Bizarro World Podcast,
with Nick and Gerardo
Jan. 7, 2022
Publisher's Note: The first podcast of the new year is also our first ever video podcast.
Experts tell us it’s more engaging and that the audience wants to see our faces. I’m not so sure.
What I’m more sure about is the reason stocks have been selling off. Despite rampant infections, it has much less to do with omicron than you might think.
The market cycle continues to change after a rip-roaring 2021. See how to position now in our first Bizarro World of the year.
Enjoy,
--Nick and Gerardo
Table of Contents
3:10 Is Market Pricing in Omicron or Something Else?
11:24 Thoughts on the Crypto Drop
14:29 Violent Unrest in Kazakhstan Highlights Precarious Uranium Supply Chain
20:12 LAPD Kills 14 Year Old Girl While Shooting Someone Else
27:20 Long Island High School Teacher Arrested For Jabbing 17-Year-Old Without Permission
29:22 Are We Collectively Moving Past Covid?
33:35 Early Year Market Action to Get Excited About
Gerardo Del Real: Live from the center of Omicron. The Kazakh government, the "cabinet resigned." You wanted video, you got video, everybody. Welcome to 2022. Crypto's are crashing, teachers are injecting 17-year-olds with vaccines. The LAPD shot a 14-year-old girl, killing her as she was trying on a dress for a quinceañera. The broader indices, especially tech, are selling off. Gold is back below $1,800. A whole hell of a lot to get to. I am Gerardo Del Real along with my co-host Mr. Nick Hodge. This is episode 151 of the most appropriately titled podcast on the planet. Bizarro World. Mr. Hodge, Happy New Year. Welcome to 2022.
Nick Hodge: Happy New Year, Gerardo. It's a bit tough to hear you with the mask. I think we can all relate to that with the muffled-ness that we have to hear from everybody these days. I wanted to be in the cool crowd because I see these Bored Apes giving interviews and people talking about NFTs and crypto's with their laser eye masks and things like that, so I figured I would come masked to this first video edition podcast of Bizarro World. And not only that, but we talk about collectibles and inflation and money in the system here a lot too and there were two things. One, there was a collectible Incredible Hulk comic that sold for $460,000, or a little bit more than that, in this past week. And in the same week, Eminem bought an NFT, a Bored Ape NFT, for around the same amount, half a million dollars.
Just to kick off 2022, a little bit of fun here with the mask and to tell you that there are continued high asset prices in both collectibles and NFTs, which I'm sure we'll talk more about. And with that, I'll take the mask off and we can get into a bit more serious note here.
Gerardo: No, listen, let's get into it. And so I'm wearing the mask and I say live from the center of Omicron because my 23-year-old and I traveled last week and brought me home a gift from New York. He came back positive for COVID. I don't believe I have COVID, I have zero symptoms. He's vaccinated, double jabbed. He had symptoms for a day and a half, maybe about four days ago. So he's back 100%, all well. Everybody else is doing well. But yeah, I think it's just a reminder that this is going to be the new normal for the next little bit. And everybody's picked sides, everybody has their own opinions about getting vaxxed, not getting vaxxed, the government mandates everything else. This is the new reality, this is what it is.
Is Market Pricing in Omicron or Something Else?
And look, the broader indices are starting to reflect that a little bit more, especially in the tech sector, the NASDAQ has fallen for three straight days. We're recording this now on Thursday, you all ask for video, you're getting video. So it's going to change a bit here moving forward, but I'd love to get your thoughts, Nick, on the broader indices and then we can get into commodities here in a second.
Nick: Yeah. Caveats, of course, we don't know a lot. This is our therapy session. We talk things through here, kick around ideas and we'll be excited to see each other face to face. We're actually having a holiday Christmas party, I guess it's a New Year party now, in Austin, Texas this weekend. And so will be good to get everyone there. And like you say, everyone's sort of got their own approach to this. We had some employees who aren't coming and some who are all gung ho to come even though you've been recently, quote unquote exposed.
Gerardo: Exposed.
