Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-01-25_MONDAY_6AM

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

12-01-25_MONDAY_6AM

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. I'm Dave Anthony Fox News for a pretrial here in the could last several days in New York City, where he's jailed, charged with murder in the shooting last year, killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of Manhattan Hotel. Attorneys for Luigi Mangione are back in court in New York today to argue the notebook found in his backpack upon arrest should not be allowed in at trial. This is the notebook that allegedly contained hostile writings about the health care industry and other executives, as well as what investigators said was evidence of a plan to eventually commit an act of violence.

Fox is Jessica Rosenthal. It's day three of the manhunt for a quadruple murderer in California. Shot up a birthday party Saturday night, killing four people injuring 11. Gunfire erupted at a banquet hall in Stockton around six in the evening. The victims range and age from 8 to 21 years old. Investigators are working to figure out a motive. Crime Stoppers is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Fox is Alicia Coon, another weekend of talks between the U.S. and Ukraine on a peace plan trying to stop Russia's war secretary of state Marco Rubio called it very productive.

Special envoy, Steve Whitkoff, goes to Moscow today for more talks with Russia. Republican Senator Tom Cotton tells Fox. They should make it clear that President Trump means business. We're continuing to arm Ukraine through NATO. We've imposed sanctions on two major Russian oil companies. President Trump acknowledges he did have a phone call with Venezuela. and later Nicholas Maduro, but would not say if it was a good or bad discussion. As the U.S. military operation continues off the Venezuelan coast, blowing up more boats suspected

of trafficking illegal drugs. Fox's Colonel Scott reports. The top members of the House Armed Services Committee said they will join their Senate counterparts to call for a full accounting of the recent strikes on Venezuelan boats. They want the Office of Legal Counsel to provide the justification for it. Some lawmakers say a report about one boat could amount to a war crime with a second alleged strike killing survivors of the first bombing. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth denies that. America's listening to Fox News. Stay on top of the latest forecast with America's weather team in the palm of your hands.

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And it's even easier to listen in the car with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Get programming alerts and notifications. Fox News Audio is on the Fox News app. The Voices America Trusts. Download it now. There's a lot of misery across Asia after storms rolled through, triggering landslides, causing widespread flooding.

More than a thousand people were killed. In Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, more than 800 others missing. Hundreds of thousands of residents are out of their homes. Some areas unreachable with damaged roads and communication knocked out, prompting air drops of food and supply. to people in desperate need.

Now to the fiery disaster in Hong Kong. More than 150 dead, but a similar number still missing. Last Wednesday's fire that raged through seven of an eight-block high-rise complex in Hong Kong has led to days of national mourning. Investigators now say construction mesh and styrofoam made of substandard materials caused the fire to spread. Other towers in the territory that are also under renovation are being tested now too. 13 people have been arrested so far.

The Hong Kong government promised reforms to stop such a tragedy happening again. Jonathan Savage, Fox News. Pope Leo is in Lebanon, home to the most Christians of any Middle East country. Speaking in French, urging Lebanese leaders to be true peacemakers. The Pope went to Turkey first on his first foreign trip. He's also calling for a two-state solution to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Wall Street, falling stock futures this morning,

suggest a fairly big sell-off to start December after big gains last week for the Dow and especially the NASDAQ. It's Cyber Monday, and as people return to work after Thanksgiving, they'll shop. Adobe estimates Americans will spend more than $14 billion online today, a record. Sunday night football came down to a final play in overtime. Washington for the win. Mariona has it rejected by Benito, and Denver has won nine in a row. The Broncos beat the commanders in overtime, 27, 26. in NBC. Earlier, the Houston Texans won their fourth straight game, beating in Indianapolis

20 to 16. Tonight, the New England Patriots go for a 10th winner in a row facing the New York Giants. I'm Dave Anthony Fox News. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, and I'm with Cherise from No Wire 63, KMED. You're hearing the Bill Myers show on Southern Oregon's home for conservative talk. Mornings on KMED at 993 KBXG. Call Bill at 770-5-633 at 770. No, KMED. Here's Bill Meyer. Delighted to have you here.

Welcome to the show. It's 11 minutes after 6th. The first day of December, I have the, well, I have the Christmas rhododendron lit up in my front yard. Okay? What about you? You got your lights up yet? You know, it's one of those things where that's all I do. We have the Christmas rhododendron.

