Stanley Druckenmiller is not a happy camper (speeches at Sohn & USC Marshall)

“The debt ceiling is like sitting on the Santa Monica pier and you see a 30 foot wave and you're worried about it. There's a 200 foot tsunami 10 miles out, but all we talk about is the wave.”

Hi everyone,

This past week, Druckenmiller spoke at the Sohn conference (video) and USC Marshall (audio and slides and prepared remarks). In a nutshell: he’s short the dollar, worried about a hard landing, very concerned about entitlements, debt, and demographics, worried about regional banks, made some interesting comments on gold, oil and copper, and was very excited about the impact of AI (which he bet on through Microsoft and NVIDIA). He was as cheerful as ever:

“I’m sitting here staring in the face of the biggest and probably the broadest asset bubble, forget that I’ve ever seen, but that I’ve ever studied.”

The speech at USC Marshall focused a lot on the looming fiscal and demographic issues and his worries about the dollar.

This argument over the over the debt ceiling, to me is like, you're sitting out on the pier in Santa Monica and you see a 30 foot wave and you're worried about what the 30 foot waves going to do to the pier and there's like a 200 foot tsunami 10 miles out, but all we're talking about is the 30 foot wave.

The demographic storm is just getting under way.

While he’s short the dollar, he said it was not a fat pitch.

It's a thesis I have, but it's not a fat pitch. I've seen a lot of fat pitches in my career. This thing is so complicated. I just want to stay alive, you know, financially, until the chaos comes because it's coming, given our behavior.

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I am sharing some quotes that stood out to me below. I am also linking two auto-generated transcripts. While the AI still makes plenty of transcription errors, it’s a good way to skim and find the interesting bits to listen to.

• Gold, silver, and hard landings ("Be open-minded") (Sohn)

• Well-earned humility (Sohn)

• Never wedded to a position (Sohn)

• Expect more dead bodies among banks (Sohn)

• The toxic situation with banks (USC Marshall)

• Oil, gold, copper (USC Marshall)

• China and Taiwan (USC Marshall)

• “The Fed can’t save us.” (USC Marshall)

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