Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Which Stocks Are on Sale Right Now? with Kevin Simpson

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

In the wake of Monday's market madness, the #1 question Nicole has been getting from Money Rehabbers has been: is now a good time to buy stocks? To tackle that question, Nicole calls up Kevin Simpson (Founder and CEO of Capital Wealth Planning). Nicole and Kevin talk about whether we should start prepping for a recession, whether to buy or sell stocks right now and what Warren Buffett is up to. To find more of Kevin's work, including his book Walk Toward Wealth, click here: https://capitalwealthplanning.com/team/kevin-simpson/ All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Brokerage services for alternative assets are offered by Dalmore Group, LLC, member FINRA & SIPC. Brokerage services for treasury accounts offering 6-month T-Bills are offered by Jiko Securities, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Banking services are offered by Jiko Bank, a division of Mid-Central National Bank. Securities investments: Not FDIC Insured; No Bank Guarantee; May Lose Value.  Brokerage services for Regulation A securities are offered through Dalmore Group, LLC, member FINRA & SIPC. Risks at public.com/disclosures/alts-risk-and-conflict-of-interest-disclosure See public.com/#disclosures-main for more information.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no

maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits

apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Yesterday, I had Dr. Shepard on the pod to talk about the slip in the market and what happened on Monday and how we got there. Today, I'm talking about what the heck to do about it. I asked you on Instagram what you wanted to know in the wake of all of this market madness, and the number one question I got is now is now a good time to buy stocks? To tackle that question, I'm calling up Kevin Simpson.

Kevin is the founder and chief executive officer of Capital Wealth Planning, an investment advisory firm with $10 billion of assets under management. Kevin and I talk about whether or not we should start prepping for a recession, whether to buy or sell stocks right now and what warren buffett is up to and kevin plays bullish or bearish with me and gives me his takes on the stocks that are causing the biggest stir on wall street right now kevin simpson welcome to money rehab hey nicole thanks for having me so yesterday on the pod we did a whole episode about the madness in the markets on monday uh with you kevin i'd love to look forward, like what happens next? But before we get into that,

I would love to get your take on whether or not we're heading into a recession or not, or if everyone's overreacting. Well, last Thursday and Friday, we definitely had a growth scare. That's why you saw the market sell off on Friday. People thought that a recession was inevitable because of the jobs report. Thankfully, we had a weekend intermission. There was a lot of things that took place behind the scenes. We can get into it if you want. Some of it's more complicated institutional trading, but there was some big unwinds that took place within hedge funds.

That's why we saw the futures trading down even more so than everything else, kind of like a little bit of a perfect storm. And what you saw with volatility was also an institutional unwind of a big short position. So we saw a big rebound today. I don't think we're going into a recession. I still think the soft landing is a base case. Really, really tricky for the Fed to do it. But so far they have, and it really comes down to the economic data and their data dependency. So I have somewhat cautious optimism. No, tell us what happened behind the scenes in the hedge fund world. Oh, it's not so much behind the scenes. It's just that there were hedge funds that you hear

about the, it's called the yen carry trade. And I'll make it super simple because it's not that complicated. Japan has really low interest rates. So you can short a bond in Japan and you pay the interest called the carry trade. So you're paying one to one and a half percent interest and you can leverage it to the hill. And now you have all this money that you can take. And if you were a safe hedger, you could buy a treasury and get 5% and you make the spread to the three and a half percent spread, risk-free as long as the yen doesn't move or Japan doesn't raise interest rates. Take it one step further, you're a speculator, you're shorting the yen, you have all this money leveraged, and you buy the big tech stocks. And that worked for a really long time.

People were just making, making, making. And then all of a sudden, the Bank of Japan raised interest rates a little bit, the yen versus the dollar had a 10% swing. And if you're leveraged and you have a margin call, well, you have to unwind your trades. And that's mainly what happened. At the same time, the perfect storm, the short VIX trade got crushed because the VIX spiked. So that's why you saw yesterday that the VIX

go through the roof and then cal calm down a lot in the afternoon and today. So just a very dynamic weekend into yesterday can be really scary if you're watching something like that, but it's always better to know that there was some explanation behind it. Doesn't mean it's over. And certainly there could be other hedge funds that are in the same pickle and they just haven't had a margin call yet. But I think the economic data is far better than what we're seeing in the stock market for the past couple of sessions. I mean, it always works until it doesn't. That's what we saw.

