Peak Prosperity - Caution Is Advised (as Retail Piles In)

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Inflation! Oil! The Fed! Oh my!Click Here for Peak Financial Investing

Nothing in this program should be considered investment advice. It is for educational purposes only Please hit pause and read this disclaimer in full Maybe the feds doing us a favor and their hatred for Trump if that's the reason why they're not playing the same card that they were before for those of us that are prepared for it and have a strategy, maybe we get a little bit of deflation The following is the audio version of a video released at peakprosperity.com. Visit peakprosperity.com to watch the video and to find other insightful content such as articles, discussion forums, and welcome to this edition of Finance U. I am your host today, as every I am every day, Dr. Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity and also PeakFinancialInvesting.com,

back with me today, Paul Kiker of Kiker Wealth Management. Hey, Paul. Hi, Chris. Good to see you today. Likewise. We got a lot to talk about today you and I talked about this on the phone the other day about the what the KFAB markets KFAB being a WWF fake wrestling term where the audience knows it's fake. They know it's fake

But we all agree it's not fake for the purposes of entertainment and amusement We can talk about that and speaking of the fakery, today was Powell opening his mouth and making sounds come out day at the Fed. Well said, Chris. Yep. So zero hedge, I love the memory on that crew over there. They say May 13th, Powell had said

the lack of tariff inflation is transitory. So that's the new narrative. We have transitory lack of tariff inflation. And then today, Powell said we expect a meaningful amount of inflation in the coming months. So that's going to complicate, Paul, what everybody, everybody and their Wall Street broker is waiting for, which is Fed cuts. We want cuts. We need cuts. We need punch in the punch bowl.

So Fed left rates unchanged today. So the median forecast still shows 50 basis points. That's a half a percent of interest rate cuts in 2025. Seven officials saw no rate cuts at all in 2025. Two saw one. Eight saw two, so we're sort of balancing out somewhere in that zone. And two saw three rate cuts. And who knows how big a rate cut is?

25 basis points, 50, who knows? But anyway, that was sort of the first part of that. They see inflation coming, but inflation coming, Paul, and cutting rates, those don't go together. No, no, they don't. And is the inflation really coming, right? That's the brilliant question. So far, we haven't seen a whole lot

of all this Holocaust of inflation that they were saying was coming with the tariffs. And I know it's still gotta work its way through the system. But can we talk about inflation real quick? because I think this is one of my favorite charts I think we always have to go back to this. This is a chart of all sorts of different things but the things in red above those are the things you need and then there's stuff below which is kind of things you want. So what do you want?

Toys, TVs, computer software, maybe we could argue cell phone services isn't so much of a want but more of a need. Clothing, new cars, those are all things you can sort of put off, right? So those have been relatively, they say TVs have gone down 98% in price since the year 2000. Of course they haven't, but they've become so much better that they got adjusted by the BLS. Hedonically, you love your TV so much more.

It's as if the price had fallen. Anyway, craziness, but the things you need, Paul, hospital services, you don't sort of decide, you know what, I'll deal with this broken leg next month, put that off. You don't do that. College tuition, it happens when your kids get to that age. Medical care services, housing, and food and beverages. Those are the things you need. Look at how much those have gone up.

100 to 256 percent, anywhere in between. So things you need have gone up a lot. That's why people are experiencing inflation as not the average of these two things, because you can escape the you can always if you decide that's up to you put off the things you want right for now but the things you need you can't get away from so yeah worse than advertised that's all I said yeah. Far worse than advertised and persistent and and it's wearing on people now I mean I'm starting to see it wear on people.

You can look at it and just the frustration and consumer sentiment in the economy, and yes, not as severe as what it has been, but it's still continuing forward at a pace. And look, I don't know if the Fed should cut rates right now or not. I'm not a fan for them keeping as low as what they did before. I know the markets want that, Right now or not. I'm not a fan from keeping as low as what they did before. I know the markets want that But is deflation necessarily gonna be a bad thing if we have a recession for the people that are paying attention and aware and they're caring about the truth because Rudy let's see here if I can pull it up

Really really having Stein right? Oh, that's a friend of mine. Oh, I love him So he's a guy then on on Twitter, which is a friend of mine. Oh, I love him. So he posted something on, on Twitter, which is a pretty, pretty good, um, let me see if I can find it here on my window. He quotes, deflation is to rich people what inflation is to everyone else. Right. So, so inflation has been rewarding, the rewarding, the wealthy. And I'm not familiar with the individual that quoted. All I know is that he really made the comment and the comments that he wished that he had come up with that quote.

But they've riddled the American people, the average individual with all this inflation and it's benefited them, a little deflation would be good for labor and those of us that are having to have a cost of living and the average person that cost of living is going up without the asset price inflation. And for the ones that are,

that are searching the truth and they make prudent decisions, the prudent foresee danger and hide themselves can protect themselves. So maybe the fed's doing us a favor in their hatred for Trump, if that's the reason why they're not playing the same card that they were before. For those of us that are prepared for it and have a strategy, maybe we get a little bit of deflation. before. For those of us that are prepared for it and have a strategy, maybe we get a little bit of deflation. Maybe, maybe. I will point out that, you know, people being stressed, you know, I've talked about it before, Paul, my house insurance went up a lot, right? Nothing happened, no claims. There's no explanation for it. It's just like, oh, it's more now. Like, why is

it that much more? I thought this is a regulated industry, state regulators, and they have to submit, and presumably somebody looked over it all and said, well, this makes sense. The only thing I can figure, Paul, is that insurance companies are just hemorrhaging on the back end somewhere. Houses aren't burning down more frequently.

You know, I don't know what it is, but they really jacked it up. But the other part of that would be this, which is auto insurance rates over a five-year period rate of change. So it's kind of a tricky chart to interpret, but in each one of those bars, it's asking the question, the past five years, how much has auto insurance gone up? And you can clearly see that it is spiking here in the last couple of months here in

April and May of 2025. That's what these two bars are here. So if you said in April 25, how much is auto insurance gone up over the past five years? It's about 75% if I'm eyeballing that right. And but we know for May it went up over the past five years, 84%. You can clearly see Paul something is happening over here, right? Some something something not good. This here would be not consistent with low inflation. That's high inflation. That's high inflation. You know, and I shared this theory what,

I guess it was about a year ago, we were talking about what was taking place in the commercial office space with, you know, work from home and everything, and we shared all of the data about these major buildings that were getting sold for 20 and 30 cents on the dollar. And we were wondering why it wasn't passing through to the banking system.

Well, as you and I talked about that, I got to thinking, I'm like, you know, big insurance companies, that's where they invest. They put a lot of their capital in these big commercial properties from a long-term standpoint. And I've had the theory for a while that a lot of these extra costs, yes, the cost of autos is higher. The courts are very generous in normal bumper-to-bumper accidents where you're

getting these one and a half million dollar settlements for cars that weren't totaled. bumper accidents where you're getting these one and a half million dollar settlements for cars that weren't totaled, that has some input to cost to it. But I still believe that a lot of it has to do with that they are passing down their losses and their investments to the average people. So if that's what's taking place, it's essentially a taxpayer bailout that the government regulators are overlooking it. Well, I'm sharing this idea with somebody in Florida.

