Submitted by QTR's Fringe FinanceI’ve had the pleasure of talking with Julia La Roche a couple of times now, most recently last week.This time around, I explained why I still believe the Federal Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place, why I don’t think inflation is going away as easily as many hope, and why I continue to believe fiscal policy has become completely untethered.We also discussed why I think the bond market, not the stock market, will ultimately dictate how this cycle ends, and why I still believe the system is heading toward another major deleveraging event.We dug into what I believe are some of the biggest risks hiding beneath the surface of today’s market and talked about the growing trend of stuffing illiquid private equity assets into insurance products, the similarities to some of the financial engineering that preceded 2008, and why I think the market continues to ignore mounting risks in private credit, regional banks, commercial real estate and parts of the crypto ecosystem.We also spent a good amount of time discussing today’s market structure. I laid out why passive investing, options activity and market-cap weighting have fundamentally changed price discovery, why I prefer the equal-weight S&P 500 over the traditional cap-weighted index going forward, and why I think the SpaceX IPO could wind up serving as an important sentiment gauge for the AI boom.We also revisited Michael Burry’s comparison between today’s AI buildout and the internet bubble of the late 1990s.On the investing side, Julia asked about some of the areas where I’ve actually been finding opportunities despite my broader skepticism. We talked about why I pounded the table on psychedelics at the beginning of the year, why I continue to like emerging markets, and why I think the recent pullback has once again made gold miners attractive for long-term investors who believe another round of monetary intervention is inevitable.One of the more personal parts of the conversation centered on my decision to permanently step away from active trading. I explained why I finally accepted that there’s a difference between being a good analyst and being a good trader, why trying to force both wasn’t working for me, and how that decision has given me more clarity, more time, and ultimately allowed me to produce better research for subscribers.It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made in years.Finally, we wrapped up with a discussion about what I think investors are overlooking today, from stablecoins and Tether to corporate accounting, speculative technology names, and the broader consequences of years of monetary intervention. Whether you agree with my conclusions or not, I think you’ll find the discussion thoughtful, wide-ranging, and hopefully a little different from the usual financial television fare. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.(WATCH THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW 100% FREE HERE). Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.Loading...