The Market Game Is Rigged And Everyone Is Lying… Still

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

I just sat down with Dan Ferris on Stansberry’s Investor Hour for one of the most honest, wide-ranging interviews I’ve done in a while. Before this conversation hits the wider world, I wanted to make it available first to you — my paid subscribers. It pulls from years of experience, harsh lessons, and truths that don’t get spoken on CNBC or passed around in TikTok trading rooms.

I started the conversation with a little self-deprecating humor, pointing out that I thought my “half-life with ever being invited back to anything Stansberry after my 2019 onstage performance in Las Vegas was much longer than six years.” I told the story of how I showed up from the pool in a tank top for that event and how “I’m just going to go and say what I want to say. And that’s going to be it. And if I don’t get invited back, you know, that’s okay.” My philosophy is simple—say what I want, enjoy myself, and if people get flustered over salty language, so be it.

When we got into the subject of tariffs and manufacturing, I admitted that while tariffs have downsides, “I don’t think that it’s a bad idea… to make this hard stop and say, listen, we have to do something.” COVID had exposed how much we rely on overseas production for critical items—“the ingredients that are used to make pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceuticals themselves, the rare earth minerals, the things that really… hang significant portions of our quality of life.”

I pointed out how “the only thing this country exports right now is dollars” and how trying to reverse decades of decline in domestic manufacturing is “like turning around the f*cking Titanic.”

From there, I laid out what I think is the real danger: how financial markets are structured today. I explained the “passive bid” problem—how “people are buying the ETF, and that’s driving Apple higher” regardless of fundamentals. I said the danger is that when redemptions spike, “a lot of these funds don’t have cash liquid to absorb those redemptions” and instead “have… taken on leverage specifically so they don’t have to sell.”

With 40% of S&P index money in just 10 stocks, “we’re really in a situation where we’re putting so many of our eggs all in seven baskets. And that’s frightening.”

I also talked about the options market, which I see as one of “two giant f*cking trap doors underneath the market.” When dealers sell calls or puts, “there’s a certain percentage… they have to hedge against,” which can force huge amounts of buying during manias like GameStop. I said, “The entire market has become leveraged gambling. I mean, top to bottom.” The same mechanism can work in reverse, and “when that happens again, you’re going to see options weaponized in the other direction, which I think could be extremely dangerous.”

We also got into specific names and the market darlings. I didn’t hold back on Cathie Wood and ARK Invest. “She promised 40% compounded returns some years back and ARKK has gone nowhere in comparison” The gap between the promise and reality is “just a little bit off.” I said bluntly, “There hasn’t been a piece of pre-order, pre-revenue dog sh*t that these people haven’t fallen in love with.” Without Tesla’s 10x run from late 2019 to mid-2020, “no one ever hears this woman, ever.”

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That doesn’t mean I’m a pessimist. “Most of my portfolio is long, but it’s just long in stuff that’s not mag seven sh*t.” I like value-oriented names like UPS, “which trades at 12 times earnings, pays a dividend… a business that’s going to be here forever.” I also own “gold miners, silver miners… nuclear… psychedelics” and “anything I can do to kind of get out of the system as it exists today.” If you’re holding insolvent companies or fad coins, “there is no bottom.”

On the macro side, I see the MMT cycle accelerating, “widening the inequality gap,” and cornering the Fed. Inflation is still above target, so they’ll have to choose between “basically a quick deflationary depression or inflation.” I described this moment as a transition from “the gold standard to fiat… [to] fiat to digital” where “even more rules just kind of fly out the window because we have even more ways to micromanage the money supply.”

I wrapped up by reminding people how quickly things can change. “One day it’s not a big issue and then you wake up the next day and people are fist fighting over toilet paper.” The lesson I’ve learned from a decade of short selling is simple: “Everybody’s a liar, everybody’s a fraud. Nothing is as it seems.” My advice: “Be vigilant about protecting yourself and protecting your… family and your community” and remember “the more complacent everybody gets, the more non-complacent you should become.”

(WATCH THE FULL VIDEO INTERVIEW HERE)