GeroDoc Goes Macro: My Influencer "Brain Trust" & Investing Playbook

What I've learned about money, markets, and myself after about 20+ years of being obsessive and autistic about investing and finance, in case anyone is interested

investing and finance in a chaotic world with hard assets

(Note, I am not offering any investment advice in any of what I’m discussing here. I’m not an investment advisor. I’m literally just some anonymous doctor. I’m just telling you how I thinking about money and investing).

So, as of this writing in late October of 2025 the world is in obviously an increasingly chaotic and fractured place sociopolitically and culturally - as I often rant and rave about over on the Elon site and occasionally opine on here.

I will be spending bit of time here talking about markets and finance, and my aim will be to give you a flavor of the things I’ve learned in my last two decades of putting money into financial assets - at times super speculative and heterodox vehicles (like cryptocurrency and “altcoins”) and on more than a few occasions, dabbling in questionable things like short term and leverage trading.

Early 2000s: Dot-com bubble burst. Then GFC.

About 20ish years ago I was just completing my residency and was able to start putting a little bit away into a 401K. It wasn’t much, but - it had the distinct benefit of being at or around the time the bottom was falling out of everything with the “dot-com” bust. While I was young and more or less in the midst of starting out and starting a family, in restrospect, I should have been plowing in a lot more.

At the time all I did was dollar-cost average into index funds, and put what I could into a Roth IRA. In hindsight, I benefited from market timing without even thinking of it, and via sheer luck - I happened to be starting the bulk of my investing during what turned out to be a generational (nominal) bottoming in asset markets.

In 2007, the Great Financial Crisis or GFC happened.

It seemed like the world was sent into chaos - banks were failing, home prices were cratering (no problem, we didn’t own one yet), and then, amazingly, the first episodes of a new, strange kind of financial engineering and wizardry began to be hatched out of Washington DC - the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” programs and a new, strange alphabet soup of fiscal stimulus programs and lending facilities (TARP, TALF, Capital Purchase Program, etc.), which was hatched, in essence, in response to another strange alphabet soup witch’s brew of financial engineering products that had apparenty caused the financial markets underpinning housing values to go kerfluey - like “Mortgage Backed Securities” (MBS), "Collateralized Debt Obligations” (CDOs), and “Credit Default Swaps” (CDS).

Our federal debt ballooned.

Former Treasury Secretaries Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson, with former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke pictured in the middle

As I’ve mentioned on X and elsewhere, I’ve long identified myself as a libertarian¹ in terms of my political philosophy.

As such - I tend to view political events (which I’ve always followed obsessively, as a child) through such a lens - and so given fact that the government became so involved in these market events and failures, and doing it with what looked to me like such textbook money printing (AKA quantitative easing), this got me concerned that inflation was right around the corner, so I started some small scale (what I could afford, anyways) hard asset purchases. I started investing in silver.

The 2011 Silver Bull Run

This turned out pretty nice for me and I ended up selling the bulk of my silver at or near the 50 dollar high - which turned out to be excellent timing (as silver then dropped and stayed range-bound around the 20-35 dollar range for the next approximately 15 years - but more on that later).

Peter Schiff - maybe wasn’t wrong - just wayyy too early?

What was more interesting was that in terms of my hyperinflation doom-and-glooming, I was wrong, like so many others.

Consumer price inflation didn’t go nuts, the dollar didn’t go to zero, and despite all of the “money printing” that took place, the predicted inflation turned out to be a nothing burger, which made noted gloom-and-doomers and gold bulls like Peter Schiff look a bit like a hysterical chicken little. At least for now.

2012 and on - Free Talk Live and Bitcoin

So, remember I was a libertarian?

I’ve always had a counter-cultural, if not downright anti-establishment streak in me. Hated corporate media. Although I still was listening to public radio at the time, I had already started to seek out “alternative media,” and I ended up listening to these whacky guys from the New Hampshire town of Keene.

