192: Kevin Muir – ‘Whatever It Takes’—How Reserve Banks React to Economic Pressure

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Traders, welcome to the show. This is episode 192. Similar to the last episode with Nishant Paul Banduela, this episode also has a relevant focus on current events. As we've seen making headlines recently, reserve banks of numerous countries have been adding liquidity to the market in an effort to stabilise economies.

While some listeners will already understand exactly how reserve banks conduct these operations, I figure there will be many others, myself included, who don't completely grasp what takes place below the surface. To get clarity on the subject, I kindly asked Kevin Muir to appear on Chat With Traders for a second time and to explain the actions of reserve banks during this market downturn.

Because in my opinion, Kevin has a gift for analysing and explaining complex subjects in a way which is easy to follow. Kevin was a derivatives trader for a Canadian bank during the 90s and has been an independent trader from 2000 onward. He also writes a brilliant financial newsletter, The Macro Tourist. and co-hosts the Market Huddle podcast. For links to his newsletter, podcast, as well as our first interview, check the show notes at chatwithraders.com/slash one nine two.

Kevin, before we get into your thoughts and your perspectives too much on what's happening, let's just get some clarity about what's actually taking place. Now, one of the things which has been making headlines, um, not only in the US but Australia, Europe, et cetera, is central banks injecting liquidity into the market. So one of the questions I'd like to start things with is what exactly happens when a reserve bank adds liquidity into the market?

Well, Aaron, they can do it through a variety of different methods. The most common one is they actually go out and buy security. And if you go look at the Federal Reserve, they announce, um, they actually announced on Friday the the schedule for the rest of the week of what they were gonna buy. And you'll see that uh today for Monday, March thirtieth, at nine thirty to nine fifty they were gonna buy coupons, treasury coupons from the seven to twenty year sector for six billion.

Then at 1020 to 1040, they were going to buy the four and a half to seven-year sector for$11 billion, and so on and so on. So the way they actually do this operation is that they go out, they announce to the marketplace that they're gonna they're looking for six billion dollars of these securities. Then they go talk to the primary dealers and they tell them to submit their offers.

And the primary dealers send in a list at that scheduled time and then the Fed actually just lifts their offers. They actually buy it. So the primary dealer i was holding this in inventory and they're no longer holding it in inventory. And in a lot of ways, it's that simple. They're buying the assets from the marketplace that the marketplace is having trouble financing and warehousing.

So what's an example of a primary dealer? Like who would that be? It would be a JP Morgan or like um Royal Bank, I believe, is a is a a primary dealer, even though we're Canadian, we're a primary dealer. They're basically just very uh kind of senior banks that deal directly with the Fed. And why would someone like JP Morgan or whoever the other primary dealers might be, why would they actually want to sell to the Fed?

Well, they're selling to the Fed because they're making markets in these securities all the time. And not only that, it is their job to go and to facilitate the trades of the Fed. Just like it's their job to bid on the securities when the treasury is auctioning securities, they're actually obligated to bid for a certain amount. That is their oblig it is their duty to actually

help the Fed conduct these operations. Someone has to trade with the Fed. They can't just go out and and buy directly from the clients. They're basically a middleman between the clients and the Federal Reserve. Interestingly enough, uh, The Fed is buying so much right now that the for the first time ever, I was talking to a tips trader that was telling me that the Fed was trying to buy six or seven billion dollars of tips.

And the primary dealers only offered them 4.7. They were they it literally ran out of inventory to offer to the Federal Reserve. And that's what that's the one thing I just would like people to kind of understand is the level and the speed upon which they're doing these purchases is completely unprecedented.

They announced two weeks ago that they were gonna do seven hundred billion dollars of quantitative easing and they left it open. They said it was gonna be over a period of uh a couple of months, but they didn't say that they couldn't stagger some more at the beginning. And so what they did was they went and looked at the the state of the market and they just they got a feel for how much they needed to do. Well, they literally r went through that 700 billion in the first week.