Their insurance had gotten into, their insurance had gotten so expensive. They got declined for a particular reason. So they went with a smaller company and as part of their policy, it stated, Hey, if we have it losses that are enough, there can be a special assessment that takes place. So when those hurricanes came through, right, the insurance company in Florida, they didn't get a special assessment because I was sharing this kind of discussion with them and they made the comments that that's really interesting because the hurricane came through so they were

prepared for that. We didn't get a special assessment so maybe there is some truth in the fact and I don't know. I can't prove it. I've looked, I've tried to find the data. If it's out there, it's hidden. It makes sense because we know that's where their investments are. And then you're seeing all of these massive increases across the board that are, that just don't make sense from, I mean, don't get me wrong, inflation has been horrific, but it doesn't make sense for those insurance premiums to go up that much. But the excuse is because of all these major natural disasters, they're supposed to be prepared for them. That's the excuse for them to kind of cover it up with regulators that may not be paying attention to what's really going on under the surface. A lot to cover there, but I do think that it would be important if the Trump administration or a future one wanted to do something,

they would get rid of this litigiousness that happened. So I've been reading lots of accounts over on Reddit. You know, the subreddit is r slash legal advice. And Paul, about half of them seem to be people saying, hey, I was in this minor fender bender two years ago. I just got hit with a $50,000, $100,000, $2 million suit. Right? And the advice always is,

hey, you let the insurance companies take care of it They just got to deal with it And it's just thing right but but like why are you getting a two million dollar suit? Couple years after a fender bender where everybody you know just sort of exchanged info and left right, but that's the game now, right? and so we all pay for that and I Guess that's part of the part of the game. But I don't think it's something else is going on. There's something those those last two bars there. That's pretty excessive right there. Yeah, it is. I mean, and that's accelerating in a faster pace. And that's

just gonna that's gonna further put pressure on the consumer. The consumer has been ridiculously resilient within the US right now. I mean, the one thing we can do as Americans is spend and and borrow money to spend at the government level and the individual level. And and so I don't know what's driving that but that's scary if that continues actually. What's that gonna do to the average household and people that are on fixed income that haven't prepared for that. Well carrying on with Powell's stuff, he also said, best we can do for housing is restore price stability. Hey, sounds like one of those, one of those Pawn Stars guys, right? Best we can do. What does that mean to you? Restore house

price stability. What does that mean? Because they've been shooting up like crazy and they've gotten completely unaffordable for a lot of folks in a lot of districts. So what does that mean? Because they've been shooting up like crazy and they've gotten completely unaffordable for a lot of folks in a lot of districts. So what does he mean restore price stability? Like I don't get that. You know, Fed speak is meant to be a little confusing anyway, but I don't understand that in any way whatsoever. I mean, if house prices were down 50%, that makes a lot of sense.

But I mean, he's saying we're going to hold it steady here. Like like that's price stability. Like we're going to hold them at these super high elevated levels. That's a good question. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't know what that means, but best we can do. Right. But on the other side of that, so the way you restore house price stability, I guess,

would be to keep interest rates kind of stable, because as soon as you jam interest rates low again, house prices in theory take off again, and that doesn't help. So I'm not sure what the Fed... Listen, Paul, I'm a free market guy. I don't think the Fed should have any business setting interest rates. No. Or trying to decide what price stability looks like or what full employment is or how to get there.

I don't think they should be doing any of that stuff. They're just bankers. You know bankers. Bankers wanna make a profit. It's literally all they care about. So that we have a concerned set of central bankers who want to do good things for us, like make sure that the economy's growing

and the housing's stable. Like I don't think they should have any part in any of that. I, I, every regulated market I look at Paul is a disaster. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In every way, because they're, they're not serving the people. They're serving the corporate interests and those who line their pockets the most. You know, as I've thought about that, cause I haven't seen that quote, Chris, is

that, is that a secret statement that quote, Chris, is that a secret statement? Hey, to all of you bankers out there, the best we can do is try to preserve prices where they are right now, because we really understand that prices are too overvalued. If we get into an economic environment to a downturn, that we see it drop dramatically, because there's a lot of individuals out there. Look what they have before? You know?

Yeah. yeah. Well, I mean, you and I have talked about this before, but in several key markets, you know, we saw obviously inventory is climbing. This is in the Dallas area right here, and then same thing in San Francisco. So we're seeing, we see this weakening price and sales volume stuff,

and that's carrying on right now, by the way. So the Fed's saying, hey, best we can do is make sure that the home prices in San Francisco don't fall more than they already have. Is that the, and how would the Fed do that? There are just some dudes and dudettes who sit around a very nice mahogany table and open their mouth and words come out. What would they actually do to make housing prices stable?

That's a good question. I don't, I mean, unless they, they cut interest rates to try to hold asset prices where they are, maybe that's what they do. It should be, Hey, we've got to get it a situation where housing can be more affordable. Let's, let's reduce some of the ridiculous regulation that's in there. Yeah. Let's get that cost out of it.

Let's, you know, I don't know. I don't know. But I was, you know, there's a big, big battle going on in Texas with some people. And I believe my, my, my friend, Mitch Bexler started it where they're actively talking about how property taxes are just taxing people out of house and home. And so a whole system got started where municipalities decided they needed their fair share

and they came up with a scam which was, oh Paul, your house is worth more, we just had a third party assessor assess it, so because it's worth more, your taxes are going to go up, which is a scam because that's taxing the unrealized gains in your home. Yeah. I never thought about that. You haven't sold the home, right? It's just sitting there and somebody else declared that it's worth more. And because it's worth more, you have to pay more, right? Can you imagine

if like every year they said your car, Paul, we know it's, you think it's a depreciating asset, which it is. If they said, Hey, your car, Paul, we know it's, you think it's a depreciating asset, which it is. If they said, hey, your car, Paul, that you bought for 30,000 is worth 100,000 now and you need, you have to pay taxes on that. Yeah. And they'll justify it by saying, we give you great roads. Now I gotta say Georgia has good roads, so I can't complain about the roads. But yeah, this doesn't make sense.

No, no. Anyhow. let me share on the house pricing. Oh, go ahead. Oh yeah, please do. Well, I just got this one last piece, which was that Zero Hedge also just reported that single family housing under construction, leading indicator, so our slabs poured and his framing going up, is collapsing

while new one family houses for sale, inventories climbing and they're building fewer of them. This is not a very strong sign in the overall construction business as it were. And we've seen these things cross over before like this where you see the red line cross over, green line carries up for a while, but then it follows down eventually too. And this is the great housing crisis right through here so are we there again but this is a pretty wide gap right here opening up so it's a warning sign I think people should pay attention to it housing is weak we've been covering this

for a while inventories up sales volumes are down prices are starting to nose over like they do and now the Fed is telling us, oh, they're gonna, best we can do is keep that stable. Yes, yes. That's the story, yeah. Well, and you've got some of the individuals who are experts like Melody Wright in the housing market that's just warning people that housing's overdone, that prices, the path of least resistance

is lower on homes. You've got the individual who created the Reventure app has been putting out a lot of warnings out there as well and I thought this was interesting because Look at this difference here. So zero hedge put this out on Home builder confidence tumbles to near a 13 year low article So you've got home builder confidence up here at the top, right? But look at the home buyer confidence down here and look how wide that gap is in the interim period.

