Shawn Ryan Show - #161 Rob Luna - 2025's Million-Dollar Question: Where to Invest & Will DOGE Trim the Fat?

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Rob Luna is a top-ranked wealth strategist, Fox Business contributor, best-selling author, and successful entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in wealth management. After earning dual MBA’s from UCLA Anderson School of Management and the National University of Singapore, Luna went on to manage money for high-net-worth individuals and consult for companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Luna is currently focused on empowering people through entrepreneurship and financial literacy as CEO of Luna Venture Partners, home of the Rob Luna Wealth Academy, The Lunatick Investor, and Bulletproof Live. Luna's latest book "Close Your Wealth Gap" aims to help individuals build, grow, protect, and enjoy their wealth. He regularly appears on major networks to discuss stock market investing, interest rates, inflation, and economic trends. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://helixsleep.com/srs https://amac.us/srs https://PrepareWithShawn.com https://blackbuffalo.com https://betterhelp.com/srs https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Call 866-781-8900 for details about credit costs and terms. Rob Luna Links: Website - https://robluna.com Book - https://www.closeyourwealthgap.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelunarob Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thelunarob X - https://x.com/TheLunaRob LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robluna Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Rob Luna.

Sean. Welcome back. Thanks for having me back, man. It's an honor. Well, it's an honor, man. When I came on episode 42, your show was already crushing it. Now it's a hundred and something, the people that you've had here over the last year,

just absolutely legendary. So it's very humbling. It's also a little bit nerve wracking to sit in the seat today, considering how far the show's come and how far it's spread. And congratulations on all the success, man. Man, thank you, thank you.

Episode 42? Yeah. Damn, we're at like 152 now, I think. It's crazy. I think it was just over. Episode 42. Yeah. Damn. We're like 152 now. It's crazy It was just just over two years ago. Wow. Wow It does man. Well quick quick intro you've already been on so I'm not gonna give you the long introduction but number one ranked wealth strategist in the country and Since you've been on the show the author author of Close Your Wealth Gap. Yeah.

So how'd the book do? Booked it pretty good. It wasn't a New York Times best seller. So I guess I'm a failure by all counts when you look at it that way, but. But it's a New York Times, man. So I'm not going to take it too personally. But that's not why I wrote it though.

I wrote it to be able to provide information to people who didn't have what I felt was the right information to take control over their finances. And from that aspect, the people that are reading it are saying it's changing their lives. So, and from that standpoint, I think it's a winner. Well, a lot has happened in those two years.

You moved to Franklin, you finally got out of California. Somebody talked some sense into you finally. But Rob, I just, you know, I want you here because we're going into a new year. It's a big year of 2025. We got a new administration coming in. Old ones got the boot. And so a lot of people are wondering, you know,

what's the economy gonna do? Everything from interest rates to the stock market to real estate to just starting your own business. And so I want to dive into all of that because I'm super interested and you're the most knowledgeable person I know on the subject. So I figured we'd get you back in here.

But real quick, before we get in the weeds with everything, we got a Patreon account, you know that. And they're our top supporters. I wouldn't be here and neither would you be if it wasn't for them. And so I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. And this one, there were some good questions,

but this, I want to pick a personal one because we got a future entrepreneur here. Nice. This is from Jules. She says, I am debt-free, I work for a nonprofit and I have about 500 to 1000 surplus dollars a month. I'd like to open a coffee shop eventually and buy a house. Where should I start?

With the house or with the business? Yeah, I mean, I look at the end of the day, this is probably one of the most controversial topics out there of whether you should buy a home, rent a home. And I think Sean, like quite honestly, it doesn't just come down to numbers. So, you know, I know if you've got a family, I think being able to put your head down at night,

knowing that you're gonna be able to be in that house for a year, two years, five years, 10 years, whatever it is, your kids can grow up in that home. It creates a sense of community with the people in your neighborhood. There's some consistency there. You don't have to worry about calling the landlord and saying, hey, my kid wants a dog.

Can I have a dog? All those types of things. I don't think you could really put a dollar amount on that from my opinion. I rented for, I went through a divorce and I rented for about three years. It was really the worst experience of my life considering I owned my first home

when I was 19 years of age. So I think from that standpoint, I don't know about Jules, if she has a family, I think making that investment in a home is super important. When you look at the average net worth of people who own their own home versus renting by the time they're 60 years of age, it's 135,000 for renters versus over 1.2 million

for homeowners. And why we were just talking about that before I got on here, it's that for savings, right? If you're going to pay rent every month, you're not thinking about it. You're making that rent payment, but you're not building anything up. Where if you're making that payment into your home over 10, 20, 30 years, you're building real equity because real estate goes up over time, you're paying down that mortgage. And then when you get to retirement,

one of the biggest differences I've seen working with individuals is, do you have a mortgage payment versus no mortgage payment? So if you have to get to retirement and still pay rent, which is going up every single year versus having that paid off and not having that expense, That is also the difference between having a much more comfortable retirement. So I would say if you can try to get that home as soon as possible, I would do that. But I love the idea of being an entrepreneur. I think especially we'll talk about it with

this new administration. The wind is finally at your back. I think there's going to be a lot of incentive for people to go out there and build their own business, but why not do both? I mean, a lot of times you can get into some of these homes, three to 5% down, get in there for the same price, maybe a little bit more than rent, and then start that business as well. I know it was one or the other,

but I would try to do both, but definitely get that home. You know, I think we talk a lot about this with my team. I try to convince everybody to buy home. And one of the things that I feel like, especially in this area, middle Tennessee, it's growing because it's growing at a very rapid pace. And so, I mean, would it be, but a lot of people feel like the interest rates

are still a little too high. I don't know if those are going to fluctuate or not. I want to ask you, Bud. Sure. But just from what I've seen in the seven years that I've been here, prices have just, they've never leveled off. They just keep going up, up, up, up, up.

And so I feel like it would be better to buy right now, no matter what the interest rate is because the equity is going up so fast. I mean, am I on the money with that? Yeah, I think it's a great point. And I'm one, like you said, I moved from Southern California two years ago. I looked at the price increase of the previous two years,

kind of like when you came out here and I was like, damn, I really missed the boat. And I figured, look, the money I'm the previous two years, kind of like when you came out here, I was like, damn, I really missed the bow. And I figured, look, the money I'm gonna save on taxes, all these things, I may be buying at the top, but at the end of the day, two, three, four years at all, even out, well, I think the house is up another 10 to 15%. So had I have not done it, I would have missed out.

And when you look at, I think, real estate in general, everyone wants to say real estate. Well, up until 2008, real estate is how it should be, was independent markets. You know, 2008, we saw this crash, everything went down in the same time. There was never a nationwide housing decline in the history of the United States up until 08, 09.

You had certain markets that went down when some went up. So I think it's gonna be a little bit area specific. You talk about Tennessee, you talk about North Carolina, you talk about Texas, you talk about Florida. This is the area where all the growth is coming. Jobs are being created. It doesn't really surprise me that if you look at the administration, if you look at these are red states

that support business, have zero to low taxes, there's incentive for small businesses. If you are looking to buy a home in one of those areas, which is where I think you should be buying, I think it goes up over the next two, three, five, 10 years, and that's gonna continue to happen because when you look at areas like California, I was just out in Newport Beach,

literally what we bought our home here for, which is almost 7,000, you've been to our house, it's a nice house, beautiful home, you can get a 3000 square foot lot, not a house, tear down for about the same price. So it's absolutely, you know, when you look at the value you get in somewhere like Tennessee, it's huge.