They are buying uh the equivalent of in of a 2008 quantitative easing that used to be um basically 60 to 80 billion. I can't remember the exact number. They were doing that every day for the past two weeks. The stack of blue tickets on the Federal Reserve's desk is monstrous. And then there's other ways as well that they can provide liquidity to the market. One of the most interesting things that they've done is that they've done these swap lines.

Where they actually go and provide US dollars to other central banks. They did this in 2008. They did it to the, I can't remember, I think it's there's four standard banks that they do it with. It's uh Bank of Canada, ECB. Bank of England and I don't know, m I'm not sure who else it is, but uh they go and they provide these uh kind of liquidity, these US dollar liquidity to free up the system.

Well, there was such a demand for US dollars at this time that they expanded their counterparties to ten different banks. Central banks. And this was all in an attempt to try to help the world economy that was in desperate need of US dollars to provide the liquidity that no one else could provide.

Uh, you did say something in your answer there. You spoke about uh tips. What what are tips? Tips are Treasury inflation protected securities. They're just another form of government security. So the Fed not only do they buy regular government bonds, but they also buy Treasury uh inflation protected security. Okay. And what is the goal that the Fed is trying to accomplish by doing this?

Their goal is to try to make the system have enough kind of liquidity so that it begins to operate correctly again.

See what happens is that there's basically not enough money in the system because credit is being contracted, the and basically there's there's not enough chips to go around. So therefore it ends up being this kind of game game of whack-a-mole that, you know, w one person whacks it and then the it comes up again and they try to whack it again and and it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where

the the credit current contraction of selling causes the value to go down, which then means that more people have to sell. And so what they're trying to do is provide enough liquidity to stop that kind of um that kind of reinforcing uh kind of Spiral.

And what they do is they take all the securities that they can that the from the dealer's bank balance sheets that they're having trouble financing and having trouble owning so that the dealers can buy other things that are more risky.

So the goal is to try to make it so that these banks, the JP Morgan's of the world, don't need to worry about financing treasuries and don't need to worry about that, and they can go out and they can buy the more risky securities that basically the Fed should not be buying. Because at the end of the day, the Fed is supposed to buy only government security. Now it is being blended it is being kind of Uh kind of

let us just say it's it's changing this time. In in two thousand and eight there was the TARP program and there was some different things and the Fed got in trouble because they blurred the lines of what they were allowed to buy. And then Congress went and they actually tied their hands again.

But in this case, what's happened is the Treasury's gone and actually taken a roll where they've worked hand in hand with the Fed so that the Fed can buy corporate bonds, but the Treasury takes the first loss so that the Fed is in essence still taking the government risk and it's a a riskless security for the for the Federal Reserve.

Because the Federal Reserve is not supposed to be trying to pick which countries which countries sorry which companies should survive and which shouldn't. They shouldn't be sitting there going, I'm gonna buy GE paper, but I'm not gonna buy Boeing paper. They that's not their goal. Their goal is to provide liquidity for the system. Now, unfortunately, what happened was because there was this.

you know, terrible virus and because nobody wanted to own any securities, the government was forced to go and say, nope, we're gonna backstop investment grade paper as well. meaning investment grade is the kind of higher grade corporate paper, uh, you know, bonds. And so what they did was the Fed found a way, working hand in hand with the Treasury, to actually buy corporate paper. Can you just explain what corporate paper is?

Okay, so that's like um GE or Boeing or Microsoft or Apple issues bonds. And those bonds trade in the open market and that would be an example of corporate paper. Investment grade has to do with the ratings attached to that uh bond. And generally that's considered the the higher quality company.

And then it goes from there, it goes into high yield or junk, which is anything below triple B. And that is kind of what the Fed said. We're not going to buy any of that, but we're going to buy investment grade paper.