Nick: Exactly. And so I think largely, the world is starting to move on, is wanting to get past this virus and is seeing that this Omicron variant is mild. And so in that respect, they want to move forward and are seeing that vaccination is a way to do that. I'm not sure the markets are going down because of the virus. There's a couple of other things going on here. You had Jerome Powell out last month talking about hawkishness, like he's going to raise rates. And then you also have growth slowing in a real way, right? Last year people were calling for crashes and the stock market to go down, and I was saying it's going to continue to hit new highs because GDP was coming off a level that was so low from the previous year, which was lockdown year. And so I think what the market is starting to price in now is that the economy's not going to grow at that rate, and that might be exacerbated by, at least temporarily, the reaction to this Omicron variant. But in a very real way, Omicron flare-up or not, the economy wasn't going to keep pace with the growth that it put in last year.
And you match that up against the Fed, who was talking about raising rates in the face of slowing, and you get what you've seen in the market. I would say going back to Black Friday, right? When you sort of had that sell off when we were talking about things are changing, there's new market winds. Well, I think you're seeing that's the firm direction now. And we were also saying that we were waiting for the new year to see what that direction was going to be, because the end of the year is low volume and things like that. And so I think you're starting to see the market price in some of those things I just talked about there.
Gerardo: The CNBC headline, and it made me laugh, right, is "the Fed is scaring markets with the triple threat of policy tightening." And I mentioned Omicron, I'm glad you picked up on it, and the economy, because I think the Fed is going to be as consequential to the asset classes that have been inflated for the past, you know, since 2008, frankly, as Omicron is right now to most people and the way that they process it, that being that most people are just moving on. They're either in the camp that they're getting vaccinated and boosted, they're willing to catch it and not be vaccinated, they're calling it a cold, they're calling it a mild flu. But whatever camp you're in, everybody kind of has their approach, I think, here moving forward. So I don't think that the Fed threatening to tighten and raise rates is going to be very consequential because I promise you if the market, the overall indices continue to slide and we get another five to 10% pullback, you'll get an about face, just like Powell did it last time.
He did it last time and then we saw exactly what happened, more fuel to the fire. If there's something Powell and Yellen are afraid of, they're scared of the stock market going down. We have midterm elections at the end of this year, we have a lot of very consequential political events that I think also won't give the Fed much room to get in there in taper. And I think the excuse is going to be we don't medal in politics and it won't be appropriate in light of the midterm elections coming up to raise rates too quickly or to do so in a way that's meaningful at all. 25 basis points? Maybe. 50? Possibly. But then I think, again, I think the market will remind J&J who's in charge.
Nick: Yeah, I think it already is to some extent with the softness and the inequities, if they raise, like you say a quarter-point or whatever, I think the market response will be clear. And so, that's what I wanted to talk about a little bit today. And so it's very paradoxical and that's appropriate because this is a bizarro world, right? So, last year you had the Feds thumb on the scale, keeping rates down, telling you there was no inflation, meanwhile bond yields were ripping higher, right? And now you have everybody on the inflation bandwagon, the Fed talking about raising rates and bond yields starting to go the other way, right? And I was writing about in December how the inflation herd was here and the contrarian me was thinking this inflation narrative is picking up a bit too much steam.
And I want to parse that out a little bit because that's not a cell commodities call. That's not a bale out of everything call. Look, copper projects working off a $4 base is much different than a $2.50 or $2.50 base even if you have a disinflation period or a period where commodities don't continue to scream higher, right? You're working off a new base level. And so that's one point I wanted to make. The other point I wanted to make is that while inflation was ripping last year, gold didn't do shit. In fact, gold was negative for the year and crypto's were the beneficiary of that inflation. Here in early 2022, you're getting a bit of a flip there. Bitcoin was at $42,000. We talked in recent weeks about how gold was showing strength, well north of $1,800. I know it's below that now, but I think you're still getting a bit of musical chairs as the markets get the new year under their feet.
And I think this pullback in gold is quite the opportunity, right? Added to Wheaton this week, for example, put on a trade in a Mexican developer that you and I are both familiar with initially for tax loss, but gold tailwinds wouldn't hurt that stock one bit either. And so that's sort of how I'm thinking about the markets here. The question always of course, is how long does it last, right? And so, I don't know, it's sort of, we're still in a Fed market. You, you mentioned the initial raise and the potential to raise four times. I haven't sent my issue out today, but I'm calling it the doomsday clock, right? How many times does the Fed want to ring the bell? We'll see.
