The Market Is Over-Extended, Over-Bought & Over-Leveraged | Lance Roberts

Summary

WORRIED ABOUT THE MARKET? SCHEDULE YOUR FREE PORTFOLIO REVIEW with Thoughtful Money’s endorsed financial …

Transcript

This is why going into next year, I'm a bit more concerned about a pick up in volatility, potentially lower returns, because you just have a very extended and overbought market. Everybody's in the pool. If somebody gets out of the pool, you're going to potentially get a stampede of people getting out of the pool. All they got to do is get out and you'll shark and everybody comes out, right? We have so much leverage in the markets that at some point if something triggers a selloff, you're going to get a decent correction and and a pullback to the the 4-year moving average is not uncommon. We've test for the last 15 years, we've tested that four-year moving average numerous times. So, a a retest if if you were going to do it today said, Lance, where's the four-year moving average? That's at 490 right now. Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thulful Money founder and your host, Adam Tagert, welcoming you back for a special Thanksgiving week edition of our weekly market recap. I'm joined as usual by the um what do we want to call this? The delicateessary uh [laughter] portfolio manager Lance Roberts. Lance, how you doing? >> I'm good. I'm I'm stuffed more than the turkey this year. So, yeah. Well, I I I picked that word delicatessary because as I understand it, you actually don't do turkey. No Thanksgiving. You're you're a Texan. You do all sorts of meats, brisketss, uh sides of beef. Uh how was it all? >> It was great. You know, it it's it's interesting. I I'm just it you know, there's probably 20 25 people kind of that all get together for Thanksgiving. And probably I think my wife is the only one that actually eats any turkey. So, we just order a little turkey breast for her and have it shipped to the house. And then yeah, everybody else is eating bris. We're I mean we're Texans, so you know, it's it's brisket and sausage and barbecued chickens and you know, uh mashed potatoes and and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it's anything but a traditional Thanksgiving. >> It all sounds good. But I'm guessing, yeah, your family's probably full up on turkey because they live with a turkey for the for the full year round, right? >> Most part of the year, yeah, they're they're pretty much fed up after [laughter] we >> we had fun. So obviously folks, I'm not in my studio. Um, I'm on the road. We're we're actually back in California. Um, had uh Thanksgiving uh with both our kids, which was great. Uh, but also with my whole wife's extended family and also some good friends of theirs. Uh, the friends uh own a a vineyard up in uh Alexander Valley up in um uh up in Hillsburg. If anybody who's watching knows where that is, but it's up here in Sonoma County. Very very beautiful, very very rustic um in a very charming way. But it was funny because um it turned into the Thanksgiving everyone's going to remember because the uh the uh kind of the dad who who was hosting uh his one job was to go pick up the turkeys and he got there too late. [laughter] >> So with like you know an hour and a half to go before everybody was arriving there was a mad scramble to come up with a turkey replacement. >> Oh no. >> Yeah. She sent him out found a place where he could get these cooked chicken. So he had a lot of chicken for Thanksgiving. Uh, and he he ran she told him to get 10 half chickens and he ended up getting unbeknownst to him full chickens plus he got an additional four more just to be safe. So we had 14 chicken full chickens. So it was like a party favor. Everybody had a chicken to take home. >> Never have too much left. The best thing about left Thanksgiving is the leftovers. >> Right. Right. So they everyone here will be having leftovers forever. But it was it was a great time. I hope everybody watching had a wonderful Thanksgiving with with you and your families. If you're watching internationally, uh I still hope you had a good time uh with family this week and uh and obviously us Americans are sending you um all of our good Thanksgiving wishes. All right, Lance. Well, look, we as as as we said last week, we would meet uh today >> just to give folks an update, an abbreviated week. I will I will commit to you that I will get you out of here in hopefully about half the time we normally do these so you can get back to your family. But we did want to give folks watching, we did want to give you, you know, an update this week. So, why don't we start, Lance, and maybe we'll get to the TA pretty quickly here to look at the charts. Um, but um, uh, uh, the big question hanging in the air last week was, hey, did we just see the AI bubble peak out, right? Because Nvidia had launched, released its phenomenal earnings and expectations, and yet the stock kind of rolled over. And you had said, "I don't think so, folks. Don't don't assume the worst here. This is probably just a pullback and we'll we'll probably, you know, set us up for going into an end ofear rally." [snorts] >> That is I mean, it's it's it's lower volume this week. So, TBD once the traders come back next week, but but the world didn't end. Uh we saw we've seen some strength uh in the markets this week. >> And um so I I want to give you a chance to give us an update on where we are in the technicals there, but I also want to pick up our thread. We were talking a bit about Google last week and what what's seeming increasingly uh what's going on here is maybe we're seeing the lead dog lead sled dog position in the AI space shift here. Maybe we maybe see Google stepping up to actually be the the the kingpin that pulls the sled going forward from here. Curious to hear your thoughts on that. >> Well, that's why we own Google and Nvidia, right? So, [laughter] you know, um, look, you know, it's going to be an interesting thing that comes out at the other day. So, you know, one of the the big shifts last week and a lot of the conversation was around these TPUs that Google is developing and they they actually started developing these chips 10 years ago. It was back in 2015. And sorry to interrupt, but in your answer if you know it, can you can you differentiate kind of a TPU versus a GPU in terms of how it actually performs because I believe Google's chips are better for certain functions and Nvidia's chips are better for certain other functions. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, it's a really easy, you know, kind of explanation. So TPUs are very very jobspecific and they are built for a singlepurpose application and the in in a normal GPU what happens is that data is transmitted in one direction and written and then it's sent back and then be processed and then pulled forward again. So there's a delay in the processing of the data that occurs inside. Now this is all happening in nanoseconds right? I mean it's you can't imagine how fast this is occurring but there's a transmission back and forth. Well in the TPU the data is basically sent in one direction only. So just think like a straight pipe and the data is just funneling through in one direction. So it's much faster but it's it's very applicationspecific where like Nvidia's GPUs have multiple functions. You can use GPUs for a lot of different things, whether it's video graphics processing, data processing, whatever it is, they have a lot more flexibility. So again, if I'm building a data center in theory and I don't know exactly who all is going to be storing data in my data center, I'm probably going to use GPUs because it gives me more flexibility. for Google, they're specifically building these TPUs for the data processing for AI because it's a it's a singularpurpose application and and and so you know it this is important but it's all because again the kind of initial thing is is like all of a sudden there's competition for Nvidia in terms of data center buildouts and that's a true statement. If I'm if I'm going to build a a data center and I'm and I have a very specific use for that data center I may choose TPUs over GPUs for that. They're more costefficient. They're more efficient and in their operation. They're more power efficient because of how they operate. So there's a lot of reasoning to to use TPUs. Does it unseat Nvidia as the leader in the space? Probably not because, you know, Nvidia's world of GPUs have much broader applications. But that's why we own both and that's why we own Google and Nvidia. And and you know, one of the things, Adam, that is all that we have to be aware of is that at the end of the day, do you do you ever see that series called Highlander back in in the day, >> there can be only one? >> There can be only one. And I and look, I honestly think at the end of the day, there's only going to be one AI, whether it's chat GPT or whether it's Gemini or whether whoever >> winner take all. Yeah, we've talked about >> this is a winner take all game. I I I think I think I could be wrong. May you know maybe you know there can be multiples two or three but I I kind of think that eventually people are going to gravitate to whoever whoever wins this race whoever develops the application I think a bulk of the world will move in that direction. So again I you know as an investor I kind of want to have a few fishing lines out in the water because I don't I'm not smart enough to know who's going to win this race. >> Well so this is okay. So a couple things. So thank you for that explanation. So, so sort of GPU is the generalist, TPU is the specialist. >> Right. >> Right. Um, and >> that's a much better way to say it. I could have done that, been done with it. [laughter] >> No worries. No worries. Um, do you know with TPUs like uh you said, oh, you know, if you're going to do just just AI, you know, TPUs might do it, but is there an AI TPU or or is TPU, you know, specific functions within AI? like, okay, for an AI agent that does X, we've got this TPU, right? Is is it is it sort of task specific like that? >> Yes. So, so you're now you're starting to step a little bit beyond my knowledge base, and I'm probably sure you've got some viewers that are much more familiar or have a deeper understanding of this than I do. >> You folks just chime in in the comments area. >> But, but yes, my general understanding is is these are very applicationspecific type processing. So again, you know, I could build a TPU in theory. I could build a TPU for different