes up, I'm raising my stop, raising my stop, raising my stop, you know, just pick a, pick a moving average that it seems to be staying above during this trend. And every single day, move it up right below that moving average. That's where your stop is. And next thing, you know, sometimes you're in a trade for a year up 65% that works for me. And when do I get out of it? When my stop gets triggered, when it breaks down below the moving average. So every one of my trades is a pullback from a high watermark and I'm okay with that because it lets me stay in longer and it gives me a real time to exit. And the beauty about the markets after I exit is that I can always buy it back. That's what people have a lot of paralysis about, right? They're like, Oh God, what if I sell this? And you're like, well, is the market closed? Go buy it back the next day. You know what I mean? Like why are you falling in love with this thing? It's just a trade, right? So that's a little bit of a perspective.

Tarek: And you stay agnostic too. You don't care if Bitcoin is going up. You don't care if it's going down. You don't care if it's going to change the world. You don't care if it's fake, you know, digital money. It is following the charts.

Tony: It's another ticker.

Tarek: It's another ticker. Same with gold, same with oil and energy stocks. It doesn't matter.

Tony: No, but what's cool is that, you know, Tarek, obviously, well, let's go, let's go into your wheelhouse for a moment here. You know, trades like gold are the trades that give you all the, you know, that is a trending bull market. And think about the ultimate, ultimate, unbelievable opportunities that we've been given in gold. We had a double top at 1900 and then we broke above that. And we went into that long. And I told my customers like this is where you supersize your goal position, like 2000 bid by 2100s and by 2200s. Cause this is going to break like this thing is stopped here twice. And then it goes to 4k and then it's 3500 bid at 4000, 3500 bid at 4000, you know, and you're still upsized and it breaks up through 4000 again. And that's another buy. Like you can buy, you can add to your position on that too. And then you're getting a bigger position in a market that's going up and you just have a trailing stop behind it.

Tarek: Same with silver. You know, I I was having a lot of conversations with, with investors who were, you know, silver was at around 40, $44. And it had had a very nice move and they were saying, you know, should we get into silver at this, at this juncture? And my, my response was, let's see what it does at 50 because 50 was the number, right? It was the high in the 1980s. It was a huge psychological level. Also in 2011, let's see what happens at 50. And if it breaks above 50, then you're going to have confirmation that this breakout is true and it's real. And so I'd rather give up the $6 until we get that confirmation before we go heavy, long and, and see what it does. And sure enough, it broke 50. And it moonshotted to 120.

Tony: Right. And you know that that's where you get confidence as a trader. When you talk to non traders and you say, look, this breakout here, this is where you upsize. And they say, what if it goes down from there after you upsize? And you say, you lose money. You lose more money. You know what I mean? But this is the big boy stuff. This is what we're talking about. Take the risk to lose more money to believe in the trend that it's going. You know what I mean?

Tarek: Like it's all probability based. So you're trying to push the house into your favor as much as you can. Nobody is going to know with 100% certainty that, Oh, silver is going to break above 50 and it's 100% going to go up from there. Nobody knows that. But if it means that the likelihood is 60, 40, then I'm already playing, you know, with the odds stacked in my favor.

Tony: Yeah. And you know, if you remember that in markets, you don't ever, you don't get what you want. You get what you get, you get what they give you, you get what they do. And if you realize that not every trade has to be a freaking Picasso and sometimes trades are just little 7% winners, but it just didn't go anywhere. And it's just not right to be in anymore. Then that's just all that was. And you don't have to say, no, but I'm going to hold onto this forever because I wanted 70% out of this. It's like, well, the market gave you seven. So move on.

Tarek: Expound on, on the behavioral psychology, because you've lived through so many markets, so many corrections, so many areas of exuberance, like during the tech bubble, et cetera. And you see how people's psychology impacts the allocation of money.

