Stocks Are 50-60% Overvalued. Could You Survive A Correction That Big? | Lance Roberts

Summary

• Market Outlook: S&P 500 is highly overbought with historical precedents for corrections; a seasonal Santa Claus rally is possible, but options expiration and retail-driven trading add volatility.
• Defensive Positioning: Guest is tilting toward defensive stocks—staples, REITs, and utilities—anticipating a risk-off rotation and adding these exposures to hedge high-beta holdings.
• US Treasuries: Advocacy for Treasuries and bonds as the safe bucket; duration management delivered ~6.6% total return this year and supports a resilient 60/40 allocation.
• Falling Rates: Expectation of disinflation led by shelter and softer employment, implying lower interest rates that could benefit REITs and utilities.
• 60/40 Allocation: Detailed case for a balanced portfolio using bonds for capital preservation and income, and equities for growth to meet long-term goals with lower volatility.
• Concentration & Leverage Risks: Passive flows, margin debt, and levered ETFs are fueling leadership in mega-cap tech and raise the risk of forced selling in a downturn.
• Key Companies Mentioned: Big Tech concentration (AAPL, GOOGL, META, NVDA) discussed as drivers of index flows; other names like COST and LLY cited in recent sector rotation context.
• Upside Catalyst: A potential data centers buildout (AI infrastructure, power grids, and related projects) could add 1–1.5% to GDP, creating broad market tailwinds.

Transcript

This is a a monthly chart of the S&P going back 25 years. It is rare that we have been this overbought. So the last 25 years, we've only been as overbought as we are right now. 1 2 3 4 5 six times. Each time of those that we've been this overbought has led to a decent correction. This next correction, if it if it just reverts to it, it's its running bullish trend right now is about a 26 27% correction. If it ultimately reverts to its long-term mean, that's a 60% correction. But this is why you have to be very careful with risk assets in this environment. Understanding the the volatility risk in your portfolio is not just a function of, you know, narratives and these type of things. It's about survivability. Most most investors do not survive 50% draw downs in markets. Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Tagert, welcoming you back at the end of the week for another weekly market recap. In fact, a special special holiday Christmas weekly market recap with my good friend, the Prudent Protector portfolio manager, Lance Roberts. How are you, Lance? >> I'm doing good. It's uh you see, I've got my Christmas background going. >> You look very Christmy. Yeah, >> that time of the year. So yeah, I love this time of year. It's awesome. >> Well, and you're you're having a blue Christmas, it looks like, with your shirt and your blue background. >> Well, I actually I tried red earlier, but it was it was a little bit too bright, so I had to tone it down a little bit. So, I had to use blue. But, you know, the red one was actually had a Christmas tree and a bunch of other stuff. It was awesome, but it was just way too bright. So, >> nothing wrong with channeling the king, right? Channeling Elvis on the holidays. >> Exactly. >> All right. And look, >> by the way, we have to we have to start out this whole conversation this morning with the fact that I've been working on something for 18 years. 18 years. I talked about this on my radio show on Friday. >> Yeah. >> Sorry. On Thursday. >> What is this? Getting into your wife's good graces. What is it? >> Pretty close. No, that's actually not what happened. >> It's still still a work in progress, >> as is always the case. But for 18 years now, she and I have had an ongoing argument. And that argument is whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. >> Oh. >> And I now have definitive proof that it is because just yesterday, Charter came out with this survey. Die Hard number five on America's favorite Christmas movies. So I I my wife was traveling. She was in Indiana uh yesterday working on a a contract. And so I texted her, it was about it, this was about six o'clock in the morning, so about 5 o'clock her time. So I text her with this chart and it says, "Ha, I win this argument. No debate. It's over with." And she goes, "That's not even really a survey." >> Oh man, that's great. Um well, look, I'm You count me in the camp. Uh that Die Hard is indeed a Christmas movie. Um, I'm gonna share something since you brought that up. Um, uh, let's see. This is on X here. So, let me see if I can pull this up. So, I shared, uh, one of my favorite, uh, Christmas ornaments on X. And I don't know if folks can see this well. Um, this is a jar of marshmallow fluff. And, uh, I think knowledge of fluff may be fairly regional. Um, but fluff is a marshmallow spread, uh, that you spread on a a slice of bread. Uh, it'll give you instant diabetes. Um, but but where I grew up, um, you would make fluffern nutters. Um, so you'd take marshmallow fluff, you'd slather it on one side of the bread, you'd put your gif or skippy on the other, you'd slap them together, and you'd have a fluffern nutter. Um, they make fluff. Uh, I want I'm probably going to get slaughtered by the folks that know this. Uh, I want to say maybe it's in Lynn, Mass, but but somewhere in in north of Boston, which is where I grew up. So, it's very much a local delicacy where I grew up. So, I shared this this uh uh image on X and yeah, some of the the folks that had also good memories of Fluff chimed in. Uh but one guy Oh, there it is. That's what I was looking for. One guy chimed in and said, "Well, this is my favorite Christmas tree ornament." Can you see that, Lance? >> That's awesome. >> John Mlan crawling through the duct and from Die Hard. >> And by the way, you're right. Marshmallow fluff is made in Lynn, Massachusetts at the original factory that is owned by Derky Mau. Uh yeah, it's it's it's >> pardon me, >> been in existence since 1920. >> Yeah, it's been around for a long time. Um the I just got an update from my stepmother uh when I shared that that uh ornament with my family that uh apparently she and my dad knew the actual guy that created Fluff. And uh believe it or not, there there was um there were Flufferetses. I don't know exactly what they did, but they were part of the marketing and promotion, I think. So, when I heard that term, I was like, I'm definitely gonna steal that. All right. Anyways, folks didn't expect us to go in this direction. We got a lot to talk about. Um, I do want to leave some time for the rant today. Uh, it's it's uh I think an important one to have. Um, I'm just going to apologize in advance, Lance. I don't know if you can hear the gale that is raging outside of my office here. Um, but but here in Reno, uh, I'm I've I've been learning that, uh, every couple of weeks we get these I mean, real Gale Force winds like like over 100 miles an hour. Um, it's not raging that badly right now. I'd probably peg this at around 50 or 60. Um, they call it the Reno Zephyr, and I'm thinking, well, isn't the Zephyr supposed to be like a gentle breeze? I mean, this this is more like, you know, a I don't know. It's it's it's like a aspiring hurricane here. So, anyways, tell me if it interrupts the audio at all, but sounds like it's not getting in the way yet. >> Yeah, I can hear anything. >> Okay. All right. Well, look, um uh this has kind of been a a willy won't he uh story over the past couple weeks of is the Santa Claus rally going to arrive? Um you recently put out a piece that said um uh you know markets uh were oversold after a key break. Uh they consolidate they've been consolidating after testing the 50 daily moving average. Um so are you still thinking it's more likely here that Santa is going to show up on Wall Street in this this last week? >> Well again this is you know the the whole issue with the Santa Claus rally is you're playing statistics, right? Mhm. >> So, statistically speaking, uh, Santa tends to show up on the last five trading days of the year, which will be just after Christmas. And, you know, there's an old saying on Wall Street, which is, you know, if if Santa comes to broaden wall, then that's great, right? If not, then not so much for next year. So, you know, one of the big questions is that, you know, as we go into the end of the year, it's it's portfolio window dressing, those type of things. And so, we have had a good bit of weakness here in the first couple weeks of December. If you'll remember back in November, we said, "Hey, be aware of the first couple of weeks of December tends to be a bit sloppy. You have mutual fund distributions, those type of things. And it looks like we're mostly through all of that." Now, today uh as we're speaking this morning, it's uh what about 10:20 uh Central Standard Time. So, markets are are trading this morning, but this is one of the largest options expiration Fridays in history. So again, how you know what we talk about this morning and how we end up today could be two very different things. But you know, right now, um, you know, we did come down, we we tested the 50-day moving average. Retail investors stepped in yesterday, bought the dip uh f as on Thursday, uh, got us back above the 50-day moving average, and today markets are trading a bit higher. So that's all kind of positive because we're kind of came down, tested support, bounced off support. That's good news. And then next week it's inmates running the asylum for the next two weeks. Uh professional traders are all gone. They're at their mansions in the Hamptons right now or you know out in California and you know Palivvery or wherever you know that they go to in California. Um but yeah, they're gone for the next two weeks. So it's going to be pretty much retail traders driving the markets through the end of the year. And we again we'll have a little bit of window dressing in the year end. So the bias right now statistically speaking is to the upside, but again doesn't guarantee it has to happen. Now a little bit about statistics. Um the last 15 days of December tend to average about a 1.4% rate of return in total on average. So some years better, some years worse. Um historically speaking, it is rare, like it's only happened once, that you had two negative Decembers in a row. We had a negative December last year. So statistically speaking, the odds are that this month will end on a positive note. Now that doesn't mean it's going to be up 5%. If it's up onetenth of 1% at the end of this year, it was a or at the end of this month, it was a positive month, right? >> It's still up. Yep. >> Yeah. So, so be careful, you know, be careful with exuberance, those type of things. The market's been trading a bit sloppy over the last couple of weeks. We're seeing some definite rotation within the market. Staples have been performing very well. uh transports have performed well. We've seen a lot of the previous leaders technology which was extremely overbought going into October has reversed a lot of that rotational bias and is now decently oversold. So, you know, we've seen that rotation in the market breath has improved. Um, if you take a look at, you know, one thing we kind of look at is just the difference in performance between the S&P 500 market cap weighted index and the and the uh equal weighted >> equal weight >> and that equal weighted index on a performance basis has started to there's still a big gap for this year. Market cap's leading the way this year, but that gap has closed a bit which suggests that there's a bit of rotational uh broadening within the overall markets. Of course, we've seen stocks like Costco and and and other kind of Eli Liy and and healthc care related stocks financials. They've all picked up in performance over the last couple weeks while tech's been under some pressure, but that should have been expected after the run that we've had. >> Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I I I wonder about the breath indicator whether it really matters that much anymore. Um we had we've had terrible breath in the market for a lot of the past couple years and it hasn't mattered right as as the the mag seven mag 10 whatever you want to call it you know has powered everything higher. >> Um technically seeing this rotation the sector rotation seeing this increase in breath should be a a healthy sign and and make you positive. I just don't know if it m if if it's as correlated as much anymore with market performance as it used to be. In other words, we could get better breath but but worse market overall market performance. >> No, it's very possible. And and again, you know, we've talked about the whole passive indexing effect and that certainly benefits those big 10 stocks for