Bitcoin Is Front-Running The Collapse Everyone Else Is Ignoring! ( What You MUST Know )

**Scott Melker** (0:04)
Bitcoin is front running the collapse that everyone else is ignoring. We have the situation in Iran deteriorating even further. We were supposed to have peace talks, and now the Iran Foreign Minister is actually meeting with Putin instead. Farmers are reporting that they don't have enough fertilizer. We know that there's still a chokehold on the Straits of Hormuz, but yet Bitcoin remains resilient alongside many other markets.
I don't have the brainpower to unpack this, but luckily I have amazing guests that do. We've got Mike McGlone, of course, but today Dave and James are gone. We've got Peter Cheere and Noelle Atchison also joining for a special amazing edition here of Macro Monday. Let's go.
Good morning, everybody, happy Monday, and welcome to the show. I'm just gonna go ahead and bring everyone on right now because I don't wanna have to parse this. I'm gonna leave this to you in the morning meeting, Mike, to start us off because none of it makes any sense to me.

**Mike McGlone** (1:13)
Okay, well, it was a little clear today. Anna Wong came out and pointed out the next FOMC meeting on Wednesday will be Powell's last.
She did point out, Warsh is probably a shoo-in, basically, she didn't use that word, but somewhat done. Senator Tillis has dropped his opposition. Will Powell stay on? She doesn't think so. Right off to the sunset, his news conference, he thinks, will be somewhat nostalgic and point out inflation expectations are firmly anchored, yet we have strong economic growth and might even mention things about independence of the Fed, so that's gonna be important. He doesn't think he's gonna be too much forward-looking, let that for the next chairman. But she did point out some significant views, a little bit of counter consensus.
She pointed out firms are starting to have to reduce hiring, they have costs issues and through attrition and unemployment, she expects unemployment to tick up and expects the Fed to cut 50 base points by the fall, was their quote. So I suppose that means by end of the year. And Dallas Fed, she's watching very closely. One thing that's really happened is manufacturing pickup is quite strong in this country, exports are strong, particularly petroleum exports, and you can see that also, so natural gas plunging is a good sign for manufacturing. Ira Jersey pointed out Mr. Warsh's views on the balance sheet. To reduce the Fed's balance sheet will probably not happen soon. There's a lot of banking issues. Be less for repo activities would be a liquidity issue. He thinks Warsh will get that eventually, but it'll take a while. And he pointed out there's some supply today, and we're starting to see some cuts being priced back in the markets again.
Chris Kane, our stock strategist, came out and said the last three weeks were some of the strongest rallies in history he's ever seen. Small caps are the studs. They're resuming their outperformance for its large caps. His quote is the bottom line, the small caps have relative strength and valuation advantage over the large caps. S&P 500 earnings are running 13.7 percent above year ago levels. He says that's a bit above expectation, but he's not really so impressed. The key thing he's worried about, the bar is way too high.
Tech earnings are expected to run 41 percent above year over year levels. That's just wonderful. Audrey Trill Freeman, our FX strategist, point out we have spatial central bank meetings from most of the central banks this week. Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, DOJ, Bank of Canada.
She points out she's hard to be bulls of euro because of energy prices and there's a nice interest rate differential helping out because European banks more biased towards tightening, but it's just going to hurt their economies, particularly with energies going up. Thinks the euro stuck between 115, 120 and says a similar issue with yen doesn't see the potential for strength in euro or yen, despite the hiking higher rates because of energy issues on their economy. And I pointed out the key themes in commodities are elasticity and dependency. By elasticity, I did have fun explaining to an editor last week that the number one bull market in commodities is elasticity. Just look at natural gas. It's the same price as almost 25 years ago. It went up and it couldn't stay up, so it went back down. That's US gas, and that was a great indication, 2022-23, when crude oil spiked. Now, obviously, it's all still about crude oil. I say crude oil stuck between 80 and 100 I'm not going to be using WTI, partly because it's the center of the universe, with Mr. Trump needs lower energy prices by midterms. I point out that December, crude oil future at 78, I expect to be closer to 50 than 100 Can't really predict what's going to happen in the strait, but I fully expect, again, it's going to be like a battle of balls and be somewhat cleaned up. Then I pointed out things like metals are the most dependent, the whole entire sector, even gold, on the stock market going up, I've ever seen, and even cryptos, the most dependent, as I've seen ever, as the stock market going up, which means we know where the risk is. Back to you.