Gerardo: Maybe I'll put my mask back on, the fucking doomsday clock. We have to talk the 10 year, right? I've long been someone that watches the 10 year as an indication of institutional capital rotating in and out. And I think the spike that we've seen to 1.73, the last time that I checked today, it's been a pretty solid move. I'd love to get your thoughts there, Nick.
Nick: Like I just said, I think it's going to show the Fed who's boss. And I think it's going to be the opposite of what the Fed is trying to do. So I think it's going to fail to break out. It's not, that's been the level or that was the level six months ago where it backed away from 1.7, 1.75, whatever it was, and then pulled all the way down. I'm not looking at the chart, but 1.3 or wherever we were recently. Yeah, I think it's not going to continue to go higher and that's why I've been writing about things like housing and why I was just talking about gold. Look, if you've got rates falling, better for gold, obviously, right? Even though the dollar is a bit stronger now, I think you're getting shorter cycles. And I think that rates at the end of the day, the bond markets are much bigger and control things more than people think or want to understand. And so if those rates fail to break out, I think gold is looking much better here.
Gerardo: Sounds like you're saying hard assets and the softness and hard assets are transitory.
Nick: I think so.
Thoughts on the Crypto Drop
Gerardo: I absolutely agree. You hodling still? Saw the Bitcoin drop to 42, thought about you.
Nick: Yeah, no, I'm still hodling. I haven't even actually looked into the account. I don't mind the short-term fluctuations. I haven't been trading it yet. We're saving that for Crypto Cycle, which is soon to launch here, which I obviously have to plug again. And yeah, no, I think the long term adoption and place for cryptocurrencies and blockchain and the economy is clear. I mean, we've talked about El Salvador and its implications globally on this podcast. Somebody was saying that they should host the El Salvador open for tennis and then can get in to go play. And those were serious implications. I was thinking about Mr. Dines had his forecast issue out recently and one of the big themes was about how for the past several hundred years of civilization, power has moved westward and how, one of his forecasts is how power is going to move southward in the new millennium or century, or however you want to frame that.
And so that would make total sense for African and South American countries to gain autonomy using cryptocurrency and have their own global tennis tournaments. But that's neither here nor there. Yes, I'm still hodling and all sorts of things I'm still learning. I mean, Chris Curl was writing about Fantom this week and why that was strengthening even as there was softness in Bitcoin and Ethereum, because it has advantages over the Ethereum blockchain because it saves on gas fees and stuff that's well above my pay grade, but those are the nuanced takes of someone who understands the market. Just like, what's the phrase, there's always a bull market somewhere, right? You got a Bitcoin down at $42,000. Well guess what? Fantom's ripping or whatever it is. Those are my thoughts on the crypto space currently I think. But I would add one more thing and you know my saying, it's going to come true eventually, is the soldiers for the gold army, right?
That crypto's soldiers were training for the gold army. And there's a lot of money that came out of that space. I see all these articles on CNBC and Bloomberg about millennial millionaires and these people that made all these millions of dollars trading cryptocurrency, well, that money's going to have to go somewhere. And I've long said that they understand inherently the investment case for gold, because it's a similar investment case for crypto's, right? Limited production, insulation from currencies, transparency, et cetera. And so anyway, I think they're well positioned to put some of their profits into gold, especially if it starts to catch a bit here.
Gerardo: I will say gold doesn't always jingle its bells, but when it does it jingles all the way.
Nick: Yeah. That would be nice.
Gerardo: Six, seven thousand year track record, folks. Hard to argue against that. Back test that a little bit, right?
Nick: That's a long time.
Violent Unrest in Kazakhstan Highlights Precarious Uranium Supply Chain
Gerardo: That's a long time. You mentioned geopolitical uncertainty. We have to mention Kazakhstan, the second biggest Bitcoin mining hub, I believe and again, crypto's not my area of expertise. But I believe that banks going offline, the internet going down, 18 police officers killed, a couple beheaded allegedly, according to the AP. That probably had something to do with the volatility that we saw with Bitcoin earlier this week. Obviously a delicate, delicate situation out there, wish the best to everybody. You and I had a conversation earlier in the week and you mentioned how it was ironic that higher energy prices were the kind of match that lit the molotov cocktail, right?
