 Yeah, really brilliant to have Linda Raschke on for a chat for the Amplify Masterclass series. We're delighted that you've taken the time to chat. I'm pretty sure there is no trader in our room that doesn't know who Linda Raschke is and your background and there's a huge amount of great interviews with you on YouTube. And I suppose for this conversation, I wanted to maybe ask you what you would like to talk about because you have kind of done a lot of conferences over the years and there are recordings there. But I mean, yeah, Linda Raschke, over to you. I have been listening to some books on Audible now. So when I, didn't you say you're a horse person? Yeah, so to premise this, Linda and I got talking after I finished her book and I realized Linda was such a horsey person. And I come from a very horsey family. We have a riding school and my sister trains events, three-day event horses. And yeah, so on the Black Sheep, the family that makes money from markets. But yeah, we got talking about horses. You don't make much money from horses. It's hard to make money from horses. It's a great way to lose money. I put it like that. Conversely with trading too. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And so, so are you still riding or? Yeah, so I was going to say I, you know, I listened to Audible when I drive back and forth to the barn. So I pretty much after the markets close, I go out to the barn every day. And I just finished one book that I highly recommend called The Biggest Bluff by Maria Kanakova about poker. And then I'm right in the middle of another book called Alpha Brain. And both of them deal with, you know, interesting topics regarding our decision making process that can come, you know, into play with the markets and so forth. And cognitive biases when we know we're doing stuff wrong, but we still choose to do it anyway, all these types of issues. So the markets to me are not really about, you know, the setups and the technicals and so forth and so forth. I think it's more about your process, knowing yourself, knowing the areas where you could go on tilt or get trapped up in your own biases and so forth. And so that's what I find really holds people back, you know, and it's very difficult in this environment where we've got so much information coming at us. You know, through blogs and Twitter and social media and just on and on and on news. And I can't think of one positive thing that really comes out of that. You know, anytime you hear a piece of information that's not of your own or, you know, from your own modeling or process, it's kind of a double-edged sword. You know, is it going to give you a factor of overconfidence? You know, is it going to influence your own decision making and so forth? So, you know, the things that people can do to protect against that. First of all, you know, don't go reading all this stuff first thing in the morning and letting it influence your work. Sometimes I like reading articles by respected people that might have more to do with perhaps economics mechanisms like that, but they're not going to be pertinent to an individual market per se, you know, because right now obviously the big buzzword is inflation, inflation, inflation. Well, that should really be no surprise. It's been in the pipeline forever, but it's just been bubbling to the surface now, you know, but you look at all these stocks and they've been in sustained uptrends for quite a while. So it's going to, A, you know, perhaps get you too aggressive at the wrong time. Perhaps you buy gold or silver, but you're not really able to then ride out the little ensuing shakeouts and so forth and so forth, you see. So that's a big danger there with all this extraneous information. And so, you know, how do you protect yourself against that? A, you know, through your own preparation and written game plan or B, through statistics, that's a super safety net and insurance, you know, relying on some type of modeling process. So I very much trade around models and that's my defense against cognitive biases because even after 40 years I'm quite susceptible to that as is anybody because we're human, you know. And it might just cause you to overweight something in your own trading or get blindsided by something else because in the big scheme of things, you know, markets are an auction process, right? So that's the, you know, the markets, the dynamics of determining what is value and price or where price should be trading. There isn't pure value. It's just auction up and find out where sellers come in, take it down and find out where buyers come in. And sometimes in this testing auction process, it's very easy to get tripped up by the noise, you know. So we can just reduce it down to this pure and simple playing board and not look too far ahead. That's also another big trap is people wanting to project, you know, where will we be a week from now? Where will we be a month from now? So that's one danger looking out too far ahead. And then the other danger is looking at too tight of a timeframe, you know, five minute charts or whatever the case may be. And then you're tripped up in the noise. So I think for the individual retail investor, it's a balancing act about finding where the sweet spot is in the data for you. So I try to reduce it down to my playing board just for, you know, today, maybe tomorrow, looking at the short term, you know, one hour to two or three day time horizon and forget about all the other stuff. And then think about here we are, you know, providing liquidity to the market in the auction process that puts us in the chair of possibly opportunistic trading, which is to be there for when one side gets shaken out. You see, that's very good risk reward instead of trying to force breakouts, sitting back and waiting for that, you know, opportunistic trade. And so, you know, forget all the little strategies and stuff like that, you know, but really understanding the dynamics of your game. So this is something that I focus on with a small group of traders that I work with. It's all