I don't really climb up on the roofs and put lights on the gutters anymore. Nothing like that. For the most part, it's just, okay, here's the rhododendron right by the corner. It's right by a power outlet. So I put 200 LEDs on it, and that is about the extent of my ambition for Christmas decorating. But at least it looks festive, all right? It does. I hope you had a great long holiday weekend, and how did you do?

How did you do over that? Anything going on in your particular world? For me, it was mostly, you know, mom was over on thanks. that was great and we had a good conversation and that was um that was really nice because her eyesight is doing much much better now and today she's going to go in and get her second cataract surgery done so i'm looking forward to getting that done and then she's going to have two good eye blubs as we call them in our family and uh and things are are going well and i've had more turkey over the last few days because linda doesn't like turkey linda hates turkey as a matter

fact. So for me, it's been turkey and homemade cranberry sauce. A little bit of the stuffing. I try to stay away for the carbs as much as possible. And a little bit of gravy. Yeah, I had to have a little gravy there. I tried to stay away from that as much as possible. And then here I am on Monday.

It's kind of like, well, I'm on a fast right now because I go in for blood work. I had to go see my imaginary friends, you know, the primary care people. And so they need a blood test before you come in there. And I haven't had any blood work done for, I think, about a year and a half or two years. And so they say, you can't eat anything.

All you can do is drink. But no coffee, coffee won't work for you either. I didn't realize that because I've gone in and done blood tests before with black coffee thinking that everything's okay. And then, oh, no, can't do that. It's going to be a fast. So 9.30, I get the needles and then, you know, back into the, into the holiday season. I'll let you know how that goes.

I was just wondering about what is the wisdom of going in there and getting blood work, especially for lipids and all that sort of stuff, you know, the blood fats and the cholesterol and everything else, after Thanksgiving weekend with all that incredibly rich food. I'll let you know how that goes, though, okay? 770-633-770 KMED. Oh, I did do one Black Friday purchase. Besides, of course, a few Christmas lights for the Christmas rhododendron, like I mentioned, because they always put those on sale.

But there was like a, what do they call it, a DeWalt, not chop saw, but what do they call those kind of saws you use, reciprocating saw blades. They had those on sale at one big buck store. I did get that. So that was about the extent of it, 1999 for 15 bucks was my one big treat over the weekend. But boy, did I get hit with ads, ads after ads after ads. Buy, I bet you did too. Or maybe not. Maybe you don't have a computer so you don't get those kind of things going on.

But it was good. It was good. It's going to be back now just trying to figure out how to do my job again. We are going to be talking with John Grace this morning. John Grace is the founder of Investors Advantage Corporation. We had a nice stock market bump, you know, right going into the holiday weekend. Actually, Friday. Friday's trading was actually good. Gold and silver. Silver last time I checked was like $56. announce can you believe that uh bitcoin though is uh continuing to a give back the the uh i guess the the algorithms or whatever it is or whatever you want to call bitcoin uh this uh this tradable algorithm is off about uh 25 30 percent uh it maybe went up a little bit on friday i thought man it went it slid uh but anyway what uh john grace is talking about is that he says right now is

the time to be very concerned, and he's warning about a 1929-style shock. It's like, okay, a lot of people, depending on 401Ks to fund retirements and things like that. I only have a baby 401K, so, but anyway, I'll talk with John about that here in the next 20 minutes or so as everybody else is on their computers and thinking, oh, it's Cyber Monday, Apple, buy, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know what I'm kind of curious about? I didn't do a lot of shopping over the weekend for Black Friday, but I know that Saturday was Small Business Saturday. Are there any small business owners listening that might report? How did that go? Small business Saturday is when we're supposed to be trying to do our best to support a local business. And I think

that's really great. Of course, a lot of the times when it comes to the things that many people are looking for, you know, electronics, home electronics, things like that on Black Friday weekends. I don't know. Are there many businesses left that are able to service the community pretty well on small business Saturday? Something other than the Big Bucks World. Do you try to help them out? Let me know. 7705-633-770 KMED.

If you're a small business person, how is it looking, all right? You can certainly check into that. and some of the other headlines. We'll have those all coming up, too, here. Here's some small businesses worth participating with. This is the Bill Meyer Show, and then join the first day of December's show at 770-5-633 if you wanted to join in. For precision.

