Bizarro World Podcast,
with Nick and Gerardo
March 29, 2022
Should Will Smith have slapped Chris Rock? Does it matter?
Prices are going up for everything... and taxes are about to go up as well.
How you can harness higher returns with private deals.
Plus: transgender swimmers and palm-sized spiders invading the East Coast.
Table of Contents
1:22 Reaction to Will Smith Slap: Right or Wrong?
12:03 Markets: Gold, Taxes, Interest Rates
28:00 Ahead of the Puck with Private Deals
37:30 Lia Thomas: Fair or Unfair
45:48 Millions of Palm Sized Spiders Invading the East Coast
Gerardo Del Real: Gold's looking strong. The dollar's looking strong. Bitcoin's looking strong. A lot of our core positions are looking strong. Lia Thomas is looking strong. The slap heard around the world, Chris Rock and Will Smith, we'll get into that. I am Gerardo Del Real along with my co-host, Mr. Nick Hodge. This one is episode 162 of our weekly session called Bizarro World. Nick, I was watching the Oscars because I had nothing else to do. I was in fun, old Tennessee. I was in Nashville, fell in love with Nashville. I get back, having a vodka soda. I'm winding down, watching the Oscars, because there's not much else on, and keep my wife's name outta your mouth! Then I couldn't fall asleep for another three hours so I'm not running off not a lot of sleep here, but doing great. How are you, sir?
Nick Hodge: I'm doing really well, Gerardo. I'm fresh off a trip as you are and I had some fun and have plenty to talk about. So if you want to start with the slap, I'm happy to, and I can even tell you a funny story if you want.
Reaction to Will Smith Slap: Right or Wrong?
Gerardo Del Real: Let's start with the funny story. I love a funny story.
Nick Hodge: I'm traveling last night because I'm coming back from my trip. I had to fly from San Antonio to Seattle, Seattle to Spokane. And I'm waiting in Seattle for my layover and I go in the restroom and there's a gentleman talking on his phone in the stall beside me and it seems like he's consoling someone. No idea what he's talking about, how this Black on Black violence is reflective of the things in our community... that we still don't have respect for each other... and I'm sorry it upset you so bad.
And I'm thinking, man, who slapped who? What's going on here? And then of course, a couple hours later I realized what had happened. While I was in transit, of course, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock in the face as you just said, and that's all everyone is talking about this week, at least on Monday. And we're recording this late because we were traveling last week. So where do you want to start? I think everyone's got plenty to say about it. It's broken the internet today. Black on Black violence, can't talk about women. Do comedians have free speech, artistic liberty? I'm happy to talk about all that stuff.
Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about all of it. Let's go. Let's go in order here. Do comedians have artistic and creative license and ability? Well of course they do. But words also have consequences and sometimes you got to watch whose name you say and how you say it, right? And so what was interesting to me was that there were other jokes made during that broadcast about Will and Jada that the couple took really, really well.
And initially when the joke was made and for those that didn't watch, Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, were in the crowd and Chris Rock was up presenting an award and went into his spiel and did a couple of jokes. And he made a G.I. Jane joke looking at Jada and said, "I can't wait till the next G.I. Jane." And for those not familiar, Jada Pinkett Smith has a condition that she's been dealing with that she's been public about, about being insecure about it and how tough it's been on her just mental health-wise and it causes her to lose her hair. And so I did think the joke was classless, I thought it was in bad taste.
Nick Hodge: It's a fucking joke.
Gerardo Del Real: It's a fucking joke. Also, I think Will handled it poorly. Both things can be true, right? You could have taken offense to the joke and handled it behind the scenes in the locker room, right? I thought there was a better way to approach that. I thought if you really were that offended, there's probably a conversation or a scuffle. Scuffles are okay. Sometimes people deserve to get hit, do that privately.
I didn't think the Oscars and that telecast was the venue for it, but I understand it because there's also a history between Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith where he's antagonized her in other award shows and used her as fodder. And so I think that's where his comment to Chris Rock about keeping his wife's name out of his mouth came from. There was already some resentment there. And I think in part, Will was just waiting to see, "Is this motherfucker going to do it again? Is he going to pick on my wife in front of me?"
And I think when he did it in the manner that he did it, I think that's what set him off. Again, I don't think the response... I'm not encouraging slapping anyone in front of the Academy Awards. But I also understand, I don't think Jada was amused. I looked at the look on her face and she was none too pleased by the joke. Twitter's hilarious. The memes have been absolutely hilarious.
Nick Hodge: Sure.