about auction market process. It's about who's getting shaken out. Where is it cheap? Where is it expensive? Where is it going to get more expensive in balance? But now that we've kind of steered into this sort of auction sort of chat and theme, you know, you look at Stiedelmeyer, you look at Dalton, they even say, even the study that was done from the CME on auction market theory, you know, they were saying that it's not a standalone box in a way. You know, you need another sort of flavor on your market day if you like, you know, and do you have it? What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, so Stiedelmeyer just, you know, initiated a basic model template, you know, from, you know, a couple of decades ago, and even he also was trying to like come up with something new. So it's just like his, you know, original work stands alone. And I think of the auction process as providing the decision levels, right? So you have certain levels that you can identify in the marketplace and we can get the same thing off of bar charts, simply looking at what was yesterday's high and low. What was the overnight session high and low? I mean, these things are really important points. And then, you know, gap areas or areas that might need to be developed a little bit more, you know, fill in. So that's a popular concept. All of these things provide levels. So for me, whether you get your levels, which are horizontal levels, always not convert, you know, not the diagonal lines, you know, you have your levels drawn off. It doesn't matter if you get them from the market profile or from bar charts. They're just levels where you want to watch that market with a little bit more intent. Okay, so now it comes down to two things. If you have some type of technical condition, meaning a loss of momentum as you approach that level and non confirmation or perhaps increased volume and momentum, which means you're going to slice right through that level, you see. So they just give you areas that to me are more watched by the market participants. So I don't do the Fibonacci and the GAN and the Traders Pivots and all that kind of stuff because nobody sees them. So they're not significant, but everybody sees a previous higher low or a swing higher low or a gap area, you know, or conversely, the volume nodes just to draw a horizontal line through, you know, a number of price bars and voila, you don't need the profile. And this kind of comes back around to, you know, something that I love about, you know, your kind of philosophy and your anti-noise gate is that it's kind of like trade your trade, cut that noise out. You know, you don't listen to kind of news and other views coloring your kind of contextual view of the market. And, you know, something we thought I talked about and we talked about in our room is like, you got to trade your truth and, you know, trade what you see and not kind of levels that some other guys talking about or some other girls talking about. And, you know, I think it's interesting to kind of find out and hear from you kind of do you look at do you look at like market internals when you're making decisions around your areas, let's say, maybe it's whatever market profile, volume profile, high lows, like, do you look at market internals? Are you looking at VWAP? Are you looking at all of the above? I never look at VWAP or things like that, but the market is an organic, you know, dynamic mechanism. So it's all about the money flows, you know, and those money flows will translate into the financials, the metals, you know, the energies, the currencies, all these things. So you can see on a heavier volume day, old markets are in play and a lot of them will make cycle highs and lows together. So the heavier the volume, the greater the correlations, if you will. And then, of course, crude is its own standalone grains are its own standalone and so forth. But sure, market internals, you know, the, you know, you have to understand just the cross currents with the market internals, especially in the last two or three years because so much of what I look at market breadth is going to be 90% the small caps, you know, so you could have a dynamic move underway in the Dow like we did and the breadth may or may not reflect that depending on if the small caps are going to participate. And likewise, with old traditional indicators like the ticks, ticks are totally dependent on the swings in the small caps. So as long as you understand the nuances of the market internals, you know, and, you know, things like breadth, it's not the absolute breadth reading, it's the trend of the breadth. So this morning when we opened and we had this big ginormous gap down, of course the breadth readings are extreme and everybody knows that but the trend was basically up in that market breadth. So I, if I had to just pick one market internal that I felt was like of most value to me nowadays it would just be the VIX and I use that to smooth the noise in the S&Ps because there's really not much of a leading or a lagging edge. I mean, you could drill down to a 10 second chart and you'll see them pretty much turn on the dime. But the VIX will have a tendency to smooth the noise a little bit more than you'll see on the S&Ps. And there's just some other little tricks, you know, time of day stuff for me and all, but, you know, you only need one type of trade that works for you. And I think that the challenge for people is to have patience and learn to discriminate, you know, not want to get overly reactive to all the stimulus and so forth, which is very easy for people to do with the electronic trading now. And especially, you know, oh gosh, you know, the fear of missing out and all these other little things like that. You know, again, if you go down to your record keeping your writing stuff down and frame it out with statistics, that's a good guard against that. And if your statistics were, let me see if I can have four out of five days plus, you know, for the week. Now you've framed it out differently as opposed to wanting to be