We've spoken about that on this show before. Unfortunately I don't see a quick solution that's sustainable when it comes to higher energy prices in areas like Kazakhstan. They're sitting on huge reserves, but the government is so out of tune with the people and you see it in the response, and this is why this escalated, right? It wasn't something that anyone foresaw. We now have a Russian-led peacekeeping force that's on the ground there. Good luck with that. And I think that 2022 is going to be an extremely consequential year, geopolitically, right? We've seen the rumblings, we've seen everything that's kind of led up to 2022. We talk about Fourth Turnings here all of the time. I know that's U.S. Specific, but it's really happening on a global stage right now, isn't it?
Nick: The timeframes are different, but the cycles are the same and the human lifespans are the same and so the 20 year generational turnovers are similar and carry with them similar traits. So yes, it is global and the book covers it in other countries as well. But you should recap what's happened a little bit before we get into the uranium side of things in Kazakhstan, I guess.
Gerardo: Yeah. Look, the bottom line is liquid natural gas prices nearly doubled, there was an increase in those prices that the government quickly did an about face and said, "Okay, okay, okay. We believe you. You're not going to just sit down and take this." And what's ended up happening is the people, the populous, the citizenry has said, "well, that's not the only thing we're upset about." Like anything else, I'm a big believer in energy and like-energy attracting other like-energy. This is escalated to the point where police are being killed, protestors are being killed. The cabinet resigned, right? Kind of like the peace keeping.
Nick: The government stepped down. Yeah.
Gerardo: Yeah. The government stepped down, and so there are no, there is no centralized group that is causing the rioting and the violence. There isn't a list of demands from the citizenry. It's just an expression of, "I'm pissed at government having their boot on my neck and we'd rather die or kill than continue to pass that down to future generations." And again, I think we're going to see a lot more of this in 2022. Unfortunately, I've been, not preaching, but I've been advising for everyone to take precautions just on a family and individual level to protect yourself. Because I think it's going to get more volatile. I don't think this is the end of this.
Nick: Yeah. They see a lot of their natural resources also exported to China, which is interesting. So you have the Russians, the peacekeepers there. I'm wondering how much the Russians are the supply chain protectors more than the peacekeepers. And I'll be interested to see how that applies to uranium as well. Because of course that's what everyone in the uranium space is wondering. I think the spot price jumped three or four dollars just yesterday. And so I haven't seen anything specifically with disruptions to uranium production. Of course, they're responsible for a large portion of global uranium production, something like 40%, I think. We'll have to take that as it comes, but it definitely shines a light on the precarious nature of the uranium supply chain and if you happen to be a utility uranium purchaser, you have to have a little brown stain in your boxers if you're watching the news this week wondering where your uranium is going to come from.
And so I don't take obviously pleasure in seeing what's going on in Kazakhstan, but it's sort of like the saying about luck is preparation meeting the circumstances or whatever. Part of the uranium bull thesis was always that the supply chain was precarious, right? And so you can't exploit labor and exploit the circumstances of ex-Soviet states to produce at sub-market prices forever, it's not sustainable. And so this is just all part of the uranium cycle playing out. You can't of course predict when catalysts like this are going to come. But the overall thesis was that relying on countries like Kazakhstan was unsustainable at the prices that they were now producing and so it's going to further flame what had already kicked off late last year. I mean, before the wind came out of stock sales across the board this week, uranium stocks were ripping to start the year, I mean on incredible volume, double-digit moves in a day. And so we were back screenshot days, right? We talked about that a couple of months ago. And so a lot going on, a lot to keep tabs on. And I think a lot to play out still in the uranium market.
LAPD Kills 14 Year Old Girl While Shooting Someone Else
Gerardo: A lot going on, there was a story, pivoting a little bit, that I was going to bring up last week. I didn't want to end at the year on a down note, so I skipped it, but we have to talk about it because now Los Angeles police has released the video from a fatal shooting of a 14-year-old girl who was in a store in a dressing room, trying clothes on. A 24-year-old asshole walks in with his bike and a bike lock and starts hitting several customers, including women. The police is called, the store manager ask everyone to evacuate or take cover. They're of course assuming, likely, that it's an active shooter situation because, "Hey, we're number one, we're America." So we do better than anyone in the world. And so police are called and the cops come in, they see this guy with a bike lock. He's not armed. There's a female victim that was bloodied.