sure. Um you know, you know, should you disregard breath out of hand? There's a lot of indicators that are that seem to have broken, right? The CNN fear greed index is a good one. Um that's been pointing at fear and extreme fear and the market's been rallying, you know, higher. So the leading indicators haven't mattered forever, right? >> Exactly. So, but a lot of this distortion has been caused by all the stuff that happened post the pandemic where we just flooded the system and and you can you just take a look at retail trading activity. It's exploded since 2020. Um it it was a very minor factor in the market and it just went parabolic in 2021. And they're buying ETFs. Um I just I just was posting a piece this morning. uh the number of levered ETFs that are that people are buying that the volume of purchases in levered long ETFs outpaces inverse ETFs by 12 and a half times. So, and so investors are just piling into these levered ETFs to gain leverage in the markets. And again, those are all feeding the same stocks, right? Because they all own Apple, they all own Google, you know, Meta, whatever. So this is one of the reasons you can kind of continue to see this this you know this divergence within market breath because again when I throw a dollar into the index 40 cents of it's going into 10 stocks you know Exon Mobile's over there in the in the far lefthand corner scrambling to get you know you know a penny out of that dollar right >> that guy can't get a date. Yep. >> Yeah. Exactly. And you know same thing for Proctor and Gamble and Coke and these other companies. they just they just don't get the flow because you got 493 stocks quibbling over 60 cents out of every dollar. So, you know, they're just getting a fractional, you know, taste of of those inflows that are happening into these ETFs. We've had a thousand ETFs issued this year alone. So, I I I think I heard the stat, and you tell me if you know it's right or wrong, but not that long ago, I think I heard that we had more ETFs than we had individual uh stocks, individual companies to invest in. Right. So, how long do you think it's going to be before we have more levered ETFs than we have individual companies? >> At the rate we're going, not long. Um and again, you know, thank good. >> And sorry, and that's not to mention margin debt on top of these levered ETFs, right? >> Yeah. And the thing about that is that people are buying levered ETFs on margin, right? So you're just adding leverage on top of leverage. But you know, look, thank you. >> What if what if you're what if you're buying a call option on a levered ETF with margin? >> You know, this kind of reminds me a lot of what we were talking about during the, you know, heading up into the financial crisis. We were talking about derivative trading and it was the weapons of mass destruction. If there was ever a derivative blow up, it was going to be massive. >> And, you know, we saw what happened. We're seeing the same thing in the market, you know. And again, look, let's be really clear about margin debt. When you see margin debt rising, that is very bullish because margin debt increases buying power in the market, which drives markets higher. So, as long as margin debt keeps increasing, that's bullish for the markets. Now, you look at that numbers like, oh my gosh, margin debt set an all-time record. I just did an article recently talking about margin debt as a function of of dis disposable personal incomes. Alltime record, right? Um, but as long as people are willing to keep buying that on margin and keep pushing it up and prices keep going up, it's all fine. But the edge that cuts you with margin debt is the edge that cuts the deepest and that's when the market reverses and you have to have this forced selling of assets. So, you know, the problem comes is that when you get a downturn in the markets, in fact, I I I just posted an article this past weekend in the newsletter talking about the Bank of International Settlements. uh they just did a whole study on the double bubble which is the bubble in stocks and gold >> and I overlaid some charts of gold, silver and and stocks on margin debt and they are very highly correlated because again that's where when when people are looking to leverage and chase performance they lever and and chase whatever is going up. There's a very high correlation between the the rate of change in margin debt and the rate of change in these other assets which not surprising, right? It's all speculation. So the the takeaway from that is when that reverses and margin gets called those same assets that were tracking it on the way up will also track that margin debt on the way down because liquidity is being extracted from the market and you have to sell something to cover. So and again remember about margin debt. The most important thing is closing margin debt is not at your option. When the margin call comes the bank calls you up and says you need to close out your margin debt today. So either you need to deposit cash or sell something and if you don't sell something by close of business they will sell it for you in this >> they will sell it for you. Yeah. >> So you know that's the risk that you know if there's again this can go on for a long time right don't think just because margin debt's elevated right now that that means the markets are going to crash tomorrow. That's not what that means at all. It could be a year. It could be two years. It could be three years. We we saw back we saw similar levels of this back in 1997 and it was two more years before the market blew up. So, you know, don't don't mistake current levels of margin debt because those current levels of margin debt are very bullish for for stocks and Bitcoin and gold and you name it. Whatever whatever's whatever's going up in price, people are buying on margin because they're out of cash. I've I've bought all the the stocks I can buy. I don't have any disposable personal income left. So, I've got to go on margin to buy more because markets are going up and they're never going down again according to, you know, the media narrative. So, you get the you get the speculative chase, but when that reverses, that margin becomes the fuel for that reversal as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and so you're right, it's bullish in the the foreseeable near-term. Um, but then you have the, you know, I'm hesitant to use the word inevitable, but it usually is, right? The ine the inevitable reckoning. I mean, you you can you can you can jam as much inetamine keep jamming inetamines into the racehorse and it'll run faster and faster right up until its heart explodes. Right. That's >> No, look and and look, let's be really clear. All asset classes are going to mean revert at some point, right? There that is that is the most powerful force in investing throughout history. What goes up will come down and what's gone down will go back up. That's how markets work. So again, but the problem is is that as we've talked about before, there's people running around going, "Oh, the markets are going to crash in 2026. You're going to lose 50% of your money or they're going to crash in 2025 and markets be down by 25 50% whatever." And it didn't happen. So the problem is as always is the timing of the outcome. >> Is it going to happen? Absolutely. Right? Fiveyear forward from current valuations fiveyear forward returns are zero. Right? So that's we know that that's a function of math, >> right? And many say 10 years using math as well. 10 year expected returns are zero still. Yeah. >> Absolutely. 20 years or like 2%. So you know the the forward return expectations from current valuations is not great for investors. Now does that mean that every year is going to be a 2% return over the next 20 years? No, that's not what that means. It means that there's going to be some significant corrections along the way and you'll look back over 20 years and go, "Wow, I made 2% of my money." And that holds true for all asset classes. So, you know, that's the thing that we have to be aware of. But again, the timing is the hard part. We're so wrapped up into immediiacy that, you know, it's like every day we flip on our screens and the the lights are red or green or whatever and it's like a dopamine effect. And so, we're all focused on this day-to-day action in the markets and we forget that over the long term is what matters. And surviving the game is going to be the real hard part for most investors. And history proves that out as well. 30-year returns for most investors is very poor. >> Um, all right. So, you know, the the I I I I get your your your perennial warning, which is a good one to keep delivering, which is yes, there are things like crazy amounts of margin and leverage in the the system, but they're bad timing indicators, right? They they they they they give you a a good measure of the degree of risk. They just don't tell you when that risk is going to matter. And and one of the things complimentary to your warning I like to remind people of is is these the the whole system wants the status quo to continue, >> right? Um Wall Street wants the status quo to continue. They want prices to go up because they can sell more stuff and make more profit and the investors themselves want prices to go up, right? So right now >> the Fed want price and the Fed wants prices >> and the Fed, right? Soility. >> So my point is is there's kind of intervention from every which way here, right? You've got intervention from the Fed and the central planners. They've been gooseing the markets a I mean the system a ton over the past bunch of years as we've talked about. They're continuing to we have this not QE which is really QE going on now again, right? Um you have Wall Street that's trying to keep the party going because they keep introducing new ways to to bring leverage into the system. all these new levered ETFs you were just talking about, right? And then you have the retail investors themselves saying, "Yeah, uh, I want this to continue and I'm going to lever up to keep this party going." Right? So, this is sort of the, you know, don't stand in front of the juggernaut. Um, if you don't know exactly when the juggernaut's going to end because if not, it's just going to flatten you, right? So, it it's it's wise to be prudent. It's wise to be cautious. You should definitely have a plan for the thing rolling over. You should have hedges. I like to say a lot about, you know, for what could roll over. You want to have your your perennial protections that you talk about, Lance, diversification, harvesting your gains in case things reverse faster than you think, right? There's all that stuff in there, but this thing could go on a lot more than you think. The whole thing about the market can be irrational longer, you can remain solvent. So, we just got to be cautious. Now, that said, you know, you you were talking about statistics and you said that um rare to have two backto-back Decembers, right? And we'll find out if we have one this year or not. Um and and by the way, we're we're up for December right now from the start. Correct. Like if the month ended today, would we be up? >> Yeah, you were just saying that and I was like, I better go check see where we are as of today. Uh give me just one second. I go >> Okay. Well, why while you're checking it, I'm going to ask my my bigger question, which is I am worried statistically about the markets. Uh I mean, I've got a lot of other worries as we we we have talked about, we will talk about, but statistically I'm worried that you almost never get four great backto-back years in the market because as you said, markets mean revert. Now, they've been distorted a lot, but especially by the unprecedented amount of of intervention that CO brought on here. But at some point, that juice will finally run out of the system. And I worry that the reversion of the mean could be a hell of a reversion because we've had already three potentially 20 plus years back to back to back. Um it's highly unlikely we're going to get a fourth one, but could we? Yeah, absolutely. Which is why don't go hide in the hole right now. Yeah. >> Yeah. No. Uh yes, the the market is still positive uh for the month of December. So, >> okay. So, so it would need to actually fall from here to get us to negative. Yeah. >> Uh but but no, you're absolutely right. You know, we've had three fantastic years. We're probably going to end up somewhere around 17% positive for the year, give or take a little bit, plus your dividends, you know, 1.8, you're like almost 19%. >> That's not a bad return. You know, the problem is is that we've gotten so used to those returns that, you know, I'm seeing a lot of stuff running around lately is like, oh, you know, 6040 allocation's