involved with everything. And you have to turn it into your own little game. So if you take that as a departure point, you know. So on that, you know, the word consistency is bandied about all the time. And in the New Market Wizards book, I think it's, I think it's Amrit Sal, one of the traders, he just kind of takes the idea of consistency and he's kind of like, it's kind of like this fallacy in a way. It's, you know, everyone wants it, but they don't really have any clear cut path to achieving that. And it's not a very binary sort of thing to a lot of people. What, what does consistency or getting towards consistency kind of look like to you in a, in a kind of boiled down sense and, you know, I mean it's all about process, you know, and it was Wycoff that actually put forth a lecture many, many years ago about doing your own analysis in a closed room with no windows, no doors, in other words, no outside influence. So that's where you need to start with this notion of consistency and process to your homework at the same time every day, preferably when the markets are closed. If you can't do it the night before where you're not going to be influenced by everything, do it first thing in the morning, but you're more likely to be influenced by the overnight action. Well, then how are you consistent in your execution process? Are you immediately putting on constraints to manage a trade once you initiate? You know, what is your process for active trade management? Everybody wants to monitor and stock for initiation, but nobody really has a good process for managing their trades. I mean, I shouldn't use generalizations. A lot of people don't have a consistent process for managing their trade. You know, then once you're out of that trade, do you want to immediately get back in? Do you feel like you got out too early? You can't do that. You can't double dip and stuff like that because you'll find that you'll be more prone to errors that way. You know, I find that some people have a higher percentage of losing trades in the afternoon because our decision making process gets fatigued. But on the other hand, you have more certainty as to the trend for the day or how things unfold, at least in the US session. You know, you come down in the morning and there's more uncertainty as to how those players are going to come in. That's why there's more testing process and dynamics for counter-trend trades in the afternoon session. You see, but everybody's going to have their forte, you know, so no, like, it's, you need to study the patterns in yourself, not the patterns in the market, you know. And those will be things that will lead you to be more consistent, eliminating the bad patterns in yourself. Yeah, that's such a common one for a lot of the European Irish traders that, well, we have the benefit of, you know, our 8am, we're doing the European market, and then we go into the US open and a lot of the guys and girls, you know, get on a regular basis, they get hosed down in the morning and then make it back on the US session and then they're completely physically mentally spent and they're kind of net net flat on the day, but they avoided, you know, the horrible losses that they had in the morning. So it's really good to get your kind of that view on it that it's horses for courses. Well, I'll bet you one thing, okay, I bet you that I could flip a coin at the start of every session, okay, Europe session or US session or Asia session, that's how I break it up. I could flip a coin and say to you, heads, you can only make one long trade a day, tails, you can only make one short trade today. That's it. And I don't care if it's for two ticks, you know, but I want to see if you can get a green trade. And if I put that to you and said, okay, I'm only going to take the people under my belt that can make 90% winning trades, so we'll add some incentive there. Okay, over say a four week period, you know, if you can get four out of five, you know, or something along those lines, 80%. And I don't care if it's for one tick, I'll take you under my belt, right. I bet you, I bet you everybody could do that. Okay, one spot on the biggest trend day up if I said you can only make a short trade today and I don't care if it's for one tick, I just want to see it green at the end of the day. Everybody can do that. So it's the patience and the stocking and the fact that, you know, your decision making process has been narrowed down to one thing. Okay, so you already know the market, you already know your size, one contract, you already know the direction as just waiting for a spot and everybody can do that. But when we haven't narrowed down our decision making process and it's the heat of the battle, you see, that's where you run into trouble. So therefore, if you write out your game plan, like what is the play for the day? Am I looking to make one long trade? Am I making one short trade? And perhaps your method might dictate that you want to get the first hour's range under your belt or see how you trade off the opening price. It could be whatever style you want. But once you do that, you are so far ahead of the game. See, in my hero, George Douglas Taylor would say, you know, having some game plan is better than no game plan. And if I have a game plan, I'm more likely to know if it's the wrong game plan. So you think most people are not designing the game that they can win? Is that really where you see a lot of just people going by the wayside with their trading days? I don't really see what other people do, perhaps in the same capacity that you might. I can tell you, I see that people far underestimate the learning curve and how long it takes to learn to process a lot of information. Okay, it's, you know, I can sit there and monitor 20 markets at once and market internals and everything under the sun because I've been doing this for 40 years. But it takes a really long time to build up to that much longer than people think because first of all, you know, you're kind of getting your bearing on just watching the tape and the price