And by the way, no state income taxes. So I think the advice that you're giving to people, if you're buying in some of those areas that I mentioned, I think it's spot on. Now, California, places like Seattle, places like New York, I think those areas are gonna continue to come down. You've seen some of those prices come down,

unless you're getting into the upstate New York and things like that. So I wouldn't be buying there, but all those areas that I mentioned, I think you're right on. In the point, maybe we'll talk a little bit about interest rates, but 7% interest rates, that's kind of historic norm.

We're looking at these 10, 15 years where we had abnormally low interest rates, and people have kind of gravitated towards that and say, oh, I'm gonna stay on the sidelines. I don't think that's the thing to do. 80s, you have 20, 23% interest rates. And the pros and cons of a booming economy, if the economy does do well

Which I believe it's gonna be doing under this incoming administration I don't think interest rates are gonna be coming down anytime soon. So I wouldn't be on the sidelines You don't think they're gonna come down. No, no a lot of people are waiting for that. Yeah, they're gonna be waiting a long time. I think So, I mean the country, it is what it is. The country's been very divided. It has been for some time now. And we are seeing this massive influx of people from California moving into red states,

especially the tax-free states. But so are prices in California, are they dropping? Cause what I've heard from the rumor mill is they're actually staying the same if not going up. Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at them relative to other states, they're not doing nearly as well. When you look at some of the higher priced homes,

and the thing is about California, I mean, an average home, let's look at Orange County, for example, an average home is gonna be somewhere around 1.8 to $2 million, nothing super exceptional. So when you look at it from that standpoint, they're kind of hanging in there. You're not seeing the increases like you're seeing

in North Carolina or Texas or Florida. However, the thing that I would say California has going for it is there's nowhere else to build in these areas. There's no open land like you have in Texas and Tennessee. So prices are going gonna somewhat stabilize. However, the catalyst for them to go up, I don't think it's gonna happen.

And when you look at some of the big producing areas in California, these are the last five to six years, like Newport Beach area, like Cunnington Beach. And these are kind of, they actually call these the Red Republic. These are the areas within Southern California that have different politics and people who couldn't have necessarily left California

to come to Tennessee, moved from Los Angeles into some of these counties over there. Those areas are gonna continue to, I think, hold their value, but the catalyst for them to go up, I don't think is really gonna be there, Sean. Okay, and in places like Washington, I mean, those are coming down. Those are coming down as well. For some of the same reasons we're seeing in areas like Washington, I mean, those are coming down. Those are coming down as well.

For some of the same reasons we're seeing in areas like California. Now, the hope is, and we had this last election in California, we've seen a much larger movement politically than we've ever seen in the last, I think it was 20 or 30 years. And I think, look, Sean, people are sick and tired of what's been going on, the crime that's been going on there. You're going to pay $2 million for a home. You can't send your kids to the school. People are sick and tired of what's been going on, the crime that's been going on there. You're gonna pay $2 million for home.

You can't send your kids to the school. You can't wear a watch out without worried about getting carjacked. Somebody I know was followed home three months ago in front of his family was shot in his face. He just passed away two, three days ago in an area, Bel Air. Like we've heard of the fresh Pinsir Bel Air that's outside of Beverly Hills.

One of the nicest areas out there. And it's really because of the politics and what's been going on. Like I've seen since COVID, I lived in Southern California for 20 years. It became almost like a third world country in some of these places in terms of the crime. I'm absolutely horrible.

Geez. What about land? Me and you go back and forth on land all the time. I know you're right, but I just, I love land. But what are some of the, I mean, what do you expect land to do in the upcoming year? Yeah, well, look, I think that the, I like land also.

The challenge with land is if you're someone who, two things, number one, I would say the tough part about land is you don't get an immediate income from land. So if you buy raw land, you can't rent it out to somebody like you could apartment or even a single family house or a commercial building. There's no tax incentive as you know, unfortunately when you go to buy land

because the tax incentives come from a depreciating asset which is a building on top of the land. So when you buy land, what you're doing is buying that land for future appreciation, which isn't a bad thing, but you have to have the money to be able to wait for that. So for example, if you're looking to buy, we were just talking about Tennessee's booming right now. And so all the development is starting to go further south because the areas north are starting to get towards Nashville are starting to get more expensive. So the builders,

everybody's starting to move further south. That path of progress, if you want to get ahead of that because you know developers are going to be buying that land, you know people are going to be going out there, investors, Vanguard, BlackRock are going to be buying KKR. I think buying that with the idea if you can wait seven to 10 years, it's probably going to be a good investment. But just know during a certain period of time, there's not going to be any income coming from that. And you don't want to buy any investment, whether it's land or stocks or private business, with the idea that I might have to pull money out in a year or two years, because that could become a time where the market isn't doing too well and you don't want to have to sell at a loss. So if you've got the money, you don't need the tax incentives right away

and you can wait for that progress to happen, I think land's a decent investment. What did you say, KKR? Yeah, KKR is a private equity fund company. So you're starting to see a lot of these private equity companies buying raw land, doing developments. You know, and this is one of the problems actually,

probably the biggest problem I believe, and I don't think enough people talk about it in terms of housing inflation. So when you think about the big money, the pensions, the endowments that are investing billions and billions of dollars in different asset classes, stocks, in real estate, they all have something called an investment policy statement, which kind of governs how they can invest their money. And up until 2008, 2009, while they invested in real estate, commercial real estate was self-storage, multifamily, these big skyscrapers, Class A commercial types of buildings.

That's where all of their money was going. Then in 2008, 2009, Blackstone was one of the first ones, KKR came in. You remember, especially areas like Arizona, you saw 70, 80% declines in home prices. You saw communities where the average home was being built and sold for six, 700,000 come down to $150, $200,000. A lot of these homes are being short sold

because if you remember at that time, one of the things that fueled the housing crisis was, yeah, not only low interest rates, but these liar loans where you could say, hey, I make a million dollars a year. And as long as you had a decent credit score, there was no verification of tax returns. There was no verification of your income.

So people were able to go in and get these houses with little to no down payment. So they had no skin in the game. And what was happening during this two, three year period leading up to 08, 09, people were just flipping these homes, making money. And they're like, oh, why wouldn't I do this? Well, because they didn't realize

that home prices can come down. When all those home prices came down, what did they do? They went to the bank, they gave them the keys and said, hey, I'm walking away. And the ultimate wisdom of the administration at that time actually changed the tax code to give them forgiveness of indebtedness, which means if you bought a home for $500,000,

the bank wrote it off for $200,000, that 300,000 difference that you would have been liable for, if the bank allowed you to walk away from that, you would have actually had to pay the taxes on that, or they could have came after you. Well, during that time, the administration let that go. So there was absolutely no recourse for people. Everyone turned in the keys, prices crashed,

but there was money out there for the big guys, the pension endowments, and they said, look, at these prices, if we came in when they did the calculations, if we buy these homes and rent them out, we can actually get a really good return. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance that you can get done right from your couch and it can be done all online and on your schedule. You could be covered in under 10 minutes with no health exam required. Just go to meetfabric.com slash Sean. That's meetfabric.com slash Sean.

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I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have

is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence

brief. This is going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week,

maybe two if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, links in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter. Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute,

head over to iTunes and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. So as you know and I know, they're not gonna buy one-off homes or two-off homes. They were buying entire communities at a time. And what they started doing, and now you're seeing multiple publicly traded companies come in 15, 16 years later,

is they're buying thousands and thousands of single-family homes, turning these into rental units. And now what's happened is the single family home has become what's called an institutional asset class. So now it's just not mom and pop that are bidding for these homes. It's Blackstone and KKR, and I can't remember some of the other names,

some of these big companies that have come in over the last two to three years that are also putting bids. So every time you see homes come down a little bit, well, that kind of triggers their model to go off and they come back in and buy. And remember, the difference between you and I is endowments, pension funds, their timeline is perpetual, right?

