MacroVoices #471 Tian Yang: Tariffs Will Continue Until Morale Improves
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This is Macro Voices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high net worth individuals, family offices, and other sophisticated investors. Macro Voices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics telling it like it is, bullish or bearish, no holds barred. Now, here are your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Ceresna.

Macro Voices episode 471 was produced on March 13th, 2025. I'm Eric Townsend. Variant Perceptions CEO Tian Yang returns as this week's feature interview guest. And of course, he brought one of Variant Perceptions famous slide decks with him. We'll talk LEIs and step through Variant Perceptions outlooks for everything from stocks to fixed income to FX to commodities, including gold.

After Monday's stock market slaughter, just about everyone is wishing that they'd hedged downside equity market risk back in late February using options. While it's too late to employ the hedging strategies that would have worked if you'd put them on back in February, that doesn't mean that there aren't still strategies that you can use to employ options to shore up risk and repair your portfolio.

So be sure to stay tuned for our post-game segment after the feature interview, when I'm going to ask Patrick to give us a quick overview of a webinar that he's putting together on that very subject. And I'm Patrick Ceresna with the Macro Scoreboard week over week as of the close of Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. The S&P 500 index down 416 basis points to 5599, a peak to trough 10% decline in just three weeks. The question?

Are the markets oversold enough for a short squeeze? We'll take a closer look at that chart and the key technical levels to watch in the postgame segment. The US dollar index down 66 basis points trading at 103.58. Two consecutive weeks of selling doing meaningful technical damage to the charts. The

The April WTI crude oil contract up 208 basis points, trading at 67.69. So far, the retest of the September 2024 lows has held. April RBOB gasoline up 47 basis points, trading at 215. The April gold contract up 55 basis points, trading at 29.42.

Copper up 104 basis points, trading at 484. New breakout on copper with next resistance just above $5. Uranium down 78 basis points, trading at 6355. And

the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield up three basis points, trading at 431. Keen news to watch this Friday is the preliminary University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers. And next week we have retail sales, the FOMC statement, the Bank of Japan and Bank of England monetary policy statements.

This week's feature interview guest is the Variant Perception CEO, Tian Yang. Eric and Tian discuss the macro environment, the impact of Trump's administration policies, and the economy. Eric's interview with Tian Yang is coming up as Macro Voices continues right here on MacroVoices.com. And now with this week's special guest, here's your host, Eric Townsend.

Joining me now is Variant Perception CEO Tian Yang. As many of you already know, Variant Perception is well known for their excellent graphs and charts, so you're definitely not going to want to miss the slide deck that accompanies this week's interview. Registered users will find the download link in your Research Roundup email. If you don't have a Research Roundup email, it means you're not yet registered at MacroVoices.com. Just go to our homepage, MacroVoices.com, click the red button above Tian's picture that says looking for the downloads.

Tian, it's great to get you back on the show. It's been quite a while. Let's start with the big picture before we dive into the slide deck. Obviously, I think the biggest issue in macro right now is President Trump, whether you love him or whether you hate him, nobody can argue that he's got unorthodox policy approaches and clearly he's taking some very bold policy moves.

I suppose I could argue that that means LEIs are more important than ever because they tell us when a new trend, perhaps as a result of the changing administration, is upon us. Or you could argue the other side of that, which is if LEIs depend on long data series, obviously when everything has changed, maybe that invalidates part of it.

How should we think about LEIs in an environment when there's been such a profound change in the political regime? Yeah, well, hi, Hayrek, and I'm glad to be back. And certainly, I think...

That's a great question. In a way, it's kind of simultaneously true, right? You have this duality where on the one hand, I think we do really need to make sure we have an anchor using lead indicators of growth, inflation, policy regimes of liquidity, just to ensure we have a base case. But at the same time, clearly we have to appreciate which are the data points that

are actually capturing what's going on and which of the data points can't react to the headlines and the news, the tariffs and so forth. So I think it's a bit of both. I mean, the way we're approaching is to realize that clearly even things like tariff and sentiment, they can clearly affect survey data, implicit. A lot of these implicit kind of sentiment things are going to be

where it shows up first in the data. But I think this year you do kind of need to have quote unquote, like a view, especially on kind of the bigger political issues

trends and picture and then use that to contextualize where leading indicators are. So I think overall for us, it's kind of like when we, you know, the kind of most overarching model we have, which kind of combines growth, inflation policy and liquidity is still being pretty balanced in terms of

macro risk, right? So it does see like a mix of upside downside risk. So in general, it's still been somewhat more benchmark allocation, but we're kind of overlaying that a little bit with essentially two kind of longer term frameworks we have where we think that this Trump administration is one, a repeat of kind of the Reagan playbook, in particular using trade policy to encourage reshoring, encourage manufacturing to come back to the U.S.,

you know, very much analogous to Reagan getting the Japanese to come build, you know, car factories in the US in the 80s. And ultimately, obviously, a lot of these policies leading to an endpoint that's kind of Plaza Accord. And obviously, there's a lot of talk about Mar-a-Lago Accord right now as well. So you kind of have this one overlay over the top that clearly is a pretty big shift. You know, I think we even wrote out, put a note out talking about, you know, tariffs will continue until morale improves, right? That's kind of the overlay.

over the top of that. So essentially it's kind of base case value neutral, but have a slightly more stack-free retail over the top.

And then the second big kind of strategic overlay or like, you know, difference is that to us, it looks like Monroe, the Monroe doctrine is very much back in terms of the geopolitics and the US direction. So, you know, our understanding of that is essentially more localized spheres of influence and kind of like a more of a splitting of the areas of influence globally. So again, this is kind of America for the Americas where, you know, from Panama to Canada,

to Greenland, right? Like it's like this is the US's local sphere of influence. So the US needs to dominate that. And, you know, every other country needs to just stay out of the way. But equally in return, Asia is kind of China's dominant sphere of influence. So it looks like this administration cares a little bit less on, you know, exactly what happens in Taiwan. You know, so China gets to dominate that probably a little bit more. But in return, China needs to lay off. So that's kind of two bigger

currently kind of two bigger overlays we're putting over the top of lead indicators and kind of tying that together to come up with investment themes. Okay, with that in mind, let's dive into the slide deck starting on page one, knowns and unknowns. What do we know? What don't we know? Yeah, well, like I said, that's in a way a little bit of description of why I said it. What we know is what's in the data and the unknown data

unknown right now is probably around this policy because I think it does feel almost exhausting in terms of the headlines and the shifts, right? So we're trying to tease out these underlying themes. But in terms of what we do know right now, when we look at the data, the lead indicators, broadly speaking, are saying trend growth in the US is slightly below. Yes, we did have that very big GDP now

but when we break out the kind of core underlying consumer investment components, it's kind of, you know, it's still okay. Obviously it's deteriorating, but those series have tended to be volatile. But there's a lot of corroborating indicators we have, like the Fed weekly, you know, our own LEIs. Most things, you know, we were interpreting around, you know, two, maybe 2% growth in the model, but given like the tariff concerns, it might be slightly below. So that's kind of like the main anchor we have.

right now on growth, whereas I think right now there's a lot more unambiguous in terms of inflation indicators broadly actually starting to go up a bit more. So it's kind of this picture of trend to slightly below trend real growth, but sticky inflation above target. So that's kind of the overarching anchor right now.