action and the charts. And then you need to see it in bull markets, bear markets, heavy volume markets, low volume markets, you know, random outlier events and all these different scenarios can take two to three years minimum to unfold. Before you start to have confidence that you're a little bit more in control. So people get frustrated, they get reactive, you know, they don't understand how long would it take for you to become, you know, a radiologist, for example, a professional career where you could make a decent living. Well, you do your four years medical school here, your two years after that, you have to do three years residency and internship and stuff. Finally, at the end of eight or nine years, voila, you're a radiologist and now your eye is trained towards all the charts. So the training is not much difference, you know, same thing with becoming a professional tennis player. Clay, court, grass, wind, rain, cold, you know, all these different variables, different opponents and so forth. It just takes a much longer than people think and it's not about studying an individual's strategy, you know, taking a course, reading books. It's the proverbial number of hours in front of the screen, you know. You can't substitute stuff for that. Yeah, fantastic. What makes it nice for people, if you have a trading room, it makes it interesting day after day, keeps them engaged, keeps them from like hopefully tuning out and surfing the internet or doing other things. It's keeping your focus up. Yeah, we try to keep people focused on the right things and away from the noise, I think and try to dampen noise and just really, you know, focus on what matters, you know. Yeah, I totally 100%, a thousand percent agree. There's way too much noise out there, way too many distractions and it's just so easy to get turned around, I think, with the way, with the way the markets are with, you know, the amount of technical indicators that people just want to flock to, especially the early stage traders. I mean, just moving on to one more thing that, you know, I always hear you say in interviews is correct mistakes as soon as possible. And I think this is something that, you know, I've been trading equities 15 years, futures five years. I still say this to myself. I still say I should have gotten out of that quicker. I should have banked that faster. I should have should have should have. But I don't beat myself up about it. But is this, you know, is this something that is just trading and that we always, you know, try to do better and better. Sure, I think that's what's anything. If it's a sport or music or riding horses, you know, you're always working on getting better and better, but also learn how to protect yourself. You know, don't put yourself in a vulnerable spot where you haven't defined your risk management ahead of time. If you've defined your risk management ahead of time, then you can simply say, oh, I was dealt a bad hand. I think I'll fold, you know, with poker, you know, I think I'll just fault, right. But if you haven't set your parameters ahead of time, you know, things can get a little bit out of hand and you might lose more than you thought. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, something that I try to preach is consistent risk size on every single trade. I think, you know, I think there's various different ways to look at controlling your risk. But okay, fantastic. I mean, something that we do is we see a lot of new traders coming in, like really starting from their early 20s. Some of their late teens, actually, but maybe kind of late 20s and then other people who've had careers in other fields who are now finding themselves strong to trading. And, you know, I remember when I started out in futures, I was kind of really then drilling down into the success rates of traders over time. You know, that kind of that kind of, you know, who survives beyond three months, one year, two years, five years, and there's only statistics floating around. Then brokers have this kind of stat that, you know, 80% of accounts will blow out within three months. And, you know, putting that all aside, I just kind of wanted to go back to your early stage of your career. I have read the book and, you know, great start and some mentors in there. But I mean, when was it that you really felt like you had that Uber confidence? Well, maybe not Uber confidence, but you had that real pure confidence of like, I've got this, I'm controlling my risk. You know, I can make something here in these markets. I'm never 100% confident. I swear to God, you know, after 40 years, it's, but I will tell you one interesting story. I started on the trading floor in the options, so slightly different game. And you had a little bit of edge back then because things weren't priced well and it was an arbitrage type of game. But even so, you know, I did my charting, my updating every day and my numbers and so forth. So come 1987, I'd been in the markets for six years. The market had reached this phase where it was just doing the creeper trend mode, you know, where there's no volatility, but it's inching up to new highs, new highs, new highs, new highs. And I remember thinking to myself, this is after seven years of full-time professional trading. And I had an exchange membership and everything. I'm like, I have no fucking clue. I have no idea. No idea how to do a roadmap or get a handle on things. And that was after all those, you know, years. So it's a technical analysis in and of itself is a very long study. But I think at that point you were, you were managing quite a bit of money, I think at seven years. No, I didn't start managing money until 10 years after I had started trading. So and even then, you know, it's, it takes a while to build up. Nobody just says, oh, here's a hundred million dollars. It takes a long time to build track records and, you know, develop your models and so forth. So I think that's so refreshing to hear that, you know, it's like it's a craft. It needs time. You need to allow yourself to do