The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 144: Why the Stock Market isn't Crashing...Yet

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

With everything going on these days it seems like we should be seeing headlines about the market crashing and yet...here we are, just a few points off the all time highs. What gives? This week we're breaking down the reasons why we aren't tanking just yet, including an in-depth look at Michael Burry's latest blog post outlining what he believes will be the catalysts for a major market crash. NEW MERCH OUT! Get 10% off when you sign up and also get bonus content, ad-free versions and more plus your first 7 days free at https://benandemilshow.com ***THE SOUTHWEST COMPANION PASS IS BACK GET IT HERE: https://www.cardratings.com/bestcards/featured-credit-cards?src=691608&shnq=520080,4028088,4048122,4028085,3006151,4048149,4028089,4048084&var2= The newest acid video is out now so check it out! https://youtu.be/7vkFY3f5kkw WATCH THE LATEST EPISODE OF EMIL'S NEW SHOW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHG9iIjhXvI Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it! And please leave us a comment! It helps us! ***Ben's new movies and tv podcast with Dillon is OUT NOW! GO WATCH the latest episode on our TOP MOVIES OF 2025: https://youtu.be/tbC-cMqcby8?si=tO0NK0PmpN2187ir **CHECK OUT EMIL'S LIVESTREAMS HERE: https://www.youtube.com/emilderosa __ SOME OTHER VIDEOS YOU MAY ENJOY: That's Cringe of Cody Ko: https://youtu.be/dTbEk0pVh2w Our AUSTIN VIDEO: https://youtu.be/yGSs56bFzRU Our episode with Kyla Scanlon: https://youtu.be/cIHWkY35cuc Big Tech is out of ideas (ft. ED ZITRON): https://youtu.be/zBvVGHZBpMw Arguing with a millionaire (ft. Chris Camillo): https://youtu.be/1ZUWTkWV_MM We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U ***LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g ***Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa ***Trade with Ben at https://tradertreehouse.com __ GLD: New customers get 50% off with code BAES at https://gld.com. #ad FABRIC: Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family—apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/BAES FACTOR: Head to https://factormeals.com/baes50off and use code baes50off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year—offer valid for new customers with qualifying subscription purchase. __ Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why come stock market no go down? Why come no matter what bad news come out on the TV and on Twitter? Stock market don't care. The reason that we are here at this point in this market is because of fundamental structural changes. Like crashing a refueler or something and killing four servicemen? Did that have I missed that? I know. I was like, wow, this is going to be a massive story.

It's very funny. The first thing I always do is I open the financial times. Iran's going to start putting mines in the straight of Hermuz. And you're like, market must be furious. And I switch over. It's like up half a percent? What? They're bullish on mines?

This is the big news. Joe Kent, director of national counterterrorism, has resigned. Maybe the guy with the highest security clearance in the country. And I saw Bernie Sanders even said, like, I don't agree with this guy on much of anything, but what we can't agree on is that Hillary Clinton is a B. Why are you laughing? Is this funny to you? I do have a nervous laughter tick.

And... Everything is awful. We're at war. The country is falling apart. The national debt is out of control. Consumer sentiment is in the toilet. So why hasn't the stock market crashed? In this episode, we're going to explain what's keeping the market propped up, how long it can last, and an analysis of Michael Burry's recent length. blog post all about how we got here and what he thinks is about to happen. Stay tuned. Welcome back, everybody, to another riveting week here in Los Angeles. We are, we're a heat wave, man. It's like, dude, just walking in here. Woo! I haven't felt something like that since I was in Las Vegas. Yeah, it's, it's pretty miserable. And we have these three giant windows, each about, what would you say, seven feet tall? I would say about, about,

seven feet tall. Seven foot tall windows and they've got these black curtains and these black curtains just absorb all the heat and then the heat just radiates into this place. We got the AC, the one little AC unit blowing in here. It's just... It's just blowing like... From over here, you go up and you touch it up close and it's cold. But over here...

It's hot. It feels hot. We got these big ceilings. We're doing the best we can, all right? We're at war. It's hot as hell in here. We suffer for you. We suffer for you.

Hey, before we get into the episode, we got a great episode. We're talking all about why isn't the market crashing? What's going on? Everybody, you know, I got people texting me and asking me, what's the deal with this stock market? How come, no matter what I read in the headlines, it seems like everything around us is failing. Dory. Is what? Oh, sorry.

Hunky Dory? Is that what you said? No, no, no. I misunderstood you. You're going hunky dory. Yeah. So we'll explain all of that because it's not what you think. And before we do that, we're going to do some Trump and Iran updates because things do be happening every single minute of every single day.

Well, I think that's been the reason why people are like, wait, why the hell is the, myself included, you know, you open the Wall Street Journal and there's some guy going, they're mining the straight of our moves. Holy shit. And then you're like, well, that can't be good. And then you look at the market and they're like hunky dory. Yeah. Actually, this is good. This is bullish. We're in that market.

We're actually bullish on this. Yeah. Actually, this is good. And here's why. So if it would make me mad that it goes up, that's exactly why it'll go up. That's it. There's the whole episode. All right.

We'll see you next time, folks. But no, for real, we have, what do we have to get some stuff out of the way? You want some... If you want bonus content, head to banditamil show.com. If you're interested in a credit card, you've got to hit the credit card list.com. All of our favorites are on there.

You got the Southwest Companion Pass. The Companion Pass goes crazy. Get that thing before it goes away, man. I literally was explaining to my friend and they were like, I think you're lying. Like, you can't get... There's no way they just give you Bogo tickets.

I was like, yes, they do. No, they do. Yeah, they give you Bogo. It's crazy. So if you have love in your life, get yourself a companion pass. And if you don't have love in your life... Maybe get yourself.

one anyway, you go on these dates and you, they ask you what you're like and stuff and you say, I have a companion pass. Hey, babe, want to fly to Kentucky? Want to fly to Kentucky for the weekend? And they're like, no, I'd actually, I'd rather do anything else than fly for free with you. No, I hope that doesn't happen to you. Oh, and hey, um, guys, we've got a special message on the website, Ben and Emile Show.com. Don't worry, we're not breaking up. We just want to talk. And, uh, yeah, So for everybody, keep on it. This is the most anxiety-inducing way to... It's like when someone calls you, you're like, just text me.

It's honestly a good thing. Yeah, just... Go website. We just want everyone to see it. Yes. So we're asking that you can, if you please keep an eye out for that. Keep an eye out. So you can participate, respond, whatever.

Well, let's dive into it, shall we? Let's dive into this. I gotta say, we're in insane levels. We're reaching insane levels of loser consumer these days. Oh, yeah. They, in fact, we should play, did you see the Kevin Haskett clip? Which one? The one where he's talking about consumers here.

I'm just going to drop it in real quick. This is a, we are, we've never been so loser consumer. It's insane. Kevin Haskett. Kevin Hacid, I'm sorry. Hacet. But the fact is that the U.S. economy is fundamentally sound and that if it were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all.

It would hurt consumers, and we'd have to think about if that continued what we would have to do about that. But that's really the last of our concerns right now because we're very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule. Consumers are last of our concerns right now. Consumers are the last of our concerns right now. Fuck them. I mean, the economy is fine, but consumers, you're fucked. Yeah, man. And we're not worried about it.