Tian, page two is just a table of contents. So I'm going to skip ahead to page three. Let's talk about LEIs and what they're telling us. Yeah. So like I say, the key thing I would highlight here is that, yes, U.S. economic surprises have turned negative. And that's obviously fueling a lot of the market narratives around the growth scare or recession scare. Certainly, I think the market does want to trade that.

for a bit. But overall, like there hasn't been that big a shift in the data. You know, a lot of the higher frequency stuff, other than the Atlanta Fed GDP now is actually still holding up okay, whether it's the, you know, the Fed weekly, you know, we track things like OpenTable, TSA travel data, a lot of these other kind of consumer stuff. And broadly, it's a little bit of slowing, but not yet kind of the collapse that would normally indicate a recession. So it feels kind of just a

a slowdown for now. Obviously one to watch, but if we anchor around that, then this is more of a mini scare, mini recession scare than actually a real recession for now. Tian, let's move on to page four. Essentially right now, I think, as I mentioned, clearly the market is very focused on downside growth risk. Some very prominent strategies are coming out calling for recessions imminently as well. So

Given a lot of uncertainties, one of the exercises we did was almost do a kind of post-mortem. So it's like, okay, imagine in three months, right? Imagine in six months we are in recession. What are the potential paths that would have looked like that we might have seen the data already today? And so we've kind of laid out potentially four different mechanisms or paths that deserves kind of a closer look right now just to be able to react in case something

the economy does kind of decelerate faster than we anticipate. So the first one is kind of something that's probably the most obvious, which is fiscal risks, right? So with Doge and all these things kicking, potentially kicking in, the concern would be that the fiscal impulse

starts becoming a drag that it's very hard to sustain previously large levels of fiscal deficits. And this will be, even going back to, I think, you know, a year ago when we spoke about this fiscal Sisyphus idea, you know, like, you know, the fiscal policy has been there. It's like Sisyphus trying to roll the rock, roll the boulder up the hill, right? And fiscal has been just propping up the US economy for a long time, propping up profits. So that's kind of a risk.

I think it remains to be seen exactly how much Doge gets done. But we also know that the administration wants to extend tax cuts. For now, it's not super clear how much tariffs. I think the base case is probably that they're not going to be able to raise a lot of revenue by it.

by the tariffs. So, you know, if you extend tax cuts and, you know, if you follow through on the other campaign promises, you know, a lot of like no tax tips and a lot of promised basically tax cuts, right, then it's not that clear we're going to get that big a negative fiscal impulse. So I think that's one to be seen. But certainly, I think they'll just get more done than probably come in before the inauguration, before people expect it. So,

That's certainly one source of downside risk. So one to be seen. Again, for now, the impulse data looks okay, but clearly on a forward-looking basis, it looks something they're taking very, very seriously. So that's kind of the first main downside risk. And we're mainly tracking the kind of fiscal impulse data to keep an eye on it. Right now, it's okay.

The second risk is that all this tariff talk kind of essentially nips the manufacturing recovery in the bud just kind of before it's really got a chance to take root. And that looks increasing like one of the main concerns. So just even like two months ago, the manufacturing data was unambiguously kind

kind of recovering and recovering very strongly. There was like a surge of optimism after the election in a lot of the kind of regional manufacturing survey data as well. And basically since the kind of tariffs started,

you've seen a pretty big shift where future expectations, new orders, a lot of these things have flipped. But a lot of the price components of the surveys have surged higher. So it's kind of this more stack-facing tilt. And I think there's a concern that we're getting the...

the kind of 2018 version of Trump. So essentially where tariffs are driving market volatility, but overall the market's kind of going nowhere was very high ball. Rather than the kind of 2017 version of Trump that was just mostly passing policies with Congress that the market likes. And so that increasingly looks more like the case. You're getting the 2018 version first. There's obviously this focus on trade and tariffs. And that

is going to hit manufacturing. So that's, again, something that started to shift and we just need to keep an eye on if that deteriorates further.

The third potential risk that if we were to end up in recession, again, that's not in the data right now, but if what's the third path that we may have seen, then it's likely to do with housing rates, rates higher, sentimental housing turning lower. Eventually that leads to a reduction in construction payrolls. So again, that's historically been a valid channel. We'll have to see how it evolves, but

Again, for now, I think that is potentially a risk, but not in the data yet. But as we can see, given some of the shifts on completions versus starts, there is a concern that potentially home building activity could slow down, in which case that does lead to weaker growth historically. So that's kind of the third risk. And then the fourth risk is that, you know, potentially with the sticky inflation, you're going to end up with this kind of higher full growth

or high for longer, right? Obviously the Fed, the bar to hike for the Fed is very, very high, but just decided they're not going to be able to cut that much. So rates kind of stay high for longer. And that eventually does feed through into kind of the private credit, into a lot of small business and borrowers. You know, I think we've done a lot of work before on this area around how being a lot of things in this cycle where

potential credit stress has been masked. You know, these things like liability management exercises, there's a lot of these interventions to prevent bankruptcies and to, you know, get a lot of the kind of distressed credit exchanged or converted as well. So there's a

there's basically various things going on and obviously credit spreads are super tight relative to you know all the other assets that's kind of reacting a little bit in pricing growth risk so that would be kind of the fourth thing where uh small business and private credit do ultimately succumb to kind of the the high for longer so that's kind of the recap of where the downside risks are that we need to watch for and if they deteriorate further then we would obviously need to get

more defensive from our relatively neutral, slightly stagflation-light outlook right now. So, you know, basically doge fiscal risks, manufacturing, rebound being cut short by tariffs, US housing and private credit. Those are kind of the four things you could see at the margin starting to kind of deteriorate.

