Speculation Run Amok: Complacency, Then Crisis – Peak Prosperity

Summary

• European Energy: Discussion centered on Gazprom pipeline risks, Russian LNG workarounds, and accelerating EU gas storage draws, threatening Germany’s industrial competitiveness.
• Energy Economics: Intermittent wind/solar output and anti-nuclear policy were flagged as structural headwinds, reinforcing higher natural gas reliance and industrial contraction in Germany.
• U.S. Treasuries: Janet Yellen’s short-term issuance strategy, massive weekly bill auctions, and soaring interest outlays were highlighted as a feedback loop that inflates debt service and liquidity.
• Market Sentiment: Record retail bullishness and heavy small-spec positioning contrast with insider selling, raising the risk of a rug pull scenario engineered by institutions.
• Valuation Risks: Extremes in Wilshire-to-GDP and prolonged U.S. outperformance versus global equities suggest elevated downside risk if fundamentals reassert.
• Emerging Markets: As Western energy costs rise, BRICS/East may absorb industrial production, implying potential opportunities outside expensive U.S. markets.
• Inflation Cycle: A 1970s-style inflation pattern could re-emerge, with the possibility of another inflationary burst impacting policy and asset pricing.
• Risk Management: Emphasis on disciplined, rules-based strategies to trim equity exposure at extremes, preserve capital, and maintain liquidity for future opportunities.

Transcript

nothing in this program should be considered investment advice it is for educational purposes only please hit pause and read this disclaimer in full you've got to have a strategy to invest and you have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of that strategy because you have to understand the consequences of [Music] failure well hello everyone and welcome to this edition of Finance University I'm your host Chris Martinson and today I'm back with Paul ker of ker wealth management hey Paul Happy Thanksgiving week what let's I can't wait to get into this with you today me either Happy Thanksgiving week to you and all the listeners out there I just pray God's blessing over the fellowship uh with family this week I I love getting together for Thanksgiving me too me too uh kind of Darker circumstances you know across the world right now so a couple things I want to talk about today one is a big big move that looks like Europe's gas is going to get a lot more expensive that has some big implications for industry over there obviously Germany already suffering a lot under uh its um well we'll talk about all of that and just get into the details but then second as well we see that Janet Yellen is stepping down I'd like to talk about the mess I think she's left behind and then wow I have never seen this level of retail bullishness in stocks and I want to talk with you about what that maybe means cuz sometimes that means a rug pull is about to come so um does that all sound okay for today that sounds great to me that's a lot in itself to cover it is it is so um let's start with the Europe um situation you know as we I've been tracking that that uh there's all these escalations and I think Americans and maybe westerners in general very much uh uh undernourished by the media in terms of really explaining what's going on what the potential risks are you know I'm trying to imagine back in the 60s Walter kronite certainly we would be hearing about a major world leader like Putin changing their nuclear posture and doing stuff that would at least be talked about um and it's not really being talked about all that much but it's led to this now gazprom is the Giant gas industry in Russia that takes the stuff that's west of the eurals and uh puts it in pipelines and delivers it to Europe Europe's been a huge huge uh Market in fact it's really the only market for this gas that's coming out of here and now it looks like they're talking about in 2025 no more Transit of gas to Ukraine that's going to take out another I don't know 10 11% of European gas um this is a big deal that's a lot as as as inelastic as the supply um and demand equation is for oil and gas that's incredible yeah look at this I mean this is from anas um alhaji great stuff here uh on the energy side I go to him on Twitter all the time figure this stuff out so he's posting here well let's really look at where eu's natural gas comes from this is important because as as uh you know Germany is the economic heart of Europe and it is an industrial Beating Heart and of course this is a global economy so if it costs you 10 15 20% more to produce your stuff than your competitors because they have cheaper access to energy well those Industries are just not competitive um they and they're out and so we've been seeing this already as a as a big problem and here we see Russia this is the part that would be at risk here it's about 10.9% on this this is as of October 2024 and then there's this Russian LNG which also maybe this gets at risk but there's some Russian gas that's kind of hidden in here too um I think up in this purple section cuz they they put some LG on tankers Paul it goes to another country and then T gets re flagged and goes to Europe um so that's how they get around some of these sanctions I think but this is this is I know it doesn't sound like a lot oh well they'll just find something to do with their 10.9% that's not coming through gazprom now it's actually not that easy these are huge volumes big giant contracts it's hard to figure out how to replace all that and fascinatingly the eu's YULA Van Der liing which how I call her she said oh this will be good this is actually going to make our gas cheaper puzzled marks coming out of everybody's head who listens to that who knows the energy markets I don't understand how that uh statement can even be said but doesn't matter um that's how politicians go I think this could be trouble uh uh for the teetering tottering remnants of of Industry over there so basic economics supply and demand rules everything so if you have a consistent Demand with the reduction in Supply prices go up so Chris where where are they going to replace that from because because they've been destroying nuclear power in Europe correct um they they're completely against the development of any fossil fuels whatsoever so an an electric electrical um replacement is not there from a technological standpoint yet so where are they going to replace the supply they don't really have a lot of options at this point so so just this past week um Germany had uh well Europe had a big giant problem because the it was kind of Cloudy and calm so their wind and solar just wasn't uh fit for purpose at that point and so it turned out in November Europe's going to have the fastest natural gas draws since it's been measured um and so this is the biggest down withdrawal from natural gas storage and it's just because it was just you know it was just a little it was just uh little calm and cloudy so so they're already at a place Paul right now where um let me see here you can see here this is the actual gas storage levels in white and this is the fiveyear average so it's they're below their fiveyear average um and it's not a crisis but they're definitely withdrawing it at a super fast pace um and now they're going to have to replace it from some other area and by the away before somebody says great the US will sell a lot of LNG um let me see here so this is starting in 1970s you can see this is the United States here started its fracking started a lot of dry gas production coming up here through this whole period this huge explosion with that peran drill out that happened here but what's important to note is that um this is already all spoken for there's not like we don't have extra natural gas just sort of kicking around like 100% of that and a lot of that's going to LNG now which is fine but the question is could we get 10% more and I would just point out that it really hasn't gone up at all in the past year or so and the price is not constructive right now to get a lot more out of the ground because well it's kind of too cheap here in the US so I don't know that the us is going to be a good source going forward maybe but um there's a chance here that we're going to see actually a stagnant us dry gas production for a while just because of prices so I don't know who Europe's planning on getting all that gas from but for Ursula to say oh this will be good this will make gas cheaper supply and demand are they so you had a chart that you flipped through there German industrial production so what's the Hope let's just let's just destroy the economy to the point that that the demand is reduced for the supply that's coming in is that I mean what other alter they have this this is a terrifying chart this is this I mean for from a economic standpoint I mean this this is just a steady erosion this is the big down let go up a little bit this is co but you can see the trend was already in play and this just kept the trend going and it's actually been accelerating a little bit of late and this is industrial production also Services Paul uh Germany is in contraction right now it's in uh services and industrial production both so all signs of a recession and you can see there around 100 what that was at the peak and 07 and it stayed around 100 say 90 is that 95 to 100 from 14 all the way out yep so so industrial production is the lowest that