Okay, so how come they were doing that this time? Like why why this time? 'Cause the market became so dysfunctional and that there was nobody willing to buy it that the Fed needed to backstop. Now is this correct me if I misunderstood you here, but when you were talking earlier, it sounds as though The Fed comes in with all these billions to buy back government bonds and they might do so from a primary dealer such as JP Morgan.

which frees up um some capital with JP Morgan, which then allows them to go and purchase more risky assets if necessary. Right, or to to make room for the the their balance sheet for the assets that they that they need to hold. Either way, it's just it's just helping the system in terms of providing liquidity to the system. Okay. So in this case, what happens if the Fed announces that they're injecting seven hundred billion dollars worth of uh liquidity into the market.

What do they do when they don't get the reaction that was intended? I don't remember exactly which date it was, but I think it was a a Sunday evening when the E Mini came back online. And they must have announced it shortly after or just after the open and it instantly went limit down. Right. Well, first of all, I would argue that the Fed does not care about the stock market. Well, they they care, but that's not their primary goal.

They are more interested in the functioning of the credit market. The stock market is something that they watch out of the corner of their eye, and it's obviously important as a signal. But really what what What kind of lit the fire under their their their ass in terms of actually doing stuff was when the credit market started breaking.

And that's when they decided that nope, we gotta get in there and we have to do it. Because if the credit markets start breaking, then everything else just falls to the wayside really quickly. And this is one of the things that I would like to stress for, you know, when investors are thinking about this environment and they're thinking about the different opportunities there are after this huge sell-off in um you know from the virus.

and they see guys like um Mark Lazary from Avenue Capital or uh Seth Klarman um Going out and actually raising money to go out and buy assets. One of the things that I I want them to probably understand is that. These guys are probably not buying the equity. What they are buying, more often than not, are these distressed. bonds that are high quality bonds that are trading at levels that are just wrong. And so one of the things that you have to just r keep in the back of your mind is that

Some of the smartest guys out there are actually seeing the opportunities today and and actually committing capital, but the opportunities are not in the equity market. They're actually in the corporate market. Let's just take a step back there. You said that the Fed is not so concerned about the actual stock market, more so about the credit market. So when you talk about the credit market, are you referring to uh the government bonds?

The cr the credit market is both government bonds and also corporate bonds. It's bonds of all sorts. It's also money market. It's just all all the functioning, the day to day functioning of the kind of uh m the credit that goes back and forth between companies and and the the cash flows and the financing of commercial paper. And and the financing of the government's balance sheet. It's all that is infinitely more important than the equity market. Right. So you said that.

the Fed wasn't so concerned about the stock market breaking down. It was more about the credit market breaking down. So what I mean, most of us listening to this know what it looks like when the stock market breaks down. What does it look like when the credit market begins to break down? Well, the first thing you'll notice is that securities that are not on like what are called off the run, meaning that there's a standard bond that everybody trades that's the most recent bond.

But then there's the other ones, the ones that were previously auctioned, and those usually trade at a slight discount to the on-the-run because there's less liquidity. Well, all of a sudden investors couldn't sell those at all. So that's called the the spread between the on the run and off the run bonds.

And that was a trade that, for example, in nineteen ninety eight that long term capital had on, you know, they would go buy the twenty nine and a half year bond and sell the thirty year bond and eventually that spread would go, you know, back into line.

but they would have to hold it for a little while. Well, those spreads, those kind of trades started blowing out, meaning that they, you know, whereas they usually would trade at a 20 uh, you know, basis point difference, they started trading at a hundred basis point. And then you would see things like high yield and and corporate spreads, meaning the price that a corporation has to pay versus the government bond.

So if the government borrows money at one and an investment grade borrows money at three, that would be called a two hundred point credit spread, meaning that you have to pay two hundred extra over the government. Well those spreads went from, you know, I think that let's just have a look here. I I have this written down. Let me grab it. The aggregate corporate spread went from 100 basis points and then it went to 365 in the space of two weeks.

That's just like that's unheard of. The high yield went from 350 basis points to 1100 basis points. So whereas you had companies that used to be able to borrow money at 5%, they now all of a sudden had to pay 13%. Is is that sort of moves that you imagine if you're all of a sudden you're going and your mortgage is floating and they tell you it's gone up by eight hundred basis points in the space of two weeks.

