Ok now on the point I will drop its line by default through the 甚麼 been so resilient are they starting to roll over? Well, I think the, you mentioned both of them, I would think that the consumer is going to start to weigh in a lot more in the following months. Because you're starting to see credit card loans increase significantly, which means that they are starting to run out of cash and use credit cards.
And that's usually not a very good sign. But the consumer is still relatively OK compared to other decades. I do think that we're going to see a significant decline. And it's also related to labor markets. So labor markets have been very strong, but it's just in a few parts of their labor market, specifically, that are looking more resilient. So I don't know.
I think what we're seeing right now, and as far as performance across the markets that I'm really concerned about, remains, yes, that that ceiling is something that is in everyone's minds. And because of the default risk and so forth, I think there's basically zero default risk. I mean, yeah, we can see a technical default and other things. But I'm not sure that's really the problem.
What I'm mostly concerned is, as we see those two parties agree on extending to that limit, is can we absorb a large amount of treasury issuances as we move forward after the fact, after agreeing on extending to that limit? And I'm not sure we can, because prior resolvments of that ceiling issue, we've had, I think in 2015 or so, it was an increase of about $1.1 trillion in the next nine months of the debt problem. And since then, that number has been increasing every time we've resolved at that ceiling. And now, last time, it was about $2 trillion.
They're saying they're going to increase our issue about $1.2 trillion in the next months after that ceiling problem, because they have to catch up with the fact that they have not issue any treasuries. I think that it's easy to make the case that we're going to see over $2 trillion of treasury issuances. And can the market really absorb that today? I'm not sure there's really enough buyers of those instruments.
And everything is tied to the treasury market today. Right? I mean, look, even long duration assets are most of this bear market rally we've had since the beginning of the year is being caused by the fact that 10-year yields have not been rising like they were back in 2022. And the fact that we didn't see financial conditions really tighten as much as they were back in 2022. They actually ease up in many of the measurements that we looked at considering credit spreads.
Although, I do think that's an opportunity that credit spreads me blow out. They've been declining recently, along with the VIX. And so I don't know. I think that we're setting the stage for something big to happen, in my opinion. I haven't seen many of those times in my career where you have fundamentals really deteriorating. You have the narrative really deteriorating. But at the same time, some of the instruments that should be showing some of that weakness are not doing that.
And I think that the volatility is way too suppressed. And we're creating setting the stage for a vol event in my opinion. Why do you think volatility is so suppressed? What's going on that we're not seeing this reflected in the markets? I think the way we measure volatility in the first place that people like to talk about is the VIX, which arguably is not a good way to really look at volatility itself.
But thinking about how the weights of that, which is mostly looking at the S&B 500, put options and so forth, but looking at the underlying index, which is the S&T and looking at the weight of most of those mega-cap companies that have been performing well over the last months or so. I think that's the reason why we haven't seen some of those issues really of fold. Look, credit spreads are also shouldn't be explained by the mega-caps. They should be explained by the fact that we just haven't seen a credit event outside of the banking problems.
So I don't know. I think this is as there was a good chart that we put out. I probably didn't send to you guys. Just came to my mind. But it was a good chart that we put out recently that really looked at the number of bankruptcies that we haven't had in a weight versus today. And there is a lag. Initially, you see a very large amount of assets going bankrupt initially, or businesses that have a lot of assets.
And the following wave is the other number of businesses that follow along with that. And I think we've had some bankrupts happen. Some of them are very important ones, in the banking section, in the crypto space and some others. But I don't know. I would think that there's more to go. And if that is the case, and there's a credit or a vol event in the horizon, credit spreads and vicks are way too cheap. And maybe mega-caps don't deserve to be where they are.
Why would you pay 100 times earnings to a company that is not even growing anymore? Most of the things stocks are actually starting to deteriorate. Even on the top line and the bottom line. So I think there's a lot of risk that people are not really perceiving as risk right now. That's so interesting. And we're going to talk about how you grapple with that risk in a second.
