Peak Prosperity - What Comes Next?

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Chris and Paul cover market manipulation, hyperinflation risks, gold’s role, credit card debt, and investment strategies amid economic volatility. Emphasis on informed decision-making and diversification.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 So the question is is Trump for the people or is he for the top, you know point zero one percent of households The following is the audio version of a video released at peak prosperity comm 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 and welcome to this edition of Finance University Finance where we are going to do our best to decode, demystify, explain and have some fun talking about the markets back with Paul Kiker of Kiker Wealth Management.

Hey Paul, how you doing? Hi Chris, I'm doing well. A little nervous with the markets and watching them but doing well. Well it's a lot to be nervous about. I mean, so you and I have had a bunch of private conversations and you've had other ones besides with people who are going looking at the whole Doge thing and not saying I don't have, I don't talk to anybody who's like, I think they're, I'm worried about Elon's ass to sensitive information.

They're worried about the stuff that's being uncovered. Yes. Oh, these raccoons are just, you know, and it's just such gross stuff. It's like senators voting on stuff that ends up funneling money to their wife kind of stuff. You know, $17 million apparently produced one really bad Muppet show, you know, off-Broadway kind of a Muppet show. It's just, it's horrifying and it makes people not want to maybe think about not paying their taxes, you know? It's gonna have an impact. Oh, that's so, you know, over the years and trying to warn people and just talk about what's going on and I have to follow these things and

I've followed you for so long, you know, you keep people educated. There's too many people that are just still trusting the mainstream media, or even when they're just sitting around the house, they've got Fox or CNN or whatever that's on and just that consistent propaganda that's there. So I'm trying to engage in conversations with people over time to get them to talk about the facts. What's fascinating to me is, as you've stated before, I feel like we've reached, at least in our area in the conversations that I'm talking to people reached, at least in our area, in the conversations

that I'm talking to people about is common knowledge with the large majority of people. They're finally willing to have the conversation, they're angry about it, they're frustrated, they don't know what to do. There's this boiling anger that's out there right now that I'm seeing consistently. And I'd say that's probably 90% of the people

and about 10% of the people are just, oh my gosh, Elon Musk is getting access to my social security number. And I'm thinking, look, the government's known everything about you, what, since the mid-80s from clients that I've talked to that did contracts with NSA and some of these others. So they're completely missing the boat at this point,

just completely missing the boat. You know, I just, this was on a signal hour, but I remember I was reading like five years ago, they, I'm just guessing could be a little longer, but there was this fusion center. They put this fusion center. So that's the FBI and state police and this all the, they put, so they were, they're fusing the data. And so then there was some sort of, I forget who, some who some congressman looked into it said what are you guys doing in that fusion center ball they were tracking their exes stalking partners you know

like manufacturing false evidence against rivals I mean it was just like was humans being human so the idea that somehow it's sacred when it's inside the government it's just I don't have that particular delusion No, no, and wasn't that the event where one of the NSA? Individuals was using satellites and the high resolution to look at girls in the backyard while they were laying out in the Sun That was that event wasn't it? Yeah We've been warned we've been warned over time We've been warned. We've been warned over time. But I think all of us hope that it wasn't this severe. And as cynical as I can be and as much corruption as I've seen on Wall Street and just in this industry,

sometimes I feel like I'm swimming in a cesspool. But you got to have people that are trying to help people in this industry. I've been shocked, absolutely shocked by the sheer level of corruption, just foolishness that we have seen. And I tend to react a little bit quicker than most people do, but everywhere I go now, that anger and shock is just conversations around the edges everywhere. Well, that shock is going to spill over into markets. So today, Paul, I was hoping we could discuss gold. Little bit about Bitcoin and MicroStrategy, ticker symbol MSTR, got some data there and also Microsoft's Death Cross and anything else that's on your list.

Of course, this is with Peak Financial Investing. If you want to talk with Paul and his team, go to peakfinancialinvesting.com and they will take care of you. And a very simple form there to fill out So that they'll know who they're talking to I want to talk about this Paul You remember if we've all seen the pictures Weimar Germany kids playing with Stacks of cash as if they were building blocks probably because they were cheaper than building blocks for the whole stack of cash Wheelbarrows required to go conduct just a little bit of business, right? so that's Weimar Germany and I wanted to talk about this

because I was having a conversation, I have a lot of conversations with people like Chris, gold is almost 3,000 ounce now, is it a bad time to buy? And I know it feels that way, right? And I can't guarantee that it isn't a bad time to buy right now relative to where it'll be in a few months, but I wanted to put it in context

because we know our money system's out of control. We know that we like we just saw Congress just came together in a nice bipartisan show. They didn't cut anything. They passed the whole stupid thing. Right. So with all of the Doge and everything, they still passed a big old budget with everything in it. So here's the Weimar roadmap and their currency at the time was a gold

mark. And for a while you could convert it into gold. And so here is the value of one gold mark in paper marks. So these other paper marks they had. So if you wanted to have gold, it climbed up here. And this is a log scale here. So it goes from one to 10 to 100, 1000, 10,000 and so on. We're just adding zeros as we go up. All right. So from 1918 to about 1920-ish, beginning 1920, it ran from 1 to 1, took about 100 and I'm going to guess there, I mean, probably 80, 80 marks, something 70, 80, somewhere up there.

But then it fell,ul. Oh, no Oh, no, look at this huge decline That's probably a 50 loss right there and it bounced along but look at this shape swoop up Consolidate for a while this little peak falls back and then uh-oh Doesn't that look a whole lot like this That we're experiencing in gold It looks very similar to that consolidation and breakout period with that long-term cup and handle that's in there. And what's even more, you hope to get

a 3% breakout of a resistance level that lasts over that period of time. That is a massive breakout that says, look, there's something changed under the surface and we don't know exactly where this will go but that that looks very similar that it really does well and this you know is this blue arrow where we are is it should the blue arrow be here or should it be here I don't know but the point is to my friends who were wondering I'm like well depends how long you hold because you might add one zero to the price of gold which is 30,000 or two which is 300 or Three four like we're just stacking zeros on this thing. That's what happens when you get into a currency destruction and

I'm not saying that's where the whole lot of different circumstances us dollar to this or that but the point is that Gold the price of gold is is mirroring a piece of history we had when for the same reason you had, the same reason being they're humans, right? Same reason the NSA guy is redirecting satellites to go look at girls around the pool. That's just what humans do, Paul. They can't stop themselves from printing today because they don't want to take the pain today.

