Peak Prosperity - The Goldilocks Gamble on a Perfectly Imperfect Future

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

This episode of Finance U explores stock market surges, housing affordability crises, AI’s economic impact, commercial real estate challenges, inflation concerns, commodity trends, and strategies for financial resilience.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 Nothing that we have learned throughout history even matters anymore Okay So that means you've got to throw out all the wisdom of the past To assume that this is going to continue and it's just sunshine and rainbows from this point forward for the next 15, 20 years. And that's a foolish bet to place in an environment like this if you believe that history matters at all. 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 exclusive subscriber-only content. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Finance U, where we bring you the latest in financial news and education so you can make, hopefully, better informed decisions. Back with Paul Kiker of Kiker Wealth Management today.

Of course, hi Paul. Good to see you, Chris. Always enjoy the conversations. Me too. Now, so I said so people can make better informed decisions. There's a lot of confusion out there right now. Stocks are up because everything's so hot, but oil's down because everybody's so worried about future growth.

Bonds are treading water at this point in time, but stocks just keep powering up. And now the statistics are off the charts, right? We haven't seen a powerful move like this in decades. So why? Where'd it come from? You and I both know it's because somebody printed a lot of money and threw it in the system because they were worried about something but uh You know I used to I still get the Wall Street Journal print edition as well as online because it used to be useful for news Paul this is the kind of hard-hitting Wall Street Journal commentary that may cause me to drop my subscription

hmm Hey at least they're honest Commentary that may cause me to drop my subscription Hmm Hey, at least they're honest Why are stocks up nobody knows yeah, they're up because there's a bunch of money out there chasing stocks right now I guess you know It could be a little that little of what you talked about that the reflexivity which we said might be, you know, God call it something else, a little bit more obvious, but, um, it's just stocks are going up because they're going up and people chase them because they're going up, which makes them go up. So that's right.

Northman trader put a post on, on X and he's, you know, highlighting that, that headline there. And he says, why are they going up? Because they go up and everybody's buying them because they keep going up. And now we're starting to see, now we're starting, yes, yes. Why does the market keep going up? Because they keep buying. Why do they keep buying?

Because it keeps going up. Yay. That's from October of 24, by the way. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even realize that, but that was the same kind of environment at the time. Same thing. Same thing. So here we are again.

Yes. And then now it's back to the short squeeze and all the headlines. I mean, KSS went up 100% at one point yesterday and then Crater. So we're back into this retail euphoria. Everybody feels bulletproof. Everybody feels like they're a genius. bull markets always make you feel that way. And the speculation just continues to build on itself. So, you know, I think we had talked before the sale in May and go away is a historically was a good thing until everybody realized it.

So I kept thinking, you know, selling late July. This is not a recommendation. We're just kind of talking about overall, but selling July and standby until around October. We should start to get some volatility around August or September, but this is the period of time that once that momentum took over here at the end of July, that I think things may get interesting.

Maybe we even get a little bit of a correction, but there's so much momentum in this market and so much euphoria that, and then Trump's a master, right? He's just a master at just keeping everybody in a feeding frenzy and he's obsessed over the markets again. So I'm curious to see if he's going to be able to keep this speculation going for much longer than anybody can expect right now. It's dangerous though.

It is. Well, it is. Well it is, you know something I track a lot, used to but I'm tracking it again now is this stuff. Margin debt, it's over a trillion dollars for the first time. Paul, there is a trillion dollars of borrowed money in the markets chasing them higher. A trillion.

That surprises me. I did not realize that it was that high. I glance at it from time to time, but it's not been on my radar. So thank you for bringing that up. I mean, and look, we've blown out the late 2021 right before the 2022 technical bear market. We've just blown right through that. That's amazing.

And of course, you know, margin debt powers things higher, but also powers things lower when it starts to get unwound. Right. Yes. And, and so then the sour note and all this for me, which is really odd, right, because I'm going to be at limitless. I'll see you there. And that's in Dallas at the end of this month coming into the beginning of August. And my presentation is going to be about peak oil. And you can just hear the crickets chirping already because we've already proven it's dead, it's a myth, it's been debunked, you know, but surprisingly in the United States, obviously the EIA as we've discussed is like, yeah, shales peaking, right? And there's headlines every day Chevron just said, they said, oh, you know, we're comfortable with our output. We're just going to not be drilling quite as much going

forward because things are so good. All right. So, yep. You know, one of those stories. So it's just, but you look at all that, but this is the reality, Paul, is that for over two years, oil price has been in a sustained downtrend. And so that doesn't really square up at all with the idea that, you know, the assumption thing is peak oil or that the economy is so good, we should just be buying stocks hand

over fist because things are good. It's just, it's very difficult to make a decision in this environment. And the consequence of that is that for how many years now is this the the XLE's gone nowhere? means so that's That's 25 24 23 22 21 19 6. I mean you just go way back. It's gone nowhere Since 2000 we've been approximately right yep Done nothing well. That's 2014 right there. I think we could go back one further. I think that's 2008 It says there anyway. Oh, okay. Yeah, but it's been just dead money for this this chunk of three years right here

But it's honestly it's been dead money since forever Honestly compared to exciting You know AI and things. Yeah. Yeah, neem stalks semiconductor stocks. I mean, what is it now? So let me see if I can find this here. Barchart put out something good on X that just shows U.S. semiconductor market cap waiting. Ooh.

And now account for roughly 11% of the S&P 500 and all time high. So if you look at that, this just shattered the all time high back in the late 1990s on the internet bubble. So, you know, we're just in one of those environments right now, Chris, that, you know, if you're on Wall Street, and you're managing a fund, you're competing against indexing. And this zero interest policy, you know, all kinds of factors have caused the S&P 500 and the passive index just to

garner all these capital flows. So if you're doing anything in the active management space and you're working with corporate, your job's at risk if you're not participating and chasing, you know, the leaders that are out there. So it's just this, it's psychological, it's technical, it's money flows that are just driving everything into these leaders here and they're just not deploying capital to other spaces. Value as a strategy in general has just been horrible for the past 12 months.