Because they're always gonna be in business. They're always gonna have people retiring where you and I are gonna, we're not gonna live past 100. So they can take longer term bets. They don't have to make money on this real estate right away. So they're in here.

These are long-term investors. And so that's the challenge, right? Is all these people with big deep pockets now are competing against everyone else. And they've kind of put a floor. Now they're not buying to the point in California, the three, $4 million homes, which actually wouldn't be a bad thing.

What they're buying is the 250 to $600,000 homes, which is really what middle America needs to be going after. And so what this has created now is what I believe is a detriment and I think is gonna be a headwind to the traditional apartment complexes, which are called multifamily housing, because I think why a lot of people rented apartments is like, hey, if I get an apartment,

I can stay there two years, three years, five years, I've got some stability. Where if I rent somebody's house, there's a lot of things I gotta worry about. 0809, I rented your house, you're the landlord, you just short sold, guess who got kicked out? Me and my family, we've gotta go find somewhere else. You might decide, hey, I wanna move back in there after a certain period of time.

My brother-in-law just lost the job. I'm going to move him back in. When your guys' lease is up in six months, you got to get out. So there's not a lot of stability, but these new buyers are now creating that stability to where you can now have a single family house. You could have the backyard, put the dog in the backyard. They're creating community projects, parks around there. So it's really what people who can't,

as housing gets less affordable, if you can't afford a house, I think most families would rather rent these single family homes than they would apartment complexes. So that kind of changes. And these are the things as an investor you always wanna think. What is the thesis over the next five to 10 years?

While multifamily used to be great, do I wanna invest as much as in apartments? If now people are starting to go into homes, is that gonna cost a little bit of a hiccup in multifamily, which I think it will. But I think the bigger problem and the bigger issue there is the average American who's bidding for these homes, I don't think is gonna be getting a discount anytime soon.

And I don't think these players are going anywhere because when you look at occupancy rates of these communities, they're 95, 100%. Because housing is not affordable, they're able to find renters pretty easy. Wow. You know, I get a question that doesn't relate to 2025, but I mean, you know, the baby boomer generation,

biggest generation of all time, I believe. The millennial generation is now. They surpassed it. It was up until then. Okay. My question time, I believe. The millennial generation is now, they surpassed it. It was up until then. Okay, my question was, I mean, you see all these 50 plus retirement communities coming around, even here in middle Tennessee, it's massive, massive in Florida.

I mean, they got the villages, which most people know about the villages. But I mean, is that generation, and people aren't having as many kids as they used to. Either. And so, we see it here in middle Tennessee, it's like every time I leave the house, there's another development going on.

Is this gonna implode? Is there gonna be an overabundance of housing within the next 20 to 30 years? Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

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raise your game to the next level this year with Ben MGM, a sports book worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. Ben MGM dot com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Yeah, well, I think, look, I mean, the thing about the baby boomer generation now is, I mean,

they're getting older. I mean, I think they're, I forget 50s, like I'm 50. My dad was a baby boomer, right? So I think they're definitely getting older. So I think what you're seeing with that generation, and like you said, up until now, they were the largest generation, is they're downsizing, right? And a lot of the baby boomers, right? They were the children of the greatest generation, the greatest generation who actually saved and did all these things. The baby boomers are kind of,

they're criticized for not being great savers, right? They live beyond their means. They're the children of the sixties. They weren't super responsible. And they might be some of these people who were smart enough to baby buy a home. They built equity in their home, but that's all they have.

Now they get to retirement, they didn't save anything outside of their home. So what they're doing is selling the home, taking the cash out so that they can live off of it, and then they're downsizing or then switching from being an owner into a renter in some of these 55 plus communities. However, as we said, we don't live till ever, forever.

So the next 10, 15 years, as they start dying off, that could create a surplus. But we're seeing that, you know, real estate, the great thing about real estate, it doesn't just go away. So for example, Class A commercial office buildings that you would see in Los Angeles, in New York, that all these companies were renting. And then when COVID came, a couple of things.

Well, number one, people couldn't be in offices. But what I always say about COVID, if it would have been two months, three months, I think people would have went back to business as usual. But when it's over a year, there was a huge mindset shift in the way that things were done. So for example, previous firm I had,

we had offices in the best areas in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, high rise class A buildings that were hundreds of thousands of dollars to build out. And then during COVID actually no one came into those but then our clients got used to Zoom meetings, especially in Los Angeles. They didn't wanna drive two hours to come into our office.

They said, you know what? I think I'd rather do that Zoom meeting quarterly than drive two hours round trip to get in and see you guys for 45 minutes to an hour. And then obviously the younger generation kind of demanded this flexible environment. So corporations, while they're not getting rid of office space, they're all downsizing. No one's taking as much space as they did before. You don't need to do that. You have a flex environment so you can share a desk between two employees.

So that's a structural shift that's happened in real estate. So what's happened though? Well, I was just reading in, for example, in Newport Beach, California, where there's not a lot of apartments, they have some of these class A office buildings that occupancy rates have come down significantly. So what they're doing now is converting those to mixed use where there's gonna be apartment complexes in there.

And so you're seeing that with a lot of the office spaces now in New York, because there's just every time I go there, and every three, four months, there's more and more vacancy, no one's taking that space. So they're now converting those to residential units. So I think the same thing could happen there. I personally, the case for investing in them, like you said, the demographic is aging.

I think they're getting overbuilt. I wouldn't be investing in any of those areas. I would avoid them. But I think eventually they'll flip and they'll do something else with them because they're still, because the millennial generation, the younger generation, now they're the new home buyers. And because they are the largest generation

and housing is not affordable, the country's trying to find ways to make homes more affordable. And every time something is built or there's a discount on something, everybody's out there looking to pick it up. So I think, you know, it's not gonna be a huge problem like commercial real estate that's heavily levered

that I'm still very concerned about, but it's something I'd probably steer of if it's an investment case. Let's move into stock market. Yeah. What can we expect in 2025 in the stock market? Yeah, that's a million dollar question. Well, what I didn't expect was 29% in 2024, right?

It was a huge year. It was an election year, which historically is very volatile. People don't know what's gonna be going on. And when you look at what has happened since November in the stock market, it's been, and I've been in the market since 1998. I've never seen anything like this. Now, people thought, you know, maybe Trump gets in

and then we called it the Trump rally. Some things were rallying up. And usually there's a saying, buy on the rumor, sell on the news. So what I thought was gonna happen, you see this little bit of a run-up into the election, Trump gets elected, you have a couple of days of euphoria, then things kind of sell off

and people start worrying about things again. Well, that hasn't happened. We're, you know, right now at the end of the year. We've seen a little bit of a pullback, but largely we've just seen rotation where you might see tech do great and then the market doesn't crash, it just shifts to industrials

and then it just shifts to healthcare. So the resiliency of this market, I think based off of what's gonna be happening with the new administration, in my view has been shocking So what you always want to think about is you're asking me about 2025. Well 2024 we just did 30% Historically over a long period of time the S&P averages nine and a half to ten percent So that's got to get you a little bit worried when you see something rally the year before was actually a pretty good year

So now you're looking at like 40% in two years. Does that necessarily mean the stock market's gonna crash? No, it doesn't. But what I would expect is a lot more volatility. So there's a lot of things, there's a lot of heavy expectations on this new administration. We've got Doge, we've got all these people coming in,

we've got Elon Musk, we've got Trump, and everybody is super euphoric about what's gonna happen. I'm optimistic, but I'm also cautiously optimistic, and I don't expect all these things to happen overnight. So what I would say is, I believe the market will do well. I don't think it's gonna be straight up like it was before. And so I would use something called dollar cost averaging.