No, that's true. And the pain only leaves when the lesson is over. I think that was something along the lines, what Bruce Lee stated at one point. Yeah. So, so I want to talk to the, to the individuals that are looking at that chart out there. So I spent a lot of time studying the German hyperinflation around 2012, 2015. And I read every book that I could possibly read from what

businesses dealt with and having to manage their cash flows. So I've got the important books and bullet points in case you have to pull it off the shelf at one day. But in reading that, I was actually surprised. So for those of you who saw Chris's chart, the posted on the price of gold taken off, that looks easy. You look at that in the hindsight and you're going, oh, wow, how easy was that for the people who purchased it right there and took off? What those charts don't show you because of the magnitude of the move to the upside is there were, if I remember correctly, I did a quick grok search, there were four major declines over 50% on the way to the ultimate high.

So what caused it? So originally when it started taking off, the German central bank at the time, I can't remember what they were called, comes out and raises interest rates. So everybody thinks it's over, right? Gold prices declined 50%. So if that's where we're going, you're going to have to understand that it's not going to be easy. However this unfolds in the future, there's going to be volatility in every asset class

because we are shifting from a trajectory that has been seared into the memory of most investors. And that's one of the reasons why I'm a little nervous about the market volatility here, but because of the fact the government has bailed out the markets for so long, the common perception in regards to Trump is that he's not gonna let the markets go down, okay? There are people that I believe are seeing clearly saying that he's more interested in getting the 10-year

and interest rates down this go around than what he was the market back then. And that makes sense because you get interest rates down that's gonna help the average individual a lot more. But the point being is it's not gonna be an easy journey. So you've got to do the research and you've got to understand we're into the wild unknown. You want to invest into the things that have the most likelihood of having value, right? The one thing about gold is it doesn't have any counterparty risk.

So if debt blows up or great taking takes place, you own that gold. That may not necessarily be the case on some of these stocks where you're paying 200 years worth of earnings for them just because you think it's popular. So just know that. Go back and study. There's great information and anything that you can study if you're curious about it during that German hyperinflation period of time

and it's still applicable to our lives today. Well, a decline of 50% would bring gold down to 1500. I know I would get a lot of squawking people. I would be questioning things like what happened and all that but the point is that when you're looking at this chart, squawking people, I would be questioning things, like what happened and all that. But the point is that when you're looking at this chart, the question wasn't how many paper marks was your stuff worth at the point, it was how many ounces did you have? Because there are all these apocryphal stories, right, of people who say, oh, yeah, you know,

you know, this bellhop bought the entire hotel he used to work at because he had a gold coin. The value of that gold coin was more than the outstanding loan in marks on that building right so so yeah I think I'm Mike Maloney put out He said if we divide all the gold in the world by all the people there's about 1.2 ounces per person oh Wow, I didn't realize it was that that's incredible. That's it. That's the total thing. And for silver, it's not a lot more than that. It's like three times that amount, like three, three and a half, something like that. So there's not a lot per person for sure. So well, and one thing that I want to point out for those people that are concerned that

that is gold atop, look in the short run, nobody knows it's there are people get lucky that time it in the short run, but there are certain signs in 26 years of looking at this, okay? What's everybody talking about right now? For the past year, past two years, past three years, Nvidia, the Magnificent 7, Tesla stock, right? This is what you get into an Uber, somebody's talking about it. You're at the gym, somebody's talking about it. Your brother-in-law's bragging about it. That's when there's the greatest risk that's out there. Really, I mean, I'm telling you just in human psychology, when everybody knows that everybody knows

that nothing can impact it in the future, everybody's on the same side of the boat, and that's when you need to go the other way, but it's hard to be a contrarian because people think I can get within six months of it. Sometimes you're three years early. So that's one of the reasons why we use momentum tools to help us in there, but here's an indicator so in

2004 I was recommending gold and silver to clients back then not not and I got to be careful because there's regulations on cherry-picking but I got to use an example for gold so not saying that we did great because At the same time, you know gold when 2008 went down drops from a thousand an ounce to 600 At that point there still wasn't that many investors that were looking at buying it and when we had the worst liquidation in 2008 anybody's everything goes down because investors are selling whatever they can sell to raise cash to Send money back to their investors, to cover their debts. When gold peaked in 2012, I think it was around 2013 at 1800 an ounce, your Uber driver, I don't know if we had Uber, your taxi drivers and Uber drivers were talking about it back then.

Everybody wanted it. We got a long-term sell signal on it. And I remember telling, we got a long-term sell signal on it. And I remember telling, having a client that came in and I was selling my physical silver to reduce back down to the 10% holding. Because I didn't wanna sell at all because long-term I thought it would be good. And I remember the person saying, you're an idiot because everybody knows that it's gonna go up.

Well, that was the point where it went sideways for some time. Now, hopefully they held it because it still ended up, you know, may be something good from a long-term standpoint, but I don't think we're at a long-term top in gold right now, simply because of the fact that this is institutional. This is not your retail investor and people aren't talking about it. When people are scared that this may be the top, that tells me that we've got higher prices, even if they go down the short run.

None of this, none of this advance in gold price has been driven by retail if they go down the short run. None of this. None of this advance in gold price has been driven by retail at all. Retail is not even part of this story. Has nothing to do with them. This is big money. This is elephants. It's opaque.

You and I can guess, but it's we can tell it's big money. This isn't little money. Little money is actually selling at this point in time. I know that because I can go and look at the premiums that exist in retail and see these very, very low premiums, especially for, say, numismatic quality 1933 and prior gold double eels, stuff like that. Like, you can almost get them for melt. That's because people are selling their collections, right?

That's amazing to me. And I've had a few people that have sold some that had purchased them a while ago at good prices and they're like, well, I want to build a barn or I want, but barn is a different story, but they just think they're too high, right? And I'm like, you know, I would highly recommend you consider holding onto that, you know, for quite some time. Hello everyone. I just wanted to take a quick break to tell you about Peak Financial Investing. Look, my whole goal in life is to help you be prepared, to help you be resilient, to have you have the freedom you need in order to live your life in the way you want to live

it. And top of that list is financial freedom. Making sure that the money you have saved accumulates appropriately and isn't lost to some random process of market downturn or something like that. Peak Financial Investing is a place where we will connect you with our endorsed financial advisors who understand the world the way we do. You deserve to talk to somebody who is not going to look at you like a dog listening

to white noise when you say, hey, should I invest in gold? Hey, is the dollar going to be okay? Hey, are there any big risks here? Are there any bubbles we need to be aware of at this time? Great questions. So when you ask those, you deserve to speak with somebody who's got good answers, thoughtful answers, and knows, most importantly, how they're going to respond nimbly as the world around them changes. Now, this is one of the periods of the most extraordinary changes we're going to see in market structure. China's coming up and rising. Geopolitical tensions are afoot. We have all sorts of realignments happening.

