The Daily Dirtnap — ex-Lehman ETF trader turned sentiment-driven macro newsletter writer; running synthesis of his video/podcast appearances, with per-transcript breakdowns and a stock index.
One of only two names his manual top-50 chart sweep flags as unconditionally basing — "Intel looks like it's bottoming" — and notable for sitting inside a semiconductor complex he reads as topping at the sector level. A technical read, not a fundamental one: a base in a topping sector is a stock that already had its crash and has run out of sellers.
The other clean base in the 2026-SEP-03 chart sweep — "Oracle looks like it's bottoming" — with no revenue, backlog or margin argument attached. Capped immediately by the count that governs the whole exercise: "I'm seeing a lot more charts that are rolling over than charts that are basing," so treat it as an individual exception rather than evidence the market has turned.
Not a stock view at all — the illustration for infinity or zero: "all stocks eventually go to zero. All of them… Apple will go to zero someday, maybe 200 years from now, but it will go to zero someday." The point is that a holder with no sell price has no plan; in the Awesome Portfolio the annual rebalance makes the decision mechanical rather than emotional.
Jack Farley's mention, not Dillian's. The host had been screening the baldness-drug names himself and was wary of the framing — "it says it's AI powered drug discovery. So I get a little skeptical there." Dillian's own position on the theme is a blank: "I don't know anything about it. Literally I just saw a tweet and I put it in the newsletter."
Named once, inside the same sentence as Nvidia, as one of the semiconductor charts "bottoming interestingly enough," with no separate thesis and offset by the sector-level call that semis, healthcare and financials are topping. A technical observation with a short shelf life.
Paired with OpenAI in the same clause as the profitless corner of an otherwise profitable market. The mention is doing valuation arithmetic — a bubble in profitable companies breaks differently from one in companies with no earnings — not stock-picking.
A concentration exhibit rather than a company view: a college student's entire portfolio was "50% Nvidia and 50% Broadcom," which he suspects is the shape of a lot of US retail. He declines to call it dumb money — "they've been right" — but the behavioural point stands: concentrated holders who bought a long move are the least likely to sell near the top.
Named only as the buyer that cleared the overhang — "Citadel got the cleanup print on that and now they're pretty much out of that trade" — with the block trades announced July 27–28th and the bulk resold by late August. No view on the firm; it is there to show the liquidation was absorbed rather than dumped.
The exhibit for his whole bubble diagnosis rather than an equity call. Its $40 billion bond issue is the first time in his career he has seen "tech being financed with debt" — a tenor mismatch, since the asset "is going to be obsolete in a couple years" — and the effective cost is the punchline: a 60–80bp spread still means "essentially paying a 6% coupon," against 2–2.5% in 2021. It is also the private-sector crowding-out pressure his own long-duration position has to absorb.
His 2016 immunotherapy winner and the origin story for "invest then investigate" — researched the theme, bought the biotech, "basically it was a three-bagger. Got taken out I think by Bristol Meyers" (his own hedge, left as spoken; no view is expressed on the acquirer). The lesson is not about biotech but about acting on an unfamiliar theme before the research is finished.
A track-record reference, not a live call: Farley supplies the name and Dillian confirms he "was early on the GLP-1s trade" and made money for subscribers. It is evidence for the method — invest then investigate — rather than a recommendation today.
His one-line rebuttal to the claim that technology is inherently deflationary — "Have you paid your Netflix bill? It's not that deflationary" — used to argue that capex-driven demand for capital outweighs any productivity-driven disinflation. No view on the stock. Reappears 2026-SEP-08 in the same illustrative role, as one of the two great winners that "has had a couple of 75% drawdowns": evidence that "drawdowns are the enemy," not a rating.
Deliberately two-sided. The chart is in his bottoming group, but he does not value it on fundamentals ("the leather jacket guy said they were growing at 70% and the stock ripped") and is waiting on one mechanical trigger for the top: the second derivative of growth rolling from 70% to 60% to 50% — "that's when the stocks are going to top." The second flag is ownership: a student's entire portfolio is 50% Nvidia / 50% Broadcom, which he suspects is typical of US retail, and "they're probably not going to sell at the highs." Returns 2026-SEP-08 in a purely illustrative role — one of the two names cited as having "a couple of 75% drawdowns" in his rebuttal to Munger, with no view on the business.