I mean, that's a substantial difference. That just tells you, you know, home buyers are not confident, but home builders are ridiculously confident because they've been making tremendous amounts of money over the past several years. And maybe they're just not seeing it. There's a big difference in a reversion to the mean that can take place here in the difference between the two. And I would expect that if this continues, you're going to see home builder confidence drop relatively dramatically too.

And my concern is, is that's another pillar of the economy where this market's acting like we're going to get a perfect outcome. We're going to get a perfect outcome to the conflict between Israel and Iran. You know, and, and, you know, the war in Ukraine's just completely out of the radar right now with what's taking place. But something is wrong. Everything under the surface has changed, but investors are continuing to act like this is the same environment that we've been in in the past.

And the Fed was a lot more proactive in cutting interest rates up until now. Now I'm not saying that they should cut interest rates because I'm, I mean markets are right at all time high, house prices are at all time highs. If they were to create animal spirits even more severe than they are right now, then it's just gonna be worse on the other side. The hangover's gonna be worse than what I'm worried

that it's gonna be already. Yeah, well said. One more piece of weakness out there which just came out is continuing claims. By the way, in the Washington, D.C. area, this is three areas in Virginia, Maryland, D.C. in those colors there. So continuing claims for unemployment are up,

not surprisingly, hemorrhaging workers in the D.C. area. Okay, that's just one area, just one area. But you and I have talked about last time that the jobs report, pretty weak, right? A lot of people with the household reports hemorrhage tons of jobs, right? We have more people on disability, those are up for other reasons, who knows why, but I got my reasons.

We got people who are working part-time for economic reasons, also very high. Those are all sort of indicators of underlying economic weakness. And that would be the environment, Paul, that's the reason I call this the K-Fabe markets here, because, you know, those are the kinds of things that should lead to some sort of, some sort of some sort of caution in the markets and You and I talked about those historic collapse and volatility last time never before in history as it collapsed this much this fast Against a backdrop of this much uncertainty. This isn't just sort of like oh, we don't quite know what that Congress is up They like we, we're talking World War III. Yeah. Talking potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

We're talking maybe a giant trade war with China. A lot of moving pieces here for markets to be saying, we're not worried about any of that. And more and more people are starting to share my suspicion that they aren't entirely, it's not all investors. Right. Well, and I'm struggling with that because, well, let me take one step back. I was ridiculously disappointed. One of the things that I want to add from an uncertainty standpoint, here recently with

the Trump administration saying, hey, we're holding Israel back. And then when they attack, oh, we were just kidding, right? We helped them set up a surprise. I was so heartbroken by that statement because the world needs someone who's going to tell the truth in spite of the narrative or the short-term polls or anything that takes place. America should be a place

that you can trust our court systems. You can trust what our leaders are going to say. You know, what is it Jordan Peterson says? Don't lie. Don't lie. Or at least, well, I can't remember his quote right now. I thought it was going to come to mind, but it didn't. He says something along the line of don't lie or just don't speak.

Right? Just don't say anything if you're not going to tell the truth. I was so ridiculously disappointed because you can't trust our monetary system anymore if you're doing business with us because the government has weaponized the SWIFT system, and they've weaponized sanctions against other countries, acting more like a bully. And yeah, that's a tool that can be used, but not all tools need to be used That's a tool that can be used, but not all tools need to be used to keep diplomatic trust and honesty because you've got to be able to trust somebody. If you can't trust what Americans would consider the most powerful country on the face of the

earth, and you can't trust our leader to say what he means and mean what he says, then how in the world do we not have increased volatility going forward? Because now all of a sudden, the other countries are going to have to be taking everything that we say as a deception and preparing to protect themselves. And at what point, it's kind of like a schoolyard bully, right? There comes a point where the individual that knows that they're going to take a beating decides that they're not going to take the bullying anymore and they stand up for themselves. And on the other side of that, at a minimum, even if they get the, you know, when we were kids, even if you got your butthead, they still never bothered you again because a bully doesn't want somebody that's going to fight back. So you can't trust us. We're bullying the rest of the world and I'm really concerned about what that outcome is going to be, both for our markets, our economy, and for our lifestyle within the United States if this isn't pulled off perfectly.

There's an arrogance that we're operating with right now and history tells us we don't know exactly when it comes, but pride comes before the fall and there's a whole lot of pride in a lot of places right now. That's very well said and that whole lot of pride in a lot of places right now. That's very well said. And that is one of my main complaints, critiques right now is that let's just look at it through the Iran lens for the moment. 20, 30 years, we've been, everybody's been talking with them about nuclear stuff, right? So it's been an ongoing, very long dialogue.

And then Trump says, oh, you got 60 days, but he didn't say or else particularly until after the fact. And then they're coming, they're a part of negotiations. Like just this morning, Germany's MERS said, Oh, if Iran comes to the negotiating table, maybe the military options can end. It's like, dude, that's what they just were. They were at the negotiating table and then you bombed them. So why would they come to the negotiating table? Please explain. Right. So you can bomb them again. why would they come to the negotiating table? Please explain, right? So you can bomb them again, and by the way, they didn't just like bomb like a couple of like, you know, militarily significant nuclear sites, they took out the head negotiator

who was in his apartment, it was a very particular personal strike, it said, we're gonna take out the top negotiator. So now let's talk about negotiations, and by the way, can you imagine how awkward this is gonna be? You're a negotiator We got this very complex stuff to do with China now. It's about trade. It's really complicated You sit down and the Chinese person just goes why should I trust you? Yeah Yeah, oh you can trust us because these negotiations will adhere to these Right, yeah Paul I I only stole money from your wallet. You can trust me with your checkbook. And if I'm China, and if I'm China, I would point out and say, look, we can't trust you,

but there are much more severe consequences to deceive us than what it is. Because Iran has, you know, they're not as big a threat to the United States as what China would be if it was an all out war. At least look, I don't know geopolitics enough, but China certainly is much more severe. Well, that's true because China has a militarily, but B if they just said, we were not sending any more ships over to you all. We don't want your dollars. We'll take the hit on our manufacturing side, but we just can't work with you all anymore.

Our economy falls apart in a matter of weeks without Chinese imports, right? Because they make critical supply chain component materials like pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical pre-components, circuit boards, manufactured chips, iPhones, right? Whatever, all those things you kinda need to run our economy, like what are we gonna do do just start making all those things next Tuesday? Nope Well speaking of which but but let me tell you the one card that Iran has and they've talked about it for a while

They keep making noises. It's it's the trump card if they did this but this just came out this morning Paul I want to talk with you about I think it has enormous market and portfolio implications I want to talk with you about, because I think it has enormous market and portfolio implications. Sulaimani Ahmad is obviously very, he's got more of an Iranian slant than an Israeli slant, but he, I mean, I'm not just saying that because of his name. I follow him on Twitter. He says, quote, breaking Strait of Hormuz closure imminent. Iranian state television has announced that a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz is imminent. Global financial markets will be disrupted.