Tian, let's move on to one of your proprietary indicators. That's the variant perception macro risk indicator on page five. Yeah. So this is kind of the all seeing, all dancing kind of everything in there. Just, you know, create kind of one number around macro risk and use that as a guidance. So essentially how this works is we have obviously individual lead indicators that

for growth, inflation, you know, for liquidity and policy. And all those models are kind of, they have elements of kind of causal discovery in there where they're trying to like adapt to the environment, understand what inputs are. But ultimately the way we combine that into a single number, we've then trained a lot of different decision trees to understand how those kind of different aspects of macro interact.

And then we explicitly train everything on kind of downside volatility for a kind of standard multi-asset portfolio.

call it 60-40. And so essentially what this is doing is trying to convert all of the macro data into kind of a single number for the risk of downside volatility picking up in markets. So as this number goes higher, it's kind of saying the probability of downside vol is rising and vice versa. So ultimately this is kind of bounded between zero to 100. And right now we're kind of at 50 something. So it's still kind of broadly in a neutral zone in general.

But one of the interesting shifts has been that in 2024, there was a lot of different headwinds, but the overwhelming positive factor last year was basically policy support. And this is obviously the thing that's kind of gone away right now, but it's kind of been replaced by actually improvement and growth. So that's why it's kind of pretty key to see

from here if all the kind of uncertainty and use on tariff does start to tag the growth component. And that will be the risk. So yeah, that's why it's kind of really helpful right now, at least overall, to have this anchor. So certainly this isn't a, you know, level long, extremely bullish environment. But equally, this doesn't, on our models at least, it's certainly not imminent recession. It's kind of this mix. And so

For us, it means to try and outperform. This is more of an environment where I think instead of taking big asset class risks, deviating equities to bonds, we're sticking to benchmark, but then within the benchmarks, trying to tilt a little bit more. So within fixed income, we're tilting a lot more towards tips. And then within equities, I think the model of sector tilts have been like overweight energy and underweight consumer discretionaries, which is

which has actually been helping drive out performance so far. So that's kind of the overall interpretation. And at the same time, what we've also been noticing is that our fundamental leading indicators for volatility has been rising fairly persistently

You know, that's kind of the bottom left chart there. So we generally just had a mindset of whenever the VIX kind of normalizes a little bit, we're looking at ways to add long volatility exposure. So the simplest are generally looking at adding kind of VIX core spreads when the VIX is kind of settling, just to constantly keep that

exposure. And obviously for the more kind of global macro PMs, I think this is a year where there's a lot of opportunities to do a lot of more exotic trades, right? You know, things we talked about before, things like, you know, knocking in dollar peso puts and things like that, where you'll get a lot of headline risk, where potentially a lot of these currencies sell off hard, but ultimately there's some kind of relief and, you know, structuring a lot of these knocking options this year could actually start to pay off.

pretty well and give you kind of that leveled return that you need to justify kind of taking risk.

So that's kind of how I would kind of describe this overall. So again, base case, what's in the model right now is fairly neutral. So if we get too extreme either side, we'll be looking to kind of fade it for now. But clearly this is a long vol environment. Even before the policy uncertainty, independent Trump, the lead indicators for volatility was already rising anyway. So that's kind of the kind of current broad policy.

broad brush kind of outlook. Let's move on to your U.S. equities outlook on page six.

The main concern is that expectations are pretty lofty. So our lead indicator for earnings growth is running at about 6% year on year. So the fact set consensus is still higher. So again, this suggests there's a bit of a gap overall and a bit of a concern overall for the market. So that suggests a little bit downside risks. But most importantly, I think, as I mentioned, it's

it's important to probably look at selection rather than surely trying to take a directional risk on the asset class to generate.

kind of outperformance this year. So a lot of our kind of intrinsic value, you know, fair value models, energy does stand out as being the kind of sector we want to own. And as I mentioned, consumer discretion is currently the biggest underweight. So that's still the tilt right now. And then again, within equities, we've leaned a lot more heavily into kind of large caps over small caps still. So I think there was a lot of excitement that small caps might start to outperform after Trump got elected.

But I think on a lot of our fair value models, they were still pretty fully valued and pretty expensive. And in relative terms, US large caps still look better. And so that's still very much the case. And generally high for long good is not good for small caps, which are more exposed to kind of credit to, yeah, like the cost of credit and just interest rates in general as well. So

Yeah, broadly, I would say in aggregate for equities, a little bit of downside risk. Hence, it's important to kind of maintain the risk-free part of your allocation, whether it's 60-40. It's important to add some of those long vault hedges when you can. But really, I think this is a year about within equities doing the selection. And so that to us means long energy, short discretionaries for now, and then just like underway small caps relative to large caps.

Tell me a little bit more about the call on energy and what the chart on the top right means. Seems to me like on one hand, you know, clearly energy prices are at a two-year low right now. Seems like a good time to be buying. The flip side of that, of course, is President Trump claims that his policies are just getting started and they're going to take energy prices much lower.

So if we believe that's actually going to happen, maybe it's a little early. I don't know. How should we interpret this and what does the chart take into account? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So

So we have a few approaches, right? So essentially we're starting with whatever the consensus earnings estimates are for the next three years. What we then do is use our capital cycle model. So these long-term proxies of kind of competitive dynamics, future profit potential, we use our capital cycle models to tilt these consensus earnings estimates up or down, and then essentially discount them back to get a fair value, right? Like a discounted cash flow, fair value.

The difference is for our discount rate that we apply to these sectors, we'll incorporate elements of positioning and crowding. So if a name is not very crowded, it will demand a lower equity risk premium. And equally, if a sector has a reasonable quality on a lot of our quality metrics, we will also require a lower equity risk premium. So this model is already capturing a lot of the necessary data, right? It's capturing the consensus earnings estimates, and then we're tilting that using capital cycle crowding quality scores, and in turn generating a fair value.

So, when we look at the equities in particular, it would suggest to us that there's a lot of these things already priced in, right? Like the earnings estimates already embedding some of these concerns around low oil prices and around the policy shifts. But in aggregate, potentially, maybe it could be made up for in volumes, right? Maybe it could be made up for in deregulation and different aspects that can help profitability.

And to your point, like obviously the model tends to shift month to month, but once WTI oil gets down to the 60s, starts trading 60 handle and gets lower, there is also an aspect of maybe they'll do something about accelerating, refilling the SPR and some of these things that are not necessarily top of mind that can help put a floor on the prices and yeah, essentially help companies make money through volume. So yeah.

