Bizarro World Podcast,
with Nick and Gerardo
March 14, 2022
Baseball is on and March Madness is back. But, of course, March has been madness elsewhere.
The LME shut down trading and canceled trades as nickel prices surged in a historic short squeeze.
We discuss the ethics of it, but also how to profit from the trend of rising commodity prices.
Gold's new range. Uranium breaks out. Cryptos are boring again.
And cops have arrested the leader of Wakanda for trying to withdraw his own money from the bank.
This is Bizarro World episode 160.
Table of Contents
2:00 Baseball is Back
4:27 March Madness, DraftKings Stocks, Sports Betting
9:30 London Metal Exchange Cancels Nickel Trades to Bailout Chinese Tycoon and JP Morgan
17:38 Gold's New Range
22:00 Uranium Prices Break Out
31:10 Cryptos Are Boring Again
34:33 Will Biden Get Brittney Griner Back?
37:43 Cops Arrest Leader of Wakanda for Withdrawing His Own Money
43:55 Mary Elizabeth Coleman Wants to Bring Back 1800s Slave Laws
50:36 Market Week Ahead
Gerardo Del Real: Holy beeep... I'm not going to curse right up the top. What am I seeing? Oh, my God. Nick, they arrested the leader of Wakanda for trying to withdraw his own money. At the bank. Oh, my God. Inflation is at a 40 year high again. Holy smokes. What? You can rape and buy your way out of it for $17 million. Man, this Oculus is phenomenal. This metaverse is amazing, Nick
Of course, this isn't the metaverse. This is the real world, folks. I am Gerardo Del Real, along with my co-host, Mr. Nick Hodge. This is episode one 160 of Bizarro World. How are you, Nick?
Nick Hodge: I'm doing well, Gerardo. Only $17 million.
Gerardo Del Real: Only $17 million. And you can rape and pillage. And I don't know if he's got his titles back, but go Prince Andrew. I guess that's the price to rape nowadays. That's the going fee. I mean, only if you're a prince. Of course, right? I'm sure you can get away with much cheaper rapes out there. And if you're in Missouri and you happen to get pregnant by one of these creeps and, they don't go to prison and they don't get arrested, and there's no formal charges, and there's never a record of these sexual predators, and you're impregnated as a woman... Well, in Missouri, there's a lawmaker that not only doesn't want you to have an abortion, she wants to make sure you can't go to any other state and have them. We'll talk about that a little bit. I wish it was in the metaverse. That's that's the real world that we're living in right now, folks, that was all this past week. So a lot going on. How are you, Nick?
Nick Hodge: Trying to keep up, Gerardo? The markets have been crazy, as you said, there's a lot going on in the world. Had a chance to talk to some people from some other industries. They're feeling the same way about shortages and the prolonged state of chaotic affairs. And so I think it's weighing on everybody in different ways. I'm hanging in there the best I can. How are you doing?
Baseball is Back
Gerardo Del Real: I'm well. It's been an interesting week. Let's start off with some good news. Breaking news. Baseball is back. Everyone knows I'm a diehard fan of Chicago kid at heart. It's where a ton of my family is. We go back every year. I was fearful that they would cancel the season if an agreement between the players union and the league owners wasn't reached. It was reached just 20 minutes ago. We, of course, record on Thursday. And so excited to get back to Wrigley. I missed it last year. A little positive news to start our therapy session with.
Nick Hodge: What was the breakthrough.
Gerardo Del Real: A number of breakthroughs. It was actually pretty complex negotiations. there were there were many parts. One part was the league minimum for, basically newer players or players that are coming up from the minor leagues, like what are they going to be making and what's that league minimum? There was also a discussion about the international draft as it relates to foreign players and how they could be approached and how they couldn't be approached and whether or not they would be allowed to be incentivized the way they had been in the past.
There's there's two school of schools of thought there. In Puerto Rico, and Mexico and the Dominican Republic were so much great young talent comes out. There's baseball camps set up since, seven, eight, nine years old. And there's go to scouts that set up these camps. And, the downside is these scouts end up managing these young players at a very early age and taking a portion of their earnings if they ever do make it. But the upside is who else is going to do it if there is an opportunity provided for these great players to break through and get seen.
And so there was a lot of debate about how that was going to be approached and what was going to be allowed and not allowed. And, the players did well sticking together on that front and allowing those players to be, compensated, to be allowed to participate in these camps, to be allowed in and in a transparent way to to develop and hone their skills, which they should be.
Right. And so it's it's tough enough coming from a place where there's few opportunities. And so, yeah, a couple of other things. A couple of, rule changes. But they agreed. So I'm happy baseball is back.
Nick Hodge: There you go. Spring training starting soon.
Gerardo Del Real: Yes it is. March the 18th. And I believe the first games of the season are April the seventh. So looking forward to a summer at Wrigley Field with my boys and the wife.
March Madness, DraftKings Stocks, Sports Betting
Nick Hodge: It's March Madness as well. I've got to set up our company pool. Not that we wager any money on it.
Gerardo Del Real: Our completely legal and non betting company pool. Did you see, I believe the guy's name was Calvin Ridley. He's a wide receiver on a football team.
Nick Hodge: I saw someone was maybe betting. Was that him?
