Market Outlook: The current bull thesis hinges on expected Fed rate cuts and tax cuts leading to economic growth and higher forward earnings, but concerns exist about the potential for a market reversal if this growth does not materialize.
Asset Correlation: An unusual high correlation between typically non-correlated asset classes, such as stocks and gold, suggests a market driven by FOMO (fear of missing out), with investors buying across the board.
Market Momentum: Despite high valuations and assets trading significantly above their moving averages, the market's momentum is likened to a train that is difficult to stop, indicating a potential for continued upward movement but also a risk of correction.
Investment Strategy: The discussion highlights the importance of managing risk and rebalancing portfolios, with a focus on maintaining a balance between participating in market gains and protecting against potential downturns.
Economic Policies: The current administration's policies, such as tax cuts and deregulation, are seen as potential catalysts for economic growth, but their impact may not be immediate, creating a divergence between market expectations and economic reality.
Market Sentiment: There is a noted shift in market sentiment, with professional managers underweight in equities and tech, potentially leading to a performance push towards the end of the year as they adjust their positions.
Investment Risks: The discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding the risks associated with overbought conditions and the potential for price corrections, particularly in assets like Google and gold, which are significantly deviated from their moving averages.
Regulatory Environment: The potential for regulatory changes, such as the removal of the Fed's jobs mandate, is discussed as a factor that could impact market dynamics and economic policy in the future.
Transcript
The bull thesis right now is that Fed rate cuts and tax cuts are going to cause a resurgence in economic growth and therefore forward earnings are going to go higher. And so estimates, Wall Street estimates have actually been ratcheting up going to Q3 reporting. The the concern I have is is that if we don't get that economic resurgence, you're going to see a a decent, you know, kind of reversal of this an of this kind of valuation in the markets because every everybody's going have to start to re-evaluate what forward earnings look like because economic growth isn't there. [Music] Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm thoughtful money founder and your host, Adam Tagert. welcoming you here at the end of the week for another weekly market recap featuring my good friend, the Sundancing portfolio manager, Lance Roberts. Lance, how you doing? >> I I am good. And yeah, it's this market's been so hot. It's like dancing on the surface of the sun. >> Hey, that's a good analogy. Um that wasn't what I had in mind, but I like your answer just as much. Um we're losing a lot of lot of good people recently. uh we just lost Robert Redford this year. And so I was giving him a tribute um in my description there for you, >> but let's let's actually start where you're talking about there uh about how hot the market is. >> Yeah. No, it it's uh it's been quite phenomenal. Um, you know what what what has stunned me more than anything else as of late has just been, you know, kind of what some market and it's really not markets themselves, but it's parts of markets in themselves. And we're now getting a very high correlation between a lot of different asset classes and and and typically when you see asset classes that are typically non-correlated. So just say for instance stocks and gold is as a good example. Typically gold is kind of a riskoff asset and so they typically have a non-correlary nature but they're all running up at the same time. you know, when you start to see a variety of asset classes across the board, small cap, midcap, you know, Bitcoin, everything else moving up at the same time, that's just that's just representative that there's a lot of FOMO in the market and nobody wants to miss out. So, everybody's buying everything that they can get. All right, I'm going to chime in for one second here because I want you to finish this, but you you you brought it right to something I was going to ask you. Um, which is last week. You said all these things are going up in tandem at once. That's not supposed to happen. >> It's not supposed to happen. >> And then and then in like a beat later, you said but there's nothing wrong with this market. >> There's not. >> People in the comments were like, "What?" I know it's explain >> it's Yeah, it's the most So I was that's kind of actually where I was headed which is you know then and again you know it's been funny because so three days a week we have an investment committee meeting with all of our adviserss and so we all sit down and we talk about what the market's doing and it's been so boring over the last three weeks. It's the same message. There's nothing to do because everything's going up and that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing when every asset class rises at one time. That's just the that's just the sign that you've got a lot of excess momentum and speculation in the markets. And when you're looking at at markets right now, I mean, there are markets that are trading at three and four standard deviations above their 5-year moving average. That is typically where markets are finding a peak. But again, there's so much push in the markets right now that this that the I was explaining this on the radio show earlier this week. Think about, you know, when you're driving down the freeway, you see those long trains on the on on the railroad track and, you know, there's like the there's like one or two engines at the front and then there's like a mile of railroad cars behind it. Well, so when they're running at speed, you know, that's all great, fine, and dandy. The problem is is when the front engine puts on the brakes, all that momentum from the train cars behind it start to push the the engine down the track. So even though the the the engine's breaking and trying to slow things down and eventually it will slow the momentum, it just takes a very very long time for that momentum to really start to to to reverse and start to slow down. That's the way the market is right now is that there's so much momentum in the markets that it's just hard. It's it's hard to stop a train. It's like that commercial for the air conditioners. That's kind of where we are right now. So in your analogy, is the slowing economy the breaking of the locomotive? >> Well, you would think so, right? Because again, that's going to get reflected back into earnings and that's kind of the the the big factor of this is ultimately earnings. Everything is very positive right now in terms of forward expectations for earnings continues to grow. The thesis right now, the bull thesis right now is that Fed rate cuts and tax cuts are going to cause a resurgence in economic growth and therefore forward earnings are going to go higher. And so estimates, Wall Street estimates have actually been ratcheting up going to Q3 reporting. Atlanta Fed just came out a couple of days ago with their Q3 estimate at over 3% growth. So right now there's a lot of support for that narrative. The the concern I have is is that if we don't get that economic resurgence, you're going to see a a decent, you know, kind of reversal of this an of this kind of valuation in the markets because every everybody's have to start to re-evaluate what forward earnings look like because economic growth isn't there. But again, I just, you know, I I showed you this last week. These are the new portfolios that we just launched recently on Simplevisor. I just want to showed you a couple that just jumped out. This is a small and sorry this is a small and midcap index. >> Yeah. It's what up over 16% in a couple months. >> Yeah. Since this is since August the 1, right? Which which is just a month and basically a month and a half. >> 45 days. Yeah. >> 45 days. This portfolio is up 16%. And in that portfolio, so you know, it's interesting. We dig down the portfolio. Bloom Energy is up 125% since August the 1st. You've got a a H AEHR systems up 80% 64% in AppLoving Lattis Semiconductor up 43 and uh Accelis Technologies up 43 and you got a couple others up 30 and 20. You know those are massive moves and and these are again these are small and midcap stocks but the point about that is is that everybody's just kind of throwing caution out to the wind. These are also heavily shorted stocks. For instance, Bloom Energy has a 20% short position against it. >> So, are these are these squeezes more than >> Yes, investors getting excited. Okay. >> Absolutely. That that's what is going on. We have these squeezes that are occurring across the markets. But, but even in So, we have one portfolio that we built. It's called the accumulator model. Um, and this is just a ver this is for people just starting out investing. Just kind of start putting some money into the markets, get invested. That's up 8% in, you know, 45 days, right? Um, but >> they've already had a great year in just a month and a half. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, congrats. >> That's just and again, you know, even the all-w weather model, which is gold, precious metals, you know, very conservative, defensive stocks, bonds, that's up 6%. You know, the AI portfolio is up nine. It just, you know, just when you kind of and the point about this is the, as I said before, the thing about these portfolios is they're like factors of the market. So when you look at at you know kind of what's moving the market and if if you looked at these factors and said okay we see a lot of speculation and smaller midcap but everything else is pretty flat then you know that kind of shows you that but this has been pretty broad I mean we're seeing money chase you know kind of every asset class whether it's precious metals or whether it's AI stocks or crypto stocks or you know small midcap stocks emerging market stocks you're you're seeing that same type of push in in virtually every asset asset class. So again, that's that's all I'm saying is that there's so much momentum behind this market. Everybody's so exuberant. That's a really hard market to break. Now, it'll eventually break and you will have a correction 5 10% and you'll pull some of this exuberance out of the markets. But when that happens and what causes it is going to be the more difficult timing factor. >> Okay. Let me let me ask you this. So, you know, I think I mentioned this to you recently, um, that when I'm interviewed, which is much less frequently than I interview people, you know, I I try to distill it and try to make it real easy for folks. And of course, this is my opinion, everybody. This is, you know, one guy's one guy's opinion. Um, but I sort of look at the markets as um kind of concerned in the near term um because of pretty much everything you just said there, Lance. >> Yeah. um more bullish in the midterm. And by midterm, I mean kind of like a year out, like one to three years out. Because if the current administration is successful in implementing all of its policies that are designed to really goose the economy, you know, if you if you cut taxes, if you deregulate, um, if you bring, you know, a lot more foreign capital into the US, um, which are all, you know, kind of key tent poles of the current administration, um, it's just like QE. I mean, it's like if you if you shove a bunch of QE into the system, you're going to get in inflation or at least asset price inflation depending on the type of QE, you know, whether it's monetary or fiscal. Um it it just is just like if you have a sick patient and you inject them, you know, with uh epinephrine, they're going to get up and jump around for a little while, right? >> Yep. Um, so it seems like what I hear you're saying is the market is is basically saying, you know what, I think the cavalry of the um of of the administration's policies is going to arrive in time that it's it's we're not going to have, you know, too much slowing in the economy or a recession. It's it's going to get here in time. But >> well, no, no, you're close. They're saying that we're going to have a very sharp recovery. It's not just going to get here in time to just save it. It's going to cause an economic boom. And the interesting part about that is is that we don't have tax cuts. All we did was extend the previous tax cuts. >> I mean, we did give some additional tax cuts, but it's it's it's >> very minor. They're very minor. Tax on tips is a very small minor factor of the economy. Tax on social security is very small factor. But by and large, the people that pay the taxes, there was no tax change. >> Agreed. Agreed. But but but having said that, it did cement out that there's not going to be a tax increase, right? >> Well, it would have been Yeah, it would it would have coopered the economy if if they had done that. >> So that does give a sense of security, but it doesn't provide extra spending capital, right, for econom for economic growth. And so, you know, to your point though, you're right, deregulation if that occurs, you know, um you know, somehow, you know, dragging back, you know, more manufacturing the US, create more manufacturing job. I thought that was very interesting this week. You know, Nvidia took the $5 billion stake in Intel to start manufacturing chips domestically. That gets them past the tariff issue with Washington DC as well. U but that'll create more jobs here. Um that's kind of the the point of an article I have on the website today talking about how AI can help offset some of these debt to GDP concerns because it can help stimulate economic growth. So if all those things come to fruition, then a lot of these expectations by market professionals expecting this, you know, kind of resurgence in economic growth could come true. And then >> so but this is what I want to dial in on like I I think the odds of them coming true aren't bad and people can disagree with that, right? That that the economy will get a jolt um and increasing over, you know, in the midterm as these things really start to to fully flourish. But I don't think they're going to arrive this quarter, next quarter, probably not even first half of next year. And I could be wrong, right? I agree with you, >> but it seems like the market, and that's what I wanted to just make sure I'm clear on what you're saying, the market is sort of saying, "Nope, I'm taking the under on that. I think we're going to start seeing, you know, help from this soon enough for us to not not have to discount asset prices for any sort of dip in the economy." >> No. Yes, you're absolutely correct. And that's what they're hoping for again. And this is the interesting thing, right? So, you know, like on my X page, I post bullish and bearish stuff every day, right? So, you know, we I never post just bearish stuff and I never post just bullish stuff. I generally post one of each or generally two of each uh every day. And to help just, you know, that's just also me kind of working through my contrarian nature, trying to just understand both sides of the argument. But it's very interesting that if I post something bearish, then everybody comes up with all the reasons why that bearish narrative is going to be correct. If I post something bullish, then you know it's everybody coming up with every reason the sun why that bullish narrative will continue to be the case. And that's just where we are in the cycle. So nobody wants to actually listen to facts. They come up with all these crazy reasons why, you know, this has got to be true and the market's got to keep going up. And that's just simply a function of the FOMO, right? It's just >> it's a function of human nature. We're rationalizing beings, not rational beings. Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly. So you know, we're rationalizing our irrational behavior. Absolutely correct. But that's but that's the dynamic of the market and and we've seen this before, right? We saw this in late 1998, 1999. Same type of behavior in markets, same type of sentiment. We saw this in 2021. We know this eventually ends and that, you know, eventually you're going to have another correction and nobody wants to, you know, be concerned about that. But, you know, as capital managers, I have to participate. So, you know, like this week, we made no trades because our portfolio is performing fine. There's nothing for us to do. Next week though, we're going to rebalance all our portfolios across the board. We'll rebalance the thematic models. We'll rebalance our our our core models >> because you're still making money in them. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and just positions that got way out of whack. Like Google, for instance, a good example. So in our core portfolio, we own Google. Google is about as a 4% weight in the portfolio. It's now over five. It's like 5 and a half% of the portfolio. Um so we'll trim that back to four. And then we'll take then we'll probably rebalance some other stuff in the portfolio as well and and maybe add, you know, we're probably gonna add one or two positions. Uh maybe swap some things out. Um but again, it'll be just some minor kind of tweaks and tucks, but there's no there's nothing right now that says we should go and just massively reduce risk. Now again, don't forget we're carrying 12% cash also, so we have a buffer. Um but we're about to move into October. So starting in October, we've got a lot of tailwinds behind the markets through year end. Um, we've got corporate earnings are are going to be good this quarter. Um, there's no reason to not expect that corporate earnings won't come in better than expectations. As usual, they always come in better expect better than expectations. Um, we've got corporate buybacks. We'll open back up. We're on a record pace for corporate buybacks this year. We will do more corporate buybacks this year. We will be almost 50% higher than the three-year average of buybacks this year. So, that's going to be another huge push for the market. A big chunk of those buybacks happen in the last quarter of the year. You've got >> I'm calling it now. Within a couple years, they're gonna go after buybacks. I don't want to rattle hole on it, but I'm just >> I I wish they would, and I I would I would I will be right there with you supporting that. >> Yeah, I'm I'm I'm pretty sure probably not in 10 years soon, but I'm pretty sure within a couple years that's going to get in the crosshairs. But sorry, keep going. >> They should have been in crosshairs a long time ago. Absolutely. >> Um but then finally, you've got professional managers. They are way underweight markets right now. They they were underweight equities and tech in the summer months. Um they have they are just now starting to move up to weight. They're behind on performance. That's going to create a bunch of performance push at the end of the year. Um the American Association of Individual Investors, the bullish ratio of those investors took a huge jump this past week and that's because all the boomers that were kind the AI, the American Association of Individual Investors are mostly older investors. They're not young retail investors. They're not part of that group. So, when they take their survey, you're surveying older investors. They've been very very cautious during these summer months, but they finally threw in the towel last week and they're getting very bullish on the market. So, you've got a lot. You've got sentiment, corporate buybacks, earnings, and and and basically performance issues heading into the last quarter of the year that are going to keep markets most likely elevated through year end. >> All right. Interesting. So, number of things to talk about there. Um, >> now that now that does not mean that somewhere between now and then we can't have a 3 or 5% correction. I'm just saying that there's a there's a the the bias will be upward through your end. >> Okay. Um, so number of things. First off, just to use another analogy to make sure I am clarifying your the thing I asked you to clarify earlier about, you know, how can we have all these things you don't think should be happening and yet the market's fine. Um, how about this analogy? Um, and I like your train one. Um, but um, it's a frozen pond and the ice gets thinner the more you get out to the center of the pond, >> right? So you take a car, right? You start pushing it out on the ice. Um, you are probably thinking, "Hey, at some point the ice in the middle of this pond is going to be too thin and that car is going to go through. But until I start seeing cracks in the ice, I'm not going to bet that the car is going to break through like in the next 30 seconds." Right. >> Correct. So, you're you're saying, "Look, yep, this car is going out in a frozen pond. I'm concerned about that, but I'm not calling the car to break through yet because I'm not seeing the precursor signs of stress." >> Yep. >> Yep. Okay. >> Well, you know, I've kind of used another analogy this week, the same point. It's, you know, when you drive down a freeway and you see those yellow cones on the side of the road, you know, >> y >> how many people actually slow down? No, nobody slows down until maybe they see a worker and then maybe they'll slow down a bit and move over a bit. And that's kind of the same analogy, which is, you know, we're investors are going to push this market and they're going to push even when they see cracks. They're going to be like, "Okay, I'm pushing the car across your ice." Using your analogy, oh, there's some cracks, but they're not big cracks yet, so let's push the car a little bit more. Uh, there's a few more cracks, but hey, everything's holding up. Let's push it some more. You know, they're going to push it until the car finally th falls through the through through the ice, right? Got it. They're not gonna they're not going to pull back and go, "Okay, well, we're starting to see some cracks. Maybe we should go sit on the sidelines a little bit, reduce our risk." That's just not the way it'll happen. >> Yeah. All right. Well, look, we could say this is a crack, but you mentioned Google, right? >> Yeah. So, I interviewed Sven Henrik uh the other day and um you know, he was talking about signs of the market, you know, having a lot of bubble elements to it and he threw Google and >> yeah, >> can't remember how long how far back the chart of Google went, but I think it went back at least a couple years and it is so far outside of its Ballinger bands right now. It's just ridiculous. Like, you know, it was almost like somebody said, "Look, you know what? Ballinger bands eventually matter." And Google just said, "Oh yeah, hold my beer. Watch this." And it just shot into like, you know, a totally different stratosphere. >> No, no. I mean, that's absolutely the case. And then that's that's the interesting thing to me, Adam, because see this so this is a monthly chart of Google and this is a this is what's called a parabolic move, right? So the the Google has absolutely gone parabolic and these are moving averages. So this kind of purple line is a is a moving average of of 50 months. So it's basically a four-year moving average and it's now three standard deviations above that four-year moving average. Now now just for the mathematically impaired standard what when we talk about Ballinger bands and standard deviation you're you're talking about a normalized bell curve. >> Yeah. And do me a favor while you're talking, go to the weekly. >> Same thing. >> Yeah, that show a little bit more what I was talking about there. Um, I just wanted to because again, we're on Sven's chart and I don't know what the duration was, but I mean it it it wasn't even close to the top Ballinger band anymore. It was just way off by itself. >> Well, it it also depends on what his settings for his Ballinger bands are. So this is again this so this is two and three standard deviations of the 50 in this case the 50 week the other chart it was 50 months. So again, if I change the if I if I use 20 weeks or 20 months or 12 months or you know, whatever, I'm going to get different settings, right? >> So I'd have to know what the settings were, but it's it's the same chart, right? You know, irrespective, it's it's the same analysis. So when you talk about a bell a standardized bell curve, you have positive outcomes and negative outcomes on a bell curve. And so one standard deviation comprises about 68% of all potential moves. When you get to two standard deviations, now you're talking about uh about 95% three standard deviations about 99% of all potential moves. And that and then you start kind of moving out four or five standard deviations. You're talking about, you know, pretty much rare those rare tele event risks that occur, >> right? You should kind of think of the inverse like if you're outside if you're outside of two standard deviations, then it's like what? Like that that that occurs 32% of the time. If you're outside of three, that occurs only 5% of the time. And then when you're you're getting lower like this, it's like, oh, well, this is like an almost never h once in aundred year flood type of thing. >> Correct. And and but again, it's also just all you have to do is is and but again, people, you know, this is where these narratives come in. It's like, oh, well, this time is different for Google because of AI and and all that. But, you know, it's never different. And if we go back throughout history, every time that you've had these bigger ex, you know, kind of deviations from extremes, we always thought it was different this time than last time and and you know, it's AI this time and then the stock has a big correction back to the moving average and then it rallies back up, gets three standard deviations overbought and everybody's like, "Oh, it's different this time." You have a big correction and it doesn't matter what asset class it is. It's never different. That's the beautiful thing about what technical analysis tells you is that this is just basically odds management, which is yes, you're talking about a move right now and basically Google's pushing four standard deviations of its of it moving. So, we're in the 99 percentile. So, 1% chance that this stock will just keep going up versus a 99% chance it's going to have a correction. It's just suggesting that you've got all the buyers in the market are in the market. And we're not seeing this just in in Google uh in Google. I mean, you can see this in, you know, stocks like, you know, Aqua, which is up like 20% today. I mean, it's gone ver it's gone to >> Oh, really? Oh, good. >> Right. Um, this company has no earnings. It has no revenue. >> It has no revenue. Yeah. >> Yeah. This is something that >> it has no product. There's been no product in market for years. Yeah. >> For for years. And the stock is up, you know, it's so this is going to have a huge crash at some point. And that's not be and I'm not saying the stock's gonna have a huge crash at some point because it's a bad company. It just can't sustain this type of a move. And particularly when you're talking about companies that have very very large short positions. I was talking about Bloom Energy earlier. Here's another one. >> Absolutely parabolic on on the chart. >> Five standard deviations now kind of a push. This company has a 20% short float. At some point those shorts are going to be right and this stock is going to have a massive crash. So, I mean, you're talking about stock comes back to $30 or $40 a share. That's a good thing, by the way. That'd be a great entry point to buy this company, but these moves can't be sustained. Go ahead. >> No. So, I mean, yeah. So, I look at this, and I don't have your your scope of expertise, but >> I look at these as cracks, not even small ones. >> Yep. >> And and here's gold for you. It looks exactly the same as all these other stocks. You know, it looks just like Google. So again, and this is and this but see this this is where the narrative comes out. Oh, but this time it's because of A, B or C reasons, but every time gold has gotten this this kind of overbought pushing three standard deviations like here you went through a long consolidation correction process back here. You went through a 20% decline in 2020, you know, back here in 2012 through 2018 and this goes back throughout history. Um, so the point is is if I'm investing in an asset, understand that these deviations can't be sustained and you will eventually have a price correction. Does that mean you sell all your asset? No, that is not that's not what that means. It does suggest that you maybe hedge your position or at least take some profits while the profit taking is good. >> Yeah. And for the record, I have been discussing with you and others over the recent weeks that this is a really >> good time to consider exactly that if you're ahead in gold, which a lot of my viewers are, but but whatever asset. And there's a smart guy I listen to every week who says that moving averages act like gravity. >> And that's essentially, you know, the risk you have right here, right? Is they're so deviated from their moving averages that there's almost nowhere to go at this time but back towards them. >> Yeah. and and and and and again it just hap there's no point in history where that's ever not happened. And so it may not happen tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's going to happen next week. Doesn't even mean it'll happen next month or two. And you know that's the trap that investors get themselves into is that well Lance said that the market's going to you know that that you know you know Olo's going to crash or or Google's going to crash because it's got the I'm not saying they're going to crash. I'm saying they're going to have a correction back to their moving averages. If you don't take m If you don't take some money off the table, it's going to feel like a crash. >> Yeah, I was gonna say it's going to feel like it given how deviated they are, right? Yeah, >> exactly. There'll be a big reversal back down towards those moving averages when it occurs. But if the See, this is where the trap is because if it continues to go up, then it's like, well, see, he was wrong. It's still going up. And yeah, if it goes up a little bit more, see, he was wrong, it's still going up. It's going to keep going up and then it crashes. And the what the markets are really good at and what professional traders are even better at is sucking everybody into something where they get out of it and they pull that other side of the rug. They'll start shorting these assets heavily to drive the price down when they can get that move going. So, and that's what Wall Street's really really good at uh is kind of manipulating that side of the market. So, just be just be aware that again it doesn't mean go sell everything. It doesn't mean you know anybody's negative on anything. It just means that everything has to correct in price at some time, particularly when you have these kind of deviations in the markets. >> Yep. Okay. Let me ask you one last question about Google. Um, and we'll move on. And and folks watching, um, if you've got insight, feel free to add it in the comment section as well. >> Um, okay. I don't follow Google super closely here, so there's probably all sorts of reasons to justify why it's having this latest price action, but just sitting from the cheap seats, I'm like, all right, I know Google's working hard at creating its own AI, right, Gemini. Um, and you know, the AI race, I don't know, one man's opinion, you know, I think it's largely going to be sort of a winner take all, right? If there's the smartest AI, most people are going to want to use it, right? So, you know, there's a bunch of companies right now racing to see who can build the smartest AI. Uh, and Google's one of them, but there's no guarantee it's going to be, you know, the winner when all is said and done, right? So, there's probably some FOMO about Google's role in AI there. But, as I look at AI, I see it as a massive threat to their search monopoly, which is, you know, has been one of the best business models in all of human history up until, you know, this year, right? And I just don't understand why you could make an argument right now that Google's worth, you know, a ton more when you've got really valid questions of what's going to happen to