But you mentioned the VIX. The VIX came up a lot in reporting this week. Can you explain what the VIX is for someone who might not know? Well, the VIX is really something that's important to me in my portfolio because we're involved with covered call writing. But to keep it simple, the VIX has been called the fear index. With the exception of yesterday, it hasn't done as good a job in predicting market moves. Even 2022 was kind of the exception that proved the rule where we saw a full-blown correction across the board. And we never really saw that capitulation in the VIX. We did yesterday.

But the VIX measures volatility on a 30-day future for the S&P 500. But why VIX is important for me is it's part of a black shoals model, which is important to option pricing. And to make that as simple an explanation as possible, if you could consider options, it could be priced on three primary variables, time, price, and volatility. Now there's other factors to it, but those are the big three. Time you can pick one month, two months, three months. Price you can pick 5%, 10%, 15% out of the money or in the money. You don't have control over the volatility. So when you see volatility higher, it makes option prices more expensive. We definitely had institutions going in yesterday and hedging that drove the VIX higher, drove option prices higher. And you saw an unwind of

the VIX on the short end of that trade. So pretty crazy. That was a good explanation. That was a good, easy explanation, or maybe the best I've heard of Black-Scholes. Well, Nicole, I had the Black-Scholes model tattooed on my back. So maybe if we have time at the end, we'll get a chance to take it. Honestly, I wouldn't put it past you. But like how bad in context was Monday, really? So, you know, the business news media loves to freak out a little bit. But in context, this wasn't even in the top 100 worst days in market history, right? No, the S&P ended down the day 3%, so not that big a deal. Now, we were at during a period of time in our day, 8.5% off of the highs, which is still no big deal. Forgetting the bounce today, like yesterday at the close, we were pretty much trading where we were in March and April. So I know there was more than a few people panicked and,

and, you know, having nervous breakdowns, but we, I've been doing this for over 32 years, Nicole. And there were times like that. I remember we would get five or 10% pullbacks very frequently and we didn't

have nervous breakdowns. It just, It was the normal course of market behavior. Pricing gets a little bit more realistic at times. And the expectations for economic improvement is a little bit lessened when you're raising interest rates from zero to 550 basis points. Thus, the report, the jobs report on Friday that freaked people out. But the truth is the GDP was at 2.8% in the second quarter and Atlanta Fed has it for 2% in the next quarter. So even though growth is slowing, which you would expect, it's still growth. It's not negative. It's not in contraction

territory. So still okay for stocks. Yeah. I can't imagine you having a panic attack. Maybe younger Kevin had some freak outs? No, I had a really strict mentor who wouldn't let me get freaked out. But I was told the very first day that everything I thought I knew about investing and everything I learned in college was completely irrelevant. So you're a blank slate and I'm going to treat you like one. And then how did he get you to chill? He was very scary and I was too scared to pretend that I was scared. I just had to fake it till I made it. Okay. We're going to talk about Buffett in a second. But first, generally, the market is recovering. What are you seeing as a buying opportunity? Well, I think there were a

lot of opportunities yesterday. We saw a rebound today. So it was really yesterday morning where you saw the most opportunity. We went in and we bought American Express yesterday. That's a stock that I think will continue to benefit from the high-end consumer. If you think of us having like a K economy, the high-end has been really unaffected by higher rates and bringing rates down will only make the consumer stronger in that department. The lower-end consumer is becoming affected for sure with interest rates being high, credit card rates being high, $11 trillion of consumer debt out there. A lot of it is mortgages. So lower rates will help. But for the past 12 quarters, American Express has continued to increase their revenues. It trades at a 16.8 forward multiple.

So you have a really good company there. If we go into a recession, it might be a little bit of a different story. But I know that for the past three years, they've bought back 10% of their shares. And that's another thing that I really look for in companies. So show me earnings growth, show me reasonable multiples, show me dividend growth, and show me share buybacks. And for right now, American Express checks off all those boxes. Can you define what a K economy is? There are so many letters.

Well, it's like you have the haves and have-nots. So if you think of the K, is? There are so many letters. because the prices have inflated so much. Now, that's not entirely McDonald's' fault. Their cost, their actual cost of product has increased by 40% since 2019. So inflation is a really, really big deal on the lower income consumer. That's a lot of younger people too. It's not that you're not working. It's that things are very expensive. When you try to describe inflation, you say, well, inflation is coming down. It's not deflation. It's just disinflation.