that. I think for, and I say that because I see so many traders come in and they really expect huge results. You know, they want to get that radiology degree in three months, you know, in one year. And when it doesn't happen, it's, it's, you know, it's a huge personal failure. And I think that was really difficult because we have been in a once in a lifetime unusual environment with the increase in the monetary base and the conditions that we've had the last couple of years. That's not going to be the way going forward. So you hear about these people that just got lucky with these crazy gains. And we saw this in, in 1998, 1999 with the tech stocks back then too. And you had this ginormous exponential movement in the price. And then of course, maybe 10% of those tech companies survived and the ensuing bear market after you did that parabolic spike for two years basically took out about 95% of the people out of the game. So what people need to think about is treat yourself as if you are your own best client. Okay, those are the words of Hank Pruden, who was quoting Wycoff. And so you want to think about what is a program that I could sell to investors, meaning I could sell to myself. So what is my program that I am pitching to myself? I specialize in trading breakouts off the first 15 minute bar or I do this or I do that, right? And then once you have a solid consistent bread and butter type of style, then the whole name of the game isn't like hitting home runs and holding it for bigger wins or longer periods of time. It's more increasing the leverage, you see, but you can't, that's where the money is made. The money is made not from capturing these home runs or these outlier events. The money is made from increasing the leverage. And obviously if you're a CTA or a money manager or something along those lines, the ultimate is making money with other people's money because you don't have any risk that way, you see, even though you're only getting a much smaller piece. But you know, it's making, I think I had 150 million under management. So therefore, you know, the pay down to me is much higher than I would be able to make just with my own account. So, you know, it's, that's what you want to think about when you are learning and starting off as a trader. It's not, you know, not that everybody has the aspirations to be a fund manager and I don't recommend it these days. You know, I retired and hung up my licenses because it's really running a business. It's not glamorous being a hedge fund manager. It's accountants and lawyers and paperwork and teams and all this other stuff that has nothing to do with trading. But pretend you were going to do that. Well, I wanted to ask you that because, you know, I've read a lot of books about people who were doing very well. You know, like on the spooze to the 10 year correlation or, you know, inverse correlation moves in the 90s and the 90s. And then they took on money and everything just went for them. And this is such a common thing I read about. And really, I suppose the question to you is, was it worth it to have to be, did it bring you off kilter in a way from where you were prior to taking on the outside of money? You mean, was, did managing money take me off kilter? Yeah. No, quite the opposite. I love managing money. I love it. I'm like the type of person that wants to, you know, give the teacher an apple and have her put it on the desk. Oh, you're so good. You can do this better than anybody else with, you know, great statistics. Look how great you are, you know, great sharp ratio, great, you know, I love that. I want to work to please, you know, that's just my nature. So I, I loved it. And, you know, I had such a wonderful team around me and it kind of morphed it over the years. You know, I'd have like one or two good people and we added on somebody else and this and that just fine, fine individuals who could do modeling for me or infrastructure for me who made my life so easy, you know, because I hate dealing with computers and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, it's part of our business, right? So I loved it. It's just it became in the United States, the regulatory requirements just kept on increasing and increasing, you know, and I had 150 million and I had a business manager and three other people. But it was still, you know, turning into 80 or 90 hour work weeks. And the problem was that would be fine if it was trading in technicals. But no, it was more like 20 hours of, you know, bureaucracy and, you know, other types of variables that wasn't the type of work that I enjoyed. And so then they started increasing the data fees, you know, on the exchanges over here. Now, mind you, I have like three people working for me and several platforms that I use and all of a sudden my data fees were running me 12,000 a month, you know, and I'm like, that's not even including office fees and everything else. And I just was like, this is ridiculous. I just kind of use that as my excuse. I'm like, let me quit while I'm ahead, you know. Right, right. And so I mean, the parts, the several parts in the book where I kind of get I had this sense when you were thinking Florida that, you know, you had your trading office on the ranch. So the horses were kind of just outside the door. There was dogs roaming around chickens and no chickens. No chickens. But it sounded great. And it sounded like if I was to put my trading desk up in the yard where we have this multiple dogs, cats, horses everywhere. So have you, you know, and I got the sense from the end of the book that you kind of had scaled back on that sort of, you know, ranch craziness and, you know, streamlined it a little bit. And is that still where it's at? That's funny. That was very funny. I had quite the spread in Wellington, Florida. And so I actually after having gone through three hurricanes, I had started a separate office up in Chicago. Okay, just because, you know, it was like a safety net. Plus, it was a good excuse for me to go up and see the person that I was dating at the time. So