It's all the signs of the end kind of culmination of the bubble. But the problem is you don't know if it ends in three weeks or if it ends in 24 months, because once the investors grab that speculative bit, the data doesn't support it, but the narrative does. And then you've got Trump out there that's, you know, always pulling some rabbit out of the hat to force the short squeezes and, you know, keep this going. But it's not going to end well. We just don't know when it ends That's the hard part. That's the excruciating part for the pruda the semiconductor story is really an AI story

Let me be the first to admit Paul. I you know what I use grok all the time now I actually use Google today for some reason because I needed a picture something. I realized I hadn't touched Google in weeks But it's dead to me now and of course they did that to themselves with their relentless pushing ads at me and also debanking me an equivalent you know demonetizing me on YouTube and also suppressing misinformation that was anything but and all that so they lost my my goodwill a long time ago so not even I don't even

have a tiny violin to break out for that But it just shows how forcefully and muscularly like grok has come on board and did you see this news? That I don't even know what these words mean, but I'll say them anyway So he tweeted out yesterday Elon said the X AI goal is 50 million units of the H 100 equivalent That's the Nvidia chip package 50 million units of H100 equivalent AI compute within five years. Oh, 50 million? That's gracious. And don't those sell for $25,000 a piece now? Something like that. 50 million of those. That's big money. And just for XAI. And he

says next 230,000 GPUs, the whole package, including 30,000 GB 200s those are the big very expensive ones are already operational for training Grok XAI in a single supercluster they call Colossus one but at Colossus two the first batch of 550,000 GB 200s and 300s also for training start going online in a few weeks these are really big numbers like that's incredible I don't even know what to make of them and and if that's coming on in a few weeks with the advances just to leap forward in the past six months of what Grok's been able to do I cannot imagine what more it's gonna be able to do with another five hundred fifty

thousand especially with everything else coming on board. That's incredible. Isn't it? Well, one thing I can guarantee you is your electricity bills are going higher. Oh yeah. Cause we're all going to subsidize this somehow. And utilities again, not a recommendation, but utilities have crap, crap, crap up into a kind of the, the leading sectors as far as a target and it makes sense because at least it has the fundamental driver behind it. Yeah. Hey, I am getting ready to sign up for the

Grok Heavy. Okay. And so I'm going to task it. I woke up at three o'clock in the morning last night because I've been thinking about the presentation that I'm going to do at the summit. And one of the things I like to do is just show people the path over the longterm, right? Okay, so if you retired in the year 2000 and you're taking a distribution, you know, 100% S&P, nobody should be there, but just to show the mathematics of sequence of return and a drawdown.

So I'm gonna task it with math, which I think is gonna be easy. And then, you know, a risk managed portfolio on the other side and then see if it can, you know, get all the math, dividend reinvested, everything that's in there and then build the presentations or at least build the Excel spreadsheet so I can put them in the presentation so you can see them. So I'm really curious if it can do what I want it to do, then I've had it do a lot of other things, but if it can do what I want to do as far as that presentation, then I have a whole world of possibilities that just save time

because the last presentation that I built doing the mathematics took three, four hours plus the presentation of the, you know, putting the slides together. So if it can do it as quick as what I think it will, that's a game changer in time. Absolutely. No, it's really good. We've had Grok Heavy for a while. It's truly a phenomenal offering. But you know, Scott Bessent was saying, oh, we're going to have this huge AI growth boom. And I admit, it's going to make things a lot more efficient. But we already saw, Paul, they're laying off junior lawyers, don't need them anymore.

Paralegal's gone, right? Early entry coders gone. And the obvious question is, well, if you don't need your junior. Paralegals gone, right? Early entry coders gone. And the obvious question is, well if you don't need your junior lawyers, you just need GROC AI plus your senior lawyers, where do the senior lawyers come from? Right. Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that from a long-term standpoint. So as they die out, you're gonna lose the experience and wisdom there unless AI comes to the point that it can replace them completely. Well, if that happens, As they die out, you're going to lose the experience and wisdom there unless AI comes

to the point that it can replace them completely. Well if that happens, easy prediction. We'll all get addicted to using, like here's what happened to me and I realize I probably shouldn't have given this up so easily. I'm old enough that I know about these things, Paul, most people won't know what words I'm using but there used to be these things called paper maps. Have you ever heard the term? Right? Most people won't know what the words I'm using, but there used to be these things called paper maps. Have you ever heard the term, right? You used to have to be able to orient it the right way

and know which way was north and then sort of like squint at it and figure out what it meant and all that. GPS has almost completely ruined my ability to recall and retain directions in a new place. Like if I drive into Boston, like every time I go to the airport. I use GPS. I probably couldn't do it all on my own Without it. Oh not anymore and it's amazing that you reference that I can still so back when I was skiing in college We'd pull out the maps and if it was six or seven

Hours, I would write it down and that was enough for me to memorize it never had to reference the map unless you had to take A detour, right? I can still remember exactly how to get the Monroe, Louisiana Baton Rouge, Louisiana Okahumpka, Florida for the all these water ski tournaments But to go to you know places that I use Google Maps for now It takes you a different way or Apple Maps takes you a different way. I just can't I don't remember it I just don't and then that bothers me to know when it's like at can't, I don't remember it. I just don't. And that bothers me to no end. It's like, at what point am I going to remember this? And now I've forced myself to kind of set it aside places that I travel on a consistent

basis because I don't like not being able to memorize it. No, I agree. I totally agree. Well, I'm really excited for that presentation that you're going to have at the summit. And by the way, Paul, we're going to take a quick break now and hear about that summit from my favorite sponsor, which is Peak Prosperity. And we'll be right back. And I want to talk about housing when we get back. Hi, I'm Chris Martinson, and I am thrilled to invite you to Peak Prosperity's exclusive in-person summit happening this September 12th, 13th, and 14th

at Lake Winnipeg, Saki, NH. At this once-a-year in-person gathering, we take over the entire facility, which offers incredible privacy. And we offer incredible lectures, interactive content, and plenty of opportunity to settle in and allow free-thinking folks like you to come together and to connect, share ideas, and build real community. It's become something of a healthy family gathering, the one you always wanted to have. At Peak Prosperity, we speak the truth when the rest of the world seems committed to ignorance,

if not outright lies. So this isn't just another event. It is a unique chance to join and get to know a select group of like-minded people who value clarity, courage, knowing what the future holds, and most importantly, how to make their families more resilient and prepared along every dimension. Spots are limited and we sell out every year. So if you're ready to dive deep, make meaningful connections, join the family, then come grab your tickets now at peakprosperity.com. Select a ticket plus any extras that you

may need such as a second ticket for a guest or upgraded lodging by filling out the simple form. It's that easy. The Peak Prosperity Annual Summit. Don't miss this once-a-year gathering. Evie and I would love to meet you. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here.