The federal government is deficit spending like nobody's business. You know the Federal Reserve wants to get back to printing like crazy. We understand that gold is popping to all-time new highs. The story has changed. Your investment philosophy needs to be nimble and responsive to that. So at Peak Financial Investing, we'll connect you with people who see the world that way, who understand how to run what's called a risk-managed portfolio to account for all the changes that are coming. Because if the Hippocratic Oath is first, do no harm, our oath is first, take no punishing, irrecoverable losses.

It's time to manage risk, it's time to understand how the world has changed, and it's time to make sure your portfolio of savings and wealth are there for you and can meet your needs all the way through your retirement. Now, back to our program. All right, so Gold's interesting story.

And you know, I walked like six days in a row at the time of this recording every time eight o'clock happens in the U S like big selling on gold. But it's just, we're used to it. It's just, it's what we do. We're the United States. We sell paper gold. It's just, that's a tradition. So that tradition though, normally, cause I've been watching this for a couple of decades

very closely, normally we would have a lot of sort of carryover momentum to the downside because gold was in a fairly overbought condition on the charts, at least the paper charts, paper gold charts, but it's not really carrying through. No, it's not. It isn't. And, and, and the decline has not been as much as I expected it to be with the technical sell off we've had in the markets and the mag seven here, because usually it's going to go down a little bit more sometimes historically.

But it's holding up well right now. So that tells me there's buyers out there. Yep. Yep. Well, you and I have talked about the German DAX, which is still powering up as of this day. It's kind of a weird thing. But can we talk about the Nikkei, the Japanese Nikkei for a minute? You and I, we talk about double tops. Sometimes we talk

about triple tops. Paul, I have to ask, what's a nine-o top? I don't have, in chemistry, that would be non-nano because it's octo-nano deca, right? So is that a nano top? I'm going to have to call it a nuevo top because in Spanish than a nine topper. That's some more resistance right there. And for you listeners out there, when you look at something that fails in that area nine times, I think that the sell off that occurred after the third failure was your warning of the direction that it's going to end up into. So you've got a situation where whatever, for whatever reason, there is enough sellers that are entering at that level to beat that price down. So think of it like whack-a-mole and that same mole keeps coming up. You hit it enough time, it's going to go to sleep and fall on the other side. So that's massive resistance. Now,

if it happens to break through substantially to the top side, then hey, that may be telling us something else. But that is not a chart that I would be speculating on upside breakout right now. I would be more concerned about break down. Yeah. No, it gets to 40,000 and finds a lot of sellers time after time. Yeah. Well, what about if we could shift gears, Microsoft here, bar chart was saying today,

I found this, they said for the first time in nearly a decade, Microsoft has formed a death cross. So that's, I think this, in this case, we're looking here on, this is the, yeah, we're on the daily chart here. So this is a 200 day moving average being crossed over by the 50. And that has a good historical signal on selling stocks. And knowing that, we're getting ready to get a 50, 20 days already crossed over the 200 day moving average.

The 50 days getting ready to cross over the 200 day as well, which is another major warning sign for investors. So what we're seeing here is the environment and where the average investor has been going all in and you've got the, you know, you've got major positions like Microsoft that are starting to roll over, which is completely different than what occurred during Trump's 2016 election that first year in 2017. So this market's been consolidating and we're starting to roll over. The question is, what's the momentum going to carry forward?

So what we do know and looking in hindsight last year, and we've talked about this before, the Biden administration was recklessly fiscally irresponsible. Okay. So, and then we go back to Doge and what Doge has revealed. What was it 13,000 employees had 37,000 winds up subscriptions that they weren't using just this was it intentional reckless spending to help go towards these companies like that. Either way, if you're cutting this foolishness out of the government and all

this excess money that's been paying for subscriptions, it looks like it's starting to have an impact or maybe one impact on Microsoft and some of the others if this easy money train is going away. Well, I think, and it should, so for people who maybe aren't as old as I am, WinZip was this application program to help you zip Windows files and folders, but it's been part of the Microsoft operating system for I can't remember how long, it's just a feature. So the government still had you're telling me 37,000 subscription licenses for something that's just part of the operating system for free? 37,000 and Nick looked up when we happened to be talking,

I think it was $56 times 37,000 is a little over $2 million and just wasted money per year. So for you listeners out there, how much did you pay in taxes last year? Okay. And you can just count the fact that the government just wasted that money for either nefarious purposes or not paying attention.

Crazy, and that's just one example. You know, Paul, I've been covering this on my coverage back at Peak Prosperity. I've been doing this in the Fat Pipe. I've been doing this in Signal Hours. I'm on Twitter. Just, and I can't keep up with it. But it's just one gross thing after the other

where you just, they're paying themselves for $500,000 salaries. they're the wife of a senator, they're operating some vaguely named thing like the Clean Air Equity Fund or, you know, whatever. It just all looks like make work, busy work at huge salaries, and they're really mad that that's going away. I get it. But it had to go away away and it's time. So I think that that's gonna have a huge spillover effect

because this is a bunch of, you know, one man's trillion dollars of waste and fraud is in another man's salary. So, right, it's gonna have an impact. It has to, and we've talked about this before, okay? So if you pull this out, you get rid of this reckless spending. Now, our politicians don't seem to be worried

about their budget so much, so that still is reckless spending. But if you pull this out and there's jobs that are cut back, that is inherently deflationary. So I saw something where Doge found $100 million that they had saved in three million square feet of office space that they've canceled contracts on. Okay, so that's more office space availability, more supply, less demand means prices are

going to have to come down. We're starting to see that in rentals in Texas and Florida. We're seeing it in sales and real estate. So you're starting to see things roll over. And the one thing that I that I've seen here in January, February, and I'll share this chart with you that I've really been looking for if this was the ultimate top. And look, I'm just I'm just looking at the information that we have right now. Investors, I'm not making a prediction. That's a foolish error because we have no clue what's gonna happen

here in the short run. There's so many things that are being upended in the undersurface of the economy and things are moving so fast. This is really unprecedented. But one thing that I wanna share here that I thought was quite interesting, and an article that came out from the market here,

and if I'd upload the presentation, I would be able to give you the, a little bit better pictures, but I didn't. So we'll get the best that we can here. Let me make this a little bit larger. So one of the things we want to look at is some euphoria. So this is from an article by the market here, February 22nd, 2025 called, it's disturbing.

So this is the estimated retail net flow and billions of dollars over the prior week. So this is the estimated retail net flow and billions of dollars over the prior week. So this is going back to 2016. So we're at the same level of retail flow kind of panic buying that we saw at the peak back in 2021 before the market turned in 2022. Okay, so that's one little bit of evidence to tell us that people say they're bearish. There are studies that are talking about retail investors and institutional investors that say they're bearish, but mutual funds have the lowest amount of cash on hand that they've had in quite some time.