it's been since what the recession that we were coming out of in 03 because that starts in 04 08 and then the shutdown in 2020 yeah so it's basically you know excluding the the the gyration it's basically back to where it was in 2006 yeah and falling and it's going to fall faster with any dimition of of energy because energy is the economy you know I talk about this a lot right it's not just okay the price how much expensive that's the economic side of it but basically if you want to track how much industrial production an economy has you can just look at the chart of how much energy it's consuming and so price tends to make you consume less of it so that just we focus on the price a lot and maybe German industry isn't comptitive but it's very simple how many quadrillion BTUs of energy are you produc consuming and that stuff goes into things right it gets turned into aluminum engine blocks and borosilicate glass tubes and whatever so yeah this is uh the the energy policies in particular the green energy policies have been a complete disaster for this and they have tons of data for it and they can't seem to get their minds around that politically yet in Germany uh they still have leaders who are all about well you know we have to have you know more green energy AC yeah oh wait let me let me pull this up too because this has happened now and on top of this these are job losses this year and to this this is an older list we have to now include 11,000 jobs lost at thyson crup which is a steel manufacturer so and they said they're not going to be bringing those jobs back to at least 2030 and I watched a German Finance Minister Paul get on TV and and say these words he said well but that's because we're producing green steel which is more expensive So eventually the world will come around and they will want our green steel you know that's the job that's the idea that that doesn't make sense to me at all so intellectual but completely void of any wisdom and common sense at all yeah uh no what's going to happen is you're going to lose your Steel Industries and then uh by the time the world may want green steel at some point which I think we could debate uh is not actually a viable concept but assuming even you got to that point Paul then um you're not going to have a steel industry there won't be the people there who know how to do that because you will have lost it all in the meantime um and further production and further economic power is going to shift from the West to the bricks and and East because there's there's going to be a void in and the demand that's out there and somebody's going to step in to fill that so it's just cutting the industrial base of of those countries and forever weakening the country well this this speaks to the Paul to the idea of the power of a bad idea yeah they're committing economic suicide right now gleefully right they're people actively they they know not what they do but uh the damage is real when these industries leave Paul they don't come back you know it was very instructive on me when I was a young man I I I did a lot of driving around I liked my road trips and we would go to climbing areas and one of the things that we did was we would drive through parts of Pennsylvania to get down to the New River Gorge in West Virginia beautiful beautiful Cliffs but when you drive through a place like Scranton Pennsylvania or or an old coal town in West Virginia when that economic engine left like 150 years later that is still a destroyed town right or an old miltown in Massachusetts right some of them are revitalizing a little bit now but basically the point here is that when that when when that main Beating Heart leaves it's a it's a many many decade recovery process and as easy it is to transport around the world at this point as small as the world's becoming you know th those jobs may not ever come back it reminds me when we were in uh Ireland back in August you've got all of these old castles that are standing everywhere they're not function to live in and I know this is a completely different um uh the economics and Society changed but all I could think of is when you drive all over the country and the places that I've been in that used to be major manufacturing bases you've got these these old money makers like the infrastructure that used to be the money makers for the US that have been shipped somewhere else and we've transitioned so far into a retail economy but from a long-term standpoint you have to produce more than you consume so they're they're putting themselves in a position to where somebody else is going to be doing the production they're going to have to be doing the consumption and they're going to be at the mercy of someone else and and and then they're draining their economic power instead of building that economic power well it is it is and it's just you know economics is very simple it's very simple whether you're a household a person and individual a company a town either you have more inputs than outputs or you have more outputs than inputs right you're either earning more than you're spending or you're spending more than you're earning one of those things as Charles Dickens said is happiness the other is misery uh and and it's just it's really not that hard so this idea that you can just become a consumptive economy and perpetually consume more than you produce is just a fiction it breaks eventually that's what the United States has been doing for long time our trade deficit Paul if it was a country would be the 19th largest economy in the world it's like 8900 billion doll a year of just it's unbelievable you know and we just like oh well we'll just do that forever well I think the Cycles are longer at the government level but most people that have been in the finance business really understands and we can all see it in family histories if we talk wealth rarely lasts more than three generations it it just typically does it's highly unusual that it goes beyond that third generation and what I have seen typically is you've got the original uh founder of the wealth they were humble they started out working hard they outworked their peers there was a little bit of luck involved but they saved more than they spent because it was the the challenge of the money was a byproduct of the Excellence of what they do okay so then typically you got the kid of that generation that learns the work ethic but it's like you know Dad could afford dad and mom could have afforded to do more for me and they didn't so I want to do better for my kids and then ultimately by that third or fourth generation you've got kids that are so spoiled and they have such nice things without having to work now it's their expectation of having that so they've learned how to spend they've learned how to consume but they Le haven't learned how to produce and and it's really rare like I mean I I have seen third Generations just of wealth absolutely blow through everything because of the complacency and the lack of the ability a work ethic and the character to save and and you know they get the perception of who they are by the things they have not the things they produce or the impact they make in society so you look at governments and and I think is is I don't know what that cycle would be you know Strauss and how talks about the fourth turning I think that's really where it comes about is um um I think those Cycles are longer but it's the same cycle that that goes through on a smaller level that we can all relate to with family stories CU everybody out there knows some somebody who inherited a massive amount of wealth and then just foolishly excuse my language pissed it all away yeah so Paul I want to turn to something very quick which is you know we see these losses here in jobs and obviously you know we've seen the data the German economy is Contracting it's beating heart is being ripped out right now in terms of its its energy uh intensive Industries job losses are very rare thing I mean here in the United States like oh yeah thousands of people lose their jobs but but it's a different thing in Germany that it's got a very expensive sort of a regulatory cultural cost to it and despite all of that this is the German stock market from the lows in late October early November of 2023 and it's just done nothing but gone up the whole way across I I do want to talk about um how I think we're we're at risk right now for this just doesn't make any sense to me I don't I don't for the life of me this is one of these moments Paul I've been I've had several I'm old enough with the gray hair I saw 2000 I saw 2007 I feel like I'm in one of these wly E coyote moments where I'm like what is this Market thinking right given that backdrop of the things we've just talked about and and so um for everybody listening if you are at all concerned about this you really probably should talk with Paul and his team so go to Peak financi investing.com fill out a simple form and start the conversation because Paul you run something called a risk managed portfolio approach can you just take people through that very quickly and why it's important in a time like this yes so so what what our industry is consumed by now is modern portfolio Theory and and and it's Bas you've basically been forced into modern portfolio Theory and it's really easy you can have tons of clients play golf all the time with them and and you know just trust the markets trust everybody