Gerardo Del Real: At the end of the day, it's a conflict between two very, very, very well off millionaires that probably could have been resolved in a different manner and fashion. And luckily, no one was really hurt. Chris Rock's got a solid chin on him. He took the slap well. He's probably lucky that Will didn't go ahead and actually punch him because people don't remember, Will trained for a year for Ali where he did extremely, extremely good work for that part. Will knows how to hit you if he really wanted to hit you.
And so I think that was a reason for the open-handed slap, but look, all things are valid. Friends and I were discussing it, my brother and I were discussing it. We all have different takes on it. My brother felt bad for Jada. He said he puts her in a horrible position. She can defend herself. Sure, but he also has the right to if he wants to speak up, speak up for his wife. And then I get the other side of it too, delicate flowers, take a joke, handle it privately. All things can be true. Look, I think if you or I walked up to Chris Rock and slapped him in the face.
Nick Hodge: Yep.
Gerardo Del Real: We would've not only been arrested, charged with assault, but we also would've got stumped out by security on live TV by the way. And so there's definitely a double standard. And I think, look, that double standard speaks to something that we've been talking about on the podcast here since the beginning of this thing. There are different rules for different people, folks, and I don't know if there's amore recent example of that than this. Anybody else? You're getting hauled off in handcuffs. You're not allowed to go back to your seat, sit down and then go win best actor and talk about how you're a vessel for love and how you're aiming to be a vessel for love. I thought that was hilarious still, he went in full character mode.
I'll tell you what was the funniest thing about the whole interaction, when Will won for best actor, he walked up to receive his award and Samuel L. Jackson gave him the "I've been waiting to slapped that motherfucker for the longest time" kind of high five. Like he was congratulating him. I thought that was hilarious as well. That's probably the thing that made me laugh the most because the incident was unfortunate, but Samuel L. Jackson's reaction to giving Will his award when he first got up there, you know when you give somebody an extra little bit of dap like, "You got him, I've been trying to get him." I thought it was hilarious. I thought that was the funniest thing of the whole thing.
Nick Hodge: Oh man, I probably won't get all my thoughts out articulately. First of all, these people don't fucking matter. As Ricky Gervais told you at the Golden Globes a couple of years ago, you probably have less education than Greta Thunberg. Get up there, get your fucking award and go sit the fuck back down. That's the first thing. The second thing is take the fucking joke, man. We have Roasts on Comedy Central. We make fun of all this stuff. It speaks a little bit to woke culture, right? Like Chris Rock said, "It was a G.I. Jane joke, dude. What the fuck?" And so let's talk about, like you said, no one else can do that, right? And I'm big on freedom of speech obviously and so if you can get punched in the face for exercising your first amendment right, especially in a forum where you're supposed to be doing that, I think it's a dangerous precedent.
I think Will Smith should have apologized to everyone, not just the Academy. What kind of example does that set for young men all across the country? We talked about Juwan Howard on this podcast a couple of weeks ago. You can't just walk around punching people in the face, man. Will Smith laughed at that joke, by the way, if you watched the clip closely, he didn't take offense to it until his wife said no.
And so a lot going on there, I'd also say that the Oscars are growing more and more irrelevant. They're coming off the lowest viewership in history in 2021. I wouldn't put it past being staged was my first actual reaction, right? They did all sorts of things to get the ratings up this year. We got three hosts this year. We got the female host. It's inclusive. This is the Black Oscars. I mean, they're trying real fucking hard, Gerardo. I mean, so hard that they-
Gerardo Del Real: We got Spanish on there.
Nick Hodge: Was it from Encanto?
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah.
Nick Hodge: So, what else? I mean, Ricky Gervais was talking about abortions at the Golden Globes and said, "Dame Judi Dench eats her own fucking snatch." Come on, get out of here with that shit. That's the forum to make the jokes. Everyone gets made fun of there. I don't want to hear it. Will Smith acted very, very poorly, I think. And yeah. Yeah. That's about it.
Gerardo Del Real: I think my favorite meme was that's why he had to move Bel Air with his uncle and get out of Philly.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. He's causing trouble on the playground for sure. I had all those thoughts.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunate. I get it. Don't get-
Nick Hodge: Sorry.
Gerardo Del Real: No, you're good.
Nick Hodge: I feel like Will Smith, at least in the past couple of years, has been trying very hard to stay relevant. Granted he was in the running for best Oscar this year, which is the thing that should make you relevant, right? Not the slapping of someone on stage, but he is not one who was foreign to theatrics.
Gerardo Del Real: Agreed. I mean, this is a guy that... And again, to be clear, as an actor, I love Will Smith. I think he's done some great work. Ali was great. He was great in a number of movies. But yeah, this was in poor taste. It was in the wrong place. It was definitely, definitely, definitely an error in judgment. And he's very, very fortunate to be very well off and to be a celebrity because nobody else would've been able to pull that off. Great entertainment though. And like I told some friends earlier, "Hey, at the end of the day, both of those millionaires are going to be all right. Don't worry about it, guys. It's not that serious." I will say this. People are taking it way too seriously.