That's the sort of stress and that causes the system to really get into trouble because it ends up being that without that the kind of those with those spreads blowing out like that, the the whole the whole thing starts kind of unraveling.

Just going back to the question I asked you a little earlier, what does a the Fed or you know any reserve bank for that matter what do they do if their injection of liquidity doesn't have the intended reaction. And um has it had the intended reaction this far? Well I I would say that when they uh announced the first one, like when they

Because don't forget they've done two QEs so far. They did the first one, which was seven hundred billion, and now they came back with the QE unlimited, which is basically no amount, and we will do whatever it takes. The first one, the seven hundred billion, they didn't tie their hands about how much they would buy every day. They left it open ended. And I think that they went into the market, they bought it and they realized how much was for sale.

And they upped the amount that they were gonna buy. So when you ask what does the Fed do when it doesn't have the reaction that it's intended, they do more. So they realize that the system, they don't know the right number because they don't understand the stresses like that well in terms of like the specific how much it's gonna take to fix it.

So they're always kind of feeling their way along, buying some, seeing what's happening to spreads, see what happens, buying some more tomorrow. And they do that. So In fact, I would say that the first one didn't have the effect that they wanted it to have because they were forced to come back with the second one, which was QE unlimited with the extra swap lines and and the corporate paper.

So that's the long and short of it is that when a when it doesn't have the result that it that they're intending, they do more. And this is an important part, Aaron, to think about is that a lot of people will think to themselves, Oh, the Fed's gonna run out of money. The Fed can never run out of money. It is they are the issuer of the, you know, the government is the issuer of the currency. Theoretically, they could buy every bond on offer if they wanted to.

And and so when you're thinking about shorting against this and thinking to yourself, oh, you know what, the the Fed's gonna stop and the Fed's gonna run out of money or they're gonna this isn't gonna work. I always say be very careful about that idea because The Fed could literally just keep buying and buying and buying and buying. There's nothing even stopping them the from buying stocks if we change the rules that we um that we operate under. That is a self imposed rule.

Meaning that the gu the Congress has told the Fed that they can't buy stocks. But in other countries, the central banks are allowed to buy stocks. Japan, they're buying stocks. And in fact, in Switzerland, they're buying U.S. stocks. So they're imagine a situation where it gets really bad and the virus continues to kind of

I don't know, let's, you know, make society unstable and one of the worries is that the you know that the we're having a financial crisis. I could envision a a a world where the Fed starts buying S P five hundred. It's it's not, you know, out of the realm of possibility. And there's nothing fundamentally stopping them because they are the issuer of the credit. They can just they can just, you know, debit one side and credit the other. And it's as simple as that.

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What are the negative effects of central banks having an unlimited supply of money? And and also are there negative effects of them actually intervening in capital markets? Well, Aaron s some people will say that, you know, the hard money guys that think that it should be we should be on a gold standard would argue that there's tons of negative effects and that this is the reason that we're in this predicament is because the Fed keeps intervening and and doing this.

I don't know if I buy that um that argument, but I will say that the without the Fed, we would have a situation where we would have had more deflationary busts. Now you might argue that that's what the system needs. The system needs kind of a cleansing deflationary bust. I would argue that it would actually have caused um massive kind of unemployment and it might might have cleansed the system, but it would have been very painful.

So it's you know, it's a tough philosophical thing that comes down to what how you what you believe money is and how it should operate and and who is it who who's the benefit for. And and what is the what is the goal of the Federal Reserve? Is the Federal Reserve there to try to maximize employment, or is the Federal Reserve there trying to maximize the or maintain the value of the dollar? So as we've been talking about here, uh central banks adding liquidity into the marketplace.