else the passive investing and you know advisors end up being relationship Builders more than they do actual advisors and then implementing the money management so I started my career in the late 1990s and and there were these wiser you know cynical advisors that were like this is not going to end well but they were so frustrated because they've been warning people for 3 or 4 years some of them you know didn't have tools to help them play the game by the rules that are forced upon them and then others had these tools so essentially what we do is we recognize both the fundamentals because history is a great educator and and it'll help the simple to foresee danger and hide themselves like Proverbs said uh excuse me help the wise foresee danger while the simple pass oner a judge for it so you have to First Look at fundamentals and what I can tell you Buffett indicator all the indicators that are out there this is the most on the major on a lot of the indicators and right at the most expensive markets that we've had throughout history only on par with n uh 1929 the year 2000 2007 wasn't that expensive that was a little bit different issue but it was still an expensive market and then 2022 before we had that 20% correction and then this psychology took over so what our job to do is first make sure you're on the right PL uh right path okay do the things that you can do and control the things that you control that's why we do the planning with clients when we start then once we get the the appropriate portfolio to help those clients be the most successful now it's playing the game by the rules that are forced upon us because you got one of two options you can be passive which is which is what's taken over the industry and that works really good when the market is undervalued or fairly valued because typically you don't have these major calamities when the Market's undervalued because it's undervalued after these major calamities right but then you get into situations where this Market is ridiculously detached from reality but there's momentum behind it and it's impossible to pick the top you don't know how long that momentum is going to carry even uh um it wasn't Jesse limore maybe it was je Jesse Livermore I believe it was that that first came out and said the market can stay irrational longer than and you can stay solvent so he learned that by shorting the market the market kept running in 1929 but he was a legendary Trader great book reminiscence of a stock operator if you ever want to read it um but that's our job so there are times where we have to manage risk because what are the consequences of failure and here here's the point I tell clients all the time you've got to have a strategy to invest and you have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of that strategy because you have to understand the consequences of failure so so Chris I don't think I've shared this analogy here but let's say somebody offered me a million dollars to play Russian Roulette and I spend that it's all statistics right so you spend that horrible analogy but this is this is a really good teaching tool you stick that to your head and you pull the trigger well it's statistically possible that I could pull that trigger 50 times and make 50 million now what do you think the the fin IAL bubble media would do if I pulled that trigger 50 times and I was worth 50 million now all of a sudden they'd be wanting me to write a book I figured out how to na you know play Russian Roulette you can make all this money too but what good is playing Russian roulette if you've accumulated 50 million and you pull that trigger and somebody else gets to spend it so what we have to do is help clients understand what are the consequences of failure and then Implement strategies to keep that failure from why wiping them out because here's the thing that I've seen I saw people going into retirement in the year 2000 and the stock market the S&P 500 is a representative the of the US market since 1980 it averaged I think it was around some let's say some somewhere between 16 and 19% a year I know in the 1990s it was 19% a year and I met a guy that's like yeah my adviser told me I could live off 10% of my income well the market went side uh 10% of my assets so the market went sideways for the next 14 years the guy was out of money he was retired had to upend his entire life I saw the same thing happen in 2007 and 2008 so so what what we implemented is like look there was all kinds of individuals throughout history who had risk managed strategies in place now risk manag means it's not a light switch but let's say we're in 100% Equity portfolio if the Market's really overvalued then your stops and your exit has to be real close and so what if you miss a little bit of opportunity in the short run because missed opportunity is a lot easier to make up for than lost Capital because if you lose 50% and this is a market where from a historical valuation unless all of history doesn't matter unless all of what what has been taught in the finance education programs throughout history that all has to be be completely untrue in a completely new era right what they say back in 1929 it's a new uh it's a new Plateau High Plateau permanently High Plateau yeah in 1999 it was the new economy stupid right you know they were making fun of Warren Buffett because he wasn't uh participating in all the tech stocks well Buffett happens to be on the largest pile of cash that he's ever had right now he didn't stand the test of time by being an idiot he's got a strategy so we have a strategy in place that's not perfect it's not going to pick the top it's not going to pick at the bottom but it's designed to lower that risk so if you have a portfolio if this if this isn't different this time okay maybe it's two more years maybe it's two more months maybe it's six more months we don't know but there are always warnings there's always trimers under the surface of the market there's always indication that risk is high and if you can take that risk if it's appropriate from 100% portfolio maybe down to 50 equities and you got 50 in something that's that's safe and guarant gued and protected or maybe your zero% exposure to equities first and foremost you're protecting that capital and the first thing we we want to do is we want to be investors we don't want to be speculators and the only way that you're in a position to take advantage is if you have Capital to reinvest once there's blood in the streets so that's our whole that's a long-winded answer that's philosophy behind what we do to help people stay the course and more than anything the worst thing you can do is sell if you're going to be a passive investor and the Market's down 50% so every strategy you're in has a strength and weakness and you have to be prepared for it well I got to talk about these risks because the this is It's never different this time right PA no economics is simple more in than is going out right it there has to be a stocks they get decoupled in people's thought processes because they just put them out there as prices but they have to have a fundamental pinning at some point so that's what they've tried to convince me of I think which is a sin which is oh fundamentals don't matter anymore what matters is the fed's going to bail this out or somehow stock prices always go up and they get you conditioned for that but let's talk about the actual risks again from Sven Henrik Northman Trader love following his stuff on Twitter it said fed look how restrictive our policy is right and you mentioned two dates 2000 there was this huge draw down here but this is looking at the value total value how much if you had to buy all the stocks what are they worth in trillions and then that's the whe share of 5,000 right so that's that's the whole universe of all the stocks pretty much and divided by GDP right so here we see that in 2000 they hit this ungodly level of 140% they were worth 140% of the total underlying GDP but you can see the mean is actually cranking out down here at about 80% over time over a very very long period of time well then the FED got in and got real interventionists and gave us our 1% blowout rates under banki and brought us to our 2007 Peak we had this big draw down now this is what you're talking about as people sold out down here some of them had to come out of retirement they saw their dreams really dented we saw people suddenly realized they had to work for another decade that they hadn't planned on like these are real serious impacts and then we got the great financial crisis in the FED free out and this is when they entered this whole policy which I think we're going to look back on and say was one of the dumbest policies ever under Bernan and then yelen and now J pal where they've cranked this up where we've hit this unbelievable amount here we had this little pullback in in for 2020 they really freaked out and now we're at 200% two 100% ratio of stocks to the economy that sits under them they're worth twice as much as the economy itself this is simple economics to me Paul this this just doesn't pencil out this just doesn't make any sense unless something's changed that I don't get some fundamental un something about economics has just been reinvented and they forgot to tell us what that is I I don't believe so Chris I believe this is a super cycle is what it is and I believe it's it's it's a super cycle of foolishness so