now we're married and, you know, everything kind of has its own life cycle there. So, yeah, the Florida Ranch was wonderful. So I sold all the horses and, you know, the farm, it was, you know, quite an operation and moved up to Chicago. And after three years was totally miserable with no horses and cold winters, right? So then it started off where we had to buy one horse and then the farm, you know, where I had the horse, you know, the arena and all they were selling. So then I had to move them and then, you know, I ended up getting another horse injured. And so before you know it, I ended up owning two farms. I have one farm up there that's 38 stalls and 40 acres and, you know, the covered ring and all. And then I have another farm down in Florida, you know, 20 stalls, house, riding ring, whole nine yards and four horses. Okay, so. Now I'm trying to scale it all back down again. Are the 38 stalls full in the other yard though? Okay. Oh, yeah, you know, but I just lease, I lease it out to a trainer so she keeps everything running and stuff. And I don't have to worry about it, but I'm trying to simplify life again. So that's kind of, it's like our waistlines in life, right? Our waistlines get bigger and then we got to trim down a little bit, you know. Yeah, something I was really interested to read was, you know, you had a lot of bodybuilding in your past time and you're really hitting that gym and working on some strict physical targets and goals and competing. And so, I mean, that completely came out of left field for me. I mean, in terms of, you know, I never read that about you. And so are you still very active on the gym? Yeah, I'm like a Blinda Raschke bodybuilder. Yeah, so I can't do that anymore. My shoulders have kind of given out. I have to get them injected just so I can go ride, but that was my stress relief, right? I mean, everybody has to do something for the market stress. It's so important. gardening, jogging, swimming. I find physical things work best for me, but maybe you have to go and play an instrument or do something, so it really doesn't matter what it is, but you have to get rid of this tension and stress. Yeah, absolutely. And then maybe that being one thing that I think should be a keystone around your life, coming out to trading or personally speaking, I would totally agree with what you're saying there. But I mean, you had in your book, probably like four or five key sort of characters and people that really were sort of along the journey that really helped you through and sort of, shone a torchlight on a couple of things for you and call them mentors, call them now your husband maybe. How important is that in that journey, would you say? So have that mentor. I think it's important anytime people are, have a certain intensity in what they're doing to have family or friends or one good friend or one good companion, some solid person that you can communicate with, that's a little bit of a rock. And so for me, it really was Mr. Bill. He was like my surrogate father because my father was out of my life pretty much after I was 20. And so he could be just a common denominator for all different kinds of conditions. I could go and work out with him at the gym and we could discuss, it wasn't just about diet or physical exercise or something, but a common philosophy of positive thinking, belief in a higher faith or entity, all those sort of tangibles, which I think are just important for keeping a positive outlook in life. Okay, yeah, brilliant. So maybe to bring this back to markets, in terms of the monetary system at the moment, in terms of this flood of QE, we saw 200,000 odd numbers added on NFP last week on the expectations of a range between one and two mil and the markets scream up and make an attempt at new all-time highs. I think Dow definitely did make a new all-time high. I wanted to get your take and I know you don't like crystal balling, putting yourself in the future or putting your mindset in the future. But I mean, for someone who's been trading for 40 years, I would love to get your take on, where do you think we're headed with this current Fed policy? And something I'm absolutely plagued with hearing at the moment are these two words, inflation and transitory. And what? Inflation and transitory, as in inflation will be transitory is what we're hearing everywhere at the moment. What are your thoughts on this? If we just go back to statistics and you look at any time that the markets had a better than 40% gain in one year, be it an outlier or coming back from an outlier, as was the case last year, everybody likes to say, oh, the market was up X% but if you lopped off that little slip on ice there, it wasn't up quite that much. And, but anytime the markets had that type of price appreciation and there's been over 20 occurrences in the last 100 years. So you've got a decent sample size there, then the year following, which would be this year, there's always been an 8% to 10% correction, okay? So that's just a good statistic to hang your hat on. And conversely, there's never been a huge, give it all back, it's not like you ever went up 50% and then gave it all back the next year. So it would be reasonable to expect that we've probably done the bulk of the gains in terms of the equity markets and there's going to be an 8% or 10% correction at some point this year and we can get a lot of choppiness in the meantime but a good lesson also is relative strength. So you're seeing a lot of rotation, the materials, the industrials, the financials have become the relative strength leaders after the fangs. And of course, if you look at the materials, the steel stocks and international paper making all-time new highs and engineering firms and stuff, it's just a shift in where the economy is utilizing the dollar. So that's to be expected. I don't think that's anything out of the ordinary and in terms of inflation, there's so many ways to measure inflation. I have a degree in economics and the most problematic degree type of inflation is wage inflation. So you could