Is this something which just takes place on an ongoing basis, you know, week after week? Um and it normally doesn't make the headlines. Um like is this something which happens regularly anyway? Um it's normally just on a smaller scale. Th there was a time when the Federal Reserve uh basically didn't announce any of their changes and would execute a monetary policy by intervening in the market and buying or selling T-bills.

And I remember a time uh, you know, I'm I'm I'm showing my age, but that you would have to wait till eleven forty-five and you would go watch for them and you would see what they did. And if they conducted operations, you could see that they had changed the rate. of um of the interest rates through their op open market operations.

So to answer your question is that it used to be that the Fed was constantly buying and selling uh T-bills to maintain the rate that that they were trying to uh kind of target. Then what happened is in 2008, when we had the great financial crisis. We basically hit the zero bound, and then that changed the way that the whole system operates. And we went to a system with interest on excess reserves.

And during that period with the with when the gov when the when the Fed can actually just set the rate and basically have a savings account that the f that the primary dealers use, then there's no need for them to operate to buy and sell uh

kind of securities on a regular basis. Now Having said that, the Don't forget that they had run up their pr uh balance sheet m in the QE one, two, and three under Bernanke, and then was actually they were trying to wind that down under Powell when he first came in. That was what the the taper and eventually the quantitative tightening. Quantitative tightening is the exact opposite of quantitative easing, in that instead of the Federal Reserve kind of buying uh securities, they sell securities.

And so they ask dealers for bids instead of asking dealers for offers. And so during those periods, they actually were in the markets on a regular basis, but it wasn't to the extent that they're in there today. When the quantitative tightening, I think they might have sold once or twice a week. And so there would be two operations a week at most. Even during the quantitative tightening, I mean quantitative easing, I think it was two operations a week.

This one is just this quantitative unlimited is completely and utterly unprecedented. Uh like I'm counting it here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. They have seven purchases per day. of different securities. So this is much, much different. The virus was something that we've never seen before, and the Fed's reaction to the virus is something we've never seen before.

What do you make of all this? Let's flip this to get a bit more of your actual perspective and your thoughts on what's taking place at the moment and I guess how this might play out a little bit. As you've said a couple of times, you know, it's uncharted territory. We've not seen something like this before. Yeah, what are you seeing?

Well, I understand why the Fed's doing it. I I I'm sympathetic to it. And I think that they're doing the right thing. And uh and even if I didn't think they were doing the right thing, it doesn't matter what I think. Well you know, and all that matters is what they're actually doing.

I saw that the Bank of Canada the other day, uh the the governor of the Bank of Canada said something to the effect that some have suggested that he is using a lot of firepower. And then he says a firefighter has never been criticized for using too much water. The central bankers of the world are rightfully scared about a shock to the system because this is something that's, you know, we've basically shut off our economy for a month or could be two months or three months. Who knows?

So they are throwing everything they have at it. And whereas a lot of kind of market pundits will look at it and say that's gonna end badly. I think I'm gonna s short like SPs because it's gonna it's gonna cause you know, this thing's gonna collapse in on itself. I'm more worried about the opposite. I'm more worried they're gonna throw so much at this thing that it's gonna ignite like a fireball.

And I I I look at when we come on the other side of this, how they're gonna unwind this is gonna be very, very difficult. But I don't think they're worrying about that right now. Because there's just this is a This is a lot different than the two thousand and the two thousand eight crisis It was um a bunch of greedy banksters that had kinda gotten uh over their skis and gotten into trouble.

Now, eventually it threatened to take down the whole system and the central banks had to come to the rescue. But on the whole, they they didn't really want to save the system. They wanted the they wanted it to cleanse out. They wanted to g get r Lehman to be taught a lesson. They wanted to have these things change. You know, they wanted the system cut to kind of delever because it was too levered up.

In this case, this was an exogenous event that was really nobody's fault. And not only that, it's not some greedy banksters this time, it's, you know, everybody. including the mom and pops that, you know, ha had did nothing wrong. So when I look at the the kind of central banks, they have the moral authority to do whatever it takes. And you'll see them saying that time and time again. We will do whatever it takes.