there's there's a scripture in the Bible and I can't I know the scripture but I can't remember the exact location but it's there's a way that seems right to a man and in the end it leads to death okay so we have the 2000 crisis we have the 2008 crisis bernanke's absolutely terrified you know he's supposed to be fed chairman banki at the time supposed to be a expert on the Great Depression all they needed to do was was print money and keep it from happening so what did we do on the other side qe1 Q Q2 well operation twist qe1 Q2 qe3 flood the money uh the economy with money and hopefully we papered this over well what this has done is this is fueled speculation so we've had all of these bubbles throughout history the south sea bubble the Tulip bubble they're all different but the one thing is human psychology goes with it for all of the intellectual power we have for all of the information we have at our fingertips wisdom is still the most important thing and we're still void of that so I remember the first time I read the Bible in in front to back you know you had these Cycles to where the the Israelites were would would seek God they'd seek truth they' they would they would love what was important they would love truth and foundation and wisdom and then the wealth that came along after that and then they would collapse so this is cycles that we've seen through economies throughout history and I believe this is a super cycle of foolishness and we have so much information that we're flooded with today and and I believe the demoralization of all this money printing I believe that that the asset inflation that has come uh to the holders of assets uh right now has locked out the economy the younger investors are the younger parts of our our um Generations those under the age of 35 you know can't afford houses the image of what they expect the economy to be is not relating down to them so they either turn to speculation and they've been rewarded because of all this money printing because it's rewarded speculation or they're turning into to demoralization which is leading to drugs and suicide so you know this is a distorted economy because of all of the foolishness of what what our government leaders have done and we're you know I think I think America has a awakened to that at this point or at least a large majority but but I don't think that we've suffered the pain yet but if we choose the right path that pain will be mitigated compared to what it otherwise would be so if we're looking for the truth and we're looking for the wise path and we're taking each step with fear and trembling we might stumble but we won't absolutely collapse but and and that's what you're warning people to do and that's what we try to do to people right if if the market goes down 60 or 70% and God forbid we had another Great Depression everybody's going to be scarred by that but those who are wise and have a risk-managed approach might stumble a little bit you might lose a little bit but you're not going to be wiped out because you're prepared for what's coming so so the speculation that I'm seeing 90% of the investors out there 95% my opinion are speculators and they don't even know it Chris they're speculators because they don't understand his history of investing they don't even know what fundamentals mean because I had a conversation with with somebody who's been in the business a long time and and we had some younger investors and money managers that were in there that started around 2011 and 12 and and I was trying to warn like look at fundamentals these matter and they're like look I've been doing this for 14 years and it hasn't mattered so far so why do you think it's going to matter in the next 10 or 15 years I mean that's the attitude that's out there and those are the ones that are running the mutual funds now because if you if you have if you were managing money in 2000 or 2008 quite frankly you're handicapped so so it's those speculators that are in there because they fully believe that because it's not experienced in their 14 years of their career that it's not going to happen in their life well that I mean that's been true though right I mean this is it their whole 14 years has just been nothing but a wall of Central Bank Printing and and to really put this in perspective um this is you know US Stocks compared to the rest of the world let me move this over so we can see all of that this is astonishing to me right this comes to BFA Global Research US versus global uh equities right relative performance I mean this is this is the the boundary level here and something really happened here again this is back to the great financial crisis a the great financial crisis shouldn't happened in the first place right because that was it happened because Ben banki did something monumentally foolish which was he thought he could Jam the rate of interest way below what the market needed for remember this I mean I'm old enough to remember this yield seeking Behavior right people didn't know what to do with their money because you're getting 0% on your savings and you know you needed you had I don't know you were a pension fund you had a 75e horizon you had fiduciary responsibilities you're retiree you needed yield but there was Zero because Ben said in His Infinite Wisdom how's zero sound yeah well that's terrible right remember in 2019 right here at the at this moment right here we had $19 trillion of negative yielding sovereign debt in the world what even was that right what was that well that was a massive experiment it led to this huge explosion right here and now this is where we're at and everybody's just sort of said Shrugged and said well that I guess that's how the world works works now mhm I don't think that's how the world works now it's just if you don't look at this chart and realize you know maybe I ought to like be controlling my risk a little uh well and not you're paying attention what I see in that chart as well Chris is that's US Stocks versus the rest of the world so that that's what's bizarre about the environment that we're in when you take us stocks and and most western stocks they're ridiculously overpriced that shows right there so the herd around the world has said there's no alternative we got to chase the US they're chasing the popular things right everybody wants to be that's those fads so yeah there's tons of danger for uh in in the places that are detached from historical reality but that also means there's incredible opportunities in other areas and there's going to T come a time when you're ridiculously rewarded for for participating there so I don't think the system's going to end I think this is a cycle that we've been going through and there's going to be extreme pain on the other side and there's going to be generations of individuals that are going to change their behavior um a generation will change their behavior following the one that suffers the pain of the the speculation that's our whole job is to get people through this and to discover the wise path and quite frankly we all know looking back at our lives and other people's lives the path Less Traveled is the one that leads to the the greatest reward and and it's a lonely path sometimes there's a time to be with the herd and there's a time to be at the edge of the herd ready to Dart in another path and this is one of those periods where you got to stay close to the exit because when this thing does come apart um it's going to be painful but at the same time to have some rules that can have you play the game have a strategy that allows you to play the game by the rules that are forced upon you in a wise manner also keeps you from making a big mistake because if you've been sitting you know just think of the pain and this is what I'm seeing take place right now Chris there are people who who are wise enough to understand we were detached from reality in 20156 it's like wow we can't cross any other boundaries so they're sitting defensive and here we are nine years later and and that pain of of missing opportunity is wearing really hard on people and I think with this especially a lot of those that have thought deeply about things and they try to love the truth are so euphoric that Trump has won in a clear you know populist vote even the people that voted against him are excited about what he's potentially trying to pull off but now that hope and the interim period is pulling people off the sidelines and they're like hey you know he's going to kick this can down the road a lot longer and he I believe I believe that if he can Implement these things there's going to be tons of Hope but I don't know that the markets are going to be as strong as what most people expect because right now everybody's pretty much all in I mean it it sucks so many people off the sidelines that the the boat is tilt it's more than that I mean you have the appropriate number of gray hairs I mean we've seen this before so I have a you mentioned rules I have a rule and it comes from watching Wolf of Wall Street and there's this Famous Lunch scene between Matthew MCC and Leonardo DiCaprio right and Matthew's um trying to explain how Wall Street actually works right he's drinking Martini he's doing coke you know and all of that stuff and he said hey the whole job here is we keep them fully invested we go home with cash in our pockets at the end of every day right so there's a game right and the game is of