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. So the guy is hilarious on Twitter, by the way. So Calvin Ridley is a wide receiver for the Falcons and he was injured last year. And so while he was injured, he was bored at home. His dumb ass gets on his own phone with his own, betting account at DraftKings. And he bets $1500 on his team. Right. And I don't know if he won or not even, but the league found out somebody told and actually. No, I know who told, DraftKings told. He's a football player. He's registered. You can't be betting on games. So they told the league this guy bet $1500 and they suspended him for a year. And he's losing $10 million as a result.
Nick Hodge: For a $1500 bet.
Gerardo Del Real: For a $1500 bet. And so he Tweeted when the suspension came down, he said one year? He goes: It was $1500. I did it one time. I promise I don't have a gambling problem. Can you let me back in?
Nick Hodge I mean well, $10 million is nothing compared to the market cap that DraftKings has lost. It's a whole interesting phenomenon, right. So and it's going to become part of the podcast now. So, a couple of years ago there started to be deals going around as betting started open up, right? Because we got to a place where different states were having different laws and opening up to gambling.
And then we had the whole Dave Portnoy phenomenon, right? With, Penn Gaming and such and now the league even caters to the to the gambling, right? Showing you certain stats or bets or odds of certain things. And so that's another way to monetize, which of course the leagues ultimately, you would think, want. Right, because it's more to the bottom line.
And so it's all very interesting that DraftKings itself has absolutely eaten dog shit. I mean, a one year chart down and to the right.
Gerardo Del Real: The technical term everybody.
Nick Hodge: Down from $72 bucks to $18.
Gerardo Del Real: Those are not not inflation profits.
Nick Hodge: No, a nasty spill. It's interesting how that's getting integrated into the culture of sports and how some people like it and some people don't do. They think it dilutes the game. They think that's not the point of it. And it's all just very fascinating to me as a non sports geek and a non bettor. I never understood the gambling but I know a lot of people who are into it and spend a lot of time researching. And they'll have spirited debates about the quarterback from 1987 for this team or the pitcher from this team and who's better. They know that stuff and then use that to bet. Now you're going to hear the downside. For me, I could spend more time researching things that I could invest in or "wager on" in the markets that might have a better payoff.
And so anyway I'm not sure how I got to this point in the discussion but when I when I find myself in those sort of discussions about...
Gerardo Del Real: It's a Bizarro World.
Nick Hodge: About the sports and stuff, I just find myself kind of kind of lost right. But there's money there to be had. Do you like to bet on the games?
Gerardo Del Real: I don't. I grew up in a household where my dad was a big gambler. Right. my story. My immigrant parents came to this country. Dad worked his behind off, as did mom. Dad also had a pretty mean drinking and gambling habit as a kid. Right. Doesn't drink, doesn't gamble anymore. But, boy, he had a good run.
And so I learned from a very early age that gambling was not something that I probably should be around. I probably have an addictive personality. If I like something, I tend to go all out, whether that's, boxing or fitness or the markets or my family, whatever it may be. Right. I tend to have a very addictive personality with things.
And so I try to stay away from things that probably are the healthiest for me. Right. A couple of glasses of wine, some vodka sodas is probably my worst vice. Other than that it's pretty solid all the way around. But yeah, so no. No gambling for me. I've never, ever dabbled.My wife can play cards and she laughs at me because I don't know a card game.
Nick Hodge: Me either.
Gerardo Del Real: At all. Right. I shot some craps as a kid, in Chicago. That's that's about it. I did that a couple of times. But never gambling. Never with real money. No.
Nick Hodge: Yeah, same with me. I don't know the games either.
London Metal Exchange Cancels Nickel Trades to Bail out Chines Tycoon and JP Morgan
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, let's let's talk markets. We're 10 minutes into it. The nickel market is broken. The LME decided to shut down the exchange. I don't know if people were aware but there was a tin crisis in 1985 where they shut the market down for four years. I'd like to think I'm a capitalist at heart. I lean libertarian on the financial end of it. I tend to be true to the definition of capitalist. I believe in price discovery, I believe in allowing businesses to fail, I believe in upward mobility, I believe in working hard and accountability. Why are we shutting down exchanges and canceling trades because somebody bet the wrong way? This is a great segue from our DraftKings conversation. Imagine if you place the bet, Nick, the bet of your career, the bet of your life... and you won that bet, right?
Nickel soared over 250% in a matter of a couple of days, and you go to collect and this asshole, Chief Executive Matt Chamberlain, says that the exchange had to cancel trades or several brokers would have struggled to survive. What kind of perverted version of capitalism are we living in? Back to the Oculus Metaverse whole thing, like this isn't the metaverse, this is real life.
This happens and I don't see anybody in the streets up in arms.
Nick Hodge: How long of an answer do you want?
Gerardo Del Real: Fire away. I have nothing to do for the next couple of hours.
Nick Hodge: We could go all the way back to the Great Depression and the unprecedented measures that were taken to confiscate gold and initiate the Tennessee Valley Authority and the collective measures and sacrifices that were made. But I don't think we're to that point in the war or the economic slowdown and justify that. And so I guess I would point back to the global financial crisis and the precedent that was set for too big to fail.