Net and gross leverage is high, and retail has been piling in. Here's another chart that I thought was very interesting. So the what color is that blue line is average from 2016 to 2024 by month. So this yellow line is the is the daily retail net demand across products by month and billions of dollars. Look how much higher that is for the month of February. That's pure panic, fear of missing out. So is the consensus that in spite of all of these retail cuts that doze is taking place that that people fully believe that Trump's just going to save the markets no matter what happens on top of that?

Well, you've been you've been experiencing that FOMO. We talked about it last time. So people have been calling saying they want in, right? Yeah. So I've been having, you know, they're fine once I talk them through it and share the data with them. I might be patient. This is a long game.

This is the type of environment you make mistakes. Here's another little bit of information. So this is S&P 500 market breadth. So the breadth basically tells you are all stocks participating? Is this something? So back in 2014, you had positive breadth where the large majority of stocks were participating.

We're down here at cycle lows. I mean, even in late 2007, the warning that we had before 2008 in this area, early 2008. And then you've got around 2015 where we had the short term correction that the Fed bailed out. And 2020 during the shutdown, I mean, these are major warning signs on top of the fact that you've got investors that are being basically euphoric in their investing.

On top of that, we're starting to see Microsoft and some of these others roll over, okay? So that tells us the 10 largest companies as a share of the S&P 500, we've never seen it this high before at 38%. So that means if you put $100,000 in S&P 500, $38,000 is going into the 10 largest companies. 28% of the earnings in the S&P 500

is represented by those same companies. So this is a distortion. We've got the perfect environment for a market top. You've got Doge, which is cutting out some of the fat. And if you're canceling subscriptions, look, if they had that for Windzip, imagine, I'm just speculating, imagine how many they had from Microsoft

and some of these others or meta business accounts. We're seeing quick firings in the media right now for some of the more far left leaning personalities. And I want to question, does that have to do with the cutbacks through USAID? I don't know. But what I can say is we've got all kinds of warnings and I still am operating under the thesis that this is similar to the 2000 top where we're gonna get a lot of

back and forth because bull markets don't die easy and that later in the year if not sooner we're gonna see lower prices. And I just want to warn investors here before we move on, Chris, I think this is important. If you have a 10% loss in your funds, you have to make 11.1% to get back to even. Yeah, I love this point. The arithmetic of a loss. And the point being is, so if you've got a million dollars and you lose 50%, you've got 500,000 now, okay? 50% return gets you back to 750.

So if you lose 50%, you have to make 100% return to you back to 750. So if you lose 50%, you have to make 100% return to get back to even. And if we've been in a major bull market and you have a 50% decline, don't anticipate that it's gonna turn around and you know, from 2008 it was 2014. It may take a whole lot longer than seven years to get back to even.

And if some of the others are right, if we go back to what we've talked about before, a fairly valued market, assuming earnings stay where they are, we have a 60% decline. That extra 10% decline means now you gotta make 150% to get back to even. So please don't be foolish with your investing.

Be wise, this is a time to be careful. And like Proverbs said, the prudent foresee danger and hide themselves while the simple pass on and are judged for it Don't be simple in this environment. You have to be diligent Manic it's out of control quick when you have those big losses, right, you know, oh, yeah But what's the old saying? How do you lose 90% first you lose 80% then another 50%? I heard that in a long time very apropos Chris that was 90%. First you lose 80%, then another 50%. I heard that in a long time. Very apropos, Chris, that was good.

You're right. First you lose 80 and then you lose another 50. You know, Thomas Massey, uh, the Congressman out of Kentucky, he just posted this thing where he said, you know, back in the day, he was some sort of magistrate judge or something, and he was responsible for signing all these checks. And one of them was for all the telephone service. He couldn't figure out like, was this the right number? How many in the phone company couldn't tell him. And he's like, how many numbers are legit?

And are any of these actually dead phones that we're still paying for? And the phone company was no help. So he's like, all right. He just he took all the numbers that he could identify that belonged to people. And he told the phone company turn the rest off. And then he just waited. Wouldn't you know it, over the next month they only had to turn one phone number back on.

Really? That was really nice. Yup. Yup, I've heard a lot of stories like that where, you know, people just say, you know, they take over a company and there's all these invoices coming in and you just sit on them. And whoever calls you up and says, where's my payment? That's a legit invoice. But he was surprised, like how many times,

people are just invoicing you for stuff and it gets paid, you know? Because they have no systems. Doge found out that they weren't putting normal checks and balances for us. We know who we signed the check to and what it was for, right? They didn't know, like literally no clue.

Obviously that's going to go bad. Um, cause you know, humans will find a crevice, like humans have figured out how to cheat with a six card shoe of, you know, six deck shoe of cards, right? People have figured out how to like count card count for that.5% extra edge. You're telling me a $6 trillion payment system without any internal controls or ability to know where it's going? Come on.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the larger the numbers, I always ask my kids this when I'm trying to teach them about human nature. I'm like, okay, how many friends of yours would steal $10 from you if they could get away with it? How many would steal 100? You get to a million dollars and they can't think of one or

two friends that wouldn't steal money from that standpoint in high school. Well, adults are no different when they grow up. They just hide their insecurities and weaknesses a little bit better. And there is maturity and wisdom, don't get me wrong. But what number, if you think about 10 million 20 million you get into those numbers It's human nature, especially if they think they can get away with it. It's just it's just a guarantee Speaking of huge risks to the market Paul. I can't believe this this next piece. This is gonna be It's gonna be tough turns out

Consumers are organizing a one-day boycott to protest DEI rollbacks at select major corporations I'm sorry. I was trying to do not to laugh over you while you were talking. Oh, that's gonna be terrible Think of the damage That's February 28th is gonna go down in infamy. I'm just joking with that. I think obviously there's not gonna be a lot of teeth to that. But you know, part of that Paul, I've, you know, I'm gonna be down right after we're

done with this interview, I'm going down to to DC and there's an event there for Maha, right and get to do some stuff. But Evie and I are going to take Saturday and we're gonna go check out Washington DC. And I'm kind of hoping I've seen all these protests on Twitter, you know, but the camera's tight and there's never more than like 12 people at this thing. I'm kind of hoping we stumble across a few of those and I can just like selfie up, you know, and. I hope so.

Big good boots on the ground perspective of without having camera angles to make it look larger than. Yeah, I can't. I hope there's some protests. But this is job openings, the Jolt. The job openings is a measure of how many job openings you have. Normally, Paul, this really tracks very carefully with the SPX for obvious reasons, because stocks go up when the economy is doing well, and so do jobs. And job openings is one way to track that.