Wall Street is to separate the retail people from their cash if the retail portfolios go up or go down is kind of incidental to their game they don't care what they care about is that they win retail is is funding winning right and again it's incidental if both happen to win at the same time we call that bullish rising market so I have a rule Paul which is that the rug pulls can't happen until they've pulled in every last rube dollar they can I don't want to speak ill of our listeners I'm not meaning to but retail is always they're the marks in this story what do they say if you're at the table 30 minutes in in a card game and you don't know who the sucker is you know right so we have to be aware of this it's a dynamic so I've watched this happen over and over again right rug poles happen at the time of Maximum engagement by retail okay that's right that's right so here we see this is from Michael GED um on Twitter and it's he's the lead lag report and percent of Americans who think stock prices will move higher is now at an all-time record not even close right here was the old former alltime record in 2018 but you can see here that lots and lots of bullishness and this is astonishing to me small speculators index positioning this is in this uh S&P 500 the SPX we're at the 99.75 percentile like it's people have never been this bullish but it's it's that complacency but it's also the habituation which is hey hey 99.75% of people including me on some level are like well the fed's probably just going to bail this out cuz that's what they've been doing but this is the quintessential setup for a rug pole it sure is isn't it I mean am I am I misreading that how do you how do you read that no I see that as perfect setup I think I think we're in a situation right now where Wall Street finally has the opportunity with we retail Euphoria to offload their shares because if you're managing billions of dollars you can't move if if you're managing 5 600 billion you know let's say you got a 100 billion in a position you can't get out of that easy it's supply and demand if you flood the market so that's one of the things we'll see from time to time is stocks will hit a certain price and you can see that's typically institutional investors all floating well sometimes it'll break through and that's kind of one of the best things for an Institutional Investor if it breaks through and you're looking where the economy is going to be 2 3 years from now where retail is looking where it's going to be 3 6 months from now so this is the perfect environment to offload shares I don't have the chart in front of me um but uh corporate insiders are are selling stock at one of the highest rates that we've seen they're not buying as much as they have in the past Buffett's got one of the the largest cash pile that he's had uh in some sometimes so professionals are concerned and retail is absolutely euphoric and and you can't blame him Chris because the the thing that makes investing so hard okay is it's always a Monday Morning Quarterback it's always looking in the rearview mirror and going had I done this okay because it's always staring you in the face of the decision you could have made but the problem is you can make the right decisions and not get the right outcome in the short term so people tend to think that the outcome determines whether you made a wise decision or not that's not true by making the W the the wise decisions over the long term you will end up in the right path but we're in an environment where the FED has set up a position in the background to where they've rewarded speculation uh and I I believe Chris quite frankly I mean I can't prove this there's enough circumstantial evidence but I believe that as they implemented their money printing programs that information went out to the to those that are close those big Banks and big trading desk so that so that there was a big impact so they've been telling the ones that are closely connected to them here's what's going to happen retail kind of stepped back and watched and watch like none of this makes sense professional but those that are that are not have not sold their soul to be close to the the the money printing presses they steep back and said this doesn't make sense and it's just continued to suck people in and suck people in and suck people people in and now you've just got this retail Euphoria and who knows like it may last for another 6 to 12 months but when this does end it's going to be ridiculously painful for those who have been speculators and had no clue they were speculating yeah that's why I'm starting my Tac fund that's trade like a criminal um just kidding you know not not what should happen but what will happen because you know they're going to bail but but they do these rug polls and people on our end out here in my my you know out here on the retail side I experien them they're very painful they disrupt lives they uh steal people's sense of the future often their savings go poof so they're bad but not from the Insiders perspective they end up with larger shares of companies they pick things up for pennies on the dollar they pre-positioned and got themselves ready they actually get rich during downturns um so that's been the game for a long time and I know that that this is part of the conditioning we have to break through on the retail side I mean CNBC MSNBC it is just a wall to--all lunch scene with Matthew mccon to keep you fully invested right that's you know and and but what you what you do is from the risk manage point is there's times when you step aside there's times when you you know dance fully and and you don't try and catch the absolute tops and bottoms but you you have a discipline right like over your head says invest your plan right yes not your emotions right so you got to have a plan I think I think those charts we just looked at say you need a plan people really should you should and I'll tell you quite frankly I was having a conversation with a client the other day we had a we had one stock come in last year under the rules of our strategy and I don't want to say names or anything like that cuz then I get to do all these disclosures but we had one come in and I literally I was like guys this is going to be an absolute dog but you know and we had the discussion on the investment commit committee and I joked and I got up and opened the doors on my my conference room and said I'm going to go on the back porch and puke so go buy it anyway and my point being is there are things that come through the strategy both to buy and both to sell that make me sick to my stomach from time to time because I'm like this isn't going to pan out but you have the rules of the strategy to increase your probability of success you filter down to things that clear your hurdles and then you purchase them and and the larger majority work out but not everyone is going to and then there's times where you lower that risk but you've got to have a plan and you've got to have a straty and if you don't you're left to your emotions and and one thing we learned about the media or one thing that I believe is clear as day is the pharmaceutical companies have spent so much uh time advertising in the media that they that that they have an unusual level of control over them the same thing has happened in in from CNBC and the financial media MSNBC all of those there's so much money that's that's that's directed in that direction by Wall Street and I also believe that they're so detached from reality it's like the Hunger Games you have the capital where everything's great and then 90% of the rest of the population really understands reality and and the problem is is most of your investors H haven't been taught fundamentals and strategies they've been sold a bag of goods to trust me passive investing's gray you know uh set it on the shelf and forget it there is a time to set it on the shelf and forget it if you have money and you can buy 1931 1932 after the Market's down 80 90% 80% set it on shelf and forget about it if it's 1974 after the market has Rec corrected you know that big decline that happened in 74 because of the inflationary burst that happened set it on the shelf and forget about it this is not a time to be complacent it's a time to play the game by the rules that are forced upon you but have a strategy that will help you lower that risk and understand you're not going to Perfection is not going to happen it's not we can strive for it but it's just not going to occur if we're not striving per for Perfection if we're not reaching for the stars in our lives we're never going to reach our full potential so you strive for it but you understand I'm going to reach for that star but I may not necessarily get it I'm going to strive for perfection in the portfolio but I'm not going to get it but I'm going to do my best to be prudent and I'm going to stand the test of time instead of you know Whistling Dixie through a dark room and get hit in the mouth with a baseball bat and and I believe that's what's coming for a lot of investors especially with all the Euphoria that's out there right now I I agree um and you mentioned something near endure to my heart which is that 1974 inflationary burst can we talk about this for a second um so this is tracking two things this is the CPI of currently and this is 1974 to 1982 so so here we have this is 1974 coming along in inflation and then it bursts up here into 