I do want to get to that. But it's interesting that you're talking about tech stocks. Because there was all this concern about future profitability, not being it. We heard all about this rotation that is going to go into value and into more traditional names. And then I feel like ChatGPT came out. And it just blew the roof off. And a lot of the gains that you're seeing, pace and tech are really around this AI revolution. We had open AI, CEO Sam Altman and other tech executives testifying in front of Congress today.
I mean, everyone's trying to wrap their head around this. First of all, do you think that that's ushering it? Do you think that that's responsible for this enthusiasm and this money pouring into the tech sector and causing this outperformance? I sound like a permabair, but I just really, really struggle getting behind a market that the caper ratio is just so excessive or the sickly and just the P ratio is so excessively historically.
I don't think we've ever seen a time in history when we reach that level that the next 10 years will look really attractive. I know other folks are starting to talk about that as well, Dr. Mueller mentioned that not too long ago. It's an important point because how will valuations really inflate from here, especially if rates are higher than they were 10 years ago and growth would be lower than it was 10 years ago.
Now, let's use the AI idea, because I think it's something I've been thinking a lot about too. Look, AI is almost like a perfect assistant. It's almost replaces at least 100 people working for you as an assistant sometimes. And it's amazing what it can do. It's been very helpful for our business as well. We've been using quite a lot. And what I find interesting is there is today a gap in valuations between small companies and larger companies. And if anything, what AI really does, in my opinion, so far of my experience using it and talking to people, is that perhaps, yes, there is improvements across the board of technological breakthroughs, but also efficiencies and other things that may be created.
But one of the things that is interesting is that I think it will close a little bit the gap between smaller companies and larger companies. It's not the need for having to really have an army working for you. It won't be as necessary as it used to be in the past. So something to really think about. Because right now in the market, you see this major, I would say divergence between small cap names and the mega cap names. It really is a divergence. One is going up and the other one is going down. And I'm not sure that is really justified by what's going on either.
So look, I think we've had other breakthroughs during parts and times of the market where valuations are really high. Yes, there is maybe this time is different. And we're going to see two sequences of decades of robust growth in corporate earnings. We've never seen this before. We've had that one in the 1920s, one in the 1990s, and one in the 2010s. Both of the other ones were really preceded very important contractions in corporate earnings in a following decade. Can we see something similar today? I think it's very possible.
So I'm a little concerned about that. I think we've extrapolated way too much in terms of what we'll look like ahead. And I think this whole idea that markets are discount mechanism, which obviously is the case. In 2022, all we've had is in a discounting of duration, not a discounting of cash flows. I mean, even InfoTack, which, as you're talking about with the AI and other developments, their earnings are down over 11% year over year. Microsoft, which is one of the darlings of AI and so forth, just freeze salaries of their own employees. They're not raising any sellers. So, you know, a solidar conflicting data and information about all this as well. So I think it's a little bit height.
Yeah, it's a great observation. A lot of great observations in there.
是的,这是一个很棒的发现。里面有很多伟大的观点。
So if you're nervous about this, these risks that, you know, Vals Tulo, that risks are not being appreciated, credit spreads, tech, megatax, running too fast, too far, how are you positioning?
How do you protect yourself if we're setting up for a volivant? Well, we have hedges. And I think the long side of the portfolio they won't change much in the next, you know, call it five or 10 years, which is very heavily invested in natural resource companies. I still think there's a lot of reasons to believe that resource companies will do very well. And then you're, there's still a fraction of the global equity market. And yeah, they can get caught up in the recession as well.
So it is absolutely critical to have some sort of a hedge in those businesses, too. And so the way we've been doing it is, we've been, you know, we think credit spreads are gonna blow out. So if they short a lot of junk bonds, we have shorts in the mega-kept space. I think the shorts in the mega-kept space is becoming cheaper and cheaper given the fact that everyone disagrees with the thesis. Everyone thinks that they are supposedly haven assets today, which is insane in my mind.
I think there's still opportunities to be sure things like private equity companies or private equity funds that I think are massively mismarking their balance sheets. You know, some of them carry a lot of, you know, start-ups and the tech startups and they're in their balance sheets, some of them carry commercial real estate in their balance sheets. And, you know, those things just don't need to be marked accordingly. And there is a significant narrative shift happening across the general and the public in general regarding the issues of private equity in different businesses like hospitals and other things.