No. That is very funny. I will, before we get into all the stuff, I will say there was one Financial Times article. By the way, Financial Times, great source. Oh, they are by far, that's the first place I always go. Great source. Love that pink, the kind of pink flesh-colored thing. Like beigey.

Flesh colored is a good. Yeah, well, sorry, sorry, not all flesh is colored that way. Obviously, we know that from the crayon debacle. Let's get that right out of the way. But my flesh. Actually, not even my flesh. To be fair, my flesh is kind of brown. I would say the color of the financial times is somewhere around here.

It's like the color of the tip of a penis, a white man's penis. Let's move on. But by far, I mean, the financial times is by far the best place to get. That's what I've been meaning to say is salmon colored. If you want mostly unbiased. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. So over the weekend, basically on Fridays, you can just, you can time your watch to it that the United States is going to be up to some shit.

Something's going to go out. Like crashing a refueler or something and killing four servicemen? Is that, did that have I missed that? I know. I was like, wow, this is going to be a massive story. A stradot tanker? A KC1 stradotanker? I think the one where they got the little...

Yeah, the little extendable penis? Yeah. And everyone died. And they were like, it was neither... It was neither enemy fire or friendly fire. The whole thing. I mean, it's... I don't even know.

They just, they're like, sometimes playing just... fall out of the sky. What can we do? I used to play Top Gun on the Nintendo and one of the levels was you had to refuel mid-air and you had to like keep the plane from memories man. Anyway, we

No one, you know, the heart goes out to the families of those guys. I wish none of these people were. They are in the first place. Yeah. So we attacked this place that I'd never heard of called Carg Island. And it's apparently where... It sounds like it's from a video game. Carg Island? Yeah. It sounds like somewhere

where a giant gorilla would live. I'm so close to getting to Karg Island. Yeah. Did you ever play Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo? Yeah. What a game. It seems like it would be in the...

Yeah. Donkey Kong country. 90% of all Iran oil exports originate from Karg Island, apparently. And in response, Iran attacked the United Arab Emirates's Fujaira oil

refinery place, but they left the, but apparently we left the oil producing parts of that island intact. So it's like we just kind of bombed it to send a message. Which I think is... And now Trump is saying, now Trump is saying they better, they better, I don't know, surrender or come to the table. Otherwise, we will attack the parts of the island that are responsible for oil. Which I think is a symbol that Trump, the Trump administration is nervous about the economic impacts of this war.

Which, as we discussed the last time we were talking about it, the whole game right now is making the rest of the world feel the pain and them just trying to outlast it. Scott Bessent himself said they're allowing Iranian tankers. Yes. That was the thing in the financial times, yeah. Maybe Chinese tankers to go through because they literally don't want to cause an economic disaster here. Yeah, he said, we want the world to be well supplied. So if you're wondering like, whoa, what's going on? The United States is letting Iranian oil leave and go out to the rest of the world

and letting the rest of the world have their oil. And MAGA people are going, but I thought it was closed. And it's like, they closed it. And it's not closed. It's not like they slammed a door. It's everyone's going, it seems like we're sitting ducks out here. The Iranians can pretty easily just blow up our ship. So we're actually all good on going through the straight.

And yeah, I guess no one saw coming that the people who closed it could just also open it and not shoot them. So here's what's going on. Iran's demands. And what is oil at now? I mean, a hundred and something a barrel? It's probably just under a hundred. Which is funny. When you think about a barrel of oil, right?

If I had a barrel of oil and I was going to sell it to you, I'd be like 500 bucks? I know. I'm like, damn, that's a whole barrel of oil. That thing weighs a ton. You're going to give it to me. Yeah. And you know what also tickles me is the fact that they call it like this one's light, sweet. They've got sour.

I didn't know about this. Like, what is that based on? They're like weed strains. Yeah. Now, don't put that one in your car. It'll fuck you out. Yeah, that's sour OG. This is wedding cake oil.

You know what? It's a sitiva oil. You know, it doesn't tickle me when they talk about, you know, someone's screaming on on cable news about the average. of a gallon of gas in the country and they're like, it just hit 379. Can you believe it? And I'm like, I would die for

379 in LA. It's, I think at the cheapest, cheapest place I go, which sometimes Sarah's like, don't... SoCalgas. Sarah sometimes like, don't go to that place. I don't know if you want to put that in your car. It's, it's 539. That is the like

cheapest you'll find. That's why I still use... 379. Once the last time it was like, I don't I don't even know if it's ever been like that since I've been in L.A. I mean, I, boy, do I remember the days when gas was $2 something, a gallon, a barrel? Whenever they talk about these average prices, I'm going, I'm going, I kill it. We ought to do, we ought to switch it to leaders so that it feels less bad.

Because the price would go down. If you have any friends or family in Europe, it doesn't feel good. Yeah, but it's a smaller dollar amount. And to our dumb American brains, it would be like, oh, pay them a dollar amount. They're literally probably paying a pay, a dollar amount. upwards of $10 a gallon. Well, hey, gang, we got to take a quick break to thank one of our sponsors. It's GLD. Fellas. Let's be real out there. Buying men's jewelry used to be a nightmare. You know, I don't know the first place to go or what to look for is low quality.

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Use code bays to get. 50% off at gldd.com. That's 50% off with code Bays, B-A-E-S at glde.com. After you purchase, they will ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. So here's the deal. Iran has demands for a ceasefire, which include an end to American military presence throughout the Middle East and repayment for destroyed.

infrastructure. So good luck with that, sweetheart's, because I can tell you right now America isn't going to do that. And then, yeah, like you said, Trump is asking for international help regarding ships and safe passage in the Australian home routes. So embarrassing.

The French, British, the Japanese, the Germans, they're all like... The Australians, China. I mean, China, he's going to China. Yeah. This is so embarrassing. The New York Times has a whole list of them of just like, here is how governments have responded so far. Germany. Germany rejected

the U.S. to end. European Union basically fuck off. Britain, Prime Minister Kirstarmer, said on Monday that his government was working with allies on a viable plan to reopen the strait, but cautioned that Britain would not be drawn into a wider war. Australia. Australia does not intend to send ships to the Strait of Ormois. We don't going to sing ships

over there. Japan says, get lost. China, get lost. France, get lost. They are all varying degrees of polite, but good Lord, this is so embarrassing. Yeah. And And why would you? This maniac.

Yeah, he's just going to turn around. And then, hey, guys, you guys mind letting your ships be sitting ducks for us? I mean, he's pissed at all these countries because he says, we're always there for them, but they're never there for us. It's like, shut up, bitch. Shut up, bitch. He's also complaining that, which might be true, Europe might be in more dire straits because they get a lot of their oil and they are not oil producers in the same way we are. So, yeah, they might be in some trouble, but I don't know if they're going to want to... Lindsay Graham was talking about it.