That doesn't look good. We got the jaws of death kind of opening up there. For whatever reason, in the last couple of years, the stock market has been doing one thing and job openings have been doing another. How do you interpret this? Well, I think that's pure lack of attention to fundamentals because fundamentals haven't really mattered. And I think it's pure momentum,

end of a major bull market behavior. So that's what I anticipate there. And companies are starting to lay off or reduce their hours or stop hiring more jobs and get more efficiency out of the individuals they are to try to maximize profits. And I think the market is just absolutely oblivious to it because people aren't paying attention to what's going on under the surface. It's all stories and names and Nvidia and AI and Bitcoin and that.

So I believe that's a huge warning. And we didn't see that type of a divergence back in 2007 on that chart that you were showing. And I believe the reason is because 2007 investors were paying a whole lot more, a closer attention because they had just come off of the 80% decline of the NASDAQ in 2000 to 2003. So I believe it's complacency and I believe that that matters. Interesting. Well, you mentioned in there Bitcoin on talk Bitcoin at the time of this recording, taking

a little bit of a hit. That's just today's losses of about 4% bringing it to just under 84,000 kind of a key moment. So I've drawn a couple of things on this chart crudely. I don't want that laser pointer. So you can see it went over 100,000 a few times, you know, bonked it said this is the dreaded over 100,000 that'd be the one, two, three, four, five, six, oh, also a nano top, um, a new way of a top, roughly speaking, but it had, this was sort of support for a while here. Right here was about the 91 K level and it screamed right through that. And then I think there was another level right about here.

I don't even know if that technically, I don't know if that's resistance, but that would be at about the 85 level something and it's broken through that. Now we'll see where this goes, but this is post-election here. So all of this top here is because of that election. I think we're going to have to wait and see what happens down here. But obviously, you know, when it was over 100,000, I had a lot of people with laser eyes in their bios at Twitter, you know, explaining to me that I'd better get on board, I'm going to get poor.

So so then they're they're strangely quieter today. So I've noticed that this is a very, I'll call it emotionally driven asset. Like people are really excited when it's going up and they're really quiet when it's not, which is maybe not that untypical, but I've sort of noticed that it's a fairly, it comes with a lot of that for some reason. And quite frankly, Bitcoin has been the one asset class that has caused me a tremendous amount of stress. Just just in my own emotion trying to work all this through

because you're not a good investor if you're giving into your emotions. Okay, you have to operate a plan. You have to recognize your emotions that are there, but you can get in a whole lot of trouble if fear of missing out gets you sucked in or causes you to bail out a plan. Hey, I'm gonna to diversify this.

I'm going to sell some things over here. Greed kicks in and it's just basically that fear of missing out on greed. Well, you know, we had all of the story behind Bitcoin coming in with Trump. It's going to be a strategic reserve. We're going to build all of these assets, you know, and then you've got the Trump coins or whatever that comes out. Everything seems to be ridiculously favorable towards Bitcoin. And I'm struggling with those emotions like, okay, what, what, what,

am I getting ready to miss out major on this? Should we have higher exposure for our clients to the sector? You know, no, let's follow our rules because emotions are taken over. Now the other side of that is fear. You know, you get forced out of a position because you can't imagine it'll go up. But I, but it is curious to me that Bitcoin is breaking down right now after consolidating for a period of time with all of this momentum and marketing that was behind Bitcoin and especially even Eric Trump coming out and saying some of the statements that he made in there.

He may have gone a little rogue and, you know, because you assume that that's a mouthpiece of dad there. Maybe he's gone a little rogue a little bit like other investors. I don't know, but this is a pretty big, big deal that Bitcoin's breaking down with some of these other asset classes. And that tells me that it's still, like you said, an emotional, you know, liquidity trade. It's a sign of, of the risk taking level that's out there. So I do believe this is a big deal.

I also consider this to be one of my, this is my preeminent liquidity gauge. So this is actually a canary for me about the broader market, Paul. Liquidity is drying up right now and that's consistent with say oil and gold and silver and copper. And it's just saying that the main stock market hasn't quite caught down to the message yet if this is a true, if this is a true signal. But what's fascinating to me is this story of Michael Saylor of micro strategy ticker MSTR.

That's why it says MSTR up there on that. And listen to this, because this is astonishing to me that if I said anything this ignorant, the SEC would be all over me rightly so Listen up. Call the dates People think it's people think it's dead. It's convertible debt. It's unsecured. No recourse. So did set the context ball for people Micro strategy bought a lot of Bitcoin Where did they get the cash for that? They floated a lot of what's called convertible debt. So it's a bond.

You float it, you know, a billion dollars of bonds and people buy that. And you take the cash and they take the bond. So he's talking about that. And he's saying here that he's talking about those particular bonds. Convertible debt, it's unsecured, no recourse. What that means, Ron, is that Bitcoin could go from $100,000 to $1,000, the debt's not getting called. There is no recourse.

Bitcoin can go to $1, you see. Bitcoin can literally go to one penny. The debt doesn't have, there's no call feature. And so it's like basically someone loans you billions of dollars and you agree that in five years you will either pay them back in cash or in stock. Okay, that's what a convertible bond is for people listening is your choice. You can convert it. So, Paul, I've bought a billion dollars of MSTR convertible, and it has, in buying that, the bond would have a convertible option on it,

and it would say, oh, if the stock is above 450 a share, you can convert your bonds into shares at that price, and so if the stock's at 650, dude, I'm taking stock shares, right? So it's a pretty sweet thing if you like the optionality you know if you think the stock is going up but he said two things in here that are so wrong I can't understand it one he said non recourse very specific term non recourse loan is like I could take out a loan and if it goes bad the bank can't come after my stuff they have

non recourse loans for mortgages in California, right? Meaning if that goes upside down, they don't, the bank doesn't have a recourse to come take your car and your bank account and whatever else. It's, it, so that was wrong. And then saying there's no call options, so it doesn't matter what happens, we don't have to pay cash for these things, is not actually true. That's not how convertible bonds work. So I asked Grok3 about this. I'm pretty sure this is correct, right?

And it says here, if you've purchased convertible debt from MSTR and the stock price is below the convertible strike price, you know, whether you can get your money back in cash depends a little bit on the specific specific terms, and that you hold at the situation at the time of redemption or maturity. So, convertible notes, they have a few key provisions usually, but guess what, here's how it works. If the stock price is below the strike price, you take your money, you get money.

And at maturity, at the maturity date of the notes, number two down there, if you haven't converted them already to stock earlier MicroStrategy is obligated to repay the principal amount in cash Assuming they have the funds to do so Yes, that's how that works That's how I've always understood it to work. Well, I have too and you know in convertible Debt is something that that allows some skin in the game for the person who lends, but they're always on term You know and he makes the comment that there's no call but yet in five years you just pay it back it

I'm surprised how reckless he was in that statement because at the end of it He said well in five years you just you know, whatever I can't remember exactly what he sells I was so shocked by what he did say, but that was very reckless. And either he doesn't understand the debt that he's, that he's taken on out there, but it's a very speculative debt. And that that's very concerning to me. That's another thing. Right.

