The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast 248 Lior Gantz, Editor of Wealth Research Group

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

Lior Gantz, Editor of Wealth Research Group

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com thechrissvossshow.com Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. You guys are always the best audience. Be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. Tell them to subscribe at iTunes, Google Play. You can now see the show on iHeartRadio

and you can also go to Spotify. Wow, Spotify, that's the radio. You got the Metall on iHeartRadio, and you can also go to Spotify. Wow, Spotify, that's the radio. You've got the Metallica, the Lawrence Welk, and you've got the Chris Voss Show right there. Hubba hubba. Also, tell them to go to YouTube.com, for instance, Chris Voss. This is the big season. Hit that bell notification on YouTube because we're doing all the reviews of all the great presents you can give people. And after Christmas, you can figure out whether you want to turn those

because you can see their views on the Chris Voss Show. You can also, of course, see our anticipated coverage of CES 2019 coming down the pike. We're starting to get the crazy deliveries of all the crazy products, and you want to subscribe for that as well. We just got like this giant chess board that moves the things around the chess pieces. And we also just got a window cleaner in that moves around the window and cleans it. It's like the suction thing that attaches the thing. So anyway, we've got a wonderful guest as always.

Our guest today is Lior Gantz. Lior, how are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being on the show. Give us a rundown of who you are. Well, I'm a full-time investor and entrepreneur, 34 years old, and I got into business very early on. I didn't call it business back then. I called it more like surviving

because when I started accumulating money, it was when I was 13. I don't know if you know my story, but if you want the full blown, it's my father went bankrupt when I was

13. I didn't know that the business was even struggling because we lived in a good neighborhood. But apparently, it was. And this was right at the age where you want to do stuff, right? 13, you want to date girls, you want to bike, you want this, you want that. And I was frustrated. So I was a meter 49, which is like a 4'11", very short guy. Not like now.

I'm better, 6'2". Back then, really short, short guy, 13 years old. I went to a clothing store next to my house and started hanging around for two hours a day there, Chris, and learning all about the brands. Just learning about the brands so just learn about the brands and in about two weeks later I'm like telling the owners like a family-oriented thing once you hire me I can sell and sell the brands I went home every day I like to learn everything about these brands and this was hard this was before internet so like we're talking 1997 so where I would live there was no internet and I like

you know researching this and books and all that kind of stuff. Anyways I come in the store like two weeks into it and I help him upsell this customer like real real upseller and he says you're hired four bucks an hour and that was like the beginning of my accumulation period but it gave me a lot of confidence Chris so I took the first two weeks of pay and I I printed out these flyers and handed up and ended them out in the neighborhood for babysitting services and it's like a became a big babysitter in my name hood and I upsold all the parents that had boys too

so I can teach them basketball because I was playing basketball and by age 16 I accumulate like 20 grand in today's money and today's dollars and my banker said if you get a waiver from your parents you can start investing this money in your own account as a minor and this was three months after the dot-com bubble burst. So in hindsight, a very good time to get involved in the stock market. Obviously, when I got involved, I didn't know that. But I did know there was people making a lot of money because the babysitter that I was, the kid that I was babysitting was an only child. I come to his

house one day and his father's on CNN sold his company for like 4.5 billion. And there were two partners, each got like 700 mil. So I didn't know something was epic going on. But anyways, that's how I got started. And my father then went on to have two other bankruptcies but but I think it really helped me in terms of one starting to look at money very early on so I had that advantage just of years right I really started early and it really helped me to get motivated to learn much more than he did to learn from mistakes and all of my big learning curves happened through you know using my father's mistakes so it was really helpful to not have catastrophe in my own life personal catastrophe I learned

from my dad's catastrophe or should say our families catastrophes but them and started focusing on location independent businesses so businesses you can run online uh sort of like uh you know what you have right now with yourself and um that's it there were 18 years uh after that uh and um three years ago started wealth research group which is the uh the free financial. It was ranked number one in the world in 2017 because we were lucky enough to profile Bitcoin at $400 for the readers. It's a free newsletter, but we do both stuff. I really want to have people understand what I'm researching,

so the big picture, but I also, if I like something, and I did my research on it, I'll publish that research. So we were the first newsletter in the world, for example, to be on Ethereum at $12, and six months later, it was over $1,000. So that was like a 90-fold return. It's a good newsletter. That's awesome, man. That's awesome, man. That's awesome.

You ended up with a better area of rebound out of the Black Friday 1987, I think it was. Black Monday, Black Friday? Black Monday, October 87. I was actually studying at that time to be a stockbroker. And I was being paid. My license schooling was being paid for by a small brokerage back then. You have these little brokerages, and you go work for them and pound the phones.