The way we're thinking about that and why we structure it like that is ultimately, I guess, investing is about, one, is trying to anticipate what is going to happen and then two, trying to figure out if that's already discounted. And so I guess you could almost interpret this as kind of saying there's a lot of, there's basically a bit of a divergence that yes, there's legitimate concerns around oil prices. And we certainly think there's a lot of pressure points. We even think there's some risk of members

more members leaving OPEC this year as things keep up. So there's certainly some vol, but a lot of these energy equities are priced pretty reasonably. And so to us, it feels like there's upside. Let's move on to your global equities outlook on page seven. Yeah, so I think that the biggest one to highlight is I think we've taken profit in a lot of the China markets.

and we're actually flipping back into India. So the biggest story of the past six months has been China outperforming and India really underperforming. I think we've caught the China waves really, really well, realizing September that was a game changer in China, went long, traded it up, took profit, stayed long beginning of the year, went China tech. And really only it's like a couple of days or a week ago where we saw enough profit

It's probably enough on China. So ultimately, we think China remains a trading environment rather than an investing kind of environment. So we've been relying a lot more heavily on a lot of our trading signals and looking at what base case returns are and just not getting too greedy. So whenever we're kind of getting 60, 70% of the expected value of a lot of these buy signals on China, we're just getting out at those levels. So that's kind of what's going on.

Ultimately, we want to be buying dips in Chinese equity still, but it feels like very much just kind of trading rather than truly wanting to kind of probably be in Chinese assets for the next three to five years. On India, it's been one of the worst performers for the past six months. And if you look at the flow data, it's just been foreigners dumping the India exposure pretty persistently. It looks like a pretty broad-based trend.

situation to the extent that you started generating multiple kind of LPPL crash exhaustion signals on Indian equities. So I think this is a pretty interesting time to start looking at India.

Again, obviously it's not cheap, cheap, but the valuations have obviously reset a little bit lower and certainly with the Indian single names, there's some kind of increasingly more, more kind of interesting stocks to own as well. So I think so from a global equity point of view, it's a pretty interesting shift where, you know, we feel like this China India reversal is somewhat done and we'd be looking at going the other way. So yeah,

you know, taking profit on China, rotating back into kind of Indian equity exposure. For traders who are on both sides of the market, is there a pairs trade there that's short China, long India, or is it too early for that on the China side?

Yeah, I think obviously we have the two sessions right now and, you know, expectations are pretty low amongst kind of especially domestic onshore guys. So it's possible that, you know, we come out with something that potentially surprises. But yeah, I would say like that's a reasonable way to pair trade. But I think the safer trade is probably just long India and staying on the sidelines on China and waiting to buy the dip. But if you just look at the charts I've got up here on relative performance, it is very extreme.

Right. Like, you know, year on year, relative return in India is almost a minus two standard deviation and China's relative outperformance is like higher than plus two standard deviation. So, you know, if you are going to go for a pair trade, you generally just want to wait until it's this extreme. So, yeah, I think, you know, both could work. Let's move on to fixed income on PayJ. Yeah. So this has kind of been the most...

Obviously, this is the most important price point. And clearly, like, you know, this is something the administration is very focused on. So I think coming to the year because of that outlook for sticky inflation, we, you know, we did anticipate initially that yields would rise, but it always felt like 5% would be like a hard ceiling just because, you

You know, it's kind of, you know, we would describe it as the best end put. It's not so much on equity markets. It's on like the bond market. And obviously that narrative is starting to take hold a lot more that there's just a focus on targeting U.S. treasury yields. So now that there's some growth scare concerns, yields have dipped lower. You know, to us, the fair value for where we think 10-year is right now is around 4.2%.

And so the market is kind of trading in that zone now. So it feels kind of about fair. So I don't think there's a huge amount of edge from here either way. I mean, there's a couple of things we're watching to kind of, you know, potentially time the trades, right? The first, I think, thing that's a bit underfollowed, but like one of the most important indicators to track is the US five-year, five-year kind of real OIS. So it's kind of top right.

hand chart there where you know this tends to be a bit more of a clean expression of where the market is pricing essentially terminal real policy rates right so because it's 5A 5A forward you've really taken out a lot of the kind of goal and short term things and you're getting kind of this

kind of implicit anchor for where the kind of long-term mutual rate, if you like, is trading. So in January this year, that went all the way up to kind of 1.9, almost 2%, which was the level it was at during the October 2023 yield peak when 10-year last went to 5%. And so obviously that's been like a very, very extreme level which things break. And so we've hit that level and come off a little bit now. So that's kind of giving you kind of a ceiling

The other thing we're looking for in terms of when the growth slowdown really kicks in is what I think a good indicator is the 2s, 5s, 10s butterfly. And I got that plotting on the bottom left there. So typically when this red line goes up and if it surges higher, that tends to be indicative of fixed income markets potentially anticipating a kind of growth slowdown. And if you overlay that with equities, you often find that surges are

in this two, five, tens tend to be associated with equity drawdowns. Just because when the five-year point surges a lot relative to two and 10-year point, that's usually a sign of the market getting worried that the Fed might need to be a bit more hawkish, which in turn leads to a kind of growth slowdown. And that then goes into like an equity drawdown. And so you're seeing like a mini version of that. So these are a couple of things to just keep an eye on. But yeah, overall,

Fair value, you know, we think is around 4.2. If we do like 10 year yields test, like 4% on a growth scan breaks it, that might be the point to reassess and be like, okay, where are growth LEIs? And if those things look fine, then that might actually be a chance to bet on higher yields or higher dollar again. But for now we're kind of stuck in this, you know, slight no man's land, fair neutral range. So it's kind of very much waiting it out.

Let me just clarify what you mean on that last paragraph there. I could interpret your comments here about 4% as a floor on yields, meaning, okay, you think it's going to stabilize here? Or if I look at your sticky inflation call, maybe you're saying it's not really stabilizing here. It's bottoming here and about to reverse higher. Which is it?

Uh, yeah. So I think if, if we break 4%, then I think there's a chance we get a tradable range, right? If you break 4%, I think it's very reasonable to, to bet on a rebounding to kind of 4.2, 4.3 kind of range. So you have like a range to play. The difficulty right now is I do think the market wants to test that and really test the growth scare thesis. And to your point, like

It's kind of like we have to kind of see that when the market does test a 4% break, at that point in time, are the high frequency growth indicators still holding up? Like for now it is, right? So let's say we test the 4% tomorrow.

10-year goes to 4% tomorrow, then based on where all the growth high-frequency data is right now, we would feel comfortable saying, actually, there isn't a recession and inflation is still sticky, in which case then the trade very much would be betting on yields rebounding quickly, right, from kind of 4%. But obviously, if it takes us like

If we just get stuck here, it takes us like another month or two to really test the 4%. But maybe that would have been the point where the LEI has deteriorated a lot more. In which case, then obviously it might just be stuck, right? Because then that would be kind of the stagflation and the Fed getting a bit stuck. Right now, the market is discounting, call it three cuts, right? Two to three cuts to year-end.