This is where I first heard about “Bitcoin” and heard some ads for a service called “BitInstant,” where I could go through a strange, somewhat klunky process of dropping off money at a Western Union and then end up with Bitcoin sent to this thing called “Bitcoin address.” So, I started buying these Bitcoin things for about 10 dollars a pop… “just in case it caught on.”

Now - don’t get too excited. Yes, I kept buying, and somewhere around 2015 I watched my investment go to about 300 dollars - which was amazing. I thought this was a great lark, and ended up spending my small, two-figure sized hoard of Bitcoin on gambling sites, and buying things on the internet (like more silver coins, if you can believe that), and also lost my digital keys to another chunk of my stash. Sucks.

Then, as life got in the way at the time, I proceeded to forget all about it.

Fast forward to early 2017.

I suddenly noticed Bitcoin was heading to north of a thousand dollars a coin in early 2017… and seemed to be going further.

So, I started paying attention, and started quickly and steadily buying again, and ended up participating in the 2017 BTC bull run where it reached an all-time high of 20K per coin.

Made a tidy trading profit, but partially due to all of the “altcoin” trading I did (using Binance and Kucoin, back before they were regulated US entities) - my profits were a lot less than they could have been. I did a lot of short term trading - and buying a lot of very speculative investment vehicles.

I joined crypto trading groups.

I used leverage (bad idea). This is the idea of taking, say, 100 dollars and using it as collateral to borrow 1000 (which is 10x leverage). The only problem with this is it’s a way to get “rekt” fast if the asset moves against you - which is very easy to happen.

I bought speculative altcoins. I even joined a few “ICOs” (initial coin offerings) back when they were still gray-market legal for US normies like me.

I used to own a lot of Ethereum. I used up most of it to buy a ton of NFTs (AKA “non fungible tokens”) which are worthless now.

After the 2020 BTC bull run I started buying back into Bitcoin, and definitely continued to play with trading altcoins (what we would call “shitcoins”) but I made myself a rule - always DCA - always Dollar Cost Average into Bitcoin, and always stick what I bought into cold storage.

This has served me well.

2020 to Now - “Trading” over Long Time Frames, Macro Narratives, and a Very Nuanced Take on Inflation

These days, I’ve largely given up on day trading crypto or stocks. I hold a few altcoins, but I don’t really spend much time on them - I treat them like lottery tickets (there’s a remote chance that one of them might “moon” but I don’t count on any of that).

Mostly, what’s happened is I’ve discovered what I’m good at - and that’s voraciously consuming what Youtube and the podcast circuit can offer on macroeconomics and finance, and trying to understand as deeply as possible what I think is on tap over the next 10-15 years in markets, and using these insights to craft portfolio construction.

In other words - my time frame for “trading” has gotten longer and longer. What I’ve learned about myself is that I’m a shitty short term trader. I make bad decisions, I get impulsive and emotional. But when the time frames lengthen, my thinking becomes less emotional and more analytical, and much stronger.

My “Macro Influencers”

Brent Johnson

Brent is the “Dollar Milkshake” guy - with his signature theory being the prediction that a crisis in global sovereign debt will force capital not out of the US dollar, but into it (albeit temporarily). This dynamic - along with higher rates - he believes ultimately will break the global system and push both sovereign and private actors into gold, commodities, and hard assets as trust in fiat collapses.

He maintains the US will “fail last, not first,” and the key aspect of his theory is that the dollar will die not due to it’s value going to zero, but in a veritable supernova of dollar strength causes cascading crises and asset liquidations worldwide, ultimately driving both central banks and investors to seek refuge in gold and hard assets, as the monetary system rebalances toward tangible value.

Brent is the kind of mature, lateral thinking macro analyst you need to consume to understand why the 2007 orgy of Fed quantitative easing and fiscal largesse did not, in fact, end with the dollar dying. Brent is particularly bullish, ultimately, on gold and silver, dollar-denominated US equities, and commodities / energy.