So if a candy bar used to be $1 and now it's $3, the only hope is that next year it's not $4. You want it to stay $3. It's not going to go back to $1. And that's the problem with what happened post-COVID with all the infusion. Not to be critical of it. You had no choice. It was a hopefully once-in-a-generation pandemic, but it does a number on the monetary supply

and it's really, really tough to keep inflation from running rampant. And that's why you saw Fed take interest rates that they kept at zero for 12 years to five and a half percent in a very short period of time. And you're hearing a lot of critics say that they're keeping them there too long. But I'll bet in many cases, those are the same critics and economists that complain that the Fed was waiting too long to hike rates. So it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback. Sure.

And let's zoom out. In recessionary times, what are you buying? I hope that we're not in a recession. But if you are, you go to really low multiple stocks and a trade down. We own Walmart. We think Walmart's a beneficiary of a slowing economy. Not to say that you don't see higher income people going to Walmart or shopping online at Walmart, but Walmart can be a company that benefits from people being a little

bit pressed on their budgets and they do a tremendous amount of business in grocery. So I think Walmart's a good example. Yeah, Walmart outperformed the S&P in 2000, right? And 2008. So always like a good recession trade. What about in bullish times? What are you looking for? Is it the checklist of the dividend? You had it. I mean, we had it for 12 years with zero interest rates.

It's easy to make money if you're a growth investor. So we're not a tech firm by any means, but any one of the big seven that was and still is incredibly popular will always have tremendous outperformance when you have robust bullish times. And the nice thing about a lowering rate environment is that people always pay up for growth. So your big tech names, which have come down a lot recently, are probably worth investing in at these prices. Not to say that they can't go lower, they're earnings dependent. But I think ultimately over the next few years, those growth names can do incredibly well because they have such massive potential. And that's why their stocks are going up. What happened with the dot-com bubble in 2000, companies were going up that had no earnings.

There were no PEs because there were no Es. Here with the AI trade, yes, it was a little bit inflated, 100%. But if you look at companies that are involved with that, their earnings are really supporting a lot of the price appreciation. Maybe not all of it, but the big tech is where you always want to be in good, robust times. Yeah. I mean, some pros are saying this is just a natural market correction. Tech has been really frothy and this is just part of the cycle. One indicator that you mentioned investors look to when taking a look at evaluating buying a stock is a P-E ratio, whether or not it's

overvalued or not. Can you explain PE ratio for those who might just have had a brain fart or might have forgotten what PE ratio is and how investors use PE ratio in analysis? Stocks trade on two things. They trade on price and they trade on the multiple that we give them. And the PE ratio is the price over earnings. The higher the PE earning, maybe the more growth expectations surround the company. You look at really low multiple companies like big banks, utilities, telecom, they have very low multiples because their growth rate isn't expected to accelerate. By comparison, if you look at internet companies or AI companies, tech companies,

to whatever extent you consider pharma growth, companies that have really high growth potential demand a higher PE. So the more earnings that they can generate in the future, the higher the anticipation of the stock price over time. So when we look at PE ratios, you can look at the market and you can say, okay, well, if the S&P 500 earns $245 this year, we're probably trading at roughly a 21 times earnings on the S&P 500. Now, how far can that get you? Can you go to 6,000? Well, either the earnings have to go up a lot or the PE has to go up. And historically,

the PEs don't trade at 21 forever on the broader indice. So next year you could say, well, maybe we'll make 275 or 278. And that gets you a lot closer to 6,000. One thing I feel very confident about is that we'll be at 6,000, whether it goes to 2,000 first before we get there, if it happens in two years or 20 years, history doesn't give us a really terrific roadmap on that. But the best companies that continue to earn more money will be part of the larger indices and therefore you'll see stocks go higher. It's always hard if you're a new investor to think about that because you think, well, gee, I wish I would have been born 30 years ago and I wish I would have been investing 30 years ago because look what's happened. Well, companies come in and out of favor, but it's

that mindset that companies need to be more profitable next year. Eastman Kodak was really popular when I got in the business. Yeah. I think about that all the time. What was I doing as a baby? Why wasn't I investing in Apple? That would have been amazing. And so for NVIDIA, for example, if we just want to double-click on the PE ratio, that's at over 62. So what does that tell us? So you're right. So it's a pretty high PE ratio. But I think if you look at their earnings for next year, so we use 2025 forward earnings, and I'm always thinking like stocks trade on their what's to come, it brings their PE ratio down to about 35.8. So not the 62, and not quite half of that, but in the 35, 36 range, it's not as scary. It doesn't seem that overvalued or stretched because for the past 10 years, their PE has

averaged around 33. So when you look at a stock like NVIDIA, which I don't own, so it's not a stock I can buy because of the absence of a serious dividend, but it's a company that is amazingly popular, has been incredibly successful, but it's done so on the back of its earnings, not on speculation. And that's unlike 1999, where stocks would go up in similar fashion on very little substantive news. That's dot com. Yeah, 100%. Hold on to your wallets.

Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a

reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200,

or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A.,

members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. And now for some more money rehab. It's time to talk Buffett. Buffett really spooked Wall Street when he sold half of his Apple stake.

He also sold a bunch of Bank of America shares. And then you went in and you bought some Apple scraps. Yeah, so we bought Apple yesterday. Why? When the news broke over the weekend that he sold it. Now, probably his exit was around 230, I'm guessing. I bought it yesterday around 200. So there was a difference in when he bought it and when he sold it.

Selling half of his position sounds like a lot, and it sure is, but it still is number one position. It's still 20% of his portfolio. I'm not Warren Buffett. Our portfolio is not Berkshire Hathaway, but on a smaller scale, if we have a position, any one of the stocks that we own, if it grows to a 7% or 8% weighting, I trim it back to 5%. So for risk management purposes, it's making sure that we don't have too many eggs in one basket, and we're not dependent upon anyone's stock for better or for worse. So we've owned Microsoft for about 12 years and all of last year, we were just trimming Microsoft all the time. So if you say,

oh gosh, why are you selling Microsoft? Well, we're not giving up on our Microsoft position. We're taking some profits and redistributing it. By comparison, even though I bought Apple yesterday, there have been nine times over the past 12 years where we've sold out of Apple completely. Most recently was November of last year. We sold it at 187 and a half. And of course, Murphy's Law, a week later, it's at 200. Why wouldn't it be? We bought, we rotated into Vago Broadcom and that did really, really well. we bought we rotated into vago broadcom and that did really really well and then apple went from 200 down to 180 170 160 so we bought it at 180 170 164 and then it it rebounded really nicely so it rotated out of broadcom back into apple i love apple i just don't always like the price it's trading at and i have to imagine that some of the really smart people that work with Warren Buffett may look at it in a similar fashion.

Like we have a lot of Apple. Do we really need this much? Do you really think that that's what the Buffett folks were thinking? I mean, he's such the buy and hold guy. He's not the like pruning type of guy. So couldn't this sell off and holding onto a bunch of cash mean that he's doomsday prepping? I think if they're looking to make a transition to pass the reins, maybe he would consider retirement at some point. I know it wasn't in Charlie's blood and for a lot of us it isn't, but maybe, this is me speculating, maybe there could be a scenario where he came out at the end of the year and said, you know what, I'm passing the reins on to this next set of portfolio managers. I'm going to operate as chairman emeritus. And this gave

them the ability to have some dry powder to put to work and maybe put their stamp on the Berkshire portfolio. I don't own it. I'm not a shareholder. I don't want to do any more than just make a guess because you asked me a question. Can we play a quick game before I let you go? It sounds like a lot of pressure, but sure. You're like, what is the game? Tell me what I'm signing up for. So I'll throw out a few stocks and I just want you to tell me if you were bullish or bearish. Or can I say hold, buy, sell, or hold? I suppose I'll allow it. I'm going to play it your way. Let's go. I'll try to wing it. Let's go. NVIDIA. I think NVIDIA is a buy. Bullish.

I mean, it feels like there's nowhere else to go but down, but you're saying there's room to grow? Well, I look at the earnings growth. We talked about the PE ratio right now of 62. And I made the argument that if their earnings come in as projected, that the PE ratio would be 38 and change. And they have a history of beating their expectations. So the stock was 130 a few weeks ago, and it's 100 now. It's a 30% drop. I think if you don't own it, you can certainly buy some NVIDIA here. And to your point, we can see a whole nother trade hedge fund go belly up, and you could get it at 90 or 80. So it's never an all or some game with me. But I think if you don't own NVIDIA here, I can't buy it, but I would if I could. Meta. So Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp.

