David Hunter

David Hunter saw the 25bp hike — the first in three years — as fully priced and correctly executed, with the selloff coming only at the hawkish presser, not the print. With 90% of traders expecting it, “it’s usually not a good idea to go against that,” and Warsh’s talk of price stability as the Fed’s “biggest goal” and policy not being restrictive enough briefly rattled E-minis and small caps. Hunter’s bigger tell: the economy absorbed oil going from the low 60s to over $100 and $6+ diesel with the S&P only ~3% off all-time highs — any selloff should be “pretty short-lived.”

Hunter’s out-of-consensus call: this may be a one-and-done, and rates are at a three-year top. Core CPI at 2.4-something says underlying inflation is contained, 30-year mortgages around 7.17% and possibly above 7.2% are already slowing housing in Dallas, Atlanta and other Southern markets, and the ~52% December-hike odds will “trend down, not up.” Rates around 5.016% have moved just through the October 2023 5% level — “we’re in the area of a top” — and in the coming global bust “you could get a 0% 5-year. I’m either gonna be dead right or dead wrong.”

All melt-up targets stand: S&P 10,000, Dow 70,000, Nasdaq 36,000, Russell ~4,000 — with the only Q3 revision being copper from $8 to $9. His contrarian logic rests on sentiment: Wall Street is full of “closet bears” with “one foot out the door,” and “you don’t get tops when that many people are nervous.” No catalyst is needed — softer data plus lower rates and a weaker dollar can restart the run, and a 35–40% move could happen within four to six months.

The most aggressive call is metals: silver to 200 — “basically a triple” — and gold to 7,000, both within roughly 3–6 months. Silver’s pullback from 72 to 61–62 matched his forecast 10–15% correction and it’s back to the mid-60s; gold bottomed just below 4,000 in July and sits at 4,300. These are “at the top of the performance list for this last run before we top out,” with copper “pretty much a no-brainer” on low inventories, limited supply and data-center demand.

Sector map: SMH to 800 (~40%+ from 543), XLB to 85 (~70% upside), plus financials and biotech/healthcare — while disfavoring consumer staples and utilities. His staples cynicism is structural: cereal went “from $2.50 a box to $7.50” via endless 25-cent hikes — “it’s not a unit growth story” — and the K-shaped consumer is substituting into generics while MAHA pressures names like Campbell Soup.

AI remains the earnings engine, but Hunter warns against straight-lining it: “I’ve got that canyon in between.” He views the recent AI/semis pullback as a good correction and expects higher highs in both, with data-center construction, power, reshoring, Taiwan chip concentration and rare earths providing visibility through the decade — but a “pretty darn big correction in AI” can come before the next cycle when the market tops.

Midterms are the tail risk: if Democrats take both houses with a working margin — court packing, Electoral College abolition and Puerto Rico statehood — Hunter warned, “we could be seeing the end of America as we know it.” The host pushed back that extremes are loud but small in number, and compared it with the left’s fear of a Trump third term. The host later linked the sovereignty concern to a “New World Order.” Hunter remained bullish anyway: “it’s hard for me to believe that the election is going to mark the top.”

🔗 Original source & video: David Hunter: The Fed Just Hiked Rates: Here’s What You Need to Know | The Outlier Podcast

Hunter says the final leg is igniting now: S&P from ~7,750 to 10,000 in 2-5 months — the parabolic top of a 44-year secular bull running since August 1982 (Dow 780 → ~55,000). Not straight up (recent gap may fill), but the melt-up steepens from here.

Then a global bust worse than 2008-09 — economy and financial system, not just stocks — driven by worldwide leverage that “blows away” 2008 levels. His S&P call: peak-to-trough decline of ~80% (10,000 → ~2,000), with the bust “next year” (he concedes he’s pushed the date out year by year).

The most predictable part of his whole framework, he argues, is the response: the Fed will fight the last war, respond months late, then capitulate into ~$20T+ balance-sheet expansion (6.7T→30T) plus ~$30T from other central banks — seeding ~25% US inflation by ~2033, double-digit rates, world debt 330T→500T, and a mid-2030s systemic unwind he calls the end of an 80-year Ponzi.

Positioning arc for family offices: ride the last 30-40% up (his targets: Dow 70k, Nasdaq 36k, Russell 4k, SMH 800; financials/materials 50-60% upside > tech’s ~30%), then make capital preservation the #1 goal — “time in the market, not timing” fails at a secular top that “may not be revisited for decades.”

Metals: “major bottoms” just made, he says — silver $200 and gold $7,000 this year, possibly silver 55→200 in 2-3 months; GDX 180, GDXJ 250, miners tripling/quadrupling. Next cycle (post-bust): oil $30→$500, gold $20,000, silver $1,000 — commodity leadership, not tech.

The Aschenbrenner liquidation was a clearing event, not the first domino — for this cycle. Long-term it’s “the tip of the iceberg” of systemic leverage; the lesson is that momentum + 400% leverage unwinds faster than it builds, and mania made smart money (Collisons, Jane Street) believers in a 24-year-old who’d never traded a cycle.

Counterweight to note: Hunter is 74, retired, no fund, self-admittedly wrong on bust timing for years, and explicitly caveats the 10-year scenario (“I could be all wet”). Host Angelo Robles pushes the AI-abundance counter-thesis — Hunter accepts it as “the hopeful scenario that could cause mine to be moot,” but low-probability against 80-90 years of accumulated excess.

🔗 Original source & video: The melt-up goes parabolic — S&P 10,000, then an 80% bust