Download the Meeting Guide app. Hi, I'm Steve Potter, Body Shop Manager of Lithu, Body, and Paint, and I'm on 106.7, KMED. 19 minutes after 6. One of the most interesting stories over the weekend. It's an interesting read, and the Grants Pass Daily Courier ends up reporting that State Representative Dwayne Yonker may have a Democratic opponent in next year's races. Now, of course, there are still primaries to go through.

There may be more than one. But I'm reading Vicky Aldo's story here. Consulting firm owner Susan Fisher Maki. I hope he pronounced that correctly. And if I mispronounce it, I apologize in advance, right? But anyway, she's running as a Democrat to represent the Grants Pass in Cave Junction area in the Oregon legislature, setting up a possible duel with State Representative Dwayne Yonker, a Republican who works in real estate. Now, Dwayne, I'm just going to skip around a little bit here. Dwayne said his goals are to make Oregon more affordable, restore accountability, protect families and small businesses, and ensure that the legislature reflects and not ignores Southern Oregon values.

I kind of like that aspect about Dwayne. Really, I do. Yonkers said Oregon can't recover until the strong Democratic majorities in the legislature are broken up in balance returns. Until then, my job is to hold the line and stop the decline. Good line there, by the way. You know, Dwight, you got to put that on your posters or, you know, signs, things like that. Hold the line and stop the decline, right? Now, Fisher, now, say, I love this.

You can read in between the lines, a lot of the statements here. Fisher Mocky declines to comment on Younger's performance in the legislature, but she said she would bring a collaborative approach to the position. Boy, I'll tell you, there is nothing more that chairs my heart and just makes me want to just go out and vote for someone when they say, I would like to be a collaborator, and I'm looking for consensus. all right i can't help it but you know that's that's the that's the type of mealy-mouth stuff that many of the politicians like to use because collaborative why it sounds it sounds

like something that that feminists would do getting it together for a coffee clutch someplace and you get together and we're going to collaborate and come up with a solution i think my most interesting part is near the end of the story It says on the issue of addiction, both she and Yunker said measure 110 that was approved by voters was a disaster. Yonker is still opposed to an element of the law that diverts millions of dollars in legal pot tax from schools, law enforcement, cities, and counties into programs for people addicted to drugs. Some of these programs include distributing clean syringes. He said so-called harm reduction is a fraud. Now, Fisher Maki said sterile syringes, needle disposal containers, overdose antidotes, and fentanyl test strips, help prevent HIV, hepatitis, and overdoses, keeping first responders and the community members safer, and also keeping a lot of nonprofits that are engaged in harm reduction in business.

I just added that part, okay? She said the lesson of measure 1.10 is that more needs to be invested in prevention, harm reduction, detox, and long-term recovery. Okay, fine. Now, I love this one. On the issue of transgender students playing sports, Yonker wants the Oregon School Activities Association to adopt the policy that stops biological males from competing against females. We urge OSAA to adopt the policy that limits participation in female athletic categories to biological females. Okay. Now, we know that. Younger said letting biological males compete against girls is unfair, has caused injuries to girls and violates federal protections for the rights of girls to participate.

Fisher-Maki, though, said she trusts the OSAA and wants to honor the dignity of every human being. I want to care for all the children in our community. Now, the reason I put the dump, dump sound on it is because you know what that means. When you talk about caring for the children of all the community, you're only talking about caring for the transgender agenda children in our community because the girls who are being abused by dudes pretending to be girls, those girls don't count anymore. Those girls don't count anymore, at least in my view of Democratic Party politics in the state of Oregon. But you agree on that? So when someone says, I'm looking to, that's kind of a code phrase. I want to care for

all the children in our community. Yeah, I'd like to care for all the children in our community too. And the ones then, the dudes that think that they're girls and want to go into girls sports, I think the way you care for those kind of fake girls is mental health treatment. Mental health treatment and not just buying into the delusion. Can we agree on that much? So needless to say, if there are any debates between a state representative of Duane Yonker and Susan Fisher-Machie, get the popcorn. It could be quite interesting, quite interesting time. All right, some of the other news going on here. First, we had a National Guard troop die. That was just very sad with a Afghan refugee. One's dead. The 20-year-old woman,

young 20-year-old woman still, yes, she's dead. She died. And a 24-year-old male soldier still fighting for his life in serious condition, serious or critical condition in a hospital in D.C. I don't think we're going to be seeing any kind of changes in National Guard policy in Washington, D.C. anytime soon. Yep, Afghan refugee. Who would have known? Ended up driving all the way from Bellingham, Washington to Washington, D.C. to commit the crime or do some kind of crime. And already all sorts of people are talking about, man, I mean, he was having a really, really tough time.

