Investor's Edge with Gary Kaltbaum - Defense First - Buh Bye 200 Day [03.20.2026 w Adam Sarhan]

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

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Investors Edge with Gary Coltbaum. Straight talk about you and your money. Now from the BizTalk Studios, here is Gary CultBomb. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. I'm Adam Sarhan and for Gary Kaye, who's out today. Today is Friday, March 20th, 2026. We have a great show for you tonight. As always, we want to thank you very much for being here.

As you know, this is a show about you and your money and all of the fun points in between. Before we dive into the show, I'll just give you some housekeeping notes. and a quick reminder. If you don't get the show in your city, you can go to GaryK.com, listen live for archive. We are live Monday through Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. Eastern. Also at GaryK.com, you can follow Gary on X, formerly known as Twitter, just by pressing the button,

or you can follow him in his name at Gary Kulpum. You can get him that way as well. You can also subscribe to Gary's morning notes sent directly to your inbox each and every day, email him, ask him about his money management services, or anything else you want. All of that's available on GaryK.com. If you want his premium newsletter, his members-only area where he updates members several times

a day with actionable ideas, intradate and daily webcasts where he shows you the charts, it's great listening to Gary on radio, but seeing him talk while seeing the charts as well, that's a really, really big added value for many folks. That's available at convictionleaders.com. That's convictionleaders.com. All right. few notes from Gary, I'm going to dive right in here and be the messenger and report them. Clearly, defense is primary.

Well, those are my thoughts. Defense, defense, defense. But let's, let me read to you what Gary sent me. A big wild card now is that interest rates have broken out to the upside and had a decent spike to the upside today. And leave no doubt the market didn't like it. We think this is more than just the war because the last inflation number that spiked was a number before the war even started. There is no way the Fed can lower rates aggressively, and if rates get out of hand, they may be forced to do the opposite, which is raised rates. That's how free markets work,

and we worry that the new guy is just going to do what the president wants to do, which is lower rates no matter what. Higher rates really affecting technology today. Software has already been in its own private bear market. You don't want to see the rest head that way, and today was a rough day. So those are notes from Gary about today's action. And he brings up a brilliant point about interest rates potentially for the Fed. If the Fed has to raise rates to combat inflation, that's going to pretty much change the narrative that we've been operating with for a very, very long time that the Fed's going to cut rates. So now that oil is high, the headline right now on a lot of the news websites, you know, the Wall Street Journal, wherever you want to go is Pentagon sending more

Marines warships to the Middle East. So what does that mean for oil prices? Most likely oil prices will be going higher, not lower. I think in some parts of the country, it's $5, $6. I mean, gas is up a lot. Gasoline prices at the pump. Gasoline futures are up a lot as well. So we're in a situation right now where defense folks is key. I mean, I can go through and I'll give you a lot to cover here play by play as Gary does. He does on with the radio show, he does on conviction leaders. Just help you understand so you can listen to the market. You know, I have a book.

It was number one on Amazon every day for three months. I'm happy about that. And thank you, everybody who supported it and left a nice comment. The psychological analysis is the title of it. So if you're familiar, there's fundamental and there's technical analysis. Fundamentals like Warren Buffett, you study the company, and you look for, you know, the metrics of a company, earnings, revenue, so on and so forth. And in technical analysis, you study the stock.

And you can have a good stock and lousy company with no earnings growth or loses money and vice versa, a company with great earnings growth, but the stock's going down. So technical analysis is a really good way of just being objective and looking at price and volume of the stock. Those are the two big schools of thought. So my contribution to Wall Street is psychological analysis. After years and years and years of studying both of those schools of thought, fundamental and technical, I realize there's something missing. and this is you know it's that psychology right so the idea is in one simple way is the elevator pitch for the book teaches people to make rational not emotional decisions with their money and the whole point of doing that is being able to listen to the market i say in the book there's an infinite number of ways

to make money in the market your job is to find one that works for you also say in the book the market speaking and then i ask are you listening and the reason why why I asked that question is because the market's not going to verbally speak to you the way that I'm speaking to you or the way that Gary speaks to you or any other humans speaks to you or the way you speak to other humans. It's nonverbal. And most human interaction, I could be wrong, but Google this and trust but verify, like Reagan taught us, you know, verify everything. Most human interaction, I'm told, is nonverbal. The market isn't directly yelling at you by sell, hold. No, it's nonverbal communication. The way that the market's speaking is by price and volume action. All things being