And it's funny, I was looking at a report that I wrote ten years ago, because I was going back to the last financial crisis and when I founded the newsletter about being an outsider and sort of what that was all about and, it was the same thing that you just asked me, right?
It was the bailing out of the banks that caused the crisis, not allowing them to fail and allowing a bastardization of the capitalistic system. And then you starting the road down there where we've ended up now in the cul de sac spinning around the road of quantitative easing, the road of Troubled Asset Relief, the road of sending out checks when things don't go well.
And so if that's a time travel machine you have there, we're going backwards, not looking into the future. So really that was the kickoff of the era that's going to take 15 or 20 years to reconcile. And we're seeing, speaking of card games, some of the final cards getting dealt. Right. Should they shut down the exchange because you know somebody shorted nickel and got caught off guard? Absolutely not.
People should be able to go out of business when they bet the wrong way. I mean, that's sort of the game we're in. When I pick wrong or when I, go the long and stocks go down, I lose money. No one bails me out. No one comes and gives me money for the trades that goes sideways.
And at the same time, I don't take on leverage or take on bets that could wipe me out. That's part of a smart asset allocation and risk management strategy. So a lot of people are learning things that I've been writing about for a while. Recent events have shined a spotlight on things that I found with a flashlight ten years ago.
And at the same time, there's not a lot to do if you were prepared. I saw Mr. Dines sent out an alert this week and he's like, "I don't know what to tell you except, get more defensive. I already got you in the golds. I got you out of the S&P. Like, well, what more can I tell you to do?"
And I'm sort of feeling the same way. I mean, I'm sitting over here and in whatever, 30%, 40% cash, and my GDXJ I bought last week is already up 10% and...
Gerardo Del Real: Investing is easy!
Nick Hodge: Right, when it goes well. Not that it's easy, but you try to explain to people, how to get on the, unfortunately, it's a bandwagon, right? Because when you tell people before the bandwagon leaves, they don't want to hear it or they don't want to believe you. And then when stick with nickel goes up as it does... then there's a commodity supercycle.
Gerardo Del Real: Imagine that. And bringing it back, let's be very clear. It was Chinese nickel Tsingshan Holding Group that was short 100,000 tonnes of nickel. And so he ended up with a paper loss that stood at around $8 billion on Monday. Not only was the exchange shut down and trades canceled, but he was given a bailout -- which is exactly what it is, we talked about bailouts earlier -- by JP Morgan. He was allowed to restructure loans and he was allowed to get lines of credit to make sure that he would be solvent and that he wasn't buried by the margin calls. I ask you all out there again: where is the outrage on this stuff? It seems criminal to me that they allow this to happen.
And, I get it. The LME is now owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, the biggest shareholder is the Hong Kong government. A Chinese holding company, Chinese tycoon is the gentleman that's short that's about to get his ass handed to him. This isn't capitalism, folks. This isn't capitalism. It's not the way that it's supposed to work. And yeah, I don't know what else to say other than I can't believe more people aren't outraged.
Nick Hodge: Well, it's a taste of what we always talk about and what we've been talking about moe recently, that growing authoritarianism and draconian actions of Western governments and their relationships with the largest companies that fund them and the revolving door that's involved there. I mean, you go back and look at Occupy Wall Street and the things that they were saying, and it's exactly what you're saying now.
Literally, nothing has changed. And so there's a lot that still has to be rectified as it comes to getting current people out of office and closing loopholes and letting banks fail. And it's also a taste of ultimate black swan scenarios I guess I would say. You were saying the other week about Putin doing a takedown of the grid or, knowing what's in your bank account. You've got think tanks now writing in a very real way that he could, detonate a nuclear device above a city and take down the grid. And I guess I just relate that to the pausing of trading on an exchange, because in the fog of war you don't know what measures are going to be taken, what sanctions are going to be deployed and what's going to happen next.
And so that's the reason I was digging up those old reports, because I had lists of things you should do. And so I published some of those this week to the Foundational Profits readers. And they were pretty good, man. Before I had kids, I had much more attitude when I wrote.
Gerardo Del Real: You'll get your swagger back there soon. They grow quick. Listen, as someone who has a 23 year old, an 18 year old, and a 13 year old they grow quick and then, you miss them being babies and it happens. So enjoy it. I know it can be a bit of a struggle, especially when they're close in age but man, it flies in flies. It flies.
Gold's New Range
Gerardo Del Real: Here we are, almost 20 minutes in. We haven't talked gold or uranium. Gold. $2000. Surged to $2070, pulled back a little bit, but now it looks like $2000 or the high $1900s might be the new 1890s and $1900s. It's another $100 up on the floor it looks like. And look, with inflation rising 7.9% in February, food and energy costs are the highest more than 40 years.
Uranium is at $60. A lot of people are getting caught flat-footed. I'm not taking joy in it but we've been saying this for a very long time: that you can either make money or get caught on the wrong side of it. You've just got to position appropriately people. And look, I am very comfortable and content with my allocations as it relates to the equities and the metal.
And obviously, I always wish I had more. You and I both have several mentors and friends that would jump off a building if they owned the little bit of gold that I owned. They would say, "What the heck happened to my gold?" So I always wish I owned more gold. But I'm happy with the portfolio allocation. I like where it's at. I think it's it's going to be a fun 2022 despite the volatility and the very real human toll that of course is continuing to fall on again, not just not just the Ukrainian people, but Russian people as well. And you mentioned Western governments and the dictatorship and how do you make it completely unrelated but related to me? How do you arrest the leader of Wakanda?