And he would sit and lock himself in the room all the time and at home. and he was having trouble making it work in the United States of America. Oh, okay, so that excuses getting in your car, driving across the country, and trying to murder a couple of National Guard soldiers. Sure, sure, sure, that's fine. New York Post reporting this morning, President Trump giving Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro a strongly worded ultimatum as tensions flare in the South American nation, telling him to resign and leave or else.

According to this bombshell report, during a call between Trump and Maduro, the socialist president demanded that he be allowed to maintain control of Venezuelan's military if he paved the way for free elections there, said the Miami Herald. Maduro also reportedly sought global amnesty for all of his alleged crimes. Trump's refusal on both counts was said to be swift as he followed up with an offer that Maduro may not be able to refuse, leave now or else. After the phone call, Trump and Maduro failed to reach a detente. The U.S. President announced he was closing the airspace around Venezuela.

That happened over the weekend. And we have the USS Gerald Ford, America's largest warship and a marine expeditionary unit floating offshore. Trump also warned over the weekend, a weekend rather, that military operation inside Venezuela could begin very soon. Now, the question that was kind of running through my head is, on what authority? Does anybody ask that question? Have you asked any of that question? Not that I wish to question everything the Trump administration does, but my job is to question anything the government does

because governments are inherently untrustworthy, even Trump's government, because it is still Washington, D.C., after all. What is the authority for it just to decide that we take people out, that we take elected leaders out? How would we react if someone, said, you know, if Putin were to come over here and say, you know, Trump, you have a weekend to get out. You know, get out of here. You're acting like a dictator. And let's assume Maduro is. I'm not saying Maduro's a good guy.

I just kind of wondering, why do you think we're so focused on Venezuela? Did any of us, you know, I just don't remember voting for military involvement in Venezuela. I know they have oil, a lot of oil. A lot of it is bunker crude. It's kind of dark, you know, is really the dark crude oil. I don't know. That's one of those questions just kind of asking myself, where did this come from? And why are we so focused? And of course, the blowing up the drug boats and everything else, which now there's an investigation supposedly going in there because the story is that Pete Heck Seth, that's what the Washington Post claims are right, said that we don't want anybody living and that they threw another

missile after it after some people ended up surviving the initial attack. If so, we have Republicans and Democrats calling this a potential war crime. I don't know. What is going on here? I'm not a fan of, this seems like another example like what. We always have to get involved in another stupid military encounter someplace in some area that's not us. I don't know. Hi, good morning.

This is Bill. Who's this? It's on your mind. Good morning, Bill. This is Dave over in Grascast. Dave, what do you think of this morning, huh? So you were just talking about it. And from my experience, I will tell you right now, for specifically military action.

Yeah. Went through something similar. Years back, about 10 years back, Obama administration, and it was your, his big thing was, I ended the war in Iraq. Yeah. And we ended up in there, and it was the whole Islamic State time frame. And that military action that we did, it was, so it's very unique with the military, for the Marine Corps, they can send you into a response area, just as we did, embassies, consulates, stuff like that.

It's your initial, like, boots on ground to gauge the whole situation for whatever may or may not follow. So a lot of it is things like intel and reporting and stuff like that. It's because in a chaotic situation or a place where if Venezuela you have a very like the information that comes out of there, whether it be closing off of airspace or shutting off of... Now, see, closing off airspace to me is an extremely hostile action, and that's almost to me like a declaration of war, isn't it? It may be, but this is one thing where you don't, because we still have, U.S. asset in that area, you can very much so have a, specifically the Marine Corps response to secure up and shore up that interest. Now, with that being said, they did something similar

a little after my time frame in Syria regarding specific like mutual interest, like oil well stuff, Iraq, like the big dams on the Tigris and Euphrates, because it provides like the infrastructure. Now, so in your opinion, though, if you were to take a guess here, is this about shoring up oil interest? Okay, so, I'll take that as a yes. I'll take the laugh as a yes. Absolutely, yes.