dead. You don't want to own that and you want to own all these risk assets, which, you know, that's all fine and dandy. Um, until the mean reversion occurs, and then you're going to be glad you had some something that will preserve your capital. But, you know, like our bond portfolio this year is up 6.67% on a total return basis. and you know for no risk it's all treasuries right so you know I don't have to stretch a lot to create a return in my portfolio with no risk and then I add in some growth stocks which our portfolio is up with the market this year it's tra it's trading about 17% higher this year you know throw in it's got a dividend yield of probably one and a half percentish give or take so you throw that on top of it that's not a bad return for the year um certainly gets me towards my goal with a lot less volatility and And you know, if you're right, and which you will be at some point. Now, whether 2026 is the year or 2027 is the year, we're going to get some type of mean reverting event in these assets because we have two what the the big risk we have right now in the market. We have too many asset classes that are correlated, right? So, we have too many asset classes that are trading with a near correlation of one. And the problem with that is is that leaves you that makes the market very fragile because you have nowhere to go when the market sells off because when the market starts to sell off everything that's correlated has a has a correlation of one. Money's got to go somewhere. So it's going to look for the for a non-correlated class and unfortunately there's not many and that typically leads to much larger corrections in the markets. >> Yeah. Okay. Uh real quick just because you said it and stuck in my head now. Help me help walk me through the math. How do you get a 6 and a half% return on US treasuries? Uh because I don't think any US treasury was yielding that much. >> No, this is total return, right? So you had price appreciation. Remember we shortened all of our duration. So we bought when the Fed started cutting rates, we bought a lot of short duration bonds. So they've gone up in price plus the dividend yield on or the interest income on those. So our total return this year so far year to date is like 6.63 6.67. I haven't checked in a couple of days, but just it's it's about duration management. See, too many people focus on the 10-year Treasury rate, >> right? I I guess I just forgotten. So, where where were yields at the start of the year? Were they closer to five or something like that? Is that is that why? Okay. >> So, yields have come down. Uh yields have come down 10-year Treasury as well. Um so, again, you that that gives you some price appreciation. >> Okay. It doesn't take much. And you know, I I try to lay this out for people often. and is like, I don't want to own bonds because they're only yielding 4%. I can get 15% in the markets. Yeah, you can. The great thing about a bond portfolio is say you take a, you know, if you do some basic analysis of whatever your financial future looks like, depending on your age, you say, "Look, I want to have a million dollars in the bank by the time I retire." So, you you do the math backwards. Say, "This is where I am today. How much growth do I need to go to a million dollars by the time I retire?" Say it's six%. Right? So you cut a portfolio in half and you put 50% in bonds yielding 4% right now. That's 2% of your return. That's 2% of six already. You've already got one third of your work done. And you have an absolute guarantee of return of that principle in the future, >> right? >> So you got no risk to that. So now on the other side, I put another 50% in stocks and I just buy the S&P index. We'll keep it super simple. >> So now I get 2% dividend. I'm rounding numbers here. So just for math, I get a 2% dividend yield on the S&P. So that's another 1% total return to my portfolio. So now I've already got three of my six. So 50% of my work is done between bonds and the S&P index. That means I only need a 3% return out of equities to get to my goal. And so if I get more, great. Fantastic. Right? If I get 10% on that side, that's an additional five. So now I'm doing well above my target. But you know, I've got a very low risk adjusted portfolio to get to my retirement. And if the market completely falls apart, that's great because stocks will go down. I can reduce my stock exposure. My bonds are going to still mature at face value. So, I've got no risk there. So, my I can ensure my path to retirement without a lot of work and I really don't need to guess a lot at the markets and worry about these big major, you know, these we're we're so worried about this massive correction in the markets. But it's it's it's it's fairly easy to to navigate for it just by doing a decent allocation process. >> Okay. Oh, that totally makes sense. Um Okay. I was just I was going to show you that because to your point I I was just bringing up a chart here real quick. >> Um I'm just let me change let me smooth this out. >> I was also just going to say too given the math you just you laid out there too. Uh yeah the bonds are just chugging away and you're guaranteed the return of principal uh with the yield that the bond is promising you. But if if it's an environment, say like the past 40 years where bond yields are coming down, well, you'll also get some appreciation there too, which can speed you speed that half a long way. You know, personally, I think it's less likely to have that tailwind over the next couple decades like we've had because I think the bond market >> Well, look, you know, we we had a wonderful from 1980 to 2008, it was magic, right? I bought stocks. I got a great return on stocks. I bought bonds. Bonds were going from a 14% yield to four in 2008. So you had this massive tailwind for price appreciation, right? You're not going to get price appreciation. I mean, you're at 4% yield right now. If the world normalizes around 2%, you're going to go from 4% to 2% on yields, give or take, and expect recession. >> But there's just not that much upside in bonds from here because you're because you're already at fairly low interest rates. So, but what you but that's not you don't buy bonds for capital appreciation. This is the mistake that everybody makes like, "Oh, I've got to buy bonds. I've got to have capital appreciation." No, no, you don't buy bonds for capital appreciation. You buy bonds for capital preservation and income. >> And we talked about this before. You know, this is and this is the mo when you're building a portfolio. If you take nothing else away from today's conversation, take this away. >> There are three factors to your portfolio, which is liquidity, safety, and return. You can only have two of those three things at any given time, right? So I buy bonds, I have safety and return, right? Because my bonds will mature at face value and I get an interest income. If I buy stocks, I have liquidity and return, but I have no safety. If I buy gold, I have I have liquidity and return, but I have no safety. Right? So in every asset class, annuities, bonds, whatever it is, every asset class, you can only have two of those three functions. So when you build your portfolio, I want to build a portfolio that can provide me safety, liquidity, and return. And so that's how you have to blend your asset structure. And so you never put a risk asset in your safe bucket. So you would never so in the if you're building a 60/40 allocation, everything that goes in your risk side of your equation, right? That's your equities, your gold, your silver, um any Bitcoin. Those are all in your risk bucket because those can lose tremendous amounts of value. Historically, they have in my in my safety side. That's your annuities, that's your bonds, that's your real estate, physical real estate, not not REITs. REITs belong in a risk bucket because they go up and down in price. But you you know your your fiscal your fiscal real estate your your your your your annuities anything that has a return of principal function on it or guar or has some guarantee of value like you know a piece of land isn't going to zero you know it could go down in price depending when you sell it but it's going to be pretty stable over time but those kind of all go in your safety bucket. So, if you think about your portfolio between safety and risk, now you can create a model that gives you safety, liquidity, and return over time and can guarantee that you'll survive the long-term outcome of the market. >> All right, I I get all that, Lance, and I I I agree with all the logic and everything. Uh, I'm going to ask this question against my better judgment here, but um uh why why would you not put gold in the safe bucket? And look, I understand that gold is a volatile asset. >> Um, but some would say it's like a piece of land, right? It's not going to go to zero. Uh, it doesn't pay you an income stream. Um, but it is considered more much more of a riskoff asset than a risk on asset. Um, I know correlations are to one right now amongst a lot of asset classes. So, in the immediate term, I can kind of understand that. But why would you why would you consider gold in the risk pile, not the risk off pile? >> Because it has volatility risk to it. So in other words, here's a long-term chart on gold. And it it spent like for instance in 1987ish, whatever it hit its peak and it for it went 50% lower over the next 15 years. So that's not an asset that is either outpacing inflation, protecting the preservation power of my purchasing or helping my assets grow. So again, you have these spurts and and commodities where they do very well, but you know, gold is a good example of a volatility asset when it's extremely overbought. And by the way, it's more overbought now than ever in history. And a correction back to its mean right now would be nearly 50%. Most investors will not survive that correction. And this what I mean by that is they'll panic and sell it, right? So they'll destroy the value of their money. Yeah. If I can hold if I if I was committed to saying, "Look, I'm going to buy gold here and I'm never going to sell it ever. Doesn't matter what happens in the markets or anything else, I'm going to hold it." You'll probably be okay. But the problem is is for a lot of individuals, let's say I was 55 here. Let's just pick a let's pick a a better date. So here's 2012. We hit a peak in in this. Gold fell by 50%. And it took, you know, almost 10 years really to get back to even. But if I was 55 at that time, I spent 10 years making no return on that money. So whatever that portion of the money that was supposed to grow from my retirement didn't, it didn't outperform inflation. I took a principal loss on that on that calculation during that period of time. Now I'm 65 and I've impaired my return profile. So I manage. So when I buy a when I So let me let let's back this up for a second. >> Any asset that has volatility risk to it has to be in the risk bucket because if it declines by 30 40 50% it destroys the whole reason why I'm trying to control. So it has to be an asset that I control the risk of by taking profits, hedging, rebalancing, reducing risk, all those type of things. I have to be able to do that on my bond side. My annuity, like if I own an annuity in my safe bucket, I can't do anything with that. I I can't go sell the annuity, I take massive penalties, those type of things. And annuities there to pay a guaranteed income stream in the future. I buy a bond, it matures at first full face value. I don't have to worry about principal risk ever um inside of a inside of a government bond and it's going to throw off a yield every single year. The risk to the safety bucket is that it doesn't adjust for purchasing power parody. >> Right? >> In other words, my 4% yield in my bonds will be 4% every year for the next 10 years. So, what do I need in my risk bucket? I need gold. I need stocks. I need Bitcoin in my risk bucket to go up faster than the rate of inflation to ensure that my safe bucket is adjusting for purchasing power parody in the future. >> Okay, that makes a ton of sense. Um, I might suggest that you take your raw land and take it out of the risk-free bucket. Um, but other than that, that makes total sense to me. >> Normally, for when when I'm talking about real estate, the reason that's in the safe bucket, that's normally people's primary residence. >> Ah, okay. Well, that makes sense. You got to have a a roof over your head. >> Got have a place to live, right? >> But I was going to show you this, too. We were talking about the the S&P a second ago. You know, this is a a monthly chart of the S&P going back 25 years. It is rare that we have been this overbought. So the last 25 years, we've only been as overbought