actually have price inflation and if you have a price inflation that people have to spend money on, say fuel and food, it could actually be quite deflationary in its effects and that people have less disposable income to spend on consumer discretionary spending, you see. So it's all this couching of semantic and words and stuff. And the other thing is that everything's cycle. So we've really been in a massive deflationary cycle in my opinion for 20 years and that's because of the advent of globalization, that we've been able to use labor sources in other countries where the costs have been quite reasonable. And I think now you've seen a convergence there of some of these things. And with all, with that and the dollars that are built up into the pipeline, I think it would be reasonable to expect inflation just in terms of price and wage inflation over the next 10 years. That would be logical from a big macro cycle type of analysis. So if you do get that wage inflation, then the Phillips curve essentially is back alive. So we have a broad, then that is a lasting, what you're talking about there from my understanding would be a lasting broader tone of inflation rather than this temporary sort of spike of inflation that will be quite short and transitory. Yeah, don't forget that it's going to affect different economic stratosphere, like the lower, the people that are the bottom earners there, it's going to affect them differently than it would be the top group. And then of course taxes can compound that and so forth. But yeah, I think it'll be very robust, which is great for traders in the sense that we like swings and volatility and so forth. And I see it as more of a normal type of environment. And the problem is that you have a lot of people on this earth and not the resources to support the population that we have now. Well, that brings me on to really something I'd love to get your views on, which is the commodity super cycle in terms of it kind of crept up on us in a way coming out of the tail end of sort of wave two, three of COVID maybe two months ago, we're seeing massive prices in lumber, in metals. You know, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, do you think that we're just at the very foothills of the broader commodity super cycle? I mean, I think the last super cycle was 08, was it 08, 014? Yeah, I don't really see that as being a super cycle. And I think you have to take out the energy component there, you know, the crude is in its own little category and stuff. And I don't think you can look at lumber, you know, if you look at the number of contracts that trade, there's not hardly any volume at all. And that was more a case of the fact that they couldn't get people to go to the mills in Oregon. You know, they couldn't hire people for overtime or weekend or anything like that. So that was a little bit of a different situation, but it's true that there is a huge ginormous demand, you know, building houses and stuff that is surely, I think, a factor of super unrealistically low interest rates. And so when you hear these quote, talking heads refer to inflation as transitory and stuff, you have to keep in mind that our, you know, administrators and bureaucracy that be have a vested interest in keeping interest rates as low as possible because we have to finance the debt. So the things that they put out there, I think is a lot of jaw-boning, trying to buy time and buy more time and buy more time before they have to raise rates. And, you know, the thought was, oh, now they don't have to raise them until 23, but that's why you've seen this dislocation in the yield curve. So something on that same topic, you know, there's a lot of people kind of saying that, are the Fed kind of running a little too, or planning to run a little too hot? You know, if you've got Jay Powell talking about letting it run above 3%, you know, well above 2%, 3%, it sounds like 4%, he doesn't really care. He just wants it to run hot for quite some time and then they can start, you know, bringing in the interest rate heights. The Fed is always behind the curve. So you got to get that straight. They are behind the curve 99% of the time he made one little mistake once upon a time and trying to be, do the right thing and it backfired on him. So the Fed is always behind the curve and it's just trying to justify being behind the curve. So it's not a matter of letting it run hot. It's just that the cost to finance these ginormous deficits, you know, you start magnifying what a quarter, you know, of a basis point will mean in terms of financing the deficits. And I mean, the numbers are unreal. So they really don't want to go there. I think they're hoping that you can, I mean, traditionally Western civilization, what is secure for deficits to inflate them away? You know, so that's what we're trying to do. Right. So, you know, as we've been creeping up over the, you know, on the back of this quantitative easing and equities, I just find myself dreaming about, you know, a 25 basis point hike and the markets just absolutely screened to the downside. I mean, you know, these equity valuations to me just feel insane at the moment. But I've been saying that for 10 years, pretty much. And I mean, is it just, you know, stick to your guns, only trade the bullback when you see it? Or, I mean, do you agree with these equity valuations where we are up here, you know, 26 times? I don't think it matters. It really doesn't matter what the valuations are. You can't think that way if you're a trader. Who's to say what's right or wrong, you know? In a yield, in an environment of negative yields where you could have huge earnings growth and this GDP of 8%, who's to say what valuations are? You know, are you looking at valuations now? Are you looking what valuations are pricing in a year from now? Who's to say, you know? So, I think when I talk about that, like, you know, Tesla 700, 800, these companies that kind of, they don't have the, they don't feel like those robust, mature, sort of safe type of companies, but there are