He's not reaching for a weapon other than the bike lock that's in his hand and an officer felt that that justified three rounds, .223 rounds, which if you know your ammo, Nick, that's assault rifle rounds. Didn't fire his handgun, didn't you use a taser, didn't try to corner him or isolate him to make sure there wasn't a threat. This officer fires three .223 rounds into the gentleman who dies, the asshole that dies, and one of those bullets ends up shooting, hitting, killing a 14-year-old girl who was trying on a quinceañera dress. And so just a heartbreaking story, man. It's something that, you see a picture of this young girl and you know, me coming from a Mexican background, you know what a moment, what a milestone a quinceañera is and how exciting that is for a young lady to finally be going and trying that dress on and getting ready to turn 15 years old and celebrating with loved ones. And to be doing absolutely nothing wrong and end up dead is tragic, but the way that it happened, that should not have happened.
There's no way anyone can justify to me outside of the guy being armed, the attacker being armed and looking to fire at officers justified three .223 rounds. It seems excessive to me, it's under investigation. The only reason we now know the amount of shots and the fact that a rifle was involved is because the video came out. And again, if the video doesn't come out, we never know it was an assault rifle. Because you and I were looking last week when we were going to about it. And we couldn't find the number of shots, we couldn't find whether or not the guy that came in with the bike lock had another weapon, a gun. No weapon was found out on him other than the bike lock. And we, again, we wouldn't have known that three shots were fired, knowing damn well, and a cop should know damn well that those rounds, of course they can pierce a sheetrock and lumber and all the stuff that goes into to a retail store. So, condolences to the young lady and her family. Yeah. Just tragic, man, just tragic. And again, unnecessary didn't have to happen that way.
Nick: Oh man. It was a tough one to read about and see, and I was looking for the details too. I actually, I didn't know until you just said it, how many rounds were fired. And if I would've guessed, I would've thought it was going to be a lot more actually. So I thought they would like went in there with guns blazing and there was errant rounds straying, and that's what killed this young girl. So this is, it's nuanced, and I know there's not a lot of room for nuance these days, but if I had to, we like to prognosticate the results of some of these cases, right? We've done that with a lot of recent cases involving police brutality and death and Kyle Rittenhouse, we were talking about why he was going to get let off. And so I guess that's the perfect segue to say that nothing's probably going to happen to this police officer. I would say that the way they're going to, not even just frame it the way it's going to come out, does this gentleman had a weapon? The police officer hit him with two out of three rounds, which, if you know anything about police shootings, it's actually pretty good.
Gerardo: Pretty accurate?
Nick: Yeah. 66 percent's pretty good. So, I don't know why he went right for the rifle. I obviously don't know all the details. But it's fucking terrible. And so what I would say is that it points to the broader response mechanisms that police use in the United States. Because there was another case this week, and I forget the city, it might have been Houston, you might know better than I do, where there was like a 24 or 25 year old police officer who was responding to a case that he wasn't going to solve. It was like a carjacking where the carjackers had already fled on foot, like they weren't to catch them. And this guy's driving 80 miles an hour with one hand in traffic and ends up running over somebody.
Gerardo: Like he's in Grand Theft Auto or something, the video game, right?
Nick: Well that's what I'm going to point at. And so that's why I was thinking there were more rounds involved in the Los Angeles one, but there weren't. But driving 80 miles an hour with one hand to a case where you're likely not going to apprehend anybody is definitely irresponsible. And so I hope you can see the nuance and the difference of those cases there. Both could probably have been approached differently. Hopefully the gentleman who was driving the car that struck somebody is held accountable in some way because he was definitely driving irresponsibly. And so it's part of the culture of policing in the United States and part of the whole debate that's been going on, frankly, for years now. And these cases are tough and they all have their own individual details and unfortunately, especially in the case of this young girl, lots of collateral damage, that's tough to see.
Gerardo: I'll say this, a life is a life, right? And we just talked last week about, or two weeks ago about the trucker that was also driving irresponsibly, also driving 80 miles an hour, whose brakes failed while he was doing so, ends up killing four people. And this guy got 110 years. After a petition was signed for a review on the case because of the way that the law's structured, the governor stepped in and has said that they will review the case. And now, now they're hoping to commute that down to 20 or 30 years, let's see how much time the officer that was driving 80 miles an hour with one hand to a case he wasn't going to affect or solve. Let's see how much time, if any, he gets.