He wrote a real catty tweet. Just spoke to POTUS about our European allies unwillingness to provide assets to keep the straight of her moods functioning, which benefits Europe far more than America. I have never heard him so angry in my life. I share that anger given what's at stake. The arrogance of our allies to suggest that Iran with a nuclear... weapon is of little concern and that military, also there's, there's no, uh, there's no threat here as we'll get to is of little concern and that military action to stop the Ayatollah from acquiring a nuclear bomb as our problem. Not theirs is beyond offensive. The European approach to containing the

Ayatollah's nuclear ambitions have proven to be a miserable failure. The repercussions of providing little assistance to keep the straight of her moves functioning are going to be wide and deep for Europe and America. We'll see. We'll see, pal. Well, half of or one third of global fertilizer ammonia and half of all global urea go through the Strait of Hormuz. So that's why for those who are privy to it, all these fertilizer stocks have been going nuts, which is annoying. I hope you guys like more expensive food. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.

It's not just the gas thing is already fucked because, you know, it's not just every Tom Dick and Harry going to fill up their tank. It's going to have cascading effects throughout industry. Me paying 539 a gallon, which I do not like doing. Imagine that on multitudes of scale when you're running a business, everything gets more expensive. Well, that's, yeah. Qatar. And then they're talking about jet fuel too. I don't know exactly how that works, but jet fuel gets more expensive.

Well, because it's refined from oil as well. And then you're just cascading effects all throughout, you know, tourism everywhere. Well, it also extends to things like semiconductors, because a third of global helium comes from Qatar, and those exports have been reduced to zero. And helium is a very important part of the semiconductor manufacturing process. It's also used in things like MRIs

and a bunch of other stuff, balloons, you know, balloons for kids, birthday parties. Yeah, it's... Stuff that makes your voice funny. So nobody's going to be making funny voices anytime soon. Back to you, Emil. No, it's...

I think we can't even begin to process at all. All of those things you said. Plus, I didn't even realize this. It impacts generic drug prescriptions because the U.S. gets nearly half of its generic prescriptions from India, roughly 47% by volume. It depends on the Strait of Harmoors for around 40% of its crude oil imports. That oil ultimately feeds into the petrochemical inputs used throughout pharmaceutical manufacturing. So even though American consumers are not buying medicines directly from the Gulf, they are still at the end of a supply chain that runs through

Wow, I didn't know oil was used in drugs. Guys, check your fint. Make sure that you don't have any oil in it because that's not safe. Multiple ingredients needed to manufacture many drugs in India often travel through the Gulf Logistics Hub first. So, yeah, Trump assumed apparently that he was going to get high approval ratings like George W. Bush post-inical Iraq invasion. And he also said that he's delaying his China meeting by a month.

We don't need to play it. I don't know why I put that in there. He's just, you know, he's... It's possible to keep up with the shit that comes out of this ass clown's mouth. It's a real mess and the economic repercussions are going to really impact people. They really want to get this thing open so much so that Newt Gingrich. Oh, yeah, this is great. Pull that up.

Possibly fallen for a... I don't know. I just checked. The tweet is still up. I cannot believe it's still up. He doesn't understand. But he, what he's doing is he's tweeting a link to a substack article titled It's Time. And I believe this is copy and pasted from the article.

He says, instead of fighting over a 21 mile wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you've got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks. And so this came on my feet and I was going, is this for real? Is this guy talking about setting off nukes? Well, underground, dude. Come on. And so you open the thing and it's on this blog called China Talk. It's time.

An open letter to Secretary Hexeth from March 15th, 2026. And it's very funny when you read it. It's clearly satire. On Friday, you told reporters, the only thing prohibiting transit in the streets right now is Iran, shooting at chipping. Fifteen days in, and the best we've got is the president asked in the UK, France, and even China to send warship. That's not MAGA. That's weakness. I have a solution that doesn't require a single phone call to G. A solution that only President Trump could pull off because only he has the vision and the arsenal will do it. We nuke us a canal.

And at the very bottom of this article, it basically says this is clearly satire. And if you believe it, you're a fucking moron. It says the views expressed above do not necessarily represent those of anyone with brain cells. Yeah, except for, yeah, Newt Gingrich. And the guy, I even put a little update and he said, Newt approved. It's very funny. I mean, now I know what the woke deep state is going to say, and I want you to save the trouble of listening to them.

The comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty never ratified it, even if we did, who cares next? It's just like, I cannot believe former leader of the house is suggesting this. Before we get on to the big crash, Oh, I forgot to say that part of the thing that we're looking at here is Michael Burry from the big short fame did a big blog post

and I read that over the weekend and I have some takeaways, main takeaways, so that you don't have to read it. But before we do that, what's the guy's name Joe Kent? Yeah, and before we even get into that, so the past couple days have been... We finally had something happen

before we put out the episode. But the past couple days have been very funny because you're seeing a side of Trump that you don't normally see. You're seeing a side of Trump where... You're seeing an ugly side, which you don't normally see. Normally, he's nice. I like his vibe.

He's reserved. But would it be fair to say that he almost seems... He's lost his swagger. He's... Brother, sure, I guess. But normally it's like nothing sticks to him. He's steadfast in his insane beliefs. Here, I mean, the best way to...

I think the Maga faithful are... There's a rift forming between the Maga... faithful and the, in the anti-war, anti-A-PAC. But it's not even them. It's, it's, it's, it's like he seems to be doubting his own, his own ideas, which he doesn't normally do. So there's this first one where he's, he's kind of talking about how we shouldn't even be there.

Is this even worth playing? It's so loud on the plane. Can we, should we try it? Then play the other one, because this, he fully admits that they just could not have seen this coming, which is shocking for a number of reasons, but just play it. And power. Look what happened. In the last two weeks, they weren't supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shot.

So, I mean, he's sitting there and going, we never could have imagined that they would hit American bases if we bombed the shit out of them. Which is already insane if it wasn't for the fact that Iran officially warned in a letter to the UN on February 19th that U.S. military bases across West Asia will become legitimate targets if the Islamic Republic comes under attack by Washington. Hey, everybody. You know, we got to talk about something that's a little more serious, but it's very important. It's called life insurance. Have you heard of it? You know, life insurance is very important. And every year I tell myself I'm going to stop procrastinating. This is the year I'm going to do it. This is the year I'm going to do it. Yeah, I'm going to do something. I'm going to like ride a will. You need one of those. You need a life insurance policy too. It's actually really quick, though, and it's affordable and it's essential. And that's where fabric by Gerber Life makes it easy for you. You can handle something major for your family at the start of this new year. If you've been putting off getting life insurance, there's no better time to do it than now. Over two-thirds of Americans overestimate the cost of life insurance.

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It wasn't brought to my attention. I'm sorry. That's the first time I'm hearing about it. By the way, real fast, with his thing about that comment he made on, he made a comment to reporters on Air Force One that said, maybe we shouldn't have been there at all.

We have our own oil. I think the context of that is important because it doesn't seem like he's like just being crazy. I think he's making like a jab like, well, fine. Maybe we shouldn't even be there at all. If that's what you want. Europe, we're doing you a favor. Maybe we shouldn't even be there at all. You know what I mean? Yeah, but he also did this thing where they're asking, I mean, there have been so many clips and we can put it in too. But I'm sure you saw the one where they're asking him about why we're even doing this. And he starts being like, you know, I don't even know. Maybe we did it out of habit,

which maybe isn't a good idea. Maybe isn't a good thing to do. Have it? You didn't see this? No. I mean, is it worth pulling up right now? I don't know. I mean, I believe I hear you saying it.