74 right MH yeah and then and then it falls down and then it bursts back up again right M and here we seem to be tracking this almost perfectly and it's just turned up a tiny bit again who knows what's actually um going to happen uh you know Michael uh liebovitz here is saying well you know it sort of depends how you how you how you scale these things but there's a chance we could get another inflationary burst here right because you know um the way I'm looking at this right now Paul is that um I think we've been set up I I I'm a huge nonan of Janet Yellen oh me too she has done some things that that I I just I see her as um as having risen well beyond her capabilities I've never been impressed with a single press conference she's given I've listened to her reasoning I've read her papers I'm just left very underwhelmed um and she just seems like a political hack to me and she does what's expedient and convenient in that moment so she's stepping down it turns out now uh Ash crypto is suggesting that maybe something big will get exposed who knows but here's what she did in treasury I don't like what she did as fed but in treasury she short-termed us she put us on this short cycle right pushing out stuff onto the short end of the curve meaning that we're you know the US government is funding itself with short paper four-week bills 8we bills 17 we bills and so I just went just you know she's stepping down this is what the incoming Administration is going to have to deal with this is the auction schedule just for this week Paul this is for the 26th right announcement date it's going to auction out on the 27th which is today as you can see from my little thing to today 17 4-we 8we bills 64 billion 95 billion 90 billion I remember when those were numbers Paul that you would see for the whole month right 2.5 2.5 and now we're just now we're just rolling these out week after week after week there's going to be another auction next week and there'll be another auction the week after that and the week after that so so this this is this is just enormous funding that has to happen now and that's courtesy of Janet Yellen pushing it out to us here um on the short end of the curve the like whoever's going to manage this has got their hands full um and I guess that person has been announced I don't know if they've been confirmed um but he's a hedge fund guy and hopefully he understands this Market really well because uh they're gonna have their hands full I sure hope so because the most the the most criminal thing that I believe that the the treasury did was you mentioned negative interest rates several years back okay as a fiduciary of our national uh funds why would you have not issued all of the 30-year uh debt 100 Year debt just pass the law push it through put it out for 100 years and and fix that right like everybody out there right now has got a two and a half percent mortgage the last thing they want to do is sell that to go to a five and a well six and a half 7 and a half% mortgage right now they understand how good a position that they're in why wasn't that done on a on on a national level with our national debt now I've got a white paper on my debt that's on my to-do list to read I've been putting it off but there there there's something to do with shorter issuance of debt and the liquidity that it brings into the economy so did we really play these short-term games just to juice the markets which we've been talking about for the past n nine months my concern was they're going to run this economy hot into the election and there may be all this eup for into the end of the year maybe spring of next year and then reality sets in with that that hangover um that occurs on the other side of it so I'm I'm glad she's gone I've never been very impressed with her and U myself either well there there's an unsustainability to all this too Paul I mean this is this is total federal public debt this is an Old Chart now because it's actually at 36 trillion that says 34 so just mentally you know take this red line to the top up here um you can see the shape of that it's just going off like that but of course given the environment we're in Elon Musk just reposted this this is from Ron Paul and he's writing to my friends at the department of government efficiency Doge don't forget about the big one this look at this this is this is interest payments right now this could open up a very big can of worms uh obviously the first question you might ask is you know these interest payments back here Paul I would call that the cost of having a system manage your money for you right the treasury said and it's you know us government's Infinite Wisdom here's what we're going to do we're going to create this thing called the Federal Reserve it's a private cartel but you know what somebody's got to manage the money we'll put that off in their hands and it's it's a it's a very complicated thing to to do and so we're glad they're doing it this was the cost well the cost of having our money managed by a third party is now exploding these are direct interest payments that go out that is the cost because you know what could happen is the treasury could just issue money directly itn't doesn't have to borrow it into existence mhm so this is going to actually open this this conversation up now and it's been interesting because you've seen like Trump has said some things I didn't know you could say like maybe we should eliminate the income tax and people are like okay let's talk about that right like this is actually an open conversation that could be having which is why is our country borrowing money into existence from itself in order to be able to have to pay interest on that to third parties many of them foreign entities many of them well-connected Insider Banks many of them receiving money that got printed out of thin air to buy the same stuff that they just had to auction off this could break at some point it could and you know what concerns me is what the loone Sharks do what the what Tile Palm places do what the Payday Loan places do what a credit cards do when they get people in a lot of trouble is hey here's some easy credit then your interest interest rates are going to get really high and then someone strapped for the rest of their life with this with this burdensome debt that so eliminates opportunity and when I taught to kids in high school that's what I talk to them about when I volunteer my time to go in talk to the finance class is like you need to understand just how how debt can be used to produce business it's one thing if we're using debt to generate income it's another thing if if You' got debt for a toy right you know reserve your C capacity to borrow money to buy a business that can pay that debt off quick we're not doing that with our country this isn't productive debt this isn't something that's going to be generating a dramatic amount of Revenue it's like operating like a credit card that's going to saddle our the rest of our life and people just don't realize it until the burden so high that now they're strapped and and when I teach to youngers if you'll make sacrifices when you're in your 20s and you're in your 30s and you'll keep your debt low and you'll you'll you'll invest into businesses only by the time you're you're in your mid-30s you're going to surpass all of those people that are living a higher lifestyle than you there and in the US it seems like our government's more interested in making people look attractive than standing the test of time and and I think you've reached that point to where where when when Doge gets in there and Elon Musk and b r Swami get in there and they do what needs to be done there's going to be some impact somewhere in the economy you you can't pull this much money out and get back to what's important without H having some type of pain but there's good pain and there's bad pain well and and and this is um I I think people need to understand this too which is let me just connect that Circle of what you just said so a trillion doll of interest payments go out federal government has to pay those right in a year so that's a trillion dollar Paul so that where does that go let's imagine it goes to one of the big money center Banks right because they have a big Bond portfolio for all their clients so here's a trillion here you go what do they do with it I'll tell you exactly what they do with it they round trip it back into the next auction over here this next auction over here creates another big pile of debt that has to pay higher interest okay okay well then that higher interest payment goes out so this becomes we're in that this this has that runaway freight TR feel to it which is the higher the interest costs go up the more that money gets roundt tripped back into the government which has to borrow more because it has higher interest costs the higher those go up the more they have to roundt trip it this is the onew shuffle this is what's been keeping the market super well liquefied this is why everything goes up into the right this is a money machine it's not quantitative easing it's the Baton has been passed over to the treasury and when they can't do this anymore the FED will go back to quantitative easing but this has been the onew shuffle and none of it makes us better as a country none of this is going into necessarily productive stuff if it's being productively invested it's kind of an accident it's a byproduct