Energy infrastructure is damaged. Oil price is surging to 400 a barrel. And they say here that over 20% of global oil supply flows through it, but it's more than that, Paul. Here's what flows through it. Coming by source, you see the UAE putting out about 4.4 million barrels per day, because this is thousands of barrels, 4,403 barrels is 4.403

million barrels. Kuwait 7, Saudi Arabia 7, Kuwait 2, Qatar 2, Bahrain 3, Iraq 1, all that, right? So 21 million. We burn, the world burns about a hundred and three million barrels a day But most of that's kind of produced and consumed locally So there's actually Paul about 50 million barrels a day that flows across the world That's 40% of it right there Wow 40% of the oil that has that needs to be exported

That's the critical stuff. You know, if Canada produces some and burns it, it doesn't matter as much as this number. So every country that's dependent on oil imports is gonna, would take it and take it hard. And what would happen, we have $106 trillion of debt, something like that in our system now in the United States. What happens when a hundred plus trillion of debt, something like that, in our system now in the United States. What happens when a hundred plus trillion of debt runs into $15 a gallon gasoline? It just stops working, right?

Oh, oh my gosh. That would be absolutely devastating for households. Consumer has nothing left over. The inflationary implications are not going to be solved by a Federal Reserve that- Nothing they could do nothing they can print and hands out money or slams interest rates to zero corporate profits would be absolutely obliterated because of the input calls. And then I mean, that would be absolutely horrific. Read. Agreed.

So you know what? State TV and Iran, they maybe they're talking some smack. This would be catastrophic if 21 million barrels a day suddenly stopped flowing. So you know where I go, Paul? The same place that told me Trump was going to win in this last election? You got to go to Polly Market. When money's on the line, you let the money vote. Here's the money voting on Polly Market asking the question, what's your bet that the Strait

of Hormuz will get closed in 2025? We got a few more months in the year, obviously, here in June, it's about half the year, but 57% chance, like more than half, more than a coin flip according to Polymarket, but look at it skyrocketing there as of the last week or so. That's a big deal. Yeah. I think people got to get ready for that. That's, Paul, there's inflation, which is you print too much money, you spend it, it

happens. But this is not inflation. They'll call it inflation, but it won't be inflation. It'll just be a supply shortage leading to vastly higher prices for something. And it'll feel like inflation because we confuse inflation with prices rising, but they can rise because you printed too much money, which is actually the value of your money falling, or prices can go up because there's not enough of it.

It's just a supply, demand, price curve chart, right? So nothing the Fed can do about it. Bill, there's nothing they can do about it. You've got this continued fiscal irresponsibility, which is ultimately inflationary inary in of itself and then you add that on top of it it's like throwing gasoline on a fire and I like polymarket because it's not polls it's people actually putting their their money where they're where their educated guess is. Yep, yep, this leaves ideology at the door. Doesn't matter who you pick in the fight or whatever you want to make sure you're making the right bet. So yeah, that's part of that now. So, oh, Paul, I really want

to talk about China and gold and what's going on there. And we'll do that just as soon as we come back. The markets are a ticking time bomb. Volatility is spiking, trade wars have broken out, and most investors are sleepwalking into disaster. Many portfolio strategies perform poorly during times like these. At peak financial investing, however, we don't gamble with your future. Our registered investment advisory connects you with battle-tested wealth managers who reject outdated models and embrace active management, strategies proven to navigate chaos, and who aren't afraid to discuss things like the great taking or maybe the importance of protecting

your wealth with gold. Without the right approach and with the wrong advisor, you're risking, well, everything. Don't wait for the crash to act. Visit peakfinancialinvesting.com right now to schedule a free consultation and discuss your particular situation. Take control of your wealth before the markets take it from you. Again, that's peakfinancialinvesting.com, and I'm Dr. Chris Martinson urging you to act now. All right, welcome back.

China, gold. I think China, I think China, Paul, has full, full, full, let me just put this on the table. I think that they have leadership there where they are not stocked up with people who are morons. Make of it what you will, but they put people in positions of power who have real competence and demonstrate competence. And when they're incompetent, they tend to get removed.

They don't have any, our former energy secretary is Jennifer Granholm. They don't have any Jennifers trying to run their national energy policy, right? She had zero experience, didn't know anything about anything. It was a disaster, predictably. So looking at China, I think they're always, I watched closely. This caught me. Gold Markets Investor, which is at global market observer there, MKT Observe on Twitter, said China continues to quietly acquire gold through the London market. They bought

27 tons in April according to Goldman Sachs estimates over the past year China's monthly purchases been hoovering As I'll say that carefully hovering in between 25 to 60 tons a month. These are massive like this is this is the estimate by Goldman Sachs in the light blue here and reported by the People's Bank of China as this little red schmear. Nobody's buying that. So Goldman Sachs is estimating, Paul, this is big, 50, 60 tons a month by China. Just quietly vacuuming it all up. And again, it started here in earnest around 2022.

We've described why before That was weaponizing the US reserve dollar reserve currency against Russia Who you just pointed out is not really in our optics anymore But still that moment I think woke China up and said, you know, maybe we should hold gold instead of US dollars Maybe that's a good idea There it is in a chart form Now I believe with the hindsight of history, the pain of changing became easier than the pain of staying the same at that moment, because that's when they've been very aggressive and started to communicate, accumulate and understandably

so, because all of a sudden now you can't trust the monetary system. And we had, you know, I would, I'd get myself into a position where I'm not And I think that's expandably so. Because all of a sudden now you can't trust the monetary system. And we had, you know, I would. I'd get myself into a position where I'm not reliant upon and they don't have that power over me. So it makes sense that they're accumulating that much metals. 32,150 times let's say $3,400 an ounce. Yeah, it's 110 million bucks a ton. So, so they're throwing half, half billion dollar chunks out the window on a monthly

basis like bring it in. My view is I think they're bringing it in as fast as they can without raising alarm bells. Yeah, it's smart. It's smart. I mean- Sort of a stealth accumulation. bells. Yeah. It's smart. It's smart. I mean, of a stealth accumulation. Yeah.

Yeah. So why would you publicize everything that you're purchasing so that that would throw up the retail red flag and then all of a sudden retail and institutions jump on top of it and then the price gets higher and, and, and they have to pay higher premiums. It's smart on their part to be able to accumulate aggressively in here before we've, you know, and look, prices have gone up a lot, but not in relation to all the money that's in circulation. So gold by a lot of measures from a long-term standpoint is still under value.

And I've got a chart in here somewhere. Let's see here. I love this chart. So this is just to put it in perspective of to what happens from a historical standpoint. So I think we've talked about this before. So what I'm looking at here, what I'm sharing is a gold continuous contract. It's end of day. So going back, and I cannot remember, and I apologize. I wish I could provide the source, but I do have a legitimate source because I verified it

I just can't state it because it just came to mind So back in this was 2021 somewhere around August July to August of 2021 global Financial assets and gold share was approximately one and a half percent That's about 1800 an ounce over here. I know that's hard to see Where we were back in December of 2024, at 20, that's about 2700, 2650 an ounce, it had only risen to global financial assets and gold share at 2.1%. So imagine if we were to get the 5% of global assets. Imagine if we were to go to 10% just how much higher the value of gold would be in that period of time.