It's good enough. We'll insert it later. Let's do Tom Kent. Zero. We don't need, you know, we don't need oil. We have all the oil we need for ourselves. It's one of the great assets that we have. We have double, more than double what anybody else in terms of oil production.

We're at more than double any other country. So we don't need it, but we did it. It's almost, you could say we did it at a habit, which is not a good thing to do. But we did it because we have some good allies there. We have some great Middle Eastern countries there, Israel there. So we did it for a lot of reasons. Joe Kent.

Joe Kent. But so there is a, I don't know, at least in my eyes, I'm like, this is a weird tone he's striking, where he does seem to be. to be acknowledging the fact that maybe they made a mistake, maybe they are in over their heads. Maybe they don't know what the hell they're doing there. Yeah. Because from all respectable, you know, all across the political spectrum, anyone with a functioning

brain seems to be saying, what the hell did you do? Yeah. So. Except for Lindsay Graham. Well, I said anyone with a functioning. And what's his name? what's his name? With the fucked up daughter, Sarah Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee. I did say anyone with a functioning brain. I did caveat. Well, because his whole thing is he's one of these psychos who truly believes. He's a religious zeal. No, I know. And he's like, oh, it's funny. Because when he's like, fucking Netanyahu posted a video of the two of them talking and he's

laughing and like being chummy. And I'm like, this psycho doesn't want to help you, dude. He's truly like, yeah. Once we get all you guys rounded up in the same place. we can finally welcome Jesus back. Isn't that what he believes? Or something? I couldn't even begin to comprehend what Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee, why don't you just keep playing bass, man? I like that part of you. Doesn't he play bass? Yeah, I think he released a... It's them either doing Freebird. I forget. They're playing a song. It's pretty ridiculous.

That's a whole other thing. God Almighty. A lot of people... That's another string of videos that have been coming out with Netanyahu because people are saying that he's quite possibly dead. and then people are looking at the videos and finding genuinely weird

artifacts in the video like a ring is missing for a second. Yeah. I... Anyone who watches the bonus could tell I'm not great at spotting AI videos.

Why? Have we been fooled? Remember we were watching that one where the guy body slams the table? Oh yeah, yeah. But that's not AI. Who knows?

I don't know. We know that that was not. But so yeah, that video he's referencing, who even knows if it's real? People had found some weird artifacts and that. We don't even know if this guy is a lot. But yes, this is the big news. Joe Kent, director of national counterterrorism, has resigned today. And he put out a formal letter.

This is a... Let's pull it up. This is a massive deal. This is maybe the guy with the... highest security clearance in the country. And he put out a tweet today. And it's got probably some of the biggest numbers I've ever seen. It's currently sitting at 58,000 likes.

61 million years. 182,000 retweets. After much reflection, I've decided to resign from my position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. And it's clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel. and its powerful American lobby.

It has been an honor serving under POTUS and D&I, Gabbard, Tulsi Gabbard, and leading the professionals at NCTC. May God bless America. And this is a big deal. This is not a... This is a guy who was very pro-Trump. Very MAGA, very...

He even talks about it in the thing. I support the values in his letter. I support the values in the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020 and 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation. Okay, so this is not some holdover from a Biden administration or something like that. This is a guy who is firmly in his camp.

And Trump already has come out and trashed him. Oh, man, they're going to... There's a lot of specula... I saw speculation that. that he was a leaker, that people were saying that he was like leaking stuff prior to this? I didn't see that. Oh. But this is a guy who, I believe he did 11 tours of combat. He was a green beret, left the special forces to join the CIA.

His wife was another service member killed in Syria. So this dude is deeply entrenched in the military world. Yeah. They're going to ruin his life. Yeah, he's probably going to go on Tucker Carlson. That's the rumor. That's the rumor. That they're going to go on, he's going to go on Tucker Carlson and talk about what he saw in the administration.

And Tucker Carlson came out and said that the CIA was tapping his phone and there was, I couldn't tell if this was real or just conjecture or not, but that the Trump administration suspected him of leaking stuff to the IRC and then fed him false information. You think this guy was? No, no, no, no. Well, I'm not making that connection, but now that you said that, could be, who knows? No, no, no, because they were saying that he was at the White House. What's his name?

Tucker Carlson was... Tucker Carlson was saying a U.S. military member was... No, no, no. Tucker Carlson said that the CIA has been reading his text messages and, like, tapping his phone. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And the rumor mills are swirling that they entrapped him for treason

for like leaking stuff to the IRGC. Interesting. And that he's, what I saw was that, and this is not me confirming this, obviously, what I saw was that they invited Tucker Carlson to the White House and Trump intentionally said, made it seem like they weren't going to do anything anytime soon.

And that Tucker likely leaked that to the IRGC, thus enabling comedy to do. just be not in a fucking underground bunker. And then, you know, made it clear that, like, Tucker was going to go, oh, you guys are, you guys are fine for the next. Interesting. That's what, you know, one thing that I saw over the weekend.

But who the fuck knows? He's getting in trap. So he says, he ends it with, I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation. Or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards. It was an honor to serve in your administration and to serve our great nation. I wonder what that would look like if we were to, if we were to, what, I don't know if you can reverse course at this one. You can't just declare victory and say, well, we did it.

Like, even the MAGA faithful, the most MAGA faithful can see through that. Well, I don't even think that's the problem. I think the problem is that you can, you could say, okay, I'm done with this. Iran may continue to send drones and missiles. into things and blow up tankers with, you know, no matter if you say I'm done with this, Iran also has to be done with it. Hey, gang, we got to take a quick break to talk about factor meals. You know I love these little guys.

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and free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new factor customers. With code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase, make healthy eating easy with factor. Right. So, yeah. Well, and they, like I said, they made their demands clear. No more military presence whatsoever in the Middle East. Yeah. I also do want to be clear. The guy is, the guy is not someone, as much as I agree with this sentiment that I don't want to be in this war,

this is not someone who I would, in other circumstances, go out on a limb for. and trust his judgment or... He's like a 9-11 truther kind of guy? I believe he's got... So he ran for Congress, maybe twice. I think the last... You know that woman Marie Glucentcamp or whatever? Marie-Pres-Glooson-Camp?

Who could forget Marie-Loseon-Camp? He actually almost beat her as a very tight race. And I believe stuff was unearthed about him reaching out to Nick Fuentes about social media stuff. Oh, yeah, there you go. Cheap. Oh, yeah. Marie Gleason.

Oh, and I guess he ran for another one. Domestic issues. And I think he has weird, obviously he has weird stuff with January 6th. I think there's some maybe proud boy connections. Well, you know, with the good come the bad. You know, you know, there's everybody's got their dirty laundry. He's a non-interventionist. It's a funny, it's a funny thing because I think people are,

are a little bit pissed that this is not getting more airtime. And then I think at the same time, people aren't being fully honest about who this guy is exactly. But that's a tricky thing. I mean, I saw Bernie Sanders even said, like, I don't agree with this guy on much of anything, but what we can agree on is that Hillary Clinton is a bitch. I mean, I find it, I find it crazy that he's willing to, he,

so he quotes his letter. Bernie Sanders says Joseph Kent, a top counterterrorism official under Trump just resigned. Kent and I don't agree on much, but he is right. And then in quotes, Iran pose no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. That's an insane thing coming from... Bernie Sanders. Coming from our senators. I mean, that's a... Well, that's a powerful gift. You see that? Go back to the one with the hat.