For a good primer as to his theory - watch this:

Luke Gromen
Another major, major influencer of mine who I rarely miss updates from is the very bald and endearingly nerdy midwesterner and founder of Forest for the Trees (FFTT), Luke Gromen. Luke is known for his “gradually then suddenly” theory of de-dollarization and regime shift. He excels at extremely detailed and cerebral takes on macro and finance where he is able to identify “bottlenecks” in financial markets and monetary plumbing that followers can learn about and take advantage of in their investment portfolios.

Luke has long forecasted the transition of global reserves out of US Treasuries and into gold and other hard assets, arguing that US fiscal imbalances and geopolitical developments will increasingly force capital into tangible resources, and in the case of gold, will likely need to be valued significantly higher in nominal dollar terms in the near future simply as a matter of sovereign monetary math.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, will likely serve a role not unlike “digital gold” but also as a “liquidity sink” in the coming years, tied to the rollout of USD stablecoins (which both Luke Gromen and Brent Johnson are currently fully cognizant of). Luke is particularly bullish on gold, BTC, commodities and infrastructure assets (with a special eye towards electrical infrastructure) in the coming years.

A very recent update from Mr. Gromen:

Lyn Alden
Lyn Alden is great - originally trained as an engineer, steeped in math and systems theory she now studies liquidity cycles, credit mechanics, and the dynamics of monetary regime change, and offers a newsletter and other consulting services at Lyn Alden Financial.

I would say that probably she and Luke Gromen are most closely related to how they think and reason through macroeconomic first principles but she distinguished herself from Luke and Brent by virtue of her agnosticism: she doesn’t belong to a “camp.”

She’s not inherently pro-dollar or anti-dollar, nor is she exclusively bullish on gold, crypto, or equities, and instead is just about analytically dissecting the transition points that occur when cycles mature, liquidity flips, or monetary authorities adjust course. Lyn is much more comfortable issuing “conditional calls,” adjusting her stance as monetary, fiscal, and geopolitical data emerges, and unlike both Gromen and Johnson, is more circumspect about giving clear calls as to the complexion US and world monetary / economic endgame, as well as making any bold calls as to timing.

One thing that Lyn Alden talks about frequently in her interviews is this idea of “fiscal dominance” - that in the world of critically high sovereign debt that we exist in now, typical signals we might receive from the Federal Reserve in the form of interest rate policy now have much less value for investors in terms of providing guidance for portfolio allocation, and instead we need to look to the fiscal authorities - in other words, political actors (like Congress, the President, etc.) and geopolitical events have far more import now than before - which means we must all start marrying political and geopolitical analysis into our portfolio design.

Lyn tends to be bullish on precious metals (gold and silver), Bitcoin, and commodities including energy. A very recent update from Ms. Alden:

Tom Luongo

Speaking of fiscal dominance and the importance of political and geopolitical analysis to in investment portfolio design, I want to introduce Tom Luongo - a former research chemist and now macro analyst, he publishes the Gold Goats ‘n Guns newsletter and has established himself as a leading voice in the tactical hard asset investing space.

Delivered in a characteristically loudmouthed Italian manner, Tom’s main value proposition are in his fearlessly strident analyses of gold, silver, and other markets and financial sectors as arenas for financial and geopolitical warfare. Long having travelled in the Austrian economics circles, as well as being an obsessive gamer, Tom is exceedingly skilled at reading the fingerprints and proverbial ‘tea leaves’ in media reports and market moves to discern where power players and big money are moving behind the scenes, and how it fits into the rapidly-changing and often volatile geopolitical environment.

While his unapologetically “America First” pro-Trumpism may be off-putting to many who listen to him, I have always been extremely impressed with Tom as being dedicated to objective analysis with an eye towards financially actionable conclusions - his unique combined outlook marrying markets and geopolitics has helped to validate my core, high-conviction allocation strategy emphasizing hard assets and nimble positioning (Full disclosure - I subscribe to Tom’s Patreon service - he also offers a higher-tier Newsletter service, which I do not subscribe to). Here is a recent example of Tom in interview format:

My Portfolio

I have three main investing “pots.” The first is my main, tax-advantaged portfolio, where I hold a basket of index and mutual funds. The second is my Roth IRA, and the third is my my pile of “off-grid” hard assets, mainly gold, silver, and real estate (which includes my primary residence).