functions, but it's it's very application specific. >> Okay. So a couple of things. So [clears throat] first, competition. So I mean, Lance, I think for a couple years now, you know, we we've been sort of predicting that, hey, at some point, uh, you know, companies are going to look at all the the gobs of of revenues and profits that that Nvidia's making and they're going to get into this space, right? Um, And so that's starting to happen now. So this is one thing to note which is hey competition is now getting to a material level for Nvidia. And when you have competition I mean it's it's it's great for innovation. Um it's not necessarily great for profits right because competitors basically start competing away each other's profits right as they try to be price competitive in the market. So this could be an interesting new era in AI where you know maybe pro future profit margins need to be marked down because there's more entrance in this space. >> Mh. >> Um so we'll see. Now I'm I'm I'm kind of talking out of my league here but um I share your thoughts about kind of the Highlander analogy, Lance, which is >> you know we've we saw this happen in the internet where you had big generalists like Yahoo. You know, I worked for Yahoo for a number of years and Yahoo lost its its leadership in an increasing number of verticals as vertical specialists emerged who really captured that space. So, Amazon and e-commerce, you know, Facebook and and social media, YouTube and video, I mean, just the list is is endless. Um uh the reason why those vertical leaders kind of walked away with the PI was because of network externalities where somebody said hey look this this guy's beginning to develop the best solution in the space. So out of all the choices I want to use that one obviously and then the more people that chose that it became more valuable because that's where the audience was and it created this virtual virtuous cycle. I can definitely see the same thing happening with AI, which is who [snorts] who wants the less smart AI? You just want the best answer to your question, right? So, as as a public perception begins to emerge that you know what, it's Claude or it's ChatGpt or it's Gemini or it's EX or XAI, um Grock, I guess is what they call it. Um that's where the audience is going to go. And then, you know, where the audience and the revenues go, they'll just roll that into more R&D and making the product even better. And it kind of begins to to spiral away from the rest of the competitors. So, it's the the competition landscape is going to be interesting because it might be more competition for a while and then less competition as you've got one one leader emerging at the end. >> Yeah. Well, you know, you just think of it, you know, it's kind of easy to understand what you're saying, which is correct. Just look at internet search browsers. I mean, yeah, there's, you know, there's Microsoft Edge. Yeah, there's, you know, uh, Opera, there's Firefox, there's a bunch of different browsers, but when it comes down to the end of the day, the vast majority of usership is Chrome, >> right? And >> Safari is somewhat big, but probably search engines is probably a better analogy because >> Yeah. Yeah. Or search engines. Yeah. I mean, I'm just saying is that, you know, there's, you know, it doesn't mean that there's not going to be other AIs, and I don't want to imply that not that all the other AIs are just going to go away, but there's going to be one dominant victor out of this that will have a vast majority of the market share. >> Yeah. >> For your reasons. And I think a part of that's going to come to whoever figures out, you know, whichever artificial intelligence figures out, and this is one thing, you know, we talked a little bit about Google and Yahoo last week, you know, how how Google went to Yahoo and said, "Hey, why don't you buy our search engine?" and Yahoo was like, "No, we don't need you." Um, >> trust me, as a as a former shareholder, Yahoo, I ru that decision on a daily basis. >> Uh, so yeah, so Google figures out Adwords and changes the whole marketing game. And I and I and that's one of the things that I think will separate out who wins the AI space is who figures out whatever processes there that there that there is. is kind of like the AdWords for artificial intelligence >> provides the tools, the backdrop, and the structure to allow companies to monetize AI. And you know, I think whoever figures that out is probably going to win the race. [clears throat] >> Well, look, I've got a couple ideas that you're sparking here, but I'm I'm so much not an expert in the space. I'm just >> You both for the time being. Yeah. >> All right. Well, look, if we can, um, let's, uh, let's go to your true area of excellence, which is what's going on in the markets. Le, let's let's look at the markets in general. U, but also maybe let's just take a quick look at Nvidia and Google stocks as well. um because uh I haven't looked at them since last week, but my sense here, Lance, is at least at this moment in time, it seems like Nvidia is still kind of um recapturing its its legs beneath it where Google just seems to be freaking off to the races. >> Well, yeah. Again, so so here's Nvidia. um you know it's it's you know if this thing and again it's always important to keep things in a bit of perspective and you know every time there's a bit of a correction we touched on this last week and every time that a stock corrects it's we've got to have a we need to as investors we always have to come up with a rationalization why is the dollar going down oh we're we're debasing the currency well you forget it had a huge rally before the decline so you know things get overbought and then you're going to get a reversal right >> we had this huge rally in Nvidia that started back in April of this year. So, you know, we're having a bit of correction. That should not be surprising. But again, as investors, we always need a reason. Why is it going down? Well, it's because, you know, the AI or this or that or the other thing. In reality, you were three standard deviations above long-term means and very overbought. And now you're getting a decent pullback. You're clo not yet. And I and I wouldn't necess we we bought some stocks this past week. Um, but we didn't buy Nvidia yet, but we're probably going to add to Nvidia here soon. We're waiting for kind of some signals to trigger, but you're now getting decently oversold. So, the opportunity, you know, where investors go wrong is that they're always buying stocks when they're very overbought. It's like, oh, I got to get in. It's going up. It's going up. I got to get in. Um, you know, it's always better to kind of wait for a pullback, get a better entry point, and those type of things. So, you know, the the dynamic, you know, looking at the earnings, the fundamentals, the whole story behind Nvidia, there's nothing wrong with the company. This is just simply a price correction of overbought conditions. And we're likely going to see this stock base here a bit and then turn up and you'll have a much better, you know, kind of entry point to add shares to your portfolio. But to your point, Google has just been what just went off to the races and we actually took profit >> after having the same rocket ride since May that that Nvidia had. >> Yeah. But exactly. But a lot of this was around, you know, what was going on with their with kind of their the the Gemini and their AI space and, you know, this kind of, you know, kind of performance issues. But this stock was extremely overbought now and and we actually took Google. Google was our largest position in our portfolio and we trimmed it back this past week to target weight because when you look at this on a weekly basis um you have had this parabolic move higher here. You're more than three standard deviations above long-term weekly moving averages. And previously when you have these type of kind of very overbought conditions, you get decent corrections uh in the stock. So again, I still want to own it, but you're ex you you've been on a relative strength basis, a momentum basis, you're extremely overbought here. You're going to get some type of corrective action in Google at some point here. Probably pull the stock back into the mid200s. Wouldn't be a surprise, maybe even a little bit lower. Um, and then you'll have another good opportunity to buy it. But, you know, that's why again, that's why we took profits out of that position this past week was because primarily of this technical overbought condition. We still have the stock long term. We think that they're going to be a dominant player long term, but you're going to have corrections in these positions from time to time. >> Yeah. Okay. So, a couple questions here. First, you said Google was your was your largest position. Yeah. >> Before you started trimming it. Um, but uh I'm guessing it became your largest position because of this price action, not because you were deliberately trying to overweight it. >> Well, no, no. Yeah, we So, we will overweight and underweight stocks. um because of tactical positioning reasons. Um and so we'll adjust the weights in the portfolio. But you know, as we've talked about before, when we position a a stock within a portfolio, we have a base target rate. So every position in the portfolio can have a maximum of a 5% weight, can have a minimum of 1%. So it has a range that it can work in. >> So we'll identify a target weight for that stock. So let let's say that um a good example was Meta. you started adding Meta to the portfolio here o during this whole kind of week period um over the last month or two. So that target weight for that for Meta in the portfolio is 4 and a half%. That's our target weight. We started at one and we've been building into it. So now this week we added to it again on this pullback and we're now up to target weight on that now. So if if if Meta grows to be four and a half to five, five and a half or six then we'll trim it back to four and a half. Mhm. >> That's what happened with Google. Google was a 4% weight. It went to almost six and we trimmed it back back to target. So, you know, again, we're still long the position. We just took profits out of it. Put that put that money in into other positions that, you know, maybe are in a little bit better position technically right now, but it's just manage and it does and that serves two purposes. One, it manages the risk in the portfolio, but two, it's a forced process to take profits so