If inflation is sticky, how many more cuts can you price in? You know, maybe four cuts, but it's going to be hard to price a lot more in. So that's kind of roughly the parameters we're kind of working with. Let's move on now to the FX outlook on page nine.

Yeah, so this is obviously critically important, but like a very, very difficult thing right now. What's interesting is that our long-term structural models to like shorter models, like most to the positioning models, most of the models actually slightly dollar bearish, not a huge amount, but slightly dollar bearish. But one of the challenges we're having with this model is that to us, if we take a step back and look at the big picture,

it does look like the policy mix that the Trump administration is pursuing is that Reagan analogy we talked about, right? There's a lot of, you know, back in the 80s, Reagan used voluntary export restraints instead of tariffs. It was essentially the same idea of trade policy to encourage, you know, FDI flows into the U.S. to encourage companies to invest in the U.S. and create jobs in the U.S. So I think those policy mixes tend to actually be

pretty dollar bullish, right? Because at the same time, you are still running a large fiscal deficit in absolute size. So,

you know, you would need like Doge and like the fiscal policies to really shrink to then enable the kind of dollar to kind of break that Mandel-Fleming framework, right? On like the strong dollar mix. So like the base case is kind of if Trump is doing what Reagan's doing, which is essentially, you know, pursuing kind of the trade policy to get jobs back. At the same time, they are doing fiscal deficits, right?

and that's causing yields to stay high for longer, then that mix tends to be dollar bullish, right? So you kind of have this theory, you know, in theory what should happen, in practice what should happen problem right now. And so,

Our mindset has been, or our model suggests that the dollar does need to correct. We've obviously had that correction and with the European defense stuff, that's obviously giving another leg to kind of the Euro rally right now. I think probably the mindset is to stay on the sidelines and actually ultimately look to put on a long dollar expression once this plays out, just because the models might be saying one thing, but the policy mix still feels pretty dollar bullish. So until the administration changes,

what they're doing, right? It's not something we want to kind of lean against, right? We don't want to fight that policy. Even though Trump talks about he wants dollar lower rates lower, I think it's important for their policies to start reflecting it.

for it to actually happen, right? Like, it's very easy to just go, yeah, rates need to be lower and dollar needs to be lower. But if you don't change the policy mix, it's very hard. You know, you could say that, hey, maybe they're trying to engineer a stock market correction and the growth slowed down to justify it. I mean, it's possible, but obviously, like, you know, that's very hard to know in real time if they're doing it. But,

For now, our mindset is probably step back, let the kind of dollar correction play out, but ultimately look for a chance to actually go long dollar again. Let's move on to commodities on page 10. Yeah, so I think the most important, probably controversial thing is on gold, where I think this is the thing we've gotten a decent amount of pushback compliance on as well. So I think we turned bullish on gold about two years ago, so that timing was originally good.

And, you know, I think we broadly have liked gold up until basically the end of last year. And one of the concerns for us right now is that for gold to continue to really outperform from here, you would basically need the kind of 1970, you know, global monetary system, redux, right, reform, regime change for gold to keep performing. Gold's valuation is already pretty punchy.

uh you know one of the ways we value gold in the you know that's the bottom right hand chart here we look at the global stock of g20 uh money supply so fiat money supply relative to the the kind of total global above ground stock of gold so right so you just say how much fiat money is there how much gold is there and what's that imply and i think on the a lot of these metrics we're kind of back to kind of 2011 2012 levels of valuation right so

you know, to us, there's obviously legitimate concerns around fiscal, around growth, you know, around foreign central banks buying gold that this isn't necessarily a sign that gold's going to crash. It's more to us that given we've had this very good performance of gold for, you know, the past two, three years, essentially, especially relative to fixed income, gold could just be stuck in and be stuck, you know, going sideways on a lot of volatility for the next two years. So,

you know, if you still need it as a core part of your portfolio to give you some protection as a real asset, it'll still probably be okay. But it's just pretty, pretty valued. And, you know, alternatives like buying tips and, you know, rotating to something more kind of industrial commodity that's still real assets. They just have,

They just are on much more reasonable kind of entry points and starting kind of valuations. So that's more what we're thinking on that right now. So ideally take profit and gold. It's not necessarily fully a fade, but to maintain real asset exposure, we're leaning more into kind of tips and industrial commodities.

Let me just ask you a little bit more about the analysis that you described, because although I don't think this is 1971 all over again, it does seem to me like this is a pretty darned pivotal moment in monetary history from the standpoint that the things President Trump is proposing in terms of policy, you know, really wanting to demand payment from

from other nations for the military protection that they received from the United States, changing the relationship with Europe. We're definitely seeing a very significant change in the cooperation level between the EU and the United States with respect to the Ukraine war right now. It seems to me like those are all things that are likely to cause at least European central banks to

the ECB and the other smaller national banks to really start looking at diversifying away from dependence on U.S. denominated reserve assets. So I'm not saying it's 1971, but isn't there still a pretty strong argument that it is a moment of significant change in monetary history? Yeah, for sure. I hear you. And I think that that's the tricky thing. So

I guess this is more like what is the base case probability and is it priced in, right? So like clearly those are things that are being realized and they are justifying the previous rally in gold, right? Like a lot of the things that we're seeing is what justified this kind of, you know, need for gold to rally. And clearly it does take time

for portfolio managers, multi-asset managers to kind of embrace gold. Now, obviously, this is kind of a little bit depends on who you talk to, but my impression has broadly been that, again, like we're three years into this, right? Especially goals relative to performance to fixed income. So it feels like

you know, it's kind of well known as a concept that yes, it obviously, and that's why we laid out a lot of these different potential base cases that yes, clearly it can, it can continue if it's truly like a complete reordering of the global system. But it's like, but there's some probability that this is kind of, um, you know, discounted and, and that's what the challenge is. And, you know, I think the rotating away from dollar assets is a long term theme. So, um,

Ultimately, we're talking about whether the US will remain the global reserve asset, right? And if it's going to be the kind of still the default unit for kind of accounting for transactions. And I think those things generally, at least when we study the history of global reserve currencies, right? So going back to the Dutch Gilda, going back to the British pound, there's like a few kind of fundamental factors that generally determines whether the

a currency's reserve status. One is kind of actually technological superiority. So if the country maintains technology superiority, they tend to have the best economy, the best growth, the best industries, and that helps. And two is obviously the financial system, how dominant the local currency financial system is and their ability to extend credit to other countries. And so

On those things, I think, yeah, sure, China and the US in the AI race, but the US obviously has a lot of things going for it in terms of VC funding and tech innovation attracting the global elites and so forth. Elite talent that still suggests that US still has a good shot of maintaining their technology lead.