And I think those are gonna be big shifts in terms of the narrative that could eventually hurt those companies. We've always been skeptical about those industries just because, you know, I'm not sure this, if people really knew what was really happening, you know, in terms of how those valuations really occurred and how those fees get paid through those managers, I think people would be surprised.
And so, anyways, I do think there's a lot of pain in that part of the market and still have. You know, some of them are already suffering outflows and other things that we know of. And so, I'm not saying that this will happen tomorrow, but that's one side of the market that I think could be potentially at risk.
And so, mega caps, corporate bonds, private equities, I think insurance businesses that carry a lot of, of corporate bonds today, those businesses have a lot of corporate bonds in their balance sheets. It's basically a big chunk of what they own. And so, I think there's, you know, there's reasons to be worried about some of those parts of the markets.
And, yeah, and technology have a separation, right? The smaller companies and the larger ones, the larger ones are really cheap to be finding ways of being exposed to the short side. And I'm really attracted to those.
Are you, is there a concern that trouble in that part of the, or if the pain starts to become real in that part of the market, that it could become systemic? Do you worry about something like that?
Oh, I think there's a potential. You're asking really the question of if there is a risk of a, a full, hard lending sort of scenario. And I think it's a, you know, I would say that there is a very high probability of that.
I think very soon here, given how things are developing, the situation with the banks that really adds to that case, I think there was a chart I used recently, which was showing the commercial and industrial loans of, and in terms of growth. And we're starting to, because people are looking at those things in an annual basis, so the Delta on a year-to-year basis, I'm not sure that's really as critical as looking at this in a shorter timeframe, given the fact that most of those developments happen in the last month or so. But you're starting to see some really significant declines in terms of contraction of those loans. And, you know, I think that that is just adding to the case of the yield curve that has been telling and warning us about a potential recession.
And the fact that we're starting to see the separation, even on earnings beginning to contract, but revenues is still staying resilient. Revenues would be the less than was to fall. And I think that's in the next earnings, we're probably gonna see that. And if you look at most estimates, we're still seeing growth is still being embedded in most of those estimates today.
So, yeah, I'm concerned about overall in terms of the economy. I think there's gonna be some real pain here in the near future.
是的,我的担忧是关于整体经济状况。我认为在不久的将来,会出现一些实质性的经济困难。
Yeah. So, you're bullish commodities. We talked about that last time you're on. But it's interesting now if we're seeing recession, we're seeing the potential for some vol events. These are all negatives that would presumably hurt demand and weaken the economy. And yet, you're still bullish commodities. It sounds like it's a longer term. I'm gonna let us know if it's a longer term call. And what fuels that?
Well, I first informed most, I'm a big believer that we're gonna see correlations playing in markets very different than we saw back in a way. And so, I think that I don't think this is 1970s, but I do think correlations could be very similar in a sense of how you have had protective assets like treasuries in the last couple of decades that have been very good defensive assets here for Folly, I'm not sure that would be the case today. So, you think about gold playing that role?
There's a reason why, yes, I know gold has been underperforming less week or two, but it's the only asset in the whole world that is actually about to make new highs in terms of a macro asset, not Bitcoin, Bitcoin's down 70% from all time highs. And so, not NASDAQ, not the S&D 500, not oil, not copper. You know, since it's really interesting to see that gold is holding up well up there. And I think there's a reason for that is trifecta of macroing balances that we have, the 1940s debt, the valuation problem of the 1990s, inflation problem of the 70s, all that is playing a role into allowing gold prices to be lifted.
And I think that's probably gonna be the case moving forward. And so, the reason why I'm so bullish on commodities, I understand the risk and the cyclicality of some of them like silver or copper, but I do think gold will play more and more of a role into becoming that defensive asset. It's important to see what's going on with central banks buying those instruments. Central banks were basically the big buyers of treasuries in the 80s.
If you look at what caused the 6040 proposed creation, in my opinion, started with the larger institutions, even larger than the patient funds, which are the central banks. They started buying the treasury market before anybody. And then we became, we saw this construction of a conventional portfolio called the 6040s. And I'm not sure that will be the case in the near future, meaning five or 10 years from now, I think there's gonna be not the end of fixing common equities in a portfolio, but a more balanced portfolio where gold will start playing a bigger role into that.