I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here.

I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be here. I can't wait. And, you know, we're talking here about AI and all this sort of artificial silicone-y stuff. Nothing's more important than getting together with real people, having real conversations, you know, and having that camaraderie, the fellowship that is, I think, missing for a lot of folks these days. Yeah. And I, I tell you what, I'm looking forward to the, to the speakers that are there. Like I've already built my list of where I want to be and hope I can work my schedule out to get there. And then the campfire at night, the conversations around the dining table.

I mean, it's wonderful. Cause everybody that was there last year and has been in the past, they care about the truth. They care about their families. They care about this country. They want to learn wisdom and find information to be resilient. It's one of the most, actually the most enjoyable event that I've ever been to.

My biggest hazard, such as it is, is besides wandering into the lake, is when I'm trying to go from one thing to another, there's all these people who want to talk to me and I want to talk to them. So, the hazard is trying to get to the next event. So I end up missing a lot of events, causes me some anxiety. But all for a good cause, it's all perfect. That's why I go to these things. So this caught me.

Bravo's research does a really good shot at this all the time. Housing is as unaffordable, according to that red dotted line, as it was in 2007. Now what happened to housing in 2007? What was it? Hmm. That was right before a reversion to the mean, maybe a little bit worse.

Yep. How did we get here again so quick? So this was, what happened was COVID, they just jammed inflation up our throats down our throats, whichever way you like to put it. But I mean, this is, this is terrible. This is households not being able to get formed because people can't afford the houses anymore. So unaffordable houses tend to lead to stagnant housing, meaning people can't sell, they can't buy because the sellers want to get what they think they're worth so they don't

move. Right. We're starting to see some pileups. We talked about it last time, you know There's these stories where people like I don't understand. I've lowered the price of my house. I won't sell what should I do? It's like lower the price further. That's right till it clears But this wasn't just a US phenomenon. Look at this. How does this even happen Sydney, Australia? the median house price Look at this, how does this even happen? Sydney, Australia, the median house price, 1.63 million. And look at that compared to median wages

in light blue down there. How does that even happen? And how is this sustainable? It's not, that's an exponential curve and a linear curve. Like they don't, this just doesn't work. So I would love to know what the drivers of that is, is that, you know, you look at the Canadian housing market years ago and well, not years ago. It's still experiencing it from what I understand.

But a lot of it was Chinese capital that was flooding out of China to purchase Canadian houses is the same thing taking place in Australia that's driving those those prices up. I listen, people will correct me and I hope they do. My limited understanding is that like Canada, Australia is a very big piece Listen, people will correct me and I hope they do. My limited understanding is that, like Canada, Australia is a very big piece of land for not that many people, but they have these very activist, dare I say, socialist governments that heavily restrict your ability to do anything—rules, regulations, this is and that.

So the housing is artificially constrained because you can't just buy a piece of land and put a house up Right not yours to do that with so so it's very I think an artificial situation And then also they had a lot of migrants and immigrants two separate classes of people plus Possibly what you're talking about which is foreign direct investments a Chinese nationals wanting to offshore some capital into a different housing market Could be all those things, but it's really this is policy. This is policy driven. I said pillaging Australian style because Paul, this requires activist interventionist government and central banks colluding to make that exponential curve go up.

And the whole point I called it pillaging because you, the person on this blue line, you know how much harder they have to work to own that house On a percentage basis of their overall effort output daily waking up How many hours do you have to work every day to feed the people on the other side of this? Purple line who you borrowed the money from that's pillaging. So that's what it is straight up it is but it's also beneficial for the insurance companies because they're increasing their cash flow, which means the cost of ensuring those homes goes up, which further increases the treadmill for the other generation. Property taxes go up because they're a function of value.

It's a whole thing. I mean, that's unsustainable. That breaks. Full stop. That breaks very badly at some point for the Australians. Think about what the current generation is doing to the next generation though. Not only are you artificially driving those prices higher that's going to be unsustainable, you're driving you know insurance costs, taxes, tax costs higher, and then you've

got the baby boomer population generation that at some point is going to be dying off and then that's going to be a lack of demand for housing because you don't have the younger generations that can afford to have children. I mean, you know, to have four children is unbelievably expensive, which is what we should do to continue the population growth. So you're creating this huge vacuum and house prices down the road, oversupply is going to establish at some point in the future with these huge debt loads. And then having to pay prices just to be able to enter the game, you know, it's sad what's being what government policies around the world have done to the next generation. Not to pick on Australia.

I'm really not meaning to, but you can't afford four children because that would be a multimillion dollar misadventure and so this is how they put it in an Australian headline very recently Australia's birth rate hits rock bottom with severe consequences for economic future oh no won't someone think of the economy but this is I'm laughing this is tragic this this is this and that other chart of the house prices are directly connected events Yeah Absolutely, absolutely So I mean, what is that if it's an an act of policy to inhibit?

Family formation I have this bad policy at best. It's something worse than that at worst. Is it just that our leaders are so weak that they do not have the strength nor the fortitude nor the wisdom to guide the people in the direction that's right from a long-term standpoint? And it's just, let's line our pockets as much as we can now. Is that what it is? Is it just, I know it's weakness, obviously, because they're not watching out for the longer generations.

You know, and biblically, it states that, you know, a good individual will leave an inheritance to their children's children. Now, I believe that inheritance is more than just money. Because you look at the statistics on people winning lotteries, you know, the lottery, in most cases, they say it's the worst thing that ever happened to them. I think that inheritance is more than just money. It has to do with an economy that's sustainable, that lays a foundation. It's values that are sustainable from a long-term standpoint. It's family relationships, you know, that when that grandfather is gone or that father is gone, that they're missed because they made such a wise impact in the lives of those following generations. It doesn't look like we're leaving a you know good generation for the a good inheritance for the future generations

in any way whatsoever outside of maybe you know artificial intelligence being built to the point that that that everybody's in the ready player one movie at some point in the future. That was a fascinating movie by the way. Well it is kind of a game except that has real consequences. To pick back on the US again, this is the 2006 bubble. We've eclipsed it, blowing it away with the 2025 bubble. Then this goes all the way back to 1890. So you can see that houses should really be about here on an inflation adjusted basis. But this was, this was the malfeasance of the federal reserve under Bernanke. And it came all the way back, but there's not on our watch.