The named exception to his one concession that this cycle is not 1999: "there are a lot of analogies to the dot-com bubble 25 years ago… but the one thing that's different is there are profits. I mean, except for maybe in OpenAI and Anthropic." Farley counters that the labs' revenue growth is "among the best ever for history of companies" and Dillian defers.
The July 2026 blow-up, read as a bottom marker with an explicit caveat. "Anytime you have a leverage player that goes t.u., that usually marks a bottom" — but Bear Stearns in March 2008 was followed by a 17% S&P rally and then Lehman, so "the most leverage player gets taken out first" is a ranking, not an all-clear: "my guess is there's another Situational Awareness coming in the months down the line."
Not a fund view — the exhibit for risk of ruin scaled by wealth (2026-SEP-06): "would you take $300 million and put it all in SPY?… nobody does that. What they do is they take it and put it in T-bills." The highest-expected-value allocation is the one nobody with something to lose actually chooses, which is his whole case that the right allocation depends on the balance sheet behind it, not on the return series.
Farley's positioning-data source, not Dillian's. Cited to complicate the crowded-semis story: retail positioning in semiconductors "among the lowest it's been over the past two years," with the late-July hedge fund unwind "the biggest since 2020." Dillian accepts the correction on the spot — "I like it. I can go with that" — and reassigns the crowding to institutions and the multi-strategy pods.
Used only as the ETF half of a mutual-fund-vs-ETF contrast on the same index (2026-SEP-06), and the preference runs the unfashionable way: the open-end fund's once-a-day NAV is a behavioural feature, while with the ETF "you can look at your phone every 5 seconds… and that's bad." A former ETF trader arguing that continuous pricing is a defect for long-horizon money; he would build the whole portfolio in open-end funds but for the absence of a physical-gold one. No view on the fund itself.
The one named security he takes a position on in the 2026-SEP-08 allocation episode, and the position is to own none of it inside the framework: "I think you should leave it out altogether." The objection is behavioural rather than valuation — a sixth, high-volatility sleeve is the one you check constantly ("you know how often I was checking it? Every 5 minutes" in 2021), "and then you're going to do something dumb." For existing holders the compromise is mental accounting, not a sale: "half of it to be gold and half of it to be stocks." The 2026-SEP-06 telling adds the concession that makes the exclusion interesting: crypto genuinely improved the math — "in 2019, if you included Bitcoin, it increased the Sharpe of the portfolio" — and he leaves it out anyway, because "an 80-vol" sleeve raises stress "even if it's a tiny part of the portfolio."
The sharpest phrasing of the episode: "especially the broker dealers. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have very scary charts." A technical judgment with no comment on earnings or the deal pipeline — the broker dealers are singled out because their revenues track markets themselves, so a top should show there first.
The healthcare name pulled out of his topping bucket. The timing read matters more than the company: healthcare "had been a laggard but has been recently catching a bid," and a defensive sector that suddenly works while the market's leadership is sold is usually absorbing rotation money — which is where his chart sweep keeps finding tops.
The only outright short named in the appearance, and already published to his podcast audience: "I talked about how JP Morgan was a pretty good short." It comes out of the manual chart sweep that reads financials as topping, reinforced by flow — banks were one of the groups that rallied to fill the gap left by the semiconductor sell-off, and being a rotation destination is a late-cycle condition in his framework.
Named twice alongside Goldman — topping in the first pass of the chart sweep, then "very scary charts" in the emphasis at the end. Pattern recognition rather than business analysis, but the repetition marks it as the part of financials he feels most strongly about.
Third name on the topping-financials list ("Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo all look like they're topping") with no separate commentary — included because the sector call is the point, and because banks catching a bid while semis were sold is what stretched the group rather than what supports it.