This happened at the top. That's in rock. I'm not saying I don't want to get there, but that's the best I, the best we can say is he doesn't understand how those bonds are structured. He just doesn't know. Which I think a CEO maybe should know, but okay. Maybe not. Maybe that's the kindest I can be.

He actually doesn't, doesn't know. So the example of dollar a share that you don't. Yeah. Yeah. So sorry. Yeah. And then also from Grok three, because now I love Grok three. Paul, this would have taken me two hours and it took me two minutes. Right. So I asked it, Hey, MicroStrategy has been issuing these convertible senior notes to fund Bitcoin. How many does it have? What's the end?

It's like, oh, here's the maturity schedule. Here we go. Um, on March 15th, 2027 MicroStrategy is going to have $500 million of these notes that they're going to have to, um, that it's going to have to find cash for. And then September 15th, 2028 has another billion and then 2029 3 billion 2032 billion Also in 2030 another 800 million. You can just see how they've structured these out. So those are big numbers, right? So then the obvious questions. Well, how much cash do they have on hand? Answers not much as of September 30th 2024. They had 46 million with an M on its balance sheet.

But however, they may have floated another 2 billion convertibles. So we don't know how much of that cash is left. Right? At any rate, Ben Eifert responded right away to that to that video we just saw and said, Hey, derivatives guy here, convertible bonds are debt securities that have to be paid off in cash if the stock price is below the conversion price. Your investors will want good old fashioned fiat currency if it's worth more than your

stock. Hope that helps. And Ben knows what he's talking about. Ben knows what he's talking about because that's, I, at the time, as soon as I heard it, I had scratchy record bumps. I'm like, that isn't, what? Are they right? Are they, I have to, I'm humble this way, Paul. I'm like, maybe they're doing new things with convertible debt. I didn't know.

Right. Things change. Right. Maybe they've come up with some new crazy stuff. Nope. Not the case. So this is micro strategy stock price here. It hit a high of about laser pointer time, about it hit $504 back here in 2024 and it's down about 50% since that time almost exactly actually. So everybody who took some of those convertible notes back here, they're going to want their cash back. They're all underwater. Anybody who took it from this point backwards, depending on the terms, I'm just guessing

wild here, they're probably underwater on that and they're going to, they're going to want their cash when it comes due. So if you don't have the cash, but you have a big old portfolio of Bitcoin, you know what you do You sell the Bitcoin you sell the Bitcoin that's right and and just for those investors out there that don't you know Bitcoin is down approximately 25 percent or so from the top I just did a quick calculation without getting exact just ballpark and MSTR is down 52% from the top that tells you right there the risk that's associated under from the people who know Because if Bitcoin was to come apart That's gonna you know if Bitcoin was to go down another 25. I would assume

Okay, based on what's happened here and what I know about what he's representing it to be and what actually will occur, what you just demonstrated right there, you're going to see MSDR down a whole lot more than that. Yeah. And what was constructive for the price of Bitcoin on the way up were they're floating more debt, buying Bitcoin, Bitcoin goes up, that allows them to float more debt. And so they do that. Honestly going into higher and higher forms of leverage to buy a single type of appreciating

asset is known as a Ponzi scheme. It's almost pure technical definition of it, right? Using the price to get more people to give you more money so the price can apparently go up. Well that virtual circle becomes a vicious spiral if it goes the other direction potentially, right? Where more selling begets more selling begets more selling. So it could go both ways.

I just think that, you know, I got into arguments with people who are very Bitcoin, you know, positive. I'm like, I don't think this guy's good for y'all. I think that this guy, you know, playing a little fast and loose is going to like help drive it on the way up. But if it turns or when it turns, he's going to do the exact opposite of all that.

I don't think that's, I wouldn't want that if I was really, really, you know, maximal on wanting this all to succeed that that guys like him, I don't think help. No, I don't think so either because it damages the whole community and the network. And it sucks a lot of people in that don't realize that they're gambling. So the best analogy I can come up with is like, you're at the blackjack table, you win and you double,

and then you win and you double down. And all of a sudden you feel like you're bulletproof and you're a genius when you got this huge stack and then all of a sudden the stack's gone. Yeah, that's what ultimately happens in schemes like that. So yeah, I wanted to get your points of view on a couple things. I did this solo last week when you were you were stuck in the Liberian airport. It's quite the stressful event, but I will tell you one thing that's interesting. So they cancelled

our flight and I gotta say I snuck away to Costa Rica. Every now and then I'll take these little extended weekends just to kind of clear my head. And it was great because in Samara where we were on the Pacific coast, I will say I saw the most amazing thing in all the years of offshore fishing that I've ever seen. It had to have been two and a half miles in diameter as a

bait pod. And we sat there and I bet there was 500 dolphins that we watched and man-of-rage that were jumping out. I mean, I was literally in awe. And I tried to take pictures of it in video and I'm looking at it and then I'm looking at the, and I'm like, I just sat my phone down. I just wanted to enjoy it. The bad thing about that is, is the fish didn't want to touch anything that wasn't real. But, so we come back, our flights canceled, several flights were canceled. We don't know what's gonna happen. Finally get a hotel room and we get over there.

The only food was KFC. And I haven't eaten KFC that often, but I will say the quality of the KFC there, I want to go try it here because we had eaten not too long ago was unbelievable. Either that, or I was that hungry from sitting in the airport. Yeah, I don't know. But it was quite the event and ended up getting home at like 1 a.m. the next day and completely undid my schedule. So we got everybody rearranged and caught up. So I'm so glad to hear about that.

And I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad to hear that. ended up getting home at like 1 a.m. the next day and completely undid my schedule. So we got everybody rearranged and caught up. So I'm so glad to hear about that two and a half mile bait ball. You know that that does my heart good because I haven't seen it. I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. You know that sounds healthy. It was it was and the guide he's he's been down there the the captain of the boat, he's been down there

for 25 years now and he's never seen anything like it. He was so excited. He said, unfortunately for you guys, they don't wanna touch artificial, you know, dead bait floating on the top. We did catch a couple of sailfish, but it was magnificent, Chris. It was absolutely magnificent.