Nick Hodge: That's what I was going to say. The fact that we have to analyze it, that we talk about women's feelings, and how women who lose their hair feel, that's not the point of this and analyzing stuff like that is partially what's wrong with a lot of society is that everything gets put under such a lens and everyone has to have their voice and we try to make everything fair and just, which I'm sure we're going to talk about more in this podcast. But sometimes you're the butt of the joke, sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.
Gerardo Del Real: That's it, that's it. And sometimes dumb stuff just happens and yeah, this was one of those. But again, highly entertaining. Both of those millionaires are going to be okay. For people on Twitter and out there and social media that are trying to politicize this, get a life, man, ain't that big a deal. Move on. Let's get to the real world. Let's get to the markets.
Markets: Gold, Taxes, Interest Rates
Gerardo Del Real: Gold is solidly above $1,900 while the dollar index is flirting with 100once again. We, by the way, still have a war going on where thousands of real people are really losing their lives. We have millions of people that have now been displaced as a result of the Russian invasion into Ukraine. Those are real-world issues. We have a president right now that regardless about how you feel about him personally or how you feel about his policy is requesting multi-trillion-dollar budgets, adding to not only the military budget, but adding to a domestic police budget that already seems pretty substantial in itself to how we allocate those dollars is a whole different conversation and that we can talk about that as well.
But when I look around the country here in the US, I don't think our police budgets are slim. I don't think our police budgets are begging for new reinforcements. We have a militarized police that if anything needs to get demilitarized and retrained in my opinion, right? There's better ways to do policing in this country. I'm a big fan of community policing, again, another conversation for another day, but why is Joe Biden proposing a wealth tax during a war going into a slowing economy where the fed is vowing now to tackle the inflation they didn't see coming and then said was transitory?
Why is he looking to tackle that by including a tax unrealized gains? Let me say that again. They want to tax unrealized gains at certain points of the trajectory higher. Now you're not going to be able to capture those losses at the same point for unrealized losses. I don't understand again, however you feel about them, however which way you lean politically, how people can't see that this is just a power and a money grab. It seems desperate to me. It also seems foolish. And by foolish, I mean, stupid as all hell.
Nick Hodge: Not a taxation expert. You certainly can't tax unrealized capital gains. It seems political right? Heading into the midterms when he's got a slipping approval rate and inflation is obviously rampant and things are costing more and he's tap dancing around feining support for Ukraine while not really allocating any of that military that we have such a big mighty gargantuan budget for.
And so you want to know about the tax, I was going to talk about the red line, but-
Gerardo Del Real: Talk about both.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. So the tax it's on billionaires, but it's not. It's not on billionaires, it's on multi-hundred millionaires. And as I've expressed before, I'm fine with taxes and I'm certainly fine with distinguishing between the 1% and the 0.01%. That's an important distinction that has to be made and I've said that.
But let's go about taxing them the right way and I may be pointing out a problem without offering a solution because I might not necessarily have one. It seems that there's got to be some changes in the structure of how these super high net worth people are compensated and how they are allowed to operate. I mean the loopholes that they use to keep those as unrealized gains and then to take loans against those assets, right? That's how they tap dances around it or to convert stuff in ROTHs and then not sell. They have those assets. That's what they're worth is based on, but they take loans against them to get cash to fund their day-to-day stuff.
So we have to think outside the box and it's not by taxing unrealized gains. It's by making fundamental change to the system, to the structure of how it's set up, which is we go back to a lot, right? Band-aid solutions are not adequate anymore. The institutions themselves have to change the tax structure, the way these super high net worth people are incented to skirt the tax system. And so, again, that's above my pay grade, but to tax unrealized capital gains, doesn't make an iota of sense, whether it's me or you or Elon Musk, right? And so they've got to find a better way to do that and it seems like they should be putting effort into that instead of how to win the next election or whatever, how to appease all camps. And so work to do still, especially when they're still giving it out.
I mean, the administration is also floating like gas cards for everybody, right? Similar to what they're talking about in California. And so I don't see the spending slowing down. And so that's another point that I'd like to attack is as well is let's reduce the spending overall instead of constantly increasing taxes. And the other thing I've pointed out before on this podcast is you literally can't tax your way out of it. The debts are so big and the interest on the debts are so high that I think we've said it here, you could tax 100% of everything that every company makes and you're still not going to pay it back. And so you have to have a little bit different conversation, right?
