Podcast: Play in new window
- Executive Orders Signal Immediate Change
- Mr. Bond Vigilante Still Has The Strongest Say
- Uncertainty The Best Driver To Gold
“So returning to the executive orders, at the end of page 2, I was saying, “Wow.” At the end of page 5, each page with at least 10 executive orders on it, it was awe-inspiring, ambitious in scope, sure to offend, and FDR and Reagan both came to mind. Massive change, very disruptive to the status quo. From a market perspective, I kept thinking disruption, uncertainty. These are things that drive market volatility.” —David McAlvany
Kevin: Welcome to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick, along with David McAlvany.
Well, David, all I can describe is sensory overload. I think about punk rock concerts back in the 1970s through the mid ’80s. You had the bright lights, the strobes, you had the loud music, you had all these different things going on, which purposely are trying to create sensory overload. I wasn’t really part of that movement, but I remember getting my pilot’s license. And the guy who was checking me out was trying to do the same thing while I was flying a plane.
Now, if I’m the markets right now, whether you’re happy about Trump, whether you’re not happy about Trump, but if I’m the markets, how in the world do I know what to do next?
David: It’s an amazing week. Normally on MLK day, I read a passage from MLK, Jr. and discuss it with my kids. Not this year. We’ve got the inauguration, the announcement of sweeping changes into the late hours of the evening. I was reading word for word the five pages of links to the new executive orders, redirecting the usual practice and had me a little bit distracted. So we’ve got the rescindment of 78 Biden-era executive actions. The second executive order stopped bureaucrats from issuing new regulations. The third mandated federal workers return to offices. Imagine that.
Kevin: You got to go to work.
David: I know.
Kevin: You got to go to work.
David: Ending government censorship, freezing hiring of the IRS agents, ending some birthright citizenships, signing pardons for 1,500 Jan. 6 prisoners, and then six commutations as a part of that. It goes on and on.
Kevin: I told you, bright lights, strobe lights, sounds, it’s all happening all at once.
David: Yeah.
Kevin: And it’s presidential. I mean, these are executive orders, Dave. Nobody’s voting on this.
David: The one word I would apply to the markets going forward—reflecting on the knowns and the unknowns, the intended changes, and really the actual paths forward—is the word volatility.
Kevin: Oh, sure. Well, what do you do when you have sensory overload? And again, there may be many really great long-term outcomes coming out of this, but what do you do in the meantime while things are shifting back and forth?
David: I’m trying to replay in my mind Sid Vicious soundtracks, cassette tapes—because it would’ve been a cassette tape. The best way of describing the financial markets in the current context is like a vast casino. And again, you talk about sensory overload. Vegas has gotten a little bit better, even leaving the airport’s not quite as loud as it used to be. But our current context is like a casino. You’ve got high stakes bets. They’re rolling through constantly. You’ve got currency bets and fixed income bets and equity and option bets, cryptocurrency and commodity bets. And all of these bets are based on economic inputs. They’re based on external factors which are deemed to tilt the odds in the favor of a certain outcome. Make no mistake, it is a casino and it’s no longer clear to the currency players what those external factors are going to be. It’s no longer clear to the fixed income players, the options traders, the commodity traders, and the equity operators just how those external factors are going to impact pricing.
Kevin: Well, how about crypto? I mean, crypto just has one direction, doesn’t it?
David: Well, that’s right. The crypto bros see a one-way bet regardless of the external factors. But how should these speculators, how should they be placing their bets? And the reality is, with that question in mind you’re going to see hedging increase significantly. But the rest of the gambling world is in a position to at least partially hedge their bets with some of the unknowns introduced by these policy edicts. Again, I come back to volatility. It’s hedging, it’s un-hedging, which sporadically creates a lot of volatility. Volatility is a dream for traders and it’s an absolute nightmare for investors. So welcome to 2025 and the casino Trump was finally given a license to run.
Kevin: Okay. So you just told us that you sat and read all the wording of all the executive orders. That had to take a while. I haven’t done that. I just have seen a condensed summary. What was your impression as you read through them?
David: Yeah, I’m looking for market impact. What are the areas of uncertainty? Where is there confusion? Where is there lack of clarity in terms of policies and the impacts of policies? What we can’t determine at this point is what are the unintended consequences?
Kevin: Well, you always say ideas have consequences. Ideas have consequences.