that when downturns occur, we just don't wind up giving up all of our gains. >> Right. Right. Yeah. It's like to your gardening analogy, it's when the tomato plant gives you a surfitit of tomatoes, well, you take at least some of them, right? Right. >> Otherwise, they just rot on the vine, right? So, >> Exactly. Yeah. Um, okay. So, here's here's sort of where I'm going um narrative-wise. Mhm. >> So, like I said, last week there was a lot of constrnation that like, oh my gosh, maybe the AI trade is is topping out here, right? Um, it doesn't seem to be, and we're going to get the S&P in just a second, but what I am sort of detecting, and I'm curious if you're hearing the same thing, is is look, look, you said earlier, there's nothing wrong with Nvidia, you know, no worries. And there are people that might disagree with you on that because of the story >> makes market >> the market but also just like the news cycles that we've had right around um the circular financing and the sketchy you know some people are saying are sketchy accounting things and practices and stuff like that right >> so one of the things I'm detecting I think I'm detecting is >> hey doesn't doesn't matter if the bloom is starting to come off the Nvidia rose because you know the we've got this rising superstar now in the space again in Google and so therefore the AI trade is fine because we might have you know our lead sled dog might slow a little bit but then the guy behind him is picking it up and it's going to start driving forward from that so I just want to see are you sort of detecting that same sort of narrative in the market right now? >> Not not really. um you know because again we're still you know we're still just looking at this from a technical flows basis as well and you know again you know we we're correcting really overbought conditions we had this massive run so again this bit of a pullback look nobody likes pullbacks in the markets right if everybody would be happy if just markets went up every day and we never had a pullback or a correction right so >> but every time there's a correction we have to know why and we have to rationalize why that's occurring and so we come up with a lot of these stories that occur. And if there's any piece of news, remember we've had deepse u we've had the the AI trade was dead back in July of 2024. You know, every time we have these these pullbacks from overbought conditions, we got to have a narrative for it. But if you take a look at earnings growth, the trend of growth, the profitabilities of these things, you know, those are still growing exponentially. We're not seeing any real material slowdown in margins or anything else. Now, eventually that's going to occur. It's just a function of time. The margin that Nvidia can generate on chips is going to shrink. There will be other competitors that come to market. There will be a shift in the market tenor in one direction or the other and they're going to have to reduce margins in order to to continue demand. That's just a function of how markets are going to work. But that's probably another year or so out before we start seeing any material impact at this point. Um but yeah, you know this you also have to remember um we also still have very much the passive indexing effects. Nvidia is 8% of the index. So every time somebody says, "Oh, look, you know, I'm going to buy the AI trade or I'm going to the index is going up. I'm going to buy the index." $8 of every hundred are going into Nvidia. So that's also another, you know, problem that we have with the markets that continues to defeat these bullish narratives and everybody keeps forgetting. Everybody keeps coming up this the market's overbought, they're overvalued, they're they're this, that, and the other thing. But everybody's dismissing this this power of this passive indexing cycle that we're in that just continues to deflate the markets. And we saw this last week is last week, lots of pressure on the markets. On Monday, retail buyers showed up in force and started buying the markets again, >> right? And I think the reason for that though is it's like because it's just so constant. It's like the sun that newspapers report that the sun rose this morning because we all take it for granted, right? It's the same thing in the past there. Okay. So, that that's fine. And again, like, you know, all I'm trying to say is I think Google's strength has has prevented people maybe from freaking out more than they might have about the weakness that we saw in a video last week. >> No, no doubt. No doubt. >> Yeah. Uh but you mentioned something important too which is um uh I think you mentioned it but but we are we're seeing some capital rotate inside the AI trade right Google is is seeing a lot of love right now >> but we are starting to see some rotation into other sectors >> at this point right the we're starting to see the breath start to I don't want to say getting better but it's getting less bad and we're starting to see some sectors I think like um biotech and pharma are two of them that are you know starting to actually see some love where they haven't seen love for a while right and and how notable is that to you because that that seems to be healthy >> no it is and and we wrote about this >> and I think you and I even discussed this this was probably two three months ago is that you know healthc care was extremely beaten up and we said that when this market rotates a bit look for a rotation into the healthc care financials and defensives as an offset for that correction in technology because technology was extremely overbought going into really October. And so we talked about this whole idea of the sector rotation. We had bought Eli Liy, we had bought ABV and some other stocks and the reason was for that riskoff rotation that occurs and you know and I've showed you this stuff on Simplevisor before on the on the sector analysis that you know from overbought to oversold >> and that's and that's what what has occurred and you know this is why you know again we go back to always talk about portfolio management is and I I get this you know I got email questions from clients and we had phone calls in the office like I don't understand why we own Eli Liy it's not doing anything or Costco or Walmart, whatever it is, right? I don't understand why they're doing anything. We need more of the technology stocks because that's where well, when you get these corrections and by the way, this whole correction was like four and a quarter% peak the trough, right? I mean, you know, can we just please keep your, you know, keep your shorts in your pants, right? Just, you know, just keep things in perspective. But when they occur, you know, we start getting all these phone calls like, "Oh my gosh, we got to get out of the market." and and it's like look, your portfolio is down like half a percent from the peak because that rotation into those defensives was holding up the boat, right? And so those those defensive positions, they don't necessarily always work, but when they do work, that's when you need them to work the most. >> Yeah. Yeah. I always say that uh good financial advisors, they always earn their stripes um you [clears throat] know uh during the time where they seem to be missing out on the party the most. >> Right. >> Right. That's when everybody is really angry with you because you're you're not willing to just go whole hog in whatever's popular at the moment. Right. Um, but it's that it's that self-discipline to abide by the the time proven tactics um that saves your vacant when everybody gets surprised by a market's reversal, >> right? >> Yeah. Um Okay. So, um uh All right. Well, let's let's if we can let's pull up the S&P. So, just just show us where we are. And in this as you're doing that key question I just want you to address is um so for for a brief moment there um it looked like the markets might be turning risk off um but now it seems like risk on is is is certainly back on the table um and not just in the AI sector um we're seeing you know assets like Bitcoin you know that that got pretty woped last week after a few prior weeks of weakness I think it's up like 10 grand a coin from its bottom that it hit last week. So is is is the market turning back risk risk on here? >> Yeah. Yeah. Abs. Well, and and you see this. So this is the um S&P 500 versus the VIX. So this is your volatility index >> VIX and black obviously. >> Yeah. The black line is the VIX and and so yeah, you can just see that just, you know, as we were coming down to test that 100 day moving average uh last week, volatility was spiking. That was the fear in the markets. And now we've completely reversed that. We're back down into, you know, 15 16 range on the VIX in just three days. So, so yeah, this is very much this risk on a now again with all the stuff that we're talking about, keep with a grain of salt that there is nobody trading this week. All the big traders are gone. They're at the Hamptons laying out by the beach, whatever they're doing. This is all inmates running the asylum right now. So, >> so this could change a lot on Monday is what you're saying. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, you you know, anything could happen next week. Now, speaking of next week, though, we do begin the last trading month of the year. Now, there's some important stuff that's going to happen. In the first two weeks, I would expect a little bit of a sell-off in the markets and not nec doesn't have to happen, but a pullback to the 20-day moving average, something like that would not be surprising because in the first two weeks of of the month, and again, we'll get a we'll get a lot of headlines is like, see the AI trades over, whatever it is, it's mutual funds distributing all their capital gains and interest and dividends for the year. They have to distribute all that at the end of the year. that tends to occur right in the first two weeks of December. So you typically get a bit of pullback in the markets in the first two weeks of December. And if you own mutual funds, you're going to see your mutual fund drop in value for a day. And and you're going to you're going to wake up one morning, look at your account, and your mutual funds are all going to be down a dollar or two. And you're like, "What happened? You know, the market's up today and all my mutual funds are down." Because they just they that's the distribution. And in a couple of days, you're either going to get, if you dividend reinvest, you're going to get shares back or if you don't dividend reinvest, which I encourage you to do, you'll get cash back. >> Yeah. >> Um, and you can reinfor I I looked at my portfolio and saw one of my holdings um wasn't a mutual fund, but it was Bareric was down like six something percent. I like what's going on with that? It's a big company. It's a big and then it was the it was the dividend payout. >> Exactly. So, that's going to happen in a couple of days. It'll all balance itself out, so it'll be fine. So, just don't freak out about it. but also just be aware this is going to happen in the first couple of weeks of December. Um, so you normally get a little bit of a pullback and then that sets you up for the the year-end rally where all the mutual funds, the hedge funds, the the pension managers, everybody needs to make sure they have all the right stocks on their books for year-end reporting because when that report goes out, they need to make sure that they own the Google, the Apple, the Nvidia, whatever it is, they need to make sure that it's on their books. They may buy it December 29th, but they say, "Oh, yeah, we don't." When you look at our holdings, yeah, we own all these companies. Um, we own all the favorites. So, you know, that's going to happen last couple of uh couple of weeks of the month. And that typically is why you get the Santa Claus rally into the second trading day of January. >> Okay. >> So, just kind of that's just kind of the look ahead. >> Yeah. And so, in a nutshell, it sounds like you were thinking that that is the default outcome from your expectation here. >> That's the that's the statistical norm. Does that mean it has to happen that way? Absolutely not. Are there years that that didn't happen that way? Absolutely. >> But statistically speaking, about 70% of the time, that's the way it works out. >> Got it. Meaning with your positioning there at RAA, you are planning on that more not more likely than not happening. It's you're you're not like battening down the hatches because you're expecting something different. >> Correct. Well, that's why we we added to we did some buying very on Monday. We did some buying uh in the markets on Monday morning and we did we trimmed Google and we did some buying across the board. Rebalanced our dividend equity growth model, you know, to take advantage of some of these cheaper prices because again the default expectation is that based on averages, historical norms, etc. that markets are likely going to move higher through Thanksgiving and into the end of the year. So we were just positioning ahead of that. >> Okie do. Um All right. So, uh, anything else to say about the, uh, the S&P here? >> Yeah. So, um, so this is a couple of things. One, another, this is also kind of bullish for the markets. Uh, so this is the market. Um, we've gotten back above the 50. We we had violated the 50 and and the 20-day moving average on this correction. Came down, touched the 100 day moving average, which is right where the bottom of this of this correction was. And now I've rallied back, regain the 50 and 20-day. That's bullish. We've turned money flow back positive. That's bullish because money's coming back into the markets. >> We've trigger triggered a momentum buy signal um from below zero which is also good. That now gives the market some room to run here over the next month and relative strength is improving after getting decently oversold. So there's a lot of bullish tailwind for the next month behind the markets. Now again month not next year, right? for the next month is what we're talking about. There's just a decent setup now because of this correction. We've had a that three that four or five percent correction we just went through provides a very decent backdrop now for a rally for the next month. Now again, once we get into 2026, I'm probably going to write the curb your enthusiasm article again for next year because I think we're going to see more like we saw this year. I think we're going to see more volatility again next year. >> Okay. Uh, two things. One, the negative divergence that we saw over the past month or so, >> is that now over? Because it does seem like all these trends are now moving in the same direction. >> Right. So, this this blue line at the bottom you'll see is is that was the negative divergence in relative strength. So, the market was rising as relative strength was declining and that was why we were being a little bit more cautious in portfolios because that always precedes a correction of some sort. sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, but always precedes a correction. So, now that we've gotten that break in relative strength, got it oversold. Now, we can come back up. Now, what would be ideal is if we can get relative strength back above 70 and break that negative divergence. That's, you know, because again, that's, you know, that negative divergence line's going to run to about 65ish right now. So, if we can get above that kind of trend line and get RSI back into positive territory, that would be even more supportive for the markets. >> Okay. Um All right. And just because you brought it up, um in the words of the great Yogi Barrow, predictions are hard, especially about the future. >> Exactly. >> You wrote Curb Your Enthusiasm at the beginning of 2025, >> right? >> And you warned of that it was more it was going to likely be a more volatile year than we had had. And you were correct on that. So, right. >> But I think you you were sort of setting an expectation that like, hey, we've had two blockbuster year in the markets. Um, we're probably not going to get a third. >> If we end up riding rising into the end of the year here, I I think we're going to be notably ahead of what your price target that you guys set at the beginning of the year. So, my question for you is there's no criticism here because it's so predictions are hard, >> right? How surprised are you at how this year is ending versus what you were thinking when you wrote that piece to be >> so when I wrote that piece I said expect 8 to 10% for the year not another 20 um we're going to be close to 20 if this market r so we're 16% right now for the year we'll be close to 20% again if this market rallies into the new year we'll be 18%ish like close enough for for jazz right um that is surprising I mean triple backto back 20% gain years are not uncommon are not I shouldn't say they're they're not normal but they're also they happen we we've seen these before and the more years that we stack up of these outsiz gains the bigger potential that you have for a larger correction at some point in the future so again it's just with anything we're we're stretching weekly trends and and monthly trends to very large extremes and I think that's something that you know we need to at least be cognizant of here's a a weekly chart of the S&P 500 as an example. So, this is this this is this is the uh Spyder ETF. So, this is SPY. A little bit different than the SPX, but it's close enough. Momentum wise, we're very elevated, trying to trigger a little bit of a sell signal here. Last time we had that sell signal trigger was going into basically April of this year. So and again markets can remain overbought for a very long period of time as we saw kind of all in in 2024. Markets can remain very elevated, very overbought for a while. That's the problem with weekly indicators is that you know for instance a lot of people go oh you're triggering the sell signal. I need to get out of the markets. You got to be really careful with that because you had a whole year where markets were flipping back and forth at very high levels and markets just you had corrections right 3 5% corrections but the market trended higher. So this is not a buy sell signal. It's a bit of a warning signal that we're going to have a a bout of higher volatility. So So again, I still expect as we get into 2026, earnings estimates are still way too elevated relative to what I think will actually come to fruition. Um analysts are very optimistic about earnings growth next year and particularly they are very optimistic about earnings growth for the small cap midcap space. They're expecting 50% earnings growth next year. >> Ridiculously optimistic. Yeah, >> with an economy that's potentially slowing down next year. So, you know, falling, you know, if inflation continues to fall and the economy slows down, that's not great for profits because again, you need inflation for profits. That's, you know, the inflation run we had was a big boost for profits, but you know, that's kind of been backtracking a bit here. So, so again, I'm going to, you know, again, I'm not going to specifically rewrite the Kirby enthusiasm article. told me to do a spin-off of it, but it'll be the same idea, which is, hey, I would expect another year. If if I'm positioning for this year, I wouldn't go into it blindly. And that was and really the Kirby enthusiasm article was was really just that. It was don't go into this year blindly and just be long risk because we're going to have some volatility this year because of these very overbought conditions. And it took till April, but it showed up, right? >> And and I think that's going to be the case this year. We're very extended. were very overbought on long on both weekly and monthly basis. That increases the risk for a pickup in volatility and potentially lower returns and and valuations are elevated. You know, we we all know that, but valuations are a terrible timing indicator, but it does suggest that you'll have lower returns at some point in the future. >> Okay. Um, so let me let me ask you this, and I'm not trying to be um I'm not I'm not trying to be uh intentionally pessimistic here, but >> [clears throat] >> um over the long run, markets mean revert, >> right? And we've talked about this a lot, right? >> Y >> it is rare to have three blockbuster backto backtoback years in the markets. So how concerned does that make you about 2026 just sort of from a math standpoint? Well, from again mean reversions take a catalyst of some sort. Sure. Right. And so we need some type of catalyst to show up in the market and that could be could be a credit event. >> Right. But as you say, these catalysts are always the bullet you don't see coming. >> Exactly. It could be geopolitical, could be anything. But >> the short term, we don't know. We don't know what it's going to be. We don't know when it's going to happen. Yeah. >> Right. But what it does have to have is it has to have the ingredients