And at the same time, if the US is doing this by getting other countries to invest in US bonds and essentially extending dollar credit globally still, then those things are generally supportive of kind of reserve currency status as well, right? In addition to US being the incumbent and kind of already in a swift payment system, all these things. So those are probably like some longer term pictures, things that I've looked at to suggest it's

it's clearly a risk but as a base case those are like really long-term anchors i'm looking at but yeah clearly it's fair enough right that's why i was saying it's quite tricky that you know i don't think it's necessarily goals going to fall i just think it might just go nowhere for two years and i'm you know i'm kind of looking at other other parts of the the asset spectrum to give me my kind of risk free or risk off asset exposure

Well, Tian, as always, I can't thank you enough for another terrific interview. But before I let you go, please tell our institutional listeners a little bit more about the services you have on offer at Variant Perception, how they can find out more about you and how all of our listeners can follow your work. Yeah, so I think the easiest thing is VariantPerception.com. I think how we differentiate ourselves is essentially to have a much more of a kind of model first approach. So we have a lot of different

models we built out for trading signals like LPPL through to kind of the macro regime, macro growth inflation LEIs through to kind of longer term capital cycle models. So, you know, in terms of the output we have is very much being model centric, sitting on top of these models and tying together these different time horizons of trading business cycle, longer term structural cycle models to try and generate kind of investment ideas and investment themes.

Patrick Ceresna and I will be back as Macro Voices continues right here at MacroVoices.com. Now, back to your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick Ceresna.

Eric, it's great to have Tien back on the show. Now let's get to that chart deck. Listeners, you're going to find the download link for the postgame chart deck in your Research Roundup email. If you don't have a Research Roundup email, that means you have not yet registered at Macrovoices.com. Just go to our homepage, Macrovoices.com, and click on the red button over Tien's picture saying, looking for the downloads.

Okay, Eric, let's get into these charts. What are your thoughts here on equities? Well, Patrick, I think what's going on here is exactly what I've been warning about since the election. The market was acting as if Trump was somehow magically just going to succeed without any resistance at all of his policy goals. Trump has been clear all along in saying that protecting equity markets was not going to be a priority of his administration. But it felt like everybody just

Thought he was bluffing or something. Our friend Isabella Kaminska penned a piece on the blind spot, pointing out that the Trump administration has been signaling all along that we should expect this market route. And that piece was published on Saturday, two days before Monday's market slaughter. Now, finally, everyone seems to be getting the message. Trump's policies are huge, and so are the risks of policy blowback.

A breakdown of the U.S.-Western Europe alliance that's been in place since the end of World War II could be at stake here.

These are times of big change, really big change, and therefore market volatility was a clear, certain, and obvious outcome from the beginning. Only now does the market seem to be waking up to all of this. After Monday's market slaughter on the S&P, I think the logical thing to expect next would be a relief rally back up to the 200-day moving average, which is right around 5780 or so, 5780.

But from there, I think another leg lower is still entirely possible. But so is a V-shaped recovery from here. My real point is what happens next will depend on news flow. And the only thing that we can predict with any certainty is volatility.

The range of possibility here is so wide that it goes from Trump getting assassinated in his first months in office all the way to Trump succeeding in all of his policy goals and having them all be effective. And there's obviously a huge number of alternative scenarios between those two extremes.

Nobody can possibly predict the outcome of these things until it happens. So as far as I'm concerned, the only prescription that can be made with any confidence for this market is to put your seatbelt on and get ready for an exciting ride.

There are definitely a number of alternative scenarios of the two extremes of how things can play out. But let's just take a moment and look at this purely from a technical perspective. We had basically a six-month topping formation in the markets. And finally, we saw a break that has now led to a pretty methodically straight line decline of 10% in the S&P 500.

And so we're now at a really interesting moment because the markets are quite oversold. And whenever this type of a magnitude of a market correction typically would happen, if it's in the midst of a bull market, this would be often where the buy on dip would come in. You would see short term lows. There are certain extreme readings on the markets from very oversold conditions. And usually this is where things turn.

But now let's go with the alternate scenario that this is the beginning of a much more prolonged bear market. It doesn't have to be a severe financial crisis or anything, but just even a scenario like 2022 where the market simply had to mean revert and spent half a year to a year consolidating off of its highs.

If it's one of those scenarios, then usually you see a market drop of 10 to as much as 20% in the first wave down. And after that comes a pretty violent market rally that swings the other way but does not approach previous highs by any means.

And so this is really a really important moment in the markets to determine which of these paths the market is taking. If this is a big buy on dip, then we should see the buy on dip traders, even within the next one week, somewhere emerge and start some sort of a meaningful rally back towards 5900 in a rapid fashion.

But if in this very weak distributive state of the markets where we're so oversold, if it just leads to more and more selling, you know, a 15 to 20 percent correction could see us down to as low as 5,300 to even 5,000 on the downside.

And that is the puzzle to solve as to whether that kind of a bigger sell-off is occurring. Now, to kind of add to that, on page three, we have the Magnificent Seven. And you can see the Mag Sevens broke a very key bullish trend line, have been decisively below their 50-day moving averages, and have been the center of almost all major distribution trends.

Will we be able to see the MAG7s meaningfully reverse and bounce along with the S&P 500 is going to be an important clue because the MAG7s are such a huge market cap waiting that it'll be very difficult for the S&P to make it back to 52-week highs without the MAG7s turning at the same time.

And when we look at it from a volatility perspective on page four, you can see that the VIX has spiked up to a 28 level. We've seen that twice in the last year, once in August and once in December, where we had these spikes. But there's a very big difference because volatility rose to this 28 level in an incredibly methodical fashion.

Both times in August and December when we had big spikes, they came on one day market scares and massively reverted within days. And

And so this is a slightly different field to what is happening with volatility. And it'll be very interesting to see if volatility stays up in this 20 handle on a sustained basis, which would be further evidence, uh, that this market has shifted in its, uh, in its personality and its nature, uh,

other interesting notes is that we've see, uh, credit spreads and junk bonds finally starting to spike. We're seeing junk bonds breaking down and when markets enter usually deeper market corrections, usually it's accompanied by some form of credit correction as well. And that is starting to emerge as well. So to sum this all up, uh,

a market bounce can definitely happen here. But this was definitely a market environment where the hedges that we've talked about many times in the past on this show have worked so well in this environment and certainly a good time to remain hedged as this moment of uncertainty is coming.