David: Yeah. And this is the domain of unintended consequences. You’re talking about policies set in motion to accomplish A, B, and C, and yet you can get as a part of the package X, Y, and Z. So I’m reading through the executive orders, roughly a-third seemed reasonable. A-third raised my eyebrows as I thought to myself, “That’s ambitious. I guess we’ll see.”
Kevin: Right.
David: And then a-third was uncomfortable, either being too vague or veering towards a form of political hyperbole. Admittedly, I did not go back and read the 78 Biden executive orders and memorandums that were canceled, but there will be no doubt great mourning and many hissy fits on the left as the week progresses. Our focus is primarily on the market impact from change. But first thing this morning, I went to MSNBC and to slate.com just to kind of see what the feedback was, what the tone was. And sure enough, there on the front page of Slate, on their website, “An Exit Strategy, Leaving the United States for the Next Four Years.”
Kevin: You obviously can’t live here anymore, so where are you going to go move?
David: Yeah.
Kevin: Portugal made the top of the list. All right, so in all seriousness, through the years my adult life I’ve gotten more and more concerned that we live in a republic that issues a lot of executive orders. Now people are going to take offense to this on whatever side they have. But really, you remember the old story about Ben Franklin coming out and the woman asking, “What form of government do you have?” and he said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” In a way that many executive orders, whether it was Biden or whether it was Trump and Bush before that, and Obama, I mean these guys are all issuing these executive orders. It does make you uncomfortable because this is a representative republic and you really don’t have anybody voting on those orders.
David: Yeah, the one group of speculators notorious for guiding policy and shifting its course are the bond traders.
Kevin: So in a way, it’s a strange version of a market republic, isn’t it?
David: Yeah. I mean the president may hold the keys to the Oval Office, but the bond trader holds the keys to the kingdom.
Kevin: Ah, okay. If the bond trader decides that a policy stretches too far out on a limb, trim the limb. Cut it off. And the over-committed are left to free fall.
Reminds me of Clinton. He had to readjust his thinking. He was bringing in radical change, too, and then had to adapt.
David: Yeah, forced in the early ’90s to shape his fiscal policy to meet the expectations of the bond traders, the vigilantes. Last week, Reuters quotes one of Clinton’s former economic advisors, Alan Blinder. He said, “A lot of us are wondering if the bond market vigilantes are going to come back for a second chapter. Clinton was forced to raise taxes and cut spending to balance the budget.” And Blinder went on to recall, “He went away pretty disgusted with the idea that here he had won an election by a pretty nice margin in a difficult three-way race, and now he was subservient to a bunch of bond traders.” And that’s the end of Blinder’s quote. Bond market is like the post-election popular vote. You don’t want to tally.
Kevin: So let me ask you your opinion about the new Treasury Secretary because it’s not Yellen.
David: Trump’s best resource in navigating the land of vigilantes is Scott Bessent. So far I think this is the savviest appointment in his administration.
Kevin: So the head of Treasury?
David: Yeah, I mean I’m assuming this is the post that he’ll take. Bessent has a shot at keeping the market posse mollified and less concerned, but it’s a tall task for anyone. The casino is more rowdy than usual. The leverage in each kind of bet at a higher level than usual. And the US, our country’s cash flow, frankly not that impressive as we spend the first quarter of the fiscal year well beyond—we’re spending well beyond the tax revenues coming in.
So tax revenue slipped a few percentage points while spending in the first fiscal quarter was shockingly high. Obviously a Hail Mary play by the Biden-Harris administration. Government outlays on a trailing 12-month basis are set to pass $7 trillion. Interest and entitlement spending, if you combine those two, you’re looking at 111% of tax receipts from October to the present. And so that leaves Mr. Bessent with this Sisyphean task from day one. They’ve got to roll our debt markets forward and avoid being crushed by a loss of control on the downhill slide.
Kevin: Well, and the math is not that hard. I mean, when you are taking in less tax receipts than what you’re spending, there’s only one other way to handle that, Dave, and that’s print money.
So how about inflation? Trump talked tough about inflation on Monday. Do you think that this is going to be something that he can get a hold of?
David: Not a single mention on the debt though.
Kevin: I noticed that.