So Meta just became a candidate for our portfolio. The last quarter, they announced the dividend. So it's in our universe. We actually have it on our whiteboard and we're looking at it. I think they have tremendous earnings potential. Advertising looks really good. We haven't bought it yet. I do think it's a buy for us that the research that we need to do on it is going to be a little bit deeper dive just so we can learn about the stock. But it's what I'd like to have in the portfolio. I'd be bullish on Meta. Bitcoin. So I don't know anything about Bitcoin, but I feel like it's something that people should

have a little bit of just because you want to have the ability to talk about it at cocktail parties. I wouldn't make it a huge investment, but I believe in the thesis that people are interested in it in a really big way. And momentum can be a powerful thing. And if there truly is scarcity whenever they do the halvings, then that just makes the demand greater for lesser supply. So I don't think it's going away. I'm bullish. Tesla. I would never bet against Elon Musk. I don't know that I'd be aggressively buying the stock here because I know that his margins are coming down for the automobile. But if autonomous driving is something that never really comes to fruition, then you can justify that multiple. Probably be a bearish on the short-term, bullish long-term.

Ford. Oh, bearish. There's nothing good to say about it. Okay. They should cut the dividend. They shouldn't even pay a dividend. Their earnings were so horrible last quarter. Yeah. Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly is a buy. The weight loss drugs, even if other companies come into the marketplace, they're first to market. They're investing so much money and to be able to develop it and produce it and manufacture it, that Eli Lilly is a buy. And there's so many other uses for it. I missed Eli Lilly. We owned Merck and Johnson & Johnson, which we don't have anymore.

I have Amgen that we missed Lilly. I wish we had bought it, but I'm still bullish on Eli Lilly. For the GLP-1s? For the GLP-1s, plus other things that they seem to have other uses. Lilly also is working on Alzheimer's drugs that I think could be very potentially profitable. So it's a company that's not a one trick pony. And when you say you missed it, what does that mean? I didn't buy it. It went up a whole lot and I didn't buy it.

You could still buy it. I wish I had made the investment in Eli Lilly a few years ago and I just, I didn't. We can't get them all right. So when you say you missed it, you just missed a certain price level. Like you can still go buy it. It would just be too expensive for you based on some. It's still a little pricey for my metric because of how I look at the company, but that doesn't always amount to the entire story because it's hard to fight the tape and the prospects for that are so good. I hope that that stock comes down a little bit more and that we can buy it because I'm bullish on their

business model. I just think it's a little pricey for me to put a big position on at this point. It's come down a lot. I mean, if you look at the chart, it's getting very attracted to the point where we are looking at it. But I still think that if there's short-term volatility over the summer, it is a presidential election year. For those of you who remember 2016 and 2020, it's possible we'll get some more air pockets and some more volatility, despite my more general bullish thesis. So as we did yesterday, where we were buying things on dips, that's a candidate for us to put in the portfolio. Gold. Modestly bullish. I mean, I think you have to have a piece of it similar to Bitcoin, but not for the same reason. We prefer the miners. We own Freeport and Macmoran. It's a way to invest in not the commodity itself, but a company that's mining so that you get a little bit of a dividend.

a company that's mining so that you get a little bit of a dividend. Now, Freeport specifically, I don't know that I would chase after it. It's a copper play more so than a gold play. We think that copper is going to be a real story in the future, but we have a long time horizon. So I think you have time to get into that trade. But if you like gold and you're bullish on it, I think we are Freeport Mac Marans how we're playing it. Apple. Oh, I love it. I love it. I think we bought more Apple yesterday. And I think there will be a true refresh cycle for the iPhone. This is a stock that has lots and lots of volatility. So if you see it trade down back to 175, I mean, there's no surprise there. It's not going to cause us any concern. But if you don't own it, I would start buying a little bit of it

here and just always buy it on those pullbacks. And when it gets up in that 230 range, you can sell it because it's a stock that has a decent ability to trade if you look at the chart. We wrote a covered call on Apple two weeks ago that expired and it brought in some good premiums. So I know this is maybe a conversation for another podcast, but covered calls are fun when you have stocks that have some volatility and we've been writing a lot of options against Apple. Amazon. Yeah. Oh, it's a buy. I mean, the AWS story is just, it's incredible. You're probably very similar, Nicole. You can't walk into my house without stepping over 20 boxes every day from