its core revenue model if nobody's clicking on blue links anymore because Google's just serving up the answer and it loses all that advertising revenue. >> Well, so so this so do you see this gap right here? >> Yep. in the chart. That was the news that came out that basically remember they were under antitrust risk that >> they weren't going to have Chrome removed. Got it. Yeah. They weren't going to have to give up Chrome. They're >> and so so what that that gave the stock a huge bump because all of a sudden it took that pressure off the stock. >> Okay. Could that have been discounted in the value that they were going to have to give up divest of Chrome? Okay. >> Correct. And then of course when you got that pop that sucked everybody that was short the stock then had to cover and then that's what's been pushing the stock price higher. also just the function that again now if you go back to that accumulator model I was talking about earlier um in like in our simplevisor portfolios which is just an S&P index a NASDAQ index some emerging markets those type of things >> um so as this market continues to grind higher it's just sucking money into those ETFs and when everybody buys those ETFs again we go back to you know robot right it's just it's buying more Google and the bigger Google gets the more money it absorbs and so you have this kind combination factor. >> All right, do do me a favor. Keep talking. Hit the monthly. >> So, totally get giant minus robot. Great great additional reason plus Chrome. But here, Google is now worth way more than it's ever been worth, right? >> Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I >> I don't know when exactly they they the news came out initially that they, you know, the government want might want him to best of Chrome, but but you know, let's say two, three years ago, whatever, right? Let's say it's been hanging over the stock for a while. >> Yep. But should the stock be worth way more than it's ever been worth with that overhang that I just raised about their core business model? >> Wouldn't you expect that? That is a fantastic question. That's a fantastic question. So here's Google and this company trades at a price to earnings growth ratio P what's called a PEG, right? >> So its price to earnings growth is 1.8. That is really that is a fairly valued company even at current levels based on the rate that it's growing earnings. This is their earnings. This is their sales growth on the bottom and this is their EPS growth. So they're buying back shares which is helping boost the EPS side to some degree. >> I mean those are BS numbers. I know the street cares about them. I don't know why because of buyback distortion but yes. >> Exactly. But if you take a look at sales growth which you really can't distort through buybacks. This is this is straight billions in sales, right? This is not sales per share. So it it it excludes these buybacks, but they've got very strong earnings growth. And so the earnings growth is helping support. So again, you've got a company trading at, you know, value a forward PE of 23 and a peg of of 1.82. And so let you know, if I backed this up and I said, "Hey, Adam, I've got a company right now that trades at a peg of 20 and has a price earnings growth of 1.82." You know, and you'd be going, "Okay, what company is that? I'd be willing to buy it, right? That's fairly true. >> Probably. But just to that point, you know, you talk that you say it's all about earnings, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Um so those historic earnings don't reflect the threat of AI eating into their revenue the way that I'm concerned about. >> Correct. And then that's the that's the that's the 64 trillion giant in the room that nobody can put a handle on is how is AI going to impact their ad revenue? This is the same question for Meta. It's the same question for Apple. It's the same question for, you know, really Amazon as well. Um, you know, they each have models where they're selling a product, a good or a service like Apple, but they also depend on ad revenue. Like Meta in particular depends on ad revenue to large degree. Google huge ad revenue generator. What does AI do to change that ad revenue environment in the future? >> To totally agree. Although I think Google has the and I'm not an expert here but to me Google has the greatest direct threat because meta just serves that to you where Google the ads are part of the the customer experience right which ad gets which which blue link gets served higher right >> um so anyways and look it's clearly not mattering and and that's sort of the point I'm trying to make here which is um uh in a FOMO in a late stage FOMO market you know things like risks don't concerns don't matter But also to your point about the giant mindless robot, >> we may be at the point where the giant mindless robot is pushing companies to valuations they have no business being at because of fundamentals. And Google might be one given the concerns we're mentioning. Apple, I might argue, is another where they haven't been growing revenue that much, right? But still a huge chunk of every new dollar that comes into the market goes into them. So, it really could be creating these these Frankenstein, you know, stock market valuations that at some point, and who knows what the trigger is going to be, true price discovery will kick in and we may find that the true price is way different than what it is right now. >> And and I >> I'm not trying to sell fear. I'm just saying that these are the things that make me scratch my head. >> I absolutely agree with you. This is why again what I do as as look I absolutely agree with you is that we're going to have price discovery at some point in the markets. Um we're g and and again take a look at Google trading at you know again you you plug in any asset price and you get kind of the same chart lately but you got this massive deviation from the long-term mean you're and and every time it's done this before you've come down and retested this long-term mean multiple times. So this is why I like technical analysis because it strips out all of the ifs, the ums and the buts and the narratives and the rationalizations and just says look whenever the stock has had a relative strength overbought condition before there's been a corrective move in the stock not necessarily and this is but this is a trick as I said you know is hey it was like right here it was overbought RSI wise and it went up for six more months and then you had the correction right there again that's the momentum and the train. There's nothing that says this is going to correct immediately. Same for gold, same for um you know, Bitcoin, same for Microsoft stock, same for Nvidia stock, same for Olo, same for Bloom Energy. Uh same for Apploven. You you kind of pick the stock, pick the sector, pick the index. They're all look like this and to a large degree. And when you see these relative overbought conditions on a long-term basis, that's a really good warning sign that we're getting potentially closer to a corrective cycle in the markets. Again, that doesn't mean a bare market. It just means that we're going to see assets start to move back towards their mean prices at some point. And those reversions happen consistently throughout history. I was uh you know, I was showing a chart of the S&P. Um I'm I'm working on for our newsletter this weekend, and this is a long-term chart of the S&P 500. And what you'll notice is is that every time the deviation from the 48month uh 48w week moving average, so 48 weeks is roughly about a year. Uh 48 trading weeks is a kind of a trading year. But when you're this deviated um from the 48we moving average, you typically get reversions. But importantly, if you just look at the markets over, this is since 2009, we've been in a very steady bullish trend. But every time we get to the top of this trend channel, we correct back to the bottom of the trend channel repeatedly. And there's and at the time that the markets are going up, you know, in 2021, it was like, oh man, this is this market, we're on fire. We're buying meme stocks. We're buying spaxs. It's fantastic. It's, you know, it's all new, all new land that we're in. And then you had the 2022 correction. There's always a reason why the markets will correct, but that's just that return to rationality. is that, you know, when you get big weekly, you know, RSI overboughts, you get big weekly extensions from long-term means, you get tops of trend channels, that's where typically something occurs. And whatever it is in 2026 that shows up, whether it's, you know, economic slowdown or whether it's some type of, you know, issue politically, geopolitically, whatever it is, uh, the Fed hikes rates next year for, you know, nobody expects the Fed to hike rates, but what if the Fed would hike rates next year? um anything like that could cause that immediate repricing of the markets because that affects that outlook for forward earnings and then we have to re those 22 23 24 times valuations all of a sudden have to get repriced lower that becomes problematic for the markets and so again that you know we're just putting the market and all the assets in markets all across the spectrum at really risky extremes where the potential for corrective price action is becoming much more prevalent. Got it. Yeah. And I just want to note here, um, yeah, if the Fed hiked rates next year, it would totally surprise everybody. But I think what's probably more likely is the Fed is going to cut rates and it's going to cut rates probably a lot >> just as it did right as the start of the dot crash right as it did at the start of the financial crisis right at the start of COVID which were also corrective elements along this historical pathway here >> because that has much more commonly been the pattern of you know when the Fed has switched from a a height rake regime to start cutting that you know historically that is when we've seen some of the larger market corrections That's right. >> Yeah. No guarantee it's going to happen this time, but would not surprise me in the least >> at all. Correct. >> Yeah. Um, all right. So, I just want to note real quickly, I interviewed yesterday. The interview is going to come out the day after this one airs, so Sunday. Uh, Mark Newton, and Mark is the, um, research partner of Tom Lee from Funstrat, right? And just so you know, um, he he's a total technologist. like he he he looks at the macro world, he gets opinions about the macro world, but it doesn't influence his trading. His trading is just all on on the data. He's a big momentum guy. Trend is your friend. Ride it and trend is your friend and ride it until the end. That's his his metric. >> Um so peering out and like you, he's more confident, you know, with a three-month uh forecast than than one much longer than that. >> But he basically says, "Look, given the momentum, I can see this market continuing to go higher the next couple weeks. he is, you know, then becomes more concerned about October, November and thinks, you know, on on the whole probably some sort of correction in the market. Um, he sees that as a buying opportunity to then ride the market into the end of the year. Um, he then thinks 2026 will be a lot more rocky. Um, and and sort of like, hey, how rocky? Let me tell you at the end of this year when I do my 2026 official forecast, right? But I don't think you would be surprised at all if he turned out to be right there, Lance. >> Right. That wouldn't surprise me at all. >> Yeah. Okay. Um Okay, great. Um let's see where to head next year. >> Before we jump real quick, let me just say one more thing. >> You know, I because I see this comment in like like your chat a lot is like Lance, you know, it's like Lance said the market's going to go up and down. You know, that's not very helpful. >> I get that. I don't know. The the reason that we make that statement, and sometimes it seems like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, is because I don't know what the future's going to be. All I'm doing is trying to figure out what the odds are of markets going up or markets going down, in particular, the assets that I own. And so, if I'm if I own a bunch of assets in particular sectors or markets, I want to know where my risk is. And I don't know what the future's going to be. So yes, it's always it's always a question of yeah, I've got a 40% chance the market's going to go higher or 20 or 30 um and I've got a 50 60 70% chance the markets are going to go lower. How do I want to manage that risk in my portfolio? And anybody that tells you they know with absolute certainty that the markets are going to go higher over the next six months, 12 months or a year, actually 12 months is a year. Six months, eight months or a year. >> Um they they don't know. They're just guessing. And yeah, you know, I see, you know, there's a lot of these, you know, a lot of these graphs that come out says, "Oh, every time the Fed hikes rate, you know, cuts rates, the market's higher 12 months from now." >> True, that happens most of the time, but what they don't tell you is that a lot of times there's a big correction right in the middle, >> right? >> You know, or or something that that you know, yeah, maybe the markets are higher, but you're probably not. So, you know, that's why it's always important is that we're just trying to navigate the landscape and manage that risk accordingly. And again, I don't know what the what the markets are going to do on Monday, much less I don't even know how they're going to finish up the day. >> Yeah. And and just to sort of echo you things you said in the past, like look, I can pretty much guarantee everybody the market's going to continue going up. It's then going to go down. It's then going to go up again. >> I just have no idea when it's going to make those turns, right? And so what you're trying to do is is assess the probability. How many cracks do we have in the ice if things are looking stretched, right? You know, oh, are we starting to see green shoots we need to pay attention to, right? if if the market's been headed downward, right? Yeah. >> Yeah. Correct. Yeah, that's it. Okay, go ahead. Next topic. >> Okay. Uh let's see here. Um okay. Um I'm I'm going to Oh, okay. So, first off, uh we had a Fed meeting this week. >> Um so, yeah, need to get your reaction to that. Um so I think anybody who's been you know paying even a little bit of attention uh has seen that the Fed uh cut uh its policy rate by 25 uh basis points which is what everybody was expecting. Um I think I think it it touched the pace of QT just a little bit but not really much to talk about. >> Um and the market kind of generally liked what it heard. Um, so no freakouts and you know, markets are now up a little bit higher since. So I guess we can say it did like what it heard. Um, I did not have a chance this very uncharacteristically I did not have a chance to watch Pal's presser, but it didn't seem like he said too much that surprised anybody during it. Any other takeaways that you've got, Lance? >> No, I mean it was it was as expected. Um, you know, they cut 25 basis points. The market actually sold off after the news and then actually rallied back just a smidge to close flat for the day. Markets were up yesterday, but really not because of the Fed. If you looked at the heat map yesterday. Oh, so by the way, let me just get our days straight because you'll be watching this on Saturday. So, Thursday. If you watch the market on thing this on Friday. >> Yeah. >> Um, but if you watch the market on Thursday, um, the markets were green, but only because Nvidia had taken a $5 billion stake in Intel and both those stocks were up sharply, which was affecting the Dow as well as as the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ because of the weights of those stocks. the rest of the market was kind of in, you know, the market would have probably been up about half as much on Thursday as it was if it wasn't for Nvidia and Intel. And then on Friday, as we're talking right now, the market opened up but sold off to to basically flat. It's it's again, it's kind of the the mag seven driving the markets today. It's Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft. >> And and sorry, just just to interject with some breaking news. Uh Trump and Chinese uh Premier Xi just finished their phone call and they have agreed that uh the Tik Tok deal is going through. So that's probably helping a bit too. >> Yeah, but yeah, the market got just a little market was basically trading flat and then bounced a little bit on the news. We'll see what kind of comes up. There's no uh and I'm just reading from their press release as well, Adam. Uh Trump and Z didn't release details of the of the deal, but new investors would own about half the company, while existing ones in the Tik Tok parent, Bite Dance, uh including Sescuana International, KKR, and General Atlantic, would hold roughly 30% of that. So, um we'll we'll kind of see what this looks like, but again, at least this removes the threat of a Tik Tok ban potentially. >> Okay. All right. I'm going to take things sideways for a second here. Anything else about the Fed before I do? No, no. Again, it was pretty much as expected. The only thing is is that the markets are now expecting five more rate cuts between now and next year. >> Oh, sorry. A to sorry, sorry, four more rate cuts, a total of five >> into 2026. >> Okay. And that was notable with the dot plot did suggest that the Fed uh the FOMC the the board that meets is expecting to be more doubbish next year than they were before. I think a valid question to be raised too is, you know, if you assume for a second that Pal is going to get replaced by somebody more doubbish, which the president seems to want to have, and if potentially they replace Lisa Cook, that dot plot might get even more doubbish next year as you have more doubbish people sitting in the seats who are voting on the dot. >> Steven Moran, who was a firsttime voting member, he was the Trump appointee. He was at five rate cuts. He was the outlier. >> He was a denter. He wanted 50 basis points. But then when they did the dot plot, you see one dot plot is way lower than all the rest. Yeah. You're like, I wonder who that could be. Yeah. >> Exactly. No surprises. But I thought, but you know, it's interesting. They released their quarterly projections uh every quarter for, you know, economic growth, unemployment, inflation. U no real change, expecting slower rates of economic growth into next year. Um 1.9 to 1.8 in 2027. 1.8% long-term economic growth. That's not great. 1.8% economic growth is not something to write home about. that's that's not even keeping up with the rate of population growth um in terms of employment, but they're expecting >> and that's what the Fed's kind of you know historically rosy outlook on the jobs market, right? >> Yeah. You know, >> and so but they do they they they've got this very rosy outlook for 4.2% unemployment, but you know this really dismal outlook for economic growth which is the driver for employment and inflation going to 2%. So there was no no real changes but uh you know no prediction of a recession of course uh out in the future ever. It never is. Um so >> but they but they can never say one's coming just >> Yeah. But but the projections aren't aren't good. I mean the projections are for very slow economic growth um in the future. >> Yeah. And also >> disinflation than inflation. Yeah. >> Yeah. And to note they they changed their their policy statement and said hey we think the balance of risks now is towards uh unemployment to jobs and that's a big shift. It had been for the past bunch of years you know since since they started the rate hikes you know several years ago they were much more worried about inflation than about the health of jobs market. That is now officially shifted. >> Yeah. which you know I think you and I Lance have been saying hey dudes you know if you care about uh jobs you should be caring them about a lot more than you than you than you have been for the past year plus especially because the jobs data seems to not be accurate and I think the Fed is maybe finally getting that memo but of course way too late which is why Pal's nickname is too late pal um one thing I'll note too um is uh there are now calls in fact just just like literally in Congress a bill was just proposed to um remove the Fed's second mandate, the jobs mandate. It's really interesting. There's been the past couple months, there's really been a lot of questioning about not just the Fed's interest rate policy, but like, hey, should the Fed actually operate differently than it does? Um, who knows where this is going to go. Maybe we can talk about this in depth in a later conversation, Lance, but >> we who knows, but we could potentially see some some changes there at the Fed. There's even some discussion of like and should the Fed even be setting interest rates and maybe we should just have a market, you know, mechanism for that and the Fed just becomes a true lender of last resort as it was originally intended to be. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but it would be interesting to see if they were forced to give up the jobs mandate. Um >> I think it should I think they should give up. But again, I'm more leaning in the >> they're one of the only central banks that has it. >> Yeah, know I I would just say, you know, get out of the whole prediction business because a you're horrible at it. You're never right. Um, but B, just, you know, your job is just make sure the banks are functioning properly and just, you know, the two-year Treasur, you don't need the Fed funds rate. The two-year Treasury rate t tracks the Fed funds. >> I was going to say that's a that's a marketbased solution right there. >> Yeah. And just use a market-based solution for your your lending policy and just make sure the banks operate and and get out of everything else and the whole world would be a lot better off. >> Yeah. So, okay. If if we want to, we can go more deeply into that. I just find it interesting that that we're now beginning to shift from just some random voices, you know, like the Ron Paul's of the world talking about this into the wind to all of a sudden there are bills being introduced, right? >> Um, okay. I'm going to take things sideways for a second, Lance. We could do we I'm sure we could rant on this forever, so we'll keep it tight. >> But, you know, I look at that ticktail Tik Tok deal and I'm just kind of like, you know, like um I'm realizing there was probably a part of me that was hoping it wasn't going to go through. not for any business reason, but for a societal and cultural reason, right? Um, and uh, you know, we we we we gave a nod last week to the Charlie Kirk assassination, which I think is just a milestone on this cultural path that we're on, where um, you know, we are we are really having uh, cultural decay and it's been going on for generations and then talked about this a lot with Greg Lucino and the coddling of the American mind and my interview with him from last month. Um, and we've talked about elements of this, but I I think we're at a point, Lance, where if you ask everybody, and I think this is a universal, you hear about these 8020 issues, this is like a 99% issue of is social media healthy for us as a culture. I think almost everybody would say no. It's pretty toxic, right? So, we know we have a problem, right? We're the person who says, "All right, you know what? Yeah, I got a drinking problem." Right? And the question becomes, you know, well, what should we do about it? And I'm torn on this one because, you know, the the fair market libertarian, you know, type person in me, live and let be, I don't want to be, you know, placing censorship. I don't want to be on the side of of censorship. But I but I do think that, you know, when we're looking at the the harm that social media is doing to especially our kids, but as our kids begin to grow up into adults, you know, the adults that they're becoming and just what's happening in society, like the cost is really real. It's measured in the cost of human lives. And not just the fringe people who might assassinate somebody, but the people who commit suicide, the people who, you know, self harm, all that type of stuff. And just diminished, >> you know, pursuit of happiness is a huge part of what's supposed to be in America. this is really compromising that. And so I don't know, we could talk about this forever. I don't want us to, but like I look at this Tik Tok deal and I'm like, that was a great opportunity just to say, you know what, let's just not have it. Let's start there. Let's kick off one of the the biggest sources of brain rot and just say we don't want it, right? But >> yeah, I I wrote, you know, but and no, and we've we've written about this before. I wrote an article called technological advances. Does it make things better? Um, you know, we're always looking at technology as like, oh, it's this great thing and it makes our lives better and but if you take a look at the technological advances, you can almost market to the year when Facebook went public and the iPhone was invented that you saw a rapid decline in in and you and individual happiness levels decline sharply. a very sharp rise in depression and loneliness, a very sharp rise in teenage suicides. Um, you know, um, you know, it's just there's been and and again, you can market almost to the year starting in 2007 to 2010 and that was when these things were, you know, that's when the smartphone was introduced. That's when Meta went public. And nothing you can't point to anything good that's come out of it, but we're all addicted to it, right? And it's like, wait, you know, I got I got to look at my phone, you know, to see what's what's happening and I got to post videos and all this. I mean, the average American spends between four and six hours a day on social media. And then they complain about why they, you know, they're not they can't build wealth and they can't be productive in society, they can't, you know, oh, life is so unfair >> or they're not getting promoted or whatever. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, just think if I could use if I could use four to six hours of my time that I was spending on social media instead learning a new skill, learning a new trade, doing something to advance myself, personal, you know, exercise, eat better, whatever. How much better off would you be? And it was interesting because I posted this this tweet earlier this week. It was a really great quote from Ronald Reagan. I I'd stumbled across it and I I posted this tweet and and because there's I get it's gotten so much push like I don't know why it is just recently too there's been a lot of push about how unfair life is and and how nothing is you know you know it's all been co-opted by the boomers and and the Gen Xers and and none of that's true. You got to remember that the boomers have had 50 years to build wealth and to buy houses and these type of things. They've had a very long run of time to save money and invest. But it was also a very different environment. You know, they they were taught to work hard and save money and do these type of things. They didn't have social media. But I I posted this tweet. It's called the American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends intends him to become. And there's a quote by Ronald Reagan and and that and that's true. And from the standpoint that you know the opport the the opportunity is fair for everybody has exactly the same opportunity. Everybody has >> it's not that you're given everything the same. It's that you have the equal opportunity to change your station. >> Correct. And think about how much time how much more advancement that we could make if we spent our time rather on social media achieving whatever goals it was that we wanted to achieve. And you think about four to six hours a day. Just say say just to say it's two hours a day that you're on social media. That's 14 hours a week, right? That's half a day of just spending time on social media, cruising around seeing what everybody else is doing. But again, that, you know, the social media we see how how well how everybody else is doing better than us. And most of that's They're, you know, they're renting houses and renting cars and taking videos out in front of them is not even real. But we start comparing that to to our >> They're showing us their best life, but in most cases it's even a fake best life. Yeah. >> Yeah. And Yeah. You don't you don't see you don't see all the challenges and struggles, right? Everything's great everywhere else and and your life sucks, right? So >> So I'm going to reel you in here because yes, we could bash social media for hours here, right? >> No, I'm just I'm just saying is that there's a great movie called Ready Player One. Watch the movie because that tells you where we're headed. >> I know. Especially with the advent of of virtual reality. Um, yeah. So, anyways, um, but I'm gonna end this with a with a provocative question for you, and you're no matter how you answer it, you're probably going to get slammed by a bunch of people, but I'm going to do it anyways, and we'll revisit it. I >> don't care, >> which is, so I have thick skin. H >> how how do you think we should as a society address it? There's the on one hand, there's the argument of, hey, you know, this is a parenting issue. This has to happen in the home. We just have to, you know, start, you know, both adopting better behaviors ourselves and enforcing it on our kids and we have to moderate, you know, the age at which our own kids use this and we have to, you know, kind of help onboard them. Um, which I completely agree with. I think that is a part of the solution. But some would say that's where it should end. The state shouldn't be involved. Or is there a role for the state here to say like certain countries are beginning to I think Australia just just uh recently did this where they said and correct me if you're watching from Australia if I'm wrong here. Um but that it's you can't use social media if you're under 16. Right. And we we approach it like we do alcohol, cigarettes, things like that, driving. Um do you have a strong opinion one way or the other? Uh, so it's interesting because in Ready Ready Player One, that game, they basically outlawed one day a week, social media was down, right? So you had to spend one day a week in in reality, right? It's just you had to go back to living life. Um, but no, I mean, I think you definitely have to start looking at, you know, putting age limits on social media. um in terms of because again when you're when you know really young kids are getting into social media they're they don't have the decision-m capability to say hey this is good for me or this is not good for me right now >> just interjected not everybody has a Lance Roberts as a father who would would be heavy-handed in the home and say no you're not going to use it until you're older so yeah >> which we did by the way >> which is good for you but my my point is or your point is is look the state's role is is to help especially the kids who don't have which is which is why you can't buy cigarettes till you're 18, which is why you can't buy alcohol till you're 18. You know, these type of things because we said, "Hey, you know, that's probably not a good idea for a minor to have control of that because they're not mentally mature enough to handle it. >> The prefrontal cortex isn't developed enough yet." >> Exactly. And it's interesting now because I talked to my kids um and they're turn they still use social media, but they're not on it very often. Um even and and I've talked to my kids about like, "Hey, you know, I noticed you you haven't been on TikTok lately or whatever." Um because I have a I have an account where I track all of their social media use. Even even though my kids are over 20, I still track how much they're using on social media. So I know when they're on and when they're not on and um I know she haven't been using them much lately. Yeah. Yeah. It's just I've got other stuff going on. I'm really busy at school. I've got this happening. I got to go, you know, I'm you know, my son works two jobs. He goes to school. Um he's working on his degree. So I mean goes to the gym, eats right, right? And he's doing all the right things. So he's busy. He doesn't have time to be on social media. But he even said that even his friends that