Will they say that? Probably not. I will say, though, I'm just going to be honest as an American. Yeah, man, I really like two or three dollars at the pump. And I won't lie if that means we've got to secure an asset. Sometimes that's worth it because, I mean, you look at America right now and you go, okay, well, average American can they afford a $5 to $7 a gallon charge of pump? No, most of us can't. So with that being said, you know, I'm not going to say it's justified, but I will say, you know, like sometimes there is a cost for our way of life.

and I'm not trying to justify it or diminish it or anything like that, but at the same time, nothing that we have literally is free. So we have to kind of gauge it on, well, I mean, what do we want to keep and what do we want to lose and how much do we want to pay for it? All right. That's an interesting explanation. I really appreciate that because, you know, military involvement was something that it's kind of like, did any of us really ask for this?

And have we seen this? It's like all of a sudden popped up, and I know we've been blowing up drug boats. And I've questioned that because of, you know, the killing of civilians. These are not military targets per se. But this is kind of, I think it looks like it's being used as a precursor or a Trojan horse to get there. You know? The other thing we've got to remember in key instances where similar situations have happened, you look at Tripoli and the attacks on 9-11 the anniversary of and the killing of an ambassador.

you look at that and it's like there wasn't a response to that situation although we still had that same exact of military response stage it's just the government was like no we want zero involvement in this and they pretty much allowed it to happen so you look at it and you go okay what was our interest there there was none so therefore we didn't have a response to it just like you're pointing out there very oil heavy right you know i i can kind of i'm with you and saying, well, this might be the stage for something further, but at the same time, I don't know that. Yeah, we don't know that.

But the part that I find it interesting is that the report about, well, leave office or diet, so it's like, okay, all right, let's have Putin or Xi say, you know, I don't like the way you're running the United States, leave office, or else we're going to attack. I mean, now I know that we'd be able to get that out. There's kind of an arrogance about that that gives me pause to me. I agree with you, and it's a scary thing, especially looking at it. from the outside. My thing is, we are, in my opinion, the greatest country owners living here.

We have more rights. We enjoy more freedoms than most people could imagine around this planet. But with that being said, I will say that there is a price to pay with it, and I'm not saying that it's right. So in order to have for us to have our freedoms that we just decide to dictate what goes on elsewhere i'm not i do think that there is a better way to go about it and i was really hoping to be a lot more uh diplomatic or administrative business type transaction of that from this administration um and i am i i yeah absolutely i voted for jump and i believe and i think

he was the best out of all of the alternatives and uh i will say that i yes to a point but at the same time, like, there is a way, I think, that we could go about this differently than putting our guys, specifically the service members, at risk and putting their lives on the line with realistically, like, that's not the freedom that they are supposed to be paying for. Yeah. I appreciate your take on it. Dave, thanks for the call from GP.

We'll pick that up a little bit later, okay? I'm going to be talking with John Grace here just a little bit. We'll shift some gears to the economy, but we'll definitely get back to Venezuela in what is going on there. 635 at KMED. This is the time of the year. Most of us are checking off our holiday gift list. Identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on that list. Protect your identity with LifeLock.

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seasoned contributor, national commentator. I've got you know good national commentators. We love having you on here. How you doing this morning, John? Welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Bill. I'm good. How are you? Doing great. Tell us a little bit about the investor's advantage and how people can get a

hold of you, websites, all that sort of stuff. We'll do all the contact first, and then we'll delve into the, well, the topic to azure of where is it all going, right? Fair enough. Yes, I have a site, Westlake, financial advisors, our investors' advantage. Happy to talk with folks and love to talk with your folks who are listening to you and help them figure out what they need to do or at least what to look at. any obligation okay very good and we'll get all your information up here i want to want to touch in here is the other day you end of the putting up a note here that the stock markets everyone's kind of wondering are we looking at the possibility for a 1929 style shock because

what markets have been driven mostly by a handful of stocks isn't that the case isn't that what's really rolling through the situation right now i i and invidia the magnificent seven et cetera etc. How would you evaluate things right now? A little frothy or not? Oh, absolutely frothy. Okay, full on froth. I mean, we maybe have entered into an area I call either too big to fail or we're in the orgy of everything, Bill. And that comes from President Hoover, who in his 1952 memoirs talked about the stock market. And the way he put it, these are his words, is that the Great Depression was a reasonable expectation thanks to the, quote, orgy of stock speculation. Now, I don't know about you, but if that doesn't feel like deja vu all over again, I don't know what is.