If you've got some money you wanna put in the market, don't dump it all in right away. Use some of these pullbacks, use some of the scare, use some of the fear, use some of the disappointments, which we're bound to get with some of the new administration like we would with everywhere. Use those as opportunities to buy, but don't go all in after we've had this huge run.

What sectors do you think are going to do the best? I think technology is going to continue to lead because technology is what is creating a technology is a double-edged sword. It's creating the increased productivity, meaning efficiency for businesses. At the end of the day, when we're buying stocks, what we're doing is we're buying the future profits of a company. And the more consistent, the faster growing,

the more reliable those profits are, the more that stock is gonna continue to go up. And so when you look at technology, there's no industry that I know, well, let's take one sector of technology, cybersecurity. Well, everything's going to the cloud, everything's going to AI. If you were a large corporation or small corporation corporation like my businesses, your businesses, no matter

how bad the economy is, are you going to cut your budget for cybersecurity? Are you going to tell your customers, hey, things aren't quite good. We're going to make your data a little bit riskier. Of course not. So there's going to be increased investment there. Artificial intelligence, other things that are gonna increase productivity to make companies more efficient and more profitable are gonna continue to do well.

The downside of that obviously is there's gonna be less people needed to be able to create those jobs. So technology I believe is the number one sector out there. Everything is gonna be AI driven, robotics driven. That's where the economy and the future is going. That's been really, that painter's picture has been painted for the last five to six years and that's where you're seeing the money start to go. Now you look at other areas where it's almost like when you think about the gold rush

back in California, you can invest in the gold and the mine itself or you could invest in the picks and shovels, the things that they're going to be out there to be able to work and create and mine that gold. So you think about energy, for example. Well, all this data, like we saw with Bitcoin mining and everything, it takes a lot of data and power and energy to be able to power this new economy, which is why you've seen in the last year to two years,

utility companies, which are traditionally, they say utilities are what widows and orphans buy, right? Because they're stodgy companies, they don't grow really fast, you know, they're what puts the lights on literally, they pay good dividends historically. So you start to look at those as more conservative investments, but we've seen utility companies go up 50, 60, 70% for precisely the reason I'm talking about, the need to be able to power these supercomputers and generators and everything to be able to create this new economy.

So that's another way that I would look at playing it. What I'd be a little bit more leery of when we're talking about this is areas like healthcare. There's so many questions around that. The healthcare system is clearly broken. We don't know what that's gonna look at. There's not a lot of predictability. And the way Wall Street prices stocks

is when there's a high degree of uncertainty, there needs to be a high discount associated with it. So the more certainty, the more people are willing to pay up for it. There's a pretty high degree of certainty that Apple's gonna be around in a few years that Apple's gonna be around in a few years, Google's gonna be around in a few years. But what does UnitedHealthcare look like?

Not mentioning everything that just went on with that company, Pfizer. What do those companies look like with the new administration? We see RFK talking about some different things. We know the system is broken, clearly. We don't believe in it, we don't trust it, we don't think it's efficient.

That's probably an area I would be avoiding. I would be heavy in technology, I would be heavy in energy. I think some of the real estate investment trusts that own the right type of property or another area. So another thing is, if you don't have money to buy a home or invest in commercial real estate, sometimes the cheapest place to buy real estate is actually on Wall Street.

You can buy something that's called a real estate investment trust that owns self storage units, that owns single family homes, that owns raw land, that owns commercial units, whatever it is you wanna buy, and you get a lot of the same benefits, depreciation, you get income that comes from them.

So some real estate investment trust had been really beaten up over the last year, year and a half. Why? Because traditionally as interest rates go up, areas that pay you a dividend or income like real estate investment trust or as interest rates go up, it's not easy to borrow to buy real estate tend to come down. So some of those areas have pulled back, but I think there's gonna be a stabilization. I do believe in real estate.

So real estate investment trusts are another area that I'd be looking at. Back to the RFK thing. I'm glad you brought that up, because I wanted to specifically ask that. He's got a lot of plans about kind of going after big pharma, going after the food companies. But there's gotta be a counter

to that, we can't just get rid of all of that. So is there anything in healthcare or in food or that we should be looking at? One thing that comes to my mind is psychedelics. Psychedelics just keeps getting more and more popular, more and more people are hearing about it and figuring out all the positive aspects of going through some psychedelic therapy.

I know that, I don't know, I've heard rumors of publicly traded companies kind of rising up within that space. Are you tracking any of that at all? Yeah, I mean, the thing to be a little bit leery of with a lot of these companies, some of them, most of them don't have earnings yet, right?

So they're investing in R&D, which in itself isn't a bad thing, right? Because as you mentioned, it's been kind of like a backdoor type of thing, psychedelics. It hasn't hit mainstream yet. I mean, it was the same thing with alcohol back before Prohibition, right? Before Budweiser and Coors became these big stocks. So I do think there's some validity to your thinking. I do think that those things could get a light shown on them. And when you start looking at some of the independent

research out there, you've talked about it on your show a lot with different people. There's actually a lot of positives that surround it, more so than what's happening with barbiturates and all these other things that are out there that are harming people. So I think what I would say about those types of investments,

the same thing I talk about crypto and all these other areas that are a lot more speculative, that had a lot of degree of uncertainty with them, I don't think you should avoid them because if you're not participating in those, those are the areas which we call them 10 baggers, right? Those could be the things that do you a 10 X return, 20 X, 30 X return.

So you miss out on them because of fear. What I would say is though, those are the areas to maybe sprinkle a little bit of money in. So if it goes down and you lose something, it's okay. And I would also say, don't try to pick one stock. Spread it out across 10 to 20 stocks. This is like what the big boys do.

Andreessen-Harowitz, the private equity companies, when they're investing in small private companies, they invest over 100, 200 companies. Why? Because they know 50, 60% of them are gonna shift the bed. They're gonna go to zero, but the rest, or one or two or three of them, could be that home run that more than makes up for it.

So I would say start doing the research. I think it's promising. Not too long ago, we saw something similar a few years ago with marijuana stocks Some of the psychedelics actually had big runs during that period of time. I do think the in this administration though Could create a narrative that actually supports a thesis for those types of things And one thing I've learned Sean for being the market for over 26 years You know, I'm trained to be a fundamental analyst But what I've realized and I also have a degree

in psychology, the psychology of people sometimes is a lot more important than what the actual fundamental numbers believe. And so if somebody believes in something and enough people believe in something, the power for those stocks to skyrocket well ahead of what the valuation model is going to show is going to happen. So I do think those are areas people should be looking at this year. Does seem like there's a big wave of people that are a lot more interested in homeopathy type care

and in natural medicines. And so, yeah, I was just curious. And I'm sure there's tons of companies, only probably a couple will survive. I mean, is that? Yeah, more than likely. I mean, it's the same thing we saw with the internet. I joke about this all the time.

And I got into the market professionally in 1998. And so at the time, this is when Amazon went public. And there was also, which is still around, just not as big as it used to be, was Barnes & Noble, right? And so remember, I mean, Amazon started with books. Now, the vision from Bezos was way bigger than books, but he knew if I could start with books, that's something I can deliver on.

I could under promise, over deliver, I can create trust. And everything that he's doing today, maybe not 100% of it, but he had a vision of the vast majority of that 25, 30 years ago. Wall Street didn't quite get that. And so we literally used to argue with other analysts about should you buy Amazon or Barnes and Noble?