In one line: two people in one, and they agree. The trader fades whatever view has saturated the front pages — right now the bond bear market, so he is maximum long duration into an AI boom he thinks is a bubble because it is financed with debt. The author tells everyone else to stop taking that kind of risk at all: 20% each in stocks, bonds, gold, cash and real estate, rebalanced once a year, because "volatility is the enemy" and the binding constraint on a 40-year investing life is not return but what you can hold through without selling.
Sentiment and positioning over fundamentals. The inputs he actually weighs are crowd artefacts — front-page headlines, magazine covers, who is writing about a theme and in which outlet, what retail and the multi-strategy pods are carrying. "I'm a sentiment guy, so when I see stuff like that, I'm just naturally going the other way." He states flatly that he does not think in fundamentals; valuation carries no information in a momentum leader.
Maximum long duration, and it is a holding, not a fade. As of 2026-SEP-03 he is "insanely bullish" on Treasuries — 5.2–5.3% on the 30-year and 4.7% on the 10-year are "an incredible deal" — and has "moved a huge portion of my money into bonds in the last month" for a three-to-five-year hold. No ETF or ticker is named. The supporting argument is a ledger correction: supply is the observable half and everyone quotes it, but "nobody ever talks about the demand for bonds," and the deficit at 6% of GDP is half the 2010 level when auctions cleared at three-times bid-to-cover.
The "mind virus" thesis on rates. He thinks the market has priced a 1970s inflation regime — "people were calling bonds certificates of confiscation" — while inflation is falling and the growth dashboard (two weak payroll reports, Chicago PMI ten points light, JOLTS, ISM) is deteriorating. A 66% priced probability of a hike against that data is "madness." The resolving print is named in advance: a deeply negative payrolls number reverses the whole trade and makes the Fed chair "the best gold salesman of all time."
AI is a bubble — because of the capital structure, not the multiple. "In my lifetime, this is the first time I've seen tech being financed with debt." The dot-com build was all equity; this one funds two-to-three-year assets with ten- and thirty-year paper at an effective ~6% coupon. "The leverage is what gets people into trouble." He does not expect the cost of money to slow the capex.
Still bearish private credit and private equity, and the clock is long. A call made roughly two years earlier that has worked in the listed alt managers, and he is not taking it off: "we have not found the bottom yet." The mechanism is liquidity — publics reprice in weeks, privates hold assets rather than sell them — and he treats AI and private credit as one connected trade.
Charts read by hand, one at a time. A Lehman-era ritual: pull the top 50 (once all 500) S&P charts, sort each into topping or basing, and count the ratio. The 2026-SEP-03 sweep produced semis, healthcare and financials topping — JPM "a pretty good short," GS and MS with "very scary charts" — against bases in NVDA, AMD, INTC and ORCL, "but I'm seeing a lot more charts that are rolling over than charts that are basing."
One named trigger for the AI top: the second derivative of growth. Not valuation, not a headline — the growth rate stepping down from 70% to 60% to 50%. He has been waiting on it for six months without acting on price.
Drawdown tolerance is the binding constraint, not return. The organising idea of his book: index investing hands you the index's volatility along with its returns, and a large drawdown makes people "tap out and sell and stop the pain," which stops the compounding. His answer is five asset classes equal-weighted — stocks, bonds, gold, cash, real estate. He does not claim it beats the index and says so out loud: "if you buy the S&P 500, you will have more money when you retire… That's if you can hang on."
The Awesome Portfolio, with the numbers he actually cites (2026-SEP-08, backtested to 1 Jan 2026). Sharpe 0.6 vs 0.7 for the S&P; standard deviation 8.22% vs 17.04%; five worst years −11.8% (2022), −9.16% (2008), −1.72% (1990), −1.51% (2018), −1.09% (2015) against the index's −36.55% in 2008; ~9% annualized. It is an explicit modification of Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio (25% each stocks/bonds/gold/cash) with real estate added — "the Sharpe ratio goes way up, the returns go up, the volatility comes down" — arrived at in a 2018 afternoon of emails with a subscriber before he knew Browne's version existed. The single named vulnerability is rapidly rising rates, which is exactly 2022.