And I happen to be in New York on Yahoo Finance in October, where I said, let's look at crypto. That could be our first shoe to fall. And then about two weeks later, we see that crypto did, in fact, peak in October. And now I believe it's down around 86,000 today. So it's off about 30%. It may be that the AI stocks follow. The overall stocks follow that. and then we see a cascade of cards to reach new lows.

So, you know, Bill, I think the best way to put it is everybody loves sports, right? It doesn't matter which team you love, you love sports. It doesn't matter your age or your gender. The point that I'm making here, which is so important, is that whether you're rooting for whoever you were rooting for, you have to have two components to the team, right? You've got to have offense and you've got to have defense. let's just recognize most of us have no defense when it comes to our investments. We're hoping to reach new highs every darn day.

And when it doesn't do that, we're having a problem. Yeah, it's interesting. I know that I've talked with other investor people here too. And I've been actually doing pretty well on commodities this year as far as, especially gold and silver. And it just felt like, and then that kind of topped. out and then sort of consolidated down, but appears to be roaring back, or are we looking back at maybe there is a search for some investors of the tangible, rather than always, the latest AI, the latest AI, a shiny object kind of dangled before us, going to speak, you know?

That's going to take me to even higher highs than I ever imagine. Listen, I think the most important, I don't know what the answer is in terms of what the future looks like, but here's what I do know. As I say, defense is so important. So the real question that investors need to evaluate and come to a hard stop on is how much loss can you expect or accept? Is it 10%? Excuse me. Is it 70%? You want to look at the positions that you're in to see how bad it got, because if it did it before, it might do it again. And if we look at the depression, this is interesting, Bill. I believe it was Charles Merrill. that's Merrill Lynch in 1928, who suggested that people sell their stocks.

Now, we only had the Dow 10, I believe, back at that time. And then the Dow jumped 80%. And then two and a half years later, it's off over 90%. So that means a million dollars. That was a lot of money back then, but it's numbers we can use now, suddenly was worth less than $200,000. And when we see my peers, say, on your shows, shows like yours, is, hey, it always comes back. You ask, well, how long did it take? Well, the answer is with the

stock market after the Great Depression, it was only 25 years, assuming you did not need any money for 25 years. A million went to less than 200,000, and your less than 200,000 did not come back to even for 25 years, assuming you did not redeem any shares. Do you know anybody who doesn't need any money for 25 years, Bill? No, I don't. But, John, the thing I was going to ask you, though, but people say, but this time is different. Yeah, that's what we say all the time. And let's recognize who saw two, not one, 50% losses in the same decade. Now, let's spend a minute here.

When you were making contributions, I don't care what you were buying. That was a blessing, wasn't it? It's kind of like you're at the beach. The tide goes out. You collect your seashells. You come back. The tide comes in. You're like, oh, happy day.

That's 250% losses. When you're making contributions, that's a good thing. But now we have the majority of those folks who are making contributions, baby boomers born 1946, 1964, who are now doing what? Taking withdrawals from whatever position they have, particularly traditional retirement accounts. So they're being net sellers of the assets right now at this point. And now when you're a net seller and you have a traditional retirement account this year and you're at 73 years old and your withdrawal rate is 3.77 percent and it goes up every

year, no matter which way the market turns, tell me how many 50% losses you want to go through or you think you will survive. My answer is zero, and that's my point. We like to help people figure out, is it 20%, is it 10%, but if you let it do what it's done before, you may be in for a very hard landing. Okay. John Grace, once again, he's the founder of Investors Advantage Corporation. Are you then, from what I hear then, are you a fan of what is called hedging? In other words, you're taking both sides of a bet, you know, or shorting at the same time. You're hoping something goes up. I mean, how do you, what do you speak of when you're talking about, you know, protecting yourself?