The Republicans had already come out and set it between Marco Ruby. and Mike Johnson and stuff. And when they were getting asked, they were just looking at the camera going, we don't know. Israel was going to do it first, so we just did it. Right.

So this is a, this is all very shocking. I'm sure the fallout from this is going to be insane. I don't even, I, it just happened. It just happened as a recording. Until the next thing happens.

Well, let's shift gears, shall we? You want to pop the clutch there, bum? I'm actually, I'm doing water right now. Oh,

okay. well, he doesn't want to shift the gear the gear stick. So Michael Burry, right? You all remember him as Christian Bale in, Christian Bale as Michael Bury in the movie The Big Short.

He's playing Christian Bail, playing him in a in a weird meta-documentary that they made. But he put out a big blog post called Foundations, U.S. market structure and value. And it was

behind a paywall, but then he opened it up for public viewing for 24 short hours. And you can probably find it behind like removepaywall.com or something. But I broke it down and I wanted to share it because it is very interesting. Normally I kind of poo-poo things that he says because he's mostly been like kind of wrong and kooky on things. And perma bear. I mean, he's been calling the bear market for Well, that's one of the things that I, as a, well, I guess we'll just talk about it as I go. So first and foremost, he brings up historical bear markets. And remember, a bear market is when the market goes down. He brings up historical bear markets and the fact that Schiller PE ratios, which is a price to earnings ratio, Schiller was a Yale professor who came up with this formula that is kind of, it's kind of an old metric for stock market valuations.

some consider it woefully outdated, but others like Michael Burry still reference it. The Schiller-P.E. ratio is basically just you divide the price of the index or the stock by the average of 10 years of earnings. And it's, yeah, it's meant to give you a valuation. The higher the PE ratio, the more overvalued it is in the lower, the more undervalued it is, theoretically. So during bear markets historically, Schiller P.E. ratios bottom at about five to eight times below fair value, or roughly half of the last 100 year average, right? And he says that the 2009 bear market only hit fair value and didn't go below like other bear markets. And that's because of intervention from the government. So that one never quite resolved now.

as it should have. And since then, we've been in this completely different paradigm, right? Second thing, second point he makes is that interest rates no longer drive valuation. Narrative does, which is like no fucking duh. That's one of my, that's what I was just going to say is one of my main things with this is that he's kind of living in the past and it's like, buddy, we're in uncharted territory. I mean, people have already talked ad nauseum about how valuations in the dot-com bubble were out of control. But that was because they were burning venture capital money and investor money in the pursuit of profitability that never came. Whereas now, these companies print more money than the dang freaking, the freaking United States Treasury.

The mint, you know? I mean, golly. So it's a different, it's a different world. And he pointed out rightfully so that interest rates rose post-COVID. despite interest rates rising from 0% to about 4.5%, the S&P tripled from COVID lows. And the Schiller PE went from 28.4 roughly to 40. Normally, when you have interest rates rising, that's when the market tends to kind of flatten or drop down because it makes borrowing more restrictive. Less free-flowing money. Yes.

And he says, well, stocks are mostly driven now by a competition between narrative capture and expectations disappointment. Hence why he's been attacking the AI narrative because it's all just about narrative and storytelling. And you can see that just this week. Invidia had their big... I forgot what GTC stands. It's their big conference.

In Jensen Huangs, they trotted him out there and he's going, man, we're making so much money. We don't even know what to do with it. Could it get any better than this? Jesus! I mean, literally, he said... Didn't they say they expect a trillion dollars? Yes, but then they had to caveat it.

He said, we're expecting a trillion dollars in revenues through 2027. But it's like from 2025 through 2027. It's like, yeah. But still, even then, that's fucking... God damn. Can you imagine what that must be like? You went from being the CEO of a company that you founded. And for the longest time, it was just video games and computers.

I make graphics cards and you got to explain that to people. We make graphics cards to make... Boobes, you know how it's a Tumrader. The boobs used to be a triangle, right? But now we give them more definition how the teddy's real when they're playing a game. Remember how a GTA3 you could pick up a prostitute and the car would shake?

And it would make little boys everywhere, honey. That was us. Yeah, that was us. You're welcome. I don't know why Jensen Wong. Jensen Wong does not sound like that. Jensen Wong, he sounds like that. So he's saying that interest rates are kind of detached from,

or market valuations are kind of detached from reality in another sense, being that they don't really, care about interest rates any longer. Third, and this is a big one, he points out that we are way, way, way overdue for a reversion to the mean, for a pullback

to the average Schiller PE ratio number. Currently, we're at 40.2. In April of 2000, just before the peak of the dot-com bubble, 43.5. And he says that they have always always reverted to the long-term average.

Since the beginning of the S&P, since the beginning of the Dow Jones, they've always reverted back to that average. And he says, the current streak is 34 years, which is a record by a wide margin, the prior one being 1960 to 1970, which in that case preceded a bear market.

And we are over 10 times the historic average reversion cycle of 3.2 years. That's good. Why are you laughing? Is this funny to you? I do have a nervous laughter tick. And I think, yeah, this is not anything new to us. We've been talking about all kinds of stuff.

Even before the Iran War, it seemed like the market was on shaky ground and didn't make a ton of sense. He's not the only one with ideas like this. I'm blanking on the guy's name. We were talking about his article in the New York Times. He wrote a book in 2007. called like the devil's something, which basically was saying a huge crash is coming

and then we all remember what happened in 2008. His article was basically titled, I called the crash of 2008 what we're seeing now. You're going to wish it was 2008. Yeah. I mean, that's, he goes on to say

the 100 year average currently would be about 18 to 19 on the Schiller PE index. So that would be, you know, that would that would that would that would put us on par for a pullback like 1929 or like 2000 uh okay fourth the reason that we are here at this point in this market is because of fundamental structural changes and supports and he notes correctly and he has been harping on this for a while passive index investing via the 401k which was created in 1978 it took off in the mid 90s

people didn't have pensions anymore. Now, if you want to save a retirement, you have to put all your money into a retirement fund basically pegged to stock market or however you want to do it. So basically, what does that mean, the passive index investing? Hey, you got a 401k,

you got an IRA. Most people, in fact, a majority now, you just get a little bit taken out of your paycheck every two weeks or every month or how often you get paid and it just goes into that 401K account and it just gets put in there.

Now imagine that time's business. billions and billions and billions. Passive investing, in fact, went from 6% of equity fund assets in 1996 to 19% by 2010. And is currently, well, as of 2024, 60% of stocks is through passive investing. That's crazy. It's our fault. It's our fault. 401K and IRA assets are now worth over $32 trillion.

Things are on autopilot, he says. There's no price discovery. Price discovery, meaning like, oh, that's a natural buying and selling news has an effect. And, you know, it's not just this never-ending flywheel that just keeps it going on and on and on. Sometimes it's the opposite. It's like we talk about the retail investor buying up the dip. Oh, yeah. That's a big part of it.