And they crammed it all the way back up again. And I guess the plan is to cram it even higher in the future. But obviously it can't work And and then the thing is Paul What did what jobs are these people going to be performing if AI is going to take half the jobs away nobody's nobody's articulated that yet Right Scott Bessent just said oh, you know it's gonna great efficiency from AI But but I he didn't answer the. Who's buying all those efficiently produced products? And it's inherently deflationary long-term.

So let's say it takes out all of the white collar jobs. That's where it's hitting hard right now. But one of the reasons the blue collar jobs have done so well is because there was a whole generation that like you have to get a college degree and move into white collar. So you've got an under supply of workers that are in that area. And then you had all this capital extra cashflow from the asset owners that's been generated

so that they can create this excess demand for the blue collar workers. But if all the white collar workers are gone, where's the extra capital gonna pay for the blue collar workers? So the cycle is gonna, this pulled them up, is going to pull it back down across the board and everybody's going to be in trouble at some point

when the only thing that we have left to do is to do the things that the robots aren't going to be able to do under the artificial intelligence. So it's a challenging future. And one thing I look at that chart, Chris, everybody believes that, and I'm dealing with this because my daughter is looking to purchase a house right now.

So, you know, even if we continue to go higher, let's just assume that this trend continues for the next 10 years. Do people really believe that there's not going to be any pullbacks? I mean, if you go all the way back to the start of the chart, there's been rises, there's been pullbacks, there's been rises, there's been pullbacks. there's been rises, there's been pullbacks, there's been rises, there's been pullbacks. So there's still going to be pullbacks in the interim period, and we're stretched to a point that at least a minimum, if they're able to keep this going from a long-term standpoint, we still should have some type of pullback, even if it pulls back to just the 2006 bubble top. Well, indeed, and this is inflation adjusted home prices, which makes sense that for 100 years, the deal was that, you know, how sometimes sometimes, you're right, during the Great Depression, house prices

actually fell, so they deflated by a terrible time. And then here, but for a hundred years, 1890 to 1990, there was a relationship between the price of a house and inflation, which makes sense. It's a commodity, you build them, right, or requires, you know, if inflation makes a price of lumber and labor go up, it costs a little bit more. But on an inflation-adjusted basis, there ought to be a connection. And then right here, to combat the so-called internet stock bubble bursting, they blew this housing bubble.

And so the Fed jumped from one bubble to another. And now they've done it again. But now with housing in a bubble, and and you got the bond bubble right behind you I submit we're still in a bond bubble and we're in an equity bubble. We're just this is it We're in the bubble land Everything's a bubble and the point here at Paul is they're gonna have to they are gonna have to keep the bubble going For as long as possible Now this is fascinating because Trump has said he wants direct leverage over the Federal Reserve now and he wants it to do whatever he thinks they should do.

So if he thinks they should shave 300 basis points, 3% off the Fed funds, right? They'll do that. If he thinks they need more money or, you know, the government wants to print some because it's an emergency, the Fed should fund it. Yeah, he wants to he wants to just sort of start monkeying around with that stuff. I submit to you he's doing that at a time of massive nested bubbles, real estate, stocks and bonds. Seems like powder keggy to me. What do you think? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the level of perfection needed to maintain at this level, you can't

afford any errors in any way whatsoever. Much less have a catastrophic natural event that occurs, whether it's a major volcano, a major earthquake that hits some major economic region, global war spans out. I mean, when you're priced to perfection, you have to continue to have perfection to maintain that. And look, I bashed on him so hard. There's a lot of things that I'm glad that he's been doing. Like the US Olympic Committee came out and said, they're banning men from women's sports and Olympic.

Hey, that's great. There's so many things that are great. But at the same time, I'm like, look, we're just getting back to what we should have been doing anyway, like I know that's a big deal because of the direction we were headed on. But I just don't understand this obsession with the markets and instant gratification and rah rah re. It just reeks of pride to me. And pride comes before the fall. And more than anything, we're in a more dangerous time because you and I have talked about it in the

last two times. I can reference it again. John Hussman clearly lays out just how unique we are and how expensive this period of time is, and you have to embrace the fact that it is completely different this time. Nothing that we have learned throughout history even matters anymore. Okay, so that means you've got to throw out all the wisdom of the past to assume that this is going to continue and it's just sunshine and rainbows from this point forward for the next 15-20 years. And that's a foolish bet to place in an environment like this if you believe that history matters at all. I think too about, because we've been mentioning it a bit and dancing about it, but I actually feel really bad for the younger generation.

You mentioned your daughter looking for a house, and I can't even imagine trying to make decisions at that age now, seeing the landscape. If you have any context for it at all, you're like, what just happened? And not least of which is this just came out in Financial Times, and they're showing here that men in particular have this extraordinary gap in unemployment from between men and women that's just opened up and it's really high and it's rising up. Look how harsh this is rising right here and this is college graduated college graduates 22 to 27. So for whatever reason for the past few

years college educated men have been finding it harder and harder and harder to get a job. Why is that, you think, Chris? I don't know, maybe there's some disparity in the types of fields that men go into, maybe slightly more concentration in STEM kind of things. Maybe we need fewer engineers now. I'll tell you this. So I was I was thinking about I just asked Grok to do something that so we have this project going on

across the street and a few years ago I had a structural engineer want all this money to do this thing and I just typed it into Grok and the question was calculate all this load-bearing stuff, given these parameters, fed it some things. Paul, it spit out a beautiful engineering report for me. Like, really good. All the calculations were in there. You know, the moments of deflection,

different categories of materials. This material would deflect this much, given that. Everything. As a starting point, I don't know that I would trust that without giving it to an engineer, categories of materials, this material would deflect this much given that, everything. As a starting point, I don't know that I would trust that without giving it to an engineer, but I think the first $5,000 of work just got done at the push of a button. Yeah, that's a good point. And that's deflationary because that's less revenue to the engineering firm. And that's less need for your junior engineers. So it's amazing what the technology can do. It's incredible. If I'm a guy, I'm like, why go to college? You know, I have other reasons maybe to ask that question, but, you know, but, but this is this, this is not a