David: Right. So there is little in Trump’s agenda that supports a move towards the 2% inflation target. And rather, it suggests his goals are geared towards economic growth. And you may have the consequence of inflation or higher levels of inflation, but really he’s not focused on destroying inflation as much as he is creating or making America great again. That’s economic growth, that’s new jobs, that’s whatever. So the trick will be if he can deliver economic growth without reinforcing an upward inflation bias either via wage pressures or price pressures.
Kevin: Well, and if you were to look at his toolbox, Trump’s toolbox right now is negotiation, but negotiation comes with tariffs. And aren’t tariffs almost always inflationary?
David: Yeah. Now add to the tariff front the impact of higher energy. One of Biden’s sort of parting shots was to bring a fresh round of sanctions on Russia. And lo and behold, energy prices move higher. You can’t have energy prices move very high for very long without that being factored into the inflation scenario. But setting aside energy prices—they come and they go—the general consensus is that tariffs drive inflation higher. To what degree? We don’t know. But as a driver of deglobalization, certainly on a categorical basis, tariffs are a problem for globalization and reinforce a bigger deglobalization theme. Tariffs tend to increase frictions and costs and force trade partners to reexamine the cost benefits of the relationships they’ve engaged with.
Kevin: One of the things that Trump’s known for is, if you’re loyal to him, he’ll be loyal to you. And how does he think of the world as far as how it’s broken down? Who’s loyal to him? Who’s not? Because I would imagine that’s how the tariffs are going to be handed out.
David: I was reading a Financial Times piece, Michael Ignatieff. His name caught my eye, and I thought it was a very insightful piece, Canadian perspective. He’s an academic living in Europe. Studied, I forget if it was at Oxford or Cambridge. Very bright guy. And he suggests that Trump sees the world in three blocks, or spheres of influence. The Mexico-Canada tariff threat largely, in his view, a tool to consolidate influence over this particular zone of influence. So he says that Chinese in East Asia, there’s the Russians in Eurasia, and the Americans with an exclusive sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere stretching from Greenland in the Arctic to Chile, in the southern tip of Latin America. And he went on to say a Trumpian version of the Monroe Doctrine is essentially what he sees.
So I continue to believe, Kevin, that till shown otherwise, tariffs are a leverage point from which Trump advances both domestic policies and his foreign policy objectives, with a dual purpose carrot and stick at the ready.
Kevin: One of my favorite interviews through this Commentary was with Carmen Reinhart, and she co-wrote a book with Ken Rogoff called This Time is Different. And what it was, it was an analysis of debt markets over the last 700 years to see how maneuverable a country could be when they had large amounts of debt, and at some points became unpayable. Ken Rogoff, his look at the Trump administration this time around, because of the debt burden that we’re under, is quite different than it was for his first term.
David: Yeah, this time is different. I remember reading that on my way—
Kevin: Going to South America. You were going—
David: That’s right. Yeah, I was on plane to—
Kevin: Argentina.
David: Argentina. In his book This Time is Different, he would suggest that 2025 is not the same backdrop as the first Trump administration. If there was one number as a takeaway from that book, 90% debt-to-GDP, this historical study by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, this was sort of a threshold beyond which you began to see destabilization. And if you did not repair quickly, then you were on the path towards a currency crisis of one former another.
Kevin: Well, and he was bullish on Trump’s first four years, right? Because the debt burden wasn’t quite as high as it is now.
David: Exactly. So debt-to-GDP is past the historic threshold for a healthy and sustainable economic trajectory. He was bullish on the first Trump presidency, and is far less so on the second—not because of Trump per se, but because of the context. There is the debt issue and there is the geopolitical backdrop as well. And Ignatieff points out the issue in terms of geopolitics. He’s basically asking, “You want to know who your friends are, you clearly have to know who your enemies are, but it gets very confusing when your friends don’t know they’re your friends anymore.” And again, from a Canadian perspective, it’s worth reflecting on. Like, if you’re organizing the world around some sort of grand strategy, it is good to know who your allies are. And currently, we’re not doing very well in underscoring the importance of those relationships.
Kevin: Well, and then we have, the world is far more tense from a geopolitical standpoint at this point than it was back in 2016.
David: Yeah, Jamie Dimon discussed this as a part of the threat to an otherwise resilient US economy. And of course he’s out with blockbuster numbers for JP Morgan. The bank had phenomenal trading profits. But since 2022, geopolitical risk has increased dramatically. Dimon said that last week, “Ongoing and future spending requirements will likely be inflationary, and therefore inflation may persist for some time. Additionally, geopolitical conditions remain the most dangerous and complicated since World War II.”