People didn't quite get it. And that was kind of the thing, right? And Google, for example, just came out during that time. Should you invest in Google or ask Jeeves? That was the other search engine that people were going. So to your point, there's some that went by the wayside, but there's a lot that won. And then the other thing that you also could have

the benefit in with, I think, some of these psychedelic companies, some of the artificial intelligence companies, some of the computing companies is the big behemoths out there, the Microsofts, the Metas, the Googles, X, like all these companies, you know, they're trillion dollar companies to continue to double and triple

and have 20 and 30% organic growth, meaning just more advertising and more clients, like that's not gonna be able to happen. So as companies get bigger, what they tend to do is instead of investing in their own R&D or trying to advertise more or do anything, they start growing through acquisitions. So what you'll see is some of these smaller companies, if you can invest them at the right time, they can get bought out 2, 3,

4X of what they're trading at. So you've got the catalyst of, hey, if that company can do it on their own, great. But I've got a lot of big buyers out there in these spaces. Like, you know, I was reading this morning that, you know, Metta and Microsoft and I believe Alphabet are all looking into potentially buying into nuclear power plants, right? Because again, they're gonna need to make some of these investments everywhere. So these big technology companies,

don't just think about them as tech. Why won't, I mean, you've already seen Amazon get into pharmaceuticals and Metta, like these companies are giants that could get into the food industry, that can get into healthcare, that are trying to get into pharmaceuticals and Metta, like these companies are giants that could get into the food industry, that can get into healthcare, that are trying to get into energy with big deep pockets that could be buying

some of these smaller companies. So as an investor, I like investing in those big names, but I think in trying to pick some of these smaller names, there's a lot of catalysts that could be coming up. By the way, all the regulatory burden that you have to get over to be able to do M&A That's probably gonna be put aside for the next four years with this incoming Administrations and you haven't really seen a lot of M&A based off of historic norms over the last four years

I think that's gonna be coming back which is another catalyst for some of these stocks to do better back to tech, I mean there's we're on the Seems like we're on the brink of World War Three. Yeah. And so with that being said, I just interviewed this guy, Joe Lonsdale. He was the founder of the company called Palantir.

Yeah. And it seems like there's all these, I don't want to call them mini, but there's like new wave of military industrial complex type companies coming about. They're a lot more efficient than the old ones. I think it's Anduril. They have the missile instead of firing these million dollar missiles to take out a drone, these things, if they miss, they come back and they land.

We don't lose. I mean, is that something to be thinking about, investing in companies like those? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Especially with the new landscape, the world being on the brink of all these different complex. I mean, even if it wasn't,

these big companies still exist, the Halliburton's and everything in the world that are fat, happy, they're doing business the old way, there's not those efficiencies. So the thing about it is, even if we're not on the brink, which I agree with you, things don't obviously look great right now,

the ability to change things, make things better, look at things from a different light, come from the technology space and get, like I was just saying, right? It's not technology companies just competing with each other. They're trying to get into every area now that they see inefficiencies,

especially with artificial intelligence that they think they can improve on. So at the end of the day, even if that's not the case, if there is a company that could come in and do it better, cheaper, or faster, that's something that you wanna get in and invest on. And so, you know, what I tell people all the time is,

and Warren Buffett is really well known for saying, invest in the things that you use, right? So if you drink Coca-Cola, you know, he invests in Coca-Cola, he bought McDonald's, and you know, he bought Apple after he got drugged into saying he would never invest in technology stocks. But I would also say some of the best investments that I ever found came from things that I saw my daughter and her friends buying before they were talked about on Wall Street or listening

to your show. I mean, you're bringing in some experts from what I love about it is all over the world, all different industries, different mindsets. And what you really need to do to be a great investor is go against the herd, think differently. Don't think like the masses, don't be following the sheep. The sheep, what they do is they're constantly buying high and selling low.

Oh, technology ran up, let me buy it. Went down, somebody knows something that I don't know. Time to sell, right? So they're just constantly following the herd. They don't wanna do what Gretzky said, is skate to where the puck is going, not to sell, right? So they're just constantly following the herd. They don't want to do what Gretzky said is skate to where the puck is going, not to where it's been. So when you start hearing ideas like that, if it makes sense to where, hey, this could be done better,

like you're saying, and I don't know, I'm not a military expert, obviously, but hey, if it's gonna cost a million dollars to shoot this or 20,000 to shoot this, I think this is more than likely where it's gonna be going. And again, you start talking about things like government efficiency, and there's a huge amount of waste in the government and what the military's spending.

And if we really can get the right players on board to say, hey, why are we spending money over here with a company like this when there's this new upstart that we can invest in, cut the budget by 20 to 30%? Because it's gonna have to be with Doge and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, it can't be more than just pointing out problems and saying, here's the problem. To your point, there has to be something to replace it.

Same thing with healthcare. So if these companies are now starting up a viable alternative to be able to compete with those, I think there's gonna really be some time and space for some money to flow into those. So again, don't bet the farm, don't bet money that you can't afford to lose, but if you can find some of these things early, the great thing about Google chat GPT, start putting some things in there.

It'll bring you back some of the companies. If you could see some of these that are trading public, identify those and put a little bit of money on them. Follow them, do some research. Don't wait for your stockbroker to tell you about it. Don't wait for it to be on the front page of Yahoo Finance because by that time the stocks are going to be much higher. So I think it's a great way to do it.

Speaking of Doge, I mean, a lot of people are excited about this. A lot of people are excited about the government trimming the fat. Seems like there's a lot of fat to be trimmed. Now this goes the way everybody kind of hopes it goes. And there's this massive reform and government spending and it sounds like even laying off a lot of jobs.

What does that do for our economy? Well, I mean, I think the big thing is when we look at this budget deficit, right, that is getting out of hand. I mean, and I think, look, I think most people that are listening to this, they know it's a problem, right? They understand that if you're an individual, you can't live off of credit card debt and not have any savings, right? So they're, everyone I think is aware enough to know that we can't continue to spend.

I think the biggest risk to that is a few things. Number one, all this spending is tied to the currency, tied to the dollar, which we try to diversify away from the dollar with Bitcoin or with real estate or other things, but at the end of the day, we're all pretty beholden to the dollar. If the dollar crashes, the vast majority of us are going to be in trouble. And the problem is the dollar no longer is backed by the gold standard or anything else.

The dollar is backed by the belief that the US is always going to make its debt payments on time. That it's always going to be able to do that. And the rest of the world looks at it as the reserve currency. When you start talking about World War III and everything, you got people like Putin out there and say, hey, we're gonna get away from the dollar. And so I don't think people understand really

how dangerous that could be if your dollar all of a sudden went to zero. Now, people in third world countries, you've seen 200, 300% inflation happen overnight, understand how detrimental that could be. So I think the idea of having a balanced budget, right? And trying to understand that we have to make more money than we're spending, which I think is good

about this administration also, because it can't just be to your point, we can't just cut everything and save our way to prosperity. We also have to grow. And that was the one thing I would say about the Democrats. It was about, okay, let's spend, spend, spend. But even the things that they talked about cutting, I never heard out of their agenda

what they're gonna actually do to grow businesses. I heard $25,000 for first home buyers. I heard we'd give you 20 grand. I never heard anything that was gonna incentivize us businesses to grow. And the truth is the size of the hole that we've dug ourselves, we can't cut our way out of it. We need to grow. We need to

grow. We need to increase GDP. So I think, look, I think everything that they're going to be doing in terms of looking to cut, I think that's great. There's going to be some things that obviously there's a lot of fat in the system, that low hanging fruit could be taken out. But what I'm a little bit more interested in is what are they going to really do to spark small businesses? The vast majority of this country is made up by small businesses. We see a lot of incentives and benefits for the big, huge corporations, but the small business owner like you, myself, 90% of the people that I deal with, those are the people

that are kind of stuck in the middle, right? They're not making enough money to get the huge benefits. They're not poor enough to get all the free handouts. They don't get their credit card debt paid off. They don't get their student loans paid off. They get to pay for everybody else's shit though. Like what are those people are gonna be getting? How are they gonna be incentivized to grow?