equal, there's something, you know, there's moving averages. It's a quick refresher. It takes the last closing price for X number of days, the 50 day moving average or the 200 day moving average or the 21 day moving average or any other moving average you want. Let's just use a 200 day because it broke it today. You take the last 200 days, the closing price, and you take an average. And you're smooth it out and that becomes a line. The 50 day moving average, same thing. The 21 day, same thing. The longer term moving averages like the 200 day, the 150 day, the 100 day, the longer than moving average, the slower it is because you need more days for that moving average to move. Like 200 days is 200 days. A five-day moving average is only five days. So it's much more sensitive and can move a lot more,

I guess faster is the word not frequently I wasn't say frequently but it's faster so the shorter term moving averages move faster

than the longer term moving averages and the reason why the longer term moving averages are there and you can think of them as somewhat as guard rails is that they help us

understand all things being equal the state of the market and the state of the market changes up and down so when you're in a bullish environment typically the 200 day moving average is sloping higher lower left upper right and the 50 day moving average is doing the same thing in the 50 days above the 200 day just for the sake of simplicity same is true in a stock an ETF the market the NASDAQ the S&P just 101 you know technical analysis 101 now when the price and the price is above the 50 and the price is above the 200 in that situation when the price gets below the 50 like what's

been happening over the last few weeks here, if not month and change, before the war even started, then all of a sudden something happened, something changed. Then you've been living below the 50 for a while. That's the market speaking. If you look at the QQQQ, you could see at the NASDAQ 100. For the last several weeks, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven weeks, eight weeks now, if not more, you've been living below the 50. And then yesterday on Thursday, you touched that 200, closed, just, just a few, just near it, and then a day like today, Friday, boom, you break the 200. It's not all of a sudden out of nowhere.

No, this has been happening for a while. In fact, the market's been going sideways for about, what is it, four or five months, six months now, since October. We had a ginormous, if that's a word, a massive rally from April last year until October, moved sideways since then. and now we're going down to test support near that 580 level. But we broke the 200 day. So, okay, defense, defense. It was since we broke the 50 day, I've been saying defense, defense, defense, Gary as well. Why?

Because, you know, somebody told me one time nothing good happens at nighttime, right? From a, you know, teaching kids and young kids and go to bed at night type of a thing. Same thing here, nothing good happens below the 50 day. And really nothing good happens below the 200 day. Just because it broke the 200 doesn't mean it's over. It doesn't mean, oh, no, go away. No, it's just the time to be a little defensive. And that can change, right?

But for now, it's just defense, defense, defense. This two shall pass. It always has, if you look at market history. Even last year, we fell hard in the first quarter. We bottomed in April and we shot higher. Could that happen again this year? Yeah, of course. Anything is possible.

Could we go into a correction, a pullback, a bear market? Anything is possible. If you would have asked me last year in March, do I think we're going to have a huge rally from April to October? Probably I would have said no. But when the facts change, I change. You know, Lord Kane said that, a famous economist from way back when. And then he asked the question, rhetorical question, what do you do, sir? So for now I'm defensive.

If and when the action improves, we get back above the 200 day, we get a new fall through day, we get above the 50 day. and more leadership shows up, more breakouts show up, so on and so forth, then things will improve. Until then, not much happening. So it's really important to put things in perspective and stay aligned with the market. That's it. It's really that simple. If you fight the tape, if you fight the market, you end up losing.

most humans. I've yet to meet one that can consistently fight the market and win. Defense, defense, defense, defense. I mean, I can say that 100,000 more times. When the environment improves, we'll adjust accordingly. Up next, we've got a lot more to cover. I'm Adam Sarhan, and this is the one and only Investor's Edge. Hi, I'm Gary Kalbaum, hosted a nationally syndicated radio show Investors Edge. We're not just handsome radio people. We manage investors' money for a living, specializing in fee-based discretionary money management.