Just the ocean was boiling with life. And I've not seen that in fishing with my father-in-law off the Atlantic coast and whatnot since the early 1990s. I've never seen anything like that. It was amazing. Oh, that's fantastic. So a couple things. People who watched this last week saw these,

but I wanted to get Paul's take on it first. Wow, that's a bullish chart. Credit card debt hit 1.21 trillion. So people are just putting it on the card. That's a big increase from 760 billion, call it, to 1.2. I mean,'s taken place in 2024. That's that's just that's a that's both combination of reckless spending and In addition people they are ran into somebody that was that I talked to on the trip That uh, it's like I'm not I'm I hate it that I have all this credit card debt But I don't want to sell my stocks right now because I don't see any environment where they're gonna go down

I was literally told that and I'm trying it is I'm trying to give fundamentals and price earnings ratios and you know history And they're like but tell me one thing that's gonna cause the market to go down like Trump's not gonna allow that to happen So you've got people that have had to accumulate that debt based on inflation, and they're trying to make ends meet to survive as long as they can. And then you got other people who are foolishly accepting that extra debt, not realizing that this is,

if not the most expensive market in history, the most dangerous time in history the most dangerous time to be playing the debt game. So let's see if we call that that's one two three four it's about four and a half four and a half four hundred and fifty billion across four years so it's basically an extra hundred billion dollars of sort of purchasing power. I'm curious what the average credit card rate is right now. Well, it's probably 21, be my guess. The reliable estimate pegs the average rate at 24.2%.

Okay. 24.2%, that's not a wise thing to do. That's financially devastating. Yeah. To the people who've used that. Yeah, if you had to carry all of that, that's another 300 billion dollars per year. That's hefty. Ouch. The next thing, Paul, would be this from Finance a lot who just wrote Godspeed all drawing out the dreaded megaphone pattern, which is a charting thing, which you can tell kind of looks like a megaphone so

he's also drawing a rising wedge on the Dow coming up and then going back a bunch of years I think that this chart starts in 1997 over there on the left so anyway a big giant megaphone but you can see all that rise from 2000 great financial crisis time onward 2008 onward that's just been the central banks just printing like crazy. So to your friend's point, you know, is there anything you can see that might cause the central banks not to print? Is there anything that I see that? Well, that's a good question. If they, it depends on whether they want to crush the currency and,

and put pure misery on top of the average American citizen. And I would, I would think based on Trump's actions and Elon Musk and what they're doing at Doge right now, that if they really wanted to do that, they wouldn't be cutting this excessive spending out of the government. They'd be letting it flow into the economy like the prior administration did. And that's at the top of a Bollinger ban and a rising mortgage and a megaphone pattern. And I'm so used to looking at these, but Chris, you had the same megaphone pattern develop before the 2008, which developed,

that's a rising wedge there at the top of the Bollinger band before it came apart. So that Bollinger band guys is that cloud that's up there. So that tells you that we're in a very dangerous place right now. Yeah, you can see when you get up to the Bollinger Band and touch it, you tend to go down and touch the next one. Come up and touch it, come down.

That's the 2007, eight, nine crisis. But then it bumped, it's just sort of been bumping along the top of this Bollinger Band for a while. It's just sort of been bumping along the top of this Bolger band for a while. It's pretty impressive. I would love to overlay that with the Fed QE1, QE2, you know, operation twist, because all of that kept that market just red line pegged going forward from that standpoint from there.

So, you know, the question is, have we entered a different environment? Is Trump more concerned about bringing interest rates and inflation down or is he more concerned about keeping the market up? And we won't know until we get hindsight. But what concerns me is the average investor believes that Trump's certainly not going to let the market go down. But that reminds me of one chart,

if you don't mind me sharing it here with you, Chris. Yeah, please. This came up, so this was by Greg the analyst. And I don't know if you've ever followed Greg. I've followed him for a long time. He puts out good work. And he was basically saying that we saw that already. And in those talking about past periods,

but 2025 is also way too high without reading all that because we'd have to have the prior conversation. Share of wealth in the U.S. owned by the top 0.01% of households in 1929 was 10.4 and 2021 is 10.8. This is cyclical. This is something that if you read the Bible front to back, you see the same cyclicality This is something that if you read the Bible front to back, you see the same cyclicality in human nature go forward. Our human nature hasn't changed. It's just different

generations make different mistakes with, you know, thinking they're smarter than the ones that are prior. There are certain things that we go through, like the seasons that we go through—fall, winter, spring, and summer—the same thing happens in longer cycles in economies. So the question is, is Trump for the people, or is he for the top, you know,.01% of households? And based on the actions that we're looking at right now, the Biden administration was for the capital, which are these people right here.

And I'm hoping that Trump is actually gonna to come through with what they're doing right now and be for the average individual. And if that's the case, I'm not so sure that they're willing to sacrifice the currency to print unless that's the only option that they have. I don't know that the currency can be saved. I mean, you know, the Federal Reserve had one job and it was to print money out of thin air and not do a bad job at that. And they've printed too much.

I mean, this is, I'm actually going to take him at his face value. When Elon on February 17th came out and said, America's going bankrupt, all caps from extreme, all caps levels of government spending, either radical action is taken or we're toast. I think they believe this. I believe it because that's what my data and my charts tell me too. So if you hold this point of view, Paul, you believe that America is going bankrupt, it's too much spending. What do you do?

And cutting spending is obvious on one end, but you have to do something more than that. I'm submitting. That's right. I think it's a new paradigm. I think they've got a deeper plan. It's very simply what you would do is you want to manufacture as much as you can on your own shores. You don't want to be spending all your money buying manufactured stuff from other countries. You got to attract all of that capital to come back. But you got to have people who know how to do the Yes, you do. So you either have a default, which is ultimately a, you know, technically, well, a default is not a debt jubilee, the end result is, or you crush the currency and try to inflate it away. Either way, there's pain. Either way, there's pain.

But from what I've experienced, what I've read throughout history, I am much more concerned about a hyperinflationary event than I am a deflationary event. Because deflationary events are going to wrestle the power from the foolish to the wise and the patient thinkers, where hyperinflation is going to just absolutely crush everyone. Yeah. If we lose our currency, you know, is there any, what other options do they have though, besides those two extremes? Come up with a new currency, you know,

to try and hot swap it midstream, but there's a lot of pain in any one of those stories. And I guess that's, you know, why I'm so interested in having people work with you, Paul, because look, I don't see any way around this at this stage, you know, that there's we live beyond our means for too long. Now we're going to have to live below our means to sort of balance this checkbook, right? Just it's national finances, you know, I don't see another way around it at this stage.

And I challenge myself all the time, daily calls with Nick, I'm like, how do we have this wrong? What's another way to look at this? What am I missing? Is there another way to think about this? But I think where we are at with the overall debt and spending problems in this country, I mean, I have to imagine this fantastical amount of economic growth. So I'm constantly on the lookout, right?