Gerardo Del Real: Nope. Agree with every single one of those points. It speaks to a common theme in our podcast, Fourth Turning and how it's the institutions themselves, not the individual parties. I read a poll earlier this week that said that 73% of Americans are tired of a two-system majority as it relates to political parties in this country. I think that's likely the first time in our country's recent history that that's been the case. I actually think that's healthy. I think whether we're talking military budgets, police budgets, defense budgets, you name it, social service budgets. There needs to be a drastic rewriting of how we do things, because they're making it up at this point, Nick. They're making it up. We just saw a case in Wisconsin where the Supreme Court is allowing redistricting maps that they had already decided weren't fair and inclusive, right?
And we're meant to skirt around the demographics. And this is happening here in Texas and it's happening in Florida. And so they're just making it up and you can't just have a system where we make it up or we tax billionaires differently than we tax a hundred million millionaires than we tax regular millionaires. There's got to be a better way. Above my pay grade as well, I'm not a tax expert, but if you're wealthy in this country, or even if you're rich, it's not hard to skirt around because of all the loopholes that you mentioned and that's not fair either, right?
Nick Hodge: They make everything up and everything is a broad generalization so I should say they make lots of things up instead of everything. But I should also say that there's no accountability for making things up. And that's why I was going to mention the red line because you had Biden this week, basically call for regime change in Russia saying that Putin should not remain in power. And people were quick to point out that Mr. Obama said the same thing about Assad, right? We had a red line that he was not to cross and then he crossed it and we didn't do shit.
Gerardo Del Real: Kept bombing other places that weren't doing anything to us. He did that.
Nick Hodge: Exactly. And when you say they make it up, they is like the global community because you can put out the red line, you can continue to bomb other countries and then we just give you the peace prize, right? And so this has been literally just making shit up. And so what I wanted to say was about accountability, right? A politician is great at getting up there and promising me things, obviously, that's what they do to get elected, right?
And then there's never any follow-through which most people with any shred of common sense realize that the politicians never follow through on their promises. But increasingly, there's pushback against that. And that's what this societal political change is that we're going through. You just mentioned the growing number of independents. In certain counties in Arizona now, I was reading this week, probably part of the same poll independence are the largest identifying political group.
And that's par for the course. My favorite cartoon is the March of Tyranny. One guy said, "Next time I vote Democrat." The other guy saying, "Next time I vote Republican." And it's like, "Well, no, it's the system. It's that two-party thing that is the problem." And increasingly people are starting to realize that, right? I won't take it back to Chris and Will. But yeah, it's bigger than the two parties. And so I don't know if I answered any questions about the tax regime or we made any valid points there, other than to say that the veil is wearing thin. And lots of things are related because stuff's starting to spiral. I mean, look at fertilizer prices, look at prices of everything else.
I just spent a couple of days with some guys who run contracting businesses and was just listening to them, hear about how they've got to raise prices on their bids, even for jobs that they've already bid out and how their customers are responding to that and wondering about where it's going to end. Things are broken. I mean, we talked about the metals market, we've talked about the price of aluminum and the price of copper. And so you're getting into end game stuff, I think, and it is time to pay attention, which is why we do what we do.
Gerardo Del Real: End game stuff. Let's talk gold. Let's talk to 10 year. Let's talk the dollar briefly. They're all interrelated at this point, right? We have a 10 year that hit a high of 2.45% earlier today. We have mortgage rates that are rising. It happens to coincide with a slowing economy that now faces for the first time in a long time headwinds as opposed to tailwinds. Oh, and the Fed's going to raise rates. What is it? Eight more times now, nine more times, 10, 11, depending. If you believe the market, which we have an inverted yield curve, and that's what it's signaling. It's saying possibly recession.
Nick Hodge: Not just twos and tens, like fucking fives and thirties.
Gerardo Del Real: Fives and thirties. Those are the ones. Those are the ones that made me laugh out loud too. There's a lot of broken going on out there, folks. Be very, very careful. I think we've warned several times about the fact that it seems to be escalating and getting worse by the minute. But look, keep that extra food in storage, keep some liquidity outside of the banking system, keep ways to defend yourself and your family. Not like Will, just sensical stuff. And pay attention. Thoughts on the 10 year, thoughts on gold, thoughts on the dollar?