these big valuations of very sexy companies. And I suppose we all want to get in on them. So, yeah, I mean, it's interesting, you're totally right. It doesn't matter. We could keep going up there. All that thinking is a big trap to me. You just can't think that way if you're a trader, you know? What is considered to be a discounted price, you know, this week, you know? What's a markup in the price this week? And that's the type of thinking that takes people out of the game, you know? Because now you have a cognitive bias. And for every, you know, argument you make, I can give you two sides of a coin. Every single issue out there, if you give me a negative, I can give you a positive. If you give me a positive, I can give you a negative with anything out there, you know? So... Okay, fantastic. That's amazing. Really good insight there and good advice. One last thing, cryptocurrencies, what do you think? Where do you sit on Bitcoin, decentralized finance space? Do you even care about it? Is it something? I don't trade them for several reasons. First of all, you have a lot of different cryptocurrencies out there. Reminds me of tech in the late 90s. Let's see what shakes out. Let's see what, you know, the last man standing or the last five men standing. And I don't trade them for the sheer reason that A, they're not scalable to me. So I'm looking for a market that has liquidity. I don't wanna go and do a one lot. I want something where you can go and do a hundred contracts. I don't feel comfortable doing that on crypto. I think there's too many dislocations. I think that was a wake up call for people when China took down the network there and it's like 50% of the power to drive the Bitcoin. Oh, it's gone, you know? So you're giving over control to China. I think that despite the, you know, proclamation, otherwise I think they are a horrid waste of resources and energy just in terms of the demand that it keeps to run all the networks even though, okay, so it's in Greenland and the energy is not being used for anything else. I mean, here we are killing ourselves to, you know, go to electric cars and reduce the carbon footprint of the planet. And you have the most insanely wasteful medium out there. You know, everybody was ragging on poor Charlie Munger, you know, you know, kind of that he is like, oh, he's an old man, you know, he doesn't have time to wait for the green bananas to ripen here, you know? But on the other hand, he made some valid points. So you have a medium that's a double-edged sword. Yes, it's, every day we see it used for ransom, you know, in all our networks and so forth, companies, okay, you know, we've got you hostage, pay us in Bitcoin because it's not traceable or whatever it is. We'll see where it all shakes out. I do think that there's merit to having, you know, some type of digital medium there for currency that isn't controlled by the government is a store of value, perhaps. There's a lot of flaws currently, you know, the transaction time has gotten shorter because you have people now like PayPal and Visa, you know, doing transactions in Bitcoin. But that was an issue there. It's not like, you know, if I go pay in Bitcoin is an instant one-second transaction, you know, they're trying to overcome some of these things. So, you know, we'll see where it shakes out. But for me, you know, I have no problem getting into trouble with other markets, you know? I mean, who's to complain about copper and these grains and crude oil and that gas and bonds. I mean, all I want is liquidity and movement. So whatever works for you, I guess. Fantastic. Listen, I've taken up a lot of your time and it's been a sheer pleasure to cover quite a bit. Really interesting, an absolute pleasure for me. So, Linda Rasky, I hope you get to buy some more horses and you get to ride a lot more. And yeah, look at the horses. I'm trying to sell horses now. We're trying to simplify life, you know? So I can still enjoy life, you know? But let me just pass on one thing to your viewers and that is if you go to my website, lindarasky.net, I always try to provide a lot of resources for free. You know, I'm not out here selling things and doing all this kind of stuff. I really enjoy what I do and wanna share that passion for technical analysis and so forth. So under my resource section, I must have done a hundred YouTube videos on different things for free. So great resource for people. I think you've seen some of them. And then, you know, my Twitter feed, I only try to post like links and resources, things that I think will be of value to people without trying to shove something down their throats. So... I think I'm gonna be starting the Linda Rasky fan club. We'll be selling t-shirts and caps soon enough. I've seen a lot of the videos. No, no, that's a big thing. You know, that's like, you know, I try, you know, you wanna be a low profile, you know, like I don't want anything to mess with my head. So... And the book, of course, the book, Trading Sardines. Fantastic read. Fantastic read. You know, I don't have that many more copies left. I only did one printing and I didn't do that many. And I've only sold it off my website, so I don't sell it off Amazon or anything. And I'm wondering if I'll even be able to afford the paper to do another printing, you know? Yeah, to plug the book, it is only available directly on your website. And so I definitely urge people to go on there and get it for sure. It's definitely one for the library, absolutely. So listen, it's been an absolute pleasure to take up your time and to talk with you and look forward to seeing you in Ireland and it will get you out in some horseshair. It sounds like your group of traders is really fortunate to have you being a little bit of a leader there for them. So I've never been to Ireland. I would absolutely love to come to Ireland. Well, anytime you want, hit me up on email and I'll pick you up from the airport. Deal, all righty. Great, thanks so much. Have a great evening and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thanks guys. Bye-bye.