in his friend group, they're all starting to use social media a lot less. They're starting to realize that it's not really that beneficial for them and they're starting to turn away from it and use their time in more productive manner. So maybe the hope is is that you know this a generation it's like this was a huge fad. It was great. It was wonderful. Everybody participated in it. But maybe people just naturally come to decision is like what am I doing here? I'm spending four hours of my day doom scrolling Tik Tok and I'm not getting anything out of it. >> Yeah. I I think it's sadly more like cigarettes where um because I don't think you've got that mentality in eight and 10 year olds that are, you know, getting their first device and like, "Oh my god, this is amazing." Right? I think kind of like cigarettes where the guy's like, you know, finally in his 20s or 30s and saying, "You know what? This this six-pack a day habit I have is is not so great. I got to start cutting it down." Right? So, it it's it's heartening that your kids and and I've actually seen with my kids um I I had my older daughter kind of in her last year in college, first year out of college, you know, did say a couple times like, you know, I'm going on like a social media fast because I'm just realizing >> it doesn't make me feel good and I feel much better when I'm not on it, right? But I think that that's almost a state you get to after years of abusing it and realizing it's not helpful. So, okay. So anyways, uh I just wanted to get a sense for for Smart Man's opinion on whether, you know, this was something that we might have to have some regulation around. And it seems like you think that's probably going to be part of it. And who knows? We we'll keep our eyes on it. I >> I I don't I don't know if anything ever happens, you know, with it. I mean, there's too much money behind it, you know, Google, Meta. I mean, >> well, I mean, sadly, the the companies that apparently have all the money in the world now, you know, are the ones that are building these, so who knows? Yeah. All right. Um well, look, I want I want to move on here in the time we have left. Um Okay. This is kind of interesting. Um, so first off, let me just pull up a quick tweet here um by Melody Wright. Um, this is on housing. Um, and you know, you talk about the power of narratives, Lance. And, um, one of the narratives in housing, the housing market right now is, yeah, you know, Florida and Texas are going through, you know, some rough times here. Um, but they're the ones with the big inventory problems. And you know, I live in New England or I live in the Midwest and we've got a chronic national housing or chronic housing shortage and it's never going to get bad here. Prices can't come down here because we don't have the inventory they have there. And who knows, right? Uh but Melody tracks this stuff and in talking with her, I know that she believes those markets will not be immune. They they probably will not go down nearly as much as as the Austin's of the world or the St. Petersburgs of the world or whatever, Coral Gables. But um she is saying here, hey, in both the Midwest and the Northeast, we're seeing higher month-to-month over inventories um when inventory should actually be going down due to seasonality uh in this year. And that's actually happened in the South despite the pain the South's going through in the West. Boston is up 11% in inventory month over month. Um so I'm just pointing this out as just a just another crack, right, in the housing market there. Um and >> which is which which is absolutely fascinating to me because you look at homebuilder stocks and they are on fire this year. >> Um I guess although Lenar just uh announced I think it was yesterday and the stock went down um they they they announced disappointing results and and it is I mean look the the the pain that the home builders appear to be in in terms of having to uh you know do mortgage buy downs and price cuts and all and all sorts of non-pric discounts to get their inventory to move. Um, yeah, their stocks have been surprisingly strong. I mean, I to me I kind of like I can't believe it seems just like a short that's just begging to be placed on there. >> Yeah. No, >> and I probably would have shorted by now, but when Buffett bought in, I was like, "Oh, you know." >> Well, yeah. That's what I was saying. It's like, you know, home builders have been doing great. Then Buffett buys in. They have they have a big run. And I'm I'm sitting there looking at all the stuff that goes into home building. You and you take a look at the housing statistics and blah blah blah. And I'm like, "This doesn't make any sense." But this but this goes back to our previous conversation that everything's going up and so if everything's going up it's like oh that hasn't gone up yet let's buy that and then it starts going up and so that just drags more money into it. So it's kind of the feeding the narrative and I'm I'm going to be fascinated with with with Buffett's purchases of the homebuilders. I I I get the fundamentals on it, but again, when I'm looking at the more macro environment, I'm just wondering if his timing again, he doesn't care about timing, right? He's got a hundred-year view on this. >> Exactly. And that may be it, right? Which is just like, hey, I'm I'm I'm looking at the price in 25 years from now. >> Um so, so I got another tweet here, and this one is after your heart, Lance. Um, so just to be super clear, um, the record shows that you and I have a difference of opinion in terms of your comment on it's just as easy to, you know, build a life today, you know, than it was back 30, 50 years ago. >> Um, I agree with much of your logic, but not all of it. I do I do >> sure >> I do believe that it is a a harder slope to to to climb, but um, here is a quote. Here's a tweet. um guy named helpful landlord here on X. Prospective tenants just pulled up to my $2,000 a month rental in their $100,000 truck. >> So these are people >> but see right there that goes to my whole point >> that that's why I'm bringing it up and laughing about it. Exactly. You know, a huge part of this is um >> personal choice. >> Personal choices. Now, this guy does have a follow- on tweet that says, "Hey, in all fairness, the trucks used for work and the tenant makes good money. They could probably buy a home if they want to. Uh but still, um you know, uh I mean, honestly, I don't know what you got to do for work to to need a truck that cost $100,000. But, um anyways, long story short, yeah, somebody showing up for a a rental with a truck that costs what, you know, 50 times their monthly rent is bananas. >> Um okay. So, um, you know, we just want to show, hey, there's there's there's continued stress in the housing market. Um, both in terms of, uh, you know, inventory, continued price reductions in the weak states, but again, we're seeing some inventory weakness, um, meaning more inventory than expected coming online, even in the quote unquote safe markets. Uh we're seeing stress in the terms of increasingly strapped consumer households and you and I have talked about the student loan cascade and all the delinquencies and all these different types of debts, but also just on people making poor life choices where they're just living above their means and eventually you have to pay the piper on that one too. Like having >> buy now pay later. >> Yeah. >> Um okay. Uh so we'll keep our eye on this folks, but here's a housing concept I wanted to to run by you Lance. Um, so, uh, you know, my daughters are now I just dropped my younger daughter off for her sophomore year of college. You know, they're out of the house and, um, like any selfish parent, right? I hope when their life travels, uh, get to the point where they want to settle down that they choose to live near mom and dad, right? Um, and we've also talked about how um, you know, I'm the kind of parent who uh, to the extent I have the means to do so, you know, I want to help them out at key moments in life, but I don't want to enable them. I don't want to give them too much, that type of stuff, right? Um, and so I've thought about, okay, you know, like, do I help them buy their first home? You know, that I've been sort of thinking and if so, how much? And all that type of stuff. Here's an idea I came up with literally in the shower this morning, Lance. And so I'm going to I'm just going to toss it out there. It might be a terrible idea, but I thought this would be kind of fun. So I'd love for my kids to live near me so that my grandkids are near me. You know, we we raised our kids um next to my wife's parents or or you know, same town over from my wife's parents uh their whole lives. So they've they've had their grandparents in their lives, you know, on a on a weekly basis um almost on a daily basis when they were growing up. And it's just been wonderful, right? Um so here's the idea I came up with. um which is you know it's all about incentives. So maybe I tell them look um if you want to come live near us uh I'll buy the house you guys live in it rentree for as long as you raise your family here and if you raise your family here next to us um you don't have to pay me rent although there's a caveat in that which I'll mention in a second. Um, and by and when the youngest child heads off to college, I'll give you the deed to the house, right? So, you basically get to live rentree and get a free house out of this. And the cost of it is that you you live near me with the grandkids. Now, I will make them pay rent, right? So, we're going to we're going to there's going to be a market rent payment you're going to have to make every month and that's going to go into either a retirement account or a trust for you guys. So, it's like a forced retirement saving for them. They just can't take that money and blow it, right? They can't live a higher lifestyle than they would otherwise if they were renting a house. I'm just taking that making those payments go into something in the future that's going to benefit them in their retirement, right? So, um, it's going to feel to them like they're renting a house from somebody as they're going through the process, but they know that, uh, you know, at the end of it all, they're going to get a free house and they're going to have, uh, some additional retirement savings and I'm going to be happy to do it because my family's going to be near me. What do you think about this idea? >> I think that's selfish as it can be. >> Oh, it's totally selfish. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I want my grandkids near me. >> I I wouldn't I wouldn't. So, if you want to do that, I wouldn't do it the way you're doing it then. And I wrestle with the same thing with my kids because we would we want so we've got four kids. We would all love to have them right here next to us so we can have access to the grandkids. Totally selfish, right? You and I are on the same page. Absolutely. >> Here's the here's the risk you run into. You're going to limit their ability to have a profession. I mean, who wouldn't jump at that? Oh, dad's going to dad's going to not only give me a free house, but fund an investment account for me and give me all this money at the end of the day and, you know, give me and that's who wouldn't go for that. >> Yep. problem is is that now you've taken their career search and you've surrounded it within a 10 milei radius of your house, >> right? So, so you you have impaired their future ability to grow their wealth >> um and to grow their profession, grow their careers. And so, you don't want to do that. Um you know, and again, I wrestle with this as as well, but my daughter's at school to be an anesthesiologist. she's going to try to wind up at John's Hopkins in New York because if she can get there, then, you know, that's a huge career builder for her. Then she can go from there to wherever else she wants to go. Um, you know, my son when he graduates computer engineering, he needs to go to work for somebody like a palunteer, right? He's getting to a top tier company, grow his career. That's going to take them away from Houston where we live. And and that's going to be unfortunate that we But you can get on a plane and go see him anytime you want. plane plane flights are cheap, but you don't want to impair their ability to grow their career for a selfish motive. And again, you and I are in the same bucket. I agree with the I agree with the intention and I like the idea. If it happened to work out that they were moving close to you, then sure, you know, help them. I wouldn't I would I would have them pay rent um on the house and then just take that money and invest it for them and don't tell them you're doing it, but make them think that they're paying rent. Have >> Well, maybe don't tell them, but it's pretty much the same experience. >> Yeah. But don't tell them that you're doing that because that's just a free incentive, right? And so make them pay rent, a market-based rent. Don't tell them what you're doing with the money because they don't care. And furthermore, you can turn that into a legitimate rental property and then you get the tax deductions for that. So you don't screw yourself on the other side by not collecting rent. >> That's interesting. >> Yeah. So, you know, but but again, I agree with the intention, but I just want you but you should consider the impact you're going to have on their future careers if you limit their job search scope. >> Yeah. And so, it's a great point. Um I thought a little bit about it in the shower, but not them realizing not fully. I mean, obviously, if they left, then it would be a good thing because it's like, all right, you got a sweet deal here. You're if you're leaving for something even better, awesome, >> right? Maybe you don't do it until they have kids, right? So, you're not you're not in incenting a 20, you know, four-year-old who's not going to have kids maybe for another five years um to to just plunk down your home rather than okay, I'm going to go to John's Hopkins and, you know, cut my teeth and build my expertise, but then maybe come right again. Yeah, it's totally selfish. I mean, at some point in time, you get to say, >> trust me, I want the same thing, right? Yeah. But, you know, here's the interesting thing. You know, I've talked to all my kids about this and and not not overtly like the way you're talking about like, hey, here's a big incentive package, right? I haven't done that, but I just talked to them. It's like, hey, you know, what are you thinking about, you know, kind of in the future? And they all want to wind up somewhere around Houston. They they want to be close to their family because we have a very our our family is very very close in terms of structure. We, you know, we rely on each other a lot. We're very close-knit. And so their own choices are they're trying to figure out ways to get back towards Houston. Um. >> Yeah. But how many kids do you have? >> Four altogether. So >> yeah. Yeah. So So I've got two. You got better odds than me, right? So I'm like, look, I I get to get at least one of these, right? >> Well, I lost one. I've got one in the UK. Don't forget. So >> Well, for now, >> I've only got three left. >> Yeah. I tell you what, the way the UK is going politically, um, hopefully he'll come home soon. So, >> um, okay. Uh, I had some additional ideas on this about like, well, what if they want to upgrade the house or what if they decide they want to get a different house because they're having more grandkids or whatever. And >> if folks like this idea, I can throw that stuff out later, but all right. So, I got to think I got to think a little bit more about h how do you not their ability to to advance in their careers? >> But, I mean, almost kind of by definition, if they're going to live near you, no matter whether you structure anything or not, you know, then there there there's that limitation there. But I guess the question could be if they got a if they got a good job offer and you didn't want this to keep them from doing the right thing. >> Yeah. >> What what could you do? So I'll noodle on that. But I still I'm not giving up on this idea. >> And don't Well, no, no. And I'm not saying you should give up on the idea. I also want you to consider the fact that you're eliminating struggle. >> Um >> but how I mean that's why they're paying the rent, right? You don't pay me this rent, you don't get this deal. >> Well, no, I get that. Right. But you're also giving them a lot of of other benefits, right? So, and I get that. Just all I'm saying is is don't forget there's an importance to struggle and they need to struggle in order to build >> I'm thousand% with you on this. Yeah. This >> I know you are. I'm just saying so so as part and and I know you and I both agree on this. Yeah. And so part of the thing that you and I have to both approach is to make sure that they struggle but we're there to help them as needed. So part of this process is is like, hey, I'll help you buy this house, >> but instead of me just giving you money to buy the house, I'm going to become a co-owner. I'm just throwing out an idea. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna buy half the house for you, and we're going to be co-owners. And so if you ever sell the house in the future, then we're going to split the profits, >> right? So you help them get into this. >> You pick up a tax benefit from being a real estate investor, right? Um and then at the end of the day, you get you you get some benefit. And then what you do with the benefit, right? You sell the house, you split the profits, and you go invest into an account for them, whatever you want to do, but you help, >> or you just deed them the house when you die, >> or however you want to do that at the end of surprise, here you go. Right? But they've had to struggle and they've built those muscles. They've understood the importance of money, how to budget, how to save for things. That's and those are the important lessons that we have. And again, you know, let's go back to, you know, where you and I disagree. You like you're like, "Oh, it's harder today." It's really not. If you if you live back when I grew up and you and you talk about house prices back then and and income >> I can just see the comments right now. >> No, I'm I'm just telling you that mathematically it's it cost more to buy a house in the 70s than it costs today on a percentage of income basis. Um and so the the times aren't really any different. It may seem different because we we didn't have all these other expenses back then that you have today. You know, we didn't have to buy Apple iPhones and big expensive cars and all these other things. So, so again, the thing that you and I need to focus on is anybody can afford the lifestyle they want, but they have to be willing to struggle, sacrifice, and and have the discipline to get there. It's not going to come tomorrow. Nobody's going to give it to you. And this is one of, and this is when you get the comments, right? This is always the comment section is, well, you know, you don't understand. I do understand. >> I've lived out of my truck to build my business. I've done these things that we've talked about before. >> And so, yeah, I understand, but you have to be willing to commit to it. And nobody's going to give you anything, right? You just have to be willing to start the process. And that's the hardest part is saying, "Okay, I can't afford a $2,000 phone. I'm g have to go buy a flip phone and I'm g have to live with that for a while until I can afford the nicer things that I want." But I've got to start the saving investing process. I've got to do these things. And I know it's not fun. I know it's it's it's it seems challenging and it is challenging and there's certainly a lot of differences today because we think we have to have certain things that we don't necessarily need but we think we have to have them because everybody else has them and that's the trap we get ourselves into. >> Yeah. So you and I are a thousand% in agreement on that. We still differ I think on the data and you know I'll commit Lance we'll have a one of these rants where we just bring the data and I'll let you make your full data argument on that but it doesn't really matter because we still agree on the whole process thing and and this just just to end this idea um you know um so I'm a thousand% that a they have to have the struggle because that's how they're going to develop the muscles to be self-sufficient and have a great life right >> um and you got to make sure to your point about you want to be there to help them when you can, but you don't want to be like the Fed where they just know, ah, whenever we get in trouble, dad's going to come bail me out, right? Can't be that type of relationship. >> The The reason why I'm sort of willing to make this sort of as broad daylight transactive as it is. >> Yeah. >> Because it is a little bit of a bribe. It's like, look, you might be able to get something better somewhere else. >> Yeah. You know, >> I'm trying to sweeten the pot to make sure that you stay near me, right? >> Yeah. You know, bribes are illegal. >> Pardon me. And that's why bribes are illegal. >> Yeah. But when it comes to your grandkids, those rules go out the window, right? >> Again, I look, I have no problem with what you do with your kids, right? Is just understand your consequences and understand your motives. And as long as you understand you're being completely selfish in this whole motive, which I completely understand, right? I would do the same thing. >> I just, you know, I I just have to also look out for my kids' best interest to make sure that they get to where they're supposed to be. >> Right. >> That's also your job as a dad. >> It is. Which again, and maybe it's twisted logic, I still have to still have to process this, but like that's why like, hey, if you go through this, you raise your kids near me and and and you got to do well enough to at least pay the rent and do the other stuff you want to do in your life. Um, I may be limiting your prospects by this. I get it. Which is why if you do this, you get a free house and you, you know, and and whether I told them before or not, voila, here's all this retirement savings that you've made with your money along the way. Right? So, anyways, uh, folks, love to hear your thoughts. Maybe I'm just super crazy. Or maybe folks have a have a better riff on this idea that they can share on. >> Oh, no. No. Look, I I guarantee that people in the comments will love this idea. If their parents would do this for them, they would be all over it regardless of the consequences. >> Yeah. Well, of course. Who who would love an Yeah, exactly. I would have loved this option, but I'm curious to hear those who have their kids whether they think this is a good idea or not. Um All right. Um let's see. So, we talked about trades, which is basically you haven't done any trades, but next week and and sorry, will next week be more rebalancing or >> uh No, we'll do we're probably going to do a couple of position swaps. Uh we've got a couple of positions that are performing okay, but not as well as we would like them to. And there's some other there's a couple of other positions that we want to add. So, we'll probably because we we only hold a maximum number of stocks in a portfolio at any one time. And so, if in order to add a stock, I have to sell a stock. >> And and is that just because you feel like your attention can only focus on function. No, no, no. It's a function of mathematics. If you own more than than 30 stocks in a portfolio, you might as well just go buy an ETF. You're going to get the exact same performance. >> So, >> okay, it gets so broad that that >> and and the way and because of of passive indexing and all that type of stuff that if you own 40 stocks in your portfolio, you're basically going to get the exact same performance as the index. So, just go by the index and save yourself the time. Um, where you can create outperformance is by holding more concentrated positions in a fewer number of stocks. And that's that's how you can create outperformance over time. >> Okay. Um, all right. Well, look, um, I'm going to start wrapping things up here. Um, a couple of things. Um, first off, I want to remind folks, I should have said this at the very beginning, but we are now officially now less than a month away from Thalul Money's fall online conference, which is taking place Saturday, October 18th. Uh if you haven't bought your ticket yet, uh you should run notwalk uh to thoughtfulmoney.com/conference. Uh and uh get that ticket now because the early bird price discount that we're offering right now is going to go away pretty soon and I want to make sure everybody who can get it does get it. Um if you are a premium subscriber to our Substack, make sure you look for the code I sent you that'll help you get an additional $50 off of that conference. But the conference is it's going gang busters right now. I've got such a fantastic uh faculty and um I think just from a timeliness standpoint um given how much uncertainty lies out there for next year uh it it really probably could be both our best faculty at the most timely time. So anyways, hope to see you there folks. Um all right, so uh I'll do a little rant here, Lance, and then I'll I'll I'll do some some quick recap to share again some fun things. So, um, uh, yeah, I'm trying to make the rants a little bit more light-hearted, uh, this time around or positive given that we've had some pretty heavy ones, uh, of late. Uh, and I guess before I move on from that, uh, just I I promise I won't ask you this every week, Lance. I'll let you give us updates if you feel like it, but how are things going with you and your family right now? >> So, we as as as well as good as can be expected. We went through our first round of chemo last Friday, so you know, typical nauseous for a couple of days, been tired. But good news is so today's Friday. She actually went back to work yesterday. Um and today she's at work as well. So, you know, kind of getting back on her feet and uh doing well. We actually had a a client. We had a um dinner last night for all of our employees, kind of an employee appreciation dinner for our company and she went to that for a little bit and visited with everybody. She gets tired so we couldn't stay for very long, but you know, um she's trying to get back to being normal. One of the funny but the funniest story of this week is that um my wife has and and Adam will will attest to this. My wife has be a beautiful head of hair, long blonde hair, very full, very rich mane. She's very proud of her hair. And of course she's >> she's very beautiful period both inside and out. But yes, she's got great hair, too. >> Yeah. And >> by the way, I'm married for hair. Just I mean, if you're looking at what I'm working with, I I I did the same thing. Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly right. And uh so she's going to lose her hair and so she went and had her hair cut pretty short and she looks absolutely stunning with this short haircut. I was I was I'm a I'm a long hair guy. I've always loved her in long hair and I was like I don't know how this short hair is going to look but she's she looks like she looks like a a movie star right now with this haircut she's got. She wears her glasses. >> It's great. >> Yeah, it's great. Well, she ordered this wig and and my wife's very frugal. She's always looking to save money and and try to, you know, make things stretch things out. So, she ordered this wig offline. It was it was a dark-headed wig with these blonde highlights in it. And uh I I she this wig comes in the mail and and she goes into her dressing room to put it on and and I hear this just hysterical laughing coming out of her dressing room. And so I mean just kind of bell I haven't heard her laugh like this in in a long long time. Um and so I go in I was like what is going on? And she turns around, she's wearing this wig. And this wig is looks like something that you would get with like a really cheap Halloween costume. It was the It was the most horrid thing whatsoever you've ever seen. But it was so funny. And it was great because she was just having this belly laugh coming out of this of what she looked like in this wig. And I said, "Don't worry, honey." So, so this weekend we're actually going to professional wig shop to have her a wig made. But um you know, so that was that was kind of the highlight of the week. Hey, if um if if uh it will help you upgrade to uh you know, one that's really going to make her happy, uh let me know what what what the upgrade amount is and I will pay it from the thoughtful money account and it'll be a big, you know, wellw wish from the thoughtful money community to her. >> All right. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, I'll let you know. >> Yeah. Um that's funny. So, she got like the spirit Halloween of of >> Oh, yeah. It was It was so bad. It was so bad, but it was so funny at the same time. And again, she it it was really funny because she really needed to laugh. >> Yeah. >> Um but yeah, it was great. >> Um it it it's funny story and um my wife has long hair and it's it she straightens it. So if you know her, you know, you think of hers having long straight hair. Um but it's kind of got a natural curl to it. And when we go on vacation somewhere, like if we go to Hawaii, we're on, you know, we're out here on the west, so it's a lot easier to go to Hawaii. Um, her hair gets pretty frizzy and she kind of hates it, but I love it. I call it vacation wife, right? It's like, oh, I got I got a different variant of Yeah. So fun when you see it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Christine's the same way. She's always straightened her hair, but her hair is naturally very curly. It's like almost an afro. It's so curly. And so when we get we go somewhere like to a beach or something where there's a lot of humidity, it just goes >> good. Yeah. But even with a different cut, right? It is. I think it's really sexy. She hates the curl and it's all, you know, women are women are hysterical, right? Because, you know, like I think freckles are cute and she has freckles. You can't see them because she covers them up because she hates freckles, but I think they're cute. >> I think they're super cute. Yeah. >> Yeah. And and she hates curly hair because she has curly hair. So, she wants straight hair. Women always want the opposite of what they have. And I'm going, "Honey, I like curly hair and I like freckles." And she goes, "I hate those things. I don't want freckles. I want straight hair." So anyway, that's just >> which proves that proves that women dress for themselves, not for guys. >> Exactly right. Exactly right. >> Um all right. Well, look, uh just in wrapping up here, um uh I'm not making a uh good or bad comment on this. I know folks have strong opinions on both sides. Um but um uh Jimmy Kimmel is is uh losing his uh uh talk show or late night show and and Steven Colbear uh was announced was is going to be losing his I think next year >> and I don't want to get into the right or wrong of that folks. I know folks have strong opinions either ways. What I want to talk about is that both of these guys their shows had hundred million dollar budgets and they had hundreds of employees. And I don't know Kimmel's uh profitability, but I know the Colbear report I think was I think it was losing like 40 million bucks a year, right? >> Both of them had both of them had bad ratings and and really were probably on their way out eventually anyway. So I'm I'm I'm not sure timing is any any consequence of that. >> Yeah. And I don't know if maybe these were just the the the air cover reason that the network had to say, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna stop the bleeding. I don't know. Again, I'm not trying to to to make this a judgment a call about the gentlemen or their programs. I just want to say that like um when I hear about that as somebody who kind of runs his own show, you know, and runs it with a staff of the dude you're looking at right here, um you know, it it's kind of an amazing time in in history and in in media history. And Lance, I know you know this because you run your own show as well, right? You got Brent and I don't know if you have many other people uh helping you produce the show that you do. I mean, it's run with a skeleton crew relative to the size. And of course, you know, National Network TV show, yeah, it's going to be a lot bigger, but there's a lot of shows on YouTube, a lot of channels on YouTube that have as much, if not a lot more uh viewers than a lot of these major TV shows. Oh, yeah. >> But they run on on on, you know, a relative skeleton crew. And and not to pat myself on the back too much, but you know, there are times where I'll have a video that does quite well and I'll be like I'll look at the the stats and I'll be like, "Hey, that's more viewers than this CNN channel had or that this, you know, I don't know if the Tonight Show, but certainly some of these other, you know, big uh bigname uh talk shows. You know, I'll look at their media stats and say it's as big, if not bigger than at least that guy that week, right?" And again, I'm just one dude with a camera, right? and free editing software that I use. So, um it's really kind of uh it's really kind of cool that you can produce content hopefully of decent enough quality as affordably as you can right now. And it's it's it's also really good for audiences where I think you know what we're seeing is a huge number of people leave traditional media for new media, alternative media, whatever you want to call it, because in a lot of ways the these new media outlets are able to offer either more what I like to call nutritious content. So I like to think that, you know, our long hour and a half, two hour, you know, weekly market recaps give people much more useful information than the way they can get from, you know, a threeminut hit on CNBC or something like that, right? >> Um, so it can be more nutritious or just more authentic, right? You know, you can you can find people who aren't reading teleprompterss uh that are largely being written by their advertisers and stuff like that. So it's just it's a really interesting time. I I'm I'm gonna move forward from here on this theme, but real quick, do you have anything you want to add to that as a as a guy who's playing in this space? >> No, no. I I think I think really it's it's two things. One, I think one, you're right about, you know, the the content is more targeted. So, in other words, if I'm a consumer and, you know, I haven't watched late show I haven't watched late night television in forever because I go to bed at 8:00. So, I have to get up at 3:30 in the morning. So, I'm not awake long enough to see. if they had really early night or maybe late afternoon, you know, television, maybe we'd watch that given how early we go to bed. But yeah, >> but but but honestly, I don't watch much of news anymore on television. I don't watch much of I don't watch much television anymore other than my wife and I have a few shows that we'll just watch together to, you know, spend time together while we have dinner or whatever. >> But even then, that's on demand. You're not like tuning into the channel and seeing what's on. Right. >> Ex Exactly. And so that's kind of my point, which is I think that there's there's so much targeted content that more and more consumers are just going, you know, I I can watch on demand my favorite person anytime I want on YouTube, Twitch, Kick, you know, whatever platform that you Tik Tok, whatever you're you're you're using. And I just think that that's just driving more and more the consumption in that direction rather than staying up till, you know, late night to watch, you know, Saturday Night Live, as an example. I mean, I just think I just think I think I just think that the the viewing habits of people have changed. >> Oh, absolutely. And and look, I mean, there's a lot of consumer benefit. You get to see what you want when you want to watch it. There's downsides to it, right? Where we build our own echo chambers and then of course your social media feed is suggesting the next video that you're, you know, it wants to keep you in that >> in that echo chamber. >> Yeah. In that echo chamber. Um, but but yeah, so all true. Um, I I guess the the the thing I also just sort of want to note here is that um uh you know I think it used to take massive amounts of money and manpower to to bring people things that they wanted and now it's amazing how little it does. And I guess parting comment on this before I move on is um you know if anybody takes inspiration to say hey you know anybody watching this says hey there's a topic I've got something to say on I would encourage you really think about starting your own channel whether it's on YouTube or the the platform of your choice. Um it it is a golden era to be a content creator if it's something you want to do and if you've got something compelling to say there's a lot of baggage that comes along with it that I'm happy to explain to anybody who's interested. Um, and and that kind of gets me to the second part of this, Lance, which is, you know, one of the costs of of, you know, of being a personality in this space is, I mean, a you're going to you're going to attract a certain amount of haters and you just develop a a thick skin to that. But every so often you you'll get something strange that happens. And I want to speak real briefly to something that happened to me over the past couple of days. Um, I started getting um kind of copied on X. um on these tweets by this guy. I'm not going to mention his name, but he's he's a guy who sort of has his own, you know, he he's sort of a talking head expert. Um never heard of him before. And he was just starting to to slam me on X, just reacting to my tweets, but basically just saying, "Ah, this Tagert guy, you know, he's a loser. Don't listen to him." Whatever. And um whatever. You know, the guy's welcome to his opinion. I don't know why he was ranting about me. And I've learned a long time ago, don't feed the trolls, right? Just just let him say what he wants to say. It doesn't matter his opinions. But I started getting emails from some people who followed him who said, "Hey, this guy's really like got a thing against you and I follow you and I follow him and I I'm just I don't know why there's a discourse here. You know, can you can you explain to me why he's got a beef with you?" And I was like, I have no idea. Um, but whatever. You know, each to his own opinion. Um, >> wait, let me ask a question. Is he tagging you in these comments? >> He is. And I'm going to answer where I think you're going with this. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's why. >> Again, yesterday there there was kind of a flurry more and and I realized, okay, in these ones he wasn't just tagging me. He was tagging some other people who also had big audiences. >> And so I'm like, oh, you know what? You know, this is really beginning to seem like he's got less of a specific beef with me and more that he's trying to use, you know, my prominence and the prominence of these other guys to kind of build his brand, right? >> Yeah. Well, no. Yeah. just build his followers, right? Get >> builders get traction and and yeah, all that. I mean, yeah. You know, and because I get a lot of that, too. And you know, I've people pick fights with me and and and I'm like, why are you picking a fight with me? I just posted this tweet. And then I realize it's the same thing. I go, if you go look at their followers, they got like 2,000 followers or 200 followers or whatever it is, and they're just trying to to get enough interaction to get pushed up, to get people to follow them. >> Exactly. And I think that that's probably going to increase, just FYI, as you have these Johnny come lightly where the field is now crowded with some bigger players. >> Well, how do I how do I give myself some oomph? Oh, let me pick a fight with the biggest guy, you know, on the prison yard type of deal. Um, so I wrote what I considered to be, you know, uh, as diplomatic a response as I could and just said to the guy, "Hey, look, you know, uh, I don't know who you are. I didn't know who you were until a couple days ago. I don't know why you have an issue with me. you're welcome to disagree with anything that I do, but it seems to me that you're doing exactly what you were saying he was doing, Lance. Right. And I said, "Look, I I personally don't appreciate that, nor do I think the other people you're you're trying to >> to whose other coattails you're trying to ride on here by by trying to tear them down publicly." I just said, "Look, I trust, you know, my viewers to come to their own conclusions as to what value they're getting from here, who they want to listen to, what they want to take away, if anything." And um you know like look buddy nobody needs your uh your your unwarranted uh you know abuse here and hey I'm leaving it that if if you want to re-engage on this >> you're welcome to try but this is a one and done. I'm I'm not talking to you after this. So, anyways, I mentioned that just to give people a little bit of a, you know, some inside baseball as to how the media industry works here. But I also want to thank uh a ton of my followers saw that and then chimed in and they were they were very um protective of me. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's that's that's honestly that's the best part about it is when like somebody will say something and then all my followers start just, you know, basically railing them, right? And it's I just sit back and kind of y popcorn. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, folks, anyways, I mean, there there's a lot of this stuff that goes on behind the scenes, and it's it's fun. Like, every every so often, Lance, once in a blue moon, um I I I'll get interviewed by another person who's a channel, you know, like mine. And, you know, they'll interview me about what I think about what's going on with the macro world, given everybody I talk to. But then when the camera's off, we just talk shop. And it's so nice to talk to somebody who kind of understands what it's like to be a content producer in this new world here. Um, so anyways, folks, I thought I'd give you a little taste of that. Um I I'll I'll conclude here by saying um you know it is very important to me to you know deliver value. This is I I I look at what I do here as a value exchange, right? You give me your time, I give you content that hopefully is worth your time, right? And I'm always trying to figure out, okay, how can I make that content better? Um, I do have a lot more plans of what I I want to do to even keep raising the bar here at Thoughtful Money. And hopefully over the next couple months, quarters, you know, you'll see that come to fruition. I don't like to pre-announce stuff. Um, I've got a real beef with people who do that. Um, just personally, I much rather just do it and then tell you about it. Um, I will say though, just for folks that maybe haven't noticed all the things that have happened, um, in the past 6 to 8 months, um, we have introduced a number of improvements on the channel content-wise, uh, most people know that Stephanie Pomboy, you know, comes on bi-weekly now. I think we started that probably at the beginning of this year. Um, and everybody loves Stephanie for very good reasons. Um, I'd mentioned you, Lance, but you you've been on for so long that you're there's nothing new about you. You're just an old old old reliable here. Um, I've also for about the same time that Stephanie's been been committed to bi-weekly, we have Axel Murk uh who joins me after every FOMC release to make sense for it in real time in a live stream taking your questions. We just did that uh on this Wednesday. Um, and we'll continue to do that going forward and topical things like that, right? We've got um you I think I've got a guy from the the Rain Institute that when there's something big happening geopolitically I'll pull him in to make sense of it for us as well. So kind of having these specialists come in on targeted um focused topics. Um and then um we've you know relatively recently given the strong interest in precious metals in general amongst this audience but certainly given how they've performed over the past year. Uh we, you know, first I I just as I refer um people to financial adviserss like Lance. I I I identified Miles Franklin as uh the endorsed precious metals solution for thoughtful money. So if you want to have questions answered and maybe figure out how to buy some, you can talk to the folks there. Um but Andy Sheman, the co-founder of it, um he appears now on the channel monthly to give us a monthly pulse on what's happening in precious metals. Uh I've very recently as in the past like you know week or two um now brought Dave Haye on for a monthly um recap. Um you know he's a veteran investor macro guy. So you know he'll come and give us his his slide presentation that he just did last week on uh everything that's happened over the month and what he sees going forward. Um, and then after we record that for the public audience, um, I've created a, um, a premium uh, discussion with David that's also happening monthly that goes both to our premium Substack subscribers, but also now to our premium YouTube subscribers, the folks that buy a membership on YouTube. I think it's like five bucks a month. Uh, but because YouTube, you know, introduced that premium tier, I wanted to be able to have something for it. So anyways, uh during that premium discussion, Dave and I Dave watches pretty much every video that Thoughtful Money puts out. So, hey Dave, hope you're listening to this. Um but he and I go back over the past month and kind of talk about what our key takeaways were from the individual interviews. So if you really want to know what caught our attention, you're getting that in that kind of retroactive uh video. So anyways, point is is, you know, whether it it was clear enough to folks or not, you know, we are continuing to try to add more and more things that you guys are sort of indicating to me that you'd like to see. And I'll end here by saying, um, to the extent there's things you'd like to see more of, like to see less of, um, like to see a different take on, please do let me know in the comments section or send me an email at, uh, at at thoughtful money. You can just go to the thoughtful money website and then click the contact link and it'll come to me. Um, I I I really do, you know, every day try to think, how can I make this better for you, the viewers? And the easiest way for me to do that is just to listen to what you guys are telling me you want to have more of. So, I I'll wrap it up on that, Lance. Um, you know, uh, one of the best ways to create value for this program, I think, in the long run, uh, is to have you, you know, coming on, uh, as you do every week. Uh, you're such a valued part of this. Um, and I will say too, you know, in this this thing that this guy was um going after me for, you know, ah, you got all these bears on your channel. And I don't want to go through that defense again. I don't I don't filter people out for being bearish or bullish. Um, you know, I just try to find people that have a a data driven analysis. I have no idea what they're going to say when they come on the program. Uh, but that being said, an easy defense of that criticism, Lance, is like, I've got Lance Roberts on every freaking week. You know, I do five videos a week, so 20% of them is not a bear or a bull, it's an eagle, right? I mean, it's Yeah. >> And and that's again, but you know, it's always and that's kind of interesting is that, you know, I wrote this I I tweeted out this chart about gold being so extended here and somebody invariably went back and they found an article that I wrote on gold in 2021 and said, "Hey, it's, you know, think about take," this was like in November 2021. I said, "Gold's very extended. look to take some profits here and there's some reasons why that gold will probably have a correction. And she goes, "Well, and seeing you wrote this article and gold's up 100% since then." And I'm like, "Yeah, but do you not remember what happened in gold in 2022? >> Did you think that we didn't buy it back at the bottom of 2022 and added it to our portfolios? Of course we did." But that, you know, the whole thing is that people take take one aspect of whatever you say and then they take it and they just they extrapolate that to be your whole persona. So, you know, look, this is what we were talking about earlier about managing risk. You know, I I'm there's some bearish things in our conversation today. Look, I mean, markets are grossly extended. There's a lot of things that are bought. We got negative divergences in relative strength and momentum relative to the markets, but there's also on the bullish side, a lot of momentum. We're going to a seasonally strong time of the year. That's going to be that I'm not bullish or bearish. It's a function that we have to measure both sides of these risk and probabilities and navigate the market for what it is. And you know, but people only hear what they want to hear and then they extrapolate that out from there. And then if they if they just, you know, want to be hateful and it's easy to be hateful behind a screen because I can just tweet anything I want. Um, you know, your life sucks. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna I'm gonna be mean to you, right? Because my life sucks. I'm gonna be mean to you. Um, you know, there's no need for that. But that's kind of how people respond. So you got to just and this is why I have a very thick skin. People say stuff to me all the time. I'm like whatever. You know, I'm I'm doing what I know is right and that's that's what we're doing. But I think that's the thing we always have to remember is that, you know, people are always going to extrapolate things out of context and it's important to always put things back into the context in which they were meant. >> Well, absolutely. And this is again a huge reason why I think most folks should work with an adviser. Um because a lot of this is nuanced, right? And and one of the biggest issues I have again folks just to give you some inside baseball in the media industry is okay after I do this video with Lance, right? I then have to edit it. I then have to upload it. I then have to create a title for it and a thumbnail for it, right? And in the thumbnail I've got three to four words, right? Max. In the title, maybe I've got six, seven, right? So, how do I summarize a a nuanced 2-hour discussion in three or four words, right? It's super hard. >> Market crash coming. >> You're gonna make a joke. Yeah. Exactly. Well, and and and the reality there is is I've got to make it accurate. Like that's really important to me that I can't put something in there that Lance didn't say, right? And I I try to capture the general theme. Now, it might be theme one of seven themes we talked about, right? >> Yeah. >> I've also got to make it somewhat emotionally engaging, right? If I just put in there, markets could go up or down, right? I mean, nobody's going to click on that for understandable reasons, right? >> Right. Right. So, um, you know, the people will go back and, well, look at your headlines here. They're all so, you know, whatever. I'm like, well, yeah, because that's the that's what I'm limited by here, right? I do the best I can with them, right? And to your point, Lance, like, don't trade on headlines. You know, often times you you don't have CNBC on during the day because it's just all sound bites, right? It's not nuance. It's not useful for you, right? So, you know, parting message here for folks about just investing is is, you know, either like really get into the nuances that we talk about and and, you know, become very well informed and make your investing choices that way or work with a professional who can do that for you to reduce your odds of just saying, "Oh, I saw scary headline X or I saw bullish headline Y and I just went for it because Right." >> Yep. No, that's right. No, it's look, it's it's, you know, the whole the whole business, you know, your business and my business are both mediadriven. Um, and it's just a much more challenging environment. And, you know, and again, this goes back to the the, you know, we were talking about social media earlier. This is one of the big negative benefits that come out of social media is just divided everybody down the middle. And, you know, if you're bullish, you're bullish. You can't have you can't have a bearish view if you're bullish. And if you're bearish, you can't have a bullish view. And if you're bullish, you got to hate the bears. And if you're bearish, you got to hate the bulls, you know. And it's just the it's just like two waring factions that we have going on. And and again, you know, just making a logical argument about gold. Everybody that's gold bulls all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, you just hate gold, right?" No, I'm not saying that. We're long gold, right? We have a whole portfolio with gold and silver and and uranium and everything else in it. Um but I still have to manage that risk. But it's you you get these people. And again, I got into an argument with a guy on on my Twitter account, >> and you can always tell when they've lost the argument because they resort to name calling, right? Because he he was he was making he's like, "Oh, the reason gold's going up is because um you know, it's central banks buying gold." Well, there's basically been very little change in the amount of gold being bought by by central banks and in developed countries. A little bit of increase in emerging markets, but it's mostly price appreciation. It's not quantity of of gold being bought. And so I presented that chart to him and he's like, "Well, that's that's that's not that, you know, it's it's because of this." And and every time he presented an argument, I just gave him the data, right? And >> but then you're triggering the backfire effect. Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. And so and so when you ran out of arguments, he just started calling me names. And I'm like, "Okay, you lost the arguments now." >> Yeah. So >> And just you're not singling out gold, guys. You could do the same thing with Bitcoin. You could do the same thing with with you can do the same thing with Nvidia. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. It does. And that's my whole point is is that is that that's that's the problem with social media is that everybody is just fighting with each other, right? Rather than having and this and and this is this, you know, this changed really and I I told you I used to do political talk for a long time and this changed during the Obama administration. And this is starting and the reason I I picked that starting point because that's when meta and and social media really started coming to a rise and we just started dividing the population. We used to have very thoughtful conversations around politics and it was a call-in radio show. So we took live call-ins and people would call in and say I don't agree with you about this or that. And I say okay well let's talk about it. And we'd have a very respectful conversation. they'd present their argument over this and and I would present my arguments over this. We'd compare facts and figures and then we would come to a resolution, right? Most of the time it was, well, we both wound up agreeing with each other mostly and there was just small differences, right? And same thing with you and I when we debate on stuff, it's like mostly we agree with each other, but there's some small differences and that's that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. >> Um that's what makes that's what makes a good discussion. That what makes a good market. But today, you cannot have those conversations. It's just immediately it's attack, attack, attack, attack attack. And I'm not listening to anything you're saying. Even though if you present me with the facts, your facts are all wrong. You have to listen to my facts. >> Yeah, this is I mean there's a lot of threads we can pull from the coddling the American mind discussion here. And I think social media totally made it worse. And seems like you've really seen that. I've heard people say that it really shifted earlier um uh basically uh was it Contract America the Nuke Gingrich era um and that was actually driven by media that was that was the Nuke Gingrich and I'm not a huge expert on this folks but um kind of woke up to the power of cable television and so you know CNBC uh or no C-SPAN um started putting cameras in in the congressional chambers and he was the first guy to really start playing to it even though you know there might be like three senators you know only in the room uh but but he >> only three people watching C-SPAN >> yeah well at the beginning but then it really began pick you know it started getting picked up right and so again the common thread here is is sort of media changing the game right >> um okay well look we'll uh we'll we'll end it at that um >> this is interesting >> pardon me >> no it's it's all very interesting >> yeah it's it's all very interesting I guess I'll just end here too by saying um if anybody uh is I mean seriously if anybody's thinking about potentially getting into media um I actually have consulted and I'm not I'm not putting out a shingle here for this but I'm just saying that if uh if you've got you know some small questions happy to answer anything I can for folks you know over uh over email um if someone's like real serious about hey I think I might want to start a channel um and want some real help on that. I don't have a ton of bandwidth but if I can be helpful either myself or referring you to somebody I'll be happy to do that. Um, all right. Well, look, in wrapping up here, um, uh, I'm trying to think of a funny way to to to get to the like button for you here, but, uh, if, uh, if you think the best way that we can find our our, uh, you know, most nutritious, uh, source of truth is out there in the world is to, uh, watch Lance Roberts appear on this channel every week from now on. I'm I'm doing a horrible job on this week's one. >> Just click the like button. Just click the like button. Click the like button. Just make Lance happy by clicking the like button and then the subscribe button below. >> You know what? Let's do this one. My wife would really appreciate >> Oh god, that's the worst. >> That is Oh my god. I can't believe you went there. Oh my god. >> I know. You know what's in all honesty? My wife will play that cancer card in a minute. >> Will she? You know what? I kind of think I would if I did, too. In the spirit with the smirk, I think your wife >> Oh, no. No. She she's like the other day she comes into the house and she goes, "Honey, there's some boxes in the back of my car. Could you get them?" Of course, I will get them for you. But she didn't say that, right? She I will do whatever she asked me. She goes, "Lance, will you, you know, would would you do this for me?" Absolutely. Never a question. She comes in, she goes she goes, "Lance, you know I have cancer. Could you get those boxes out of my car, man?" >> So, she's now, trust me, she is using this to her benefit. Don't you worry about my wife. She's completely okay. Oh my gosh. Oh man. Uh she is so wonderful. God, folks, just click the like button for Please don't let's not break let's not bring her into it. Um all right. And then uh a quick reminder, um go get your ticket for the conference if you haven't already. Links right below the video. Um and then last, if you'd like to get some professional help managing your portfolio, uh then feel free to talk to one of the professional financial adviserss that Thoughtful Money endorses, perhaps you might want to talk to Lance and his team there at RAIA. to do that, just fill out the short form at thoughtfulmoney.com and the firms will be in touch with you right after you do that. Um, Lance, my friend, um, it's great to see you smiling and laughing again. Um, and I know that that's, uh, you're probably getting to some sense of normal, so here, um, part of that's probably putting on a brave front, too, but it's nice to it's nice to see nonetheless. >> Well, no, I I appreciate that. And and yeah, we've got a big calendar on our wall. We've got uh six chemo treatments, so we've got five left, and so every time we mark one off. So, >> is there a big party for after the last one? >> Absolutely. And that will also mark our date that we'll have an annual anniversary. So, you know, once she gets through the last chemo, then we start tracking, you know, time. So, every year >> So, anniversary for when she's hopefully in remission. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we got to go five years um without without it coming back uh to be in remission. So, we'll be marking those anniversaries. >> Okay, good. Really important. I just wasn't sure if you were saying you guys had your own wedding anniversary coming up and then we'd have to >> Oh, no. We do have a wedding anniversary again, but that's our 15 year anniversary is coming up uh in May. >> Okay. >> So, well, look, I can't wait to be selling celebrating many anniversaries with you and her very far out in the future. >> Yep. And we're looking forward to seeing you. You'll be coming to to town in January. So, we're looking forward to seeing you. >> That's right. And so, pretty soon. Do you have a date locked in for that yet? We may as well just >> January January 24th. And we've we've got um really interesting guy named Ed Slott to talk about um all types of really important tax and financial planning strategies. >> That'll be fun. >> And then we've got a guy that's going to be talking um from Black Rockck talking about artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, um and working on another speaker right now for kind of AI infrastructure and how to invest in infrastructure or and or private credit. We're kind of talking to two different speakers right now. So, should be a really nice conference uh covering a lot of topics, markets, investing, capital, everything. >> Okay. When you guys have your sign up page and stuff for that, I'll give you, you know, as it gets closer, you can tell folks exactly where to go. But just real quick, folks, um so the thoughtful money conferences, we do two a year. The fall one's coming up, like I said, on October 18th. Uh those are virtual, so that's where I get to bring a whole bunch of experts to you virtually and and you can just watch from the comfort of your own home. Uh, and I'm able to get them all on that day because they're virtual. Um, if you want to go listen to some very smart people, but also get to mingle in real life with Lance, me, these other experts as well as other people who think like you, then, you know, Lance's is inerson event where you can do that. >> Yep. And we're actually going to have a the night before we're going to have a kind of a mix and mingle event. So, actually hang out and talk to the speakers and it'll be a lot of fun. >> Great. And you know what? Um, you're reminding me I I I think I tossed an idea out there like two months ago >> that we should get together in real life with anybody who's interested uh and do something fun and I had this crazy like pickle ball uh self-defense, you know, gathering. Um, and people loved it. People love the idea and >> I think we just do the pickle ball. I think we get together and play pickle ball. >> Probably with pickle ball will be enough. But but but I I I do want to call out there was a gentleman who responded. I just I I feel terrible. I haven't reached out to him yet. So, I'm making a note to do that now. Who is an MMA fighter who loves pickle ball and has access to a place where we can play pickle ball and then do any M. He was like the perfect guy to respond to that. So, um again folks, if that's something you'd be interested in being a part of one or both of those things, >> stay with the pickle ball. >> Stay with the pickle ball. Um but I think it'll be fun if you showed us some stuff. And like I said, I'm happy to be your dummy. I could be the guy that you beat up on to show some of this stuff. >> How about we get that guy to do to do some education? That would be good. >> That might be the better thing to do. Okay. Um All right. >> Preserve my aging body for a few years longer. Yes. >> All right. Well, if that if that would be fun of any for any of you, if you'd really like for me to to put some uh energy into trying to make that happen again, let me know in the comments section below. All right, buddy. Great to see you. Thanks so much. I'll let you head off and give your wife a big hug. >> Thank you. See you. See you next week. >> All right. All right, and everybody else, thanks so much for watching.