Nick: Yeah, we'll see if there's any follow up. It'll of course just disappear from the headlines as it all too often does, but we'll try to make a note to follow up on it. And of course we'll document the ongoing cases and then reflect on them here, as we do.
Long Island High School Teacher Arrested For Jabbing 17-Year-Old Without Permission
Gerardo: Speaking of irresponsible. Did you read about the Long Island high school science teacher?
Nick: Only on the notes that you put on the sheet before we started recording.
Gerardo: You'll love this one. I have questions. And I haven't seen a picture of the teacher, but I'll pull it up later. Laura Russo, a biology teacher at Herricks High School in Searingtown was arrested after authorities say that she gave a coronavirus vaccine to a 17-year-old boy, even though she wasn't authorized to do so and didn't have parental consent. That would've been enough to me off as a parent, right? That would've been enough to upset me. The part that I'm questioning is what was the 17-year-old doing in her home?
Nick: Oh, that's where it was?
Gerardo: That's where it was. Her home in Sea Cliff, which is a village on Long Island. And so, the vaccine injection is bad enough if I'm a parent, but what the hell is my 17 year old doing at the 54-year-old science teacher's house, whether it was for a vaccine or some other kind of picker-upper.
Nick: Mm. A little experimentation.
Gerardo: I'm curious to see where this one goes as well. 2022 is not disappointing thus far. We thought 2020 was going to be it. You know, the bat shit crazy of bat shit crazy. 2021 didn't mess around. We had January 6th, almost immediately, first week in. And here we are first week in a year later, and it looks like we're in for another crazy wild ride in 2022, I should say. So. Yes. Stay vigilant out there, everybody.
Nick: I wonder why she had to get so close to him, Gerardo.
Gerardo: We don't know how close she got.
Nick: Yeah.
Gerardo: No, I'm not making light of what looks like an abusive situation, but yeah.
Are We Collectively Moving Past Covid?
Nick: Ah, a little more on omicron, I guess. So, you documented your situation, I told you I had it in early December.
Gerardo: Oh, hold on, hold on, you said omicron. Hold on, hold on.
Nick: Oh, you got to put the mask on. I'm going to get closer to you.
Gerardo: Make sure it doesn't come through.
Nick: So when, when, when we got it and my kids tested positive, they had to close down the pre-3 preschool that my daughter goes to, but not the kindergarten, which is in the same building because the pre-3 is considered a daycare and the kindergarten's considered a school. So you start to get into these arbitrary sort of rules, right? They had to close down one class, but not the other one. And so this was before omicron was everywhere and it was the highest transmission rates of the entire pandemic and everyone was getting it.
And so fast forward to this week, right? My kids are finally back in school. It's after their quarantine and then after Christmas vacation. So they haven't been to school in like almost a month. They go back to school on Monday, Tuesday we get an email, the principal's infected.
Gerardo: Oh, God.
Nick: He won't be in school. Later that afternoon, we get an email, someone in pre-3, the preschool's been infected. We got to close down the preschool again. And we're like, "fuck, we haven't been at school in a month, here we go again." But here's the funny part and the part I wanted to point at, so you're already arbitrary because they're closing down one class in a school, but not the other one, and you already know the CDC which we've talked about five days, masks, just mask if you go out, negative test, whatever, just do what you-
Gerardo: Do whatever the fuck you want to do.
Nick: So now it's like, they're saying, in order to return to class, you got to have a negative PCR test. But if you can't get a PCR test, just do one those rapid at-home tests. And if you can't get one of those just like wait five days. And so you can see how this is sort of just like in real-time becoming, I don't know, I don't want to, endemic is not the right word, but a thing that we just move on with. Like I can't see them closing down school every other week indefinitely. You started to see repercussions of that around the country where cities are having remote learning again. We can't, I don't think, keep doing this. That's one thing I want to keep an eye on going forward because the over cautiousness and certainly the dracronian actions of the government and the vaccine lockdowns have been too much and have not done, as I've said multiple times, look at the transmission rates in mask mandate states and non mask mandate states, they're similar and the virus still spreads. So anyway, we're going to keep an eye on this and I think people are just ready to get back to it is my sense of things. So I'll be fine to see you again this weekend. So we're definitely ready to get back to it.