it's coincidental but that I just want people to be aware that is the onew shuffle more gets auctioned makes a higher interest payment higher interest payment means there's more cash out there a lot of which gets roundt tripped back into the next auction which makes the interest costs go up and that's the one to shuffle we've been we've been experiencing for a while while well what I'm concerned about is the Baton thought this is the thought that came into my mind passing the Baton let's change that just a little bit Chris it's a hot potato that keeps getting hotter so the FED passed that hot potato to the treasury they've done what they can do with it and who knows how much longer that can last well guess is who's going to catch that that hot potato that's that's turning into a little lava ball at this point Who's after the treasury to catch it except for the US tax payer and the and the citizens of our country and then that's going to be a branding pain that we're going to receive if this Administration is not able to to pull that off uh correctly hey let's let's put this a trillion dollars is I still have a hard time understanding what a trillion is right it's a number you can express it in years well let's let's say this I want to I want to show the show the math here one trillion divided 450,000 and y'all to be quite honest I struggle doing a trillion dollars on a calculator so a Google search worked good that's 2 million 222,00 uh 222 450,000 um dollar houses that's right right 2 million four 1 trillion divided by 450 2.2 million houses if we wanted to build $450,000 houses 2.2 million 2.2 million a year okay well on a trillion dollarss interest so think about the opportunity cost if we didn't have that debt then we could be and I'm not saying the government needs to be building people houses okay that's not my point I'm just trying to put it in perspective so that people can understand exactly how much a trillion dollars is how much would H more affordable would housing be if we had that Capital to reinvest back into affordable housing right I mean I'm not saying the government should be building houses and giving them away we need a free market economy but that's just money that could be used in other places more infrastructure better roads so that our commutes to work are not as long as what they used to be more you know there's so many things that that could be used instead of just just paying interest because of of shortterm short-sighted thinking well I I'm kind of hoping we're going to get to this rep prioritization last time we did talk about how if this department of government efficiency like let's imagine they cut two trillion out of the federal budget I mean oh my gosh think of Paul fire and brimstone this will be terrible it's going to be awful but that just would get us back to where we were spending right before Co hit right so we had this emergency spending that became permanent welcome to the swamp right this is just the world we live in and so the the unthinkable proposition is can we just like that all that fat we just threw on there can we just how about we undo that right and then we're going to have to prioritize at some point we haven't had to have these priority discussions yet in this country in my entire adult life which is like do you want to bomb all these various foreign countries or would you like to have nice Bridges and Roads right we haven't traded off anything and we're getting to that point where I think we're going to have to do this trade-offs right pick it's just like normal prioritization DC is lost I don't think it has the muscle memory I don't think it knows how to do those have those conversations I don't know that they know how to negotiate and and come to the best conclusion because in my my lifetime Paul spending bills went from this to 2,800 page monstrosities with earmarks and just junk you know every Congressman has a little like something something in there it it's just turned into like all pork you know and and not real investment I think some of that again accidental coincidentally sometimes leads to good things but for the most part it's just stuff you know it's not thoughtful it's not strategic it's not relevant yeah so well well and I hate to say it Chris but I believe as a country is as a people we worship money okay because because the answer is let's throw money at it and see if that'll solve the problem and and yeah it has because it makes people look a little bit wealthier on paper but we've reached the point to where it's priced out the average individual and one of two things has to give okay either we have to have some deflation and right now I don't think deflation is a horrible thing or we're going to have to have salaries go up dramatically and I can tell you in studying history and and those of you out there right now inflation is a much worse evil than deflation because inflation is an equal opportunity Punisher of individuals and if we get God forbid hyperinflation that absolutely upends the lives of everyone there's no way without being ridiculously aggressive that you can avoid the pain of hyperinflation but the prudent and the wise can survive deflation they can they they can turn that into opportunity so so either we're going to have to have asset prices come down some or salaries are going to have to go up dramatically or it is going to be an environment in 2030 to where about 5% of the people own everything and 95% of the people have nothing well and that wealth Gap is something that started under Bernan was accelerated under Yellen it's been continued under pal so I think people need to understand that the Federal Reserve is not here serving the interests of American people no it's here doing what it's supposed to do it's a private cartel it serves the interests of its main clients that clientele has been getting wealthier and wealthier but it's really this Canan effect which is which is they just happen to have been closest to the money spigot when it got opened and they are just leveraging the asset prices and and all of that right so and and so to that back to your point at the beginning of the show now to sort of like be comfortable you need $5.7 million of net worth right that's a big number and obviously that that doesn't apply to the vast percentage of the people so so this is the other part of the story is that of by and for the people's been subverted obviously and the Federal Reserve does not work in the interests of the American people and the Press has never held their feet to the fire about that I mean every single Federal Reserve press conference ought to start with a chart of the wealth Gap and saying hey Jay poell now plutar even thousands of years ago said the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics is a gap between the rich and the poor y'all are architects of this Gap where you headed with this and how do you see this turning out right and they'll try and evade and pretend it's not their problem and and point it back over to fiscal policy but it it belongs to the FED they print the money they make sure the markets go up into the right they reward speculators the speculators get wealthier and wealthier and the Gap gets ever wider that's on them and uh I think they should have to answer for that I really do because it's social engineering and it's dangerous social engineering and I would like to know what their plan is like like oh we think Plutarch was wrong here's why we have a white paper can I see it I'm don't know what the plan is and I'm suspecting they don't have one but you know you would need a functioning press asking reason questions to get that kind of answer out of them absolutely and we don't we don't have that we just don't we have the use the Joe Rogan the individuals that are doing the the the conversations like this long form conversation that are bringing the truth out but the media is not doing they don't even they don't love the truth enough now Chris I think we talked about that before on the 5.3 million so for the listeners it was right before I picked up uh before Chris and I started uh talking Zer hedge put on on article Americans need a $5.3 million net worth in the most recent survey haven't completed the article to find the survey to be be considered financially successful okay they go on a little bit further to say in interviewing people that that an annual salary in excess of 270,000 is needed for a person to be considered successful in the United States on the November 22nd survey um in terms of net worth it's 5.3 million now to put this in perspective that's such a small percentage of the PO because uh according to the epoch times um arra pulley reports navine arra according to the Social Security Administration the national average wage last year was $ 66,67 while the average net worth for a family in 2022 and this is a family uh average wage for an individual was 66,000 the average net worth for a family in 2022 was 1, 160,000 okay and because what used to be a $450,000 house is now selling for a million dollar the large majority of that is is their the their primary residence and Chris here's the problem and most people get it but I still have a hard time communicating this from time to time when we do the retirement plan analysis I don't use your primary residence your primary residence is an asset that you have and you can go borrow against it but it doesn't do do anything but take money