Innovators
3 Curated Dialogues
David Hunter
Key Views & Dialogues
David Hunter on the S&P 500, Bonds, Gold & Oil | What Comes Next?
David Hunter targets S&P 10,000, NASDAQ 36,000 and roughly 30–40% further upside, with a parabolic final leg if his secular-bull thesis is right. He simultaneously expects unprecedented debt and derivatives leverage to drive a potential 80% global bust, while seeing lower oil and a bond-market bull move as key cycle pivots. The timing remains unresolved: he sees a very good chance of a bust next year, but expects oil to fall and gold and silver to reach 7,000 and 200 before then.
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- David Hunter remains very bullish: S&P 10,000, NASDAQ 36,000, Dow 70,000, Russell 4,000 and SMH 800—roughly 30–40% upside by his math. He says the 43-year secular bull became a 44-year bull in August and expects the final leg to be parabolic if his thesis is right.
- He still expects a global bust, with the broad market potentially falling as much as 80%. His core reason is unprecedented debt and derivatives leverage; he says there is a very good chance the bust arrives next year, though the timing keeps getting extended.
- Hunter is very bearish on oil: in Connor’s above-$90 scenario, he expects oil back into the 70s and 60s this year or in Q1, and into the 30s during the bust. He argues supply is larger than commonly assumed and demand falls as prices rise.
- He believes bonds are near a double bottom and rates a double top versus 2007, with a major bond-market bull move possible over the next 12–18 months. He expects inflation and GDP eventually to roll over and the Fed to fall behind in easing.
- He targets silver at 200 and gold at 7,000 over three to six months, while believing the recent lows near silver 55 and gold 4,000 may hold. He sees fearful, angry investors as potential fuel for the next move.
- His main market-top signal is all-in sentiment: institutions remain cautiously invested, while debt delinquencies and pressure on lower-income consumers are already building. He also sees widespread legalized gambling as a late-cycle warning.
- He sees an uphill midterm for Republicans but does not change his market target because of the election. Hunter claimed Mark Carney helped derail U.S.-Canada trade talks as part of a broader globalist agenda; Connor disagreed, saying capitalism and ordinary workers matter more and arguing Trump helped make Carney prime minister.
David Hunter: The Fed Just Hiked Rates: Here’s What You Need to Know | The Outlier Podcast
The 25bp hike was fully priced, but the hawkish presser briefly hit E-minis and small caps as oil topped $100 and diesel exceeded $6. Hunter sees a one-and-done move, rates near a three-year top, and December hike odds trending down. His melt-up targets are S&P 10,000, silver 200, and gold 7,000, with AI correction, oil, and midterms as risks.
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- 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.”
The melt-up goes parabolic — S&P 10,000, then an 80% bust
David Hunter sees the S&P entering a parabolic finale, targeting 10,000 from roughly 7,750 within 2-5 months as financials, materials, and metals outperform technology. He then forecasts an approximately 80% global bust driven by leverage, followed by delayed central-bank capitulation, higher inflation and rates, and a capital-preservation imperative, though his timing has repeatedly slipped and he concedes he could be wrong.
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- 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.