And so I was going to school for that during that time. Sounds like the Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, it was a little Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, yeah. I remember the stockbroker guy who hired me. He was one of those Wolf of Wall Street type guys. Okay. He was one of those guys where every time you left his presence,

you'd check your pants for your wallet and stuff. Yeah, I was I was three years old in 1987 when that happened but I do remember I didn't remember 2008 very vividly because well I was an eight one yeah yeah I was in Colorado and I went on a four-day rafting trip no signal no nothing and this is exactly at the Lehman moment. So I'm getting out of the Green River in Colorado, which is like the extension of the Colorado River,

and I opened my cell phone. It was like 150 messages and crazy. Like, you know, what are you doing? Where are you? And it really helped me, though, put things in perspective. I was like, okay, why is Intel down 30%? Are people not buying chips anymore from the computers?

It really helped me to sift between companies that really had a problem and companies that people had margin calls on and they just needed to sell everything. It also helped me to get into real estate in 2009 which was a huge contrarian move because everyone was like leaving and I was entering and

yeah so it's it's it helps to put things in perspective when you're not part of the madness the initial madness and you're like okay what happened I was just roughing four days that's it that's a tough four days it seems to me that like anything anytime happens is usually when i start going on a trip like i'll i'll drive from vegas to california and i'll get no more than half an hour an hour down the road and then some clients on you website or some sort of problem is on fire. And I'm like, oh, God, I just. It's like, I can sit around here all day long. No one calls you.

Everyone's fine. All the plates are spinning. The wheels are working. But as soon as I go on vacation or go to leave town, it's like pants on fire time and stuff's burning down. But that's awesome. You learn from it. Here in Las Vegas, I witnessed firsthand the crash of the real estate economy. I came down here.

We actually sold my home. I got really lucky because I got caught without a home. But I sold my home in Utah and moved down here with three, two other investors to invest in real estate because it was rocking. So I came down here and met with several real estate agent heads. And one of the gals from Caldwell Banker, she knew why this was happening and what was going on with the inventory and the effect that 2001, the 9-11 towers coming down and had on the market and that the inventory was starting to catch up to demand and thereby the prices would would either flatten out or below

would pop and i was like this bubble's gonna pop and she's like yeah it's that's that's where it's at and uh i'm like holy crap So we decided not to invest that time. And yeah, you can buy a house this year for like $30,000, $18,000. I remember those days. There was even a law firm here that made a killing off of it that figured out they could do foreclosures off of the, what do they call them? The HUDs? The Homeowners Association. Here in Las Vegas, everything's a homeowners association, and they technically have first placement on the deed.

They don't really have first placement on the deed, but they really do. So if you want to pay your homeowners fees, the homeowners can foreclose on your home, even though the bank has the first note. And so all these homes are just sitting empty and these homeowners associations are going bankrupt. So they're just like, we'll sell these off to the lawyer firm.

And the lawyer firm basically, how they worked when they went into foreclosure, they wiped the deeds because they went into foreclosure. They wiped the other debts. went into foreclosure. They wiped the, the other debts. And because of some obscure law, they were able to get away with wiping the first and second on the property.

The banks were pissed. Yeah. I remember. Um, so in 2009, what happened, what I did is I learned that there's about 2 million vacant homes in America, but they're vacant for various reasons. So sometimes people inherit a house, they live halfway around the United States, and they never get around to it.

The house starts growing a bush, and then the garden is untaken care of and it just looks bad but there's no for sale sign anywhere it's not up for sale by owner it's not on the mls it's nothing it just sits there vacant um so what i did is i built in 2009 i built teams in five cities that just scour the streets and find vacant house making houses and what you do is you get the address. And I actually wrote about this like a special report. If you go to wealthresearchgroup.com, real estate, you can actually download the entire system. I built that business for five years in five major cities and sold it in 2013 when the market sort of became better. And so my niche became less important.

But anyways, so you get the address. Once you have the address, you go to the assessor and you find out who owns the house. Now, once you know who owns the house, you can find out how to contact him. If he's moved somewhere else, you can do the services that you can do to find him, or you can mail him. Now, they forward the mail to the new address. So whatever you do, you market to that guy and say, hey, this house is vacant. I know you own it. You can even look at what he owes, if he has equity in it or not, and then you can strike a deal with him. And what I did was I struck a deal with people, and then instead of closing on that property

myself, renovating it, doing all the work, you can simply assign that purchase contract within your time period to a legitimate fixer-upper. So you just sell your rights to close on the property to another person. People buy these assignments for $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 and you can do that all day long. If you have the right team

and people scouring the streets and you have the system to find everything. I automated a lot of it and it became a real good business. That is awesome, dude. You would have loved it here in Las Vegas. I took properties from my real estate friends in Manila during the blow up. And I lived up in the northwest part of Las Vegas, which was the newest area that had been built.