Nick Hodge: I didn't see that one, so I don't know.
Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's talk gold. I'll go back to the leader of Wakanda a little bit, but talk about dictatorship, what the hell?
Nick Hodge: What about what do you want to know about gold?
Gerardo Del Real: Overbought? Oversold? Good floor. What do you think?
Nick Hodge: We've been saying that it's strengthening. It's looking increasingly bullish, obviously surging to $2068 per ounce. We've said as much. I told you I bought the junior miners for the liquidity last week. And I told you I bought them because of the volatility of gold, the ups and downs. the $50 swings. So if it's $50 swings up or down you're in $100 range. And so yeah, you're right. $1900, buy gold. $2,000, sell gold. So gold is sort of what stocks were for the past year or two: sell the rips, buy the dips. And you're getting into that place in gold and gold equities -- and even other commodities and commodity equities.
Some of the big copper miners and mid-tier copper miners are moving very robustly. And same with the gold mid-tiers and juniors. Hecla's (NYSE: HL) up 30% in a couple of weeks. So those bigger ones are giving you the liquidity to get in and out. So gold looks very good. I wouldn't be, buying physical. I told you that a couple of weeks ago, too, and maybe not, putting it in your hand, but having it as an allocation, a paper allocation, because just like being in cash or being in bonds, it's not going down and might even go up while the S&P remains down 12% for the year. And we also mentioned hedge funds failing recently. There was a Financial Times article about it saying that on average, hedge funds are down 2% for the year, which is better than the S&P is doing, but you're still down for the year.
Gerardo Del Real: And we're a quarter in.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. I mean, we get to the end of the first quarter and some of those will go away. And so it's interesting to see, who's too big to fail, who gets the special treatment. And you mentioned the ownership of the exchange. And so it's it's not hard to figure that out, but gold looks good.
And silver's starting to look good as well. And the PGMs are obviously very strong. So in times of uncertainty, not necessarily inflation, but certainly uncertainty, gold is proving its mettle as ever.
Gerardo Del Real: Agreed. Meanwhile, uranium had itself a week.
Nick Hodge: Yeah, I wanted to keep it separate. Let me see if I can spin out of the editorial that I wanted to write.
Gerardo Del Real: So you take uranium and I'll take gold. Yeah.
Uranium Prices Break Out
Nick Hodge: I mean, the uranium spot price punched through $60. So that's an important barrier or milestone because it hasn't been above there since it went below that threshold on the tail end of the downside from Fukushima. So despite scares of nuclear war, which is related obviously to uranium, and despite scares of nuclear reactors being damaged inside Ukraine, uranium is still performing well.
And I think there's a lot going on there. So let me just unpack it for a second.
If it is a nuclear war, then you've got more to worry about than your uranium stocks. And so I think the market -- like I understand Mr. Market? -- that's kind of hubristic to say. But, I think that that risk is sort of aside because, in nuclear war, all bets are off anyway. And so you look at the attacks, the reported attacks or purported attacks on the nuclear reactors in Ukraine, and we haven't seen elevated levels of radiation and there have been no reports of serious damage. And the DOE here has said that the only thing they have to report is that the reactors have been shut down safely. And I think we should look at that as a testament to the safety of nuclear energy, that when they're being bombarded in the center of a war zone, they are still safe.
And so that means relatively they're even safer when they're not being in the center of a war zone. So I was writing again this week as I've found myself doing several times in the past that nuclear energy is the safest form of electricity generation that humans have ever harnessed relative to the amount of electricity that it's produced and then.
Gerardo Del Real: Ever is a very long time.
Nick Hodge: And then, it's the same as like the prices that the Europeans are paying for energy, which is the other part of this that you've got to continue to hit on. So we still haven't sanctioned the Russian energy exports, right. Because Europe's still got to get its gas from Russia. So that's sort of like the thing that's dangling there. It's the elephant in the room. Like when are they going to put the sanctions on energy? How serious are they? And that's the geopolitical chess that's above my pay grade because they're afraid, obviously, of how Putin is going to react. Is he going to do that nuke over the city to take down the grid or whatever? And so you are in a very precarious situation geopolitically when it comes to war. But you're also and have been in a very precarious situation when it comes to energy supply and who you rely on to get it. And so I think the world is starting to take that more seriously and not just the world, but the United States.
When you see the announcements that we've talked about from the White House and just people understanding better the supply chain vis a vis the shortages we've seen over the past couple of years. And now they're starting to understand not just about China manufacturing, but also about where their resources come from. And so that was not unexpected.
It's, again, catalysts that we've always put in the list of catalysts that we put out there for bullish scenarios for the things we invest in. And so I guess that's the end of the uranium talk there. But if they do sanction, I guess just to wrap it up, say we can't get uranium from Russia, the prices are going to go much higher because you got to incent supply to come on in the Western world.
And then utilities, I mean, I think are going to just want to contract with Western uranium anyway. I mean, just look at businesses in the US. McDonald's is shutting down locations in Russia. we hired developers that are in adjacent states, not Belarus, but the service that we use for that is not that you hire developers and like Belarus and Russia anymore, for example.