Gerardo: Here in Texas it tells you how it's really a state-by-state approach that's completely drastically different. So here in Texas, my 23 year old tested positive, our 18 year old who's home from college tested negative, our youngest, we couldn't find a test. I couldn't find a test. The wife was able to find a test, but she won't get her results back until Monday. So at that point our oldest won't be contagious anymore because he's been back for almost a week. And the school district here for our youngest, for our 13 year old says, if you don't show symptoms, you have to come to class or it's not excused, regardless of exposure. So this is not going to ever be solved with plug and play approaches. It's just not going to work that way, folks. So whatever you believe as far as vaccination or not vaccination or herd immunity, whatever your favorite approach to this is, the current one is not going to work because viruses don't just kneel to government because government hopes the virus kneels.
Nick: My favorite approach is what my favorite approach typically is to life and many other things and that's a lot of common sense.
Early Year Market Action to Get Excited About
Gerardo: Imagine that, imagine that. Nick, what are we excited for this coming week? I know we talked some stocks, we gave some awards last week. I know we talked about being excited about, me being really excited about Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)OTC: RGDCF), that's had itself a nice week. I talked Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) last week. I thought that was going to be a top stock in 2022, that had itself a really good run in the past week, up some 50% before a 10% pullback today. But again, there's a lot of money to be made out there, Nick. And what are you excited about in the markets?
Nick: What am I excited about? We've mentioned some of our top stocks recently. I mentioned Palamina (TSX-V: PA)(OTC: PLMNF), they've got assays that we should get this month or next month. I'm excited to see what they reveal. I'm excited to put some safer money to work. So long time followers and readers will know that I had given some money to a manager last year. In the last week of the year, I've taken that money back. And so I've got to get that money into the new accounts and start deploying it, which I think will be fun because that's what I would call a front-end thing, right? It'll be for Foundational Profits and it'll be larger companies and funds and there's plenty of opportunity there. So I guess at the bit of sounding a bit mundane at the start of the new year, I should remind people to do the start of the year things, right?
There's like tax savings that you can easily get by putting money in an IRA. If you're going to buy stocks and invest anyway, you might as well save some taxes on it. I'm excited about doing some of that check the boxes, get ready for the new year's stuff. And then what else? I don't want to talk about everything I'm excited about. There's some psychedelic stuff that's shaping up pretty nicely. The cannabis stocks, which we've talked about multiple weeks in a row have started to bounce up nicely as expected. And we'll see how this Kazakhstan thing unfolds. We're involved in a uranium company that's just been acquired. And so that transaction will come to a conclusion and will be trading in a new vehicle. I'm watching all those things. What about you?
Gerardo: Excited for all of it, right? We have gold, copper, and lithium assays pending the front Patriot Battery Metals for that project up north. We have Hannan, which won't be drilling until Q2 of this year, but again, I think that's going to be a company-making drill progra. And, in an odd kind of way COVID and the delays with the assay labs and permitting in Peru, actually I think is going to turn out to be very, very beneficial to shareholders for the simple fact that they were able to do so much more quality field work, identifying targets and narrowing down trends and being able to prioritize. Because when you have an entire basin that's perspective for copper, gold, and silver, it can get really expensive really quickly to go and try all of the targets without maybe doing the proper field work.
I'm glad they had the time to get that done. Michael Hudson and his team are amongst the best. It's not a coincidence that they keep making discovery after discovery and growing those discoveries. And yeah, I think 2022, you know me, I'm mostly resource specific, unless you tell me to go do something, then I go write a check and then I just check and it goes higher. So other than that, no, I'm excited for the resource space. I'm excited for the psychedelic space. We have a company that we wrote to check for like 17 years ago that hasn't gone public yet and has been halted for a while. So I'm hoping to get some sort of resolution there because I think there's a lot of potential in that space as well. And no, just all around I feel great about 2022, I'm looking forward to gold breaking out and again, jingling all the way, baby, jingling all the way.
Nick: It looks like we got ourselves a title. Even though it's January, we'll keep the Christmas theme going.
Gerardo: Love it. Anything else to get off your chest, Nick?
Nick: No, that's it.
Gerardo: That's it. Welcome to 2022, everybody. I am Gerardo Del Real, along with my co-host Mr. Nick Hodge. This was episode 151 of our therapy session we call Bizarro World. Be safe out there, everybody.
Nick: That means we've almost been doing it three years. See ya.
This transcript is unedited. Please excuse grammatical errors and run-on sentences.