And if there's one thing I would just kind of like to leave your listeners with, it's that don't forget that they will continue to buy and support markets in whatever size is needed. And they and they are not gonna get scared off because it's a certain size. They are just gonna keep standing in there and they're gonna keep buying it. And if it ends up being that they own every guy, you know, treasury on the market, so be it.

One of the things you said to me, uh, prior to prior to our call Is that you'd like to speak about how we've never seen the government, I think it was the government and the treasury, correct me if I'm wrong there, uh working so closely together as they are at the moment. Is that something you'd like to speak to? Sure, yeah. No, I'd love to I'd love to talk about that. I I've I've contended that uh Donald Trump was the most MMT president that we've ever had, modern monetary theory.

And what a modern monetary theory uh kind of theorist believes is that the government is never constrained by um financial constraints, meaning that the the people that tell you, oh, the government has a hundred percent of debt to GDP, they don't worry about that. They say that the government is only constrained by real resources.

And what does that mean? It means that the government can keep spending until they reach a point where they use so much resources, real resources, that they cause inflation. And I've argued that Donald Trump is the most MMT president that we've ever had, e even to the fact that you take like his um his stimulus plan. He did a stimulus plan eight years into uh economic expansion. Most Keynesians would tell you at that point that you should be trying to balance budgets, not Donald Trump.

And when they asked him why, you know, he wanted the interest rates lower, and when they asked him why if the economy's so good, why he wants interest rates lower, he says because there's no inflation, which is exactly what an MMTer would say. So when we come to this point, we get to this this kind of crisis that we're having from the virus. And A lot of kind of Austrians and and hard money guys would say, well, the government can't be spending at this point because we don't have.

the balance sheet to do it. We're already indebted by whatever it is and we don't want to be saddling our grandchildren with this debt. Well, that isn't happening here. The government is going and doing a uh kind of a fiscal stimulus or saving uh fiscal kind of rescue package to the per the to the tune of ten percent of GDP. Japan is talking about doing 16% of GDP. So governments are spending like nobody's business, and right, and rightfully so, because there's been a huge demand shock.

And the if you think about it, the Federal Reserve and other central banks are there to finance it. And if it comes down to the market is ends up being worried about how much the government is spending. we could eventually hit a point where instead of the government issuing bonds and then the Fed buying them back through quantitative easing, we just get a situation where the Federal Reserve says we're gonna, you know, do two trillion dollars of spending and the Fed's gonna buy it all.

Because if you think about the process that we're going about doing it, the we go, the federal uh the treasury spends, they issue bonds. The public uh the primary dealers buy'em, the public, you know, trades them, and then the f then the Treasury buy or the Federal Reserve buys them back. So well we could just eliminate the middleman. And and that is one of the things that uh will should give kind of the hard money guys shivers.

And because eventually we're gonna see a situation where that's occurring. And we've kind of gone through three decades or four decades of lower and lower inflation rate. And everybody thinks that we can't create inflation. And I argue that we we can't create inflation because we keep relying on the private sector to try to create inflation. You know, through the banking system and through people taking out loans. Well, as we try to as we saddle people with more and more debt.

it's becomes more and more difficult for them to to take out even more you know, the incremental amount of debt ends up being more difficult. So they d b they're kind of more hesitant. So eventually you get to a point where the private sector can't create inflation, which is basically what you're seeing in Europe. No matter how low you put rates, they don't respond. And in fact, you get to the point where you get into negative rates.

And the private sector, if you as you send them lower, they become even less incentivized to actually go and and take out loans because it ends up being it's deflationary. So at that point, it's up to the government. And up you know, up until now, most governments apart from Donald Trump have been reluctant to go and spend.

You know, you see Germany trying to balance her budget and saying that Italy can't go and run a deficit. Even you see in your country, Aaron, you're you're from Australia, right? Mm-hmm. Your your latest guy up up until before the forest fires, he was talking about running a balanced budget. And he was he was trying to he ran on a on trying to balance the budget.