Nick Hodge: You're near inflection points is what I think I would say and things change. One day, you don't hear any turkeys and the next day you hear 30 turkeys. And so you've got to be aware of those highs and lows, right? You also have to be aware that we're headed into the end of the month that lots of people need to look better because they got their asses handed to them in January and February. And so to me, that would be the reason you've seen the S&P deliver best one week growth since whatever the headline says 2016. And the reason that the VIX came pulling back down to 20 after staying relatively elevated in the past couple of weeks and months. So they got to paint the quarter end. It's not just a month end. It's a quarter end. And it wasn't a great one. And so if you look at things like you mentioned, if you look at the rates, if you look at dollar, if you look at the VIX, they're all near what we would say is support or resistance. We're not in the middle of anything. I think we're getting ready to go back the other way.
And I've been obviously wrong on interest rates so far, but right on a lot of other things though. And sometimes it just takes time, especially when you're dealing with the end of a quarter. So while gold's looking strong, I mean, literally today before we recorded this, it pulled back 30 or 40 bucks. It was down too, I don't know, $1915 or something.
And so things are still moving. What was the point I wanted to make there? I think you've got rough sailing ahead in Q2. So you've got the third revision of GDP about to come out. And then in April, we'll get the first print of Q1 GDP, and it's not going to be pretty. And so I think what you're seeing is a bear market bounce. And I think there's a lot of pain ahead for stocks, especially speculative non-resource stocks. We talked last week about investing in physical things. I think that's still the market that you're facing so I wouldn't be buying this two week run in the S&P and the NASDAQ and this falling off of volatility, because, well, it's March and it's in a lion and out a lamb, but April could growl pretty bad, I think.
Gerardo Del Real: That's Nick saying you should probably lighten up if you need the gains. If you have gains in there in the broader indices, if you need that over the summer, you may want to front run that a little bit because Nick and I spoke a little bit, correct me if I'm wrong here, Nick, but we believe so in May is probably coming early this year. And I think that those headwinds that we mentioned are likely to accelerate when that happens. Let's talk about stuff that's going in the other direction.
Nick Hodge: One point on that is liquidity needs don't cease, right? I still got to pay to finish my pool. I told you that we bought a house. And when you're coming off and we've said this before, 10 years of bull market stock gains, there's rotations to be had. I mean, it only makes sense to sell some stock gains when you're facing the prospect of slowing growth, a recession, and falling stocks. Of course smart money is going to sell.
Not that I'm categorizing myself as the smart money, but I'm thinking about selling stock and I've told you that I'm more in cash and a bit defensive. So yes, it's more of that and it's more having conviction I would say. I bought more GDXJ today 10 minutes before the... I've actually forgot I had a limit order set. I just got an email order hit. I was like oh shit I guess I own some more gold stocks. Because I picked my spot, I knew that gold is going to sell off. I probably set that order two weeks ago. Waiting for gold to pull back closer to $1,900 or whatever. And so winner, winner, chicken dinner for me, I guess.
Ahead of the Puck with Private Deals
Gerardo Del Real: That's it. Let's talk about where the puck is going. You talked about interest rates. I've been wrong on interest rates thus far as well. I think I'll be right soon I believe because I know that with current debt levels being where they are, interest rates can't rise too much further, or it's really going to hit the fan. Right? So one of two things is going to happen. You mention inflection points. I think you're a hundred percent spot on. I think that's where we're at. We're at that point where it's not going to take a lot for something to break. And usually when one thing breaks, other things tend to break with it. Where the puck is going is how you maximize profits in specifically our business, which is the business of personally buying and sellingstock. And then on the research and the publishing side, obviously sharing some of the ideas about what we're doing or what we see.
We talked off air a little bit. I've been very vocal about my support for Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: PMETF). We help finance that at 16 cents. I've talked about it at 35 cents, at 50 cents, at 60 cents, at 70 cents, and have been telling you that I think the market's been slow to wake up to that. I think it closed today at a $1.40, touched the high of $1.50, and the market's just starting to realize it.
So here is where share structures matter. The company had to roll back its stock, call it seven or eight months ago. It tightened up the share structure. It got some weak hands out of the stock. We helped finance it at 16 cents that came with a full warrant at 25 cents. The people that wrote those checks, you and myself included, there weren't a lot of us supporting the company back then because at that point, this new emerging lithium district was just a property that they were earning into.
Fast forward a little bit. Drill program. First five holes successful. They negotiate 100% of the property. They now own the entire district. They go from 20 kilometers of trend to 50 kilometers of trend. They raised $13 million in the last month and a half. And now the institutions are starting to catch on because assays are starting to trickle in and the pictures starting to emerge. But now the stock's at a $1.40 and a $1.50 and likely headed substantially higher if it continues to hit with the drill bit. There is no easy way now for an institution to come in and take down a $3, $4, $5, $6 million position because the $13 million that were just raised were raised with a strategic group of people that aren't looking to blow their shares out to make $20 cents or make $25 cents on the stock.