And so companies have shown the initiative and the wherewithal to cut off business and forgo revenue. And if that spills over to the energy space, you're going to see fireworks. And you've seen a little bit of that already. But not like we saw with oil in leading up to 2007 or not like we saw over a similar timeframe with uranium and equities going up tens or even hundreds of thousands of percent like we talk about with Paladin where literally $1,000 could've turned into a million.
So when you talk about the situations that are needed for those sorts of returns, it's not, the smooth sailing, no volatility situations. It's the extreme fear and the extreme greed that lead to gains and percent moves like that. So I think we're heading in that.
Gerardo Del Real: My cup of tea. It's a beautiful, beautiful sector if you like volatility and you can trade around it. It's two very big steps forward. And then you always get a 50% snap-back ride. And so it's, it's, Twitter when used for good is a hilarious little tool that does amuse me from time to time.
And there's nothing like a uranium pullback. It brings out the most fearful of fearful traders and it's such a contrarian signal. And the other side is very similar. You get those hundred and 50% moves in stock in a week and a half and all of a sudden everybody thinks it's a clear shot to $100. Never works out quite that way but uranium supply-demand fundamentals were very bullish before any of this started.
North Korea just tested an intercontinental ballistic missile system, by the way.
Nick Hodge: Oh they're cute now.
Gerardo Del Real: Take that for 2022. Anyway, uranium was headed to $100 and $125 and I said as high as $200 -- I thought it would overshoot. But $200 might be conservative if this escalation of a resource war, which is essentially where we're at, continues. There's a very real war happening where lives are being lost and hospitals are being bombed and people are losing everything they have, including their lives and their loved ones' lives.
But there's also a sub-war, right, that not a lot of people are paying attention to the outside of the space. But when I see two presidents, Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin, rushing to see who is going to ban imports and exports of uranium first...That's not inconsequential to either Russia or US or the rest of the world. It's a very material catalyst for the sector. So, look, if I thought that uranium would overshoot to $200 and this continues and we do indeed ban or Putin decides that he's going to restrict exports of uranium until the end of the year, it can get, pun intended, explosive very quickly.
Nick Hodge: Yeah and it's important to know the ranges and to be in tune with the stocks, the equities, the existing ones, the ones that are being formed because of the situation that we're in, and also to have a little bit of investing or trading chops from experience like, I guess I'll just give you an example, right?
Like you mentioned the 50% pullback. I'm looking at a chart of, of Skyharbour Resources (TSX-V: SYH)(OTC: SYHBF). You've got to have patience and know the level. So I had investors in Skyharbour, gotta pound the chest a little bit, watche it run all the way up to over $0.85. You see them start to pull back last fall and then you say buy under $0.45 and not a penny more and the stock falls to $0.44 for like two days.
And then up to $0.85 over the next, I don't know, six weeks or so it's gone up by 100%. Yeah. Not freaking out, keeping the head and knowing why you're invested in the stories you're invested in.
Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. I know we could go on, right. We could find out just a little bit more. We'll leave it alone on that front. But we've had some big wins this year. A couple of mine have done that exact same thing. Surged to new highs, pulled back 50%, before surging to new highs.
Again, you could have been shaken out of those positions a couple of times if you weren't in tune with management and the catalyst and the structure and the reasons why those pullbacks were happening. It's important to keep your finger on the pulse or to pay someone that will do it for you.
Cryptos Are Boring Again
What else should we talk about? Cryptos seem boring again. we used to have I think we went for a year and a half yarding a gold and now gold is sexy. Girl girls shaking right now and cryptos just kind of like not all of them, but, Bitcoin, the big ones are just kind of sitting there kind of waiting to see what the next shoe to drop is.
I realize that the U.S. had some guidance on wanting to establish clear and transparent protocols. And we talked about this a bit. You talked about this a bit last week. the pros and cons of that. Any any thoughts on what came out this week and have you had time to dig into it?
Nick Hodge: I haven't, but what I would say is the same thing with being in tune with the uranium equities and knowing the levels and why your invested is playing out in the crypto space. And we're applying the same approach to that. I mean, Chris was writing when Bitcoin went back up to $45,000 the other week, it's not going to stay there unless it breaks through. And also that it's correlating highly with the stock market, which I just told you is down 12% for the year.
So as volatility remains in the stock market, I think you continue to see that in the cryptos. And the other thing that's had happened is you got the CPI number today, and we already knew inflation was the highest since 1982. I mean, that's sort of where it's been but the last time the number came out, Bitcoin sort of reacted to the downside as well. And so that's what I mean by the shifting of the narrative or the cyclicality or the cycles of stuff, right.
When it's now time to buy the dip in gold and gold equities, where it was time to do that last year in equities and crypto, that's just not the investment environment you're in right now. And that's not to say the S&P isn't a good long-term investment. And then that not to say, Bitcoin isn't a good long-term investment. That's just about buying what's going up when it's going up and not buying what's going down when it's going down. So that's the macro environment that we're in for cryptos right now.
But they're still being used, I would say. So over a hundred million bucks has gone to the Ukraine via cryptocurrencies. And we've talked about obviously, the Canadian truckers in a couple of episodes. And so if anything if it is a boring time for cryptos, it's a proving time for cryptos because if people had questions about how do you use them, or what's their utility, or what can I really buy with them?