They're looking long term. Well, I ran those numbers a while ago. So the current value of the US gold market is about one and a half trillion-ish. And so I asked the question, what if the top 10% of families decided they wanted to have a 5% allocation to gold and the answer was because there's about a hundred and sixty trillion dollars of wealth stored in those families The answer was well, you need five to six trillion dollars of money goes into gold but the total market currently is only one and a half trillion and that's being generous because I don't think we're going to sell any of Fort Knox's gold to these people maybe, but I doubt it. So, so, so you, once you skinny it down, I'm like, Paul, this

market has to, it's going to get a, like if they just want a 5% allocation, which I, by the way, and this is an investment advice and you know, I don't give investment advice, but personally from an educational standpoint, 5 percent would be the bare minimum that I would entertain if I was running a family office or a personal portfolio I'm much higher than that personally again education that's all but if they just did five percent you're gonna have to 6x the value of the of the current market yeah that's tremendous that's tremendous. That's tremendous But what if they went to 10% you know it just goes crazy it gets stupid from there right so you know

But will we go stupid? Probably probably we probably will before it's over. There's no doubt so Paul. Can we turn now? I see the time moving on here I want to make sure we cover all of this stuff. How about this? So you like charts charts patterns this is the NASDAQ and somebody here noted that they think they're looking at a megaphone the dreaded megaphone pattern because the reason it's dreaded for those of us who follow such things is it gets wider and wider and wider and wider but one day it tends to break down out of the megaphone. They're suggesting there might be a few more counts higher,

you know, which makes it all look good, but there's a big old ugly in the background here coming along, and I know the markets look bulletproof, but you and I have talked about this, that almost all of the buying has been done by retail, not institutions, and by the way, Paul, not insiders. This just came out in the Financial Times yesterday. Corporate executive stock sales reach an all-time high. So what do those insiders know?

They're looking at the big picture. They understand how tedious the underlying economic situation is and how perfection is going to be needed for us to get the best outcome. And they're making smart decisions at this point. They really are. And this is an environment where if you're in an institution, you can offload your shares over to retail because they're feverishly buying up this market. We've turned the markets into a gambling environment,

is what it is. And I'm extremely concerned about that. This is, on this side is the S&P value, 6,000-ish gets up to there. But here on this side we're looking at the ratio of sellers to buyers. So it's just a ratio. So this is five, say.

So there's five times as many sellers as buyers. So insiders are still buying, but some are selling. And you see here at this big burst of, you know, it was above three, so from three to five, and that was during that ramp up here. And then look what happened when it collapsed down into the great financial crisis here. This went all the way down to below one. There were more buyers. And what did those insiders know?

Well, they were pretty smart, right, As they came up through all of this. And then you can see there's this big burst of selling up here as we came back in through that piece. But again, they collapsed down. So here they are, this is the highest, this is an all time high. There are more insiders selling today. And who are they selling to?

They're selling to retail. And that's a double plus on good. You don't want the insider selling and you definitely don't want them selling not to institutions either but to retail in the scheme of things. So that looks like weakness to me. It sure does. And on top of that, you've got private equity now, which is putting out a massive number of advertising, which is trying to offload their illiquid products onto retail. So you've got insiders that are selling, you've got hedge funds have been selling into this, they may be stopped into the market, but this is the perfect environment for Wall Street to be able to offload their shares and prepare

to be in a better position to buy if we do get some deflation in the markets. Deflation mean prices go down. And Paul, give us an example. What is a private equity deal? What would that look like if somebody got approached by one of those? Okay, so that's a good question. How do I explain exactly what private equity is? So what private equity is,

so there's a problem with a lot of companies that'll go public. So you've got these special acquisition vehicles like SpaceX, right? They're, what's the structure on SpaceX specifically? Average retail individual can't buy it, right? Because that's not a good idea of private equity. So let's see what private equity would be. Okay. Private equity would be, hey, we're going to provide some type of lending that the banks won't cover. So they're going to go out and they're

going to raise capital by a lot of individuals and they're going to do bridge financing or they're going to do some type of special financing. That's one option. So that's structured in the loan market. The other environment and what I have seen in the investment industry is they're going to say, hey, we're going to go buy a bunch of RIAs, registered investment advisory practices. buy a bunch of RIAs, Registered Investment Advisory Practices. 2010, 2011, they would sell for three times revenue. I'm just picking that simple, just for explanation purposes. So what they'll do is they'll raise some capital, and they're going to be a $2 million minimum, for example, to go in there. They'll get however many people come in, then they're going to start buying these advisory practices and combining them together. Then they leverage them up, and then they'll take that

and they'll go buy a bunch more. So they may be buying private stocks, buying small businesses, but they lump all of these things together and they tell investors that they're gonna be tied up for five to six years. So it's private equity. There's not publicly traded data. So I haven't had to explain this for a while. I've talked about it,

but you asked me a good question. I'm trying to think. So they're going to lump all this together. And then what they try to do is when they get it big enough, they're going to sell it to an endowment like Harvard or some, or some other institution that's not going to deal in small businesses. So they wrap these things up, that they've levered them to the hill. Well, the problem is your big investors have been buying up a lot of these really sexy private equity deals over time, and now they don't have anybody to sell to, right?

They've got some illiquidity in there. So there are several individuals that have come about and talked about Harvard's private equities, a large portion. I'm seeing all of the rave right now from my friends that are at major Wall Street firms in the buy and hold side. I'm like, hey, what's your big firms telling you that's nice? Oh, our clients have got to have private equity.

So what they're doing is they're going and showing to the average person because now the minimum purchase points have been dropping. Some of them you can get in for as little as $50,000 at this point. Don't get me wrong, 50,000 is a chunk of money for somebody to lose, but that brings it down to the level that the average investor can put some in there. So the Wall Street firms will say,

hey, if you had have invested 20% in a private equity over the past, then your returns would have been this. Because when you get in on that original side with the big money and then you start leveraging these up, what does it do? It's asset price inflation. But then it reaches a point of diminishing returns and there's a limited number of buyers. So it's the perfect vehicle for Wall Street behind the scenes to be able

to avoid some of the regulations on publicly traded companies. You've got institutional investors to begin with and now that you've got a track record you can go to the regulators and you say hey this would be appropriate for the average individual. You grease the right places and now you're offloading that to the average individual when when it has maximum efficiency, maximum debt level that's accumulated with it, and maximum downside risk. So they'll do it for, there's private equity that'll go in and buy apartment buildings, there's real estate investment trusts, which is a little bit different, or they might, they may buy, there was a period of time where one of the private equities was doing some type of franchises

and mixing them together. But typically what they're going to do is they're going to go borrow these, they're going to leverage them to the hilt, get them as maximally profitable as they can, and then they're going to package it up and sell it to individual investors. And that's one big concern that I have right now is because you can't see all of the inner workings because you don't have all of this public reporting requirements in the private equity, at least from what I understand,

that you do in publicly traded equities. Well, I'll give you an example I just heard about from a friend up in Maine. I believe that, so they needed something done. It was like HVAC or something. And so they call up their friend who has this HVAC company forever and ever and said, come on out, get this done. Guy said, ah, it's going to be six grand.

He's like, it was 800 bucks last time. You know, it was just a simple thing. It was like, what, what, what, what's going on here? He said, ah, you know, we sold our company. They got bought up by one of these private equity firms. They rolled up all of the HVACs. So now there's no competition, because they bought them all. Yeah.

And then they jacked the prices up by huge margins, like 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times on various services. And then the people are stuck paying. And then they show you, Paul, look at these amazing returns. But you know what? A, it's immoral anyway. But B, you know what happens? People start HVAC companies and start competing with them.

