Bitcoin Volatility Explodes! Is Trump Manipulating The Market?

**Scott** (0:03)
Markets are breaking right now. Now, Bitcoin just swung from below 69,000 to above 71,000 and back into the 69,000s, all driven by conflicting war headlines between the US and Iran. Of course, we had Trump saying that there's peace talks and a five-day pause, and then Iran almost immediately saying, yeah, that's completely not true. Very hard to know who to believe in these situations, but it gets even crazier because gold has had its worst week in 43 years, wiping out 7.3 trillion in value, even as war inflation and oil shocks raise. That's obviously not supposed to happen. And crypto regulation apparently is also accelerating in Washington. There are so many things to unpack here. If the traditional safe havens are breaking and Bitcoin is ripping on headlines, we're watching a massive shift of where capital is flowing next. We're going to unpack all of that here on Macro Monday with Mike, Dave, and James. So much to talk about. Let's go.
Good morning, everybody, we are back. Obviously, I took a few days off last week because of spotty internet and spider monkeys attacking my computer while I was attempting to do a live stream. That actually happened, and I have video proof, but we're not gonna talk about that right now because we have something even dumber than a spider monkey to talk about, and that is the war in Iran. We've got Dave, we've got Mike, and we've got James here to unpack it. Mike, we're gonna go into the morning meeting, but I do just wanna very briefly show what was happening this morning because it's really hard to prep for a show when you have a president with this bad of ADHD. This is absolutely insane. At 7:04 a.m., President Trump said, the US and Iran have had productive discussions and the war. I'm old enough to remember last week when he said there was nobody to talk to. By 7:10 a.m., the S&P surged plus 240 points, adding two trillion to market cap. 27 minutes later, Iran completely denied all of President Trump's claims. It said there's been no contact with the US. By 8:00 a.m., the S&P had fallen 120 points, raising one trillion to market cap. That's three trillion swing in market cap in 56 minutes. Just in the S&P 500, what is happening here? I haven't even looked, to be honest, to see what happened in the last 14 minutes or so since this happened. But I think we understand what's going on, and that's that nobody believes anyone, and markets have no idea what to do. But Mike, we can start with you here.

**Mike** (2:36)
Well, it's been so much conflict and information. I took a screenshot. Maybe you can see this of this weekend of CNN. Yeah, you can see it, but here there it is. The headline was, On CNN 22 Nations Issued Joint Statement of Safeguarding the Straight and Home Moves. I think that was Sunday morning.
The key theme that I think, well, so we'll talk to the meeting, but there's so much great information. But there's some good stuff in the meeting. Stuart Paul, our economist came on, and he says, before this war, the FMC pointed out their inflation estimates were going up. So they're all off easing, obviously, except for one person, Stephen Moran. But the key question for him is, when will consumers not be able to help pulling, to help pull back on spending, to belt tightening? He's pointing out, $4 gasoline, savings rate of 4% is very low. Typically they'll come from savings. And what of the, he pointed out the dot plots.
They're really not priced for tightening. And the quote basically is, they typically fade energy inflation. Where the down risk is a prolonged war. And the bar for hiking is very high. So basically our whole meeting, everybody pushed back in the potential hiking in this environment. Ira Jersey came on and pointed that out. The members are not for cutting, but they're not for hiking either. The market, he says, shows the Fed's on hold. It's quote was, was him was, it's hard to imagine the Fed to do anything while the war is on. He pointed out the two-year-old yields 55 basis points higher since the war began. I mean, that's part of the pressure on gold, almost all from inflation expectations and higher oil is the top reason. Chris Kane, our stock strategist pointed out the big difference, we know S&P 500 finally dropped below its 200-day moving average, but very rarely, it typically does it with volatility much higher and volatility is lower. He says the CPI upticks something to worry about. Audrey Trill-Freeman pointed out that the dollar continues to do better, and I just focused a little bit on crude oil. I can dig into that later, but my main quote was, finally, McGlone, I think, is going to be right this year for my call for crude oil to go to $40 a barrel. And I just pointed out that December contract, which is front month, right before the leader of the world's most significant energy producer and net exporter of crude oil and natural gas, wants to, before those elections, right before he wants to win. And that's why I think that price right around $75 bill is going to be more like to go to 50 or lower. And here's the opposite. If it stays above 100, that's a global recessionary trajectory.