So Rogoff reiterates that—and this was in a Project Syndicate article—”The world is far more volatile than it was eight years ago. So that’s one of the differences. In the US, the debt burden has grown considerably since the start of Trump’s first term, a notable shift in interest rates since 2016.” Again, we’re going back to the era of basically zero rates. It shines a unique spotlight on US liabilities in the current context.
So can economic growth keep up with rising government debt? That remains to be seen. I think often of my dad’s quote. I don’t think it’s his quote, but I heard it from him all the time, “We hope for the best, we prepare for the worst, and we remain ready for anything.” And I think as we look at the proposed economic agenda from the Trump team, it’s wise to keep those words in mind. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, be ready for anything.
The Trump team is slated to add 7.8 trillion to the national debt before we count the $2 trillion annual deficits we’re running. More than half of the annual deficit is unavoidable. We’re talking about interest payments. There’s no wiggle room there.
Kevin: Yeah, I was talking to a client this week who is extremely happy that Trump’s in, but he said, “We can’t get disillusioned by hopium.” I love the word hopium. He’s still making judgment calls based on precious metals, based on uncertainty.
So Dave, we probably will have some form of Trump boom at some point, but is it preceded possibly by a bust first, or are there things that we need to be prepared for?
David: Yeah, there is a chance that Trump’s policy realignment does create a boom. Our concern is that an over-leveraged and incredibly fragile financial structure goes through a bust first. So the word I picked to describe 2025, volatility, is one that brings mayhem to leverage. Again, volatility, not great in a leveraged environment. Disorder to the casino is essentially the issue. The ever-important distinction between the economy and the financial system may bear this out. The economy is not in bad shape. I mean, yes, we have corporate bankruptcies on the rise, we have household fragility. Those are real factors, particularly at the economic margins. But we’ve got the liquidity in place—the liquidity needed to keep the casino going, at least for now.
Kevin: Yeah, one of my favorite commercials when you’re watching football games and things, mayhem. Remember the guy Mayhem? He’s got the bandages all over his face and he says, “You got to be ready for mayhem like me.” But mayhem can happen with volatility. It does not necessarily mean that you’re not having a boom. We’re not trying to be pessimistic here. We’re just basically saying this is sensory overload, and there are going to be a lot of reactions that we can’t predict.
David: We’ve framed this for several weeks in terms of the past experience with Reagan taking office and within a matter of months going into a recession. It created downside in the market. It created a generational floor with the Dow reaching its lows, 1982. And then from 1982 to the year 2000, you had a roaring bull market.
Kevin: Well, and we tripled our debt under Reagan’s first administration, too, right?
David: Which helped. And then of course by 1989, we’re reaping the benefits of the peace dividend and globalization has a new lease on life as you see capital controls dissipate or disappear after the end of the Cold War. I mean, all kinds of things happened as sort of ripple effects from both public policy and geopolitical positioning attributable to Reagan. So amazing good stuff, but that didn’t prevent a recession and a bear market in the first two years he was in office.
Kevin: So let me ask you, because when Reagan came into office, the interest rates were elevated. I mean, you said we’ve got enough liquidity right now, but can the financial markets sustain what they’re doing with elevated interest rates?
David: Well, that’s why we keep on coming back to inflation because rates must go higher to solve the inflation problem. And the inflation problem may or may not be behind us. Perhaps it’s too early to call this a trend, but for the September CPI number to be at 2.4, the October to be at 2.6, the November at 2.7 and the December at 2.9, and 2%’s the target, it would appear at least in the last four months that we’re moving the wrong direction. Does that mean we’re going to five or 10% in terms of the inflation rate? Not necessarily, but it certainly suggests that while policy has been intended to bring it down for the last four or five months, it’s done nothing that it was supposed to do in terms of bringing it down.
Kevin: So we’ve got mortgage rates at almost 7%. We’ve got 10-year Treasurys close to five. So you’re saying higher interest rates still?
David: Well, and just like we had under the Reagan administration with Volcker taking rates higher to solve the problem, there was a consequence in the economy. There was a consequence of very real impact on interest rates here, and it impacts equity values there that showed up between ’80 and ’82. Financial markets are not prepared for rates remaining elevated or moving higher. Financial markets could extend that to even the real estate market. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is north of 7%. The 10-year treasury has in recent weeks flirted with 5%, both concerning for continued growth in financial assets.