They're looking at five, six, $7 potential if this district play actually materializes the way that we think it could. Still early stage, a lot to get done, but there are two rigs turning and there is a 20,000 meter drill program that is underway right now. So where the puck is going is how you make the money. It's great to buy it today $1.40, because I still believe it can be a 3, 4, 5, 6, $7 stock if things play out right. But man, 16 -ents is nice.
Nick Hodge: Absolutely, multiple bagger in very short order. And that's the upside of private deals when you have the access and the network to be able to get into them within the setup that we've been talking about. I guess, no one's recycling a lithium that we don't need Patriot Battery Metals' deposit anymore. It's partially knowing the things, knowing what's real obviously, knowing the trends and the framework of the market. But then being able to evaluate structure as you just said and possible upside. And we got to talk about private deals for a second because I have two open this week that people can participate in. There's another one that you and I financed at 10 cents that's already run to above a $1.50. And we just wrote our 10-cent check two weeks ago.
Gerardo Del Real: Two weeks ago. Thank you by the way.
Nick Hodge: Of course. That's like the mania phase that we often talk about. It's been a while since I mentioned the stock charts in newsletter promotions. When you see that XYZ stock went up a thousand percent and this one went up 8,000%. Those charts come from periods you're witnessing right now. When the London Metals Exchange breaks, when the price of phosphate is going through the roof, when there's those mismatches in, "oh, shit, where are we going to get this commodity from?" That's being exacerbated by multiple factors in the case of the war and the years of inaction to be proactive in securing that supply for yourself, whether it's natural gas in Germany or uranium in the United States.
And so private deals are a way to position yourself at the earliest stage possible is close to the ground floor as possible. And so I guess tying all that together, I'll just give you one example of a company we finance that's got assets here in the United States, financed it privately, first at 15 cents last year and then again at 30 cents last year, in a second private round. So you've already, at least on paper, doubled your money if you wrote a first check in the earlier financing, and then here it is coming into spring the following year, and it's raising money at 50 cents and about to list. And I'll be writing a check into that listing round as well. And so, I mean, there you have it from 15 to 30 to 50 cents in inside of a year with a copper-gold project in the United States. And so I have that out for accredited subscribers to participate in right now.
I just sent it out and there's another one coming up in the silver space. And we've talked about gold, but we haven't really mentioned silver, which is starting to look better as well. And got to say the things that you got to say about silver, no high quality, real pure silver plays. When you do find one with a good structure, it tends to perform well. We could talk about Silver Hammer or something like that. Again, coming back to structure.
So this week and into next week, we'll be financing a private silver deal in Hodge Family Office. One that I've found privately since 2016 that's only now going public because of what? The macro market conditions are right for a new silver story. And it's just put together a deal with Pan American to get some of its assets. And the timing is just right for resource stories, as we just covered with Patriot Battery Metals, et cetera.
And so again, 10 cents to a $1.50... 16 cents to a $1.40, that type of action is tough to get, consistently at least, in open market public market buys. But on the private side of things, where the status quo is discounts to market and potentially warrants to buy more without risk, then it behooves you to position in some of these plays. And so if you're interested in copper gold in the United States or you're interested in pure silver plays in South America, then I've obviously got a product for you. We've got open placements in those two very deals now. And so that's why I wanted to talk about it today just for a little bit, but I guess that's about it. They compound over time because one, there's always a new deal right around the corner and two, the warrants give you options, right?
To trade around positions, to sell some shares, to exercise, which is what we're doing. I guess I'll talk my book for another second. We got 30 cent warrants in Kutcho that we're exercising. That's a 60 cent stock. It's good just to have this portfolio over here to say, "What day this year do I want to make a hundred percent of my money real quick?" And same with Critical Elements, we've got warrants there at 40 or 45 cents, and that's a dollar 30 stock. And so it's a good place to be when you're watching the S&P go down 10% in a quarter and you can look at your warrant portfolio and just see multiple three digit winners in the money that you haven't even exercised yet. And so that's the style of investing that allows you to compound to get that generational wealth and to get to the next level.
Because honestly, if I had never in that first check for that silver company in 2016, the one that I was just mentioning, my past half decade and my career trajectory would probably look a bit different if I hadn't taken the time to figure that out. And I guess I'll send myself to jail for a second. I certainly wasn't the proper definition of one who should be participating in private placements, let's say, when I first started doing so. But I've also been one to ask forgiveness and not permission. So you have to read between the lines there.
Lia Thomas: Fair or Unfair
Gerardo Del Real: I would say... I won't say. We'll leave it there. Everybody can read between the lines. Let's talk about accountability and we have to end it in a little bit with the story about the millions of palm size flying spiders that could invade the East Coast because I don't believe we've touched on that yet, but we have to talk a bit about Lia Thomas, right? For those of you not familiar, Lia Thomas is a swimmer who is trans and has transitioned into a woman and is cleaning up.