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The number to call is 888-4-2-5-59. That's 8-8-8-5-9. That's 888-4-22-5-5-9. Investment Advisory Services offered through call-bomb capital management. It's time to switch on the integrator units and get the brain cells working. You're listening to. Hey, this promises to be fun. Investors Edge.

The last bastion of quality programming. With Gary Cult Bomb. It doesn't get better than this. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. In case you're just joining us or missed any part of the show, I'm Adam Sarhan, in for Gary Kay, who's out today. You can go to GaryK.com and listen live or archive, basically 24-7 on any device at his internet, anywhere in the internet.

the world. So we spoke about the fact that the market is in a defensive state right now. Remember, the states change, high level of some education here. There's three states that the market can be. Again, this comes from my book directly. And if you want to pick up a copy, feel free. It's Amazon. You can go to psychological analysis or type my name in Adam Sarhan on Amazon. And there's three states. The market can go up, it can go down, and it can go sideways. That's it. literally, that's all it can do, up down sideways. Same thing with any stock, same thing with any publicly freely traded market. Commodity, stock, currency, doesn't matter. Crypto doesn't make a difference. As long as it's freely traded, there's supply and demand, there's price volume,

it can go up down or sideways. It doesn't matter if it's Apple, if it's Amazon, if it's an oil stock, a gold stock, it doesn't make a difference. Up down sideways. The idea, simplest forms, is to be aligned with the broader trend. Be long in a bull market. You know, when the market's going up, that's an up trend, you want to be long. That's how you make money. When the market's going down,

you kind of want to get out of the way if you're an active trader. You're a long-term investor. A complete different story. People that are dialed in and focused, I'm assuming Gary's audience, are not going to sit back and watch a stock go down 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 percent. So you want to be long in the bull market.

You want to be flat or out in a bear market. And sideways choppy environment, it's up to you and depends on your cushion and your risk tolerance and your conviction and so on and so forth. But typically in a downtrending market like we are now, the last few weeks, the market's been going down, sideways to down. I'm not looking, you know, my whole thing be defensive. I'm not looking to take on new risk. Oh, I'm going to go buy, go all in right now. Yeah, no thanks. I much rather be aligned with the market.

Again, that's a play on words here what I'm about to say. Be in harmony with the market, not just harmony, but harmony. It's a play on the word harmony with the market. And be long when the market's going up and be out. or flat or reduce my exposure depending on the situation in a downward trending market or a sideways environment. That's all. That's simple. How do I know? I don't for sure know. Nobody does. Nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow next week where the market's going to close in a year. Nobody knows. And that's okay. You don't have to know. When I understood that,

I had this huge breath of just relief, this sense of like, whoa, it's okay not to know? Yeah, it's okay not to know. Why? Because look at nature. And by the way, it's also, before I talk about nature, it's also okay to be wrong more than you're right. As long as your losses are small and your wins are bigger. I learned this from nature and from the market. Nature has, let's say you have an apple tree, he has a thousand seeds. I'm just going to exaggerate to illustrate a point here. 99 of those seeds die. Now, that's okay.

One seed becomes a new apple tree, and you get another 1,000 seeds. 99 die, another one seed becomes a new apple tree, so on and so forth. And nature flourishes. Even though the vast majority of those seeds die. That's okay. Why? Because when you're wrong, what does nature lose? It loses one seed.

That's okay. When it's right, potentially infinite new seeds. You get another apple tree, same thing. Rinse watch repeat, rinse, wash, repeat, so on and so forth. And nature flourishes. Trading can be the exact same situation. If I have 10 trades, again, I'm going to exaggerate just to illustrate the point. There's two traders, Trader A and Trader B. Winning Trader and losing, well, Trader A and Trader B. There's 10 trades. Nine of those trades lose. One wins. Which one would you want to give money to? The other trader had nine wins and one loss. Which one you want to give money to? Well, of course, Adam, the one with a 90% win ratio. Nine wins, one loss. I'm in. Pause for a second.

Really? You don't even know how much they lost when they're wrong. And you don't know how much when they won when they're right. So to illustrate the point, and again, I'm exaggerating here, but just to stay with me here, just illustrate the point. You have 10 trades. Nine don't work. You lose one, nine times.