away from you so if you're going into retirement and you might have a $10 million net worth but you've got 9.5 million in that house well you can't afford that house because if you've only got 500,000 it's not even going to cover the taxes that are there so that's an extreme example but your house is an asset taker in retirement it doesn't generate income for you so the bad part about that is is that house being the largest uh part of that net worth it is not something that produces income for people in retirement so those people who don't understand that are really typically up in it I can't tell you how many people I've met over the past six to seven years 10 years really 10 years they'll come in and they're like hey I've got a 2 million net worth and $15 million dollar tied up in the house and I want to retire and then I have to show them you're going to have to work another 10 years you're going to have to sell that house and downsize because because it's consuming so much of your budget that you can't afford to retire so so I don't think that net worth is incom producing money yeah all those people who are confused about this they need to read a book by my friend Robert kosaki called Rich Dad Poor Dad and in there he articulates that assets put cash in your pocket liabilities take cash out of your pocket everybody's primary residence is a liability it may have an asset value if you have equity in it that's positive and you can cash that out and go do something with it but let's be clear about this my house takes cash out of my pocket every month Paul it it does and then when you got how it is it's a liability let's be clear yeah then you got the roof that needs to be replaced it's got to be repainted and that's another problem in what I'm seeing a lot of people who aren't doing the math when they're buying rental properties right you know if you're if you're purchasing a property that your rent's not going to pay for it in 20 to 25 years well you're 35 to 40 years just off the top of my head depending upon the numbers before that thing's really going to be a free and clear asset because you got to service the debt down and then you got to repair the roof you got vacancies that are going to occur from time to time increase taxes and insurance unless it's triple net lease so we're distorted across the board so a lot of people are speculating on these properties that they're buying thinking hey I've got a rental property this is great but what they don't understand is it's going to be 35 or 4 4 years before it really becomes an incom producing asset because things are so uh distorted so we're at a period of time where a lack of teaching in our education system and I believe that's another criminal thing that has occurred from K through five and then even in our colleges people aren't taught this unless you're in the world of finance and sometimes people even in the world of Finance aren't really taught that because what they're taught to do is sell products and and and then all of a sudden you've got this wave of easy money that has lifted all boats and the tides come in and people think that they're fully clothed and when that tide goes back out they're going to be standing there with no swimming trunks on and and suffering the consequences that come along with that it feels like we're in one of those cycle periods you talked about right people love truth people wander away from that over time and it's the same thing every time right same Dynamic which is um possibly the same thing where they it's that saying from that book which is that um Hard Times create good men and good men create easy times and easy times create weak men and weak men create hard times that's just sort of the cycle so it's been easy for a long time right and I think we're all cognizant of the idea that the FED can't just print forever right it it's just you know we all know that on some cell level like it can't be forever but I guess I understand getting habituated into the idea that well true but I can't know when that's going to end and right now it's good right and and so that's that's where we're at but the season we're in if I had to guess we're not in spring in this story we're in late fall you know and you know that's just it's just like how many more times can we sort of pull the same rabbit out of our hat and and just pretend that that things don't matter um well I I think you know time to be prudent time to take a uh manage the risk as as best as we can and to really understand where we're at but but this is why what we do is so important it's it's education it's you have to you have to have the appropriate education on this and most people were not educated I'm not calling them um unintelligent that's not the not what I'm saying they don't teach this stuff in schools they don't teach you how money is created they don't teach you what APR on a credit card is They Don't Really teach you that you know your total 30-year cost of a mortgage is actually going to be twice the value of the house when you first bought it a lot of things like that right but that fundamentally I think the fundamentals are that you can't live beyond your means forever that's right at any level you can get away with it for longer as a nation but when the turn comes for whatever reason uh it can be fast mhm and and it can be pretty deep and there'll be those who are prepared for it and I think they'll do relatively well if not even exceedingly well and a lot of people will be caught blindsided by it and they will do relatively poorly if not very badly um yeah and that's just That's History that's history and and I want the listeners to know and you know this Chris because we talked enough I'm not a Perma Bearer and you're not a Perma Bearer we're not you know this isn't about being bearish and trying to talk people of being exposed this is about warning the Bible tells us somewhere that my people die for a lack of knowledge okay you can take that to an extreme it's just most people don't know and most people aren't warning about the risks that are out there this is about talking about the risk this isn't about burying in the backyard I had a conversation with with my oldest son last night he's in construction he's got a commercial builder's license he's 25 he's doing really really well and I'm like okay right now is the time for you to build your War chest don't do what everybody else is doing build your War chest so we talked for about an hour and a half last night and I went back and shared with him an individual that's become a a built a small Empire in construction in the north Georgia area and I was sharing his story about in 2007 he was really starting back in about 2005 2006 he started building his War chest so when things came apart in 2008 he he stayed focused coming out 9 10 11 12 then all of a sudden he started buying basically buying and bringing in everybody in the Contracting process from ground break you know groundbreaking to complete finish and and he's doing so ridiculously well and I'm saying look to those individuals there don't admire where they are today I mean admire it but go back and find out what they did to get there and what you'll find there are people who are here that are lucky right right place right time there's always going to be those but the large majority of those that that that we're admiring today made some sacrifices back then and they also made some mistakes and the difference is they learn from those mistakes and they press on to the greater achievements of the future the Optimus Creed I love the Optimus Creed Optimus club by the way um and I'm just trying to explain to him and he's like Dad it's hard right I'm like yes it's hard that's why they call it discipline that's why they call it the path that's traveled build your War chest and be patient think where you want to be 10 years from now don't think where you want to be six years from 6 months from now think where you want to be 10 years from now and then build back into the action plan that you can build today to get there and then surround yourself with with wise advice and people who love you enough to call you out for your stupid Behavior the people who love you the most are the ones that are going to tell you you're headed on a path to destruction and they're going to try to warn you before you get there and then it's your choice to heed that warning or run off the cliff with the with the excuse me other fools indeed all right well Paul that's all the time I have today I got I got family coming shortly uh it's been great talking with you for everybody who would like to speak with Paul and his team please go to Peak Financial investing.com fill out the simple form somebody will be in touch with you within 48 business hours uh Paul have a great Thanksgiving thank you Chris and to you and all the listeners may God just bless your fellowship with love and Great Fellowship and and conversation around the thanksgiv giving table and and everybody just enjoy family and all the different personalities even the ones that that irritate you from time to time just enjoy each other's company because you're you're there for a reason and and Thanksgiving is and the fellowship that comes around Christmas to me is just just one of the things I look forward to indeed well said I'm Chris Martinson of peak Financial investing uh this has been Finance you so Paul have a good one you too Chris [Music]