Nick Hodge: But was a man.
Gerardo Del Real: Was a man. Absolutely.
Nick Hodge: Born a man. Was a man. Went through male puberty.
Gerardo Del Real: Correct. Went through male puberty. Identifies as a woman now. And so Lia Thomas is swimming her ass off, cleaning everybody's clock in the pool, competing against other women. And so when we talk about accountability, you talked about woke culture. I don't even like the word anymore because it means so many different things to so many different people. Well, let's just talk about common sense, right? Common sense. If I, Gerardo, am born physically with male genitalia and I go through male puberty but I identify as more Mariah and I-
Nick Hodge: And you can sing.
Gerardo Del Real: And I decide that I want to look more like how I identify and I take the course of going through my transition and I'm accepted as Mariah, and that's all fine. Everybody has the right to identify however the heck you want to identify, as long as you're not intruding on people's personal space, freedoms, liberties, all of that. But you can't tell me that Lia, who went through male puberty and has all of the advantages that come strength-wise physically from going through male puberty, you can't convince me. And if you can, please do so because maybe I'm ignorant, but you can't convince me there is not an unfair advantage if she's just competing against women that haven't gone through that transition and didn't benefit from being biologically born as a male. Am I wrong in my thinking of that, Nick, in your opinion? We haven't talked about this. We haven't exchanged ideas. I have no clue how you feel about it. Again, that doesn't seem transphobic for me to think that that seems like common sense to me.
Nick Hodge: You would think it's common sense and the reason you can't be convinced is because she does have an unfair advantage. It's as simple as that. I'm going to go to the military for a second because I remember when the elite teams of the military, the SEALS and some units of the Marines, women wanted to enter. And of course, they should be able to enter.
Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely.
Nick Hodge: What I remember to discussing at the time was their inability to pass the physical tests as written. And so they had to change the tests. Why? Because the women are physically, and don't take this the wrong way, I won't say inferior, not as strong as men. It's a fact. They couldn't do-
Gerardo Del Real: Most. Correct.
Nick Hodge: On the whole, just the muscle density and how high they can jump relative to how big their muscles are and how much they can carry relative to big their muscles are. So they couldn't do the same amount of sit-ups or pull-ups or push-ups or whatever. And at the time I remember saying, well, that's fine. And you can even talk about like Asians in Harvard, for example. Are these the rules to get in or are these not the rules to get in? And so they had to change the rules or change the test to apply to women because men and women are different physically. And so that is what I'm using as a proof of why Lia Thomas is different physically, right? She is physically superior to the females that she's swimming against because her body is in fact male and I'm all for transgender inclusion.
Gerardo Del Real: Same. Huge supporter.
Nick Hodge: Your right to be whoever you want, identify as whatever you want. I don't care if you want to be a fucking house plant. But your hands and your feet are still the size of a man's and they don't know that you identify as female. And then to have you compete against biologically born females, I think this is how I would feel if I were a woman, certainly how I feel if Lia were competing against my daughters in the swim meet, is that, "Hey, you're detracting-"
Gerardo Del Real: Biologically born young ladies.
Nick Hodge: "You're detracting from what we're doing, what we've trained so hard for. We're trying to be at the top of our game, we train hard and you just come in here and literally flick the switch and come in here and whoop all our asses. Nah, that's not fair, and it's not because it's not." And so she shouldn't be allowed to swim with the girls is my position and that's not a non-inclusion thing. It's not about attending a dance or a party or being accepted or not discriminating against, it's your body is not a woman's despite what you identify as. And so what I think is there should be transgender leagues is where we're going to have to go. If there truly is that amount of people and keep in mind, it's less than 1% of the population we're talking about here.
So, I mean, I think there just has to be transgender leagues is probably the route we're going because it's simply unfair, man. It is. And women teams are writing letters to the NCAA expressing as much saying, "Look, we don't want her in the pool with us. Not because we think she's got cooties, it's because it's not fundamentally fair." And I agree with them. And back to woke culture, you got to talk about society a little bit, because what do the news outlets get caught doing?
Gerardo Del Real: Airbrushing her to make her look more traditionally feminine, which again is absolute bullshit because now I'm going to get on my super supportive of all-trans rights and LGBTQ rights because I am very supportive on that front. The news outlets and the media is doing a disservice to other women by deciding what the hell looks more feminine. Lia has every damn right to identify as Lia, to feel as Lia, and to be beautiful in all of Lia's glory. You don't need to touch Lia up to make her look more like what your definition of feminine is. That's bullshit too. So for anybody that thinks that we're only talking about fairness and ability because she's trans, now I'm a big supporter of all LGBTQ rights, equality, accountability under the law, on all of it, on all of it. But the media got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and that right there should have been called out a little bit more than it got called out as well because that's equally bullshit.