Patrick, obviously those of us who didn't heed your advice to hedge downside risk back in February paid a price for that. But hindsight's always 20-20. So now that we've already tested a full 10% correction level from the peak on the S&P, the question on my mind is what hedging strategies are left that can be applied now after the fact for those of us who failed to hedge the risk of this correction before it began? Well,

Well, Eric, you can still apply the debit spread hedging strategies we are actively using at Big Picture Trading because they are more volatility neutral with favorable skews. But what I wanted to focus on now is on how to repair trades that have gone against you because at some point you will come to a typical short squeeze move where many of these stocks will reflexively retrace some of the recent declines. So let's talk trade.

trade repair. So if you've ever bought a stock only to watch it sink 20, 30, even 40%, and then you're stuck thinking, do I take the loss or throw more money at it and hope?

Well, you're not alone if you have. We've all been there. And today I wanted to share something that most investors don't even know exists, a way to repair a losing stock position without adding more capital. You see, most investors think their only option is to dollar cost average, buying more shares at a lower price to average down. But that approach has real risks. You're doubling your exposure to a trade that is already hurting you.

And you're tying up capital that could have otherwise been used for better opportunities. And the worst of all, you're doing this without a clear exit plan, just hoping the stock comes back. And let's be honest, hope isn't a strategy. Instead, what if you could attempt to fix the trade, lower your break even dramatically, but without adding a dime of new money? And that's where options repair strategies come in.

Now there are a few different ways to approach this, but today I wanted to focus on one of the simplest and most effective.

The ratio call spread. Now I love this strategy because it often requires no additional capital or most a tiny amount and it gives you a real shot at cutting your losses or even breaking even on the stock when it rebounds. Let me give you an example. Now keep it simple with round numbers. Imagine you bought a stock at $100 and it's now fallen to $80 so you're down 20%.

And now to get back to break-even, the stock would need to rally 25% all the way back to $100. And that feels like a long way up.

Instead of buying more shares, here's what you can do. Step one, you buy a one month $80 call option. That might cost you about $4 in this example. Now step two is you sell two $90 strike call options, $10 above where the current stock price is trading. And let's say you collect $2 for each.

Since you sold two calls for a total of $4 and bought one call for $4, the trade nets out to zero cost. And since you already own the stock, both calls are covered. Now what happens if the stock makes even a partial comeback? Let's say it rallies from $80 to $90.

In that case, you've recovered all of your loss by expiration. Instead of needing a rally back to $100, you're exiting near break even at $90 on a trade that was badly underwater. At the same time, if you were early on that repair strategy and the stock proceeded to continue to decline, you didn't dollar cost average and you're not losing on twice as many shares. The option spread just expires worthless and you get to try again.

Now look, we've all been in those losing trades, especially in markets like this where volatility is high and things feel unpredictable. But strategies like this give you the options, real options, to fight back and manage the trade. Just imagine cutting your break even dramatically without adding more capital and without throwing good money after bad.

And right now, with the markets as oversold and volatile as they are, I think it's critical for investors to understand how to apply these kinds of strategies because these situations are everywhere. Patrick, for our listeners who want to delve into these repair strategies in more detail, I understand you're working on a webinar on that very subject. When will that webinar occur? Is it free for Macro Voices listeners? And where can people register for it?

Now, obviously, there are more details to doing this right, like how to pick the strikes, what expirations to choose, what to watch for. And that's why I'm hosting a free live webinar on option repair strategies. And I'll be walking through the exact mechanics, sharing real life case studies and showing you how to avoid common mistakes that trip people up.

If you're sitting on a losing position right now, or you just want to know how to handle it when it happens, this is something you don't want to miss. It's happening on Tuesday, March 18th at 4 p.m. Eastern Time, and you can register for free at bigpicturetrading.com or the link is in our Macro Voices Research Roundup email.

All right, Eric, let's get back to the charts and let's talk about the dollar. Well, Patrick, 104 has been a key level on the Dixie for years now, so taking it out decisively to the downside this week was an important signal. As the situation appears now, I think lower numbers are still in store, but we've come an awfully way down already, so a bounce higher to repair the TPO chart would make a lot of sense before we eventually see lower numbers.

But again, my strongest overall caveat about this whole market is that this action in the dollar is a result of news flow, policy decisions from the Trump administration, and they're changing by the minute. So a big move in either direction is always possible on changing news flow.

Well, Eric, when looking at the dollar, that breakdown that happened over the last two weeks has done some serious technical damage. Even two, three weeks ago, when we were sitting still in the 106, 107 range on the upside, there was an easy technical argument to make that there was just a consolidation for a bull continuation pattern.

But with this deep of a drop in the U.S. dollar index, it has done some real technical damage that at minimum neutralizes the last bull cycle. Now, does that mean that the downside floodgate is opened and there's just going to be a collapse of the dollar? Probably not.

But at this moment, we haven't seen even an attempt to bounce it from such an extremely oversold scenario. This could mean that we're going to re-enter that two-year trade range that was bound with $100 as the lower level and $105 as the upper range.

So could we see some weakness of a few more dollar index handles to the downside to retest some of the lows of the last two years? It's plausible as the dollar really has lost almost all of its upside momentum.

All right, Eric, let's touch on oil. Well, we've entered a consolidation range with the floor right on the 52-week lows around 65 spot 20 on WTI. And we're oscillating up and down maybe three or three, three and a half dollars above that level. My read on this is what we're doing here is fighting the 52-week lows, which are acting as a strong support. I think the market's trying to test to see whether we can break lower below that number from here.

I think we probably will. And if we do, I wouldn't be surprised if that accelerates the selling down into at least the low 60s. One message is clear. President Trump wants lower oil prices. And so far, quite frankly, he's been willing to play hardball in order to get what he wants.

Ultimately, oil prices significantly lower than they already are are only going to hurt American shale producers. So if we get a breakdown below the support level, I think it will probably be fairly short-lived and therefore a buying opportunity.

I also have a suspicion that President Trump's plan may be to try and push oil prices as low as he can possibly get them for the sake of taking a victory lap on the public stage for doing something that Biden failed at, but then to immediately commence a very aggressive initiative to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve back up to the rim with every possible drop of oil that will fit.

In other words, pull oil prices down, take political credit for doing that, and then put oil prices back up, but do it in a way which services his Make America Great Again agenda by filling up the SPR, something he said that he wants to do.