good trend here. Well, and unfortunately I would say some of that has to do with just lack of communication skills and lack of, just some of the things that this generation is struggling with. You know just some of the things that this generation is struggling with. You know, one of the things that I've done because I've recognized the lack of communication skills. So anytime the booster clubs or not booster clubs, well, the booster clubs put together fundraisers,

you've got high school kids that'll call. I sponsor a lot in the local area, anything to help kids, whether it's banned, if they're involved in something, you know, in addition to their daily schoolwork, I want to support it. But my one requirement is you have, you know, parents call and they'll say, Hey, Paul, will you sponsor Johnny? Yeah, all or, or and or whatever it is. I'm like, I will. But Johnny's going to pick up the phone and call and ask me seven out of 10 kids will not pick up the phone and call and ask me. Seven out of 10 kids will not pick up the phone and call and ask now. And two out of 10, now that's, that's what I'm experiencing on a local level,

but two out of 10 will call and they're absolutely terrified. And of course, me being kind, I'm making assault, you know, I'm like, Hey, if you had the courage to pick up the phone, that's good, but these are skills that some of these kids just have not had to develop because they're, you know, I'm like, hey, if you had the courage to pick up the phone, that's good. But these are skills that some of these kids just have not had to develop because they're, you know, texting all the time or social media. They're not having to meet people face to face. They're not having to ask for things. So some of that may be the case. But I don't understand why there's that big of a divergence between men and women in the job market. I'd like to know exactly why. So we can help better prepare the next generation.

Well, maybe AI is coming so fast, Paul, that none of us can really wrap our heads around it. It's going to be so disruptive, so quick, you know. And we already saw that, you know, Microsoft fired a bunch of junior lawyers and they don't need coders anymore. And so you're right, great observation. These are coming after white collar jobs. It's going to be a long time before they come after a blue collar job, right?

It's going to be a long time before a robot knows how to climb up on my roof and find the leak and fix it. Right. Hey, the robots now can come after the record services. Have you seen the technology where they've got the little, it looks like a little, um, skid plate or roller plate that goes under the car picks it up and moves it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, they're incredible. So I mean at what point with the driverless technology do you have financial firms that instead of calling the record services to go repossess a car or they send this little robot out there that picks it up and drives it down the road?

Checkmate, I have a gravel driveway. Oh yeah, that's a good one. Put a little boulders. Everybody's gonna have boulders in their driveway now. That's a very good point, Chris. We'll call it the repo rock service. We'll sell you the rocks you need to keep your car safe. Hey, I like your gravel driveway though because you don't get the ribs in it like I do. I've got one real steep hill coming up towards to our home and it's constantly getting washboard in it that I have to take the box scrape and scrape down. So, but it sure is nice because it keeps the traffic low when it's a gravel driveway. It does and no repos. It's going to be, it's going to be awesome.

Speaking of repossessing what you and I have talked about this, I'm shocked. I'm shocked at what I think is being papered over in this case I'm gonna talk about the commercial real estate market Paul I don't understand like these numbers office vacancy in q2 Atlanta 25% I'll call that how do you survive with 25% can you imagine like running like uh you know I've talked about if you want to be a landlord you buy a single-family you know, and you calculate in, it has some percentage of unoccupied time. You might put an 8, 9, 10%, maybe 15, you know, but that would be, you know, one month out of 12 is, you know, that's 8%.

You'd have to have two months out of 12. Anyway, hard to, look at this at this Seattle 31% San Francisco 35% That's I don't even understand how this how this works That's devastating to the historical models, and I wish I could pull up the statistics but you know there's some of these buildings are selling for pennies on the dollar yeah, and and But where are those losses? Who's eating that? Is that in my insurance bill? Is that why my insurance went up?

I think so. I really do, because the banks aren't absorbing these, and we know that the big the big insurance companies are big investors in these bigger properties like this because of the cash flow that they'll generate off there. But how many of their models have actually planned for that, and how many of their models have actually planned for that? And how many of our regulators actually understand and think deeply enough to realize, oh, this isn't, you know, these premiums going up isn't just

the inflationary impact of house prices. Yes, that's true. That's a part of it. Replacement costs have gone higher. And it's not just these major storms that have occurred because they have reserves set aside for that. You know, I think, and at some point I'm going to take the time to dig down and dig into the numbers to prove, and I just haven't had the time yet to get in there. But it only makes sense that a lot of our premium increases are making up for the losses that they have on these major commercial properties now.

They got to make up for the losses that they have on these major commercial properties now. They gotta make up for them somewhere, so where else are they gonna do it besides their customers, which is the citizens? And the government should make them eat their losses and cause them to go bankrupt and let a stronger insurer step in and pick up for them. Take them over, that's what should happen when these companies get too greedy like this

and carry too many risks with the resources they have to invest. I'm looking forward, Paul, to that future Wall Street Journal headline that would say, who's eating the CNBS losses? Nobody knows. Hard-hitting journalism like that is what keeps the whole thing moving. Hey, I'm just proud that they were actually honest for a change.

Me too. It's all good. But I think you scratch at that a little bit. They're going up because people are buying and there's a lot of liquidity in the system. There's just tons. The central banks say they're tightening, but they're not. I can tell because all the risk assets are floating higher effortlessly, right? They are. They sure are.

And you know, and I hear a lot of individuals that are that are on this bandwagon, they're screaming for rate cuts, they're screaming for rate cuts. I see no signs right now of rate cuts. Why doesn't DronePow come out and say, hey- A rate cut for what? Yeah. I know you want to cut them, but house prices that are all time high, inflation is still sticky, asset and stock markets are at an all time high.

What signs do we have of a need for a rate cut right now? You know, because what that's going to do, if you're supercharging this euphoria and speculative fever that's out there right now, it's going to further exacerbate all the problems that are out there for the younger generation and further make the the asset owners wealthy at the expense of future generations. I know. Yeah. Why would we need a cut? I mean, I know, I get it. Wall Street always wants more. It's never satisfied, but hard to make that case right now.

You and I have been talking on this for a while. I note that there's been some heroic efforts to keep silver from poking above 40. You know, just big big dumping gold sort of been churning along here at the 3400 mark. Copper, can we talk copper for a second? 583 a pound. This is much higher than it's been over any really long timeframes. Let me go to monthly. This is a monthly chart. That's incredible. So let me get rid of this. I hate these little ads they throw at me. But look at this.

