Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs… Even As Macro Gets Worse

**Tony Greer** (0:00)
It wouldn't shock me if we have IPO prices that are the dead ball high print for 10 years in AI stocks. You know what I mean? And I will be out there participating in shorting them.

**John Gill** (0:10)
The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, but oil prices are falling. The markets are overbought, but still rising and making new all-time highs. How should investors and traders be navigating these volatile market conditions, and what is the rest of 2026 going to bring? Hello and welcome to Milk Road Macro, the podcast that's here to remind you to close your shorts. I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Thursday, May 28th, and today we are joined by Tony Greer. Tony is a veteran macroeconomic strategist, trader, and the founder of TG Macro, an independent research firm he launched in 2016 after more than 25 years trading at firms, including Goldman Sachs and UBS. He is best known as the editor of the Navigator Newsletter and the Macro Dirt Podcast, where he delivers fundamental technical and behavior analysis of global markets to institutional and retail investors alike. Tony is a wealth of knowledge and experience, and he's going to share a ton of alpha with us today. If that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. And without further ado, welcome back to Milk Road Macro, Tony Greer. How are you, sir? How are you doing?

**Tony Greer** (1:10)
What an intro, man. I got to save that. That was amazing.

**John Gill** (1:15)
I try to prepare well for my guests to make them feel welcome.
Tony, I think I've heard you talking a lot about this. I really want to get your thoughts on this. I've been looking forward to ask you about this. The strait is still closed. As I said, a lot of people have been expecting oil to go much higher than it currently is, and now oil is coming down. How do you reconcile this as a trader? Is this whole market of Fugezi? What's going on with this here?

**Tony Greer** (1:36)
I love that you used Fugezi. Yeah, it does feel like that. The strait has been closed since we know since March 1st. 20% of crude oil traffic is not getting through. We saw a big spike to what it was at 120 or 110 or so.
This is the unwind, if you ask me, regardless, I can't really listen to President Trump tweet about ceasefires and then see anything but that going on on Twitter and watching the timing with which he's making those calls. All I can do is surf last sale. And it feels like this week, I've been having a come to Jesus moment where I won't say I was in the camp where I was expecting $200 oil or anything like that. But I was definitely in a camp that we were going to set off a little bit more of a commodity-themed spike in the markets based on oil rallying, getting that hot CPI, PPI number last week. And I thought we were going to have a little bit of a new natural resources resurgence, and that's not happening. So the semi-bubble is getting bigger, and I don't want to talk about that. Let's get back to oil. What it looks like is oil dips into below $90 here, spreads are all the way into their lows that they've seen since this conflict started. So they're back to levels that they were trading at when we first closed the Strait of Hormuz and went to conflict with Iran and everything like that. So to me, the episode is pretty much close to over. And when you think about the fact that gas prices, inflation adjusted, are pretty static to where they've been for over the last 10 or 20 years, there's not that much of a spike to worry about in energy prices. So this is a new flavor for me.
You're catching me right on the cusp of really pivoting my book as I abandon the idea that we have to have higher prices in oil for longer just because the Straits closed, just because I listened to too many oil experts on the internet. That's my fault. That's totally my fault. I hear smart people saying, oh, well, we're going to have $150, $200 oil, and I listen. You know what I mean? So that was the biggest fault of mine to put so much weight into these flapping gum economists and other traders just like me, who are trying to figure it out just like me.
I'll say now that it looks like the episode is ending. So I'm trying to pivot, I'm trying to give some sectors in technology a little bit more of a... I'm not weighting them yet. I'm not long any technology, but I'm trying to abandon my international resources bull right now. So it looks like with the spreads coming in, with oil settling back under $90, I feel like we're getting diminishing returns on the idea that the Strait is closed, and that means oil has to go up. So that's where we are.