So if it's tariffs, okay, great. Let's do tariffs. But what incentive do I now have to keep my business here, hire more people, pay people well, are there gonna be benefits to me? So that's, I mean, everyone's interested in Doge, I'm more interested in what are the growth policies that are gonna be put in place by this new administration.

Are there any yet? I mean, nothing's definitive, right? They haven't got in there, there's a lot of talk out there right now, and I think that's around everything. It's gonna be around real estate, which is obviously a big part of the economy, small businesses.

One thing, talking about real estate, for example, which I think was probably one of the examples of the type of smart policy that I really hope this new administration comes in with was something called opportunity zones. And so Trump put this in place to where when you look at some of the underperforming demographic areas where maybe there is a high unemployment area, a high minority area, and instead of

just saying, okay, let's give them more welfare checks or let's put up another community center. What the Trump administration said was, if you develop real estate in these areas, if you move businesses and offices into these areas, we're gonna give you huge tax incentives to be able to do that. Now those things have started to wear off because they were put in place

at the beginning of this administration, they pretty much go to zero over the next year to two years. This is the old adage of like, let's start investing in teaching people how to fish instead of just giving them fish. So I think things like that for real estate investors, I believe things like opportunity zones, things like accelerated depreciation

to where you're able to buy a new building, like you're building a new building, right? You can go out there, incentivize somebody to create a business, build a building that they're gonna house new employees with. And instead of having to write that building off over 28 years, they could take a huge percentage of that in year one.

Things like this that are looking at what is the goal we're trying to achieve and how do we create policy to incentivize that? The truth is, Sean, the things that we need to turn this economy around, you don't need to be a rocket scientist. The vast majority of Americans could figure out what they need to do. They do what most people have a balanced budget in their own house. The problem is, as you mentioned at the beginning, this polarizing politics that we have, to be able to create a bill that solves a problem

for unemployment now has healthcare tied to it. It has military things tied to it. So there's so much fat around it, the bill is not actually put in place to solve the true problem. So what I'm hoping is there's gonna be more than that. And like I said at the beginning, I'm cautiously optimistic, I'm also a realist. like I said at the beginning, I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'm also a realist. I know a lot of these things aren't gonna happen overnight. They're not gonna be super easy. What I would also say about this new administration is the people that think they're gonna work less and all of a sudden this rising tide is gonna float all boats,

that everybody to prosperity are gonna be sadly mistaken. I think the only thing that's gonna happen is there's gonna be some, probably some tax incentives. I think the only thing that's going to happen is there's going to be some, probably some tax incentives. I think the biggest thing for small businesses that I'm looking forward to is lower regulation. And I think that's a big area that people talk about on both sides,

is regulation and the problem that regulation causes. And you talk about fatten the system that Doge is going to be cutting out. And what I'll tell you is someone who's been in financial services for 25 years. And I'll give you an example. I probably shouldn't do it on camera, but I will. In financial services, I'm all for protecting investors, obviously.

There's a lot of crooks out there in my industry. I've talked about this before. To call yourself a financial advisor, you don't even need a high school diploma. You don't need to do anything. You could say I'm a financial advisor and literally within days advise people on their life savings. And if you are some slick talking person, you put on a good suit, and you get in front of the average American who we know the reason I wrote this book, financial literacy in this

country is at an all time low, the vast majority of people know nothing about the stock market or real estate or anything that's going on. You can convince them to do things that are going to be detrimental to their future, right? And so all this is going on. So if you're a regulatory authority, why not say, hey, why don't we require some type of minimum requirement of college or testing or something before someone calls themselves a financial advisor and people have forced their life savings over to them.

We looked at the Madoff scandal where he scanned hundreds and hundreds of people, I mean, thousands, I think it was of people where the SEC went into his office time and time again and nothing happened to this guy. He was literally stealing money. We see that people who aren't registered but are doing crypto scams and all these things that I see on a daily basis that people are getting caught

off, nothing's being done to them. Instead, what they're focused on is, hey, we've taken this 52 page document you have to give your investors to a 56 page document, which we know they're not gonna read anyway. And this I needs to be dotted twice and this T needs to, not to protect investors, but to create jobs for regulatory guys,

to come in and have more jobs and come in and create fines. And if you look at companies like, people think, oh, Chase and Morgan Stanley, and these guys are getting fined every single month, hundreds of thousands of dollars, why? Because they're stealing from people. We know Chase isn't stealing from people, right? We know Merrill Lynch isn't stealing from people.

However, they might not be dotting that I-cross. Meanwhile, we've got people literally stealing from people that nothing's getting done. We launched a new firm, Real Talk Capital. I left my old wealth management firm, I sold that a few years ago and I said, hey, we were only working with the ultra high net worth. We wanna be able to expand and offer our services

to more people. In order to do that, we need to think differently. We need to create different pricing models. We need to think outside of the box of this 1% management fee that everybody's charging across the board. And so we created a way to say, hey, let's do some flat fees. Let's create some things that are going to enhance people's lives

at an earlier age, versus having to wait till they have a million or $2 million. And so the short event, and I won't talk about the different regulatory authorities, but regulators came in, looked at things. And because we weren't following this boilerplate template, until we actually increased prices on some of our services, and I mean significantly, they wouldn't leave us alone. And so until we increased prices so they could check the box, right? Because people don't wanna think it's just like policy.

It's not like what's right for the person. This doesn't fit the mold that we've had for 25 or 30 years. When we increased prices because they forced us to do that, then they were okay with it. And so this is the shit that goes on that doesn't protect investors, it doesn't protect small business owners, it creates more jobs for regulators,

and it's not helping the average American get to where they need to go. That's just from my own industry, but you see it in energy, you see it in healthcare. So why, you know, if you talk about psychedelics, why would you treat a new upstart psychedelic company who's trying to really provide value and opportunity and options and choice to people,

the same as you would treat Pfizer, yet they do it, right? Same thing with a financial services company. Why would you create the same regulatory burden on a new upstart financial services company that you do for Chase, that we know is too big to fail, that we know the government's gonna come in and support them anyway if anything is going wrong. But that's the way things are being done.

Nobody's talking about this stuff, Sean. And so when you hear this incoming administration saying, we're taking down regulatory burdens, you're gonna hear the left scream about, oh, it's gonna be 2008 again. Well, let's remember 2008 and a lot of that shit that happened was because Barney Frank and saying everybody should be a homeowner

and all these liar loans and a lot of stuff that were created to get into everybody being a homeowner regardless of whether you have a job. Let's remember that some of the liability belongs to there. And just because of the fact that we're talking about smart regulation and reducing regulatory barriers doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be the Wild West. And what I believe it's gonna be able to do

is allow small businesses to actually be able to compete, to create new products, alternative services, and not have to spend 100% of their time on compliance and going through audits and actually working on creating solutions for people. And that regulatory burden, Sean, is probably the single biggest tax that a lot of small businesses have because they're constantly having to pay for more compliance officers and more attorneys.

And I look at just our small financial services from the amount of money that we're spending on legal fees to meet things that aren't even helping our clients, that's a huge tax. So if you can minimize that burden, that's money that I could actually employ more people for, buy more technology for. And so I think this new administration, and so I'm just trying to paint the picture

for the average person that doesn't understand why regulation is such a bad thing. Regulation in itself is not a bad thing, but regulation for the self-sake of regulation is just a lot of fat that doesn't help anybody except regulator. Interesting. I never would have thought of that. Let's move into crypto.