We came out of this rising wedge here, clearly just smashed it. This is higher than copper's been at any point on this chart, which goes back to 1990. Now an inflation adjusted basis, it might have been a little higher there in 2005 ish, but still nobody's really talking about that. That's highly inflationary going forward. Absolutely. Silver for its part, beautiful cup and handle. Get rid of this little fidelity thing here.

Beautiful cup and handle, broke out of that. I'm expecting this to begin, there's really not a lot, there's a lot of air up here. It'll do what it's going to do next. I have been amazed though, before you transition over, I've been amazed at just the sheer amount of effort to short silver and break those prices down. And it's just methodically climbing forward. It reminds me of gold after that breakout. I can't remember the date. I'd have to go back and look at the chart, but the major break up we talked about. So, and to be clear, silver is owned in our portfolio. So, you know, you have to assume that I'm talking my book. I'm not. I won't do that. But regulators make me state that you have to assume that. But it really

looks like the path of least resistance. Well, we have a lot of latitude just talking about a general commodity, not a particular equity or share. But this is what you're talking about here, Paul. So yesterday, silver starts to climb in the US markets, and then it just gets hammered, huge, giant volume. And same thing, it climbs all night long, just being bought by Asians or whatever, and gets into the US market here, and they did a big slam right at the 830 mark here

to try and get it, claws back. This is giant, that's a giant volume, huge volume. They've crushed it down and keeps clawing back. So somebody's spending a lot of money, firepower trying to keep silver down, but I don't think they're having a lot of money firepower trying to keep silver down But I don't think they're having a lot of success. I've been watching silver a long time Normally you get these big clubbing's and they're followed by subsequent clubbing's and more clubbing's and then that's the end of that This is highly resilient behavior right here this in particular

really big so well we have strong hands that are accumulating and we don't even have retail euphoria yet. What in the world is going to happen to the silver prize? Because what I have experienced over the years is you have to talk people into gold, but they naturally want to buy silver just because it's priced less and they can buy more shares, you know, just retail that's the case. And so whenever that retail euphoria in the AI narrative right now changes and silver prices continue to hold, I think that that euphoria and those major moves are at some point in the future. But you've got strong hands and long-term thinkers right now that are continuing to accumulate these positions. Because look, if you look around and say, hey, let's assume the government just keeps printing

and places is going to continue to be a problem. Housing is going to run into a wall at some point because incomes haven't gone up enough just to absorb the costs that are there. You know, if it cracks, where are those asset prices going to go if the those assets going to go or the dollar is going to go if people continue to print? There's a high likelihood that it's going to start moving into the silver and more gold and commodities in general down the road. So housing is cracking. We've mentioned it before, but some key markets. I'm going to see if I can find this real quick. But Austin was down pretty hard. And that was a former hot market. Yeah, here we go.

Of course it's Nick Garley stuff. Of course it is. So Austin, Texas home values three years in a row now, minus 13.9% in 2023, another 4.2 in 2024, another 5.4 so far, minus 5.4 in 2025. And this is the biggest housing correction Austin has experienced the last 25 years. So even bigger than what occurred during the GFC, great financial crisis. So yeah, that's that, you know, but it had this huge enormous COVID pop, you know, but then so it's probably just working off some of that steam, but still no, you know, for

the people who bought here, this You know for the people who bought here This is misery for the people who bought way back here. It's you know It's you you might want your house price to be higher, but it's not It's not the end of things these people are trapped in some cases can't move. You know But still it shows something important which is Sometimes houses go down to They did. The number doesn't always go upright, you know.

That's right. And there was, you know, there were still a lot of people that had those adjustable rate mortgages because they believe that interest rates were going to stay low. So yes, a large number of individuals locked in were wise and locked in 30 year rates at those lower levels. But I'm still surprised by how many phone calls I'm getting of people that have adjustable rate mortgages and asking, what do I do? Yeah. Because they're resetting substantially higher.

And then, you know, these tax bills, everyone that I'm talking to across the nation, and especially in the Southeast, their tax assessments have ratcheted massively higher. And I'm having people going, and one of the things that they did for us in North Georgia is in the past, they would, you know, when you got your assessment, they would show you what your estimated cost was gonna be.

They don't have your estimated cost on it now. So nobody really even knows unless you pick up the phone and call the tax assessor, and what they're gonna, what that dollar amount increase on their tax liability, on their property tax is gonna be until they actually get to the end of the year and get their bills. So I've got people that are calling in now that, you know, have been retired for quite some time. They plan well, they're prudent with their assets because, because they know inflation is going up and they're like, hey, Paul, you know, what are we going to do? You know, how are we going to do? How are we going to absorb this? And most of the people that we plan for, it's pretty easy.

But I'm also getting calls from people that are not necessarily clients, haven't planned for that, and they're having to make some hard decisions right now on what they're going to do. And there's not that many options. It's kind of a growing movement for people to recognize now, because apparently we can just say stuff now, which is great,

that you don't actually own your home. You rent it from your local municipality, right? And your incentives, you would like to think that you have aligned incentives with your locals, the people in the municipalities. It shouldn't be an us versus them, right? We all want our roads to be plowed when there's snow on it We want you know safe streets, you know, we want you know lots of the same things But I find Paul people are starting to recognize that it's become

disconnected and therefore adversarial that You know, they call up and say why did my assessment go? I can't afford these property next to what's happening? And they don't get a good answer. And the processes are cumbersome or they outsource it. They're like, oh yeah, it's terrible. We all hate those assessments, but we had to use this assessing firm. And you call the assessing firm and they say,

oh, well, our hands are tied. The state has these rules we have to follow. Hey, as much as I'm giving California a hard time, I really didn't understand until yesterday, what was it? Proposition 82? Is that what it was? I can't remember the number, but I was talking to a client about house prices and, and property taxes and they've got, they own some property.