As we look to particular financial players who need refinancing in 2025, debt refinancing at these rates is going to push more firms to bankruptcy this year than last year. Not to mention the strain that it puts on the US Treasury to refinance what is approximately $7 trillion in, again, debt that has to be rolled over. We’ve mentioned this before, but last year we averaged 3.3% in terms of the average interest expense. If you’re rolling over $7 trillion, and it’s at 4.25, 4.5%, guess what? Your interest expense is moving higher. And this is where we worry. We worry about the bond market vigilantes having an opinion. They get the final vote.
Kevin: Well, in a way, as strong as these executive orders sound and as strong as it sounds like we’re going to see change, there’s still permission needed by the bond market—as much as Reagan didn’t like it, as much as Clinton didn’t like it.
David: Yeah, it brings us back to the market disciplinarian, the bond vigilante. Liz Truss in the UK tried a fiscal cocktail which the markets rejected thoroughly. Donald Trump has the power to move public policy in dramatic fashion as long as he has the green light from the bond market. But if tax cuts or increases in spending are judged imprudent by the bond market, Trump will face a Liz Truss moment with more limited options should he wish to maintain the support of the markets.
Kevin: Well, and you bring up the markets. I mean, if the cyclically adjusted, the Shiller CAPE, the cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio averages about 16, and we’re at what? We’re at like 30—
David: 36.
Kevin: 36.
David: Off of a recent high 38.
Kevin: Oh, I bet you, he wishes at 16.
David: Right. Well, I mean he’s taking the reins. Trump is taking the reins with the S&P trading at, again, over 36 on the CAPE ratio, the Shiller P/E. The number’s been higher twice: year 2000 and at the peak of the everything bubble, 2021. You combine that with debt levels never having been higher. Interest on the debt, never higher. And like Reagan, there’s a high probability that Trump brings a radical reorganization to DC but not without a reorganization in financial assets, or at least a reappraisal of future returns in the financial markets. So what we don’t know is the cost of change. That’s still unknown. And Bessent is very positive on the prospects of what he calls the new economic golden age.
Kevin: Which could happen, but there’ll be some adjustment first.
David: Well, I don’t doubt they have a destination clearly in mind. But the journey is unlikely to be an easy one the entire time, right? So household net worth, again, this is just— We’ve already priced in a perfect world. Household net worth sits at an all-time high, 575% of GDP. If you look at any other cycle peak, economic cycle peak, it’s 520, it’s 480, it’s 360. We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers in terms of asset prices relative to the economy which supports those asset prices. In other words, speculation is rampant. Gambling is occurring, the casino is open. Any shift higher in inflation is of grave consequence to the Trump administration’s ambitions and to the asset classes that are already in manic mode.
Kevin: So should we be concerned about the budget deficits over the last few months? Because I mean, if you really look at it, what was that? $87 billion in December?
David: And this is where we’ve seen the bond market inch up the pressure at the margins. Interest rates have crept up even though the policy rates by the Fed have come down. I think we should care about the budget deficit. 87 billion in December? I think we should care about the October to December deficit tallying to $711 billion. That’s 201 billion more than last year at the same time, or 39% higher. Again, we’re looking at the same run rate compared to 2023, it’s 39% higher.
Yes, I noted earlier, some of the deficit spending was a last-ditch effort to drive economic growth prior to the election and buttress the incumbent bid. So we should not stay at the same pace on an annualized basis, but we cannot afford to see a decline in tax receipts.
Kevin: Well, and so this brings me to— I mean, we watched a lot of the proceedings on Monday, and there were some fabulous things. But one of the things I didn’t hear Trump talk about was the deficit. It was almost like, “Let’s don’t talk about that right now because tax receipts are falling, aren’t they?” Tax receipts have been falling.
David: This is the elephant in the room. This is the elephant in the room because I think for all his plans to grow the economy, we do have to deal with this cash flow issue. And so pure research reports national tax revenue is slipping, and that in 44 states—these are the ones that have personal income tax—collections are running 11.9% below their 15-year average. Now, that’s on the negative side.
On the positive side, corporate tax collection is currently 18.3% over the same 15-year average. So corporate tax, we’re ahead of schedule by about 5.7 billion. The problem is personal income tax receipts are off by about 17.2. So there’s about a $12 billion gap. Again, this is just, we’re not seeing adequate revenue from tax receipts. Meanwhile, we’re not addressing the budget blowout. So putting it all together, if spending is up 10.9% and receipts are down 2.2%, Trump is inheriting a problem.