Tony: Yeah. So I, you know, I put sentiment into a really important slot of my toolkit, you know, is on knowing what sentiment is in something that you're in is absolutely necessary. Um, I'm trying to think of what I could add to the psychology of it. Um, it's definitely something where you want there to be naysayers of your trade, right? You want there to be a lot of people to think that that's wrong because then they're going to bet against you. And if you're right, you know, they're just going to have to stop out and that's going to create buying. And if they're right, then you're going to have to stop out. And that's the, that's the fight, right? That's the competition in the markets. But when you start, you know, when you're in something, like I said, it's great to have people say, ah, that's not going to work. I'm bearish that when you're in something and everybody's like, I'm in it too. You're bullish. You're bullish. You're bullish. You're, you're bullish. Everybody's bullish here. Okay. I'm out. Literally. It's become something like that. It's like, if I'm not out, I'm cutting my position size. And now I may not just take this small sample size, but I will go check every sentiment indicator out there and make 15 phone calls. What do you guys think about this? What do you think about this? Doom? What's the story? What do you think of this? JD, what's the story? What do you think of this? And if everybody's like, yeah, we're bullish, man, then I'm out. Then it's like, you know, because groupthink means no one is thinking. So that's when the trade is over. And God forbid, everybody's bullish on a trade that gaps open higher. That's like an automatic out for me. That's how, that's where, I don't know if you listened to JJ speech yesterday, but that's where it's where I will always say that's enough. Yep. That's enough profit because if you're long a trade and kind of, if you're in a trade and babysitting it and it's going your way and it's not going fast and all of a sudden it lurches your way, that's a sale for the guy that's long. You know, you just did all the trouble. You did all the work and you've got a quick payout of this percent. Now something moves an outsized move in a short period of time. What's the odds of another one happening smaller, right? So that's where it's for me. It's like, okay, that was the trade. That's enough. And then you take that pile of money and you move on to the next one.

Tarek: So let's give us a little one minute snapshot into your view of the market going into 2026.

Tony: You know, I'm going with, it's, it's really important to me that the stocks that came out of liberation day, the tariff, you know, story, the thousand point down and back. And we came out of that with leadership in obvious metals and mining, right? Gold miners, industrial miners, uranium miners, but there were also cyclical sectors that performed well last year. Solar stocks, semiconductors, things like that. So that's pretty balanced, broad, bullish view of, of those sectors. And then we've got AI, this big, you know, behemoth, this 800 pound gorilla that we've just grown. That's probably overbuilt. That's probably in a bubble, if not definitely in a bubble. And now all of a sudden it stopped performing. So what happened is you've got natural resources have gone bid. They're breaking out AI and the, and the semiconductor trade is hanging in, but not performing as well. And you've got other sectors of technology and mag seven going down. So it feels like we're set up for another year. That was very much like 22 that we call that I call the great rotation, which is like everybody's pitch. That was when headline inflation was hitting the markets and bonds were selling off hard rates were higher. That's why everybody sold their tech, their growth stocks and bought value stocks, right? And commodities were up huge that year. So it feels like we're going to have a little bit of that, right? It feels like this AI thing that's this AI engine that stopped going to the sky is all of a sudden sideways and vulnerable. Now other sectors of tech are getting hit and all of that money is going right into the resources markets.

Evan: Do you think that AI trade is because the industry isn't going to go as far as people think? Or is it just way too expensive for where it is right now?

Tony: It just seems like, it seems like the buildout has gotten enormous, right? They've spent a lot, so much money on this infrastructure. They don't have a great revenue generating plan or the CapEx is crazy, right? So that's what looks, that's what the dot-com bubble look like. Yeah. It seems pretty ring fenced though. Like it seems to me like when the AI bubble unwinds, I don't necessarily think that the stock market crashes.

Evan: A lot like the dot-com bubble to a certain extent.

Tony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But everything went down in the dot-com bubble and I really think that there were no bullish commodity markets during the dot-com bubble is the reality. You know what I mean? That kind of happened a little bit later. That kind of came out of it, but it was, it was everything. The S&P and the NASDAQ were getting hammered during that breakdown. Whereas this, you know, now we're kind of spinning, spinning wheels just below S&P 7k, but now all of a sudden you've got oil services stocks and E&P performing and they're right in there with gold miners and uranium is not going away and basic materials and copper is coming along and things like that. Right. So it's like for me as a commodity based trader, like that's the stuff that I'm going into. No questions asked, right? The commodities are going, they're breaking out. I've got a chance to get into these names early. So it feels like a good year for natural resources, but I think it can continue. It feels like it's something that can be more lasting. You know what I was talking? I feel like we're at the end of the, I feel like we're close to the end of technological advancement in certain ways. Meaning now technology is not going to stop, but the tech markets, we've got this AI thing here. That's not going to go away. It's going to change, you know, how everything operates and what's the next thing? What's the next tech thing? Biometrics, chip in the wrist and neuro link, right? Things like that. And it is my belief that humanity is going to dramatically reject that. Like we rejected metaglasses and it's just not going to be something people are going to go for. If you have a chip in your arm and you're being monitored, you've given up a good portion of your divinity as a human being, right? And you put yourself at risk of God knows what. And I think that more intelligent human beings are going to be like, I don't really care why or what. I'm not putting that thing in my wrist.