as we are right now. One, two, three, four, five, six times. Each time of those that we've been this overbought has led to a decent correction. You can barely tell some of these, right? So this this correction back here, this is this is the financial crisis. Looks like a little dip now, right? No big deal. Um these were 20% corrections in here. This was a 35% correction here. This was about a 25% correction here. this next correction, if it if it just reverts to its running bullish trend right now, is about a 26 27% correction. If it ultimately reverts to its long-term mean, that's a 60% correction. That would still be in a bull market, mind you, right? We've talked about this before. >> Yeah. >> But this is why you have to be very careful with risk assets in this environment. understanding the the volatility risk in your portfolio is not just a function of you know narratives and these type of things. It's about survivability. Most most investors do not survive 50% draw downs in markets. They they wind up panic selling getting out of the markets doing everything wrong. That's what investors do over time. Yes. Are there individuals that can just weather that? No big deal. Yes, there are people that can do that. They are a very rare commodity that have that type of emotional stability to work through a 50% correction. And this is why I and I think you, you know, are are nervous um about this whole reversion to the mean threat of, you know, a we've had three great years in the past in the immediate past, but also markets rarely been this overvalued as you've said, right? And there's just there's a lot of things out there that suggest that a wicked reversion of the mean is probable. Um not not guaranteed, but probable. The problem, as you always say, is we just don't know when, right? So, >> yeah. >> Okay. Um, all right. Well, look, since we're looking at charts, um, could you bring up the just the latest S&P chart, let's let's look at where we are heading into the last week of the year here, um, from a technical standpoint. >> Hold on a second. I'm checking my dates here because you said last week of the year. So, actually, we got a week and a half, but just because had to had to double check that because I was like, man, are we already there? Um yeah, but here is the latest S&P chart. So again, um here, let me zoom in here just a little bit so you can kind of see this just a bit. So this was the the we had a 4day selloff coming into Thursday and Friday. And again, mind you, we're currently trading. Um it's now about 10:45 central time uh in Houston. Um so markets are still very early in the day. the the the good news is is we came down I last week I I produced this chart for the newsletter and laid out you know the various uh short-term kind of uh uh support and resistance levels for the markets and that's these lines are. So we have support support at the 100 day moving average which is this orange line critical support at these bottoms going back to the the correction we had back in October and then critical support at the 200 day moving average. So these are kind of your your big support levels you want to pay attention to. So, we had this 4-day sell-off. We came down. We actually broke the 50-day moving average for a day. Now, this is something we talk about a lot uh in our shop is that just because this is where investors also make a mistake. They go, "Well, I've got to stop. I'm going to set my stop at the 50-day moving average. If I break that, I'm out." And so, they break the 50-day moving average. They sell their positions. They feel good about themselves. Like, ha. See, my stop worked got me out of the market just in the nick of time. And then the market turns right around and goes right back up the next day. And they're like, "Oh, damn it. So, this is why when when you run a stop loss in your portfolio, always give it some time, right? So, set your 50-day moving average, that's your stop, and then give it some time. I always give it through the end of trading on Friday. If if the if the market breaks the moving average on Tuesday, I give it till Friday. If it breaks it on Thursday, I give it till Friday. >> All right. Sorry to interject, but just make sure folks are understanding. So instead of setting an automatic stop-loss that says when it hits this price, sell me out, >> have it be more like an alert where it says, "Okay, it's it's triggered the level you were you were worried about. Now you you're saying watch it closely from here, but don't necessarily sell it immediately." >> Exactly. And here's why it you should never use automated stop- losses in your in your portfolio ever. And the reason is is that when you enter that stop loss into your trading system, let's say you trade at Schwab or Fidelity, and you say, "Okay, I'm going to put a stop loss on Apple at $50 a share, whatever the number is." And so you put that order in. It says, "If if the stock violates $50 a share, sell all my shares." All the algorithms are out there and they're watching these live stop orders. So when you put your orders in, they start hunting you. And you can see this in the chart. There was a bunch of stop orders sitting out there at the 50-day moving average. And you can start seeing the algorithms hunt that that moving average. So they start put they start putting in sell orders and they start driving the price lower. And as soon as it triggers all those stops and this is why you see this you see this a lot within the markets. We have certain support levels and the market immediately turns around. That's because those algorithms were hunting those stops and as soon as they trigger them, they start buying the stock on the other side and that's why the stock rebounds very quickly and goes back up. So, never use an automated stop-loss order in your portfolio management. We have a whole system that we built internally in our office that we place our stop orders and it sends us an email immediately when that stop order is done and tells us, okay, that stop got hit. And then we can stow in and evaluate what's the market doing now. Are we seeing buyers show up? Are we seeing those algorithms start to step in and buy or are we starting to see volume pick up on the sell side? So that's helps us navigate that. But yeah, you should never because of all the computers that are out there, Citadel Securities, everybody else, especially on like you they Citadel Security on Robin Hood traders. If you trade on Robin Hood, you're getting prayed on by Citadel because they're watching all your trading activity and they're trading ahead of you. And that's how Citadel makes billions of dollars every year by taking advantage of you. Free trading is not free by the way. You pay for that. Um but yeah, so so when you're managing it, I would I would build some type of if you're using trading software um like um you know like an uh like an Erade or uh something like Think and Swim or what's what's the other one? U ES signal. You have the ability to place alerts within your system and just have it alert you. says, "Hey, this price was hit." Send you an alert, but don't actually execute the order. >> Okay. Yeah. So, you're absolutely correct. You know, there's an arms race out there that you are not the big dog in. And these guys will push you uh you know, if you're just using automated stops, they they'll push you to the point where you you trigger your sell and that's engineering for them and artificially low buy price and they buy it and then then the stock bounces back up. Um, let me ask you this, Lance, because I I don't know the answer to this. Do these quant shops with all the algos and everything, can they actually see the stack? Can they actually see where these these uh uh uh trigger orders are are set? >> Absolutely. Yeah. You when when when an or when a live order is placed into the system, that is viewable by everybody. So if you if you have level one, level two, level three data. Yeah, you can you could see where all the sell orders are or buy orders and sell orders are all stacked up and at certain prices there's so many, you know, so much volume getting, you know, here to buy, so much volume here to sell, etc. Absolutely. They can >> So, so that's almost like being at a poker table where you can see the hands of the folks around you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you're you're you're playing poker with your cards facing your opponent. >> Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that's really important to know. Yeah. Yeah. And look, I mean, I I think I think intellectually the concept of a stop is really prudent, right? Hey, I want to make sure I don't lose more than X on this company. I think it's worth Y. If it drops enough far enough below that, I want to get out. Um, but now you got to really think about, well, you know, if I'm using a stop, am I just kind of guaranteeing I'm going to be selling the stock for less than it's trading for now because these other guys can see my cards and and push me out. Yeah. >> So, it's just it's it's it's something to consider. >> Yeah. No, and there's a couple of things you can do to combat this. If you want to use automated orders, there's a couple things you can do. First is is don't use standard measures. And what I mean by that is is like for instance, um you know, everybody uses the 50 and the 200 day moving average. That's very widely used within the market. So, everybody's steps uh when they set their stops, they set them at the 50-day, at the 200 day. So there's all these orders that are stacked up at those levels. Use an oddball data. So we use some moving averages in our shop that are odd. Um, you know, instead of a, you know, for for instance, if everybody's using a 12week moving average, use a 14week or 13week or a 15week. do something that nobody that most people aren't using >> and use that as a trick because because again if all the algorithms are set >> to look for instance, you know, at the 50-day moving average and we break through that and let's say I put in a a 63-day moving average. I'm just picking a number 63-day moving average and put below that. you'll see where, you know, that tends to be a little bit better buying support in a lot of cases because you'll see it break like we saw in the 50-day and then the markets will kind of bounce off whatever's right below that because that's where all the buying's showing up. So, if you break through that kind of oddball number, now you've got a little bit better picture about what's happening in the markets and if there's more selling coming, etc., you're going to kind of rip through these kind of oddball levels. That's just kind of one way to to try to offset some of that that volume risk that occurs at very at these levels where everybody's watching the same number. >> Okay. All right. Well, look, good lesson. Um, let's get back to what exactly the markets are doing right now. I think I diverted you from that. >> Well, no. So, so yeah. So, >> important point to make though. I'm glad we made it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, right now the the market is back above the 50 and the 20-day moving average as of this morning. Again, how we finished today. Today's a huge options expiration day. Market's going to be all over the place today. So, just, you know, it's going to be hard to tell. As long as we hold the 50-day through today, that's probably going to be fairly bullish. We've turned relative strength back up. We we kind of worked off some of the overbought condition we had. And so, we're kind of turning back up here on relative relative strength basis. We had triggered a little bit of a MACD buy uh momentum signal that's starting to turn up here. So, if we can get some follow through, you know, Monday, Tuesday, next week before we actually hit the holiday, and remember next week it's all inmates running the asylum. >> Yeah. >> Retail buyers kind of push this market up a bit. We kind of trigger a bit of a buy signal. That's a really good setup for that last three, four days of the year for that window dressing to occur. >> Okay. And and the institutional traders and stuff, they're gone now through the year, right? They're they're not coming back up. >> No, they they probably left two days ago. >> Okay. Okay. >> All right. So, so it truly will be retail driving the action >> from now until January. >> Yep. And so there's be some good trading opportunities. Um, you know, there's some stocks that have just gotten the dogs not beat out of them. You know, companies like Olo and Applied Digital Corporation, others, they've really gotten beat down hard over the last really kind of month. And there's still a lot of those are still kind of some of the retail kind of mania favorites. And so there's going to be some some stocks that are going to move, you know, 15 20% from current levels into year end just as people try to get those on their books. >> I'm not saying buy those. I'm not saying go buy the I'm not saying go and say buy applied digital or Olo. I'm just those are retail favorites that have, you know, like Olo lost like 50% of its value over the last couple months. So there's there's, you know, there's going to be some tradable if you're a trader and can trade technicals, there's going to be some decent little trading setups for two or three days. >> Okay. Are any of those darlings on your target list right now or is that just >> No, we're we're position we we're already positioned for year end. You know, we bought some stuff uh last week. We bought, you know, we bought a little bit of u kind of defensive positioning that we started building our portfolio. You think next year uh defense is going to be a little bit more um of a place to be versus offense? So right now you've got a lot of people piling. >> Okay. You mean general defensive stocks? You don't mean the defense industry. >> No. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Actually defensive stocks may actually do okay next year, but >> Yeah. But you were talking more broadly than that. >> Yeah. More broadly, you know, you have offensive positioning. So gold, silver, technology, um you know, discretionary communications, those are all very high beta risk assets. So next year, those are probably going to come under more pressure and you're you'll see a rotation more towards safety and defense. So that'll be things like staples, REITs, utilities, interest rates come down a bit next year. Um you know, so that gives a boost to REITs. Uh utilities do better because of the dividend yield. So you potentially see some kind of that riskoff rotation. does. Now, does that mean sell all your risk assets and go all in on defense? No. What that means is is you maintain your risk assets, but hedge that by adding some of these more defensive positions to your portfolios. That's what we did. So, we still we're still on Google and Nvidia and gold and silver and platinum, uranium. We still own all that stuff. We're just adding in some of these defensive positionings to the portfolio, >> right? Or or you're shifting your mix, right? It's Yeah. Okay. >> Um >> All right. So you just made a comment there that not everybody would agree with you but I I think I understand why you're making it so we'll go there which you said interest rates are going to come down next year right so certainly percentage of viewers here who don't think that's a given this one of the things that you know the people that I interview are more they differ on more than most things um I I believe your confidence on that stems from your confidence in that inflation particularly as measured by CPI is going to come down next year and that interest rates are very much a function of inflation expectations. Also too, you've got the central planners and the administration desperate to get uh bond yields down. So, they're going to be doing some unnatural acts to try to help with this. But, um uh my question for you, and you just wrote a new piece about this, I think even today, but will 2026, when the dust is settled, do you think we'll call that the year of disinflation? >> Well, we're seeing it now. Um, you know, you saw So, let let's start with the CPI number because that was probably >> because you're going to talk about shelter first and foremost, right? >> Well, yeah. Yeah. Because that's what drives CPI. >> Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I I echo you a lot in a lot of my other interviews about this. So, >> I mean, well, I mean, there's just there there's there's there's there is narrative and then there's freaking math, you know, and if you have 44 42% of anything driven by one number, it's hard to beat. the rest of it can go crazy and you're still not going to get a lot of inflation because of what's happening. I mean, you take a look at any rent index, it's going down. Um, and again, you know, so, so first of all, let's talk about the CPI number that came out. When was that? Wednesday, Thursday. What day did that come out? Anyway, it came out this week. >> Came out recently. >> I know this week has just been so fast. Um, but anyway, in that inflation report, first of all, we didn't get a lot of data. uh most of the data most of the data was blank and so there was just a lot of extrapolation a lot of things that went on all >> it did come down right 2.7% year-over-year >> yeah so we were like 2.9 and it came down to 2.7 between October and November so you know but again a big function of that is just imputed rents that that's all it is and there's no evidence right now anyway and again things can change but there's a massive overupp of mult multif family properties, which is going to keep price pressures on rents. >> Yeah, >> Lance, I think all you need to do with this audience is just say just listen to Adam's last interview, couple interviews, and no, right? She'll she'll make the comment about why housing is going to continue disinflating. >> Yeah. And again, >> deflating. >> Yeah. Look, I'm not I'm not saying we're have a I'm not going to say we're going to have a housing crash. I'm not saying that. Um but there's not a lot of support right now for a reaceleration of home prices. and and and and specifically we're talking about rents because of the over supply of multif family >> and and rents are starting to come down in a large part of the country. >> Yeah. And and and and so that's that's very important. The the the the bigger one was in the Fed's latest analysis when they just cut rates. They talked about employment. Employment was negative 20,000 in October, positive 40,000 in November. That's a net 20,000 job increase in two months. That is not screaming robust economic growth. So slower slower. >> Sorry to interrupt, but the Fed also said they think that the BLS payroll numbers are over inflated by 60,000. >> So you subtract that from those numbers and it gets a lot worse even. >> Exactly. In fact, you know, this is uh and so so two things about this. One is that you know as you start looking at what drives economic growth and what drives so where does inflation come from? It's supply and demand. That's it. So in the in the economy you have to have more demand than you have supply of goods or services to have inflation. If employment is slowing and wages are falling, which are both happening right now to a a decent degree, that suggests you're gonna have slower rates of economic growth next year, which is going to lead to lower rates of inflation just because of a lack of demand because prices come from demand. >> And you take a look at, for instance, there was a really great chart out, this isn't mine, um, but there's a really great chart out just this past week. I did not realize this, but it doesn't surprise me. Every single jobs report has been negatively revised this year by a substantial >> doesn't surprise me at all. >> Yeah. But you know which which all this well which is why all this goes to tell you why inflation has continued to decline this year because of your your reducing this demand within the overall economy. And that was kind of part and parcel of of this you know analysis that we did on the infla we did one an analysis on inflation just today just published it today. But you know, if you take a look at the the annual rate of GDP growth versus the annual rate of change in inflation, not surprisingly, they're very highly correlated. And that's because inflation is a function of economic activity. And with the extraction of capital out of the market, extraction of liquidity out of the market, extraction of demand out of the market, slower employment, that's all going to contract economic growth next year. And so if if the Fed is right and we get back towards 2% economic growth, you're going to have about 2% inflation, those are going to be fairly closely correlated. >> Okay. So what if the administration is right, Lance? So Trump just got up in front of the nation um and said we're going to see economic growth that America's never seen before. and uh you know him, Bessant, you know, everybody involved in the economic team there is saying, "Look, we've been laying the groundwork that stuff's really going to start hitting on all cylinders next year." They're even doing some stimulative things like, you know, 17 uh $1,776 checks to 1.4 million people in the military. uh we might get those uh I don't know the status of kind of the tariff checks that were going to go to a bunch of houses. Um Bessant saying that people are going to see the biggest uh tax savings that they've seen in a long time come tax time. Um just assume for a moment that that actually does all get deployed and work. Um, would you be changing your tune if instead of 2% GDP growth, we had three and a half% GDP growth. >> Yeah. No, if if you start seeing an uptick in economic growth, yes, you're going to get higher rates of inflation because inflation will track economic growth, right? So, but you know, it's it's interesting. I've been listening to a lot of what they've been saying. Um, we've had tax cuts before. You don't get really a boost in you get a very temporary minor boost in economic activity. Maybe a little bit of a bump in inflation, but it goes very very quickly because yeah, I got a tax s I got a tax refund. I go out and I buy a television with it and it's over, right? You know, if I'm going to send checks to households, yep, we do that nonsense again. You're going to get a bump in inflation temporarily because people are going to run out into the economy. You're going to spend that money and then once the money's gone, you know, they're going to go back to where they were. So, you know, all these programs, you know, everybody forgets all these programs. are all temporary. If you want sustained economic growth and higher rate and we just we we should all hope honestly we should all hope for 3 or 4% inflation. That would be awesome. If we had 3 or 4% inflation in the economy annualized and you had say four and a half to 5% maybe even closer to 5 and a half% economic uh sorry interest rates and you had wage growth growing at five and a half and six% a year to keep up with that. That's the key thing >> that that man we're we're cooking. I mean that's an environment where economic prosperity is just is is doing great. That's by the way that's the 50s and 60s in this in this economy. We were growing at 8% annually on growth and we were killing it. >> Um we didn't have any debt back then which is the big problem. The problem is today we just have too much debt, >> right? >> Which which diverts too much capital in the debt service. But but yeah, no that would be great. We should all hope for that. I mean, we're Look, the Fed's hoping that we can just get to 2% and maintain that. If we can maintain 2% growth, we'll do okay. It's that's not gang busters, though. That's just that's just kind of getting by. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, so, you know, look, I think the administration would say, "Hey, Lance, we've been trying to lay the groundwork for the sustainable stuff." So, it's not just gimmicks. It's, you know, >> yeah, >> the thousand flowers bloom, a million flowers blooming from deregulation and less all that stuff, right? I'm not carrying water for them, but I'm saying I'm just saying if if they if they manage to pull it off, you're going to change your tune here about Yeah, >> absolutely. Because no, that's good inflation, right? That's if we can get good Look here, I think the biggest upside risk >> good inflation as long as real growth is positive. We got to be we got to be beating it. Yeah, >> exactly. And sending checks to people doesn't create growth, right? Sustainable growth. But what could is if this data center buildout takes off as everybody's expected and we can add one one and a half% of economic growth because of productive investment to the economy building out roads and bridges and electrical power grids and uh you know new plumbing lines and all these type of things to maintain and support these data centers. That creates tons of jobs that increases more that increases more wages. That creates more activity in the economy. That's good, productive economic growth. I am all for that. That would be great. Stock markets will be higher. Bond markets will be doing great. I mean, everybody will be happy. Credit will be flowing. It'll it'll be good in that environment, but we've got to get there. >> Yeah. So, right now, you're skeptical. You're not saying it's not going to happen. >> Looking at the data, and the data doesn't suggest it yet. >> Yeah. But folks, we will be tracking this. So, whether the data gets better or worse next year, you know, we'll be keeping you a breast week after week after week here on this. Absolutely. >> Um, all right. So, I'm I'm gonna start wrapping things up so we can get to the rants. Uh, you you made a brief comment about trades, but I don't know if those are trades you made. Actually, I already you already told us about last week or have you made anything over the past couple of days? >> No, no, that we're we >> you're locked in for the rest of the year. >> Yeah, last week we talked about our trades adding defense and so we're we're we sold one position for a tax loss and then we bought some defensive positioning we talked about last week. So yeah, there's nothing for us to do now until year till after this year is over. We're we're positioned for year end right now. >> From a portfolio management standpoint, I got to imagine RAA is probably pretty damn busy right now helping clients do all their end of year stuff and get that done before the end. Right. >> RMDs going like crazy right now. So that's, you know, Roth conversions, RMDs, um end of year tax planning, charitable gift donations, um you know, donor advice funds, that's been a big one this year. So yeah, that's that's full boore right now. >> Okay. So, um I know despite all of our admonitions to people and advice to get early on this stuff, if somebody is behind on those things now, um but would like some help from you guys, can they still reach out and contact you or >> Absolutely. But you need to get a move on because again, if you just look at the calendar, you you're going to have Monday, Tuesday, half of Wednesday, and you're done the rest of that week. Nobody's going to be doing much of anything. Um, and then you're going to have two really two days, three days in January, uh, sorry, the week after Christmas to finish things up before you hit and again, there's going to be so many people gone and on vacation. If you if you wait till December 31st to call your your your financial institution, go, "Oh, I need to do an RMD." Good luck. There's a real risk you may not get it processed. >> Well, because even if your advisors there, even if your guys answer the phone, the guys at Schwab might already be gone, right? >> I would. But if you have any year-end stuff to do, a do your adviser a favor uh and b do yourself a favor. Do it Monday. You know, I've, you know, when you'll see this video on Saturday, but Monday morning, set stuff aside. Do your RMDs. If you need to make charitable donations, get that done. I don't know if you've got enough time yet to left. I don't think you do to set up a donor adise fund. Um, you can talk to your adviser about it if you if that's something of interest to you, if you're a high net worth investor, but RMDs and and tax law selling and all that you can get done and I would do it Monday. >> All right. So folks, if if you're in the camp as someone who's behind on the stuff and want to get it done before the end of the year, pause this video right now. Uh literally go contact your adviser or go fill out the short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Connect with one of the ones that thoughtful money endorses. You know, let them know if you want to talk to Lance specifically. Um but as Lance said, you you're you're down to the last, you know, few seconds on the clock. Get in there now if you can. Um all right. So, uh, rant. Um, so forgive me if this rant is a little, um, wandering because I'm I'm I'm thinking in real time as we're we're going to be discussing it. Um, uh, but I I want to talk briefly about uh what happened at Brown University uh in and at Bondi Beach in Australia. Um, tying it back a little bit to the conversation we had, Lance, right after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. um because I I think they're all connected with sort of the same point I want to make. Um and and that high level point is that um we really need to return as a society to uh dialogue and debate, right? Can be very vigorous. Um can be uncomfortable, but that's that's the playing field with which we work out our differences. um we we we've got to really focus on the quality of ideas and not let emotions drive the decision- making. Um because I think that's one of the big, you know, problems where you are in society right now is we are giving emotions the same weight as ideas and using them for justifications to do things that uh we really have no business doing. So, and I'm sure most people know what I'm talking about here, but um uh this story was personal for me uh what what happened here um because I went to Brown. So, um I've got some insights as to the culture on the campus there, or at least the the the um the protoculture that sort of, you know, became what it is today there. Uh I I've even learned that one of the students that was killed at Brown um was a classmate of my nephews in high school. Um so hits home on on on many different uh many different fronts. Um and Lance, since this thing broke out, I've I've I've had a lot to say, but I've I've I've held my tongue because we didn't have a lot of data, and we still don't. But the morning that you and I are recording, this is the morning after they found the body of who the the authorities believe to be the gunman who who who you know did what what happened at Brown. And um look, I I'm I know the points I want to make here. I I take everything I'm about to say with a big grain of salt as it relates to Brown because we still don't there's a lot we don't know still. We don't actually know the motives of the shooter. Um, but uh, when I heard the news of the shooting at Brown, I immediately feared it was somebody who was going to be connected to the university. Um, and the the the reason for that is, you know, no surprise to most folks who who watch the media, um, Brown is a hotbed of um very of ideology, of a very specific type of ideology. And um I I I again probably no surprise to too many folks watching this, but having gone there in the early '9s, that was the birth of the politically correct movement, the PC movement, and I saw that happen from from day one. And and first I want to say Brown in many ways is a wonderful place. I'm not trying to tear down the institution. I'm certainly not trying to kick it while it's down. Has gone through a very real tragedy here. Um but the what was clear to me in my time there was um the politically correct movement as it as it um had its genesis there was was all about um you know looking at at classes that had been dispossessed right minority classes and saying hey we need to elevate those people right absolutely nothing wrong with that totally get it but the way in which it was done there Um it it was it was very exclusionary. It was in the sense of like, okay, if you're in one of these classes, whether it's based on your ethnicity or your gender or your uh your sexual orientation, um that's all in the good. Everything that's sort of in the majority is kind of in the bad. It's kind of the evil. It's the it's the patriarchy. It's the, you know, whatever it was, right? And um it it was uncomfortable going there as a guy from a majority background. And I'm not looking for anybody to to shed any tears for me. Uh and I had you made wonderful friends there. It totally opened my eyes to um the conditions of a lot of these these uh minority groups and and the challenges that they've they've had to go through. Um so there's a lot of good that came out of it. But but what worried me as I sort of you know left the campus and matured and and you know got more clear in my thinking um it was very much an othering right it was hey the establishment is bad um it was sort of a vilification of of the establishment um of of of of what we'll call sort of I don't know the core culture say of of of this society and instead of it could have in my opinion it could have and should have been an and right which is hey there's a lot we can learn from these groups and what they've been through they bring a lot of um background and strengths and and whatever and we can add those to the the the great benefits of our existing society and we can make kind of everybody better we can elevate everybody together. Um and in my opinion that is based on values right um what are the values we all agree are the ones that um are the ones that we should pursue together and then let's let's support and reward everybody from every stripe and every background towards uh pursuing those values. Instead it became much more of an ideology. it became much more of a well if you're you know if you have these attributes these either you know physical attributes or or belief attributes um you know then you're good and if you don't then you're bad. it became much more of a a vilification. And as I said, um, right after, I mean, just just hours after the the Brown shooting and what happened at Bondai Beach was, um, we have to get back to making it about a dialogue about values and about ideas. Because if you don't, if you make it about simply demonizing another group, demonizing an other because they're not in your group, then it provides this false justification for doing inhuman acts. And I think we've gotten to a point in society, Lance, where um uh just like we've created this this casino like market structure where we've taught everybody to be speculators rather than investors, we now have a a a number of cohorts. I mean, I would say, you know, millennial, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, uh to a large extent have been told that if somebody thinks differently than you, then they're they're an existential threat to you. that words equal violence and that therefore it's okay cancel culture-wise to use violence in response to people that think differently you think that's just the the downward spiral that society is sort of getting pulled into here right now so I'll take a beat there's another point that I want to make on this but um you know at the end of the day uh what I'm trying to say here is is look everybody from every background uh should have an absolutely equal playing field and be treated equally, be treated with respect. Um, but it should be based upon the values that we all share in common. Um, it should not be based upon um some sort of protected status or some sort of, hey, you know, I believe one thing, that guy believes something else, so therefore that guy's bad, and I've got to go after, you know, I'm justified in doing whatever it takes to get rid of that guy. Um, it it seems to me that seems to be the the theme of what 2025 has has really started. um metastasizing into that more and more whether it's Luigi Manioni, you know, shooting a CEO uh you know, in the back on a street in broad daylight or whatever. We're we're in we're at the danger point of that becoming acceptable in the mainstream. And I feel like this is the point where we as a society need to hold the line and say no, we can't go there. We got to pull it back. We've got to say it's all about ideas and values. It's not about ideology. So thoughts? >> Well, no. I mean, there was a really great article today I was reading. I wrote about this before. Uh I wrote an article called The Dark Side of Technology. Um there was an article out today called America's Rapidly Growing Happiness Deficit. And it's interesting because they point to all these reasons why people are unhappy, but they don't really get down to the core reason why there's so much loneliness and unhappiness in today's society is because we're all now glued to our phones and our media. And our and our phones and our media are all designed by the algorithms to feed us whatever information we want, you know, whatever we're watching, right? So, it just keeps feeding us more and more stuff. So if I'm already depressed and I'm and I'm looking at things that are depressing me, it keeps feeding me more and more of it. And so my point about that is is that, you know, when you have the ability when, for instance, when when the CEO the CEO of United Healthcare was shot, there were people cheering on social media that about his murder and you know, when Charlie Kirk was shot, there were people cheering his assassination. What is wrong with you? Right? These are human beings. Whether you agree with them personally or not is is, you know, is irrelevant. These are human beings and, you know, we're cheering their murders or their assassinations because we didn't agree with their ideals. But see, it's okay. You can do that behind the the the behind the screen, right? You won't do that to somebody else's face. I was just had this conversation with a guy yesterday. I was like, you know, we all say this stuff and and we you know, we'll