Well, it's a good question, and this isn't our first time to the rodeo. So we pay for research. And the research team said before the financial crisis, be not surprised to see stocks and real estate prices take a hard hit. so what we do and have been successful at is two parts to the puzzle one is limiting losses through active management look at this way most of the stock funds the positions of bond accounts we have they stay static they do not move they're 5% cash or 95% invested that's great on the upside right not so good on that downside so instead of holding those shares when we work with folks and we come up with a hard number we want a specific number we want a specific number

my friend, okay? Is it 12%? I'm not saying what it should be, what we're going through some exercise to determine for you to determine what do you want to, you know, what's your goal? You want to limit your losses? What they say when you find yourself in a hole stop digging? When do you want to stop digging? Is it 10? Is it 12? Is it 70? So let's suppose it's 12 or 20, whatever it might be. And then let's see what your account did to you. Did it perform within that limit? Probably not. So instead of holding the shares in 08, for example, investors started 5% cash, and in some cases, the account moved more defensively from 5% cash up to 100% cash. That means the loss in this example was less than 20% when the market was off over 37%. And most of the no-load,

inexpensive ETS and mutual funds that everybody loves were off over 40% taking about five years to get back to even. So the first point, piece of the puzzle. The first step is limit your losses. Use active management. We want to be active right in our mind, our body. In other words, you're not talking about just a buy and hold the way people have been told for ages. That is correct. That is correct. That worked when you don't need the money. It doesn't work so well when you do need the money. We need a defensive strategy where instead of we are told to live with losses. No, no, no, no. Let's not do that. That's silly. Let's limit the losses. Let's see what we can do to limit the losses so we don't need a

Helmery pass just to get back in the game. I'm kind of curious here. John, wanted to ask you if maybe one aspect of this stock market, which is different from past stock markets that are looking topy and frothy and all the rest of it, especially when how many stocks have really pushed the S&P 500 to where it's been lately to these amazing highs? How many? I think, yeah, I think you nailed it. Is that Magnificent 7? It's everywhere. Okay, which means we have a lack of breadth. That's with a D. And so you've got a limited number of stocks that a lot of people have holdings in, even in the S&P 500, because they're diversified. And so you're riding the wave to the highs, but you're not prepared for the lows. And let's just look at it this way, Bill. I think if I'm not mistaken, using the S&P 500 Schiller Index, this is the second priciest market in 155 years. That's from January of 1871. are we going to have a repeat here because let's also recognize that stocks and real estate tend to take the stairs up and the elevator down when they start going down they move quickly

so active management is the first answer to your question the second one is looking at alternative investments okay things that are not residential real estate stocks or bonds things like uh and not bitcoin either by the way things like artificial intelligence but owning the data center infrastructure for all of that artificial intelligence. How about student housing around the country? How about infrastructure? How about manufacturing, private credit? We want to look at what the endowments do.

Let me ask you a question. Bill is a great question. You're looking at the Yale endowment. Any number will do. It's about $44 billion. It's a big endowment fund. What do you think, let's look at it two ways. What do you think Yale at this point, last I looked, as a percentage,

is sitting with gold or stocks as a percentage. Boy, I'll just say it may be 10, 15% at most. I would think they'd be pretty conservative on their... Yeah, every time I look, and I've been looking at Yale's Endowment, they report like once a year. And by the way, they report on their side, you have to dig for it, but they say they didn't have any losses in 08. Now, see, that's a good example to follow for ordinary investors.

So the answer to the question, they have no exposure to, gold, as I can see, or other commodities. They have as little as 3% exposure to U.S. stocks. That's a, now, see, that's really interesting. What do they have exposure to out of curiosity? Yes. You've got a long list. You've got natural resources, only like 7% or so in bonds and cash, only 9.5% in real estate. About 12 or so in internationals at the time I looked. leverage buyout, 17, 23% for absolute return venture capital. Some of those, the terminology is a little different than the way we look at it. But let's just notice this.

That's about seven different asset classes. No huge bets. No bet larger than 24%. And the smallest bet is, it has been ranging in domestic equities from 2.25 to 4% or so. But notice the exposure is very, very. small, all over the place. That's very different than what the majority of us do. And Yale reports that over the last 10 years, they've averaged about 9% per year, but here's the real beautiful piece to the puzzle. And that is they report that not only did they not have any

losses in 08, that 9% has been very consistent. All the positions that you're talking about have been very volatile to the side, remember? Yeah. Now, what about Buffett? People like Buffett in Berkshire Hathaway. What, what, now, I know he's gone now, or he is left active management of the company, but, uh, but, but still, you know, people always pay attention to him. I heard last time that he was just like loaded with cash rather than actually, uh, fully, fully invested. Is he?