Yes. Because they can undercut their pricing by half or more and still do very well, right? And so they won't talk. They'll sell you at that maximum point of apogee on the launch of this exciting financial rocket. That's a good point. That's a good explanation. That reminds me. In our area, in the North Georgia Mountain area, private equities bought up all the concrete manufacturers. And then the prices have gone through the roof. Well, the sellers have gotten on competes for a certain period of time.

Most of them were exiting, but you're right. And they purchased up all of the quarries. So now you're paying ridiculous amounts for your gravel and load of gravel that you come in. Yeah, some of it's inflation, but it's exactly what you've done. It's regional monopolization of prices. You're exactly right. What happens on the other side, especially when these non-competes expire, or entrepreneurial individuals recognize, hey, I can make a good living

by doing the same service for half the price. Yeah, that's, your explanation was much better than mine. Very well done, Chris. Well, I just want, we'd say private equity, I just want people to know what that means. Hey, I ran across something, Paul, I was dying to get your take on. Jim Chanos, who I've had the pleasure of meeting before he's an interesting character just to say the

least here he is describing his strategy around micro strategy which is Michael Saylor's company MSTR is the ticker symbol it's the company very famously I don't know if they do anything anymore besides buy Bitcoin and then issue preferred and regular stock and some kinds of debt. Anyway, here's Jim describing what I thought was a fascinating strategy. I wanted to get your take on it. Michael Saylor is a wonderful salesman,

but that's what he is. He's a salesman. And what he's selling investors is the concept that you give me your money and I'm just gonna go buy Bitcoin. And hopefully the value of my stock trades at a premium to the value of that Bitcoin. And so as long as I can keep doing that, I generate value.

And this is, of course, I called it financial gibberish. Because on top of that, he also said in your interview, he said, the company should not just be valued on the basis of the Bitcoin holdings, but on a multiple of the profits that accrue from when I do this financial alchemy. And I pointed out on social media, I said, well, that's akin to saying, well, my house that rose in value from $450,000 to $500,000 last year is not worth $500,000.

It's worth $1.5 million because it's worth the $500,000 plus a 20-multiple on the worth 500,000. It's worth 1.5 million because it's worth the 500,000 plus a 20 multiple on the $50,000 increase. And of course, that's absurd. But that's the claim he's making. And let me just interject really importantly here. I'm actually doing what he is advocating, right? I am selling micro strategy securities to buy Bitcoin. Let's be clear. it's a hedge trade.

I don't know where Bitcoin is going to go. And it doesn't matter to you, actually? Well, it doesn't matter. The premium compressing matters to me. It's important to understand that in 2024 and 2025, mostly at the end of 2024 and 2025, MicroStrategy has sold $ billion dollars roughly of securities 33 billion in common and convertible into common and 2 billion and preferred most recently The market for the preferred stock that he's selling is tiny relative to common

Let's be clear about that and in his own words that you just played back He makes a case that you have to be crazy to buy these preferreds, right? He's going to pay you a dividend, maybe. It's not redeemable. It's perpetual. And if I don't pay the dividends, they're not cumulative. I don't have to pay the back dividends. So who in their right mind institutionally would buy these preferreds?

So, so interesting, huh? Oh, that look short sellers are different characters, but the ones that have survived as long as Jim Chano's they're brilliant. And they're good at discovering these inefficiencies and something like that. That was that's worth listening to five or six times over again, because he just summarized a great strategy. He's selling micro strategy to buy Bitcoin. Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's a can't lose. He just has to wait for the margins to compress, right?

That's just gonna... Yeah, for that premium. It's gonna compress, it will. And so I had to pull it up, but this is micro strategy. Why would you buy this stock? Just buy Bitcoin. But people are buying this, but under the idea that it's gonna perform a lot better than the Bitcoin that's being used as the core asset to back this. It's a back.

Anyway, market cap 103 billion dollars It's got a very high beta which means that if the market moves one unit It's gonna go three point seven six units, you know if it goes down It's going way down earnings per share minus twenty two dollars and twenty five cents minus twenty two It has a negative earnings per share. They're burning cash and There's this there's this premium between their underlying assets and what their stock is trading for. I don't know how Jim loses in this trade.

As long as he's got the wherewithal, which he's been short selling for long enough to ride out any euphoria in the interim period, but I don't see how he does either. That was very well articulated, very well explained, and very well thought out. That was impressive. I've been impressed by some of the things he's done in the past and just how clearly he sees things. Yep.

And that's the most impressive yet. Yeah, he is quite the character meeting him in person. He's every bit who he seems to be. He is quite the character. Tell you more about that offline someday It's uh and don't ask him a question. You don't want to know the answer to right, right? So so I that's just a cautionary tale again not not for against anything not financial advice But for people who are trading in micro strategy, you're gonna want to listen to that five or six times till it sinks in yes because there's a story there and yeah I do

yeah Jim is a hard guy to just discount I mean you'd have to work hard but yeah and and for yeah so and he survived he survived all kinds of market cycles and he does that by being smart calculated and careful and careful. And Chris, talking about micro strategy, that brings to mind something that Jeremy Grantham was talking about his career recently through GMO, and he's been a legend throughout all of the market cycles. But he talked about a lot of the mistakes that he made in the past. And he said, he said one thing, and this is one thing that I have discovered too, that you have to spend a lot of time educating people to keep them in the right place. Because he stated clearly, there's no more pain than an investor.

This isn't his words, this is my summary. There's no more pain than an investor can feel than to watch somebody else getting rich or perceived to be getting rich while they're sitting there, making a little bit less. And that's the problem with micro strategy and some of these others. Seller makes these sensational claims. It sounds really sexy. The average person can't refute it. You know, you're at the golf course. Somebody's bragging about how much money they're making.

You know, you're as smart as they are. And then you're feeling a little bit foolish. And then that fear of missing out people start piling in And I'm seeing that everywhere right now. I mean everywhere from housing You know during the internet bubble we saw it in the in the internet stocks value stocks were thrown out Housing wasn't really the bubble that burst then it turned into housing We know how both of those ended up what Amazon was down 92% from top to bottom approximately after the internet bubble burst. Investors just got too speculative in the short run. But now there's not many places outside of energy and commodities and emerging markets

that you're not in a bowl, right? In the US it's technology, it's AI narrative. And then he also, but that's the problem. You know, so be very careful. I've always been worried about micro strategy and and it works until it doesn't. And it reminds me of a strategy that that this this can make sense to people. And I think I've shared it before to brutal strategy. Let's say somebody pays you a million dollars every time you play Russian roulette. Let's say somebody pays you a million dollars every time you play Russian roulette. Well, you spend that and you pull the trigger,

you got a minor probability outcome and you get rewarded for that. Well, if you do it 30 times in a row, how many people do you think are gonna start joining the Russian roulette game? The consequences of failure are too costly to bear and that's my concern about micro strategy is if it hiccups it

can go wrong really really painfully and he just did a phenomenal job of pointing out a way to bet against that and now I wouldn't recommend the average person do that because he's a professional and he's got a lot of scars to know what he's doing but that was an unbelievable communication thank you for sharing that I've not seen it I knew I wanted you to see that. So speaking of sort of finding the bet that's wrong and going against it, you know, one of the things that the oil markets have been doing for a long time, Paul, is betting that we're going to get to this thing called peak oil demand, right?