You're minus nine. The 10th one, you win 10. net net you're up one but you lost 90% of the time net net you're up one the other guy or gal one one one nine so they're up nine the 10th tray they lost 10 net net they're down one even though they're had a 90% win ratio means absolutely nothing in the real world why it's the size of the win compared to the size of the loss over a series of time. That's what matters. Not the percent winning or percent look at baseball.

Same thing. The best baseball players in the world do what? Hit three out of ten pitches. They're a bounce and they're phenomenal. They strike out seven out of ten times too. And that's okay. Nature doesn't know which seed is going to work. Otherwise you just have one seed and you're done.

There's thousand seeds come out, millions of seeds, whatever it is, right? Again, I'd have no idea. A gazillion billion seeds. It doesn't matter. You just need one to work. Providing when you're wrong, all you lose is one seed. When you're wrong in that example, you lose $1, one unit of risk, 1%. Whatever that looks like for you, feel free to have it look like that way for you.

Some people risk 20 basis points, which is a fraction of 1%, some people risk cap of a percent, some people risk a percent of their overall portfolio. because ultimately that's what matters. I could say, oh, I'm going to buy this stock. And if it goes down 10%, I'm out. Okay. So you buy it at 100, you sell it at 90. That's a protective stop.

And I did that initially. I'd risk 7% or 8% of my portfolio on any given idea, but I had no idea how to position size. And I would take a position that was way too big. And I would lose 7% or 8% and do that two or three times. and all of a sudden I'm down 20 or 30% of my portfolio. Thankfully that happened early as a teenager when I didn't have a lot of money and it didn't make a big impact. But I learned a lesson real quickly that position sizing matters.

What really matters is what is the impact going to be if I'm stomped down at 7% or 5% below my entry or 10% below my entry? What's the impact on my portfolio? Is it 1% of my portfolio? Is it half of 1%? A 10th of 1%? the 20th of, you know, 10 basis points, 20 basis points, whatever it is. That's fine. But know that number. Why? Because that's what's going to matter over the series of time. And knowing when the trade is just as important as knowing when not to trade. You don't have to force the issue.

If you're not aligned, take a break. There's no need to trade every day. In fact, some of the best traders know that and they don't. Trade a few times windows open and closed. They call it. at Trading Windows. Up next, we've got a lot more to cover. I'm Adam Sarhan. This is the one and only Investors Edge. And welcome to America is talking. Investors Edge. He's got to be pleased with that. The crowd is just on his feet here. He's a Cinderella boy. With Gary Colbomb. It comes highly recommended. You're going to feel better if you talk to him. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. I'm Adam Sarhan in for Gary Kay, who's out today. case you're just joining us or missed any part of the show. You can go to garyk.com, rewind, fast forward,

listen at your convenience on any device you want. All right, a few things happening here. Number one, defense is key. Number two, we spoke about timeless lessons that can help you when you navigate the market. I always like to say the market speaking and then ask, are you listening? And here's how I listen to the market. I'm going to go in more detail. So I created the biggest institutions in the world. Let me back up for a second. You know, Wall Street, traditional Wall Street. They use terminals to win. Bloomberg terminals, icon terminals, they have their own terminals, right? Excuse me. So I decided to create my own terminal and it's called marketterminal.com. Feel free to check it out if you want. It's a very helpful tool that I use every day to help me listen to the market.

So market terminal. First thing is divided in half. You'll see the screen. Left hand side is to help you find new ideas. The right hand side is to help you research those ideas. So left hand side, first thing we show is breakouts. Every day, there's stocks breaking out. Even a day like today where the market's breaking the 200 day, getting clobbered, so on and so forth, you still have stocks breaking out. They happen to be a lot of oil and gas and energy stocks, but that tells me right away where the leadership is. So some of the stocks that broke out today, CQP, this is a oil and gas energy stock. Next one. V-N-O-M, Viper Energy, another energy-related stock. Planet Labs, ticker symbols, PL, aerospace and defense stock. Now, again, these are not buy and sell recommendations.