Amazon. That's not necessarily a reason to buy a stock, but your eyeballs don't lie. Amazon. That's not necessarily a reason to buy a stock, but your eyeballs don't lie. The business model is unstoppable. And a lot of times with the numbers, you get a little upset about one component over another, but they're playing such the long game. We can't invest in Amazon because they don't pay a dividend. But the second they do, they'll go on the whiteboard next to Meta and we'll start following them very closely. I'm bullish on Amazon. Bank of America, our friend Warren Buffett also sold some of that. Yeah. I'd say bullish. I own JP Morgan Goldman Sachs more so because of the investment banking component as opposed to just being a traditional bank. But the way the stocks come down,

it's trading just a little over one time book, good dividend, great management. I mean, at some point he might retire, but I'm bullish on the big banks and think about lowering interest rates, how that could benefit some of the things that they have on their books. So Bank of America would be bullish. I just feel like in general, if something happened to Bank of America, like that's zombie apocalypse vibes. I just feel like Bank of America is always going to be okay because of the name. Well, we don't invest in any of the small community banks or the regional banks. I know there might be more opportunity there, but there's more risk. To your point, when you have one that's

that well-capitalized, that well-financed, and that well-managed, you can sleep a lot better at night. CrowdStrike. This is the company, of course, that was at the center of the insane. Well, also a name that we can't own. I would be bullish and take a flyer on it. I wouldn't put all my money in it. If I had money to put towards CrowdStrike, I'd put half in right now. When there's blood in the street, sometimes that's great opportunities

to make an investment. Who knows what they're going to have to pay and their Delta is suing them for like $500 million or something pretty sizable. But there is some culpability. There's going to be some financial outlay. I don't know if they have insurance or not for everything that happened. But the idea of how important cybersecurity is, maybe that was just a great wake-up call that it was something of their own doing as opposed to an outsider getting in, but they can come out of this even

stronger. I don't expect it to happen overnight, but I'd be bullish on it with half of an allocation because I do think that there is no more important business from an AI standpoint, a computer standpoint, to have defense around your data. Crude oil. I wouldn't be overly excited about crude oil. For the past two years, it's traded between 70 and 90, and I would expect that to continue for the next two years. We own Marathon Petroleum, which had awesome earnings. And we also have a little bit of Chevron. We have some ConocoPhillips.

We own these companies because their main concern is distributing cash to shareholders. In the old days, it was about exploration and CapEx and spending money. Now it's about making money, distributing it to shareholders. So I think it'll be range bound, but I'm bullish on the energy names, maybe not the commodity itself. All right. Final round, Kevin, what are you bullish on? What stock are you bullish on that I didn't mention yet? That's a good one. I think the first one that would come to mind would probably be TGX, TJ Maxx. And this goes back to the beginning of our conversation. We were chatting about the economy, the trade down Walmart. TJ Maxx is the same type of thing. They went through a period

where they stalled after the COVID. There was a kind of a catch-up trade in their profit margins, but they're hitting at all cylinders at this point with respect to the business model. And much like Walmart, it has the ability to attract the high-end consumer and the lower-end consumer. And if we have a recession, the lower-end, the higher-end consumer will probably spend more time in those off-rack stores. So I'm a huge fan. I spend a lot of time at HomeGoods. And again, not a reason to buy a stock, but the eyeballs don't lie and it's hard to find a parking spot. What are you buying at HomeGoods? I'm not buying anything at HomeGoods. Taking my wife to HomeGoods, walking around with my dog and putting stuff in a cart.

As you should. All right, Kevin, we end our episodes by asking our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. Can you give our listeners who are freaking out about a potential recession right now any sage advice? I think the freaking out is unnecessary. It would be naive to not have one eye on the ball expecting that it could happen at any time. But you have to watch the data. And so far, the data is slowing. It's proven that the U.S. economy is slowing. And that's what's supposed to happen when you have rate hikes.

You need the economy to slow down. You need wage growth to slow down. You need unemployment to pick up a little bit so that you see inflation come down. It's not to say that the Fed won't cut too late. They could. I'm not freaking out about it. It doesn't mean we can't have a recession. But they have a lot of maneuvers that they can maneuver. And I feel like the fear is premature and unjust. But to blindly walk out into the night and think that everything is great and there's not going to be any problem would also be a mistake. So right now, the data supports that we're not at risk of a recession in the short term. Eventually, we'll have one. That's an economic cycle. They happen. And we go through those. But I don't think that there's any reason to be freaking out about it today. We always get through them. Every single one. To find more of Kevin's work,

including his book, Walk Toward Wealth, check out the episode description. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make. Thank you.