And I think, you know, look at the performance of treasuries versus gold in the 70s, which is very important. That was a major divergence between the two, where gold was rising every time the market had some painful moments. I think we're gonna start seeing that here as well. Jim was asking what resources you like and why. It sounds like even though we're talking about commodities, it's really gold. Or do you like the mall you just like gold the best?
Oh, no, I like a lot of. I think the metals and mining is one of the most important ones. I had a chart that I sent to you all looking at the industrial production in the US. And it's such an important chart, because it creates and sets the stage for the long term demand for commodities in general. So if you look at that chart itself, you're gonna see that there's been an 80 year process from the 1920s all the way to 2000, 80 year process of an exponential growth of industrial production in the US. And then from 2000 to now, we've basically seen a stagnant period where there was no growth whatsoever in the industrial production.
In fact, this was really aligned with the fact that China entered the WTO and became a large exporter of, I think China went from 2% of total exports in the global economy to 15%. So big changes there in terms of reliance in that country.
As we continue to see things play out in terms of more de-globalization trends and so forth, countries will be forced to go above and beyond and shift their economies back to own shore and reduce the geopolitical risk that they currently have. And as we see that happening, it's hard to believe.
Just like China entering the WTO created a whole marketing commodities in the early 2000s. I'm really excited about seeing the G7 economies doing the same today. It's gonna be much bigger. So I think there's a case to be made there in long term commodities.
And we look at the metals and mining industry itself, which will be serving most of those developments. What, it's like, again, it's a fraction of the S&P 500. It's a fraction of the global equity market. So I'm bullish, not just gold, but silver, copper. We have coal, balt, nickel, all sorts of things.
And I just think it's really interesting that today you have gold prices approaching new levels and properties that own gold that have, there aren't the process of defining large discoveries of gold, trading have very depressed valuations. And so I've never, either I'm really stupid or this is one of the best opportunities I've ever seen. So I'm really excited about this because I don't know per se 100% the value of everything that we only in terms of their assets on the ground, but boy, it's definitely not what's being priced in the markets today. So I think it's really interesting. The level of inefficiencies we're finding there. And that's why I'm so attracted to it.
So as I'm thinking about this, and I don't know if this is exactly the right question, but if there is, if there is de-globalization, and we do see this industrial boom as everyone reassures, if you've got AI on the loose, and it's gonna be robots that do much of the heavy lifting or a version of computer learning and things are way more efficient because of that. You don't need nearly the amount of people.
Is, does that still mean we see a commodity boom? Do we just get rid of wage inflation, but you still have commodities going up or does that change the calculation of our commodities as well?
Well, we still need bridges to survive. We still need airports, we still need highways, we still need all sorts of things. Industrial capacity needs to be built. And like I said, there's another show between the manufacturing part of the economy relative to GDP today, which used to be a very significant percentage and today is probably one third of what used to be. And it's, you know, we've been in a secular decline on that by the way.
So I don't think commodities are going away because of AI. I think AI is gonna create a lot of breakthroughs. I'm really excited about the biotechnologist place, for instance, I think there's a lot of, we've been investing in that.
我认为 AI 不会让商品消失。相反,我认为 AI 将创造很多突破。例如,我非常兴奋生物技术领域,我认为我们一直在投资这个领域。
We actually hire recently three months ago, scientists to work with us in finding some of those, before this whole hype on AI really, I should say five months ago or so. And it's been really exciting to learn about that industry overall. And I think with AI, things can really become more and more appealing in that camp. But, you know, and they're not priced the same way a lot of the mega caps and other stock price today for perfection. So I'm attracted to that.
I don't think AI will change the dynamic in terms of the demand for, you know, copper in terms of the green revolution, the electrification that is happening. Or even gold itself, the fact that central banks are buying gold and you have solar panels being created still needs silver. I don't think we're gonna change that setup for commodities at all.
So I think there's, you know, I think it's, I'll go safe to say that the demand side of it will continue to be very robust and probably increasingly robust over the next five to 10 years for commodities. And the fact that supply remains so tight, commodities are all different in their sense.