And the International Energy Agency, they just came out a couple days ago and they said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's coming real soon people are just gonna stop burning more and the corner of stone of their argument is that there's gonna be all these EVs right electric vehicles are gonna just burn into that demand and and I listen I understand that the IEA has political they're they're really more of a political agency than I would consider to be a truly agnostic research firm, right, which is what they ought to be. So they kind of, you have to read through what they say,

but this is getting kind of awkward for all of us in this space right now, because if you look here, I know this is just Canada, just Canada, I mean that not dismissively, but they're a small market relative, say China, but this is something I'm seeing all over the world It's in Europe. It's it's happening latest electric vehicle sales data released by Stats Canada last quarter EVs dropped

54% fully electric cars dropped 57% gas and diesel went up so Dude, where's my peak oil demand? Right? Yeah. Hmm. Hang on. This gets more interesting because we just had a really interesting update in the Energy Information Agency, the EIA, in their June 2025, what's called Short Term Energy Outlook. That's STEO. They're STEO. Okay. While you're pulling that up, I'll share something here to buy a little bit of time for you. So, and this is relevant. Tavi Costa talks about, you know, oil surge for a brief moment. This is back on June the 14th.

But what I wanted to point out is energy sector is a percent of the S&P 500. Look at that. Going all the way back to 1926, what we saw in 1980, that huge oil spike in 2007 is down to 3% of the S&P 500. Oh, unbelievable. The energy sector is a percent. It's unbelievable. That's so low. And by the way, I think this is just, oh, I'm so excited for what's possible here as an investor.

So look what they just announced, Paul. They just, you see, this is total US crude oil production, right? Remember we weren't going to hit peak of production till forever. And then they said, oh, 2027. Now if you notice this black line is just a tiny bit lower than that. Now they've backed it off. 2026 is going to be lower than 2025. And it's kind of a permanent condition for the u.s. That's just how it's going to be

Wow, so now that's advanced forward by the way We're sailing into this period maybe with the closure of the Strait of Ramos with the SPR Barely barely started the refilling process. That's the strategic petroleum reserve Plus we just had a big drawdown in gasoline and also crude this last report that just came out for the past week plus we have the least amount sort of in storage all over out of the last five years just right at the bottom of that range so we don't have a lot of supply and we have future supply constraints and the response to that Paul is to have a

failure to negotiate in an aboveboard manner with the people who control the choke point for 40% of the exported oil in the world. Yeah. Make it make sense. That doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't make sense to me. One question I want to ask you about that chart. Mm-hmm, so There's some of that how much of that has to do with the fact that oil prices are low and it's just not economical to go drill more rigs a little bit of it But not a huge amount

So so the so yes, it's true if oil prices are low you get rigs stacked and people don't Prosecute as aggressively it's true. If oil prices are low, you get rigs stacked and people don't prosecute as aggressively, that's true. On the other hand, a lot of them have, who don't have their own leases, right? If you purchase a lease, right, so you might be a Texas landholder, Paul, and I'm like, hey, I'd like to drill on your property. We'll come up, we'll write a lease. It's a legal contract. And you're going to want to protect your interest.

So it'll typically say something like, you can have this lease you got to pay me all this money but if you don't do anything in X period of time in the next year or two years like if you don't put a hole in the ground you lose it all and I get to sell it to the next guy right very standard sort of an arrangement so a lot of these people instead of losing the entire value of the lease will drill anyway so that that tends to keep the drilling a little stickier than you might just based on pure economics so that can happen right but on the other side of this if we stop drilling right now just and we wouldn't but if if they just stacked all the rigs and said we're

stopping the tight oil the shale plays which are most of that story Paul they lose every month they lose five hundred month, they lose 565,000 barrels per day of production. Every month. It's just controlled dive into terrain, and we have no flaps in this story. So, we have to, so the drilling has been fairly aggressive keeping it going. If oil suddenly doubled, I think you could sort of hold that for a little bit longer, but as it is right now, you can see here, here's the components of the annual change here in this chart, this bar chart. So in 2023, we put on almost a

million barrels per day. Most of that was the lower 48, which is shale and a little of that was gulf of america's they call it now the goa 2024 0.27 2025 and i'm going to take the under on this they're still projecting 0.21 million barrels per day increase from 2024 to 2025 that's that sort of leveling out process but in 2026 it goes down. We're just, we're just not, we're not being serious about this as a nation yet. No, the only analogy I can think of it seems prideful, prideful that we've not filled our strategic petroleum reserves aggressively and hubris to the point that that we think that there may not be consequences. Maybe they know something that we do.

Maybe the US is in the background and there's such military power and such technological capability that Iran will not have the capability of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. But look, anything can go wrong in a fight. Anything can happen. And time and time again, we've seen the best fighters that get

knocked out surprisingly by somebody that they shouldn't because of one good shot. So, you know, it's like an employee that gets a little arrogant, spends all of their savings down. They've got 60 days worth of expenses and debt up to their eyeballs. And they walk in one day and decide that they're going to cuss out their day and decide that they're gonna cuss out their boss and think that they're needed so severe or they're gonna ignore a deadline and they lose their job. They get fired rightfully so, but they're in the weakest position

that they could possibly be in. And not only do they lose their job, but because they've spent their savings down, they lose everything and get in a much worse situation. I don't see how that doesn't have severe consequences in the way our economy operates. If that continues and especially starts to decline. Well, even if we don't get into a, like, if they shut the straight and remove, that's a true shock get into a like if they shut the straight of her moves that's a true shock that will

guaranteed cause some very big economic pain going forward but even if that isn't true Paul this thing saying that we're kind of like at peak here even if it even if it bumps along for three years that's practically no time to actually get ready for what that means right and we're just not getting ready for what that means currently and? And we're just not getting ready for what that means currently. And what are some things we could do? Well, a lot of people say, oh, we could use nukes. They're not interchangeable. We use very, very little electrical stuff for transport, right?

So 70% of a barrel of oil all goes to transport things. But that includes planes, right? You're not operating jets on electricity anytime soon, right? Tanks, ships, you know, not so much. Diesel locomotives, not really. And trucks, right? So that's what we use, a big chunk of it, just to move stuff around. That's our economy. All right. So the other 30%, Paul, is just other stuff. It's paraffins waxes asphalt precursor chemicals plastics for plastics things like that You're not getting that from electricity either, right? So so really they're not interchangeable But I still think we ought to be putting nukes in as fast as we can

So that there's no reason like natural gas for instance. We use we burn a lot of that to spin a turbine We shouldn't do that. We should use that for other stuff. Right? But we don't have a really good program for that going. I was really hopeful Trump signed an executive order saying we're going to have nuclear stuff. That's important because we don't just say you want nuclear. We need material scientists. We need nuclear scientists.

We need all kinds of specialties, welding. There's like a lot of things that have to happen for those things to come into being and get operated safely That'd be great I think there could you could be a whole channel of you know people that could go into that kind of line of work And that'd be great, but you got to get the the regulators out of the way Like we just we just can't figure out how to do these things right because we've had a safety conscious NRC forever, I know they just ditcheded the leader of that just yesterday or day before, but still it's a giant behemoth organization that, Paul, it's the government and they answer the phone.