That would support prices, help American producers. And if he does it after at least allowing prices to stay, let's say for a few weeks down at a lower level, doing something that Biden was not able to do during his term in office, well, that buys him a bunch of brownie points with the American people. That's

pure speculation on my part. I have no idea if that's going to happen. I'm simply suggesting that it would make sense and be consistent with what President Trump has said for him to try to do something like that. And I think he has enough levers to pull in order to make that happen.

Well, just technically speaking here, Eric, we came for a direct technical retest of the September 2024 low, and we have at least seen some short-term bullish reactions off of that low. But is it a new bull phase just because we tested a support line?

It's a little premature to jump to that conclusion. We could easily bounce towards $69 and $70 on the upside just from the reflexivity of the magnitude of the prior decline. And that in itself wouldn't even do any technical bull signaling like oil's ready to run on the upside.

At this moment, we have to respect the prevailing downtrend. We also have to respect the big support line. It's more likely that we have to anticipate that the remainder of March is going to be a period where oil is going to have to establish some sort of a basing formation from which the bulls can potentially lean on if they're going to turn it off of these levels.

So Eric, I wanted to touch on page seven where I have the 12-month natural gas fund, which is essentially trading a natural gas strip and removing the seasonality of natural gas futures.

And what we have seen is an extraordinary bull advance in natural gas prices as we've gone off of, on this chart anyway, from the $7 level up to over 30 plus percent towards the $10 plus level on the upside. We have now exceeded all the levels that we traded at in 2024. It's one of the few charts that continues to look actually extraordinarily bullish in

Now there is a very big overhead resistance in the $11 to $12 area. So it's not exactly like there's a big asymmetric opportunity to start buying up here. But there's a definitive bull trend. And I think that buying dips on natural gas is something that may continue to work.

All right, Eric, let's touch on gold.

But the weekly chart is still overbought. So while we might hit that round number of 3,000 or maybe 3010 on this swing, I don't think we can move materially higher, you know, 3,500 or something like that, until the market has time to consolidate first on a sideways trading action or even a down move for a few months in order to shake off this extreme overbought condition on the longer time frame technicals.

The exception to that, of course, would be if the Mar-a-Lago Accord really happened or if there's a formal revaluation of U.S. gold reserves, that could bring a breakout that just defies all overbought technical levels and just takes us much higher. So anything's possible, but barring a really big news event to support it feels to me like this market

Maybe he has one more swing higher, test that round number resistance at 3,000. And I think it's going to run out of steam at least until it has time to consolidate for a few weeks to a few months. Well, Eric, I just want to highlight that from a perspective of gold, I remain very bullish. It's a primary bull trend, higher highs, higher lows, all support lines keep holding.

The debate for me, though, is that is gold going to just break out here in March to an all-time new high and punch to like $3,200 or $3,300 on the upside? Or are we in the midst of a prolonged consolidation? I want to highlight that, for instance, back in March and April when we had a big push in gold from the $2,000 level up to about $2,400,

gold ended up spending three months trading sideways along its 2400 highs before ultimately breaking out again to continue the bull run. And so for me, this still has vulnerability of still being in this consolidation phase. And just because we're retesting the high right now is not convincing enough for me that right now is when the next bull continuation pattern happens.

Now, for me, I could see a consolidation that potentially still maybe even during a broader market liquidity event could test $2,800 on the downside. And it really could be a second quarter of the year story when gold gets going. But if we do finally see a meaningful and sustained breakout of gold, then a move up towards $3,200 to $3,300 is definitely the upper target in this bullish chart.

All right, Eric, let's touch on uranium. Well, this was another week of even lower lows on an already oversold uranium market. But I'm finally seeing signs of improving technicals. Specifically, a few weeks ago, we had the uranium sector selling off hard, even as the S&P was holding up along its all-time highs.

But even during Monday's market carnage on the S&P, a few uranium sector issues were actually up on the day, while others were down, but not down nearly as hard as the S&P was. These signals give me confidence that the uranium sector is ready to find a bottom and reverse its trend to the upside just as soon as the broader stock market is ready to recover. But

But as we discussed earlier, it might be a while before that happens, and much lower numbers could be in store before the broader market bottoms. And that will be decided by news flow that we can't possibly predict. Now, barring anything other than an outright stock market crash 40% down or something like that,

I don't think we're going to see that much more carnage on uranium because I think the uranium capitulation has already played out, whereas the broader market S&P capitulation, if there's going to be one, hasn't really happened yet. So I don't expect to see uranium continue to underperform the S&P. But hey, if the S&P continues to move lower, and especially if it moves substantially lower, it's definitely going to bring new lower lows on uranium. Still buying opportunities as far as I'm concerned.

I have no idea how long it's going to take for this to shake out, but eventually this uranium market has to turn around. They've got to buy fuel for all these new reactors that everybody wants to build. It's coming sooner or later, and only time will tell.

Technically, Eric, uranium continues to be in a distributive cycle, lower highs, lower lows. It hasn't yet seen new accumulation and or new buying. And this is where I would want to see some sort of price action stability start to form in order to speculate that a bottom is in.

Overall, I think that this will prove to be a good price level for the long term. But on the short term, it may be a very quiet and boring holding period waiting for uranium to come back to life again.

And the final thing I wanted to touch on, Eric, on page 10 is the copper chart. And surprisingly, Dr. Copper continues to plug away on the upside as it's making higher highs and higher lows. And now only real resistance above is its previous highs from May of last year, which were up in the 5 to 5.10 area. Copper, like natural gas, is in some sort of a new accumulation cycle and continues to work.

Folks, if you enjoy Patrick's chart decks, you can get them every single day of the week with a free trial of Big Picture Trading. The details are on the last pages of the slide deck or just go to bigpicturetrading.com.

Patrick, tell them what they can expect to find in this week's Research Roundup. Well, in this week's Research Roundup, you're going to find the link to that special webinar I'm doing on option repair strategies, which is, again, being held on Tuesday, March 18th at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. You're also going to find the transcript for today's interview and the chart book that we just discussed here in the postgame, including a number of links to articles that we found interesting.

You're going to find this link and so much more in this week's Research Roundup. That does it for this week's episode. We appreciate all the feedback and support we get from our listeners, and we're always looking for suggestions on how we can make the program even better. Now, for those of our listeners that write or blog about the markets and would like to share that content with our listeners,

Send us an email at researchroundupatmacrovoices.com and we will consider it for our weekly distributions. If you have not already, follow our main account on X at Macro Voices for all the most recent updates and releases. You can also follow Eric on X at Macro Voices.

Eric S. Townsend. That's Eric spelled with a K. You can also follow me at Patrick Ceresna. On behalf of Eric Townsend and myself, thank you for listening, and we'll see you all next week.

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