that makes market say, "Oh my gosh, all those forward earnings estimates that we thought we were going to get are no longer valid. It's going to be something much smaller because of this event." Whatever it is, that's got to be a thing. That's why generally when we have these geopolitical events that occur and it's like, oh, this, you know, impact with, you know, Ukraine or this impact with the Middle East, whatever it is, pick an event. A lot of times those may matter to the markets for just a moment or two. Like a day or two is like, "Oh my gosh, we're so concerned about this." And then markets go, "Yeah, but that's got nothing to do with earnings. We're back off to chasing stocks." >> So the thing that creates that larger mean reversion is something that changes that forward outlook dynamic for earnings growth. And I don't know what and again the problem is you never know what that's going to be until >> it actually occurs, right? >> But but but to your point, so having said that, here let me share a chart with you. So this is a monthly >> you're pulling it up. Let me just give an analogy. The way I'm kind of looking at it, which might be wrong, >> is it's the Jenga tower, right? >> It's you don't know which block is going to tip over the tower, >> but you know the longer the game is going on and people are pulling from lower and low like at some point you know it's going to come, right? And so it doesn't mean it's going to come with the next block. It might not come with the next 10 blocks, but you're like the longer we go into this game, the more worried I get that this thing's going to topple. >> No, I agree. And that's my worry right now. So this is a monthly chart of the S&P 500. Now this goes back to 2005 2006. This is a terrible chart to time markets with. Absolutely terrible. Do not look at this chart and go, "Oh my gosh, I need to get out of the markets right now because it's all going to about to come peeling apart." Don't do that because you're going to be frustrated if you do that. But what this is, this shows a trend channel that we've been in since 2009. So this big drop off back over here, this is the 2008 financial crisis. Doesn't really show up anymore, but you know, there it is. Um, that was a 50% correction. Since then, we've been in a very defined bullish trend. Whenever we get to the top of this bullish trend and get very overbought on a relative strength basis, we have a correction back to the bottom line of that trend, which also happens to be the the the running four four-year moving average, which if I move this line, you can see this this orange dash line. That is the 4-year moving average for that market. So, again, that's been kind of the running trend. Right now, we are back up to the top of this this trend channel. very overbought on a monthly basis. Um, but again, as we've seen before, this was the peak right before the April correction. We were overbought, had that correction, came back down to the uh one-year moving average, bounced off that, then then rallied back up. But here's a good example of what I mean by staying overbought. We kind of first triggered this overbought condition in 2021 and you stayed overbought and the market contin the trend channel. >> Yeah. >> For about a year before it finally correct. Then you had Russia Ukraine and and the markets corrected back to the four-year moving average. So my my point is and again this is and to answer your question is that this is why going into next year I'm a bit more concerned about a pick up in volatility potentially lower returns because you just have a very extended and overbought market. Everybody's in the pool. If somebody gets out of the pool, you're going to potentially get a stampede of people getting out of the pool. All they got to do is get out and yell shark and everybody comes out, right? So that's that's the risk. I was doing an interview recently with um with uh Tom Thomas Thornton uh from hedgei sorry from hedge fund telemetry. Sorry Thomas, I didn't mean to get the wrong the wrong name. Um but he's with Hedge Fund telemetry and I was having this conversation with him and we're using the theater analogy which is you know everybody's in the theater watching the movie. you may want to move closer to the exit because if something starts to happen, those exits out of the markets get very narrow. And and Thomas said, well, it's also we're in a movie theater with very obese people because everybody's now leveraged. So now that exit gets even smaller because now all these obese people are trying to get out of these doors that are cramming the the door space. And he it's a it's it's not politically correct, but it's a good analogy because >> a fair analogy. Yeah. >> Yeah. Because now we've got everybody not only long stocks, we've got over 1 point we've got roughly about 1.2 trillion in margin debt. That's not even to mention the amount of money in in levered options. Not to mention the amount of money in levered ETFs, which they're trying to bring to markets now. 5x ETFs. So, we just have leverage. And then of course if I have a leveraged ETF that I bought on margin, you know, I'm even leveraging that up even more. So we have so much leverage in the markets that at some point if something triggers a selloff, you're going to get a decent correction and and a pullback to the the 4-year moving average is not uncommon. We've ke for the last 15 years, we've tested that four-year moving average numerous times. So, a a retest if if you were going to do it today, said, "Lance, where's the four-year moving average?" That's at 49.90 right now. >> Wow. That's pretty. And I know what you're going to say. I know what you're going to say next. >> Yeah. And I know what you're going to say is is is even if we hit that, that's a 2,000 drop in the S&P, right? >> Yeah. You're still in a bull market. >> Still be in the bullish uptrend. >> Yeah. Yeah. It' just be a correction. It wouldn't be a bare market at all. >> Right. Meaning if we did have a bare market, not that you're saying we would, but but that but the pain would be severe because it we know it's below 2,00 points from here. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. Okay. So you again but again my question is wait let me just reiterate one thing. >> Sure. >> If you're listening to this video right now, do not go sell your portfolio based on that piece of analysis. It is a terrible terrible timing analysis. It's something to pay attention to from a riskmanagement perspective though. >> Got it. And and this is why we have you on every week and and you know calling letting us know where the action is heading. >> And to your point, Lance, which you've said many times is, you know, corrections um especially big ones, you know, generally, not always, but they generally tend to be events. Um so, you know, bull markets tend to be more processes. They take many many years. In many case, you've been pretty much in a bold uptrend for the past 15 years as your chart just showed. Um but the point being is as uh when you get into this elevated territory it's still a bad timing indicator because as you said it can last for a year or more right and so you and I have seen lots of people who consume a lot of videos like this and say ah okay it's overstretched therefore I'm going to go two things I'm I'm going to take an extreme position by either shorting this market >> right and then you just get zorched as your shorts go to zero as this thing remains elevated way longer than you think. Or to to the point you bring up a lot, people say, "Well, I'm just getting out of this thing cuz I'm too uncomfortable." And then you sit in cash and then the market just moves on you and then you're stuck in that, "Oh gosh, the market caught fire again. I'm all here in cash. Now prices are even higher. Am I going to be the idiot who buys in right before this correction?" You just sit there, >> you know, basically paralyzed and indecision as the market just keeps on going higher. >> That's that's right. Well, and that's what happens to this is why most DIY DIY investors, not all, but most DIY investors underperform markets over time. They buy high, they sell low, they do do all the common things. They get out of markets too soon, they get into markets too late, don't get into markets at all, you know, and and this is this is why it's important to if if you have to admit to yourself, are you good at managing your money? If you're good at managing your own money, playing with markets, avoiding large draw downs, those type of things, fantastic. Do it, do it yourself. And we, you know, Simplevisor is a great set of tools to help you manage your own money. But for most people, they don't have the time, the discipline, or the patience to manage their money well. And they don't have the the the tool set to work with. And, you know, we talked about simple things. If you can't sit down and write an investment policy statement, you you need to go find somebody to manage your money. You should understand the very basics of an investment policy statement if you're going to manage your own portfolio. >> Yeah. You Well, you're singing for my song sheet now, too, which is I always tell people that the very first and most important decision you need to make as an investor is what type of investor am I? >> Yeah. >> Right. Do I have the skills, the constitution, everything to be a good DIY investor? >> And and hopefully the self honesty too, right? Because, you know, you got to really ask yourself if I'm doing it on my own, am I being successful? Am I am I doing better than I would otherwise? Right? And and there's a lot of people who I think it takes them a while before their ego lets them admit, you know, maybe even though I'm really smart in this area, maybe I'm not so smart in this one. >> One one of the funniest things that happens in our office is that we have couples come in all the time. So, the husband and wife will come in and she's sitting there and he's he's there and he's talking about his portfolio and all, you know, everything he's got going on his portfolio and then inevitably he'll get up and go to the bathroom or something and the wife says, "He's terrible. He's terrible." [laughter] Uh, man, I could take this uh you're putting your finger on something that's um I'll just mention really briefly. Um so, I think I told you when when um I went to the New Orleans Investment Conference, um my wife Ashley came with me. she's now starting to to come on these work trips with me