Animal Spirits: Gold’s 1987 Moment

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On today’s show, we discuss:
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Tweets/Bluesky
$SLV I saw more volume than the world’s most traded stocks last week, I still can’t get past that. More than Tesla, more than Nvidia (chart). It’s not even gold, it’s red silver. Last month the volume was 10x less. Last year it was the 170th largest ETF, without recognition,… pic.twitter.com/rxD2dOmFvE
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 31, 2026
China only has one Silver fund and the demand is so great that they had to close the registration so now it is 42% payment. pic.twitter.com/2Z4NrJCs2D
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 28, 2026
🔥S&P 500 reporting highest profit margin in over 15 years – FactSetAs I wrote in September, this is a key business story to watch in 2026 www.tker.co/p/profit-mar…
– Sam Ro (@tker.co) 2026-02-01T02:43:56.279Z
— Alex Morris (TSOH Investment Research) (@TSOH_Investing) January 29, 2026
🎶I read on Rap pages they call me soft/
Yes, it’s like Microsoft🎶 -Will SmithMicrosoft says:
-the only Mag 7 member to track the S&P 500 since the launch of ChatGPT
-the biggest weight $SPY since the launch of Gemini 3$MSFT pic.twitter.com/zpmM65VfAV— Luke Kawa (@LJKawa) February 2, 2026
“As of September 30th, Retail represented 20% of the total trade volume in the US, while only long funds and hedge funds together accounted for only ~15%” -Jefferies
— Gunjan Banerji (@GunjanJS) January 30, 2026
Emerging Markets ETFs recently broke their monthly flow record by 3x. They make 3% of aum but take 13% of money. About 40% of it went to it $IEMG but the majority took cash. And it wasn’t really the cost of US or eq or bonds but more than that. pic.twitter.com/62IcFNoIg2
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) February 2, 2026
Markets tend to evaluate new Fed chairs. The average adjustment in the first six months is 15%. When the chairman is faced with the first problem, investors do not wait and see how he will handle it. Fed independence is a potential problem for Warsh but it could be anything. @NDR_Research pic.twitter.com/JjDEKzdR16
— Ed Clissold (@edclissold) January 30, 2026
That’s right. This is from a scifi horror movie
I was doing work in the morning and suddenly a number I didn’t know called. I took it and couldn’t believe it
It’s my Cloudbot Henry.
At night, Henry received a phone number from Twilio, connected the ChatGPT voice API, and waited… pic.twitter.com/kiBHHaao9V
— Alex Finn (@AlexFinn) January 30, 2026
I have a small bakery. Business was slow. The rent is over. I was thinking of closing.
Last Friday, a young man came in. He looked scared. He counted the cake change. He was short 50 cents.
“Okay,” I said. “Drank it.”
He ate it at the table, looking at his stats…
— The Husky (@Mr_Husky1) January 28, 2026
1/3
Bitcoin breakeven update…
The average purchase of everything flows everywhere $BTC from the beginning (January 2024) is $90,200. For today’s dip, AVERAGE $BTC The ETF owner is about $5,000 (or ~7% underwater). pic.twitter.com/B9AGyzKq26
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) January 29, 2026
$ META CFO: “Reels had another strong quarter with Watchtime up over 30% Y/Y in US Engagement benefiting from several initiatives we’ve taken to improve recommendation quality, including simplifying our tier architecture to enable a more efficient model…
– The Transcript (@TheTranscript_) January 28, 2026
A lot of orange. pic.twitter.com/b5iYIMARJX
– Michael Saylor (@saylor) February 1, 2026
The strategy received 855 BTC for ~$75.3 million at ~$87,974 per bitcoin. As of 2/1/2026, we have received 713,502 $BTC it was acquired for ~$54.26 billion at ~$76,052 per bitcoin. $MSTR $STRC
– Michael Saylor (@saylor) February 2, 2026
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