Is AI that thing? That's more deflationary to me than expansionary, to be honest. Certainly, technology in general is deflationary. As it should be, right? Yes. Yes. And I'm thinking of all these graphs

that I can see about the cost of storage back, you know, 30 years ago and what the cost of storage is today and just how much you can get. Technology is deflationary. Well, just any technology, right? So if I have to hand dig my field to put potatoes in, I can do X of those. But with a tractor, with technology, I can do X squared times 10. You can produce more goods for less effort, which more goods brings the price down.

Scarcity brings the price up. So let's, I want to share a thought process with you just so I can share with individuals that are listening, just the studying that I've done throughout history and looking at the German hyperinflation. Okay. People didn't anticipate that happening. You go back and read journals. It's easy to look back in hindsight and say, oh my gosh, you know what made sense? People were burning wheelbarrows of cash because the cash was easier to get than the trees were to grow for the wood to heat their house. I mean that's literally what people did. You had store owners that were shutting

their doors and wouldn't sell any goods, which magnified the hyperinflation because by the time they sold the goods and they ordered it two weeks later, they couldn't sell it fast enough to make enough profit to buy it. So you're better off just to stop. So once that hyperinflation starts, store owners don't have an incentive to sell more than they need just to service their own expenses in the interim period so it feeds on itself. So if we did get into a situation like that, pick this apart Chris, but this is what I would anticipate

that it looked like in just a general theory of how it would unfold. At first, people think it's going to be great for the markets. They go back and they look at Germany. What occurred in Germany was they made it illegal to sell on any downtick. If the market dropped, it was illegal to sell. You can only sell while the market was going up. If it went down, you couldn't sell anything.

So therefore, no sellers could feel on top of that. So their markets went up artificially. At the end of the war, when they finally brought reality about, if I remember correctly, I know you've talked about this before, it was a 90% decline initially as soon as they opened it up to a free market. So that was an artificially government stimulated market.

All right, so let's say the US doesn't implement something like that, we do get a hyperinflationary event. At first, I would expect the market to go down 50 or 60% initially. And then treasuries are gonna be your initial safe haven. But that's not gonna be the safe haven that you need to stay in from long-term standpoint

after that initial decline is over and they continue to print money. You're going to have to move into hard assets. I would assume that your gold, your silver is going to be good. And again, ladies and gentlemen, this is theory and speculation. So Chris can pick it apart. I'm not making a recommendation. But then it's going to be for it's going to be international assets. I mean, I don't like anything that's going on in Europe,

but from a price-to-earnings ratio, it's ridiculously underpriced. Emerging markets are ridiculously underpriced. Commodities are ridiculously underpriced. They're still below what they were 17 years ago. You're going to have to throw the paradigm of the past away, and passive investing is not going to work in that environment because what has been working initially

is not gonna be what's gonna get you through on the other side. So you're gonna have to have an open mind. You're gonna have to have thought about this before because we don't know exactly how it's gonna unfold. But if you've considered 20 different scenarios and you can take two steps quicker to that scenario than what the average person can be, that's the difference between you and your family having less misery than

what the average person is going to be. That's one of the reasons I spend so much time studying events in the past and building scenarios that what if this happens? Like my wife gets so frustrated at me, I'm like, we'll walk into, you know, our plane's canceled in the library airport and I'm like we'll walk into we you know our planes cancel in the Liberia Airport, and I'm like okay We got to run this scenario. We don't know this area around here where we were is safe Is this area safe San Jose is not safe they say Liberia apparently is after I asked like 20 people and But it's like how do we get a hotel? How do we get there? How do we rebook?

What do we got to do when we get home half of those scenarios? We didn't have to use but if you haven't considered them, you're not prepared for them and you can be like a deer in a headlights instead of somebody that digs in. So we don't want to be stuck in a fight or flight, right? Flight is frozen. We got to fight our way to the prudent path. And that's why I want investors out there to consider the alternatives.

And what do you think, Chris? Do you think it's going to be an environment where market comes apart and then treasuries are the answer to begin with, but then you've got to flee those initially once you get another signal? Yeah. Well, it's- Without going in all one asset. I mean, gold is a good one.

So- No, I mean, it's in order for the Federal Reserve to begin printing again. It needs a cause celebre. It needs a reason. Right. And and for that, you need people scared, you know, and that's a market downturn because remember market volatility means stocks are selling off. stocks are selling off, not going both directions, which it should mean, right? So they're scared of the dreaded market volatility, but let's be clear, there's no way for this to pencil out at this point. There just isn't, right? We have $250 trillion of underfunded or unfunded liabilities and debt. You can't think of, there's no payment schedule.

You go to your workout specialist, a big bankruptcy firm, they're just going to stare at that and go, yeah, this doesn't pencil, right? So now you're just down to who's going to eat the losses, right? And for that, they're going to try inflation because it spreads it to the people who deserve the pain the least and it's kind of how they roll. Well, and one thing I've been thinking about too, in the short run, this is outside of the theory, but what is it looking around nine, nearly $10 trillion. I think we talked about it two weeks ago with Samantha LaDuke had pointed out 10 trillion that's coming due and what in the next six to nine

months. Yeah, for the coming mature. So that's all reef. Just they got to roll all that debt. They've got to roll all that debt. What's the easiest way to provide capital to roll that debt in the short run is this stop supporting the market, right? Because where's money going to flow to safer assets and interim period. So is this a game that they're forced to play in the short run and sacrifice the market in the short run. I don't know.

I'm just just talking outcomes to be able to kick that can down the road a little bit longer, because at this point you've got to kick that can down the road as far as you can because if you can't find that nine trillion, then you're either gonna have to print or default and then and then that's the shot, you know, the gunshot going off that starts the race. Again, what we've always talked about, got to be nimble, you know, and have a risk-managed approach. So for anybody who'd like to talk with Paul or his team, this is how you do it.

You go to peakfinancialinvesting.com. You fill out a simple form. Somebody from Paul or his team will call you within 48 business hours to schedule an appointment. And Paul, how far out are those appointments booking right now? So I've gotten through a lot. So we're about a month out to get to me. A couple of the other advisors are a little bit closer, but we're starting to open that capacity up because I had to have a lot of conversations with existing clients first

of the year. So we've hit a real good pace right now. So it's not quite as long as it was a month or so ago. But I will say, get our calendar. You get a hundred percent of my attention when you're there and I keep that capacity in there. And if there are those of you that are flexible out there and you've got a couple of days during the week

then I can slide you in as long as I, you know, have been able to make sure I've talked to all the clients that need me in the interim period of time. Well, thanks for that, Paul, and for everybody listening. This has been another edition of Finance U. Watch Bitcoin, watch the gold, watch the topping process here, see where that takes you, and trade safe and be nimble.

All right, thanks for your time again, Paul. Always honor, Chris. Look forward to the next conversation.