Department of Construction Prevention, how can we stop you? You know? Not even that nice, probably. No, we got, I mean, we really got to take this is what I'm, what I'm agitating here towards Paul is we got to get serious about this. This is going to take, you know, real serious adults in the room, people who understand how to get things done, not people who sign executive orders and say, I've decreed this so it shall happen.

But this is politics. This is humans. We need competent people in charge of things who know what they're doing. Yes. Well, and who know what they're doing. And who number one commit to serve the American people and not the corporations that are in their ear all the time. I mean, that's the biggest problem. They're in a feed. It seems to me that they're in a feedback loop and they're completely detached from the lives of the average person

right They go around and they shake hands, but that's not where they're getting the relationship they're getting the relationship from these big Lobbyists that are making tremendous amounts of money that are wine and dine in them and it doesn't really matter What's taking place to the to the individuals under the surface, under their feet, because they're so detached from the reality of what the average person is facing, because everybody's trying to shower them with favors from the lobbyist group to them, their kids, their family around them, to line their own pockets at the expense of the American people. And my concern is, it's going to take a lot of pain before that changes, Chris,

because one thing that we've seen, we've seen promises that we're going to address your pain from the Trump administration when they came in, we're going to do these things different, and then they get in and it's like, oh, well, there are a few things we're going to do a little bit different, but a lot of the things that have caused your pain, we want to just continue down that trajectory and here's the reason why. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and justification. At some point, the government's got to serve the American people first and foremost, and put aside the special interest groups that are trying to influence, that are successfully influencing them with regulations to line

their own pockets. Yeah, and speaking of which, maybe we could close on this. I just got this one thing I just wanted to point out. I really like how Thomas Massey approaches things. Here he is on Newsmax. They're at Max, Newsmax. They're asking him about the big, beautiful bill, which we've discussed before. But speaking to exactly what you were saying, Paul, listen to where, listen to who's going to have to deal with

this big, beautiful bill. Listen to this. Joining me now, Congressman Thomas Massie from the great Commonwealth of Kentucky. Congressman, good to have you with us. And let's just cut right to it. I want you to explain why you are a no vote on the big beautiful bill. Well, it spends way too much money. Look, I'm for the tax cuts, extending those tax cuts. I voted for those in 2017. Here's the problem. We're cutting more taxes and we're increasing spending. And to the extent they say we're cutting spending, that doesn't happen in these first few years. They're saying, we'll do that in the later years.

The problem is, the later years never come. It should be T-ball to repeal the Green New Deal, but we're not repealing the Green New Deal in this. The corporate tax subsidies stay in place for at least four more years. There's so many problems with this bill that I'm not part of one of those factions you talked about in the intro here.

I'm kind of a guy on my own standing up for fiscal responsibility. So the point there, Paul, was that he said, oh yeah, we have all these incredible spending costs. They just hit later. Right? And later never comes. Later happens and it's an emergency. There's a recession. It's a war. It's a bad time. Don't you understand? Of course, that'll fall on my watch as a future congresswoman or a man or whatever, it never happens. My father-in-law likes to have phone when I call him.

First thing he'll do is he'll answer the phone and say, hey, the check's in the mail, right? So it's like the, and he pays his bills. It's just something that he does, funding. So it's like the creditor that's calling and say, hey, you owe me some money. Well, the check's in the mail. You'll get it in the future, but you never get it. That was very well said on what he did. It's so frustrating. It's so frustrating because at what point are we going to change? And the longer we put this off, the worse the pain is going to be. Yep. The options get fewer and

less palatable, you know? At some point we'll have to make really hard decisions and it'll, yeah, people will be unhappy with that. But well, Paul, I want to help people, and I hope people who could hear all of this could hear it in the right spirit, which is I like to educate people so that they can hear those words and decide for themselves. But if they do decide that they want to maybe manage the risks here, understand that the world

is changing very rapidly and that there's times to be aggressive and there's times to be defensive and there's times to just know what's happening. So I want people to have financial freedom. I don't want them to be forced into decisions they wouldn't take because their money went away or it didn't last or got inflated away and they didn't understand that. So that's why I love working with you and the way in which you go about helping people do those things, which is develop a plan.

So any closing words here today for our fine listeners? Well, thank you for that. And it's an honor to serve people and help. And I will say this, and look, here's the thing about the investment world. You can make the right decision, but not get the perfect outcome, right? So with the things that I'm seeing under the service, this is the one thing that I'll state. I've stated it a couple of times here in the past couple of weeks. I'm very concerned about the euphoria that's in the markets and several sectors. There's a lack

of patience with the average individual out there. There's a near panic that we've got to, you know, we could, because inflation is wearing on people, Chris, it's wearing on them, it's scaring them. So they feel this panic that they need to go out and do something. I've got to deploy some capital. I've got to do this. I've got to participate in the game. I haven't seen it this severe in my career. I was, I was, I saw it some in the late 1990s, but, but that was fear of missing

how, but I've never seen it like I'm seeing it right now. So the one thing that I want to state, it's not missed opportunity for short periods of time. And I'm seeing short periods of time of 12 to 24 months sometimes that causes you to fail. It's not that missed opportunity, it's loss of capital that can cause a problem. So the thing that I want to warn people is look at your situation, get yourself prepared. If all of this stuff under the surface is a warning, and we keep getting these little yellow lights that going off in parts of the economy, can the Fed save the day? I don't know. I don't think

they can without more consequences. Maybe they can. But the path forward to perfection is so narrow that it's gonna have to be navigated perfectly. So I just tell people, make sure that you're in a place to be resilient, take some of these profits off, build your emergency funds, make sure that you're in a position where you can service your debts

if you lose your job for 12 to 24 months. If you don't have any debts, good for you. If you're in a position where you can pay them off, you still got to do the planning in there, right, and still have some emergency funds aside. Good for you, because we're not guaranteed that we're going to get hyperinflation in the interim period. I'm more concerned about the return of your capital right now than I am the return on your capital. Now That may change three months from now, but with what I'm seeing under the surface, this is a very dangerous period of time. So be careful, be wise, and remember the prudent foresee danger and hide themselves while the

simple pass on and are judged for it. I think that's very apropos for the moment that we're in right now. Excellent. Well, thank you. For everybody who wants to, who's interested, is ready to have that conversation with Paul and his team, please go to peakfinancialinvesting.com, fill out a very simple form,

and emails get sent on the basis of that, and within 48 business hours, somebody will get back to you from Paul's team to schedule a meeting. And we'd love to have you go through that process and Paul, everybody who's been through the process, whether they join with you or not, has told me highly valuable. Really it's a great service you offer.

Well thank you. It's our honor. It's our honor. I had one today that was one of the most enjoyable. It was somebody that it wasn't appropriate for us to work together. I said, hey, follow up with me when you get this, this, and this in place. And before we finished, they said, hey, thank you.

This was impactful for me to see where we are. So, those things keep us going. It's an honor to serve people. We serve people, not money. So, if you've got some desire to reach out to us, we're not pushy. If we can help you in any way whatsoever, whether we do business together or not,

then everything else will take care of itself. Those are those seeds we get to sow. Excellent. Well, until next time, Paul, have a great weekend. Everybody else, thanks for being here listening to this and please leave the comments down below. Any topics you want us to talk about, just let us know. We'll cover them them and until next time

Chris Martinson signing off