They have a property in primary residence in California. And they were explaining to me what California did years ago to limit their property tax liability. That was Prop 2.5. Prop 2.5. Okay, that's what it was. Yeah. And that's a game changer for the citizens out there. So, so in all fairness, I've got to say they did a good job protecting their homeowners from that standpoint. Well, they did, but then it foisted all the increases onto the next person and it really traps people too. And by the way, the way it's written, they had a similar one, they have a similar law in Florida

and I just heard this case a while ago where this couple had gone to the town and said, if we do these upgrades, it's not going to like break our two and a half shield. And they said, oh no, no, it won't won't you know and they went through it over and over again and they they just renovate a portion of their home and their property tax went from 12,000 year to 91,000 year. Oh my gosh. Now it's a nice home it's on the water all that but they bought it in 95 when things were very modest you know price

and now it's insane not their fault it it's worth four and a half million now. But at any rate, it broke that, and the town was like, oh yeah, sorry, there's nothing we can do, you know. You renovated more than a certain percent. They said, but we asked you. We wouldn't have done that. They said, well, it's too late now.

What are you gonna do? Right? Well, what it should be, and this is what happens sometimes in the business world, is their word should have been their word, and they should have said, okay, we made a mistake. And that's the case because you got a question that they have an incentive to lie so that they could get more revenue because they're trying to get revenue in every area. Right. So, but, and I would assume if

you took that, the court, the courts aren't going to stand up for the individual in that circumstance. Yeah. Stand up for the individual in that circumstance. Yeah, that's that's that's criminal but the the the municipality should have Had to eat their word at that point. They should have this this is one of the major pressures bearing down on us all right? So I really know that your job is so important because you're trying to help people plan For retirement and it's always something new now Now we have to like, when I first encountered retirement planning as a financial concept, I don't remember property taxes being a big component of that study. Now you have to think of that through like, hey, if they go up, you know,

by X, you know, and then you also have to think inflation, right, which might be more than we suspect. And now we may have to be thinking utility bills. Oh, absolutely. I know you're probably getting ready to pull up that most recent dramatic increase, aren't you? Which one? I got many. So what is it West Virginia is getting ready, or Virginia is getting ready to get a substantial increase in their utility bills because of the supply-demand battle. They don't have the supply for the demand with all of these AI centers, and that's going to pass down to the average individual as well.

Yeah, I just found some of that here because, and this was in the Signal Hour earlier today, but this is important for our finance listeners to think through. So Zero Hedge said, wow, biggest US grid set their capacity at a record price of $329.17 a megawatt day. I don't know what a megawatt day is. I don't know what a megawatt hour is. Not clear on that. But 329 anyway. And so Zero Hedge's snarky but accurate comment is, just wait until people get their 3X higher electricity

slash water bills in the coming months so some chat bot can pretend it's self-aware. And then this person, Nicky said, dude, in response to that, said, dude, I'm in New Jersey. The energy prices have been steadily climbing over the past five to 10 years, averaging around 10% annually since 2022. The latest 20% hike, effective June 1st, 2025,

is largely due to surging demand from AI data centers. My bill is up 50% year over year. Not to mention EV taxes imposed by Governor Phil Murphy. Da da da da da da da. Right, so that's astonishing. You, those kinds of increases, 10, 20%, 50%, those add up quick. Those are exponential additives. And look, why did the CEOs of these utility companies, unfortunately, I'm sorry, somebody's

got to absorb those losses and they're making millions of dollars in contracts and salaries, right? Why aren't they having to absorb some of that profitability on a government regulated entity? That's one area that they could reduce that for the average individual, but the demand is just so high. And we as a government have not invested from a long-term standpoint in energy production like China has. We're behind the curve.

And I haven't seen anything change on that yet. Have you? No, no, I am envious of how China operates. I just watched this video this morning. I was fascinated. They started this dam in 2017, right? It takes a long time because it actually takes months for the concrete to cure it because they poured eight million cubic yards. So you have to pour it in stages and let it, the heat dissipate, takes time. So they start this thing in 2017. As of today, it's producing as the second largest hydro dam in the world.

Wow. And they just started building it. So Paul, you would love this. So, it's a big gorge and they had to carve down to the bedrock and then you have to start pouring the dam at the bottom. So you and I would probably go, it's a big gorge and they had to carve down to the bedrock and then you have to start pouring the dam At the bottom so you and I would probably go gonna need a road they put these giant steel cables across and they just hook up the cement trucks in

Zip line them to the center of this thing so they can dump their concrete and then bring them back, right? So they were able to do all this in record time. Now, you know, and I know, OSHA, EPA, local authorities, would all of a sudden can't do that, you know? And could you imagine the protesters that would be out there trying to block it from happening at the same time, right? Because they believe it's gonna destroy the environment and aren't thinking about the good

that it's gonna bring to the pipes, listen to people. Yeah, so at any rate, China's not saddled by that, but this to me, this is the most astonishing chart. Because AI may be the future. It might be that whoever gets to AI, whatever, super smart, first wins the race. So that be that whoever gets to AI, whatever, super smart first wins the race. So that means it's a story of power, dude. It's not even like we're not even racing the same race. Note here, the United States, I'm rounding has about 4,000 terawatt hours

of, of installed electrical capacity and China put on 4,000 terawatt hours between 2010 and 2020. Wow. In 10 years it added one entire United States of electricity production, right? And then since 2020, the last five years it's done half of that again. So it's just like just screaming forward knowing that electricity is the future. So it's a very different race. I'm a little concerned that that we haven't really thought this one through. But at the state level, big complaint of mine, like if I want to build a new house now I have to install a 60 amp car charger

for electric cars in a garage. Every garage, any new house has to have one state law. What they have not mandated at the state law level is where all that electricity production is going to come from. So I have to bear all the burden of installing the demand side of the equation, but they have no plans for the supply side of the equation. And when they do, they're just going to raise your electricity prices to pay for the construction. So ultimately you're going to pay for it again. Mandated paying.

Yes. Yes. Right. So it's frustrating. You know, it's interesting because anybody that has come to us through Peak Prosperity, the podcast, the YouTube, no one has pushed back about me running five and a half percent inflation numbers on their retirement analysis. Local individuals that just aren't as aware, they're like, seriously, Paul?