Well, you've seen some very concrete and I would say inspiring examples in the past couple of months about how cryptos can truly be used not to buy a pack of gum, but to fund international lawyers for people that you think are being persecuted unfairly, or to buy food and protective gear for people fighting for their freedom in Ukraine, or to circumvent the eye of the government from telling you where you can donate funds to. And so those are three very important ways that you can use and deploy crypto and the ways aren't going away. I'd say they're only being developed regardless of the price.
Will Biden Get Brittney Griner Back?
Gerardo Del Real: Biden should give Trump a cabinet position just for a couple of months during this Russia, Ukraine war.
Nick Hodge: What is Trump going to do?
Gerardo Del Real: Say what you say about the Trumpster. He was real good about getting hostages that other governments took from overseas that were US citizens and getting them back, because people were scared shitless that he was going to push the wrong button. I'd bring this up because WNBA star Brittney Griner was arrested over three weeks ago in Moscow. For those not familiar. She is a WNBA superstar who makes the league maximum, which is $222,000 a year here in the US. And so in the off-season, she spends four months a year in Moscow playing for the equivalent league, right? The Russian Woman's Basketball Premier League, and makes more money in those four months playing overseas than she actually does here at home.
And so she was going through an airport checkpoint and a K-9 allegedly found a vape with a couple of cartridges of essentially cannabis oil, oil derived from cannabis. She's facing five to 10 years in prison, has been locked up for the past three weeks without being allowed any kind of counsel or public viewing. This is a US citizen, one. Two, if we're going to play the class card, she's an NBA superstar high profile.
I haven't heard much in the news. I don't know if her family asked that they weren't public about what's going on, if there are negotiations going on. But I know when the Trumpster was in charge, he said say Candyman three times, motherfuckers and people got back whether it was hostages in North Korea or... He got ASAP Rocky out of prison. He was in a Swedish prison for three, four weeks. Got him out of there. Pardoned Little Wayne when they wanted to lock Little Wayne up for four years for gun possession in New York, got him out of prison. So maybe there's a cabinet post some somewhere for Mr. Trump, maybe he could be Biden's foreign policy enforcer guy. The guy that you send when you're done fucking around.
Nick Hodge: Well, I'm not an expert on foreign policy, and maybe-
Gerardo Del Real: Neither am I.
Nick Hodge: ... it would bring the two sides together. I saw the lady from the WNBA, who was arrested. It was making the rounds over the weekend. But I think like everything else, it's just dissipated from the news cycle. You have to think that's entirely politically motivated, right? And so we'll see-
Gerardo Del Real: I do.
Nick Hodge: ... if it develops into a bigger story, depending on what happens here in the next couple of weeks. But I forget what Trump has been saying. He's been running his mouth a little bit at Mara Lago, but I don't pay much attention. We'll see. It's almost time to start the campaign trail for whatever's next 2024 or whatever.
Cops Arrest Leader of Wakanda for Withdrawing His Own Money
Gerardo Del Real: Here we go. Here we go. All right, let's talk about the leader of Wakanda. And of course, I'm not talking about the actual leader of Wakanda, I'm talking about the fucking director of the movie, right, was in Atlanta working on Black Panther Part 2, and Black Panther Part 2 is called Wakanda Forever. The gentleman's name, the director's name, Ryan Coogler. I've seen the body cam footage. This guy goes inside the bank. He's got his mask on. He's still complying with all whatever mandates or requirements or recommendations the bank has, has his ID in hand, he has his deposit slip. He writes a note on the deposit slip because he was looking to withdraw $12,000 from his account.
He says, "Can you please count it discretely because of the amount of money?" Obviously, if you're withdrawing that kind of money, you don't want the teller just making it rain in front of all the other customers, right? You want them to be discreet? Can you just do the thing and just hand me my money in my little envelope, right?
Nick Hodge: You don't want to make it go brrrr?
Gerardo Del Real: And so, no, no. No. Not in the daytime and not in the bank. In Atlanta, yes. Haven't been, heard it's amazing. Anyhow so he's in there and he slides a little piece of paper ID and all. The bank teller looks at this guy and hits the panic button and the manager calls 911. So these two cops arrive. And I mean, Mr. Coogler was the most polite guy under those circumstances. Put your hands up. He puts his hands up. Put your hands behind your back, he complies, like, "Why are you arresting me?"
They're like we're arresting you for attempting to rob this bank. He's like, what are you talking about? My IDs right there, you can just go check the name on my ID, you'll see that I have an account here. I've banked here for almost a decade or however long, for years, he said. And clearly, this is the director of Black Panther. I think had it. I don't think he was trying to jack them for $12,000. So he goes outside and the officer cuffs him, they throw him in the back of the car.
Nick Hodge: That's crazy.
Gerardo Del Real: And again, he was the polite as he goes-
Nick Hodge: I look forward to their lawsuit.
Gerardo Del Real: ... in a couple minutes, you're going to run my ID. Yeah, you're going to run my ID and you're going to realize that you're making a big, big mistake. And the guy is a class act. I was reading the article, Bank of America says, "We deeply regret that this incident occurred. It never should have happened. And we have apologized to Mr. Coogler." He is a class act. He said, "The situation should have never happened. However, Bank of America worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction and we have moved on." No lawsuit, no nothing.