now that we're empty nesters and because [clears throat] she was coming um the the guys at at New Orleans if you're if you're coming there as a speaker they give you the option to do a workshop and I normally don't do one because I I don't really have a product like that to to to sell >> but I said you know my wife's coming with me and she's a therapist and you know she gets lots of questions about couples about you know related to money as as all therapists do just as a lot of financial adviserss like you get questions from couples, you know, you get to be sort of a couple's uh therapist part-time in your job as well, right? Um, and I said, you know, we we could do like a an interactive workshop if folks are interested on basically how to talk about money without blowing up your relationship. And the uh the folks at the conference were like, that's kind of, you know, never thought about doing something like that. I don't know. And like, let's just let's just run up the flag pole and see. And we ended up having a surprising number of people that came to the workshop and and you know [clears throat] we're just sort of like wow I I I can't believe we can talk about this like let's it was actually I thought from my perspective and from the feedback we got a really constructive experience. So where I'm going with this is um I I am thinking about maybe how to provide a little bit of that virtually. So folks watching if if that's something that uh might be helpful to you in your relationship um uh stay tuned. Uh I'll have a little bit more to say about that but but you know very common things you know which came you know certainly came up in that that workshop are like there's the person who's shouldering the responsibility of managing the family's wealth right either they're the DIY investor or they're the one working with the adviser and a lot of times their spouse is not interested in participating in that and will sometimes say like oh don't worry I trust you it'll be fine but they don't really realize that that puts a lot of pressure and weight on the person who's managing the family's finances and they feel >> they feel that pressure, they feel that weight, they feel that stress, and they feel isolated in it because they're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm alone in this." Right? On the other hand, you know, you'll oftentimes have one spouse feeling controlled by the other because the other one is holding too tightly to the reigns of of managing all the family's money or you whatever. You just have lots of differences of opinion around money and there's a lot of emotion wrapped up in that. I need to tell you that, Lance, because you see that all the time. But if somebody's watching this and they say, "Yeah, I'm maybe I'm I'm hearing >> my own relationship in this conversation." Uh, like I said, stay tuned. We we may actually have some um some online interactive workshops that that might be useful to you. So, stay tuned. >> Absolutely. >> All righty. Um, so we're getting near the hour, so I do want to start wrapping up. Um, at the risk of taking a perfectly nice conversation and ruining it. Um, can we just for a second, Lance, talk about the precious metals because I believe today, uh, they're in breakout. Uh, certainly silver is in breakout. Um, and at times, um, I I know you get painted with a brush as Lance Lance hates gold and hates precious metals. You don't your permanent portfolio and all that stuff. You just like to highlight when you think it's it's overstretched. >> And I want to basically I just want to check in with you to say, hey, is this is this an overstretched moment or is this like a an interesting momentum breakout that that might have some continued upside here? >> Uh, no. Again, you know, as always with with any asset, right? And this is what we've talked about, you know, so many times before is is again when you're managing your money is to pay attention to what kind of goes on, you know, behind the scenes with these assets from a technical basis because the the technical backdrop will keep you out of trouble more often than not. And I'm I'm trying to bring up a chart here real quick for you. So, no, you know, so, uh, you know, I guess about probably three or four episodes on, you know, on the show with you, um, I was telling said, hey, gold's going to be a really good short here at some point. And then we had this really nice correction. Gold prices came back down, touched, you know, basically started flirting with some of these longer term moving averages, which are good. You had a nice correction here. You got, you reversed a big chunk of that big overbought condition. you flushed out a lot of traders, especially people that were kind of trading some on leverage, you kind of flushed a lot of that out. And so you've started kind of basing here. So when you look at relative strength, you're in a bullish mode as long as you're above 50. You get below 50, you've got some other kind of concerns to worry about. So we we've come down, we reversed a lot of that relative strength overbought. We had a big deviation from the the the long-term the 200 day moving average. that was one of the highest deviations we'd seen historically corrected a big chunk of that. Now, we're still deviated from this long-term mean. So, there's still downside risk here. Don't don't be mistaken, but again, you you've worked off enough of that short-term over overbought condition to allow traders to come back in and start trying to speculate on a bottom. And so, you know, there's a reasonable potential for this for gold to rally from here. And so again, if if you're wanting to buy gold, you've got a much better entry point now than you did a few weeks ago to buy gold. But I would be a little bit cautious from the standpoint that you're still deviated from long-term means and that if something, you know, happens, there's still the potential that you could get a a bigger correction in gold prices. Again, it could be a strong rally in the dollar, which runs which affects dollar denominated assets. So, don't, you know, don't go into this expecting that, you know, absolutely there's no downside risk because there's still downside risk here, but you've had enough of a short-term correction to now allow people, particularly, you know, funds and investors that want to own gold for this year. You've got the year-end rally in in commodities, just like you have a year rally in in stocks. So, there's the potential here for a decent rally in both gold stocks as well as oil stocks into the end of the year. >> Yeah. And and actually on that point, you always talk about, you know, part of the year- end rally is that the folks that weren't in the popular trades >> buying them at the end of the year just to show the world, okay, I'm I'm finally in this trade. Um, gold's had a phenomenal year, um, as have the miners in silver. Um, so is your default expectation that they're going to see some additional buying in the last week? >> Wouldn't if we can get kind of the the the bullish footing back under the market, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Okay. And just to connect the dot here, folks, if you did not see the interview with Michael Oliver uh earlier in the week, um Lance, he's a technical analyst and went through a number of charts uh spent a lot of time actually on gold, silver, and the and the miners. >> He is extremely bullish technically on them. Uh because some of these key indicators that he looks at, they're these ratios. Uh gold had entered breakout. silver and the miners were like just poised at the beginning of this week. And he said if they can close the month above the the breakout threshold um then then it should be game on. Given the price action in silver and the miners since Michael was on here, I'm pretty confident that we are closing the month above those breakout levels. So if Michael's logic proves to be correct, you know, then those could have a really good strong performance here to the end of the year. Again, time will tell. [sighs] >> Um all right. All right. Well, look, as we wrap up here, Lance, um, trades. You've you mentioned you have made some over the past couple days. So, what have you got? >> I've got I've got two things that I need to go that I want to go through with you. Um, we'll do trades first. Um, okay. >> But I had more of a concerning uh email earlier this week that that I I think that we need to actually kind of just spend just a quick moment talking about. But uh trade-wise this week um we uh reduced our position in Google because it was extremely overweight. We added to our position in Meta. We reduced our position in the healthcare stocks. Remember we talked about this big rally in healthcare. So we reduced Eli Liy and Abby back to their target weights. Uh again those are big positions in our portfolio. So those are you know all these positions are some of the largest holdings in our portfolio. So when we make adjustments they have an impact on the portfolio. Um, we also added to Black Rockck and JP Morgan in our in our financials because with the Fed cutting rates, that should benefit the financials as well. So, we did add to those positions. Um, and our dividend equity growth model, we rebalanced our top six holdings. So, that that's that dividend growth model is a little bit different than your average, you know, kind of aristocrat model. It owns the six largest stocks in the e in in the S&P 500 to replicate the growth of the S&P 500 because that's where the majority if the market's going up that's where the majority of the growth is going to come from in the index. Um so it owns 30% of the of that portfolio is those six stocks. So those are >> the mag six basically. >> Yeah I have the mag six. Um and then the rest of the portfolio is all dividend yielding stocks. And so we added we brought Apple, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft back up to their 5% target waitings. Had to sell down Google to do that. Um, and then we rebalanced all the other positions of the portfolio back to their normal three and a half% waiting. So we just did a a kind of an early year-end rebalance to just kind of get the portfolio ready on this dip to participate in the in the year- end rally. And so rather than wait till the end of the year to do it, we kind of opportunistically did it now. >> Got it. All right. All right. So, yeah, you you trimmed or rebalanced early. Um Okay. >> All right. Well, look, let's get on to your other topic there. And just just wanted to note, I'm trying to get you out early here. So, if we go No, it's important. I'm say let's do it. Yeah. >> Yeah. No, I got this email earlier this week and and you know, you know, I've talked about this before to to a large degree, which is be careful with what you do with your money. And there's all these investment programs out there. He's like, "Oh, you know, if you'll invest, you know, with me, we're going to make you all these returns." This type of thing. Well, and this particular gentleman, he invested in a crypto fund because, correct, this was when crypto was going up and you could buy all sorts of, you know, non-traded crypto, etc., and you could make all this money. It sounds great. So, we invested a large sum of money with this quote unquote cryptos futures trading company. And >> be clear, we we is him. We is not raia. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, not we. Yeah. We would never do that. Um, no, he invested in this in this. And and the key your key warning sign is when anybody uses WhatsApp, it's 99% chance it's a scam. So as no there there is no US raia investment manager etc that's going to say hey let's talk over WhatsApp and and again Adam you have a lot of imposttors I have a ton of imposters on on X and other places and they're like hey contact me on WhatsApp and I'll give you my latest trades that's not me we don't there's a whole security issue around WhatsApp so if there's >> sorry I have that telegram to your uh >> add to your never used it but I see the scammers use it a lot. Yeah. >> Yeah. Absolutely. It's almost that is your biggest clue when they say contact me by WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. It's probably a scam. Don't do it. And do some research. Anybody that is a registered investment advisor, a licensed broker, whatever it is, you can go to the SEC or FINRA and look them up and tell if they're and like I can go and look up Adam because he's registered with the um the SEC. Yeah. And I can go through broker check and I can see Adam, right? You know, he's licensed, right? So that's that's the important thing. So, make sure you're the whole point is is before you go send your life savings somewhere, do a little bit of work. Just don't chase promises of huge returns because that's where greed gets you into trouble. >> Okay. So, you got three really important things wrapped up in there, which is if any financial specialist is reaching out to you on social media, forget about WhatsApp or Telegraph or anything. >> Yeah. >> That's that's a 99% chance that it's a fraudster just trying to get your money, right? Um, you know, really good financial advisors, have people seek them out. They're not out there trying to ping random people on the internet. Um, secondly, yeah, do just do your diligence. You should do that about any investment, but certainly any any partner you work with, like working with a financial advisor. So, go search, you know, these public databases that you're talking about, Lance. It's a really easy way as a first filter just to get a sense for if someone's legit or not, right? So, start there. And then third, you know, and I feel terrible for this person. I don't know exactly how much of a percentage of their their wealth they lost, but you know, be risk appropriate in your investment decision-making, right? I mean, crypto, especially any kind of crypto, but especially non- Bitcoin crypto, uh, I mean, that's that's that's way on the far end of the scale in terms of risk. So, I'm not saying don't dabble there, but I'm saying especially if you're not super already knowledgeable about this space. Don't don't put anything more than a few percentage of your your portfolio in there, or else you're just playing with fire. >> Well, you know, there there's a simple rule u that we use and that I use personally. I've used this my whole life is I never in I call it Vegas money. I never invest more into an asset of some sort than I would be willing to lose in Vegas. Mhm. >> So, and and because again, if you always have to assume the worst, you know, we all buy stuff expecting it to go to the moon, which is fantastic, but what if it doesn't? What if it collapses in price? And it happens. It happens in gold. It happens in stocks. It happens in everything, right? And there's the potential for big price declinations to occur in every asset class over time. It's just a function of timing till it occurs. So, just make sure to to Adam's point, you're just managing that risk appropriately. All right. Okay. Well, all right. I'm glad you brought that up, but everybody else just just, you know, perceive the talk and be smart and and, you know, when in doubt, do due diligence to find somebody >> smart to talk to and ask questions. Hey, does this look legit to you? Right. And and I'm going to make this offer for you, Lance, but if someone's getting contacted by somebody like that and they just don't know, they can call your firm and you guys will assess, right? >> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. If you're if somebody's listing you for something, say, "Hey, I well, I had a guy email me the other day and said, you know, I'm talking to this this RAIA in Florida and I can't find the information about them." So, I went and did a broker check on them. They're not registered. So, you know, you could you can do it yourself, but yeah, absolutely. If you've got a question, I'm you and and look, another thing is if you can't find them on broker check, tell them to send you a copy of what's called their ADV. It's Apple David Victor. Their ADV is what they have to file with the registrations. Adam has one, I have one. Say, "Send me your ADV." It's all the the the the details of the firm, how it's registered, what it does, etc., so forth and so on. Just ask for a copy. If they can't send it to you, don't invest with them. >> Don't invest with them. Yeah. But again, folks, and this is, you know, I have these adviserss like Lance on this program for a whole bunch of reasons. Uh, but they're largely to be a resource for you guys, right? I mean when did Lance here shows you how a professional financial adviser that I think is is above my definition of a good quality threshold how they think how they react. Lance is very generous in sharing with that with us every week. But obviously, you know, if you want some some an adviser to work with, I always say then either work with these guys or somebody who's even better than them, right? Um but they're also just here to be a resource. are like, "Hey, you know, before I I make a potentially consequential financial decision, if I'm not really confident in it, let me bounce it off these guys first." So, anyways, Lance, thank you for you and your team for all the the advice and and generous help that you offer to people. >> All right. Well, look, in wrapping up here, um uh so, all right, I I kind of had a rant and all that stuff. We're going to put it aside. Um I'll just mention it really quickly. You can go online um certainly on YouTube and there are explanations of this but um Thanksgiving has a really interesting origin story and part of it Lance is um when the when the the pilgrims came here uh on the Mayflower they had a disastrous first winter here right like like half of them died right >> um and you know there there's a great story about Thanksgiving uh you know giving thanks for making it through all that. Having the the local Indian tribes actually, you know, they they were very instrumental in showing uh the uh pilgrims how to plant corn and prepare for the next next winter and whatnot. But and that was super helpful and I'm sure essential to to the pilgrims surviving over time. But another thing that was essential was when they they landed the the compact that was written on the Mayflower on the journey over was was very much like a a socialist contract where nobody owned anything individually. Um you you all had an equal number of shares in the um you know in the compact if you will. So everybody sort of mutually owned any buildings that were built or the the fields and whatnot. And so what they realized was that the most industrious people were not working to their potential to build what they could build or plant what they could plant because they knew they weren't going to get directly rewarded for it. >> Yeah. >> From socialism, you know, o over the the many centuries and the many times it's been failed. And so William Bradford, the leader of of um the plantation, their Plymouth plantation, he basically implemented property rights and he started giving people direct ownership of their homes and their their fields whatnot. And then once he did, so much more energy was expended by by the individuals on average that they started to actually dig out of the hole of of need and begin to get to plenty. So it it actually is this really interesting story about free markets and capitalism. Yeah. And folks, if you want to hear more about it, like I said, just just go on YouTube and and and type this. You type in I don't know, you know, uh uh pilgrims and free market or whatever, and you you'll get a number of explanations of this. >> No, it's it's a true story. Um real quick before we wrap up, um I just wanted to share this very quickly. Um it's kind of a shameless plug, but Adam's coming in January. So, January 17th is our is our next live summit. We've got Brian Daniel Kang who's the CE chief strategy officer for DeFi Development Corp coming to talk about digital assets, crypto, those type of things. Brian Dunlap with Black Rockck to talk about artificial intelligence, what the future of that's going to look like. Um, some loser named Lance Roberts talk about the markets. Michael Eez will be there. Ed Slott who is America's financial planner talking all about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, what you need to be doing uh to financially plan better. And of course, Adam will be there as well to talk and and spend time. We have a big Q&A section this year, so it's going to be a lot of fun. But tickets went on sale this past week. We've already sold about a quarter of them. Um, and the price will go up as we get closer, too. So, if you want to come and visit, we have a block of hotel rooms set aside at a discounted rate and we're going to have a mixture of the night before. Um, if you want to come to that as well, it'll be that event will be there for you. Visit with everybody before the conference. So, again, that's coming up. Uh, it's