The two original ideas: the life hedge and the cheer hedge. The life hedge — "the most important chapter of the book" — is that your career and your stock portfolio are procyclical together, so the layoff arrives with the portfolio down 30%; the fix is sleeves that do well when your life goes badly, and the maximum violation is employer stock (Lehman's 10% staff discount, and his own half million of restricted Lehman shares vaporised). The cheer hedge, credited to Brent Donnelly, makes elation the sell trigger: the moment you high-five or brag about a position is the moment to sell it. Underneath both sits infinity or zero — every stock eventually goes to zero, so a holding with no sell price is not a plan.
The rules that make it work are behavioural, not analytical. Rebalance once a year "religiously" — a date, not an optimum ("if I figured out you had to rebalance it once every 267 days… that makes things really complicated"), and 2025's 60% gold move is the cautionary case. Hold 20% cash not for yield but because "cash is an option" to buy something cheaper later, and because it removes forced selling. Leave crypto out altogether — not on valuation but because it is the sleeve you would check ten times a day; if you hold it, book it half gold, half stocks. And size from risk rather than to return: "think about what risks they want and then back out the returns."
Each sleeve is chosen by cost of carry, correlation and checkability — not by expected return (2026-SEP-06, the construction interview). Gold is the commodity sleeve with the storage bill removed: he tested commodity indices first and rejected them because "commodities have negative carry… in a futures curve you're looking at contango," while gold's carry "is negligible" and "gold mimics the commodity indices over time" — with a correlation to stocks of "zero. And if you go back 25 years ago, it was actually negative." Real estate is expressed with what you already own — home equity counts ("not ideal because it's one house in this idiosyncratic geographic area"), otherwise "you can simply buy a REIT ETF," with index data back to 1972 and both return and Sharpe rising when it is added. And the wrapper is part of the decision: the open-end fund's once-a-day NAV is a feature, since with an ETF "you can look at your phone every 5 seconds… and that's bad." He would build the whole thing in open-end funds but for the absence of a physical-gold one.
Sizing is a risk-of-ruin question, and drawdown is measured peak-to-trough. "Wealthy people think about the risk of ruin and middle class people don't" — the $300m Powerball winner buys T-bills rather than SPY even though the index is the higher-expected-value answer, while the 401(k) holder with $400k is trying to double and double again. He also insists on the honest denominator: the calendar year says the S&P fell 38% in 2008, but "the total drawdown from the summer of 2007 to March of 2009 was 57%," and 60/40 in fact beats the Awesome Portfolio by about 40bp. Vanguard's advisor alpha (a referee is worth ~3% a year) is acknowledged and then dismissed as insufficient: "even if you have an advisor, if you take a 50% drawdown, you're still going to be stressed." And the exclusion of crypto survives its own counter-evidence — adding Bitcoin "increased the Sharpe of the portfolio" in 2019 and he leaves it out anyway, because an 80-vol sleeve is the one you stare at.
Uneasy about the index itself, without forecasting it. Indexing was 2% of AUM in 1997 and is "close to 60%" now, ~45% of the S&P sits in the top 10 names, and "the S&P 500 has turned into really, it's like a tech index." He flags that "anytime concentration gets to these levels it's usually at or near a top" and then explicitly declines to time it. The tail he worries about is a liquidity stampede of the kind that produced a 35% drawdown in a month in the pandemic; the alternatives he names are the equal-weight S&P and mid-caps.
Idea flow before due diligence. "Invest then investigate" — take a starter position on a genuinely new theme the first time you hear it, then research, because the alternative is deferring the work until the move is gone. The rule produced Kite Pharma in 2016 and an early LLY GLP-1 position.
The product
What it is:The Daily Dirtnap — a paid daily macro newsletter written for individual investors and professionals, carrying his positioning views, charts and raw idea flow. Alongside it he co-hosts the Macro Dirt podcast with Tony Greer, where trade views are aired before or alongside the letter, and he has just published The Awesome Portfolio, a retail-facing book on portfolio construction. Separately he runs Jared Dillian Money, the newsletter company that publishes his retail-facing research and special reports (the Awesome Portfolio began as a 15-page PDF there, before the book). He also teaches finance at a university, which is where his retail-positioning and generational anecdotes come from. Grounded only in what he says on the 2026-SEP-03 Monetary Matters and 2026-SEP-08 Excess Returns appearances; it will be revised as later transcripts reveal more.