Nick Hodge: What about the police? What were they arresting him for? What was the crime? Oh, I would've been-
Gerardo Del Real: Attempted robbery of the bank. Oh, I would've been livid. I'm livid for him. I'm livid for him. Are you serious? He's bringing business to Bank of America. He has millions of dollars. He probably shouldn't even have a Bank of America account anymore at this point, right, with the amount of money he's made from not just Black Panther, but other works-
Nick Hodge: Fuck that bank.
Gerardo Del Real: ... that he's been very successful. Fuck that bank is right. So kudos to him for being a class act.
Nick Hodge: Wait, hold on. Go ahead. No, go ahead.
Gerardo Del Real: No, no, no, no. I was just going to say, yeah, I'm impressed with just how kind and how discreet he's been about the situation.
Nick Hodge: I would've been pissed. I'd love to know what the officers arrested him for. I want to talk about the bank teller for a second. So, first of all, oh God, it's going to be actually long.
Gerardo Del Real: I'll have a sip of water.
Nick Hodge: Bank tellers are young on the whole. And I don't know anything about this case. So a lot of generalizations coming at you. They don't make a lot of money. They're at the lowest rank on the totem pole in the bank and they don't know a whole lot, and they don't interact a whole lot with people because we know the majority of transactions are done either online or via ATMs these days. They're also trained to be the front lines against terrorism, right, with the alerts they're supposed to watch out for either for people trying to bounce checks, or scam elderly people, or transfer over a certain amount of money from their account in a single transaction, which they're supposed to-
Gerardo Del Real: Report anything after $10,000.
Nick Hodge: Exactly.
Gerardo Del Real: Correct.
Nick Hodge: Right. So again, generalizations, but it's a $12,000 is a lot of money I can imagine to a bank teller... It's a lot of money in general, but it's a lot of money to a bank teller. I can only imagine they think that's a lot of money. I don't know what color the gentleman is. I can only imagine.
Gerardo Del Real: He's black.
Nick Hodge: Right.
Gerardo Del Real: As one of the arresting officers, which is why I think the director was like, "Your family's going to give you some shit for this. So you're arresting me, motherfucker? I'm the fucking leader of Wakanda, you're arresting me?" Oh yeah.
Nick Hodge: Right. And so the teller, she was either scared or he, I don't even know, or they thought they were busting the crime of the century, right. Because they're trained to think that way. I have a good friend who was a teller and then managed a Wells Fargo branch for a long time. And yeah, man, they're always looking for the errant $500 check or whatever the scam is, right. So I can just envision the mentality. And you wonder why people don't want to go to banks anymore, right? I loathe going to a bank because I just know the quality of the service that I'm going to have to deal with when I go there. And it's not high. And unfortunately, it's across all banks and it's with the people that they staff their branches with. And to some extent, I think they undertrain them to make you angry, just like Bank of America uses the most illegible font known man in their credit card statements so you can't read that legibly, right? It's all by design. And then you see the fruits that that design bears when the dumb fucking teller presses the button for a $12,000 withdrawal from somebody that has it.
Mary Elizabeth Coleman Wants to Bring Back 1800s Slave Laws
Gerardo Del Real: But the dumb ass of the week award does not go to that teller or those police officers. The dumb ass of the week award goes to Mary Elizabeth Coleman. Representative Mary Elizabeth Coleman from the fine, fine state of Missouri. And so remember a few weeks ago when I told you all there was a slippery slope to all of a sudden allow an attorney general Ken Paxton and a sitting governor, Governor Abbot to get together over scotch and decide that Ken Paxton was going to write a legal opinion that said that if you provided any services to transgendered kids, as it related to treatment or any kind of medication to help with transitions that you, as the parent would be investigated for child abuse, felony child abuse.
And then about a month and a half ago, they basically made all abortions illegal in the state of Texas by making it to where random people from out of state could just sue you if you even asked a provider a question about an abortion, aiding and abetting. You could be sued for a minimum of $10,000 if you aided and abetted or inquired into potentially getting an abortion in the state of Texas. So they tried to make it to where it's just next to impossible. Again, if you're not rich and you can't leave the state to get an abortion here in the state of Texas.
And so now Missouri is piggybacking on this and they're calling it the "vigilante loophole in Texas", which was the six-week abortion ban saying anything after six weeks is illegal, right? And so what this lady did, Mary Elizabeth Coleman, she sent several bills that are awaiting debate on the house floor, making it to where if you not only want an abortion in the state of Missouri, you can go to prison but you also can't go to any other state if you're from Missouri, if you're a citizen of Missouri or you're going to go to prison.
And what they're doing is they're enabling snitches. They're allowing the same thing they did here in Texas. Now, she's copying this in Missouri and saying, if we find out that you are leaving the state or planning to leave the state, any citizen from anywhere in the world could drop a tip, be followed up on and they can sue you for $10,000 and send you to prison. In America? In Missouri? This is some like crazy, you would think, third world repressive dictatorship. I'm at a loss for words by how brash this is. It's insane.