Rising Reversal Risk In Stocks? | Lance Roberts
Summary
Transcript
The bull thesis right now is that Fed rate cuts and tax cuts are going to cause a resurgence in economic growth and therefore forward earnings are going to go higher. And so estimates, Wall Street estimates have actually been ratcheting up going to Q3 reporting. The the concern I have is is that if we don't get that economic resurgence, you're going to see a a decent, you know, kind of reversal of this an of this kind of valuation in the markets because every everybody's going have to start to re-evaluate what forward earnings look like because economic growth isn't there. [Music] Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm thoughtful money founder and your host, Adam Tagert. welcoming you here at the end of the week for another weekly market recap featuring my good friend, the Sundancing portfolio manager, Lance Roberts. Lance, how you doing? >> I I am good. And yeah, it's this market's been so hot. It's like dancing on the surface of the sun. >> Hey, that's a good analogy. Um that wasn't what I had in mind, but I like your answer just as much. Um we're losing a lot of lot of good people recently. uh we just lost Robert Redford this year. And so I was giving him a tribute um in my description there for you, >> but let's let's actually start where you're talking about there uh about how hot the market is. >> Yeah. No, it it's uh it's been quite phenomenal. Um, you know what what what has stunned me more than anything else as of late has just been, you know, kind of what some market and it's really not markets themselves, but it's parts of markets in themselves. And we're now getting a very high correlation between a lot of different asset classes and and and typically when you see asset classes that are typically non-correlated. So just say for instance stocks and gold is as a good example. Typically gold is kind of a riskoff asset and so they typically have a non-correlary nature but they're all running up at the same time. you know, when you start to see a variety of asset classes across the board, small cap, midcap, you know, Bitcoin, everything else moving up at the same time, that's just that's just representative that there's a lot of FOMO in the market and nobody wants to miss out. So, everybody's buying everything that they can get. All right, I'm going to chime in for one second here because I want you to finish this, but you you you brought it right to something I was going to ask you. Um, which is last week. You said all these things are going up in tandem at once. That's not supposed to happen. >> It's not supposed to happen. >> And then and then in like a beat later, you said but there's nothing wrong with this market. >> There's not. >> People in the comments were like, "What?" I know it's explain >> it's Yeah, it's the most So I was that's kind of actually where I was headed which is you know then and again you know it's been funny because so three days a week we have an investment committee meeting with all of our adviserss and so we all sit down and we talk about what the market's doing and it's been so boring over the last three weeks. It's the same message. There's nothing to do because everything's going up and that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing when every asset class rises at one time. That's just the that's just the sign that you've got a lot of excess momentum and speculation in the markets. And when you're looking at at markets right now, I mean, there are markets that are trading at three and four standard deviations above their 5-year moving average. That is typically where markets are finding a peak. But again, there's so much push in the markets right now that this that the I was explaining this on the radio show earlier this week. Think about, you know, when you're driving down the freeway, you see those long trains on the on on the railroad track and, you know, there's like the there's like one or two engines at the front and then there's like a mile of railroad cars behind it. Well, so when they're running at speed, you know, that's all great, fine, and dandy. The problem is is when the front engine puts on the brakes, all that momentum from the train cars behind it start to push the the engine down the track. So even though the the the engine's breaking and trying to slow things down and eventually it will slow the momentum, it just takes a very very long time for that momentum to really start to to to reverse and start to slow down. That's the way the market is right now is that there's so much momentum in the markets that it's just hard. It's it's hard to stop a train. It's like that commercial for the air conditioners. That's kind of where we are right now. So in your analogy, is the slowing economy the breaking of the locomotive? >> Well, you would think so, right? Because again, that's going to get reflected back into earnings and that's kind of the the the big factor of this is ultimately earnings. Everything is very positive right now in terms of forward expectations for earnings continues to grow. The thesis right now, the bull thesis right now is that Fed rate cuts and tax cuts are going to cause a resurgence in economic growth and therefore forward earnings are going to go higher. And so estimates, Wall Street estimates have actually been ratcheting up going to Q3 reporting. Atlanta Fed just came out a couple of days ago with their Q3 estimate at over 3% growth. So right now there's a lot of support for that narrative. The the concern I have is is that if we don't get that economic resurgence, you're going to see a a decent, you know, kind of reversal of this an of this kind of valuation in the markets because every everybody's have to start to re-evaluate what forward earnings look like because economic growth isn't there. But again, I just, you know, I I showed you this last week. These are the new portfolios that we just launched recently on Simplevisor. I just want to showed you a couple that just jumped out. This is a small and sorry this is a small and midcap index. >> Yeah. It's what up over 16% in a couple months. >> Yeah. Since this is since August the 1, right? Which which is just a month and basically a month and a half. >> 45 days. Yeah. >> 45 days. This portfolio is up 16%. And in that portfolio, so you know, it's interesting. We dig down the portfolio. Bloom Energy is up 125% since August the 1st. You've got a a H AEHR systems up 80% 64% in AppLoving Lattis Semiconductor up 43 and uh Accelis Technologies up 43 and you got a couple others up 30 and 20. You know those are massive moves and and these are again these are small and midcap stocks but the point about that is is that everybody's just kind of throwing caution out to the wind. These are also heavily shorted stocks. For instance, Bloom Energy has a 20% short position against it. >> So, are these are these squeezes more than >> Yes, investors getting excited. Okay. >> Absolutely. That that's what is going on. We have these squeezes that are occurring across the markets. But, but even in So, we have one portfolio that we built. It's called the accumulator model. Um, and this is just a ver this is for people just starting out investing. Just kind of start putting some money into the markets, get invested. That's up 8% in, you know, 45 days, right? Um, but >> they've already had a great year in just a month and a half. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, congrats. >> That's just and again, you know, even the all-w weather model, which is gold, precious metals, you know, very conservative, defensive stocks, bonds, that's up 6%. You know, the AI portfolio is up nine. It just, you know, just when you kind of and the point about this is the, as I said before, the thing about these portfolios is they're like factors of the market. So when you look at at you know kind of what's moving the market and if if you looked at these factors and said okay we see a lot of speculation and smaller midcap but everything else is pretty flat then you know that kind of shows you that but this has been pretty broad I mean we're seeing money chase you know kind of every asset class whether it's precious metals or whether it's AI stocks or crypto stocks or you know small midcap stocks emerging market stocks you're you're seeing that same type of push in in virtually every asset asset class. So again, that's that's all I'm saying is that there's so much momentum behind this market. Everybody's so exuberant. That's a really hard market to break. Now, it'll eventually break and you will have a correction 5 10% and you'll pull some of this exuberance out of the markets. But when that happens and what causes it is going to be the more difficult timing factor. >> Okay. Let me let me ask you this. So, you know, I think I mentioned this to you recently, um, that when I'm interviewed, which is much less frequently than I interview people, you know, I I try to distill it and try to make it real easy for folks. And of course, this is my opinion, everybody. This is, you know, one guy's one guy's opinion. Um, but I sort of look at the markets as um kind of concerned in the near term um because of pretty much everything you just said there, Lance. >> Yeah. um more bullish in the midterm. And by midterm, I mean kind of like a year out, like one to three years out. Because if the current administration is successful in implementing all of its policies that are designed to really goose the economy, you know, if you if you cut taxes, if you deregulate, um, if you bring, you know, a lot more foreign capital into the US, um, which are all, you know, kind of key tent poles of the current administration, um, it's just like QE. I mean, it's like if you if you shove a bunch of QE into the system, you're going to get in inflation or at least asset price inflation depending on the type of QE, you know, whether it's monetary or fiscal. Um it it just is just like if you have a sick patient and you inject them, you know, with uh epinephrine, they're going to get up and jump around for a little while, right? >> Yep. Um, so it seems like what I hear you're saying is the market is is basically saying, you know what, I think the cavalry of the um of of the administration's policies is going to arrive in time that it's it's we're not going to have, you know, too much slowing in the economy or a recession. It's it's going to get here in time. But >> well, no, no, you're close. They're saying that we're going to have a very sharp recovery. It's not just going to get here in time to just save it. It's going to cause an economic boom. And the interesting part about that is is that we don't have tax cuts. All we did was extend the previous tax cuts. >> I mean, we did give some additional tax cuts, but it's it's it's >> very minor. They're very minor. Tax on tips is a very small minor factor of the economy. Tax on social security is very small factor. But by and large, the people that pay the taxes, there was no tax change. >> Agreed. Agreed. But but but having said that, it did cement out that there's not going to be a tax increase, right? >> Well, it would have been Yeah, it would it would have coopered the economy if if they had done that. >> So that does give a sense of security, but it doesn't provide extra spending capital, right, for econom for economic growth. And so, you know, to your point though, you're right, deregulation if that occurs, you know, um you know, somehow, you know, dragging back, you know, more manufacturing the US, create more manufacturing job. I thought that was very interesting this week. You know, Nvidia took the $5 billion stake in Intel to start manufacturing chips domestically. That gets them past the tariff issue with Washington DC as well. U but that'll create more jobs here. Um that's kind of the the point of an article I have on the website today talking about how AI can help offset some of these debt to GDP concerns because it can help stimulate economic growth. So if all those things come to fruition, then a lot of these expectations by market professionals expecting this, you know, kind of resurgence in economic growth could come true. And then >> so but this is what I want to dial in on like I I think the odds of them coming true aren't bad and people can disagree with that, right? That that the economy will get a jolt um and increasing over, you know, in the midterm as these things really start to to fully flourish. But I don't think they're going to arrive this quarter, next quarter, probably not even first half of next year. And I could be wrong, right? I agree with you, >> but it seems like the market, and that's what I wanted to just make sure I'm clear on what you're saying, the market is sort of saying, "Nope, I'm taking the under on that. I think we're going to start seeing, you know, help from this soon enough for us to not not have to discount asset prices for any sort of dip in the economy." >> No. Yes, you're absolutely correct. And that's what they're hoping for again. And this is the interesting thing, right? So, you know, like on my X page, I post bullish and bearish stuff every day, right? So, you know, we I never post just bearish stuff and I never post just bullish stuff. I generally post one of each or generally two of each uh every day. And to help just, you know, that's just also me kind of working through my contrarian nature, trying to just understand both sides of the argument. But it's very interesting that if I post something bearish, then everybody comes up with all the reasons why that bearish narrative is going to be correct. If I post something bullish, then you know it's everybody coming up with every reason the sun why that bullish narrative will continue to be the case. And that's just where we are in the cycle. So nobody wants to actually listen to facts. They come up with all these crazy reasons why, you know, this has got to be true and the market's got to keep going up. And that's just simply a function of the FOMO, right? It's just >> it's a function of human nature. We're rationalizing beings, not rational beings. Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly. So you know, we're rationalizing our irrational behavior. Absolutely correct. But that's but that's the dynamic of the market and and we've seen this before, right? We saw this in late 1998, 1999. Same type of behavior in markets, same type of sentiment. We saw this in 2021. We know this eventually ends and that, you know, eventually you're going to have another correction and nobody wants to, you know, be concerned about that. But, you know, as capital managers, I have to participate. So, you know, like this week, we made no trades because our portfolio is performing fine. There's nothing for us to do. Next week though, we're going to rebalance all our portfolios across the board. We'll rebalance the thematic models. We'll rebalance our our our core models >> because you're still making money in them. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and just positions that got way out of whack. Like Google, for instance, a good example. So in our core portfolio, we own Google. Google is about as a 4% weight in the portfolio. It's now over five. It's like 5 and a half% of the portfolio. Um so we'll trim that back to four. And then we'll take then we'll probably rebalance some other stuff in the portfolio as well and and maybe add, you know, we're probably gonna add one or two positions. Uh maybe swap some things out. Um but again, it'll be just some minor kind of tweaks and tucks, but there's no there's nothing right now that says we should go and just massively reduce risk. Now again, don't forget we're carrying 12% cash also, so we have a buffer. Um but we're about to move into October. So starting in October, we've got a lot of tailwinds behind the markets through year end. Um, we've got corporate earnings are are going to be good this quarter. Um, there's no reason to not expect that corporate earnings won't come in better than expectations. As usual, they always come in better expect better than expectations. Um, we've got corporate buybacks. We'll open back up. We're on a record pace for corporate buybacks this year. We will do more corporate buybacks this year. We will be almost 50% higher than the three-year average of buybacks this year. So, that's going to be another huge push for the market. A big chunk of those buybacks happen in the last quarter of the year. You've got >> I'm calling it now. Within a couple years, they're gonna go after buybacks. I don't want to rattle hole on it, but I'm just >> I I wish they would, and I I would I would I will be right there with you supporting that. >> Yeah, I'm I'm I'm pretty sure probably not in 10 years soon, but I'm pretty sure within a couple years that's going to get in the crosshairs. But sorry, keep going. >> They should have been in crosshairs a long time ago. Absolutely. >> Um but then finally, you've got professional managers. They are way underweight markets right now. They they were underweight equities and tech in the summer months. Um they have they are just now starting to move up to weight. They're behind on performance. That's going to create a bunch of performance push at the end of the year. Um the American Association of Individual Investors, the bullish ratio of those investors took a huge jump this past week and that's because all the boomers that were kind the AI, the American Association of Individual Investors are mostly older investors. They're not young retail investors. They're not part of that group. So, when they take their survey, you're surveying older investors. They've been very very cautious during these summer months, but they finally threw in the towel last week and they're getting very bullish on the market. So, you've got a lot. You've got sentiment, corporate buybacks, earnings, and and and basically performance issues heading into the last quarter of the year that are going to keep markets most likely elevated through year end. >> All right. Interesting. So, number of things to talk about there. Um, >> now that now that does not mean that somewhere between now and then we can't have a 3 or 5% correction. I'm just saying that there's a there's a the the bias will be upward through your end. >> Okay. Um, so number of things. First off, just to use another analogy to make sure I am clarifying your the thing I asked you to clarify earlier about, you know, how can we have all these things you don't think should be happening and yet the market's fine. Um, how about this analogy? Um, and I like your train one. Um, but um, it's a frozen pond and the ice gets thinner the more you get out to the center of the pond, >> right? So you take a car, right? You start pushing it out on the ice. Um, you are probably thinking, "Hey, at some point the ice in the middle of this pond is going to be too thin and that car is going to go through. But until I start seeing cracks in the ice, I'm not going to bet that the car is going to break through like in the next 30 seconds." Right. >> Correct. So, you're you're saying, "Look, yep, this car is going out in a frozen pond. I'm concerned about that, but I'm not calling the car to break through yet because I'm not seeing the precursor signs of stress." >> Yep. >> Yep. Okay. >> Well, you know, I've kind of used another analogy this week, the same point. It's, you know, when you drive down a freeway and you see those yellow cones on the side of the road, you know, >> y >> how many people actually slow down? No, nobody slows down until maybe they see a worker and then maybe they'll slow down a bit and move over a bit. And that's kind of the same analogy, which is, you know, we're investors are going to push this market and they're going to push even when they see cracks. They're going to be like, "Okay, I'm pushing the car across your ice." Using your analogy, oh, there's some cracks, but they're not big cracks yet, so let's push the car a little bit more. Uh, there's a few more cracks, but hey, everything's holding up. Let's push it some more. You know, they're going to push it until the car finally th falls through the through through the ice, right? Got it. They're not gonna they're not going to pull back and go, "Okay, well, we're starting to see some cracks. Maybe we should go sit on the sidelines a little bit, reduce our risk." That's just not the way it'll happen. >> Yeah. All right. Well, look, we could say this is a crack, but you mentioned Google, right? >> Yeah. So, I interviewed Sven Henrik uh the other day and um you know, he was talking about signs of the market, you know, having a lot of bubble elements to it and he threw Google and >> yeah, >> can't remember how long how far back the chart of Google went, but I think it went back at least a couple years and it is so far outside of its Ballinger bands right now. It's just ridiculous. Like, you know, it was almost like somebody said, "Look, you know what? Ballinger bands eventually matter." And Google just said, "Oh yeah, hold my beer. Watch this." And it just shot into like, you know, a totally different stratosphere. >> No, no. I mean, that's absolutely the case. And then that's that's the interesting thing to me, Adam, because see this so this is a monthly chart of Google and this is a this is what's called a parabolic move, right? So the the Google has absolutely gone parabolic and these are moving averages. So this kind of purple line is a is a moving average of of 50 months. So it's basically a four-year moving average and it's now three standard deviations above that four-year moving average. Now now just for the mathematically impaired standard what when we talk about Ballinger bands and standard deviation you're you're talking about a normalized bell curve. >> Yeah. And do me a favor while you're talking, go to the weekly. >> Same thing. >> Yeah, that show a little bit more what I was talking about there. Um, I just wanted to because again, we're on Sven's chart and I don't know what the duration was, but I mean it it it wasn't even close to the top Ballinger band anymore. It was just way off by itself. >> Well, it it also depends on what his settings for his Ballinger bands are. So this is again this so this is two and three standard deviations of the 50 in this case the 50 week the other chart it was 50 months. So again, if I change the if I if I use 20 weeks or 20 months or 12 months or you know, whatever, I'm going to get different settings, right? >> So I'd have to know what the settings were, but it's it's the same chart, right? You know, irrespective, it's it's the same analysis. So when you talk about a bell a standardized bell curve, you have positive outcomes and negative outcomes on a bell curve. And so one standard deviation comprises about 68% of all potential moves. When you get to two standard deviations, now you're talking about uh about 95% three standard deviations about 99% of all potential moves. And that and then you start kind of moving out four or five standard deviations. You're talking about, you know, pretty much rare those rare tele event risks that occur, >> right? You should kind of think of the inverse like if you're outside if you're outside of two standard deviations, then it's like what? Like that that that occurs 32% of the time. If you're outside of three, that occurs only 5% of the time. And then when you're you're getting lower like this, it's like, oh, well, this is like an almost never h once in aundred year flood type of thing. >> Correct. And and but again, it's also just all you have to do is is and but again, people, you know, this is where these narratives come in. It's like, oh, well, this time is different for Google because of AI and and all that. But, you know, it's never different. And if we go back throughout history, every time that you've had these bigger ex, you know, kind of deviations from extremes, we always thought it was different this time than last time and and you know, it's AI this time and then the stock has a big correction back to the moving average and then it rallies back up, gets three standard deviations overbought and everybody's like, "Oh, it's different this time." You have a big correction and it doesn't matter what asset class it is. It's never different. That's the beautiful thing about what technical analysis tells you is that this is just basically odds management, which is yes, you're talking about a move right now and basically Google's pushing four standard deviations of its of it moving. So, we're in the 99 percentile. So, 1% chance that this stock will just keep going up versus a 99% chance it's going to have a correction. It's just suggesting that you've got all the buyers in the market are in the market. And we're not seeing this just in in Google uh in Google. I mean, you can see this in, you know, stocks like, you know, Aqua, which is up like 20% today. I mean, it's gone ver it's gone to >> Oh, really? Oh, good. >> Right. Um, this company has no earnings. It has no revenue. >> It has no revenue. Yeah. >> Yeah. This is something that >> it has no product. There's been no product in market for years. Yeah. >> For for years. And the stock is up, you know, it's so this is going to have a huge crash at some point. And that's not be and I'm not saying the stock's gonna have a huge crash at some point because it's a bad company. It just can't sustain this type of a move. And particularly when you're talking about companies that have very very large short positions. I was talking about Bloom Energy earlier. Here's another one. >> Absolutely parabolic on on the chart. >> Five standard deviations now kind of a push. This company has a 20% short float. At some point those shorts are going to be right and this stock is going to have a massive crash. So, I mean, you're talking about stock comes back to $30 or $40 a share. That's a good thing, by the way. That'd be a great entry point to buy this company, but these moves can't be sustained. Go ahead. >> No. So, I mean, yeah. So, I look at this, and I don't have your your scope of expertise, but >> I look at these as cracks, not even small ones. >> Yep. >> And and here's gold for you. It looks exactly the same as all these other stocks. You know, it looks just like Google. So again, and this is and this but see this this is where the narrative comes out. Oh, but this time it's because of A, B or C reasons, but every time gold has gotten this this kind of overbought pushing three standard deviations like here you went through a long consolidation correction process back here. You went through a 20% decline in 2020, you know, back here in 2012 through 2018 and this goes back throughout history. Um, so the point is is if I'm investing in an asset, understand that these deviations can't be sustained and you will eventually have a price correction. Does that mean you sell all your asset? No, that is not that's not what that means. It does suggest that you maybe hedge your position or at least take some profits while the profit taking is good. >> Yeah. And for the record, I have been discussing with you and others over the recent weeks that this is a really >> good time to consider exactly that if you're ahead in gold, which a lot of my viewers are, but but whatever asset. And there's a smart guy I listen to every week who says that moving averages act like gravity. >> And that's essentially, you know, the risk you have right here, right? Is they're so deviated from their moving averages that there's almost nowhere to go at this time but back towards them. >> Yeah. and and and and and again it just hap there's no point in history where that's ever not happened. And so it may not happen tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's going to happen next week. Doesn't even mean it'll happen next month or two. And you know that's the trap that investors get themselves into is that well Lance said that the market's going to you know that that you know you know Olo's going to crash or or Google's going to crash because it's got the I'm not saying they're going to crash. I'm saying they're going to have a correction back to their moving averages. If you don't take m If you don't take some money off the table, it's going to feel like a crash. >> Yeah, I was gonna say it's going to feel like it given how deviated they are, right? Yeah, >> exactly. There'll be a big reversal back down towards those moving averages when it occurs. But if the See, this is where the trap is because if it continues to go up, then it's like, well, see, he was wrong. It's still going up. And yeah, if it goes up a little bit more, see, he was wrong, it's still going up. It's going to keep going up and then it crashes. And the what the markets are really good at and what professional traders are even better at is sucking everybody into something where they get out of it and they pull that other side of the rug. They'll start shorting these assets heavily to drive the price down when they can get that move going. So, and that's what Wall Street's really really good at uh is kind of manipulating that side of the market. So, just be just be aware that again it doesn't mean go sell everything. It doesn't mean you know anybody's negative on anything. It just means that everything has to correct in price at some time, particularly when you have these kind of deviations in the markets. >> Yep. Okay. Let me ask you one last question about Google. Um, and we'll move on. And and folks watching, um, if you've got insight, feel free to add it in the comment section as well. >> Um, okay. I don't follow Google super closely here, so there's probably all sorts of reasons to justify why it's having this latest price action, but just sitting from the cheap seats, I'm like, all right, I know Google's working hard at creating its own AI, right, Gemini. Um, and you know, the AI race, I don't know, one man's opinion, you know, I think it's largely going to be sort of a winner take all, right? If there's the smartest AI, most people are going to want to use it, right? So, you know, there's a bunch of companies right now racing to see who can build the smartest AI. Uh, and Google's one of them, but there's no guarantee it's going to be, you know, the winner when all is said and done, right? So, there's probably some FOMO about Google's role in AI there. But, as I look at AI, I see it as a massive threat to their search monopoly, which is, you know, has been one of the best business models in all of human history up until, you know, this year, right? And I just don't understand why you could make an argument right now that Google's worth, you know, a ton more when you've got really valid questions of what's going to happen to its core revenue model if nobody's clicking on blue links anymore because Google's just serving up the answer and it loses all that advertising revenue. >> Well, so so this so do you see this gap right here? >> Yep. in the chart. That was the news that came out that basically remember they were under antitrust risk that >> they weren't going to have Chrome removed. Got it. Yeah. They weren't going to have to give up Chrome. They're >> and so so what that that gave the stock a huge bump because all of a sudden it took that pressure off the stock. >> Okay. Could that have been discounted in the value that they were going to have to give up divest of Chrome? Okay. >> Correct. And then of course when you got that pop that sucked everybody that was short the stock then had to cover and then that's what's been pushing the stock price higher. also just the function that again now if you go back to that accumulator model I was talking about earlier um in like in our simplevisor portfolios which is just an S&P index a NASDAQ index some emerging markets those type of things >> um so as this market continues to grind higher it's just sucking money into those ETFs and when everybody buys those ETFs again we go back to you know robot right it's just it's buying more Google and the bigger Google gets the more money it absorbs and so you have this kind combination factor. >> All