The philosophy of buying the dip. I'm on, I'm one of these people who's just, you're part of the problem. Quietly putting money into mutual funds. And then, but that's just on auto pay or auto buy, right? So, but then when the market goes down, I go, well, I should get a little discount. And so I buy it up. Yeah. And that's where I also have, he's not saying that these things are inherently bad.

He's just. No, I think it's just a reason why it would continue to prop itself back up. Rather than in the old days when people just go, bad news or wouldn't even pay attention. Yeah. People are so clued in. You don't even need to call anyone to do it. I just open the Vanguard app. And I just do it.

I check. I go, all right, much lower than it was. I guess I just buy it a little bit more. And he points out correctly, and this is, again, this is not old news, but the main flagship ETF of the S&P, which is the spy, is market cap weighted, meaning the bigger a company is, like, say, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, whoever, the bigger they are, the more of a share they have of that ETF's weight in its success. But the bigger a company gets, the more passive money flows to it, making it bigger, which attracts more money. And it's just like, that's why you just get these,

that's how you've got it. I mean, it's partly obviously the narrative and stuff, but that's how you get, that's how you've got Tesla at fucking one and a half trillion dollars. And Invidia, at $5 trillion. Tesla is obviously everyone's number one example of a completely overinflated. When you're talking about price to earnings, it's just nothing starts to even make sense. And it's run on narrative. Yeah. Elon.

It's got to put robot. It's not about the cars. It's about the robot future he's building. Yeah. Numb nuts. Shut up. Yeah. Corporate buybacks are the other big secondary structural bid that he points out under all

all these companies. It's heavily concentrated in about six to 20 different companies. Over $7 trillion in stock buybacks in the last 10 years. Meaning these companies have excess cash and instead of reinvesting it into the business itself, building more factories, whatever, paying dividends, they can just buy back their own shares, thus reducing the amount of freely trading shares, thus making, you know, There's a bid in the shares. So they just go higher and higher.

But that is slowing. As of Q4 of last year, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, all those companies' buybacks dropped 74% year over year to just $12, a little over $12.5 billion. And now they're all to the point where they're borrowing money. They're issuing bonds to fund their AI CAPEX. You've got Oracle, for example, $25 billion. meta just issued a $30 billion worth of bonds, Google 15, Amazon $37 billion. Can you not do that?

Jesus. Excuse me. So the AI buildout is taking away that second biggest structural bid. Not only that, but boomers are getting old. No. They're getting older. And you know what happens when you reach a certain age? You die.

You, not only can you die, but you are required to take money out of your retirement accounts. I believe the, I want to say 72, 71, 72, something like that. And he's pointing out that that main structural bid that we were just talking about with the IRAs and the 401Ks is set to finally turn negative in 2028. So it'll no longer be a supporting feature of the market. It'll be a net negative when these redemptions, that's when you take the money out, will exceed the contributions as these boomers reach the required minimum distribution years. Currently, they're, because a lot of them are up there and they're currently pulling out $250 billion a year, which will grow to $1 trillion a year in the early 2030s.

Lastly, he talks about the market structure itself. High frequency trading is about 60% of all trading. And these high frequency traders tend to just step away when shocks happen. So, like, if market starts collapsing, they're not going to step in and, you know, put a floor on bidding and stuff, which can happen. They're just going to step away and, you know, that can amplify selloffs. You've got these pod shops, which are just like groups of traders, you know, they've represented about a trillion dollars in assets. They run tight and correlated strategies that can liquidate fast when things turn. And he points out, rightfully so, that Liberation Day,

just last year was a really, really big event that people aren't paying enough attention to. It was a cross-asset asset crash. Normally when stocks crash, bonds can go up, gold can go up. It flows elsewhere. But in this case, you had treasuries, bonds, the dollar, oil, gold, and stocks all fell. And when that happens, foreign investors especially get fucked because the dollar is now weaker. the bonds that they probably hold are weaker, the stocks that they hold. And that could have triggered a rotation away from U.S. stocks, which can take a long time to earn back that trust and want to step in here.

Especially as like Japanese stocks are doing well. China's up and coming. When he's talking about a correction, what kind of percentage is that exactly? Do you have any idea what that would look like? 50%. Well, because he's talking about the Schiller. the Schiller going from 40 to 18 to 19. The SMP would be like 3,000 or like 3,300, yeah.

Which is what it was at the COVID lows, which is wild. Now, that's the thing. That's the thing. He's, he basically ends it by saying, um, this could just happen. You never know. It could just one day it just starts. And it just, but I don't think that that would happen.

So here's, which, go ahead, sorry. No, I mean, you don't think it would happen. You still don't buy it. It's not that I don't buy it. Everything that he says is valid and true. It's just that there's, the market is so different now. There still is that perma bid with the 401Ks and stuff, because that is essentially the biggest thing he's talking about.

And he's saying, oh, in a couple years, that's going to turn negative. In addition to presumably the corporate buyback bid will be gone. It might even turn negative sooner. I think what worries me is just all of these, dude, no one is, no one's at the helm here. You know, we are, Trump is an absolute madman. America already wasn't a forward thinking, forward planning country. I think watching stuff, I hate to be China-pilled, but when they're talking about, China's talking about releasing a strategic fertilizer reserve.

And I'm going, does the U.S. even have that? Apparently we don't. It's, you know, and like I was talking about before, seeing him go out there and go like, who could have known they would hit those places? Who could have known they'd close the straight of her moves? And it's like, a lot of people

did. But so it already felt like it was on shaky ground and now it's this just, it feels like we're walking on a wire. and so when we you know there's all these we talked about the citrini thing I don't I think we tried to debunk a lot of that I don't think that's

necessarily going to happen but there may be more layoffs it seems like med is doing like 20% layoffs right now yeah and it got buried it got buried because of the war but I think it was two days after the war the jobs report came out and it was like way higher than people or the the job losses were way higher than people expected if things continue down this path, it's like you have less people propping it up with if you're desperate, you're not putting money into

your retirement fund and every month and propping things up like this. I think there are so many things. I just can't even believe they're all happening. We're talking about helium needed for semiconductors. What the fuck are you talking about? What are we doing to ourselves?

I mean, this was, there are so many times Trump has done things where we're like, this is national suicide. Where it sometimes feels like we're watching it in slow motion. People keep posting that thing on Twitter of, you know, this is the real national suicide. It's the scientific grants and it has all the prior years where I guess it starts off a little slow in the beginning of the year. And then it goes up. We invest a lot in our scientific research and all this.

And 2026 is just basically flat. Obviously 2025 was much lower too. But 2026 is basically flat when it's usually starts. the curve up. Well, because colleges are full of elites. Hey, you know, it's time we punish those college boys. Liberal. It's a very precarious

situation and I'm I'm shocked. If we weren't, if the entire stock market is currently propped up by the AI buildout. Which is crazy that we're destabilizing the globe.

We're not even talking about, you know, China has no reason not to move on Taiwan at this point. Yeah. I'm not saying I want that to happen. And while that's happening, we're, Asian countries are pissed at us because we're going, hey, give us your THAAD missiles. Give us your interceptors. Give us your heavy weaponry.