These are nothing to do with, I just want to see what stocks are breaking out. Because we have technology, these are tools, algorithms, AI, all this fun stuff, all built in right away. You got breakouts just like that. SEDG Solar Edge, ticker symbol SEDG, broke out today on Friday. And guess what? That's a solar stock. Why is solar stocks attractive now and catching a bit? Because when energy prices go up, it makes solar a lot more attractive on a relative basis.

And that happened in 2007 into 2008, where oil prices in 08 jumped to 150 a barrel. and solar stocks were one of the strongest groups in the market right before the 08 crash. Solar stocks and potash and fertilizer stocks, interestingly enough, and then some shipping stocks back then too. So solar stocks could be coming around here, you know, coming up as a new potential theme or a new sector, depending on the environment, depending on the market and interest. But just real simple. Oil prices go up a lot. Gas prices go up a lot.

People are going to look for alternatives that make solar. more attractive. That's the thesis. Next stock that broke out today is Scholastic Corporation, SCHL. That's a big breakout. Lower half of the range. But we'll see what happens over the next few days and weeks here, but it's a breakout. Scholastic books. When we were kids, we used to read them. Okay, great. My kids read them today. They have book fairs and all that fun stuff. Another breakout today was Anna, A-N-N-N-A. This is another oil and gas stock, a lower-price stock, $7 stock. Market caps about $300 million.

Big breakout. A lot of, more from two to seven, almost eight in the last two, three weeks. We're four weeks, five weeks here as oil prices, energy prices have been just going up. Natural gas supplies in Italy. Wow. All right. So those are the breakouts today. That's it, just six.

Now, there's also a breakdown section on market terminal. And we've got 89. Not joking. 89 breakdowns and six breakouts. What is that telling me? Clearly, the bears are in control. We have a live news section we just added. Shows you the number of breakouts compared to the number of breakdowns.

Number of movers up compared to the number of moves down. By the way, I'm recording a little bit before the close here. This updates in real time. So by after the close, you go look at it over the weekend. You might see the number of change by the climate mark closes. It's all real time live. So we get three breakouts, two breakouts, Eight breakouts.

You know, you can see everything in real time. Movers, we've got 19 stocks moving up right now and almost 470 stocks moving down. All that is is just looking at stocks that are up 3% or more and down 3% or more. That's it. 19 up, 473 down. Wow. Wow. Stocks gaping up today.

We have 8. 13 stocks gap down. 68 stocks making new 52-week highs, 271 making new 52-week lows. What is that telling me? Overwhelmingly, the bears are in control today. Now, could that change? Yes, absolutely. But I don't want to fight the tape.

I want to be aligned in harmony with the market. This is how I listen, folks. Every day their stocks breaking out. Every day their stocks breaking down. Am I aligned with it? You know, breaking out is imagine the concept of resistance and support, support and resistance, right? So let's say a stock trades between simple way to illustrate the point. A hundred and 105 for six months.

105 would be resistance. 100 would be support. A breakout would happen when it breaks above 105, ideally on heavy volume. A breakdown would be if it breaks down below 100. Ideally for the bears on heavy volume. So break, that's a concept of breaking out, breaks out above resistance. breaking down breaks down below support. So some of the breakdowns, meta is breaking down today, breaking down below 600 of support.

SMCI is another breakdown today. And again, I'll just read some of the stocks that are breaking down. There's a lot more. There's over 90 now, but I'm not going to go through all of them, but just go through some of them. SMCI was down over 30% today at some point. Just a big move down. And that's a big AI stock, right? next one let's see that I can share with you that that matters nLY

annaly capital management they're big real estate stock and mortgage guess what they're down a lot then I go look at on the breakdown list I got DHA breaking down D.R. Horton two below that and I got Bidu breaking down Toll Brothers is breaking down and breaking below the 200 day Linar breaking down from a bearish base under base pattern and then getting you know getting knocked down. What does that tell me? Well, let me go look at the XHB. Again, this is how I listen to the market in real time. Oh, the XHB broke down yesterday and broke down even more today and it's way below its 200 day and way below its 50 day. That's housing stocks. Well, rates go up. What's