January the 17th, but tickets are online. If you go to realinvestmentadvice.com, uh, we've got a link at the top, so you can get your tickets now. >> Okay, that's what I was going to ask. Okay, so the URL is raa.com or sorry, realadvice.com and you'll have a banner or something on the top of the >> There's a banner at the top and a link. >> Okay. Um, well, I have really enjoyed the previous ones and they just seem to get better every year. So, I'm very much looking forward to this one, Lance. >> That' be fun. And your wife's gonna come, so my wife's excited. >> All right, great. It's gonna be It's going to be a good time. And I I like that you expanded it, right? There's the there's sort of a mixer the night before you were saying. >> Yep. Yeah, we have a there's limited tickets for that. We've only got about room for about 30 to 40 people for that mixer. Um so again, those are those those tickets will probably sell out pretty quickly. So again, if you're interested, you need to kind of, you know, get your tickets now. >> Okay. All right. So folks, uh if you want to hang out with Lance and I in person, I think that would be super fun. Uh hope to see you there. So go to real place. >> Make sure you bring your wallet because I think my wife is going to take your wife shopping. So, >> n [laughter] um but uh I might bring my pickle ball paddle if there's anybody that >> There you go. >> Um all right. Uh so just in in wrapping up here um because it is Thanksgiving, I I want to um give a couple quick things I'm thankful for and then then want to ask you if you you want to share the same. Um but [clears throat] uh so you I was reflecting right before I got on with Lance. You know what am I feeling especially grateful for this Thanksgiving this year. Um one is what we have built and are continuing to build together here at Thoughtful Money. And and when I when I say we, I don't mean me. I don't even just mean me and Lance and the other advisers here. I mean everybody, all you viewers. Um this is a platform that is kind of, you know, made for the people, by the people. Everything that I do is basically listening to the feedback that you all give me and tell me what you want to see more of on this channel. Um, uh, I have received a ton, uh, I I I unfairly receive a a number of of positive comments of support from people on a regular basis, but certainly around the Thanksgiving time, a lot of you were very kind just to say, "Hey, one of the things I'm really thankful for, Adam, is thoughtful money. It's played a big role in my life." It it means so much to me to get that kind of feedback. Um and we are just so you know we are reaching people really at scale now with this platform. Um we have consistently I think pretty much almost every every month this this year um reached at least a minimum of a hundred sorry at least a million of a minimum of a million views per month sometimes almost twice that uh given the month. So we are reaching a lot of people at scale now with this platform and that feels it's just something I'm I'm I'm both pleasantly shocked by but also just uh supremely grateful and appreciative of. Um and interestingly you know the world is really starting to to take notice. Just just in the past three days Lance I've had um uh one of uh pretty decent article written about one of our interviews on this program on Newsweek. I just got an email the other day from the Daily Mail saying they want to do a piece on this. So, um you know that the the world is starting to take notice of what we're doing here. And again, it it just feels um personally such a privilege to be able to be involved in this. And again, folks, it is it is only made possible because of all of you watching this and and telling me where you want this channel to go. Um the other thing I'm very thankful for was or is is having all my girls together, my wife, my daughters. Um, one of my daughters has been like you, Lance, has been out of the country for much of the past two years and she came back to the country earlier this year, but then she had this job that took her all over the US. >> So, this is, I think, only the second time this year in 2025 where the four of us have been in the same location at the same time. >> Nice. >> And that feels very wonderful. And then last uh at this, you know, my Thanksgiving last night with family, you know, it was really taking note of of the multi-generational aspect of it. you know, my my fortunately my wife's parents are still alive, but they're they're getting up there. But they and their friends um great to have that senior generation there. Of course, my generation has taken over the responsibility of of all the operations and the hosting and the cooking and all that stuff. But then, you know, we I don't know, probably had about 12 uh grandkids there. Um you know, our children who are our parents uh grandchildren uh and they're stepping into adulthood now. So that's really fun to see that the the next generation that's going to take over the torch from ours. And then in my wife's and my families, we just last night had the first announcement of the first child uh from from that >> uh sorry from our kids cohort. So this is going to be the first great grandchild of the family. And it it nice, >> you know, it's going to be a little while before my my daughters um get married and have kids, but they're getting to that age. and it's just making me reflect that I'm about to step into that next act of life uh where I'll be the elder hopefully at some point, you know, the not too distant future, the grandpa or whatever. So, it's just >> I'm very thankful for the arc of life and and how it it seems to be working well here. I'm just super privileged to be in it. So, anyways, that's that's my level of gratitude for this year. How about yours? >> Well, no, pretty much I can just say ditto because I'm very thankful for your friendship and doing this with you. I'm very thankful for the opportunity I've had to work with you. It's been a lot of fun and and just being, you know, just your friendship has been a real blessing. >> Um, you know, also too very thankful for my family like you. My son came home from the UK, so in fact, he's getting ready to leave to go back in just a few minutes, so we're going to take him to the airport. But it's been great having him in town. All my kids were together. We had a big family Thanksgiving yesterday. And that's really where you you kind of recognize that, you know, I look at all my kids. They're all heading in the right direction. There's no problems. They're all they're all have matured well. They're very responsible. And just in that, you know, you just look at that and like I'm so thankful just for that because obvious I I didn't I didn't raise a criminal. >> Yeah. And and and I'm very thankful for that. I mean, there's no serious issues we have to deal with. They're all heading in in the right directions. are doing the right things. They're very sweet young kids. Um, yeah, very blessed for that and I'm very happy. And and then of course just, you know, also too at the end of the day, I'm just I'm very thankful for again just all the outreach that I've gotten from your channel for my wife and and what we're going through with her cancer treatment. Um, that's going very well. We're twothirds of the way done and uh, you know, we're very optimistic that things are going to turn out well. But the thoughts, the prayers that that's been a huge support for both of us because I share them all with her. And so all the all the outreach we've had from your viewers has just been, you know, more than I could have asked for. >> Well, that's great. And so everybody watching, thank you for all those those messages of support to Lance, as you can can see here, they really do uh >> they mean a lot. >> Make a big difference for them. Yeah. >> Um and I'm very grateful for you. you've been sharing with me uh the progress of the treatment and it it it seems to be going about as good as we could all hope for. So that's wonderful to hear. >> Yeah. So so far so good. So we're like I said, we're hopeful. >> Okay. All right. Well, look, I'm going to let you go and uh take your you spend your last minutes with your son as you take him to the airport. Uh I'm also going to go and try to get in a post Thanksgiving dinner workout today. I'm definitely feeling a lot heavier. >> Yeah, me both. >> That's next on my list. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, to that note though, um, folks, um, I I, you know, very publicly on this channel a few weeks ago went through the the fiveday fast. Um, I've had a lot of people pinging me about it, um, thinking, "Hey, I might, you know, might be interested in doing something similar. Adam, can you tell me what program you used?" And then I've had a number of folks just since Thanksgiving reach out and say, "Hey, I ate a little bit too much. What was the name of that fast?" So, if you're thinking about doing a fast, and maybe Lance, at some point you and I we can we can do a rant about the the real benefits of of them. Um, but if you're thinking about doing one, um, folks, the one that I used is called Prolon. Uh, it's very sciencebacked, and if you want to learn more about it, but also they sent me a a link that thoughtful money users can use to get, uh, 25% discount on the program. So, anyways, if you want to look into that, just go to thoughtfulmoney.com/fast and it'll redirect you to the exact um, uh, fasting protocol that I used. All right. All right. Well, look, in wrapping up here, folks, um please uh show your gratitude uh to our good friend Lance Roberts here um by hitting that like button and clicking on the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it. Um, and obviously if you would like to get some help in terms of looking at your portfolio and figuring out how to best position it for the coming new year, whether you've got questions that are related to any of the things that Lance and I talked about here, um, you can do, uh, you know, get guidance from Lance and his team there, um, by filling out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form and the firm that you get matched with will reach out to you momentarily after you fill it out. Um, with that said, Lance, it's always great, buddy. I very much appreciate you coming on day after Thanksgiving to do this while you got family in town. Look forward to seeing you here next week. >> There you go. See you then. >> Everybody else, thanks so much for watching.