right, do do me a favor. Keep talking. Hit the monthly. >> So, totally get giant minus robot. Great great additional reason plus Chrome. But here, Google is now worth way more than it's ever been worth, right? >> Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I >> I don't know when exactly they they the news came out initially that they, you know, the government want might want him to best of Chrome, but but you know, let's say two, three years ago, whatever, right? Let's say it's been hanging over the stock for a while. >> Yep. But should the stock be worth way more than it's ever been worth with that overhang that I just raised about their core business model? >> Wouldn't you expect that? That is a fantastic question. That's a fantastic question. So here's Google and this company trades at a price to earnings growth ratio P what's called a PEG, right? >> So its price to earnings growth is 1.8. That is really that is a fairly valued company even at current levels based on the rate that it's growing earnings. This is their earnings. This is their sales growth on the bottom and this is their EPS growth. So they're buying back shares which is helping boost the EPS side to some degree. >> I mean those are BS numbers. I know the street cares about them. I don't know why because of buyback distortion but yes. >> Exactly. But if you take a look at sales growth which you really can't distort through buybacks. This is this is straight billions in sales, right? This is not sales per share. So it it it excludes these buybacks, but they've got very strong earnings growth. And so the earnings growth is helping support. So again, you've got a company trading at, you know, value a forward PE of 23 and a peg of of 1.82. And so let you know, if I backed this up and I said, "Hey, Adam, I've got a company right now that trades at a peg of 20 and has a price earnings growth of 1.82." You know, and you'd be going, "Okay, what company is that? I'd be willing to buy it, right? That's fairly true. >> Probably. But just to that point, you know, you talk that you say it's all about earnings, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Um so those historic earnings don't reflect the threat of AI eating into their revenue the way that I'm concerned about. >> Correct. And then that's the that's the that's the 64 trillion giant in the room that nobody can put a handle on is how is AI going to impact their ad revenue? This is the same question for Meta. It's the same question for Apple. It's the same question for, you know, really Amazon as well. Um, you know, they each have models where they're selling a product, a good or a service like Apple, but they also depend on ad revenue. Like Meta in particular depends on ad revenue to large degree. Google huge ad revenue generator. What does AI do to change that ad revenue environment in the future? >> To totally agree. Although I think Google has the and I'm not an expert here but to me Google has the greatest direct threat because meta just serves that to you where Google the ads are part of the the customer experience right which ad gets which which blue link gets served higher right >> um so anyways and look it's clearly not mattering and and that's sort of the point I'm trying to make here which is um uh in a FOMO in a late stage FOMO market you know things like risks don't concerns don't matter But also to your point about the giant mindless robot, >> we may be at the point where the giant mindless robot is pushing companies to valuations they have no business being at because of fundamentals. And Google might be one given the concerns we're mentioning. Apple, I might argue, is another where they haven't been growing revenue that much, right? But still a huge chunk of every new dollar that comes into the market goes into them. So, it really could be creating these these Frankenstein, you know, stock market valuations that at some point, and who knows what the trigger is going to be, true price discovery will kick in and we may find that the true price is way different than what it is right now. >> And and I >> I'm not trying to sell fear. I'm just saying that these are the things that make me scratch my head. >> I absolutely agree with you. This is why again what I do as as look I absolutely agree with you is that we're going to have price discovery at some point in the markets. Um we're g and and again take a look at Google trading at you know again you you plug in any asset price and you get kind of the same chart lately but you got this massive deviation from the long-term mean you're and and every time it's done this before you've come down and retested this long-term mean multiple times. So this is why I like technical analysis because it strips out all of the ifs, the ums and the buts and the narratives and the rationalizations and just says look whenever the stock has had a relative strength overbought condition before there's been a corrective move in the stock not necessarily and this is but this is a trick as I said you know is hey it was like right here it was overbought RSI wise and it went up for six more months and then you had the correction right there again that's the momentum and the train. There's nothing that says this is going to correct immediately. Same for gold, same for um you know, Bitcoin, same for Microsoft stock, same for Nvidia stock, same for Olo, same for Bloom Energy. Uh same for Apploven. You you kind of pick the stock, pick the sector, pick the index. They're all look like this and to a large degree. And when you see these relative overbought conditions on a long-term basis, that's a really good warning sign that we're getting potentially closer to a corrective cycle in the markets. Again, that doesn't mean a bare market. It just means that we're going to see assets start to move back towards their mean prices at some point. And those reversions happen consistently throughout history. I was uh you know, I was showing a chart of the S&P. Um I'm I'm working on for our newsletter this weekend, and this is a long-term chart of the S&P 500. And what you'll notice is is that every time the deviation from the 48month uh 48w week moving average, so 48 weeks is roughly about a year. Uh 48 trading weeks is a kind of a trading year. But when you're this deviated um from the 48we moving average, you typically get reversions. But importantly, if you just look at the markets over, this is since 2009, we've been in a very steady bullish trend. But every time we get to the top of this trend channel, we correct back to the bottom of the trend channel repeatedly. And there's and at the time that the markets are going up, you know, in 2021, it was like, oh man, this is this market, we're on fire. We're buying meme stocks. We're buying spaxs. It's fantastic. It's, you know, it's all new, all new land that we're in. And then you had the 2022 correction. There's always a reason why the markets will correct, but that's just that return to rationality. is that, you know, when you get big weekly, you know, RSI overboughts, you get big weekly extensions from long-term means, you get tops of trend channels, that's where typically something occurs. And whatever it is in 2026 that shows up, whether it's, you know, economic slowdown or whether it's some type of, you know, issue politically, geopolitically, whatever it is, uh, the Fed hikes rates next year for, you know, nobody expects the Fed to hike rates, but what if the Fed would hike rates next year? um anything like that could cause that immediate repricing of the markets because that affects that outlook for forward earnings and then we have to re those 22 23 24 times valuations all of a sudden have to get repriced lower that becomes problematic for the markets and so again that you know we're just putting the market and all the assets in markets all across the spectrum at really risky extremes where the potential for corrective price action is becoming much more prevalent. Got it. Yeah. And I just want to note here, um, yeah, if the Fed hiked rates next year, it would totally surprise everybody. But I think what's probably more likely is the Fed is going to cut rates and it's going to cut rates probably a lot >> just as it did right as the start of the dot crash right as it did at the start of the financial crisis right at the start of COVID which were also corrective elements along this historical pathway here >> because that has much more commonly been the pattern of you know when the Fed has switched from a a height rake regime to start cutting that you know historically that is when we've seen some of the larger market corrections That's right. >> Yeah. No guarantee it's going to happen this time, but would not surprise me in the least >> at all. Correct. >> Yeah. Um, all right. So, I just want to note real quickly, I interviewed yesterday. The interview is going to come out the day after this one airs, so Sunday. Uh, Mark Newton, and Mark is the, um, research partner of Tom Lee from Funstrat, right? And just so you know, um, he he's a total technologist. like he he he looks at the macro world, he gets opinions about the macro world, but it doesn't influence his trading. His trading is just all on on the data. He's a big momentum guy. Trend is your friend. Ride it and trend is your friend and ride it until the end. That's his his metric. >> Um so peering out and like you, he's more confident, you know, with a three-month uh forecast than than one much longer than that. >> But he basically says, "Look, given the momentum, I can see this market continuing to go higher the next couple weeks. he is, you know, then becomes more concerned about October, November and thinks, you know, on on the whole probably some sort of correction in the market. Um, he sees that as a buying opportunity to then ride the market into the end of the year. Um, he then thinks 2026 will be a lot more rocky. Um, and and sort of like, hey, how rocky? Let me tell you at the end of this year when I do my 2026 official forecast, right? But I don't think you would be surprised at all if he turned out to be right there, Lance. >> Right. That wouldn't surprise me at all. >> Yeah. Okay. Um Okay, great. Um let's see where to head next year. >> Before we jump real quick, let me just say one more thing. >> You know, I because I see this comment in like like your chat a lot is like Lance, you know, it's like Lance said the market's going to go up and down. You know, that's not very helpful. >> I get that. I don't know. The the reason that we make that statement, and sometimes it seems like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, is because I don't know what the future's going to be. All I'm doing is trying to figure out what the odds are of markets going up or markets going down, in particular, the assets that I own. And so, if I'm if I own a bunch of assets in particular sectors or markets, I want to know where my risk is. And I don't know what the future's going to be. So yes, it's always it's always a question of yeah, I've got a 40% chance the market's going to go higher or 20 or 30 um and I've got a 50 60 70% chance the markets are going to go lower. How do I want to manage that risk in my portfolio? And anybody that tells you they know with absolute certainty that the markets are going to go higher over the next six months, 12 months or a year, actually 12 months is a year. Six months, eight months or a year. >> Um they they don't know. They're just guessing. And yeah, you know, I see, you know, there's a lot of these, you know, a lot of these graphs that come out says, "Oh, every time the Fed hikes rate, you know, cuts rates, the market's higher 12 months from now." >> True, that happens most of the time, but what they don't tell you is that a lot of times there's a big correction right in the middle, >> right? >> You know, or or something that that you know, yeah, maybe the markets are higher, but you're probably not. So, you know, that's why it's always important is that we're just trying to navigate the landscape and manage that risk accordingly. And again, I don't know what the what the markets are going to do on Monday, much less I don't even know how they're going to finish up the day. >> Yeah. And and just to sort of echo you things you said in the past, like look, I can pretty much guarantee everybody the market's going to continue going up. It's then going to go down. It's then going to go up again. >> I just have no idea when it's going to make those turns, right? And so what you're trying to do is is assess the probability. How many cracks do we have in the ice if things are looking stretched, right? You know, oh, are we starting to see green shoots we need to pay attention to, right? if if the market's been headed downward, right? Yeah. >> Yeah. Correct. Yeah, that's it. Okay, go ahead. Next topic. >> Okay. Uh let's see here. Um okay. Um I'm I'm going to Oh, okay. So, first off, uh we had a Fed meeting this week. >> Um so, yeah, need to get your reaction to that. Um so I think anybody who's been you know paying even a little bit of attention uh has seen that the Fed uh cut uh its policy rate by 25 uh basis points which is what everybody was expecting. Um I think I think it it touched the pace of QT just a little bit but not really much to talk about. >> Um and the market kind of generally liked what it heard. Um, so no freakouts and you know, markets are now up a little bit higher since. So I guess we can say it did like what it heard. Um, I did not have a chance this very uncharacteristically I did not have a chance to watch Pal's presser, but it didn't seem like he said too much that surprised anybody during it. Any other takeaways that you've got, Lance? >> No, I mean it was it was as expected. Um, you know, they cut 25 basis points. The market actually sold off after the news and then actually rallied back just a smidge to close flat for the day. Markets were up yesterday, but really not because of the Fed. If you looked at the heat map yesterday. Oh, so by the way, let me just get our days straight because you'll be watching this on Saturday. So, Thursday. If you watch the market on thing this on Friday. >> Yeah. >> Um, but if you watch the market on Thursday, um, the markets were green, but only because Nvidia had taken a $5 billion stake in Intel and both those stocks were up sharply, which was affecting the Dow as well as as the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ because of the weights of those stocks. the rest of the market was kind of in, you know, the market would have probably been up about half as much on Thursday as it was if it wasn't for Nvidia and Intel. And then on Friday, as we're talking right now, the market opened up but sold off to to basically flat. It's it's again, it's kind of the the mag seven driving the markets today. It's Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft. >> And and sorry, just just to interject with some breaking news. Uh Trump and Chinese uh Premier Xi just finished their phone call and they have agreed that uh the Tik Tok deal is going through. So that's probably helping a bit too. >> Yeah, but yeah, the market got just a little market was basically trading flat and then bounced a little bit on the news. We'll see what kind of comes up. There's no uh and I'm just reading from their press release as well, Adam. Uh Trump and Z didn't release details of the of the deal, but new investors would own about half the company, while existing ones in the Tik Tok parent, Bite Dance, uh including Sescuana International, KKR, and General Atlantic, would hold roughly 30% of that. So, um we'll we'll kind of see what this looks like, but again, at least this removes the threat of a Tik Tok ban potentially. >> Okay. All right. I'm going to take things sideways for a second here. Anything else about the Fed before I do? No, no. Again, it was pretty much as expected. The only thing is is that the markets are now expecting five more rate cuts between now and next year. >> Oh, sorry. A to sorry, sorry, four more rate cuts, a total of five >> into 2026. >> Okay. And that was notable with the dot plot did suggest that the Fed uh the FOMC the the board that meets is expecting to be more doubbish next year than they were before. I think a valid question to be raised too is, you know, if you assume for a second that Pal is going to get replaced by somebody more doubbish, which the president seems to want to have, and if potentially they replace Lisa Cook, that dot plot might get even more doubbish next year as you have more doubbish people sitting in the seats who are voting on the dot. >> Steven Moran, who was a firsttime voting member, he was the Trump appointee. He was at five rate cuts. He was the outlier. >> He was a denter. He wanted 50 basis points. But then when they did the dot plot, you see one dot plot is way lower than all the rest. Yeah. You're like, I wonder who that could be. Yeah. >> Exactly. No surprises. But I thought, but you know, it's interesting. They released their quarterly projections uh every quarter for, you know, economic growth, unemployment, inflation. U no real change, expecting slower rates of economic growth into next year. Um 1.9 to 1.8 in 2027. 1.8% long-term economic growth. That's not great. 1.8% economic growth is not something to write home about. that's that's not even keeping up with the rate of population growth um in terms of employment, but they're expecting >> and that's what the Fed's kind of you know historically rosy outlook on the jobs market, right? >> Yeah. You know, >> and so but they do they they they've got this very rosy outlook for 4.2% unemployment, but you know this really dismal outlook for economic growth which is the driver for employment and inflation going to 2%. So there was no no real changes but uh you know no prediction of a recession of course uh out in the future ever. It never is. Um so >> but they but they can never say one's coming just >> Yeah. But but the projections aren't aren't good. I mean the projections are for very slow economic growth um in the future. >> Yeah. And also >> disinflation than inflation. Yeah. >> Yeah. And to note they they changed their their policy statement and said hey we think the balance of risks now is towards uh unemployment to jobs and that's a big shift. It had been for the past bunch of years you know since since they started the rate hikes you know several years ago they were much more worried about inflation than about the health of jobs market. That is now officially shifted. >> Yeah. which you know I think you and I Lance have been saying hey dudes you know if you care about uh jobs you should be caring them about a lot more than you than you than you have been for the past year plus especially because the jobs data seems to not be accurate and I think the Fed is maybe finally getting that memo but of course way too late which is why Pal's nickname is too late pal um one thing I'll note too um is uh there are now calls in fact just just like literally in Congress a bill was just proposed to um remove the Fed's second mandate, the jobs mandate. It's really interesting. There's been the past couple months, there's really been a lot of questioning about not just the Fed's interest rate policy, but like, hey, should the Fed actually operate differently than it does? Um, who knows where this is going to go. Maybe we can talk about this in depth in a later conversation, Lance, but >> we who knows, but we could potentially see some some changes there at the Fed. There's even some discussion of like and should the Fed even be setting interest rates and maybe we should just have a market, you know, mechanism for that and the Fed just becomes a true lender of last resort as it was originally intended to be. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but it would be interesting to see if they were forced to give up the jobs mandate. Um >> I think it should I think they should give up. But again, I'm more leaning in the >> they're one of the only central banks that has it. >> Yeah, know I I would just say, you know, get out of the whole prediction business because a you're horrible at it. You're never right. Um, but B, just, you know, your job is just make sure the banks are functioning properly and just, you know, the two-year Treasur, you don't need the Fed funds rate. The two-year Treasury rate t tracks the Fed funds. >> I was going to say that's a that's a marketbased solution right there. >> Yeah. And just use a market-based solution for your your lending policy and just make sure the banks operate and and get out of everything else and the whole world would be a lot better off. >> Yeah. So, okay. If if we want to, we can go more deeply into that. I just find it interesting that that we're now beginning to shift from just some random voices, you know, like the Ron Paul's of the world talking about this into the wind to all of a sudden there are bills being introduced, right? >> Um, okay. I'm going to take things sideways for a second, Lance. We could do we I'm sure we could rant on this forever, so we'll keep it tight. >> But, you know, I look at that ticktail Tik Tok deal and I'm just kind of like, you know, like um I'm realizing there was probably a part of me that was hoping it wasn't going to go through. not for any business reason, but for a societal and cultural reason, right? Um, and uh, you know, we we we we gave a nod last week to the Charlie Kirk assassination, which I think is just a milestone on this cultural path that we're on, where um, you know, we are we are really having uh, cultural decay and it's been going on for generations and then talked about this a lot with Greg Lucino and the coddling of the American mind and my interview with him from last month. Um, and we've talked about elements of this, but I I think we're at a point, Lance, where if you ask everybody, and I think this is a universal, you hear about these 8020 issues, this is like a 99% issue of is social media healthy for us as a culture. I think almost everybody would say no. It's pretty toxic, right? So, we know we have a problem, right? We're the person who says, "All right, you know what? Yeah, I got a drinking problem." Right? And the question becomes, you know, well, what should we do about it? And I'm torn on this one because, you know, the the fair market libertarian, you know, type person in me, live and let be, I don't want to be, you know, placing censorship. I don't want to be on the side of of censorship. But I but I do think that, you know, when we're looking at the the harm that social media is doing to especially our kids, but as our kids begin to grow up into adults, you know, the adults that they're becoming and just what's happening in society, like the cost is really real. It's measured in the cost of human lives. And not just the fringe people who might assassinate somebody, but the people who commit suicide, the people who, you know, self harm, all that type of stuff. And just diminished, >> you know, pursuit of happiness is a huge part of what's supposed to be in America. this is really compromising that. And so I don't know, we could talk about this forever. I don't want us to, but like I look at this Tik Tok deal and I'm like, that was a great opportunity just to say, you know what, let's just not have it. Let's start there. Let's kick off one of the the biggest sources of brain rot and just say we don't want it, right? But >> yeah, I I wrote, you know, but and no, and we've we've written about this before. I wrote an article called technological advances. Does it make things better? Um, you know, we're always looking at technology as like, oh, it's this great thing and it makes our lives better and but if you take a look at the technological advances, you can almost market to the year when Facebook went public and the iPhone was invented that you saw a rapid decline in in and you and individual happiness levels decline sharply. a very sharp rise in depression and loneliness, a very sharp rise in teenage suicides. Um, you know, um, you know, it's just there's been and and again, you can market almost to the year starting in 2007 to 2010 and that was when these things were, you know, that's when the smartphone was introduced. That's when Meta went public. And nothing you can't point to anything good that's come out of it, but we're all addicted to it, right? And it's like, wait, you know, I got I got to look at my phone, you know, to see what's what's happening and I got to post videos and all this. I mean, the average American spends between four and six hours a day on social media. And then they complain about why they, you know, they're not they can't build wealth and they can't be productive in society, they can't, you know, oh, life is so unfair >> or they're not getting promoted or whatever. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, just think if I could use if I could use four to six hours of my time that I was spending on social media instead learning a new skill, learning a new trade, doing something to advance myself, personal, you know, exercise, eat better, whatever. How much better off would you be? And it was interesting because I posted this this tweet earlier this week. It was a really great quote from Ronald Reagan. I I'd stumbled across it and I I posted this tweet and and because there's I get it's gotten so much push like I don't know why it is just recently too there's been a lot of push about how unfair life is and and how nothing is you know you know it's all been co-opted by the boomers and and the Gen Xers and and none of that's true. You got to remember that the boomers have had 50 years to build wealth and to buy houses and these type of things. They've had a very long run of time to save money and invest. But it was also a very different environment. You know, they they were taught to work hard and save money and do these type of things. They didn't have social media. But I I posted this tweet. It's called the American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends intends him to become. And there's a quote by Ronald Reagan and and that and that's true. And from the standpoint that you know the opport the the opportunity is fair for everybody has exactly the same opportunity. Everybody has >> it's not that you're given everything the same. It's that you have the equal opportunity to change your station. >> Correct. And think about how much time how much more advancement that we could make if we spent our time rather on social media achieving whatever goals it was that we wanted to achieve. And you think about four to six hours a day. Just say say just to say it's two hours a day that you're on social media. That's 14 hours a week, right? That's half a day of just spending time on social media, cruising around seeing what everybody else is doing. But again, that, you know, the social media we see how how well how everybody else is doing better than us. And most of that's They're, you know, they're renting houses and renting cars and taking videos out in front of them is not even real. But we start comparing that to to our >> They're showing us their best life, but in most cases it's even a fake best life. Yeah. >> Yeah. And Yeah. You don't you don't see you don't see all the challenges and struggles, right? Everything's great everywhere else and and your life sucks, right? So >> So I'm going to reel you in here because yes, we could bash social media for hours here, right? >> No, I'm just I'm just saying is that there's a great movie called Ready Player One. Watch the movie because that tells you where we're headed. >> I know. Especially with the advent of of virtual reality. Um, yeah. So, anyways, um, but I'm gonna end this with a with a provocative question for you, and you're no matter how you answer it, you're probably going to get slammed by a bunch of people, but I'm going to do it anyways, and we'll revisit it. I >> don't care, >> which is, so I have thick skin. H >> how how do you think we should as a society address it? There's the on one hand, there's the argument of, hey, you know, this is a parenting issue. This has to happen in the home. We just have to, you know, start, you know, both adopting better behaviors ourselves and enforcing it on our kids and we have to moderate, you know, the age at which our own kids use this and we have to, you know, kind of help onboard them. Um, which I completely agree with. I think that is a part of the solution. But some would say that's where it should end. The state shouldn't be involved. Or is there a role for the state here to say like certain countries are beginning to I think Australia just just uh recently did this where they said and correct me if you're watching from Australia if I'm wrong here. Um but that it's you can't use social media if you're under 16. Right. And we we approach it like we do alcohol, cigarettes, things like that, driving. Um do you have a strong opinion one way or the other? Uh, so it's interesting because in Ready Ready Player One, that game, they basically outlawed one day a week, social media was down, right? So you had to spend one day a week in in reality, right? It's just you had to go back to living life. Um, but no, I mean, I think you definitely have to start looking at, you know, putting age limits on social media. um in terms of because again when you're when you know really young kids are getting into social media they're they don't have the decision-m capability to say hey this is good for me or this is not good for me right now >> just interjected not everybody has a Lance Roberts as a father who would would be heavy-handed in the home and say no you're not going to use it until you're older so yeah >> which we did by the way >> which is good for you but my my point is or your point is is look the state's role is is to help especially the kids who don't have which is which is why you can't buy cigarettes till you're 18, which is why you can't buy alcohol till you're 18. You know, these type of things because we said, "Hey, you know, that's probably not a good idea for a minor to have control of that because they're not mentally mature enough to handle it. >> The prefrontal cortex isn't developed enough yet." >> Exactly. And it's interesting now because I talked to my kids um and they're turn they still use social media, but they're not on it very often. Um even and and I've talked to my kids about like, "Hey, you know, I noticed you you haven't been on TikTok lately or whatever." Um because I have a I have an account where I track all of their social media use. Even even though my kids are over 20, I still track how much they're using on social media. So I know when they're on and when they're not on and um I know she haven't been using them much lately. Yeah. Yeah. It's just I've got other stuff going on. I'm really busy at school. I've got this happening. I got to go, you know, I'm you know, my son works two jobs. He goes to school. Um he's working on his degree. So I mean goes to the gym, eats right, right? And he's doing all the right things. So he's busy. He doesn't have time to be on social media. But he even said that even his friends that in his friend group, they're all starting to use social media a lot less. They're starting to realize that it's not really that beneficial for them and they're starting to turn away from it and use their time in more productive manner. So maybe the hope is is that you know this a generation it's like this was a huge fad. It was great. It was wonderful. Everybody participated in it. But maybe people just naturally come to decision is like what am I doing here? I'm spending four hours of my day doom scrolling Tik Tok and I'm not getting anything out of it. >> Yeah. I I think it's sadly more like cigarettes where um because I don't think you've got that mentality in eight and 10 year olds that are, you know, getting their first device and like, "Oh my god, this is amazing." Right? I think kind of like cigarettes where the guy's like, you know, finally in his 20s or 30s and saying, "You know what? This this six-pack