Offering
What it is
How he runs it
Seen in the index
The Daily Dirtnap (newsletter)
A daily subscription letter — macro views, charts he has built, and unresearched idea flow passed on deliberately early.
Publishes the chart and the reasoning the same day he builds it ("I put a chart in my newsletter today… the S&P relative to wages"), and flags new themes before doing the work, with the epistemic status stated: "I don't know anything about it. Literally I just saw a tweet and I put it in the newsletter… Research this and maybe it turns into something."
The baldness-drug theme that produced Farley's ABSI screen; the AI-bubble cover commentary Farley read in the letter.
Macro Dirt (podcast, with Tony Greer)
A co-hosted markets podcast where he airs directional and single-name views.
Views are dated and attributable: "on the Macro Dirt podcast that I do with Tony Greer, I talked about financials topping a couple weeks ago. I talked about how JP Morgan was a pretty good short."
JPM, and the wider topping-financials call (GS, MS, WFC).
The Awesome Portfolio (book)
A retail portfolio-construction book: five asset classes equal-weighted — stocks, bonds, gold, cash, real estate.
Argues from drawdown psychology rather than expected return, and states the counterfactual honestly: "if you buy the S&P 500, you will have more money when you retire than if you have the Awesome Portfolio. That's if you can hang on." Backtested to 1 Jan 2026 — Sharpe 0.6 vs 0.7, standard deviation 8.22% vs 17.04%, worst year −11.8% — and implemented by hand, since "one of these days there may be an investment vehicle where you can do it all in one click. That may happen. But until that happens…" it is a spreadsheet across every account, rebalanced annually.
Not a security call — it is the asset-allocation frame behind his own three-to-five-year bond hold. Its one security-level verdict is BTC: leave crypto out of the five sleeves entirely.
Jared Dillian Money (research company)
The retail-facing publishing arm — newsletters, research and standalone special reports.
Ideas are aired as a special report first and promoted only if they hold up: "before the book, there was a 15 page PDF on the Awesome Portfolio. And that's when I ran some of the numbers." Next book, Super Investors, is due 2027.
Where the allocation work lives, as distinct from the trading views in The Daily Dirtnap.
Long-horizon personal positioning, disclosed
He states his own book on air, with size and horizon.
"I personally have moved a huge portion of my money into bonds in the last month… I'll hold this for three to five years."
The long-duration Treasury call — deliberately not tabled as a ticker, since he names no vehicle.
How it serves retail investors
Idea flow arrives early and labelled. Subscribers get the theme the first time he sees it, with the research status stated rather than dressed up — the explicit purpose being to beat the "I'll research that later" failure that makes people miss the whole move.
A track record he is willing to be scored on. The GLP-1 call ("I made — you made a bunch of money for subscribers"), the Kite Pharma three-bagger, and the private-credit bearish call from two years earlier are all raised and checked on air rather than quietly retired.
The book answers the problem retail actually has. Not "what should I buy" but "what can I hold" — his whole argument is that the standard index-and-never-sell advice fails at the point where a drawdown makes someone sell, and that trading 1–2 points of return for half the volatility is the price of never reaching that point.
Positions come with size and horizon attached. He discloses that the bond trade is a large share of his own money held for three to five years, which is the information retail most often lacks when copying a public view.
The advice is scaled down to a first step, not a rebuild. For someone 80% in stocks and unsure how to start: "just sell something. Sell like 5%. Sell like 10%. See how it makes you feel." He is candid that the message is unwelcome right now — "this book is coming out at a very bad time… I could really use a crash on the launch date" — and that most people only learn it the hard way, which is the stated purpose of publishing it.
He revises in public. When Farley produced Vanda Research positioning data contradicting his retail-crowding anecdote, he took the correction immediately — "I like it. I can go with that" — and moved the crowding to institutions.
Transcripts
One dated page per appearance — each has its full stock table, talking points, and the saved transcript. Newest first.