And government waste is certainly the place where they’ll start. I appreciate reading through the details of the Department of Government Efficiency. Fabulous. Government waste is the place to start on spending cuts, and day one is a great day to get started. Deep cuts are needed. This is a careful balance.
We run a business, we understand the difference between increasing sales and decreasing expenses. And it takes a balance, it takes a combination of the two. And frankly, when you’re in a difficult situation, it’s always better to drive sales than it is decrease costs or decrease expenses because you, in essence, are gutting your capacity. You’re taking away horsepower from the organization.
Kevin: Right.
David: But revenue needs to increase at the same time. So we’ve got to do something to offset deficit spending and actually eliminate the outstanding debt that we have. It’s only the bond vigilante that can send that message clearly enough.
I think Bessent will listen. I think he’s the right man for the Treasury. I don’t know how Trump will respond. He may have to listen begrudgingly. But the bond market is really critical in terms of what they get to do versus what they want to do.
Kevin: Didn’t it strike you on Monday as this transition was occurring? Do you remember our conversation with Dr. George Friedman? He wrote that book on the most significant presidential changes in American history. I think Lincoln was one, FDR was one, Reagan was one. Didn’t you get the feeling on Monday that you’re going to add Trump to that list?
David: Oh, yeah. One of the guys who gets a lot of things done and steps on a lot of toes.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: There’s probably more people unhappy with him in real time. And if he succeeds, he may be remembered favorably. Again, what did Lincoln accomplish? What did FDR accomplish? What did Reagan accomplish? In real time they were hated.
Kevin: Right.
David: And after the fact, they were respected. So returning to the executive orders. At the end of page 2, I was saying, “Wow.” At the end of page 5, each page with at least 10 executive orders on it, it was awe-inspiring. Ambitious in scope, sure to offend. And FDR and Reagan both came to mind. Massive change, very disruptive to the status quo. We’re not political analysts.
From a market perspective, I kept thinking disruption, uncertainty, these are things that drive market volatility. And how will the administration manage market volatility? I’m not sure that Truth Social is an adequate tool. It is a unique tool and one that Reagan certainly never had, FDR certainly never had. So there is something new in the toolbox, but how will they manage volatility?
Kevin: So this is— Another word for volatility is uncertainty. Uncertainty creates this level of anxiety. And when I get anxious, Dave, maybe I’m just too much of a gold bug, but when I don’t know what’s going to happen, I just buy gold.
David: Well, I think a better setup for gold I can’t imagine. The Fed is insolvent. The US government is fiscally in a pickle, with leadership that doesn’t know the first thing about fiscal conservatism. The household sector is grossly divided between super wealthy and poor. The financial markets are priced for a perfect world. And when you look at how well some of the casino management is doing, trading profits from the casino have never been greater. Jamie Dimon should know. It was JP Morgan logging 14 billion in profits for the quarter, 59 billion for the full year. The operators are happy because the speculators, the gamblers are inebriated and loving it.
Kevin: Oh, by the way, did you buy the Donald Trump coin or the Melania coin? Did you jump into that crypto game?
David: Well, should have on the first notice on Friday, because by the end, it was midday Saturday, it was up 16,000%.
Kevin: Oh, well.
David: Donald and Melania’s meme coins within a few days of trading, granted they’ve lost half their value off of their peak, combine them together, they’re still $30 billion. We’re talking about the nature of the casino. Fart coin is up 45% year-to-date.
Kevin: That’s a real deal. Fart coin. Yeah.
David: It’s up 45% year-to-date with a market cap of 1.8 billion. Now, that’s nothing compared to Melania and Donald’s meme coins. But the license Trump was never granted by the Nevada Gaming Commission was granted January 20th. And the casino is open. Gamble all you want. It will work until it doesn’t, unless this time is different.
* * *
Kevin: You’ve been listening to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick, along with David McAlvany. You can find us at mcalvany.com, and you can call us at 800-525-9556.
This has been the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. The views expressed should not be considered to be a solicitation or a recommendation for your investment portfolio. You should consult a professional financial advisor to assess your suitability for risk and investment. Join us again next week for a new edition of the McAlvany Weekly Commentary.