Yeah. Bitcoin just hit, what was it, 100,000? Yeah. 100,000, 6,000. Yeah. Where's that going? Yeah. I wish I knew exactly where it was going. One thing I will say about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, alternative currencies in general is it goes

back to this faith in the dollar. I think a lot of people are losing faith in the dollar because a lot of people have lost faith in politicians. And unfortunately, in this country, there's two things. We have fiscal policy and monetary policy that kind of rule our economy. Now, monetary policy is what we see the Fed doing, right? And monetary policy, they only have one tool.

So Jerome Powell and all these guys, they sit around, they look at all the problems. They have one tool for a dual mandate. Dual mandate meaning they have to do two things. They have to keep a lid on inflation. Their numbers about two to 3%. We know we're like at 7, 8% before, that's not the real numbers.

If you look at housing and all those things, it's like 12, 13%. And they need to maintain full unemployment. So they went of unemployment somewhere around three now, 4%. So that's two pretty big tasks, right? Control inflation and make sure people have jobs. Oh, and you got one tool, that's two pretty big tasks, right? Control inflation and make sure people have jobs. Oh, and you got one tool, that's monetary policy,

meaning interest rates. That's all you can do to control this. So no matter what they see, that's all they can do. And so what the Fed tries to do is control the economy by either lowering interest rates or raising interest rates. So when they raise interest rates, they're trying to slow the economy down. Why? Well, it makes sense. If're going to go and buy a house,

well, that house payment today is going to cost you a lot more. A lot of people have credit card debt. So your credit card interest payments this month or this year might be 500 bucks, where three years ago, they were only $200. So when interest rates go up, it stymies the economy. There's more money that has to go to debt service

than can go out to buy goods and services. And that's why the economy slows down. And that's why inflation comes down. The opposite is when they see things, and right now they're in a period of lowering interest rates, which is relatively controversial, because when you look at the economy, it's actually doing pretty well.

And so people are wondering like, why are they lowering interest rates? So when they lower interest rates, the idea is, well, what we're gonna do is give more stimulus into the economy. So the opposite, if home prices are lower now, right? Because of the fact that their payment is lower, more money to the economy.

Less money is going to pay off your student loan or assuming you still have student loans or your credit card debt, so more money goes into the economy. So that's the only tool. The problem is though, that the Fed can only control the overnight lending rate, which is short-term interest rates.

So we've seen the Fed cut rates twice now, but actually long-term rates have gone up. And so like the 10-year treasury actually controls the 30-year mortgage. So mortgage rates were in the sixes. Now they're back above 7%. So people are kind of scratching their head because at the end of the day, no matter what they do, it's the free world market economy that's gonna dictate what they believe in. People do not believe

that they're gonna cut interest rates much more. They don't believe that the economy is gonna go to a point where it dictates rates going lower. And so that's not really working. And so I'm getting to your question about Bitcoin, but that, so then that relies on the bigger lever to move the economy, and that's fiscal policy.

Fiscal policy is things like tax cuts. It's things like changing regulation. It's everything else except for monetary policy, which I would argue is the more important thing, right? I want, I don't wanna pay, I don't wanna build a business and have to pay 40 or 50% when I sell it in taxes to the government who's not efficient with it. I don't wanna pay the highest tax rates in the country.

I don't wanna have ridiculous regulation that's not helping anybody and it's causing us to hire 22 attorneys every single year. Those are the things that we're hoping that have not, we've had no fiscal policy for the last five, six years because everybody's locked up, nothing's changing. So we're relying on the Fed to move everything. So everyone's blaming the Fed for everything's locked up, nothing's changing, so we're lying on the Fed to move everything.

So everyone's blaming the Fed for everything. And meanwhile, it's really Congress that can't decide on anything that's gonna actually help the economy. And so what I'm saying here is all these things, the ability for Congress to act on fiscal policy, for us to have smart monetary policy, that dictates what's gonna happen with the dollar. And unless people feel like there's some security

and stability around the US economy, there's not gonna be security and stability around the US dollar. And so what people start saying then is, well, what can we believe in? What currency? Now, it's not gonna be like the US dollar loses reserve currency overnight. it's not gonna happen.

However, what people are starting to now look at is alternatives and how do I hedge against that? How do I make sure I'm not Argentina or Russia where overnight my dollar is not worth anything? So they're looking at things like Bitcoin as a hedge to that and Bitcoin obviously kind of, it's an unscrewable ledger, there's a finite amount of supply. In terms of using it as a currency it's not going to

happen it's not efficient enough to happen but people are using it as a store of value. Arguably when things really go bad I don't know that it's going to be the best store of value I think I'd probably have rather have land and maybe even gold in that sense but they're using it as a store of value and also a hedge. Now, again, remember I told you, narrative is super important though. So why I talked about investing in psychedelics makes more sense now than if the Harris administration

were to get into there. All these things are based off of narrative. So stocks need a catalyst and they need a story to support it. So I think this new incoming administration really kind of lit a fire under crypto. Why? Because you have Doge. Why do you want to get excited? Doge, it was Dogecoin that Elon Musk took from a fraction of a penny to 40 cents. He's obviously pro crypto. You've seen Trump out at some of the crypto conventions out there. So this administration seems pretty crypto friendly.

What does that mean? I don't know. However, there's a narrative there for people to speculate and bet on it more. And you're starting to see other countries adopt it. Maybe does it become, you know, if they start talking about, hey, we need to have a certain amount of crypto to kind of secure the dollar. I mean, you're gonna see, or Bitcoin, you're gonna see things absolutely rally.

So it goes back to, we don't know enough about it yet, but should you have a small amount of money invested in these things, more than likely you should. Just don't go all in on it, because if it doesn't happen, you're gonna be in a lot of trouble. But I think there's enough now with this new, if this administration didn't get in, I think I would say don't touch it.

But I think there's enough out there to where we could hear something kind of shocking that gets it to skyrocket. So I think having a little bit of an allocation to it's pretty good. What about precious metals? Yeah. I mean gold is, it's close to $3,000 an ounce down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really jumped. Yeah, so gold, it's all the same reason. Also because of fear of the dollar? It's exactly what it is. So whenever, look, when you look at, there's a few, what I would say, old school hedges against the dollar.

Gold's probably one of the oldest, right? We used to be on the gold standard, which means we had to have a certain amount of gold in supply for every dollar. Then we got off the gold standard because we wanted to be able to create the deficits that we have without any accountability. And that was probably one of the worst things

that could have happened to the US dollar. But gold is one of those things. Land is one of those things. Oil, you know, what they say is, if you drop it on your foot and it hurts, that's probably one of the things that you wanna have to hedge against the dollar. Now, Bitcoin obviously isn't that,

but I guess they're saying that that's kind of the new cyber hedge against that. But I think a little bit of a goal of this fund, but let me tell you my honest opinion about all this stuff, right? A lot of people will say stocks are also a good hedge against inflation, why? Well, we just went through a good period of inflation.

Stocks did really well, why? Well, let's look at Procter & Gamble, it makes a lot of food and diapers and all this stuff, things that we all need to buy. So what did they do? Inflation came, they increased prices, which hey, you still need to eat and you still need to put diapers on your kid.

They did something called shrinkflation, which they just gave you less cereal in the box, but you've paid the same price. So companies will not just sit back and not be profitable. They will pass along ways to be profitable to the company. So stocks do tend to be a good hedge against inflation. But here's the way I look at it. Over the long run, like what are we really trying?