Nick Hodge: But you can't because you got to tiptoe around the woke stuff, right? You're allowed to because they might cancel you even though what you're saying is relevant and has merit, like the fact that mask don't work, for example. And they'll cancel you for it and shadow ban you. And that's why it's the problem with the whole system and the state of things.
Millions of Palm-Sized Spiders Invading the East Coast
Gerardo Del Real: And that's where we are. Let's talk about the spiders before we get out of here, Nick.
Nick Hodge: Oh, man.
Gerardo Del Real: It wouldn't be Bizarro World without millions of palm-sized flying spiders invading the East Coast.
Nick Hodge: It was a couple of weeks ago so let me see if I can remember this right. We've had a bunch of invasive species recently. I'm from the East Coast so I know about East Coast invasive species. First, we had the snakehead, which was a fish that came, I think, in shipping containers and leaked out. And now snakeheads are up and down the East Coast, certainly in Maryland and Delaware and Northern Virginia. And those are fish that can live out of water, man. They look like a snake. They sit with their face out of the water. Anyway, going on a tangent, and they can get out and walk, man. They can get out and walk to the next pond. And if they don't make it for a while, they can go to a puddle and live in the puddle for a little bit.
Anyway, they're crazy. But apparently they're delicious. And so there's been a series of invasive species. The one of the more recent ones is a lantern fly. I don't know if you've heard of that one. It's a beautiful bug, a bright red looks like almost like a little miniature butterfly, but it will kill all your fucking trees because it sucks the sap and the vitamins out of them, it taps into the bark. And so if you live in Maryland or Pennsylvania or Jersey, you're supposed to kill every single lantern fly you see.
And this is a part of globalization, obviously, having shipping containers going and all around the world of transporting invasive species. So the newest one is this spider. And let me see, I pull up the article. Palm-sized spiders. But what got me was how fast these spiders can multiply. So it's a black and yellow spider that's this big, bright black and yellow looks like it'll eat your face off. It's apparently not poisonous, but they're going to be everywhere on the East Coast, as you said, and this is why. They lay thousands of eggs at a time and when the eggs hatched, they can fly. These little tiny spiders on silk parachutes and get caught in the wind.
Gerardo Del Real: They're fancy.
Nick Hodge: And so that they could just disperse, the spiders in the wind with their little silk parachutes. And so they think that these palm-sized black and yellow spiders are going to be all over the East Coast in a matter of years. It's called the Joro spider, J-O-R-O. And so just another one on the list to add to, but that would be something. I mean, we really don't have giant spiders like that on the East Coast and to see millions of them it would be like the locust which everybody talks about when they come out, so are the cicadas. Anyway, glad I'm on the left coast for that one because palm-sized spiders don't sound fun.
Gerardo Del Real: It's a bizarro world out there, folks. A couple of deals that will be going public here soon that I know both Nick and I participated in, companies that we've owned privately for quite some time, something to put on your radar, good gold, copper play is going to be Lode Metals should be public next Tuesday, not this week, but next. We talked about Patriot. We talked about Critical Elements. We talked about all of the different private deals. Look, not everyone is going to be a 700, 900,000% win, but those add up really quick when you're able to have three, four of those every 12 to 18 months, especially if you're writing checks that actually count. So I would encourage everybody to take a peek at Lode Metals here next week as it goes public. And then I think there's a couple of other public ones that are coming on board that I'm sure you'll be happy to talk about soon, Nick.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. I'm looking at my list. Lodeis on there obviously. We had one called Lannister that is working through the filing process, should be by May-ish. An oil deal, which is interesting considering the price of oil. I haven't seen any concrete filings, just a note of exempt distributions. And then we have to bank, we have a private bank which is not resource, which is supposed to be at least accepted from a regulatory standpoint by the end of the summer. So that'll be exciting headed into late 2022. So you said it earlier, 2022 is shaping up okay. And I have to agree with you as long as you are positioned properly because 2022 being okay is different from 2021 being okay in the stocks that are going to go up as a result.
Gerardo Del Real: Well said, well said. It's all we got this week everybody. I am Gerardo Del Real along with my co-host, Mr. Nick Hodge. This was number 162 of Bizarro World. Keep your hands to yourself, everybody.
Nick Hodge: And keep my name out your fucking mouth.
This transcript is unedited. Please excuse grammatical errors and run-on sentences.