going to happen? Mortgages. They go up. What's going to happen in demand? Probably go down. So real estate prices, home prices. If this continues and housing stocks continue to get mulled here continue to go down a lot. The spring housing market's on, but mortgage rates just shot higher. All right, that's one of the headlines on the financial news today. Okay. Again, we're just listening to the market. Before we said, I read the news, I could see it. The market's speaking to me. That's how I listen to the market, folks. I hope that makes sense. You can look at movers up. We've got 25 right now and then movers down. There's see here. Geez, there's almost, yeah, there's a lot. Over 400. So however you want to cut it, you want to dice it. It's up. To me, it's just

look for themes, right? The market's speaking. How do we connect these dots? Those are the housing stocks. By the way, there's 90 breakdowns today. I just gave you a handful. There's a lot more. So when you see a lot of things break down like that, that tells me, oh, okay, hold on a second here. There's areas to avoid, right? There's areas to avoid. There's a lot of areas you want to lean into. Like right now, it's extended, but we know energy tends to be working. So let's look at the XLE. Oh, had a huge run from 46 to about 60. I'm not going to touch it now, but had a big run. The OIH, oil service stocks went from 280 to 406. Huge move. The XOP, another ETF that tracks oil or energy, oil and gas exploration stocks, went from what, 139 it

broke out to 177 or 178. Again, knowing where to be is just as important than we're not to be. Some of these, I'll go through some more sectors a little bit later, but some of these areas to avoid, they broke the 50, they broke the 200 day weeks ago, even before the war, right? So it's not like, oh, all of a sudden, oh, it's because the energy prices. Yeah, sure. But listen to the market. The market's objective.

Price, volume. They're facts. not my opinion. It's not, you know, it's what's actually happening in the market. And to me, that's game changer. Sure, I'd love to listen to my own opinion, but I trust the market's opinion more. Not mine, the markets. My job, listen to the market and then get aligned with the market, getting harmony with the market. And think long term. Buffett taught us to think in decades. decades, not days or weeks or months or years, decades. That's where real, real compounding takes place.

Knowing when to be in and when to be out allows you to compound in ways that are just absolutely remarkable. Up next, we've got a lot more to cover. I'm Adam Sarhan. This is the one and only Investor's Edge. You're listening to. What are we waiting for? Well, what are you waiting for? One, two, ready, go.

Action. Inverester's Edge with Gary Culpa. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. I'm Adam Sarhan in for Gary K. Who's out today? All right. So here we go. So I'm just waiting for that music then.

Thank you very much for being here. As always, everyone. If you missed any part of the show, you want to listen again. Or if I went fast over something, you want to pause or wind. Please go to GaryK.com. You can listen for free on any device you want. want anytime you want all on gary k.com all right so in closing here we have only a few minutes left again defense defense defense uh if you're looking to i like sharing timeless lessons i don't come on

often but when i do i want to just zoom out share timeless lessons with you i did a few of those today the market speaking i always ask are you listening being in harmony with the market you know just some of the things that i've covered but if we go into an aggressive selling state please understand fear possibly could take over. And if that happens, the, you know, logic, we all think we're humans, you know, humans are logical creatures, but if you look at our actions, we tend to be emotional creatures and use emotional logic, or if you look at psychology, they call confirmation bias, you find logic that supports your emotional decision. So, for example, most humans are overweight in the West. Okay, great. Well, why are they overweight? We're looking at a new diet,

this, and the other thing, you know, Atkins way back when or keto diet or this diet, paleo diet, whatever, right? It's calories in versus calories out. Simple, logically, you would think most people would be underweight, just to control the calories, right? Have less calories, burn more, less coming in, more going out. It's a real simple formula. Most people are overweight. Why? Because it feels, notice my language, feels as an emotion, feels good to eat. So I'm going to eat more and then do that every day. What happens? It compounds.

I left off just a few minutes ago speaking about compounding. Everything in life compounds. Every year I get to give a speech at my, or a speech, you give a presentation about Career Day at my kid's school. And I ask them, how many wonders of the world do you think there are? And everyone's like, oh, yeah, seven. Here's the eighth compounding. Everything in life compounds.