We got to go over there real fast. Iran just blew up our billion dollar radar. Can you give us one of those? Yeah. What are we doing? Mm-hmm. Yeah. The entire economy's propped up on it.

If China takes Taiwan, it's... Game over. It's just done. Yeah. If NVIDIA goes down... I mean, how much would NVIDIA go down if Taiwan... 50%. I mean, I don't...

The circuit breaker would trigger on it, for sure. It would be who the hell knows, man. We're playing with very dangerous things. Like, all those things that we were talking about with the fertilizer and the helium and all that stuff, the people who were talking about people who know way more about this I'm not gonna pretend like I'm some expert on fertilizer and trade routes and all this stuff

but it doesn't if Trump goes on TV today and is like we're leaving the Middle East Iran can have whatever they want we're done I relent just open the straight it doesn't get turned on tomorrow this it has massive effects these things can be very difficult to store they were talking about

if this gets resolved tomorrow it could be two months before the stuff. Yeah, liquid natural gas out of Qatar would take a month to restart. And some of the fertilizer and helium stuff could take longer. It's just like... Well, so that brings us to why no crash?

Why come? Why come stock market? Why come stock market, no go down? Why come, no matter what bad news come out on the TV and on Twitter, stock market don't care. it's already down just a little bit but again why come well there's a little thing called the wall of worry first of all bull markets like to climb a wall of worry uh there is always some narrative there's always something going on that everybody's like oh man but this is bad right this is

bad right and it just keeps going up and the more it keeps going up the more people worry and the more they think well surely everybody's uh everybody sees the writing on the wall and then it just ends up kind of not being as bad as people thought. And that's kind of like when we pointed out that Iran was their own oil was allowed to leave the straight. That's one of those examples where it's like, okay, it isn't fully closed. They're still distributing oil to the rest of the world. So it's not quite a global issue in the sense that it's like, oh, it's all fucking closed. That's just one example. It is still, yeah, no, for sure, for sure. I'm not making a judgment call here. I'm just, you've got FOMO as well.

And the point that illustrates is this, me who's very nervous about this and says we're walking on a wire. You are the Wall of Worry. I keep buying the dip. You are, and you are also, you are a good representation of the Wall of Worry and FOMO. People don't want to miss out because for the last, since 2009, it has been proven that all you do is close your eyes. And it was called BTFD, man, by the fucking dip. And realistically. I'm 36.

If I wanted to retire, if I was near retirement age, I would not be doing this. But it's a retirement fund that would have consequences if I took the money out anyway. And so it's like, well, if it goes down, hopefully in 40 years, it's okay. Then you've got, Jim has talked about this a lot. Structured products. What does that mean? It means that you can get a return on your money from stocks. You can get a return on your money from bonds, from gold, stocks that have a dividend that pays a certain percentage every quarter or every year.

And there are certain funds out there, certain banks and institutions that offer a competitive return on your money. Hey, you're a high net worth individual. Why not allocate a million dollars to this strategy that we've got where we, for example, a bit very, very, very, very, very, very, very popular one, is selling volatility, meaning keeping, well, when you've got enough of these entities doing this, it effectively creates a damper on the volatility itself. You're selling volatility, you're selling calls and puts. Oh, man, this is a little convoluted, but you're basically, you're keeping everything within a range because so many entities are doing it. And it kind of keeps this, it's like a beach ball, trying to put a beach ball into,

jumping on a beach ball in the pool. There's just always this buying pressure from all of that going on at once. And like you said, like we were talking about, you've got the AI buildout. $640 billion is being spent

in 2026 by Amazon, meta, Google, Microsoft alone. And that's set to increase, obviously, to like over a trillion dollars in the next year and then probably two trillion after that. And Nvidia just confirmed that With their revenue increases, they keep coming out with new chips and shit that they're like,

we can't make enough of it. All the foundries can't keep up with it. We've got to go to different foundries to, because Nvidia doesn't make their own chips. They design them. And then foundries like Taiwan Semiconductor make them and whatnot. Then there's also the Fed. We always know that the Fed is going to come in if things really get bad and they will inject liquidity. into the market like, like, uh, like so many fat cells into the top lip of, of, uh, of, of, of, of an actress.

Is that what it is? It's fat cells? I don't know. Some, some shit like that. I don't know. Or they get a B and they agitate it and they poke you. Man, people, sorry, I don't want to go off topic here, but people look downright crazy. Yeah, man. We were at a restaurant the other night and I literally, I could not stop. You looked around and someone was looking at you. like this. Truly. I was like, I'm so... I'll take the suit. Just...

What's his style? Look at? Yeah. I mean... Yeah. Well, what... It's hot. It's a sexy look. I like it, man. Man, what's going on with you? You need some Benadryl, baby?

Yeah. She had an allergic reaction? Is she the sexiest lady I've ever seen? Yeah. Looks nuts. What do you got to... What colors that lipstick you're putting on? Is it poison ivy? Do you mistake your lip gloss for the poison ivy? I feel like sometimes you can see

like injection sites or something. Yeah, you probably can. Ugh. God bless him. God bless him, I always say. Anyway, then, yeah, so the government, you always know that the government's

going to probably step in if they need to. I mean, they did it with COVID. Trump also, in this day and age, is a masterful confuser. He confuses things. He says so much conflicted conflicting shit that it just ruins the ability for anyone to get a grasp on the narrative.

He's confused himself. And of course, you got taco. Trump always chickens out. He says one thing. He does another. He says yet another thing. He does maybe something slightly different. And it's impossible for anyone to take seriously what he says.

Look at what he did at the Liberation Day. He does the tariffs. And then these countries go, hey, we'll play ball with you. And then he goes, okay, cool. Tariffs are lifted. and then the market fully fucking bounces and never looks back. So there's that force as well. And like I said, everybody knows to always, always, always, always buy the dip.

So if you've been wondering, what? You just still don't think it's going to happen. I don't know. At this point, it's really... Because you... We did a great episode about it where, leading up to 2020, where you were certain about the coming crash. Yes.

You're not there. No, because I think that the Hormuz stuff is, it's not exaggerated. But it's Hormuz on top of. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it doesn't matter right now. It doesn't matter until it matters. Just like COVID didn't matter until one day it mattered.

I think that's true. I'm just, I don't know how much people can take. I do think people were already struggling. I mean, what is that? California going to look like when people start paying... What's the K-shaped economy, dude? $7, $8 a gallon. Yeah.

I mean, look at... And that's going to have effects throughout everything. Well, maybe at that point we would see, I don't know, a 2% pullback. But it is, it's the K-shaped economy. It's very funny. The first thing I always do is I open the financial times. And you'll see these things like, Iran's going to start putting mines in the straight of Hermuz.

And you're like, like, when I see the big headline, I go, holy shit, the market must be furious. Yeah. And I switch over. And I'm like, up half a percent? What? They're bullish on mines. Yeah.

It's because the market is really good at pivoting from narrative to narrative. It's really good, especially at getting attached to a very nice. negative narrative. And then once it's proven to not be even a fraction as bad as they thought, all is saved. Oh, they're not putting mines there. Oh, okay. A couple ships were led through?

