Luke Gromen & Darius Dale: How Close To The End Are We?

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**Adam Taggart** (0:56)
The end of the ninth inning ends in Paradigm E. What inning would you put us in right now or in Paradigm C? But what inning of the ballgame would you put that?

**Darius Dale** (1:07)
It's impossible to know with precision, but I would say somewhere between the top of the third and the bottom of the fourth.

**Luke Gromen** (1:13)
I would say we're maybe more, I don't know, sixth, seventh, or even eighth inning.

**Adam Taggart** (1:25)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart. Today, we have the very great good fortune to welcome back two of the best macro and market minds to this channel. I'm talking, of course, about Luke Gromen and Darius Dale. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today.

**Luke Gromen** (1:43)
Thanks for having us here.

**Darius Dale** (1:45)
It's a real pleasure to be here, man. I'm a huge fan of you both as people, as analysts. This is going to be awesome.

**Adam Taggart** (1:51)
It will be. We did this a few months back and folks really enjoyed it and over X, you two were talking and said, hey, it's high time we did this again.
I'm so honored and privileged that you guys chose to come back to Thoughtful Money as the platform to do this on. I will just say going forward, the door is always open to anytime you guys want to have one of these discussions. They're not really debates, but they're just sort of thoughtful discussions that you two think through where you agree and where you disagree. Anytime you want to have them, we'd love to have them here on Thoughtful Money. Now, gentlemen, there's a lot that's going on right now.
So a lot for us to roll our sleeves and dive into. I also did ask the audience on X for questions for you too, and got a whole bunch. So we're going to have no shortage of things to talk about. Before we turn in the camera here, Darius, I thought you floated a really good idea for kicking us off here, which is just to say if the whole progression here is ending in a destination that you feel fairly confident about, then I'll let each of you determine what that destination is. What inning would you put us in right now on the way to that destination? Darius, maybe let's start with you and then Luke, I'll give you a chance to give your answer right after.

**Darius Dale** (3:08)
I appreciate you, Adam. Thank you again. Thanks again for having me. Be careful, by the way, you invited to leave your door open to a former office alignment.

**Adam Taggart** (3:20)
Just push your way in there and make the whole thing.

**Luke Gromen** (3:22)
You can open up your fridge and it's like, oh man, is Darius still here?

**Darius Dale** (3:28)
I may take you up on that, but no, all jokes aside, we're dealing with some pretty interesting times. And I think the last few months have brought to the forefront of consensus, some of the things that Luke and I have been talking about in our research for quite a long time, for, I would say Luke, in your case, for at least half a decade, probably my case for almost going on four years now, which is there is a disequilibrium in the Treasury bond market that has manifested its ways, manifested in various forms and fashions, through policy, through financial markets, and ultimately, in our view, we think it's going to have a pretty meaningful amplification on politics and society. We're not there yet in terms of the latter part, but we've certainly seen enough of the mile markers breached to give us a lot of confidence that that's where we're ultimately headed.