go on to Twitter and we'll troll people, call them idiots or whatever it is. you won't come say that to my face because I'll punch you in the nose, you know, and but this is the society that we've built over and and if you see if you take a look at depression, increases in depression, increases in and teenage suicides, all those rates started to rapidly increase when when the iPhone was released, when when Meta went public with Facebook, those when all those when those two became public and and really became mainstream, we just started seeing depression rates, loneliness rates, unhappiness rates, all those just start to skyrocket. Suicide rates with teenagers, all that's just skyrocketed and we just keep feeding this stuff into the system. And to your point, nobody's nobody's willing to stand up and go, this is not what how we act as human beings, right? This is not right. There's, you know, there are no, you've got to have some guard rails out there somewhere to keep humans on track because if not, they'll become the most depraved individuals on the planet. And we're already seeing that. >> Yeah. And as I mentioned, when when the news came out that there was a shooting at Brown, again, I was concerned. My immediate gut feel was I think this might have been a student. And it turned out the guy was a student at Brown. Now, he was a a student like me. He was he was uh I think he went there in like 200 2020, right? So, he hadn't been there for a long time. >> Um >> he was a permanent he was a what was it? Well, he was he was eventually a legal permanent resident, but he was there on a student visa initially. He didn't get his permanent status until 2017. >> Yeah. >> Um and and look, I I it seems very clear there's probably a lot of mental issues that went on with this guy. And of course, he after he the Brown students, he then went and killed a a former um classmate of his from his time in Portugal. Um so this guy clearly had some some real issues. Uh, and it's unclear. Yeah. >> If you're running around shooting people, you have mental issues. >> Well, well, but >> I People always act surprised like, "Oh, he had mental issues. We should forgive." No, you don't forgive people just because they have mental issues. This is the problem. >> Yeah. And and and I'm not I'm not necessarily talking about forgiveness, which is I'm saying it's unclear whether there was an ideology that made him target that specific um Brown class. He could go to Brown and and target that class. Um, so I don't know and I don't want to I don't want to pretend to know, but I I will tell you another thing that made me think that that a student had done this or someone familiar with the the the campus is that Barrison and Holly, the the building that this attack took place in, it's a big science building and he had to go find this specific class and and you know, that's where he started shooting the students. If you were just going to randomly kill people on a campus, like if your goal was just to to just create mayhem, you wouldn't sneak your way into Baris and Holly and then walk down and find this one particular classroom. I mean, there are plenty of other places on that campus where you could just pick students off in the middle of the main green or whatever like that, right? This was a guy who had some reason that was driving him there. And I don't know if it's just a coincidence or what or whatever, but the the woman that was killed, you know, was the the head of the conservative uh group there on on campus. Uh the professor presumably, even though um it's a sciences building and it was an economics class, she was with the Judeaic studies. I don't know if it's tied to anything around anti-semitism or anti- conservatism. The timing obviously with the Bondai Beach shooting um is is highly coincidental, but it it might just be a coincidence. There's so much we don't know right now. But my point there is that the the um the the the culture at Brown is already such a um uh what do I say? Like a high pressure environment around ideology. Um the very big black and white on who's good and bad. lots of strong opinions about, you know, how the establishment should be teared down and whatnot. And this guy went there like I did decades ago. I think it's only been turned up uh even more so since. And so my whole point to yours, Lance, is is like if we keep turning up the temperature here and then we worsen it with things like social media and all that stuff, you throw mental, you know, a little bit of mental uh instability into the mix, >> things get incredibly volatile. And that's the concern I have about society in general. So let me tie it back here quickly to uh the Bondai Beach thing. So, another completely heartbreaking, terrible tragedy. Um, there was one thing that happened during it though that I think we really need to to take some learning from, which is You saw that guy, I imagine, Lance, the footage of the guy, just a regular fruit vendor who went and tackled one of the uh >> one of the shooters, right? >> Yeah. Grab the gun away from him. Good for him. >> I mean, >> what a guy. >> Total total hero. No background at all in anything military. just a guy who saw something that was wrong and just you know do what he could in the moment and you know this this is why at the beginning >> we should all aspire to be like him >> be like him Ahmed al- Ahmed right um so uh uh this is why I introduced you as a prudent protector so you you might remember a couple of uh videos ago Lance we I talked about how uh a guy did a deep dive in chat GPT um and a number of the other AI um large language models around uh analyzing the thoughtful money audience. Uh and the you know basically the AI described the thoughtful money viewer as the prudent protector, a person who was looking out for their family's financial future and very focused on okay what can I do to provide for my family and be a good provider and all that type of stuff. Um and I I feel like that's what we need to do. uh if we want to if we want to have the type of future that we want to have here in society, it's not enough for us just to answer my call of to say, hey, look, put violence aside. We really just got to again embrace discussing our differences and trying to get down to, okay, what values do we all collectively share and then make sure that we're all driving towards the right values and and not choose violence as an option. But we also need to stand up and protect the system we have. And the only way there there's I'm not a poly. We there are going to be probably way more of these unfortunate events happening in the future than than you and I would like, Lance. Um but we what we need to do is not be passive witnesses to it. When we are in those moments and when we see it, we've got to put ourselves in harm way to do the right thing. And you know, especially this audience, we're wired to be prudent protectors. Um, and so hopefully nobody watching this video finds themselves in a situation like that. But if we are, I think that's our responsibility is to step in and do what we can. And I don't think we need to necessarily wait till violence erupts. You know, this is we were sort of talking about this after the Charlie Kirk assassination. We need to ask ourselves, what can we do in our communities today to be factors that bring down the temperature versus continue to to rise the temperature? Where can we help find common ground? Where can we look at, you know, um uh groups that are that are hurting and likely to turn to violence and and interact with them in some way that that hopefully, you know, bring them closer onto our page in a peaceful way. Um, so that's kind of my clarion call to everybody watching this here, which is, you know, it's time for us protectors to to step into our our natural roles here. And, you know, a lot of us are are older in life and we've lived the majority of our life here. And yeah, if we're putting ourselves a little bit in the harm's way, you know what? May maybe we're the right people to do that. And I'm not encouraging anybody to do something necessarily dangerous, but like, you know, I would hope that if I were in a situation like Bondai Beach, I would follow that AMD Alammed guy thinking, hey, look, if I get killed doing this, you know, at least I'm doing it, standing up for something I believe in, and I've lived the majority of my life, right? If I can if I can create a tomorrow where those younger than me have a better life to step into, that's a sacrifice that I personally am totally willing to make. So anyways, I I'll leave it at that, but um I know you're wired similarly, Lance, so I'm sure you've got something to say about this. >> No, no, I just, you know, this has always been, you know, we've talked about this before is that, you know, we've all turned our backs on faith and rel I shouldn't say we all because that's not true, but you know, there's a large majority of the population now that turned their backs on faith and religion and these type of things. And whether or not you agree with religion is irrelevant. What religion is though is that it provides a basis of how to behave, right? >> Yeah. It's a value structure. That's why I'm using the term values. >> Here's the rules that we live in within society. Don't kill, don't steal, don't covet the neighbor's wife, those type of things. If we could all just remember to live by the Ten Commandments, we wouldn't have these problems, right? But, you know, we're but you know, it's it's it's always interesting when you know, one of these things show up. You know, we start digging into this person's background and we find out all these things. you know, ideologies that they were, you know, taught to or instructed by or or indoctrinated by on the internet, you know, or Facebook, you know, they were subscribed to some channel that was just feeding them all this kind of information that drove them to this point. You know, that's my whole point about tech technology is great. I love technology, but it's also it's also a disease and it's like gambling. It's like alcohol. It's like anything else. And you know there are people that are getting addicted to this stuff and it's warping their outlook on life. And at some point if you push yourself into a position where you're so depressed, you are so unhappy, you are so lonely because of your world just seems to be collapsing around because you see everybody else on the internet living this great life. They've all got cars and houses and boats. They all rented that for >> or or you're so angry because your little social media ideology bubble is telling you these guys are screwing you. >> Exactly. And it's all them. So it's like, okay, I'm gonna go do something about it. You know, that's what we need to really analyze is how do we create? Look, social media is here to stay and that's fine. Social media can be very beneficial, very useful, but it has to be developed in some manner and and wrangled in in some manner that it's not a detrimental weapon to certain individuals, >> you know, maybe you've got to start restricting social media till you're 21, right? You can't drink till you're 21 for a reason, >> right? >> You heard you heard me make this point. I think it was last week uh about the Australia banner. Maybe it was two weeks ago. Uh, and I got some, you know, I knew I was going to get some blowback from the libertarian stuff, but but look, I until we've got a better way to do it, I say, "Let's try it and see what happens." Right. >> My dad said growing up is that I I would do something stupid because I was a kid, right? We all did stupid stuff as kid. And when when you were growing up in the 70s, I mean, you did really weird stuff like jump off houses with bed sheets trying to make parachutes. >> And you know, and and my dad would punish me and he say, "You can't do that again until you can prove that you are mentally able to do that, right? Or or physically capable to do that or mature enough to do that." And >> which is unfair because us men, we're like 32 before we're mentally mature. >> Exactly. Right. But the premise was there which is that you know you have to have some maturity level to do certain things. You can't drive till you're 16. You can't you know drink till you're 21. There's a reason for that. Maybe just maybe >> you know we put in some rules around indoctrinating our kids on social media until they are proven mentally mature enough to be able to make their own decisions properly. >> Right. Right. >> Maybe that's crazy talk. Right. >> Right. Well, I don't want to rattle on social media, but but also too, you know, again with the libertarian push back, which I get. I'm very libertarian- minded, but um you know, just as we say cigarettes, alcohol, etc. are