Currently - after several years of being 100% allocated, I am now in about 20% cash equivalents in my “paper” portfolio, which I am comfortable with given they are for the first time in many, many years earning a reasonable rate of return at just over 4%.

Overall, it’s best to describe my investment portfolio as a “barbell” - because it places most of its weight at the two extremes, rather than the middle, like the weighted ends of a physical barbell. In investment parlance, a barbell approach typically balances assets that are very defensive and liquid (such as cash, ultra-safe government securities, and guaranteed income) on one end, with hard, volatile, high-upside assets (like gold, silver, critical minerals, and sometimes targeted equities or crypto) on the other.

In my case, the ‘barbell’ is made up of:

• Highly Defensive Assets: Interest-earning cash and real estate equity. These provide psychological security, optionality, and a buffer against market shocks.

• Conviction & Hard Asset Positions: Physical gold, silver, and Bitcoin, along with tactical investments in hard-asset funds, miners, and select resource equities in my Roth IRA and in my tax-advantaged retirement accounts. These are designed to capture outsized returns from regime change, inflation, or currency devaluation risks.

I intentionally leave the ‘middle’ of the barbell, which would typically be reserved for conventional “60/40” (stocks / bonds) arrangement, and would include things like speculative stocks (e.g., AI) or broad market equities, and crowded trade narratives - very light. I also hold no long dated bonds of any kind in my long term portfolio (as one of the key precepts of my influencer ‘brain trust’ is that financial repression and negative real yields is a mathematical necessity going forward by issuers).

Some Caveats

There’s a few obvious ones.

First, I could be wrong thematically and narratively - and over the coming years the United States could start really reigning in its finances, start becoming fiscally responsible, and debt to growth could finally start getting in line with each other, which would definitely invalidate a variety of the major narratives that underpin my investment theses. This seems unlikely.

Second, I could be really off on timing. While this is considerably less cataclysmic than the above, I am in my 50s and I certainly do plan on trying to attempt something resembling a traditional retirement someday, say, 10-15 years from now. What that means is if a major monetary / fiscal ‘regime change’ is actually 20, 30, 40 or more years off (it’s possible), the growth in my portfolio may be less than ideal and I may miss out on other investment narratives that play out in the interim.

Third, and this could certainly be problematic - I have a portfolio that requires some level of active management, and also innately holds several large positions (like Bitcoin) that are notoriously volatile. The problem here is psychological - one thing I’m doing by ‘going it alone’ with investment management (I do not have a personal financial advisor, at least yet), is that I’m a bit like a lawyer representing himself, or a doctor treating himself - for many it’s hard to treat ones own investments with the kind of cool objectivity and calm that a professional may be able, due to ‘professional distance.’ When my Bitcoin position, or my hard assets positions wildly swing, it can be very easy for someone in my position to panic sell, or overtrade.

This requires a level of zen and discipline that isn’t particularly common for many investors, from what I understand, and requires some awareness of the pitfalls in investing that are studied in the world of behavioral finance. The way I manage these psychological pitfalls is by being rules based, having a long-term focus (e.g., there’s a direct correlation between how stupid I am with money and assets the shorter term my investment horizon becomes), and never investing outside of my zone of comfort - for example, I never trade in individual equities, instead I prefer thematic ETFs and tailored, high-quality, low-fee mutual funds.

In Closing

This isn’t the first time I’ve posted about finance, but I thought I’d share my thoughts with you guys to see if any of this was helpful to any of you. Feel free to comment, and ask questions. I love talking finance, macro and such and would appreciate conversation!

1. Libertarians, of course, are often associated with school of heterodox economics called the Austrian School, and as such and as such, tend to interpret all economic and market phenomena through the lens of incentives - purposeful human action (what they call ‘praxeology’) believing that social order arises not from imposed design but from the countless acts of individuals pursuing their own ends.