Tarek: Especially after COVID, right?

Tony: Right.

Tarek: Backlash.

Tony: How are they going to sell? How are they going to sell that idea that we need to monitor you via being connected to your body and people say, yeah, okay.

Evan: You don't think that people would buy, not that the sales pitch would be, we're going to monitor you, but this neuro link is going to make you a superhuman. And if you don't, you're going to be in poverty and you're going to be left behind. You're going to be less intelligent. Do you think people would buy that story?

Tony: I do think that there are probably people that might buy that story. And those are probably people that don't have God in their life. You know? Yeah. You know, so I don't know who else is going to participate with them, with their neural link thing. You know what I mean? So I don't know. I don't really have really, I can't say it's that bulletproof of a view. You know what I mean? It's just a feeling that I'm getting from all the regime change that we're experiencing, you know, as we can see around the world, politically in markets and things like that, it's all, you know, everything is changing. We've reached a lot of extremes, right. From the time the, the, from the time the door flew off the Boeing plane, I wrote a blog post that day and I wrote DEI is dead. That was one year before the colleges started canceling all their DEI plans. Right. And it was like, no, this is the end of the line. People aren't going to risk safety on airplanes so that we can hire somebody that doesn't deserve the job because of their skin color. People just aren't going to accept that. It's not going to be okay for people to die, you know? And so a year later, it's the whole thing is shut down and you just have to see that. You just have to understand that signal. It's like, no, that's enough. That's the end of the line for that piece of tech or that idea. And so that's why I feel like, you know, like the Metaclasses were a great example. Like, Hey, oh Johnny Facebook and wear glasses around. It's like, people are like, what?

Evan: And you can film me at any point.

Tarek: Yeah, right.

Tony: Like it's like, no way. I'm not doing that. Like that's dumb. Like I'll do the iPhone. I know they're following me. I know they're filming me, whatever it is, but I'm not going that.

Tarek: Well, you and Jared Dillian have a weekly podcast that you, you I've been consistent with over at least the last year because I watch a lot of those podcasts and I would encourage anybody to listen to those so they can hear your views and kind of understand, you know, your, your market expectations and such. Where can they, where can they listen and where can they sign up for your newsletter?

Tony: Yeah. So you can listen to our podcast. The best spot is tgmacro.substack.com. That's where I send my, the newsletter out to. You can read, you can get that on YouTube or on anywhere, anywhere on all of the platforms. Macro Dirt Podcast. That's our labor of love, man.

Tarek: Macro Dirt Podcast.

Tony: Macro Dirt Podcast. Yeah. And we take it very seriously and we're having some great guests come on. And you know, we, I'm kind of the producer of the show and I kind of have a schedule for Jared and I, and then I hand it off to our producers with all kinds of instructions and visuals and things like that. And I'm really pleased with the way it comes out. Yeah.

Tarek: What I love about it is there's a lot of meat on the bone in a short period of time. So you're not having to sit for three hours and sift through a minefield of different information.

Tony: Yeah. Jared and I, we just hit a high in the podcast that we've done just the two of us. And we're starting to get like North of 30 and 40,000 views on each one. Yeah. Yeah. And we do better the shorter they are. That's right. You know what I mean? Like we put down a 21 minute one the other day, just he and I and out of the blue got 40,000 views. And you're like, what is going on? And I'm like, JD, it's because it was 21 minutes. I'm telling you, everybody's listening to it in 10 minutes.

Evan: None of us, none of Gen Z has any ability to focus at all anymore. So yeah, keep it short.

Tony: That's totally it, man. That's totally it, man. I totally get that.

Tarek: Well, in light of your long commodity play, we got you a parting gift. No way. Yeah, man. An ounce of silver, the Y'all Street silver coin.

Tony: Dude, I am honored to Tarek.

Tarek: Thank you so much for joining us, man.

Tony: Thank you so much for doing that.

Tarek: Love your research. I encourage everybody to sign up for the TG Macro newsletter and the pod.

Tony: You're too kind, man. Oh, dude, thank you so much. I'm really grateful that you guys came and did the podcast. And this gift is over the top. And I just can't say enough about it. You guys are amazing.

Tarek: Thanks so much.

Tony: Thanks so much, Tarek.

Outro: How do y'all drink this? That's the Y'all Street. You guys stop the button for a minute.