And that's starving the system of of of money and it in an environment with private limited private sector credit creation, it's kind of you know, it's the formula for lower and lower interest rates. So I understand why people think that we can't make inflation, but what they fail to realize is that if the government goes and spends, they can do it whenever they want.

I look back at history and I don't know a single country that has ever collapsed because of deflation, but I know lots of countries that have s collapsed because of inflation. And all you needed to do is have a change in attitude about government spending. And I think that you're gonna find that we're gonna be able to create the inflation that was so elusive. And this virus will I think will prove to be the deflationary impulse that changes that attitude and encourages people to go and spend.

And at first it'll feel great, Aaron. I think that it'll do really well as the government spends and it'll be terrific. But like all things, they'll take it too far and we'll go through um kind of uh what'll feel great at the beginning will end up hurting at the end. But we're we're miles away from that though. I just wanted to say I I I understand that that road is Uh for the hard money people will say like that's a that's a terrible road to go down because that's where we end up.

And it doesn't even matter, you know, Aaron, if you and I think that's where we're gonna end up. All I'm saying is that's where we're headed. And I think that this virus has kind of cemented that that uh path in front of us.

Well, Kevin, I think this has been really insightful, certainly helped myself and I'm sure many people listening to this to understand some of these uh subjects a little bit deeper uh below the surface. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we uh close things out here?

No, uh you know what, uh Aaron, it's been a pleasure being on with you. I I just wanna say thank you for having me and uh I really enjoy your show and I and I think it's uh you do a terrific job and it's a great resource for traders alike. And uh I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work you put into it. Uh no trouble at all, man. Thank you um again for for coming back on.

Anyone who's listening to this, if they'd like to follow along with your insights, I know there's a couple places they can do so. Uh you have a podcast, uh you have a newsletter, uh you're also reasonably active on Twitter. Um, do you want to share those few things? Sure. So on Twitter it's at Kevin Muir, M-U-I-R.

Uh I write a letter and if you wanna see an example of it, just uh shoot me an email. It's it's the the letter is called the Macro Tourist, and uh you can get it to it at themacrotourist.substack.com. calm, but send me an email at Kevin at the macro tourist dot com and I'll fire you off kind of a couple

uh latest kind of copies of the uh different uh d editions. And then finally, if you're interested, I do have a podcast. Uh it's called The Market Huddle. It's a little more kind of laid back. It's a couple of guys drinking beer and talking markets. And uh you can get that at at the markethuddle dot com. Cool. And you have a co host on that podcast. Who's that? That's right, that's Patrick Saresna. He uh we kind of I laugh about it. He cheats on me. He also is on macro voices. He's the

He's the co-host on Macro Voices. And then this is this is our fun thing that we do on the side is uh we like to get different traders and to drink some beer and uh talk market. Yeah. And if there's a one particular episode, um you've been doing it for about a year and a half now, if there's one episode which people should start with or or just check out to get a good idea on it.

So previously our most popular episode with this fellow by the name of Jimmy Jude, who is an ex um uh merc trader, like a Chicago Mercantile Exchange, we decided that he was so much fun and that the world could use a little bit of something to smile at. that we brought it back this last week. Um and he came back and it was a huge hit. So go check it out. It's Jimmy Jude.

J U D E and uh he's he's just a blast and it's kind of a it's a great taste of uh of what the show's like and uh I think you'll I think you'll enjoy it. And what episode number is that? Oh, I don't you know what? You're putting me on the spot. I don't actually know. I'll dig it up and I'll put it in the show notes. Okay, that's terrific. It's uh it's the one from uh what March twenty seventh. Okay. March twenty seventh, two thousand and twenty.

Yes. Cool. That's right. All right, Kevin. Well again, thank you very much for returning. It's been a absolute pleasure to have you on again and um I'm sure we'll speak again um before too long. Well, thanks for having me on, Aaron. It's a lot of fun. You've reached the end of this episode of Chat with Traders, but rest assured there are more.