So you buy stocks, what are you trying to hedge against? A hedge in general is against catastrophe, right? So when you think about hedges like the dollar crashing and World War III, you know, I would argue if some of the worst case scenarios that you've talked about on your show, we've talked about a four actually come to play, you're gonna have a lot bigger worries about

than your stock portfolio. So we've talked about this before, like I'm kind of all in on stocks and small businesses and I've got a little bit of crypto but I tend to invest in businesses and American entrepreneurs because I think American entrepreneurs are always gonna find a way to make money, right?

And it's proven itself, even the S&P 500 and we're always talking it down. Last time I was on your show almost two years ago, if you're not gonna do anything by the S&P 500, it's up 40 something percent versus trying to be all over the place, work by the S&P 500. But what I would say is if you're really worried

about the proverbial shit hitting the fan, I like things like farmland. I like things like ammunition. I like things like weapons. I like things where at the end of the day, if things really get that bad, there's been some shows on Netflix, like who wants your block of gold?

Like people want medicine, they want food, they want running water, they want ammunition. And I don't want to scare anybody or anything like that. But in terms of the hedges that I advise people against, the hedges that I have, it's more leaning towards that. Like I don't want Bitcoin. If things really get bad, I don't want your Bitcoin, I don't really want your gold chips.

I need your food, I need your energy, I need land, I need ammunition, I need those things. And it might be kind of a morbid or scary way to think about it, but at the end of the day, it's either stocks and companies and America is always going to find a way, it always has to continue to do better and do well and prosper and real estate I love, or things are going to go really bad and the alternative probably doesn't look like you're going to be protected by Bitcoin. That's just my view. Makes sense. Makes sense. So, let's start to wrap it up here, but snapshot, what should the lot of new, a lot of people

are making New Year's resolutions right now or have by the time this comes out, you know, getting out of debt, investing in the 401k, putting into IRAs. What are buying a home? What are your top couple things that that the new investors should be doing? Yeah, their money this year Yeah Look, I think there's a few things and I'll tell you my New Year's resolutions for the last two years and it'll probably for the next ten years are This isn't really an investment question, but my healthcare. Like I said, I think we're all being lied to about our healthcare and it's getting better

and greater control over that and that comes from knowledge. People like your show and other people out there, they're trying to educate people on that because I think we're all being lied to and I think at the end of the day, the system is not set up for people to be healthy. It's set up to create profits for drug companies and hospitals and these other things. And I think when you think about that in general, it's really the same thing with your money. Unfortunately, the financial service industry was not set up to give people the knowledge and information to become wealthy.

The financial service industry was set up to gather the money from wealthy people, put it in their own coffers, and then earn a percentage of that by doing nothing. That's just the truth. And I've been in this industry my whole life. I've tried to change that. So the knowledge, the way people invest, the knowledge that they have, the advice that they're being giving by big institutions, I think it's all wrong. I think it's all serving. It's not helping them. It's helping these financial institutions stay in place. And the problem is, Sean, they're still managing money. They're still giving advice based off of data and information that came from the 1960s and

1970s that haven't changed. And they've created financial institutions around this that protect themselves if they're ever sued or anything. So there's no incentive for them to change. So the same thing I would say with healthcare is start educating on yourself, you're educating yourself on how do people really get wealthy? What are people who have really made money doing? Are they following the nine to five work there

and put 5% in your 401k and get there? Or are they thinking outside the box? And I'll tell you, I've had the opportunity, we've talked about my story on the previous show, I grew up super poor and my family didn't have stocks or own real estate or anything like that. I was the first to go to college, first to own stocks,

first to buy a home. And so I'm the average American who's first generation trying to get it and create it themselves. And unfortunately, the information if I would have taken of just get out of school and work for the rest of your life, I never would have had the same opportunities that I'm having, I have right now. I think the best thing, and I was talking about this with one of your staff members for young people at the beginning of this is what people need to do going into this new year,

especially younger people, where it's not too late, and even if you're in your 40s, early 50s, there's people that start businesses, is figure out too late, and even if you're in your 40s, early 50s, there's people that start businesses, is figure out what is a problem in society that I believe I could solve better than anybody else? How do I create a skill set, whether that's going to medical school when you're young or, hey, I'm an HVAC guy, let me think of how do I create my own HVAC company? There's so many private equity companies out there that are buying these companies. How do I create something of value

where I can secure my own income, create my own income, control my own future? I would encourage everybody to start thinking that way because when you think about artificial intelligence and robotics, all these things are job killers, right? And I could tell you as somebody who's worked with hundreds and hundreds of very successful people, the more money you start to make in an organization, the more vulnerable you become when there's

cutbacks. So if artificial intelligence takes jobs and they shrink, guess where they start? They start at the top. And if you're someone who's 40 years old and you're earning $400,000 a year and you get laid off, you're at a point where you probably didn't make enough money over the previous 10 years to where you're financially set. You're probably at the point of ultimate vulnerability where now you get laid off. Where do you go replace that income?

You didn't start working on creating your own job. Somebody else isn't going to hire you for three or $400,000. What you do is you have to take a step back. So what I would encourage everyone in this new year is start focusing on how do I become an entrepreneur? Over 90% of businesses in the America are small businesses. How do I create my own income or how do I get in with a company where I might not be an entrepreneur, but they're gonna give me an opportunity to be part earn some equity in that business because again, I've earned all my money through investing,

but the vast majority of it from my businesses. I bought, sold businesses, built businesses, and I've earned it from there. But I've also worked with wealthy people since 1998, professional athletes, entrepreneurs, corporate level executives, all of them, all of them, made money from a single skillset that they were able to monetize over a period of time. I never worked with anyone super wealthy,

that nine to five their way in 401k, they took significant risks, they did it when they were younger, they started their own businesses, they took extreme leverage. I think I talked about this before, one of my largest clients I ever had that invested over $120 million with me,

the year before he had like $200,000 or $300,000 in his 401K. No other assets, had a little bit of debt. All the value was locked up in his business until he was 39 years of age. He went all in on this. He took an extreme amount of risk. But he sold that business for almost $200 million.

So I would say is start talking to people who understand the blueprint of how to get there. And I don't think unfortunately it's in the traditional colleges anymore, but there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there. There's YouTube, there's your show, there's other shows where there's the information out there, Sean. But the one thing I'll say is like don't procrastinate, right? Don't wait till it's too late. Don't not believe in yourself. Don't think that everybody else that's starting business is so much smarter than me. I've talked about it at the time,

one of my other biggest clients was pest control guy. He started his own pest control company, started buying other routes, built it up to where he then wind up selling that to a publicly traded pest control company. It could be literally anything out there, but you have to start thinking, just like I said about owning a home.

Don't rent, don't rent a job. How do I own my own income? I think that's the number one thing that you want to do. And then when you get to that point where you have the extra cash flow coming from that business, that's when you start to do the things like invest in stocks, invest in real estate. But until then, focus on that business or focus on becoming a doctor or something that's going to guarantee you a decent amount

of income where you can put away 20 or 30,000 or $40,000 a year every way or whatever it is, I would say this New Year's resolution, how do you get greater control of your income? That's great advice, Rob. Well, thank you for coming out and thanks for all the insight into the upcoming economy this year and see you soon. Appreciate it, John. Thank you. All right. Thanks. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan's show from, if you get anything out of this,

please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts. Hi, I'm Joe Salci. I hosted the Stacking Benjamins podcast. Every week we talk to experts about saving, investing, personal finance trends. Crypto, can't do it.

You could have done all that research, all the breadcrumbs, and thought this company's never going bankrupt. Spoiled again. You never knew personal finance could be this fun. Throwing down the gauntlet. I'm bringing it today. I'm only going to be off by six figures in seven. Every boy has a dream, Doc.

Every boy has a dream. For sure. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.