addictive substances, and that's why we don't want kids getting early exposure to them, I think social media very much has a lot of addictive substance qualities to it. Right. >> Does. >> Um so, two, >> I got to go because I've got to get on my TikTok now. So, >> Oh, okay. I know. I can see your hands starting to shake. It's been >> It's been an hour, man. Come on. >> Um, but but uh I I I I put a a not even a post, just a com a response to to um a comment on X that's gone pretty viral in the past 24 hours. And and um so it was a tweet from Elon Musk saying, "Hey, we're entering this era of abundance where AI and robotics are going to just create this awesome future for us." And I just responded. And I said, "Honest question. What's humans role going to be in an era of abundance?" And it's amazing what vein that tapped. Um I to me it was just a throwaway comment. I I didn't think anybody was going to see it. Um and already it's getting close to I think like a thousand people interacting with it. Um and there is a real worry amongst many many people that an AI future where everything is done for us quote unquote it may not be good for humans. Like we need purpose, right? We we we we we we you know we we we we we could, you know, we'll wither high likelihood we'll wither like the the lion, you know, crammed into the small cage at the zoo, right? Um so, you know, it's not just social media, I guess, is what I'm saying. There's to your point about technology. There's there's a lot of what we're sort of hurdling towards that I'm not sure we've really thought through as a society. And I've mentioned that before and I I don't want to rattle hole in it, but >> well just just real quick on that conclude. I've got an article coming up on this because there was another study that just came out on UBI, universal basic incomes. And this was Elon Musk solution, which is that oh yeah, well, when we have all this AI automation, we'll just have this government guaranteed income for people and that way they can go do whatever they want to do. They can become artists and painters and have all this leisure free time. Well, there's been quite a few UBI tests, real-time tests. um that are either completed or still ongoing and the results are conclusive across the board is that UBI does not create better economic outcomes for people because they lose purpose. >> Yeah. >> You know, to me, I feel like we've known this forever. I mean, yeah. >> And this is but this is the fallback position for every politician. Oh, well, if this happens, we'll just do UBI. It's not good for anybody. >> It's not good. And I don't even think it works economically. I mean, forget about humans soul nourishment and stuff like that. I mean, I I I think it it doesn't even work economically, but but to the much larger point of yours, it creates dependent societies. It it it it diminishes us. And yeah, right now we're just saying, "Oh, don't worry. That's the solution." Right. So, whole other rant for a whole other time. Just >> like I've got an article coming out on it, so we can talk about it. >> Okay. Well, when's it going to come out? Like before >> I have to go I have to go check. I' I've been writing to get ahead of time because of Christmas vacation. So, it's in the next couple of weeks. I just don't know which day. >> Okay. Well, we'll keep our eye for it and if you want to talk about it here in a rant after it comes out, you're more than willing to. Um, but but just to the end to your point here, you again, it's all about value systems and and whether it's religion and I'm I'm glad to see that more and more of the younger generations are turning back to religion. Not not because I am an organized religion guy myself, but to your point, Lance, it shows that that they are realizing that what is being offered to them is is um devoid of of purpose. Um and and they're seeking that out, right? So, you know, whether it's a community organization, whether it's a a church, whatever, I I just think that's a good thing, right? as long as they are finding their ways to to structures that that give them values that are consistent with the ones that have made, you know, Western society great. Um, and you know, I didn't just want to sit here and about problems. So, I was trying to think like, so what values really matter to me, right? And I I didn't really have much time before we hopped on here. Like I said, I'm thinking about this in real time, but a few that just came to mind are like, look, you know, respect for others and kindness as the default, but kind of like Patrick sees in the movie Roadhouse, like be nice until it's time not to be nice, right? Um, don't don't just become a doormat uh to get taken advantage of. If somebody's doing something they shouldn't do, like the Bondi Beach guy, you step in and you put a stop to it. Um, accountability, personal responsibility, hard work, community investment. Um, your default should be to build up, not tear down. Uh, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other shared values out there uh that folks watching this can can add and create a much better list than I've started here. And folks, if you have them, just start mentioning them here in the comment section below. I'd actually love to to compile something that I could put out there. But if we can agree on what our guiding values are, then everything else is just tactics, right? And um a my my last parting call for folks on this very long rambling rant is you know ask yourselves once you've got your list of values how can I be living those better both in terms of just my actions in the world but how can I serve as a beacon or an inspiration for others around me whether they know me well or don't know me at all um to look at me and say hey that's a guy that's doing stuff that I want to be doing too from a value standpoint. >> Absolutely true and there's a great book for that. Um, I read I reread this book probably every couple of years because it's basically the premier tome of how to live a better, happier, more prosperous life. And so you should all read it's called the Bible. >> Oh, okay. >> All everything you just said is in the Bible if you just read it. a better life, how to treat others, how to become prosperous, how to live a life of wealth and prosperity and happiness. It's all in the Bible. You just have to read it. >> Okay? And I I I think that's a that's a great place to go. I'm not here pushing any particular religion. >> No, I'm just I'm just saying whether you're religious or not, just read the book, right? That's all I'm saying. Just read the book as a book. That's that's it. A story. So, you know, everybody loves a good story. The whole book's just a big story. Forget the religion part, right? Forget forget the all that. Just read it like a book. Enjoy the read. There's great adventures. There's people that are having battles and wars. And there's people falling in love and having babies and having all these trials and tribulations. It's just a great read. But in it, you learn lessons about how to live a more prosperous, happy, loving life, how to treat your spouse, how to treat others, you know, do unto others as you'll have them do under you. You know, that's it. It's just a good read every couple of years. Well, that that's a great segue to my my next and last point here, Lance, which is merry Christmas, buddy. Um, I'm wishing you all the best. Um, we folks, we are uh well, actually, no. Um, so, merry Christmas to you, Lance. Happy Hanukkah to your co-portfolio manager, Mike Liowitz. Uh, to everybody else watching, same to all of you. And if you have a different religion or no religion at all, I'm just going to wish you happy holidays. Um but yeah, so next week um we will be doing a weekly market recap. It's going to be with Mike um because Lance uh well, you're going to be off enjoying your your Christmas holiday. Uh and then and then you'll be on the following week. So we're not going to skip a beat here, folks. We're going to keep giving you your weekly market recaps, even though we're in the depths of the the winter holiday here. But again, I I hope you and your family have a great time. It's actually the the So, I'm taking my wife um to Beaver Creek for a couple of days just to get her out of Houston. We're coming up on our final chemo treatment, but it's thanks to to all the the prayers that I received from all of your listeners. I mean, you know, everybody that watches this, I received literally 2,000, maybe more. >> That's fantastic. >> You know, warm wishes, prayers, thoughts, all these type of things from my wife. And my wife just had a te a blood test. And there's a blood test called a a it's quote me I may be wrong on this pronouncement. It's like a single era test. It's a blood test and it tests for cancer in the blood system. And the test came back no evidence of disease which Yeah. Absolutely. >> He's not even done with her treatment yet. >> Not even done with treatment. We got one more treat. Our next treatment is uh the following Friday, January 2nd is our final treatment. But no, we're So when we got that blood test back, I booked her a trip to go to Beaver Creek. she has a favorite little little hotel there that she likes and go get, you know, a spa day, you know, that type of thing. Enjoy some snow, you know, for Christmas. So, yeah, but uh but it's it was it was all the prayers. I mean, all the prayers and things that that your listeners did were a big help in uh getting us to where we are right now. >> Well, that is just the best news ever. I don't want to get ahead of things. Um I'm going to call this Christmas miracle, but but yeah, don't want to jinx anything. Yeah, >> it it does not mean she's cancerree. It just means that right now there's no evidence of disease in her in her blood system, which is a very good sign. >> That is fantastic. Okay. And so she has one chemo treatment left, right, in two weeks or so, right? And you'll take her to that. Um and then hopefully she just gets to rest and recuperate, get her strength back, and then maybe >> y >> get the results that we all the permanent results that we're all hoping for. >> Well, we go so after the next chemo treatment, we go to three-month visits for five years. And if we go five years without uh recurrence of disease, she will technically be in remission. And the most important thing is is she'll be able to grow her hair back. >> I'm sure I'm sure to her that's big on the list. All right. Well, look, my friend, uh that is just the best news ever. Um I I hate to make this so pedestrian, but folks, if you want to show Lance how happy you are about that, please do so by hitting the like button. I'm sorry to make that the tie in there. That's all great. We got to wrap it up. >> Uh, but that is fantastic. Folks, also just share your comments with Lance about about how wonderful that is. Um, okay. And if you would like, as I said earlier, look, if you're if you're behind on your end ofear uh tasks, talk to your financial adviser right away or reach out to one of the financial adviserss that thoughtful money endorses, maybe even Lance and his team there at RAA, you can do that by just filling out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. even if you're up on your end of year to-dos, but you want to plan for 2026, uh, and you're looking for professional help in that as well, you can fill out that same form. Um, just a reminder for folks, uh, if you have not yet, uh, taken Andy Sheckchman up on his offer of buying junk silver right now, which just hit another all-time high as we've been talking, Lance, I've been checking the futures price. Um, and and I'm going to use your term. It's now 67, right? Uh, but >> nobody knows what that means, by the way. >> Nobody knows. I mean, even the the Gen Alphas that came up with it don't know what it means, right? Um, but yeah, sorry folks, if you don't know the meme, you're good. I'm not going to explain it to you because you're better off not knowing. Um, but anyways, if you would like to take Andy up on that offer of buying junk silver for a dollar under spot, you can still do so while supplies last by going to thoughtfoldmoney.com/bygold. fill out the very short form there and Andy's team will be out in touch with you real quick. Um, all right there, Lance, I am going to let you have the last word. >> Merry Christmas. Many blessings to you and your families. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas holiday and you know, again, New Year's. We're all hoping for a happy and prosperous new year for you as well. So, yeah, see you. I will miss y'all next week, but I'll definitely see you the following. >> All right. I I can't say anything better than that. Thanks, buddy. Everybody else, thanks so much for watching.