Yes. He's pulled a lot from, uh, traditional ETS and mutual funds, the set it and forget positions that he recommended for most of his life. Let's just notice that Mr. Buffett, if I'm not mistaken, loaned Goldman Sachs in, the financial prices, was it $5 billion with a... Oh, we lost him. On 1063, KMED. Okay, we got John Grace back.

We had the line drop for whatever reason. John, I'm glad you're back. We were talking about Buffett when the line ended up clicking off here, and that he was looking pretty defensive, right? Was that kind of where we were? Yeah. Yes, sir. Sitting on a whole lot of cash.

And I think the point that we can all gain, and I appreciate it, And I appreciate your question, is now may be an outstanding time, unlike anything you've seen in your life, to look at highly appreciated assets and take some chips off the table. Like you're in Vegas, what are those chips worth? Nothing until you see the cashier's window. So now's the time not to double down on more chips. Now may be the time to cut them in half to take, you do dollar cost averaging in, do you have a system for getting your cash out before the bottom falls out? of a relative who lost $2 million in Bitcoin. And I know another one who sold, he says, at the peak.

Nobody knows when the peak is, but we don't know where their trough is either. If we take some of those chips off the table, I think we're a better position as opposed to having regret. That's interesting. Now, what about one aspect that makes me think that maybe the market will be pumped by government spending? And when I bring this up, I'm talking about not only the... the AI push, but also, it's interesting to see the United States government taking equity stakes

in some companies like Intel. Does that, is that bullish for you, or does that actually send a cautionary note? Everybody's getting high on opium. It's a new drug. And we just keep sucking it more up. We've got to recognize that the Federal Reserve runs out of bullets. The Federal Reserve only has a few real tactics that they can execute. And we just want to believe that the Federal Reserve is telling the truth that they have the capacity to take their own thermostat, put it on the economic wall of the world, and the machines will do all of the work.

It will cool the room, the world, it will heat up the room when necessary, but it'll keep everything nice. It doesn't work like that. Let's just look, the first bubble we saw goes back to the 1634 to 16. 37. That was the tulip bubble. You could take a box of tulips and buy an estate. Notice that that price never came back. Let's look at 2000s, right? Inron, where'd that company go? How about Cisco? Let's see. If I'm not mistaken, $10,000 in Cisco 25 years ago, it's worth about $10,000 today. I'm just saying that all bubbles burst. There are no exceptions. Please recognize there's no escape plan from here other than maybe death, okay? But if you want to play the game,

you've got to figure out how to take some chips off the table and be positioned to buy in a location that you don't yet recognize. Otherwise, you're praying, hopeful. We need that hell merry pass that my equity, my value gets back to its high water mark. We're not prepared. Again, 25 years for stocks after the Depression. 40 years for real estate, Bill, in New York, after the depression. 40 years, and the life expectancy at that time was 57. Right now, our life expectancy is round 78. So you can do all the things you want to do, and maybe it works for a minute, but in the bottom, there has to be a reset, and it's a healthy thing. It's kind of like winter. You know a little something about winter. It's a healthy thing we have to go through.

Yeah, and we restore it then. In other words, take your profits, is what you're saying, is what you're thinking about at this point in time, right? Have a system to take cash, move money out of positions, highly appreciate it. If it's a carve, it's artwork, this would be a good time. I don't care what it is. What I'm saying is that we keep making a claim that is just, we pray that the price is just going to go up, but that's not reality. It just doesn't work like that.

So let's recognize that we've got to be ready to see things get to much different valuation prices, right? lower prices. Again, look at the position that you love and see how bad it moved against you and look in the mirror and say, do I want to go through that again? Because probably you will. John Grace is the founder of Investors Advantage Corporation. And best way for people to get in touch with you and find out more about you on the web. John Lgrace.com. John L.grace.com. John, I appreciate it. Interesting talk. So you're feeling just a little nervous right now when you look at these.

I am very, that isn't, absolutely. We've got all of our clients ready. The positions will move incrementally out of shares into cash and their defensive positions and alternatives so that we can limit the losses. And the goal is to limit the loss within each of their customized percentage. And we check to see how we're doing throughout the year. So we don't wake up and go, oops, OS, Bill. That means the old shucks, right? Yeah, exactly, right. John L.grace.com. John, good talk.

Thank you for taking some time with this morning. Okay, be well.