In the past month, I've had four clients that have called that have worked with me for a long time and they're like, I tolerated you because I had a good referral, three, four clients that have called that have worked with me for a long time. And they're like, you know, I tolerated you because I had a good referral to you or I've known you for a long time. And I thought you were crazy about the five and a half percent inflation increase. You know, even the three and a half percent inflation

increase, but now that I'm starting to see my tax bill go up, my insurance bill, my utility bills go up, everything across the board, you know, thank you for helping us plan ahead because they've had to take extra income above and what we had prepared for to maintain their standard of living. And they're still naturally cutting back on a few things here and there and they can afford to do it. But you know, if you're cognizant about the money that you're spending and you've accumulated and going out there, it's naturally a little bit harder

to spend that money. And they're scared to do it because they don't want to outlive their assets ability to produce income. So it's been amazing to me that people have called in and never said anything about it before but just kind of admitted, hey, I kind of thought you were crazy, but thanks for the planning ahead of time, because people are starting to feel the pressure right now. And that's another thing that concerns me economically. At what point do people make major lifestyle changes because all of the grifters and our government's not watching after, not that they're all grifters, but if they're covering up for their bad investments, they are grifters if they're deceiving the insurance commissioners to

be able to pass all these hikes down to the individuals. At some point, we're going to hit a wall. And I'm not sure where that is. But if you're passive, then you're going to do whatever the market does. That's good in a euphoria. That's bad when we revert back to the main. If you're active, you know, with much wisdom comes much sorrow. That's one thing that I never understood years ago when I was reading Proverbs, but that's true now. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, because you understand the path that we're headed on, and you can see the ultimate destruction that's going to come down the road. And that's the reason why the prudent foresee danger and hide themselves. That's much harder and harder to hide yourself in an environment where everything is in an asset

bubble, but there are ways to do it for the people that are there. But you're going to, you know, you might miss a little bit of opportunity in the last couple of years of that euphoria, but no path is going to be easy, right? You play the game by the rules that are forced upon you as much as you can, but you have to make some adaptations to prepare yourself for where you're, where you, where you're, where the ball's going to be, not where it is right now. And that's what China did years ago. They looked and said, this is where we want to be.

We're not worried about inflating all the markets and instant gratification. We're going to make the sacrifices now. So the, our citizenry and we are in a better position down the road. And unfortunately, America's just caught up in this instant gratification, you know, greed and speculation and has no forward thought for where we're going to be five years from now if we don't change the decisions we're making right now. Indeed. You know, China has, last I heard, 17,000 kilometers of high-speed rail additional going

in. You can go from LA to New York five times, right? They're going to put that in probably in this next year. Wow. Right? And that would be a game changer you know to you know get on a high-speed train and basically they have one now Paul that travels basically at the same speed as a jet I think it's like they clock in at 600 kilometers an

hour now unbelievable now I would be shaking like a leaf if I was sitting on that for the first moving that fast but I remember I wrote, you know, the TJV, the train Grand Vite in France back and, you know, that went whatever, 170 kilometers or something really fast. Like it was pretty cool. I remember we passed another one going the other direction. These were full-size trains. It was like this, it was gone. Like, like the speed, like like cuz the other trains just on the other track and you could feel a little bit of the bow you know wake hit you but I couldn't believe how fast was like literally and it's gone whole train because now they're traveling each 150 plus kilometers in opposite directions you know whoo I tell you what if you're sitting in the front

and you're you're the train conductor at that point, that's gotta be quite impressive to see that coming. Well, good news. If it jumped the tracks, it's over quick. I mean. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You don't even, it's like, uh-oh, and that's it.

So no pain involved. Yeah. But think about the quality of life that gives to the citrus tree. How nice would it be if we had high-speed rails from New York all the way to California and the ability to maneuver, the quality of life that gives us the city stream. How nice would it be if we had high-speed rails from New York all the way to California and the ability to maneuver, the quality of life, how quickly you can get to see family, the reduction that that puts on fossil fuels when you've gotten, you know,

some of those others in. I know it still consumes, but it's a much more efficient. And that's really where we should be investing instead of printing money just to make generations feel better about their house prices. I mean, best thing is you get on the train in the middle of a city and you get off of it in the middle of a city where you're going, you know? You don't have to like get to the airport, which for some reason is 40 minutes outside of the city. 40 long minutes.

And it's not impossible to find parking. So we moved my son in this Saturday and I had a trailer and had paid for the truck, but not the trailer. So I got a parking ticket for the trailer. You know, when you get in the big cities, parking is a hard thing to find. Oh, yeah. So they've made a lot of good decisions for their citizenry from a long-term standpoint. And unfortunately, it's going to put them in a better position than us.

The longer we postpone this, the greater disadvantage we're going to be as a citizenry in the country as well. Well, that's all the time we have today. I'm just scanning markets here very quickly. Everybody's just up. Everything's today. I'm just scanning markets here very quickly. Everybody's just up. Everything's up. Nobody knows why though, Paul. It's a mystery. Everything is higher today.

The bubbles continue. So any last words for our listeners here before we check out? Yes. So I would encourage you. Look, we may get Goldilocks that may be perfect, but do seriously consider building your resiliency. Markets are an all time high. A lot of it's not making sense right now. Maybe we do get best case scenario,

but seriously consider building up a 24 months worth of an emergency fund just to make sure that you're resilient. One thing that I am hearing consistently of people that I'm talking to around the country is people that are getting laid off, it's taking them much longer than they anticipated to be able to find a replacement job, a lot slower. That's a consistent theme that I'm hearing that people are, hey, my friend got laid off from the

company and they're shocked at how long it's taken. So take this opportunity. While times are good, to harvest some, be like the ant and not the grasshopper, right? So the ants gonna set some aside so when tough times come and they will at some point, maybe it's not economically, maybe it's just for you. But you want to make sure you're resilient to get through that. The last thing that you want to be in a position that be forced to do is to force to sell some assets to cover your expenses if you lose a job and the markets were to drop. So seriously consider building up to 24 months

if you can do that and just make sure that you're resilient and be diligent out there right now. So, you know, for anybody that wants to examine their situation, hey, give us a call. It's that there's no charge. If we can help you, whether it's appropriate to do business together or not, it is worth our time because we care about helping people be more resilient and prepare

for the future. You know, so don't hesitate to give us the team the call and we'll put you through the retirement planning, make sure you've got your emergency funds in place and that you're as resilient as can be if we don't get this Goldilocks perfect scenario. Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you for listening everybody.

And if you want to talk to Paul and his amazing team, go to peakfinancialinvesting.com, fill out a very simple form and somebody will be in touch with you within 48 business hours from Paul's team. I encourage everybody just start the process, have the conversation. It's free, no obligation and always a highly valued and very worthwhile thing to do anyway. So with that, Paul, have a great weekend and we'll see you in Dallas. Yes, looking forward to it, Chris. See you there. you