But in the metals and mining, I can certainly say that it takes over decades to go from oversupply or to undersupply to oversupply. And I think we're definitely in the undersupply stage right now. And it's gonna take a long time to see that shifting. So, you know, it's hard on to be a bowl. I mean, it's, you know, there's a lot of, those things are really cheap, especially in the ground. I mean, if you think just buying gold or copper in the ground today is never being cheaper.
What, and you like, you have a country play on that too. You very bullish on Brazil, correct? Is it related to commodities or are there other factors that make you like Brazil so much?
你的意思是,你也喜欢有一个国家来玩吗?你非常看好巴西,是因为商品还是有其他因素让你这么喜欢巴西?
Well, I think Brazil is interesting because basically, again, if you just, I suggest people to do that, take, you know, a big macro look in terms of, what are the cheapest equity markets in the world today? Start there. Just look at caper ratios across the whole world economy. What you're gonna find is the cheapest economies are Brazil and other commodity-led economies at their very top. The bottom of that, you're gonna see the US, which is by far one of the most expensive ones, and then you have other things like India, which is a commodity-in-porter, and, you know, it's still a lot of hype on India, you know, surpassing in terms of performances, other emerging markets, which I don't believe.
Now, you start seeing things like Brazil that are really cheap and you ask yourself, why is it so cheap? Well, there's a lot of reasons. Well, that a very depressed commodity market over the last decades or so, and the other investments there is reflected in the Brazilian market. Number two, you've had a shift in the political environment that is creates a political risk, but well, though, in a second, there's also political risk in the US. One is price-back, one of the highest- You can say that again. One is price of one of the highest, you know, or most expensive valuations in history, and the other is price of one of the lowest valuations in history.
One is price for failure, the other one is price for perfection. I would much rather take the price for failure, because I believe in this commodity cycle that we're probably entering, and I think that it's going to create a lot of opportunities in that part of the market. And remember, the commodity space is very thin and small. Once large institutions begin to really spread their wings, it's hard to believe Brazil is not going to play a role as part of their portfolios.
And so I'm not claiming here it's going to be no volatility, easy trade, not at all. This is going to be heavily volatile, and there's going to be bad news and good news, and get ready for the right. It's always crazy. Brazil, there's always a political price is going on, but how prices are relative to fundamentals of most of the businesses, I mean, look at the banks. They're really cheap today, or look at commodity businesses in Brazil, relative to other commodities in other developed economies. I'm not sure that divergence evaluations is really correct.
I think there's a lot of opportunities here in that part of the market, and I'd rather be on the cheap side than on the expensive side. So I'm really excited about that. Yeah, and you like to express that through equities, like a general Brazil ETF fund, or do you have to dig a little deeper into certain sectors or currency or bond? How do you like that?
I don't have a currency position, although I'm not opposed to it, I don't have a bond position either, although I'm not opposed to it. I do have equity positions in some commodity producers, the banks, and some of the companies really high dividends as well on top of it, and we do have private investments as well in Brazil and the mining space. And so that is essentially that part of the book. It's not a huge amount of a portfolio. I just want to say that, but it's something I'm excited.
I think it's, I would think that the understanding of that market would be in demand in the following years. And people that understand that market very well, I would say that those are probably going to have some really interesting years. And I'm excited about that because I'm Brazilian and I've never been excited about Brazil. And so, biasly, negative about it. And recently, I just looking at the things and my views about commodities, I would say recently in less one or two years, I've been really shifting my view on Brazilian equities.
And it's been difficult, but I think I am fully now engaged into going public and saying that I think Brazil is going to be a great investment for the next five or the 10 years, yeah. I love it. I love it. Tavio covered a lot of ground. Always really fantastic to have you on. Really interesting. I love your comments about AI, kind of leveling the playing field between big and small companies. I think we haven't heard enough about that. I think it's a really interesting observation. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Great to have you on. Thanks to all of you. As usual, we back tomorrow. I think I'm with Daria Stale if I'm not mistaken, but have a fantastic evening. And as always, take care and good luck out there. Thank you.