a day habit I have is is not so great. I got to start cutting it down." Right? So, it it's it's heartening that your kids and and I've actually seen with my kids um I I had my older daughter kind of in her last year in college, first year out of college, you know, did say a couple times like, you know, I'm going on like a social media fast because I'm just realizing >> it doesn't make me feel good and I feel much better when I'm not on it, right? But I think that that's almost a state you get to after years of abusing it and realizing it's not helpful. So, okay. So anyways, uh I just wanted to get a sense for for Smart Man's opinion on whether, you know, this was something that we might have to have some regulation around. And it seems like you think that's probably going to be part of it. And who knows? We we'll keep our eyes on it. I >> I I don't I don't know if anything ever happens, you know, with it. I mean, there's too much money behind it, you know, Google, Meta. I mean, >> well, I mean, sadly, the the companies that apparently have all the money in the world now, you know, are the ones that are building these, so who knows? Yeah. All right. Um well, look, I want I want to move on here in the time we have left. Um Okay. This is kind of interesting. Um, so first off, let me just pull up a quick tweet here um by Melody Wright. Um, this is on housing. Um, and you know, you talk about the power of narratives, Lance. And, um, one of the narratives in housing, the housing market right now is, yeah, you know, Florida and Texas are going through, you know, some rough times here. Um, but they're the ones with the big inventory problems. And you know, I live in New England or I live in the Midwest and we've got a chronic national housing or chronic housing shortage and it's never going to get bad here. Prices can't come down here because we don't have the inventory they have there. And who knows, right? Uh but Melody tracks this stuff and in talking with her, I know that she believes those markets will not be immune. They they probably will not go down nearly as much as as the Austin's of the world or the St. Petersburgs of the world or whatever, Coral Gables. But um she is saying here, hey, in both the Midwest and the Northeast, we're seeing higher month-to-month over inventories um when inventory should actually be going down due to seasonality uh in this year. And that's actually happened in the South despite the pain the South's going through in the West. Boston is up 11% in inventory month over month. Um so I'm just pointing this out as just a just another crack, right, in the housing market there. Um and >> which is which which is absolutely fascinating to me because you look at homebuilder stocks and they are on fire this year. >> Um I guess although Lenar just uh announced I think it was yesterday and the stock went down um they they they announced disappointing results and and it is I mean look the the the pain that the home builders appear to be in in terms of having to uh you know do mortgage buy downs and price cuts and all and all sorts of non-pric discounts to get their inventory to move. Um, yeah, their stocks have been surprisingly strong. I mean, I to me I kind of like I can't believe it seems just like a short that's just begging to be placed on there. >> Yeah. No, >> and I probably would have shorted by now, but when Buffett bought in, I was like, "Oh, you know." >> Well, yeah. That's what I was saying. It's like, you know, home builders have been doing great. Then Buffett buys in. They have they have a big run. And I'm I'm sitting there looking at all the stuff that goes into home building. You and you take a look at the housing statistics and blah blah blah. And I'm like, "This doesn't make any sense." But this but this goes back to our previous conversation that everything's going up and so if everything's going up it's like oh that hasn't gone up yet let's buy that and then it starts going up and so that just drags more money into it. So it's kind of the feeding the narrative and I'm I'm going to be fascinated with with with Buffett's purchases of the homebuilders. I I I get the fundamentals on it, but again, when I'm looking at the more macro environment, I'm just wondering if his timing again, he doesn't care about timing, right? He's got a hundred-year view on this. >> Exactly. And that may be it, right? Which is just like, hey, I'm I'm I'm looking at the price in 25 years from now. >> Um so, so I got another tweet here, and this one is after your heart, Lance. Um, so just to be super clear, um, the record shows that you and I have a difference of opinion in terms of your comment on it's just as easy to, you know, build a life today, you know, than it was back 30, 50 years ago. >> Um, I agree with much of your logic, but not all of it. I do I do >> sure >> I do believe that it is a a harder slope to to to climb, but um, here is a quote. Here's a tweet. um guy named helpful landlord here on X. Prospective tenants just pulled up to my $2,000 a month rental in their $100,000 truck. >> So these are people >> but see right there that goes to my whole point >> that that's why I'm bringing it up and laughing about it. Exactly. You know, a huge part of this is um >> personal choice. >> Personal choices. Now, this guy does have a follow- on tweet that says, "Hey, in all fairness, the trucks used for work and the tenant makes good money. They could probably buy a home if they want to. Uh but still, um you know, uh I mean, honestly, I don't know what you got to do for work to to need a truck that cost $100,000. But, um anyways, long story short, yeah, somebody showing up for a a rental with a truck that costs what, you know, 50 times their monthly rent is bananas. >> Um okay. So, um, you know, we just want to show, hey, there's there's there's continued stress in the housing market. Um, both in terms of, uh, you know, inventory, continued price reductions in the weak states, but again, we're seeing some inventory weakness, um, meaning more inventory than expected coming online, even in the quote unquote safe markets. Uh we're seeing stress in the terms of increasingly strapped consumer households and you and I have talked about the student loan cascade and all the delinquencies and all these different types of debts, but also just on people making poor life choices where they're just living above their means and eventually you have to pay the piper on that one too. Like having >> buy now pay later. >> Yeah. >> Um okay. Uh so we'll keep our eye on this folks, but here's a housing concept I wanted to to run by you Lance. Um, so, uh, you know, my daughters are now I just dropped my younger daughter off for her sophomore year of college. You know, they're out of the house and, um, like any selfish parent, right? I hope when their life travels, uh, get to the point where they want to settle down that they choose to live near mom and dad, right? Um, and we've also talked about how um, you know, I'm the kind of parent who uh, to the extent I have the means to do so, you know, I want to help them out at key moments in life, but I don't want to enable them. I don't want to give them too much, that type of stuff, right? Um, and so I've thought about, okay, you know, like, do I help them buy their first home? You know, that I've been sort of thinking and if so, how much? And all that type of stuff. Here's an idea I came up with literally in the shower this morning, Lance. And so I'm going to I'm just going to toss it out there. It might be a terrible idea, but I thought this would be kind of fun. So I'd love for my kids to live near me so that my grandkids are near me. You know, we we raised our kids um next to my wife's parents or or you know, same town over from my wife's parents uh their whole lives. So they've they've had their grandparents in their lives, you know, on a on a weekly basis um almost on a daily basis when they were growing up. And it's just been wonderful, right? Um so here's the idea I came up with. um which is you know it's all about incentives. So maybe I tell them look um if you want to come live near us uh I'll buy the house you guys live in it rentree for as long as you raise your family here and if you raise your family here next to us um you don't have to pay me rent although there's a caveat in that which I'll mention in a second. Um, and by and when the youngest child heads off to college, I'll give you the deed to the house, right? So, you basically get to live rentree and get a free house out of this. And the cost of it is that you you live near me with the grandkids. Now, I will make them pay rent, right? So, we're going to we're going to there's going to be a market rent payment you're going to have to make every month and that's going to go into either a retirement account or a trust for you guys. So, it's like a forced retirement saving for them. They just can't take that money and blow it, right? They can't live a higher lifestyle than they would otherwise if they were renting a house. I'm just taking that making those payments go into something in the future that's going to benefit them in their retirement, right? So, um, it's going to feel to them like they're renting a house from somebody as they're going through the process, but they know that, uh, you know, at the end of it all, they're going to get a free house and they're going to have, uh, some additional retirement savings and I'm going to be happy to do it because my family's going to be near me. What do you think about this idea? >> I think that's selfish as it can be. >> Oh, it's totally selfish. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I want my grandkids near me. >> I I wouldn't I wouldn't. So, if you want to do that, I wouldn't do it the way you're doing it then. And I wrestle with the same thing with my kids because we would we want so we've got four kids. We would all love to have them right here next to us so we can have access to the grandkids. Totally selfish, right? You and I are on the same page. Absolutely. >> Here's the here's the risk you run into. You're going to limit their ability to have a profession. I mean, who wouldn't jump at that? Oh, dad's going to dad's going to not only give me a free house, but fund an investment account for me and give me all this money at the end of the day and, you know, give me and that's who wouldn't go for that. >> Yep. problem is is that now you've taken their career search and you've surrounded it within a 10 milei radius of your house, >> right? So, so you you have impaired their future ability to grow their wealth >> um and to grow their profession, grow their careers. And so, you don't want to do that. Um you know, and again, I wrestle with this as as well, but my daughter's at school to be an anesthesiologist. she's going to try to wind up at John's Hopkins in New York because if she can get there, then, you know, that's a huge career builder for her. Then she can go from there to wherever else she wants to go. Um, you know, my son when he graduates computer engineering, he needs to go to work for somebody like a palunteer, right? He's getting to a top tier company, grow his career. That's going to take them away from Houston where we live. And and that's going to be unfortunate that we But you can get on a plane and go see him anytime you want. plane plane flights are cheap, but you don't want to impair their ability to grow their career for a selfish motive. And again, you and I are in the same bucket. I agree with the I agree with the intention and I like the idea. If it happened to work out that they were moving close to you, then sure, you know, help them. I wouldn't I would I would have them pay rent um on the house and then just take that money and invest it for them and don't tell them you're doing it, but make them think that they're paying rent. Have >> Well, maybe don't tell them, but it's pretty much the same experience. >> Yeah. But don't tell them that you're doing that because that's just a free incentive, right? And so make them pay rent, a market-based rent. Don't tell them what you're doing with the money because they don't care. And furthermore, you can turn that into a legitimate rental property and then you get the tax deductions for that. So you don't screw yourself on the other side by not collecting rent. >> That's interesting. >> Yeah. So, you know, but but again, I agree with the intention, but I just want you but you should consider the impact you're going to have on their future careers if you limit their job search scope. >> Yeah. And so, it's a great point. Um I thought a little bit about it in the shower, but not them realizing not fully. I mean, obviously, if they left, then it would be a good thing because it's like, all right, you got a sweet deal here. You're if you're leaving for something even better, awesome, >> right? Maybe you don't do it until they have kids, right? So, you're not you're not in incenting a 20, you know, four-year-old who's not going to have kids maybe for another five years um to to just plunk down your home rather than okay, I'm going to go to John's Hopkins and, you know, cut my teeth and build my expertise, but then maybe come right again. Yeah, it's totally selfish. I mean, at some point in time, you get to say, >> trust me, I want the same thing, right? Yeah. But, you know, here's the interesting thing. You know, I've talked to all my kids about this and and not not overtly like the way you're talking about like, hey, here's a big incentive package, right? I haven't done that, but I just talked to them. It's like, hey, you know, what are you thinking about, you know, kind of in the future? And they all want to wind up somewhere around Houston. They they want to be close to their family because we have a very our our family is very very close in terms of structure. We, you know, we rely on each other a lot. We're very close-knit. And so their own choices are they're trying to figure out ways to get back towards Houston. Um. >> Yeah. But how many kids do you have? >> Four altogether. So >> yeah. Yeah. So So I've got two. You got better odds than me, right? So I'm like, look, I I get to get at least one of these, right? >> Well, I lost one. I've got one in the UK. Don't forget. So >> Well, for now, >> I've only got three left. >> Yeah. I tell you what, the way the UK is going politically, um, hopefully he'll come home soon. So, >> um, okay. Uh, I had some additional ideas on this about like, well, what if they want to upgrade the house or what if they decide they want to get a different house because they're having more grandkids or whatever. And >> if folks like this idea, I can throw that stuff out later, but all right. So, I got to think I got to think a little bit more about h how do you not their ability to to advance in their careers? >> But, I mean, almost kind of by definition, if they're going to live near you, no matter whether you structure anything or not, you know, then there there there's that limitation there. But I guess the question could be if they got a if they got a good job offer and you didn't want this to keep them from doing the right thing. >> Yeah. >> What what could you do? So I'll noodle on that. But I still I'm not giving up on this idea. >> And don't Well, no, no. And I'm not saying you should give up on the idea. I also want you to consider the fact that you're eliminating struggle. >> Um >> but how I mean that's why they're paying the rent, right? You don't pay me this rent, you don't get this deal. >> Well, no, I get that. Right. But you're also giving them a lot of of other benefits, right? So, and I get that. Just all I'm saying is is don't forget there's an importance to struggle and they need to struggle in order to build >> I'm thousand% with you on this. Yeah. This >> I know you are. I'm just saying so so as part and and I know you and I both agree on this. Yeah. And so part of the thing that you and I have to both approach is to make sure that they struggle but we're there to help them as needed. So part of this process is is like, hey, I'll help you buy this house, >> but instead of me just giving you money to buy the house, I'm going to become a co-owner. I'm just throwing out an idea. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna buy half the house for you, and we're going to be co-owners. And so if you ever sell the house in the future, then we're going to split the profits, >> right? So you help them get into this. >> You pick up a tax benefit from being a real estate investor, right? Um and then at the end of the day, you get you you get some benefit. And then what you do with the benefit, right? You sell the house, you split the profits, and you go invest into an account for them, whatever you want to do, but you help, >> or you just deed them the house when you die, >> or however you want to do that at the end of surprise, here you go. Right? But they've had to struggle and they've built those muscles. They've understood the importance of money, how to budget, how to save for things. That's and those are the important lessons that we have. And again, you know, let's go back to, you know, where you and I disagree. You like you're like, "Oh, it's harder today." It's really not. If you if you live back when I grew up and you and you talk about house prices back then and and income >> I can just see the comments right now. >> No, I'm I'm just telling you that mathematically it's it cost more to buy a house in the 70s than it costs today on a percentage of income basis. Um and so the the times aren't really any different. It may seem different because we we didn't have all these other expenses back then that you have today. You know, we didn't have to buy Apple iPhones and big expensive cars and all these other things. So, so again, the thing that you and I need to focus on is anybody can afford the lifestyle they want, but they have to be willing to struggle, sacrifice, and and have the discipline to get there. It's not going to come tomorrow. Nobody's going to give it to you. And this is one of, and this is when you get the comments, right? This is always the comment section is, well, you know, you don't understand. I do understand. >> I've lived out of my truck to build my business. I've done these things that we've talked about before. >> And so, yeah, I understand, but you have to be willing to commit to it. And nobody's going to give you anything, right? You just have to be willing to start the process. And that's the hardest part is saying, "Okay, I can't afford a $2,000 phone. I'm g have to go buy a flip phone and I'm g have to live with that for a while until I can afford the nicer things that I want." But I've got to start the saving investing process. I've got to do these things. And I know it's not fun. I know it's it's it's it seems challenging and it is challenging and there's certainly a lot of differences today because we think we have to have certain things that we don't necessarily need but we think we have to have them because everybody else has them and that's the trap we get ourselves into. >> Yeah. So you and I are a thousand% in agreement on that. We still differ I think on the data and you know I'll commit Lance we'll have a one of these rants where we just bring the data and I'll let you make your full data argument on that but it doesn't really matter because we still agree on the whole process thing and and this just just to end this idea um you know um so I'm a thousand% that a they have to have the struggle because that's how they're going to develop the muscles to be self-sufficient and have a great life right >> um and you got to make sure to your point about you want to be there to help them when you can, but you don't want to be like the Fed where they just know, ah, whenever we get in trouble, dad's going to come bail me out, right? Can't be that type of relationship. >> The The reason why I'm sort of willing to make this sort of as broad daylight transactive as it is. >> Yeah. >> Because it is a little bit of a bribe. It's like, look, you might be able to get something better somewhere else. >> Yeah. You know, >> I'm trying to sweeten the pot to make sure that you stay near me, right? >> Yeah. You know, bribes are illegal. >> Pardon me. And that's why bribes are illegal. >> Yeah. But when it comes to your grandkids, those rules go out the window, right? >> Again, I look, I have no problem with what you do with your kids, right? Is just understand your consequences and understand your motives. And as long as you understand you're being completely selfish in this whole motive, which I completely understand, right? I would do the same thing. >> I just, you know, I I just have to also look out for my kids' best interest to make sure that they get to where they're supposed to be. >> Right. >> That's also your job as a dad. >> It is. Which again, and maybe it's twisted logic, I still have to still have to process this, but like that's why like, hey, if you go through this, you raise your kids near me and and and you got to do well enough to at least pay the rent and do the other stuff you want to do in your life. Um, I may be limiting your prospects by this. I get it. Which is why if you do this, you get a free house and you, you know, and and whether I told them before or not, voila, here's all this retirement savings that you've made with your money along the way. Right? So, anyways, uh, folks, love to hear your thoughts. Maybe I'm just super crazy. Or maybe folks have a have a better riff on this idea that they can share on. >> Oh, no. No. Look, I I guarantee that people in the comments will love this idea. If their parents would do this for them, they would be all over it regardless of the consequences. >> Yeah. Well, of course. Who who would love an Yeah, exactly. I would have loved this option, but I'm curious to hear those who have their kids whether they think this is a good idea or not. Um All right. Um let's see. So, we talked about trades, which is basically you haven't done any trades, but next week and and sorry, will next week be more rebalancing or >> uh No, we'll do we're probably going to do a couple of position swaps. Uh we've got a couple of positions that are performing okay, but not as well as we would like them to. And there's some other there's a couple of other positions that we want to add. So, we'll probably because we we only hold a maximum number of stocks in a portfolio at any one time. And so, if in order to add a stock, I have to sell a stock. >> And and is that just because you feel like your attention can only focus on function. No, no, no. It's a function of mathematics. If you own more than than 30 stocks in a portfolio, you might as well just go buy an ETF. You're going to get the exact same performance. >> So, >> okay, it gets so broad that that >> and and the way and because of of passive indexing and all that type of stuff that if you own 40 stocks in your portfolio, you're basically going to get the exact same performance as the index. So, just go by the index and save yourself the time. Um, where you can create outperformance is by holding more concentrated positions in a fewer number of stocks. And that's that's how you can create outperformance over time. >> Okay. Um, all right. Well, look, um, I'm going to start wrapping things up here. Um, a couple of things. Um, first off, I want to remind folks, I should have said this at the very beginning, but we are now officially now less than a month away from Thalul Money's fall online conference, which is taking place Saturday, October 18th. Uh if you haven't bought your ticket yet, uh you should run notwalk uh to thoughtfulmoney.com/conference. Uh and uh get that ticket now because the early bird price discount that we're offering right now is going to go away pretty soon and I want to make sure everybody who can get it does get it. Um if you are a premium subscriber to our Substack, make sure you look for the code I sent you that'll help you get an additional $50 off of that conference. But the conference is it's going gang busters right now. I've got such a fantastic uh faculty and um I think just from a timeliness standpoint um given how much uncertainty lies out there for next year uh it it really probably could be both our best faculty at the most timely time. So anyways, hope to see you there folks. Um all right, so uh I'll do a little rant here, Lance, and then I'll I'll I'll do some some quick recap to share again some fun things. So, um, uh, yeah, I'm trying to make the rants a little bit more light-hearted, uh, this time around or positive given that we've had some pretty heavy ones, uh, of late. Uh, and I guess before I move on from that, uh, just I I promise I won't ask you this every week, Lance. I'll let you give us updates if you feel like it, but how are things going with you and your family right now? >> So, we as as as well as good as can be expected. We went through our first round of chemo last Friday, so you know, typical nauseous for a couple of days, been tired. But good news is so today's Friday. She actually went back to work yesterday. Um and today she's at work as well. So, you know, kind of getting back on her feet and uh doing well. We actually had a a client. We had a um dinner last night for all of our employees, kind of an employee appreciation dinner for our company and she went to that for a little bit and visited with everybody. She gets tired so we couldn't stay for very long, but you know, um she's trying to get back to being normal. One of the funny but the funniest story of this week is that um my wife has and and Adam will will attest to this. My wife has be a beautiful head of hair, long blonde hair, very full, very rich mane. She's very proud of her hair. And of course she's >> she's very beautiful period both inside and out. But yes, she's got great hair, too. >> Yeah. And >> by the way, I'm married for hair. Just I mean, if you're looking at what I'm working with, I I I did the same thing. Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly right. And uh so she's going to lose her hair and so she went and had her hair cut pretty short and she looks absolutely stunning with this short haircut. I was I was I'm a I'm a long hair guy. I've always loved her in long hair and I was like I don't know how this short hair is going to look but she's she looks like she looks like a a movie star right now with this haircut she's got. She wears her glasses. >> It's great. >> Yeah, it's great. Well, she ordered this wig and and my wife's very frugal. She's always looking to save money and and try to, you know, make things stretch things out. So, she ordered this wig offline. It was it was a dark-headed wig with these blonde highlights in it. And uh I I she this wig comes in the mail and and she goes into her dressing room to put it on and and I hear this just hysterical laughing coming out of her dressing room. And so I mean just kind of bell I haven't heard her laugh like this in in a long long time. Um and so I go in I was like what is going on? And she turns around, she's wearing this wig. And this wig is looks like something that you would get with like a really cheap Halloween costume. It was the It was the most horrid thing whatsoever you've ever seen. But it was so funny. And it was great because she was just having this belly laugh coming out of this of what she looked like in this wig. And I said, "Don't worry, honey." So, so this weekend we're actually going to professional wig shop to have her a wig made. But um you know, so that was that was kind of the highlight of the week. Hey, if um if if uh it will help you upgrade to uh you know, one that's really going to make her happy, uh let me know what what what the upgrade amount is and I will pay it from the thoughtful money account and it'll be a big, you know, wellw wish from the thoughtful money community to her. >> All right. