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He didn't expect any. It's relatively de minimis from the perspective of what it really means broadly for Canada. 

Most of it is still noise and bluster with Trump's belligerent style and how he deals with everybody, always. He takes it to an extreme, as far as it will go, and then he starts to bring it back. Question is, when does he start to bring it back? And do we want to bring it back? That's the unknown.

From a political standpoint, if you understand the importance of the US elections and Congress staying with the Republicans (increasingly seeming as though it won't), what can Trump do on the trade file to help with that? In line with that, he probably wants a deal of some sort before the elections.

If you're partisan, you already know which way you're going to vote. The moderate person makes up their mind in the last few weeks. And often, it depends on how they're feeling about things on the day they vote. That will determine where the swing vote will go.

He expects the back and forth to continue even into October.

Expectations aren't sky-high. He's looking at this circular financing, and seeing if Nvidia is willing to share what this really means. While revenues are growing massively, it's not clear whether there's a huge profit yet in terms of this buildout.

It's everything. But today, it's magnified on chips. Tomorrow, it'll be something else. Three days from now, it could be back to the Middle East.

All those things are relevant. The thing that matters a lot, in the big picture, is earnings. Right now, earnings are still good and growing. Analysts keep revising estimates upwards. As long as that happens, corrections in equities will be small until the market says "Hmmm, maybe it isn't sustainable."

The US administration is trying to do something about interest rates and minimizing the cost of funding all this debt that will be endless for decades.

US labour market was looking better. Now, with a couple of revisions, all that is showing softness. How strong is the US economy when you neutralize earnings? That is, if you take the AI capex spend out? It's still pretty good, but there are a lot of knock-on effects in other industries from all that spending that otherwise wouldn't be there.

Outside of that, he's not sure that the economy today is really strong. Shrinking labour force because of the aging demographic. There's competition from AI, and a skills mismatch in terms of what society needs.

Holding US treasuries pays you a yield, while holding commodities pays you nothing. So there's an element of income when you're talking about foreign reserves or monetary reserves such as gold/silver bars.

Not sure you'd want to hold uranium. For other critical minerals, there's the cost of storage, decay, theft, and other issues. Not practical for a central bank to store things like that. That said, there are critical storage things like strategic petroleum reserves. So there could be an element of a strategic reserve in terms of critical minerals and metals to help with supply constraints from time to time. He'd be OK with something like that.

Central banks understand gold's role in the monetary system. Decades ago, debt to GDP wasn't meaningful; today everywhere around the world, it's tragic. And only going to get worse. Central banks will probably continue to buy gold as a backing to reserves.

We talked about this last week, saying that a bit more of a pullback was probably in the cards.

More of a pullback is probably in the cards. Let's look at the chart. We broke out from strong consolidation in 2025. It tested that somewhere in the low $80s. For new $$, he'd wait for that at a minimum. Risk to the downside right now, and it could even get back into the $70s.

Thinks this name, as well as a lot of the big tech names (perhaps with the exception of GOOG), will go sideways for the next several years. Highs of $500-550 are what we'll get. He loved it in the last 6 months. Now he's out. Thinks you'll get a chance to buy again at $400 or below.

Likes it at 20-25x PE, but not at 30-35x. It's that simple. Too expensive for what it's likely to deliver.

There are a number of different YieldMax ETFs, where they write options around individual securities. A sophisticated investor doesn't need these, as they can do their own options strategies. For someone who's unsophisticated, they probably should use these (don't know enough about what they're buying).

Good product, but only for the right type of income-seeking investor. If you like the underlying name, just buy that.

You'll get a long-term erosion in your NAV, replaced by tax-efficient income. If that's what you want, appropriate in taxable accounts (not registered accounts, because you don't get the tax benefit).

A lot of the software-oriented names had big corrections. This name's had a bit of a bounce. There's more to the story, and he expects a retest of the lows. If you like it long term, wait. Don't have more than a half position on right now. Might take a couple of years to reach the old highs.

If it was just one government doing with massive debt, then you could isolate them and see the currency get obliterated. Think Argentina or Turkiye. 

The US is the reserve currency of the world, so it has this luxury that not everyone has when it comes to fiscal prudence. Japan's debt to GDP, for example, is double what it is in the US. The US debt situation can go on for decades. The question is at what cost to finance, to future growth, to political capital?

Those issues are above his pay grade, but he has some thoughts in today's Educational Segment.

Another example of options written on a single stock name. Fine for the right type of investor. But don't fool yourself into thinking you're making all this extra money. Compared to a long position in the underlying stock, you're almost certain to underperform. 

If you like the name and you need the extra income in a taxable account, then go for it. He doesn't like BCE after its recent bump up.

He wishes he knew :)  The future is digital, technology, cybersecurity. To the extent that it can grow market share in that environment, it can outperform. Analysts saying it'll "Outperform" means that it'll outperform the basket of similar companies.

Well-liked. But compared to a year ago, it's gone up 10x. Sustainable? Absolutely no. Can't tell if it's over. At a high-risk point -- if it misfires, it'll correct in a big way.

US Government Debt of $40T
Jackson Hole is this week. The market didn't like Warsh's laissez-faire approach to interest rates at the last FOMC meeting. Bonds have been selling off, but not just in the US. It's a story of total debt to growth that probably ends badly.

Larry brought along a chart that shows revenues/expenses of the government as a percentage of GDP. Post WW2, for many decades, revenues and expenses were pretty aligned. Overall debt to GDP came down after financing WW2. Then partisan politics started kicking in over in Washington, DC, with parties wanting to outdo each other. So deficits and debts got crazy.

Today, the amount of debt to GDP is 121%. Debt is $40T, on a $32T economy. Question is:  How do we finance all of this?

One of the mandates of the US government is to lower the cost of debt. As long yields got higher, Scott Bessent said a few weeks ago that they were going to buy back some of their long bonds, issue a few more treasury bills, and twist how they raise $$ for the government. There's a hope and expectation that stablecoins will be backed by US treasury bills.

His next chart shows the total cost of US treasury bills, bonds, and the current yield. Of all treasuries outstanding right now, current yield to maturity is 4.55%. The old ones are in the range of 3.6%. So new debt is coming in around 90 bps more than the debt that's maturing. That'll just put upward cost on the debt, and add hundreds of billions to the deficit.

Catastrophic in terms of what it means for future spending and budgets. It limits governments' ability to help when things get bad. Times have been good, and the government's still spending massively. We've been fiscally managed by the lot of them around the world -- Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives. 

There's a universal hate on right now for long bonds. There's a trade here, but not for the faint of heart (as yields could keep rising). Speculators are bearish on long bonds. Hasn't been like this since the last time yields were over 5%. Price of these bonds is really low. You can use some options to protect yourself. On risk/reward, long treasuries are one of his favourite asset classes right now. See his YouTube channel.