Nick Hodge: It's absolutely amazing. I mean, it goes against everything that's American, and all the freedoms that we know and presumably take for granted. I don't even know what else to say about that other than it's absolutely insane. Not only the logic behind it and why you would want to do that, but also that you're allocating government resources to following up on things like that.
It's just beyond me given the things that we're facing here in our country and elsewhere, not only the stuff that we've talked about on this podcast, but the healthcare and homelessness and inequality that you want to chase up people who are seeking things for their medical wellbeing. No, it's insane. That's the best word for it. And yeah, it's another reason that privacy and separating yourself from government is more and more in the fore, right?
I mean, look, I don't think whether you're red or blue, and this is sort of one of my main pillars: It's independence from the government because, and neither side truly has your wellbeing in mind and spends their time enacting laws that aren't to your benefit, but more meant to control you. And then as we've talked about in this podcast and others bailing out their friends and the corporations and not following up the atrocities that have broader implications and harm more people like the prince of fucking England, for example, like you mentioned, at the beginning of the hour, settling with millions of dollars to rape young girls. And then all the way on the bottom side of that in Podunk fucking Missouri making laws so girls that potentially were raped can't seek medical care that they require out of the result.
Gerardo Del Real: In or out of the state. In or out of the state.
Nick Hodge: That's insane.
Gerardo Del Real: Let me read the exact language. The language, it would not only allow citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortion for a Missouri resident, but anyone who helps or even attempts to help a Missouri resident seek an abortion in or out of the state. And so the article I was reading, it's really interesting. They talk about the analog to this law, which was the fugitive slave laws, right, back in the days, which required the recapture and return of enslaved people who made it to free states, right?
So when slavery was outlawed and abolished in certain states and slaves went to those states. And so they just passed a law that said, hey, if you come across a free slave, there's another law over here that says, even though slavery is abolished and they're free, that you have to recapture and return them, or you're at risk of arrest. And so that kind of stoking of fucking passions is in part what led to the civil war.
Nick Hodge: You know you're on the right side of history and ethics when you're citing slave laws as your precedent.
Gerardo Del Real: From the late 1800s', fucking unreal in 2022. You would think I was in there, but no, I'm in Bizarro World. I'm in this real life.
Nick Hodge: It's still going on.
Gerardo Del Real: It's more stable in here everyone than it is out there. How is that?
Nick Hodge: That's why people want to live in the metaverse.
Market Week Ahead
Gerardo Del Real: Man, what are you looking for in the markets this coming week, Nick?
Nick Hodge: Fucking fed meeting, Gerardo. What everyone's been looking for forever.
Gerardo Del Real: You already told us. 25 basis points, baby. That's what he said. You think he'll do it? I think he has to but.
Nick Hodge: I'm more interested in what the market does if his does.
Gerardo Del Real: You don't think it's priced in?
Nick Hodge: No, you got to US 10-year over 2%. I want to know if they corroborate his increase in fed rates. I mean, if they stay where they are or if they go back down as I've been talking about and yeah, I want to see the language that he uses alongside that.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. I do want to see the language. I think that's going to be the real important part there, right, is how they talk about future hikes and how dovish or hawkish and I hate to break it down to those two stupid adjectives, but how dovish and hawkish the fed sounds. It'll be interesting, especially in light of the commodity moves, right? I mean, it hasn't just been gold and uranium and silver and nickel. It's been palladium's been surging.
Nick Hodge: Wheat's at all-time high, 12, $13 a bushel.
Gerardo Del Real: You pump gas lately? Good, gracious. Ooh is right. Yeah.
Nick Hodge: I just drove to Bozeman. I pumped it a few times. It was 700 miles one way.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. A lot. A lot. What am I looking forward to? Yeah. I think the fed meeting, I think got to be the main event. Really curious to see how quickly uranium goes from 60 to 75. There's not a lot of resistance.
Nick Hodge: No. That's what, yeah, I mean, you were saying in the uranium portion, there's nothing above on the chart right now. Yeah. And all the reason for it to go higher.
Gerardo Del Real: Free, get your money's worth tip of the week for everyone. A company that both Nick and I wrote checks for at lower prices a couple of times is now public, a uranium company. I already sent this to paying subscribers. So I'll give you the free tip. Labrador Uranium, ticker symbol, LUR. I think it has a market kept roughly of 45 to 49 million right now, big, big, big land package, phenomenal team going to get a lot of work done this year, historic resource in place.
I think that's one of the still very undervalued uranium companies given today's price backdrop, right? There's a lot of companies that are still going to continue to do very, very well with the coming uranium mania. But this one, I actually think if you do exploration company comps with peer companies, there's value today. And so Labrador Uranium, that's your free tip of the week.
Nick Hodge: I agree that it has significant upside as well.
Gerardo Del Real: That's all we got. I am Gerardo Del Real along with my co-host Mr. Nick Hodge. This was episode 160 of Bizarro World. Be kind to each other out there folks. Say bye to everybody, Nick.
Nick Hodge: Team transitory, you got your ass absolutely run off the field. You were wrong all along, and you should admit it and have to wear a scarlet letter for the rest of your professional careers. See you.
Gerardo Del Real: We should send them all to Atlanta and make it rain on them.
Nick Hodge: See you.
This transcript is unedited. Please excuse grammatical errors and run-on sentences.