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, I'll let you know. >> Yeah. Um that's funny. So, she got like the spirit Halloween of of >> Oh, yeah. It was It was so bad. It was so bad, but it was so funny at the same time. And again, she it it was really funny because she really needed to laugh. >> Yeah. >> Um but yeah, it was great. >> Um it it it's funny story and um my wife has long hair and it's it she straightens it. So if you know her, you know, you think of hers having long straight hair. Um but it's kind of got a natural curl to it. And when we go on vacation somewhere, like if we go to Hawaii, we're on, you know, we're out here on the west, so it's a lot easier to go to Hawaii. Um, her hair gets pretty frizzy and she kind of hates it, but I love it. I call it vacation wife, right? It's like, oh, I got I got a different variant of Yeah. So fun when you see it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Christine's the same way. She's always straightened her hair, but her hair is naturally very curly. It's like almost an afro. It's so curly. And so when we get we go somewhere like to a beach or something where there's a lot of humidity, it just goes >> good. Yeah. But even with a different cut, right? It is. I think it's really sexy. She hates the curl and it's all, you know, women are women are hysterical, right? Because, you know, like I think freckles are cute and she has freckles. You can't see them because she covers them up because she hates freckles, but I think they're cute. >> I think they're super cute. Yeah. >> Yeah. And and she hates curly hair because she has curly hair. So, she wants straight hair. Women always want the opposite of what they have. And I'm going, "Honey, I like curly hair and I like freckles." And she goes, "I hate those things. I don't want freckles. I want straight hair." So anyway, that's just >> which proves that proves that women dress for themselves, not for guys. >> Exactly right. Exactly right. >> Um all right. Well, look, uh just in wrapping up here, um uh I'm not making a uh good or bad comment on this. I know folks have strong opinions on both sides. Um but um uh Jimmy Kimmel is is uh losing his uh uh talk show or late night show and and Steven Colbear uh was announced was is going to be losing his I think next year >> and I don't want to get into the right or wrong of that folks. I know folks have strong opinions either ways. What I want to talk about is that both of these guys their shows had hundred million dollar budgets and they had hundreds of employees. And I don't know Kimmel's uh profitability, but I know the Colbear report I think was I think it was losing like 40 million bucks a year, right? >> Both of them had both of them had bad ratings and and really were probably on their way out eventually anyway. So I'm I'm I'm not sure timing is any any consequence of that. >> Yeah. And I don't know if maybe these were just the the the air cover reason that the network had to say, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna stop the bleeding. I don't know. Again, I'm not trying to to to make this a judgment a call about the gentlemen or their programs. I just want to say that like um when I hear about that as somebody who kind of runs his own show, you know, and runs it with a staff of the dude you're looking at right here, um you know, it it's kind of an amazing time in in history and in in media history. And Lance, I know you know this because you run your own show as well, right? You got Brent and I don't know if you have many other people uh helping you produce the show that you do. I mean, it's run with a skeleton crew relative to the size. And of course, you know, National Network TV show, yeah, it's going to be a lot bigger, but there's a lot of shows on YouTube, a lot of channels on YouTube that have as much, if not a lot more uh viewers than a lot of these major TV shows. Oh, yeah. >> But they run on on on, you know, a relative skeleton crew. And and not to pat myself on the back too much, but you know, there are times where I'll have a video that does quite well and I'll be like I'll look at the the stats and I'll be like, "Hey, that's more viewers than this CNN channel had or that this, you know, I don't know if the Tonight Show, but certainly some of these other, you know, big uh bigname uh talk shows. You know, I'll look at their media stats and say it's as big, if not bigger than at least that guy that week, right?" And again, I'm just one dude with a camera, right? and free editing software that I use. So, um it's really kind of uh it's really kind of cool that you can produce content hopefully of decent enough quality as affordably as you can right now. And it's it's it's also really good for audiences where I think you know what we're seeing is a huge number of people leave traditional media for new media, alternative media, whatever you want to call it, because in a lot of ways the these new media outlets are able to offer either more what I like to call nutritious content. So I like to think that, you know, our long hour and a half, two hour, you know, weekly market recaps give people much more useful information than the way they can get from, you know, a threeminut hit on CNBC or something like that, right? >> Um, so it can be more nutritious or just more authentic, right? You know, you can you can find people who aren't reading teleprompterss uh that are largely being written by their advertisers and stuff like that. So it's just it's a really interesting time. I I'm I'm gonna move forward from here on this theme, but real quick, do you have anything you want to add to that as a as a guy who's playing in this space? >> No, no. I I think I think really it's it's two things. One, I think one, you're right about, you know, the the content is more targeted. So, in other words, if I'm a consumer and, you know, I haven't watched late show I haven't watched late night television in forever because I go to bed at 8:00. So, I have to get up at 3:30 in the morning. So, I'm not awake long enough to see. if they had really early night or maybe late afternoon, you know, television, maybe we'd watch that given how early we go to bed. But yeah, >> but but but honestly, I don't watch much of news anymore on television. I don't watch much of I don't watch much television anymore other than my wife and I have a few shows that we'll just watch together to, you know, spend time together while we have dinner or whatever. >> But even then, that's on demand. You're not like tuning into the channel and seeing what's on. Right. >> Ex Exactly. And so that's kind of my point, which is I think that there's there's so much targeted content that more and more consumers are just going, you know, I I can watch on demand my favorite person anytime I want on YouTube, Twitch, Kick, you know, whatever platform that you Tik Tok, whatever you're you're you're using. And I just think that that's just driving more and more the consumption in that direction rather than staying up till, you know, late night to watch, you know, Saturday Night Live, as an example. I mean, I just think I just think I think I just think that the the viewing habits of people have changed. >> Oh, absolutely. And and look, I mean, there's a lot of consumer benefit. You get to see what you want when you want to watch it. There's downsides to it, right? Where we build our own echo chambers and then of course your social media feed is suggesting the next video that you're, you know, it wants to keep you in that >> in that echo chamber. >> Yeah. In that echo chamber. Um, but but yeah, so all true. Um, I I guess the the the thing I also just sort of want to note here is that um uh you know I think it used to take massive amounts of money and manpower to to bring people things that they wanted and now it's amazing how little it does. And I guess parting comment on this before I move on is um you know if anybody takes inspiration to say hey you know anybody watching this says hey there's a topic I've got something to say on I would encourage you really think about starting your own channel whether it's on YouTube or the the platform of your choice. Um it it is a golden era to be a content creator if it's something you want to do and if you've got something compelling to say there's a lot of baggage that comes along with it that I'm happy to explain to anybody who's interested. Um, and and that kind of gets me to the second part of this, Lance, which is, you know, one of the costs of of, you know, of being a personality in this space is, I mean, a you're going to you're going to attract a certain amount of haters and you just develop a a thick skin to that. But every so often you you'll get something strange that happens. And I want to speak real briefly to something that happened to me over the past couple of days. Um, I started getting um kind of copied on X. um on these tweets by this guy. I'm not going to mention his name, but he's he's a guy who sort of has his own, you know, he he's sort of a talking head expert. Um never heard of him before. And he was just starting to to slam me on X, just reacting to my tweets, but basically just saying, "Ah, this Tagert guy, you know, he's a loser. Don't listen to him." Whatever. And um whatever. You know, the guy's welcome to his opinion. I don't know why he was ranting about me. And I've learned a long time ago, don't feed the trolls, right? Just just let him say what he wants to say. It doesn't matter his opinions. But I started getting emails from some people who followed him who said, "Hey, this guy's really like got a thing against you and I follow you and I follow him and I I'm just I don't know why there's a discourse here. You know, can you can you explain to me why he's got a beef with you?" And I was like, I have no idea. Um, but whatever. You know, each to his own opinion. Um, >> wait, let me ask a question. Is he tagging you in these comments? >> He is. And I'm going to answer where I think you're going with this. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's why. >> Again, yesterday there there was kind of a flurry more and and I realized, okay, in these ones he wasn't just tagging me. He was tagging some other people who also had big audiences. >> And so I'm like, oh, you know what? You know, this is really beginning to seem like he's got less of a specific beef with me and more that he's trying to use, you know, my prominence and the prominence of these other guys to kind of build his brand, right? >> Yeah. Well, no. Yeah. just build his followers, right? Get >> builders get traction and and yeah, all that. I mean, yeah. You know, and because I get a lot of that, too. And you know, I've people pick fights with me and and and I'm like, why are you picking a fight with me? I just posted this tweet. And then I realize it's the same thing. I go, if you go look at their followers, they got like 2,000 followers or 200 followers or whatever it is, and they're just trying to to get enough interaction to get pushed up, to get people to follow them. >> Exactly. And I think that that's probably going to increase, just FYI, as you have these Johnny come lightly where the field is now crowded with some bigger players. >> Well, how do I how do I give myself some oomph? Oh, let me pick a fight with the biggest guy, you know, on the prison yard type of deal. Um, so I wrote what I considered to be, you know, uh, as diplomatic a response as I could and just said to the guy, "Hey, look, you know, uh, I don't know who you are. I didn't know who you were until a couple days ago. I don't know why you have an issue with me. you're welcome to disagree with anything that I do, but it seems to me that you're doing exactly what you were saying he was doing, Lance. Right. And I said, "Look, I I personally don't appreciate that, nor do I think the other people you're you're trying to >> to whose other coattails you're trying to ride on here by by trying to tear them down publicly." I just said, "Look, I trust, you know, my viewers to come to their own conclusions as to what value they're getting from here, who they want to listen to, what they want to take away, if anything." And um you know like look buddy nobody needs your uh your your unwarranted uh you know abuse here and hey I'm leaving it that if if you want to re-engage on this >> you're welcome to try but this is a one and done. I'm I'm not talking to you after this. So, anyways, I mentioned that just to give people a little bit of a, you know, some inside baseball as to how the media industry works here. But I also want to thank uh a ton of my followers saw that and then chimed in and they were they were very um protective of me. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's that's that's honestly that's the best part about it is when like somebody will say something and then all my followers start just, you know, basically railing them, right? And it's I just sit back and kind of y popcorn. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, folks, anyways, I mean, there there's a lot of this stuff that goes on behind the scenes, and it's it's fun. Like, every every so often, Lance, once in a blue moon, um I I I'll get interviewed by another person who's a channel, you know, like mine. And, you know, they'll interview me about what I think about what's going on with the macro world, given everybody I talk to. But then when the camera's off, we just talk shop. And it's so nice to talk to somebody who kind of understands what it's like to be a content producer in this new world here. Um, so anyways, folks, I thought I'd give you a little taste of that. Um I I'll I'll conclude here by saying um you know it is very important to me to you know deliver value. This is I I I look at what I do here as a value exchange, right? You give me your time, I give you content that hopefully is worth your time, right? And I'm always trying to figure out, okay, how can I make that content better? Um, I do have a lot more plans of what I I want to do to even keep raising the bar here at Thoughtful Money. And hopefully over the next couple months, quarters, you know, you'll see that come to fruition. I don't like to pre-announce stuff. Um, I've got a real beef with people who do that. Um, just personally, I much rather just do it and then tell you about it. Um, I will say though, just for folks that maybe haven't noticed all the things that have happened, um, in the past 6 to 8 months, um, we have introduced a number of improvements on the channel content-wise, uh, most people know that Stephanie Pomboy, you know, comes on bi-weekly now. I think we started that probably at the beginning of this year. Um, and everybody loves Stephanie for very good reasons. Um, I'd mentioned you, Lance, but you you've been on for so long that you're there's nothing new about you. You're just an old old old reliable here. Um, I've also for about the same time that Stephanie's been been committed to bi-weekly, we have Axel Murk uh who joins me after every FOMC release to make sense for it in real time in a live stream taking your questions. We just did that uh on this Wednesday. Um, and we'll continue to do that going forward and topical things like that, right? We've got um you I think I've got a guy from the the Rain Institute that when there's something big happening geopolitically I'll pull him in to make sense of it for us as well. So kind of having these specialists come in on targeted um focused topics. Um and then um we've you know relatively recently given the strong interest in precious metals in general amongst this audience but certainly given how they've performed over the past year. Uh we, you know, first I I just as I refer um people to financial adviserss like Lance. I I I identified Miles Franklin as uh the endorsed precious metals solution for thoughtful money. So if you want to have questions answered and maybe figure out how to buy some, you can talk to the folks there. Um but Andy Sheman, the co-founder of it, um he appears now on the channel monthly to give us a monthly pulse on what's happening in precious metals. Uh I've very recently as in the past like you know week or two um now brought Dave Haye on for a monthly um recap. Um you know he's a veteran investor macro guy. So you know he'll come and give us his his slide presentation that he just did last week on uh everything that's happened over the month and what he sees going forward. Um, and then after we record that for the public audience, um, I've created a, um, a premium uh, discussion with David that's also happening monthly that goes both to our premium Substack subscribers, but also now to our premium YouTube subscribers, the folks that buy a membership on YouTube. I think it's like five bucks a month. Uh, but because YouTube, you know, introduced that premium tier, I wanted to be able to have something for it. So anyways, uh during that premium discussion, Dave and I Dave watches pretty much every video that Thoughtful Money puts out. So, hey Dave, hope you're listening to this. Um but he and I go back over the past month and kind of talk about what our key takeaways were from the individual interviews. So if you really want to know what caught our attention, you're getting that in that kind of retroactive uh video. So anyways, point is is, you know, whether it it was clear enough to folks or not, you know, we are continuing to try to add more and more things that you guys are sort of indicating to me that you'd like to see. And I'll end here by saying, um, to the extent there's things you'd like to see more of, like to see less of, um, like to see a different take on, please do let me know in the comments section or send me an email at, uh, at at thoughtful money. You can just go to the thoughtful money website and then click the contact link and it'll come to me. Um, I I I really do, you know, every day try to think, how can I make this better for you, the viewers? And the easiest way for me to do that is just to listen to what you guys are telling me you want to have more of. So, I I'll wrap it up on that, Lance. Um, you know, uh, one of the best ways to create value for this program, I think, in the long run, uh, is to have you, you know, coming on, uh, as you do every week. Uh, you're such a valued part of this. Um, and I will say too, you know, in this this thing that this guy was um going after me for, you know, ah, you got all these bears on your channel. And I don't want to go through that defense again. I don't I don't filter people out for being bearish or bullish. Um, you know, I just try to find people that have a a data driven analysis. I have no idea what they're going to say when they come on the program. Uh, but that being said, an easy defense of that criticism, Lance, is like, I've got Lance Roberts on every freaking week. You know, I do five videos a week, so 20% of them is not a bear or a bull, it's an eagle, right? I mean, it's Yeah. >> And and that's again, but you know, it's always and that's kind of interesting is that, you know, I wrote this I I tweeted out this chart about gold being so extended here and somebody invariably went back and they found an article that I wrote on gold in 2021 and said, "Hey, it's, you know, think about take," this was like in November 2021. I said, "Gold's very extended. look to take some profits here and there's some reasons why that gold will probably have a correction. And she goes, "Well, and seeing you wrote this article and gold's up 100% since then." And I'm like, "Yeah, but do you not remember what happened in gold in 2022? >> Did you think that we didn't buy it back at the bottom of 2022 and added it to our portfolios? Of course we did." But that, you know, the whole thing is that people take take one aspect of whatever you say and then they take it and they just they extrapolate that to be your whole persona. So, you know, look, this is what we were talking about earlier about managing risk. You know, I I'm there's some bearish things in our conversation today. Look, I mean, markets are grossly extended. There's a lot of things that are bought. We got negative divergences in relative strength and momentum relative to the markets, but there's also on the bullish side, a lot of momentum. We're going to a seasonally strong time of the year. That's going to be that I'm not bullish or bearish. It's a function that we have to measure both sides of these risk and probabilities and navigate the market for what it is. And you know, but people only hear what they want to hear and then they extrapolate that out from there. And then if they if they just, you know, want to be hateful and it's easy to be hateful behind a screen because I can just tweet anything I want. Um, you know, your life sucks. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna I'm gonna be mean to you, right? Because my life sucks. I'm gonna be mean to you. Um, you know, there's no need for that. But that's kind of how people respond. So you got to just and this is why I have a very thick skin. People say stuff to me all the time. I'm like whatever. You know, I'm I'm doing what I know is right and that's that's what we're doing. But I think that's the thing we always have to remember is that, you know, people are always going to extrapolate things out of context and it's important to always put things back into the context in which they were meant. >> Well, absolutely. And this is again a huge reason why I think most folks should work with an adviser. Um because a lot of this is nuanced, right? And and one of the biggest issues I have again folks just to give you some inside baseball in the media industry is okay after I do this video with Lance, right? I then have to edit it. I then have to upload it. I then have to create a title for it and a thumbnail for it, right? And in the thumbnail I've got three to four words, right? Max. In the title, maybe I've got six, seven, right? So, how do I summarize a a nuanced 2-hour discussion in three or four words, right? It's super hard. >> Market crash coming. >> You're gonna make a joke. Yeah. Exactly. Well, and and and the reality there is is I've got to make it accurate. Like that's really important to me that I can't put something in there that Lance didn't say, right? And I I try to capture the general theme. Now, it might be theme one of seven themes we talked about, right? >> Yeah. >> I've also got to make it somewhat emotionally engaging, right? If I just put in there, markets could go up or down, right? I mean, nobody's going to click on that for understandable reasons, right? >> Right. Right. So, um, you know, the people will go back and, well, look at your headlines here. They're all so, you know, whatever. I'm like, well, yeah, because that's the that's what I'm limited by here, right? I do the best I can with them, right? And to your point, Lance, like, don't trade on headlines. You know, often times you you don't have CNBC on during the day because it's just all sound bites, right? It's not nuance. It's not useful for you, right? So, you know, parting message here for folks about just investing is is, you know, either like really get into the nuances that we talk about and and, you know, become very well informed and make your investing choices that way or work with a professional who can do that for you to reduce your odds of just saying, "Oh, I saw scary headline X or I saw bullish headline Y and I just went for it because Right." >> Yep. No, that's right. No, it's look, it's it's, you know, the whole the whole business, you know, your business and my business are both mediadriven. Um, and it's just a much more challenging environment. And, you know, and again, this goes back to the the, you know, we were talking about social media earlier. This is one of the big negative benefits that come out of social media is just divided everybody down the middle. And, you know, if you're bullish, you're bullish. You can't have you can't have a bearish view if you're bullish. And if you're bearish, you can't have a bullish view. And if you're bullish, you got to hate the bears. And if you're bearish, you got to hate the bulls, you know. And it's just the it's just like two waring factions that we have going on. And and again, you know, just making a logical argument about gold. Everybody that's gold bulls all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, you just hate gold, right?" No, I'm not saying that. We're long gold, right? We have a whole portfolio with gold and silver and and uranium and everything else in it. Um but I still have to manage that risk. But it's you you get these people. And again, I got into an argument with a guy on on my Twitter account, >> and you can always tell when they've lost the argument because they resort to name calling, right? Because he he was he was making he's like, "Oh, the reason gold's going up is because um you know, it's central banks buying gold." Well, there's basically been very little change in the amount of gold being bought by by central banks and in developed countries. A little bit of increase in emerging markets, but it's mostly price appreciation. It's not quantity of of gold being bought. And so I presented that chart to him and he's like, "Well, that's that's that's not that, you know, it's it's because of this." And and every time he presented an argument, I just gave him the data, right? And >> but then you're triggering the backfire effect. Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. And so and so when you ran out of arguments, he just started calling me names. And I'm like, "Okay, you lost the arguments now." >> Yeah. So >> And just you're not singling out gold, guys. You could do the same thing with Bitcoin. You could do the same thing with with you can do the same thing with Nvidia. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. It does. And that's my whole point is is that is that that's that's the problem with social media is that everybody is just fighting with each other, right? Rather than having and this and and this is this, you know, this changed really and I I told you I used to do political talk for a long time and this changed during the Obama administration. And this is starting and the reason I I picked that starting point because that's when meta and and social media really started coming to a rise and we just started dividing the population. We used to have very thoughtful conversations around politics and it was a call-in radio show. So we took live call-ins and people would call in and say I don't agree with you about this or that. And I say okay well let's talk about it. And we'd have a very respectful conversation. they'd present their argument over this and and I would present my arguments over this. We'd compare facts and figures and then we would come to a resolution, right? Most of the time it was, well, we both wound up agreeing with each other mostly and there was just small differences, right? And same thing with you and I when we debate on stuff, it's like mostly we agree with each other, but there's some small differences and that's that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. >> Um that's what makes that's what makes a good discussion. That what makes a good market. But today, you cannot have those conversations. It's just immediately it's attack, attack, attack, attack attack. And I'm not listening to anything you're saying. Even though if you present me with the facts, your facts are all wrong. You have to listen to my facts. >> Yeah, this is I mean there's a lot of threads we can pull from the coddling the American mind discussion here. And I think social media totally made it worse. And seems like you've really seen that. I've heard people say that it really shifted earlier um uh basically uh was it Contract America the Nuke Gingrich era um and that was actually driven by media that was that was the Nuke Gingrich and I'm not a huge expert on this folks but um kind of woke up to the power of cable television and so you know CNBC uh or no C-SPAN um started putting cameras in in the congressional chambers and he was the first guy to really start playing to it even though you know there might be like three senators you know only in the room uh but but he >> only three people watching C-SPAN >> yeah well at the beginning but then it really began pick you know it started getting picked up right and so again the common thread here is is sort of media changing the game right >> um okay well look we'll uh we'll we'll end it at that um >> this is interesting >> pardon me >> no it's it's all very interesting >> yeah it's it's all very interesting I guess I'll just end here too by saying um if anybody uh is I mean seriously if anybody's thinking about potentially getting into media um I actually have consulted and I'm not I'm not putting out a shingle here for this but I'm just saying that if uh if you've got you know some small questions happy to answer anything I can for folks you know over uh over email um if someone's like real serious about hey I think I might want to start a channel um and want some real help on that. I don't have a ton of bandwidth but if I can be helpful either myself or referring you to somebody I'll be happy to do that. Um, all right. Well, look, in wrapping up here, um, uh, I'm trying to think of a funny way to to to get to the like button for you here, but, uh, if, uh, if you think the best way that we can find our our, uh, you know, most nutritious, uh, source of truth is out there in the world is to, uh, watch Lance Roberts appear on this channel every week from now on. I'm I'm doing a horrible job on this week's one. >> Just click the like button. Just click the like button. Click the like button. Just make Lance happy by clicking the like button and then the subscribe button below. >> You know what? Let's do this one. My wife would really appreciate >> Oh god, that's the worst. >> That is Oh my god. I can't believe you went there. Oh my god. >> I know. You know what's in all honesty? My wife will play that cancer card in a minute. >> Will she? You know what? I kind of think I would if I did, too. In the spirit with the smirk, I think your wife >> Oh, no. No. She she's like the other day she comes into the house and she goes, "Honey, there's some boxes in the back of my car. Could you get them?" Of course, I will get them for you. But she didn't say that, right? She I will do whatever she asked me. She goes, "Lance, will you, you know, would would you do this for me?" Absolutely. Never a question. She comes in, she goes she goes, "Lance, you know I have cancer. Could you get those boxes out of my car, man?" >> So, she's now, trust me, she is using this to her benefit. Don't you worry about my wife. She's completely okay. Oh my gosh. Oh man. Uh she is so wonderful. God, folks, just click the like button for Please don't let's not break let's not bring her into it. Um all right. And then uh a quick reminder, um go get your ticket for the conference if you haven't already. Links right below the video. Um and then last, if you'd like to get some professional help managing your portfolio, uh then feel free to talk to one of the professional financial adviserss that Thoughtful Money endorses, perhaps you might want to talk to Lance and his team there at RAIA. to do that, just fill out the short form at thoughtfulmoney.com and the firms will be in touch with you right after you do that. Um, Lance, my friend, um, it's great to see you smiling and laughing again. Um, and I know that that's, uh, you're probably getting to some sense of normal, so here, um, part of that's probably putting on a brave front, too, but it's nice to it's nice to see nonetheless. >> Well, no, I I appreciate that. And and yeah, we've got a big calendar on our wall. We've got uh six chemo treatments, so we've got five left, and so every time we mark one off. So, >> is there a big party for after the last one? >> Absolutely. And that will also mark our date that we'll have an annual anniversary. So, you know, once she gets through the last chemo, then we start tracking, you know, time. So, every year >> So, anniversary for when she's hopefully in remission. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we got to go five years um without without it coming back uh to be in remission. So, we'll be marking those anniversaries. >> Okay, good. Really important. I just wasn't sure if you were saying you guys had your own wedding anniversary coming up and then we'd have to >> Oh, no. We do have a wedding anniversary again, but that's our 15 year anniversary is coming up uh in May. >> Okay. >> So, well, look, I can't wait to be selling celebrating many anniversaries with you and her very far out in the future. >> Yep. And we're looking forward to seeing you. You'll be coming to to town in January. So, we're looking forward to seeing you. >> That's right. And so, pretty soon. Do you have a date locked in for that yet? We may as well just >> January January 24th. And we've we've got um really interesting guy named Ed Slott to talk about um all types of really important tax and financial planning strategies. >> That'll be fun. >> And then we've got a guy that's going to be talking um from Black Rockck talking about artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, um and working on another speaker right now for kind of AI infrastructure and how to invest in infrastructure or and or private credit. We're kind of talking to two different speakers right now. So, should be a really nice conference uh covering a lot of topics, markets, investing, capital, everything. >> Okay. When you guys have your sign up page and stuff for that, I'll give you, you know, as it gets closer, you can tell folks exactly where to go. But just real quick, folks, um so the thoughtful money conferences, we do two a year. The fall one's coming up, like I said, on October 18th. Uh those are virtual, so that's where I get to bring a whole bunch of experts to you virtually and and you can just watch from the comfort of your own home. Uh, and I'm able to get them all on that day because they're virtual. Um, if you want to go listen to some very smart people, but also get to mingle in real life with Lance, me, these other experts as well as other people who think like you, then, you know, Lance's is inerson event where you can do that. >> Yep. And we're actually going to have a the night before we're going to have a kind of a mix and mingle event. So, actually hang out and talk to the speakers and it'll be a lot of fun. >> Great. And you know what? Um, you're reminding me I I I think I tossed an idea out there like two months ago >> that we should get together in real life with anybody who's interested uh and do something fun and I had this crazy like pickle ball uh self-defense, you know, gathering. Um, and people loved it. People love the idea and >> I think we just do the pickle ball. I think we get together and play pickle ball. >> Probably with pickle ball will be enough. But but but I I I do want to call out there was a gentleman who responded. I just I I feel terrible. I haven't reached out to him yet. So, I'm making a note to do that now. Who is an MMA fighter who loves pickle ball and has access to a place where we can play pickle ball and then do any M. He was like the perfect guy to respond to that. So, um again folks, if that's something you'd be interested in being a part of one or both of those things, >> stay with the pickle ball. >> Stay with the pickle ball. Um but I think it'll be fun if you showed us some stuff. And like I said, I'm happy to be your dummy. I could be the guy that you beat up on to show some of this stuff. >> How about we get that guy to do to do some education? That would be good. >> That might be the better thing to do. Okay. Um All right. >> Preserve my aging body for a few years longer. Yes. >> All right. Well, if that if that would be fun of any for any of you, if you'd really like for me to to put some uh energy into trying to make that happen again, let me know in the comments section below. All right, buddy. Great to see you. Thanks so much. I'll let you head off and give your wife a big hug. >> Thank you. See you. See you next week. >> All right. All right, and everybody else, thanks so much for watching.