And they give them a slideshow, it shows them how money can compound over time. They're 12 years old, 13 years old, seventh graders or eighth graders, whatever it is, usually seventh grade is why I speak to. And I show them and say, hey, the average retirement age of 65 in Americans, blah, blah, blah, blah, do the math. If you just invest, one thousand dollars, he's compounded out, show them the numbers, how it can grow, 10,000, here's what happens, so on and so forth. And then at the end, the kicker, if you will, where I get the head, like, you know, the head emoji when their heads explode the type of thing, not literally, but figuratively, okay, well, they really get them. It'll be like,

aha moment. Because everything in life compounds. You're not, your relationships compound, your education compounds, your habits compound, W habits, you know, winning habits compound, losing habits compound. So go back to the logic and emotional thing. Humans, we make emotional decisions. We justify it with emotional logic or faulty logic just to justify our preconceived notion that's an emotional decision. Oh, I want X. I want to eat the cookie. Well, all right. I also want a six-pack. All right. What do you want more? look at your actions. Actions speak louder than what?

Words. Well, again, if you just look at the actions of humans or the market, objectively, it's deafening. It speaks volumes. Screaming. Why? How many sit-ups did I do today, Adam? Zero.

How many cookies did I eat? A lot more than zero. Or this week or this month or this year, right? So it's the actions that matter. We don't get we want in life. We get what we earn. I want a six-pack. If I don't do the sit-ups, I'm not going to get the six-pack.

It's that simple. Even though I want it, I'm not going to get it. In the market, the emotions trump logic, nine out of ten times. So if fear takes over, and I've seen this, I've been doing this since the 90s, folks. I've seen cycles 08. I've seen the dot-com boom and bust. I've seen, you know, COVID and traded through all these things. Fear takes over, logic temporarily goes out the window because people panic.

You walk into a crowded theater, yell fire. You get the same reaction anywhere in the world throughout history. It doesn't matter that your language, your religion, your race, the culture, your socioeconomic level, your education, any other thing you can possibly think of under the sun does not matter. Humans are humans or humans. People are going to run out of that theater. So with markets, same thing. Fear, greed, drive markets. It's the emotions. Oh, but Adam, I'm a logical person. I make rational decisions.

Show me your actions. It's the first thing I look at. It's not what people say. It's what they do. Because what you do is what matters. I could say I'm the best trade in the world. Show me your performance. I could say I'm the best, you know, athlete in the world. Okay. What's your weight? You overweight or your underweight? Do you act the right weight, so to speak, or whatever? You know, it's just the same thing. It just show me the results.

My kids tell me, oh, yeah, I'm going to work really hard. What are you doing all day? They're on the screens. Well, that doesn't make sense. Get off the screens. It's just simple. So, again, I'm using all these examples and analogies and metaphors and everything else I'm doing just to illustrate the point, right?

point is, okay, if I'm aware that I'm making emotional, not rational decisions, I can shift. I can set up guardrails. Ray Dalio, one of the biggest hedge fund managers and most successful people in the world talks about this. Setting up guardrails to protect yourself from those emotional decisions that show up and could wreck havoc if they're not controlled. In my book, I've got cartoon characters in it. once is a smart money superhero, guy who's calm, cool, collected inside of me. Inside all of us, we have a good side, a bad side, dark evil, good, bad, whatever you want to call it. I call it a smart money superhero.

And then there's a dumb money beast. And the dumb money beast is the emotional side. So the superhero, the smart ones, calm, cool, collect, the rational side, the logical side. And then the emotional side just runs havoc. Think of like a Tasmanian devil. runs around causes just in a circle just goes crazy markets up buy sell down down down it just takes over the idea is to just pause reflect bring out the superhero bring out the superhero do the right thing especially when nobody's looking do the right thing so if we're

going to go much lower here again I'm not saying we're going to go much lower but if we do remember up down sideways it's all the market can do I want to be prepared in advance for any one of those three scenarios to unfold. Up, down, or sideways. It's just that simple, folks. Don't overcomplicate this. So, defense, defense, defense. I believe that's all the time we have left for today.

As always, I want to thank you very much for being here. Have a great weekend. This has been Investors Edge with Gary Cultbaum on BizTalk. To listen to past episodes or to get in contact with Gary, go to GaryKK.com. That's GaryK.com.