Good enough. Cool. Oh, well, hey, look over here. Invidia's got this new thing. Jensen Wong, the CEO of the biggest company in the world right now, upon which all of this is kind of built, just said that demand is higher than ever and will continue to be higher than ever,

which indicates that companies are still flush enough and lenders are willing to lend the money to buy the bonds. With the helium crisis, demand might even be even higher. Yeah, because it's going to create more scarcity. Sure. Wow, actually, call on my broker. Hey, I'm bullish on all this stuff. Sure, they can't get the chips

and your wife can't get an MRI, but who cares? So all that's to say is, if you've been wondering why there's no crash looming, it's all of that that I just listed off. But the risks that Michael Burry laid out are definitely real. Obviously, the geopolitical stuff is real. And surprisingly, one thing he didn't mention is the private credit crisis that is kind of slowly unfolding.

Yeah. that has kind of taken a back seat to everything. I mean, the housing crisis debacle took years to play out. This might be a slow burn. It might be the case that we end up, you know, by 2030 or 2035, if you were to look at a 10-year chart of the market, it might just be one long, slow meandering sideways to down thing, while individual stocks can go on their own journey. as we've seen with software. I mean, the market is kind of... Individual stocks being like, sorry, I'm going on my own journey.

I'm going on my own journey. I see you guys doing your whole sideways downward thing, but I'm actually going to do something different. I'm a crystal girly now. I'm in my... I did want to play this. I just sent a clip of this former White House Energy Advisor goes on 60 minutes and explains the straight of her mood situation. I just want to play this for people. Let's do it. I've worked in the White House during an energy crisis. There are no policy solutions to a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

You're saying there's not much a White House a president can do to stop this bleeding. You open up the toolkit, and the tools in there, the options range from marginal through symbolic to deeply unwise. Escorts are a sideshow. Strategic stock releases are a side show. Gas tax holiday? Gas tax holiday sideshow. You've got to restore the flow of the Strait of Hormuz. Even if the White House, President Trump,

declared an end of this war today, tomorrow, is there any guarantee that Iran would open up the street and it's back to business as usual? No guarantee. It's not like there's a big gate that swings open in front of the Hormuz and Iran locks the gate. So all Iran has to do is demonstrate every day, every other day, that it has the means and the ability

to attack ships in the straight, and that will be enough. That's the bottom line. When was that? When did that air? I've worked in the March 15th. Or go to the, hit the 60 Minutes thing? No, no, no, no. Underneath?

Yeah, right there. That is from March 15th. Bob McNally. The thing he says, yeah, former White House Energy Advisor Bob McNally, that thing he says at the end, it's, there's no way. around this. They just have to show that they're capable of taking down the ships very easily.

Yeah. And shippers are going to go, you know what, I'm actually all set on going through that thing. A big tell will be, so there's monthly option, oh, let me try that again. There's monthly options expirations on the index. It happened on the third, third week, third Friday of every month. And leading up to that and the days leading up to the like a week leading up to it there's all sorts of the there's all sorts of uh as jem would call them structural forces at play keeping the market bit up that's what was happening leading up to covid is like all of these all of these structural forces are effectively a buoy keeping the market afloat and yeah we were coming up on the options expiration this Friday. So it'll be a big tell after going into next week what the market decides to do.

The COVID thing is funny to me because the COVID thing makes more sense to me than this does. The COVID thing, it wasn't like, I know you were watching a lot of stuff that you felt was, you know, you were convinced that you had the right information and you did. There wasn't confirmation out there. There wasn't like, up until Tom Hanks got it, basically, everyone was like, this is going to pass. Oh, yeah, a few Americans have it now. That's just a couple. Right.

Yeah. And no one was really taking it seriously. So I could see people being like, ah, come on, what are you talking about? We're going to be fine. We're always fine. This is like, it's not just the straight of her moves.

I mean, you're kind of watching a reordering of, a reordering of allies, the global, the global economy, all of these things. And what's it going to do for inflation? That's another big, big, big, big concern. As long as this goes on, the higher the cost of fuel, that reverberates throughout the entire economy, the global economy, prices could go up. And prices, inflation going down was part of the impetus for the Fed to start lowering interest rates as they have been doing.

But what happens if inflation spikes back up? I do believe the chance of a Fed cut is now lower than a Fed hike. And we have FOMC tomorrow. Yeah. We'll see. Who knows, man. Well, folks, let us know what you think. As always, the comments are wide open.

Market go up. Market go down. Welcome to your loser consumer era. We're all in it. the just so you know Ken Hassett and the Trump

administration are not seriously concerned about consumers and we have no plan to be so let's be concerned about ourselves

you know we're this is this is the loser consumer community we're building we're all in it together

we're all going to lose well folks that does it for us this week join us in the bonus Ben andamielshow.com get yourself

some new merch signing up there and them. All right, folks, we'll see you in the bonus. Coming up on this week's episode of Ben and Emile Show.com. I don't think there are any porn stars who look like me. I didn't think... Up until a few months ago, I didn't think there was... I challenge you to find a porn star that looks like me

and, uh... I don't know, enjoy yourself. Don't enjoy yourself with mine. Yeah, go ahead and do that too. You want to jack off? Who am I to stop you? Who's a meal to stop you? I will stop you.

I'll haunt. I'll come to your house. Yeah, you'll come over. Right. No, don't. No one's coming. I'm going to come. No one's coming.

I'll get your ISPs shut down if you jerk off to get to get tos. Did you watch the Oscars at all? No. I did. Did you see Sinners? Sinners game. The movie. Did you see sinners?

Sinners matches? I've seen a lot of them. Oh, God. God. He's by far one. Someone come fucking kill me. He's by far. Yeah, yeah.

My favorite 10th story. So I'll try to be. Did I see his matches? Yes. I watched him play Joe Alfonsoica. I watched him play Leonard T.N. I watched him play the Neal Medvedev. Did you see the 2025?

I watched him Beed Zverev. Did you see the 2025 motion picture starring Michael B. Jordan entitled Sinners? I haven't seen that. Oh, got it. Got it. Well, it was fine. It was a good movie. It wasn't...

So you dislike black people. I take it. Bradpot? Yes, it's a nice restaurant. It's very expensive. What? It looks like a goofy... No, it's on the fucking water

and it's nice. It's on the marina there. Yeah, dude. Look at that. Look at that. Some of that food, man. Those look like shitty-ass fries. No, no, no, no.

You don't understand. It's some premium stuff. Those oysters are going to give you diarrhea. No, they're not. Oh, man. That looks terrible. This is not a nice, right? No, go up, go up, go up, go up.

That one? No, no. I mean, that looks bad, too. The plane of fish. Those crab cakes are not. Those are made in-house. This is not crab cakes. No, I know.

That's a big filet. Look at that. It's a big filet of fish. I don't care how big. I don't care how big it is. That does not look like a good dish. It looks tasty to me. You're going to charge me $45 for this?

It looks tasty to me. You don't understand. Look at the coconut shrimp. Look at that. The coconut shrimp, I will say. That looks good. Go to the boil. Look at that.

That is some Primo stuff, my man. find the fries again the fries are really good that looks pathetic wait I'm sorry that looked pathetic if you have shit ass mozzarella sticks

you're not a nice restaurant no but trust me go to their Instagram page I guarantee they've got no no no no this is not this is not

you've insulted the restaurant you've insulted the restaurant