And I would literally go out my door and stand on my street, and you could hear what sounded like crickets chirping up and down the street. And it was all fire alarms. The batteries had finally gone bad. No homes. And I'd be a person living in about every third home on my street. We have a street, like, I don't know, 50 people or something, 50 homes or something like that. There's, like, I don't know, 50 people or something, 50 homes or something like that.

There's like 10 people living in the street. Those houses are less, they don't work for that niche because they're upside down. So they have no equity. Even if you contact the person who says, I can do sale, where you work with the bank to try and get the property for a price lower than what's owed to them. So they needed to take a big haircut. And that's a whole different department. But I'm glad to see America is not struggling in that way anymore. They have many new struggles, many new challenges. Some say even bigger challenges than back then, but the market is definitely not as distressed. But next time it is,

again, it's the time to really get aggressive on business and on opportunities. The best times is really when everything is distressed. So when you guys, you guys have wealthresearchgroup.com, and on there you get wealth, investment advice, what to do with the marketplace. What do you think about went on today? Because today, recording this video, we should say is at 12-20-2018. We lost, I think, almost 700 points today on the stock market,

and this week has lost over 1,400 points. And I think that is showing a clear bear market beginning. What do you think is going on this week? Or what's just going on in the recent months? What are the futures going to be? Sure. So I think since I started investing in the year 2000, I've developed the mentality of looking at the U.S. stock market.

You can consider it like a yo-yo that goes up and down. Somebody plays with a yo-yo. So you look at the ups and downs. But if you zoom out, that guy is on an escalator and he's going up. So in the big picture, the U.S. stock market, corporate America, grows at about 10% a year. It's a machine. It's a machine that is able to survive low interest rates, high interest rates, social unrest, the Democrat president, the Republican president, an oil shock, a world war, whatever we had in the 20th century, it survives this. And it's just because of the talent and entrepreneurship of CEOs, management, just Americans, America.

But it does come to a halt. You know, escalators need maintenance. They need some stuff repaired. You know, I don't know if you've ever been to a mall and, like, the entire grid of the escalator is exploded and there's somebody down there fixing it and they're telling you to take the stairs in the meantime. But it happens. Like, these things need maintenance. And so people focus too much on the yo-yo, on the ups and downs of everyday events. But in the big picture, the best companies in the world are headquartered in the States.

And they might do business worldwide, but they're headquartered in the States. And the U.S. stock market is a very good source of wealth over time, over a 20 to 30-year period, and not a one-month period or something like that. So it's very hard to become an investor with the madness of markets in terms of short-term. So I am a very long-term oriented investor. And what I think, so in terms of what's going on right now, there's two ways to look at it. And what's beautiful is you don't have to worry about if you're right or not on these two ways. You can invest in the same way regardless. So one way to look at it, Chris, is that the

FANG stocks and cryptocurrencies were the equivalent of the dot-com bubble last year. So euphoria happened in 2017. We saw something that never happened before. The S&P 500 gained every single month, blows higher every single month for 12 trade months. That has never happened before on very low volatility. Coupled with that, you saw something that doesn't make any sense at all, right? The cryptocurrencies went up to

unimaginable prices Projects that have nothing they really literally have nothing became valid hundreds of millions of dollars and bills not Not talking about the legitimate ones. I'm talking about the 1500 other ones other altcoins That are on the market. And it just seems like it doesn't matter what the news cycle was, stocks and cryptocurrencies were going up. But that came to a stop at the beginning of the year.

But people were still in the bubble mentality. So the denial was there. So they didn't sell. They didn't sell. They didn't sell. And now everything is coming into the realization that we have problems in the economy. And you're already seeing FAM stocks down 20%, 25%, 30%. You see cryptocurrencies down 80% to 90%. Most of them are zeroed out. So they're not even listed from the blockchain.

And that is one way to look at it, that we're already in a bear market, or a sideways market, it doesn't matter. But you can't expect price appreciation on the stock market in the next three, four, five years in a major way. And this is one way to look at where we are right now. The other way to look at it is to compare it to 1997 or 1998 where you saw years with thirteen percent or fifteen percent Corrections and then fifty percent rallies and you just four or five rallies and Corrections in one year like

a roller coaster and then a last last rob that took us into 2000. And that is what we might be in right now, this correction phase. And we might be churning for like three or four or five months and then having a really huge relief rally, for example, with the catalyst of the United States and China announcing a trade deal or something that really releases a lot of the tension that is in the markets so we are either in a bit a very steep correction that's gonna be like you know 13 15 70 percent whatever it's gonna take us down a few more percent percentage boys then we'll find a bottom and then we'll rally or we're already in the bear market. Regardless, we're very late in the cycle. This is a bull market that has been going on for many, many years.

Now, the reason I say it doesn't matter is because if you think about stocks and what they are, that they're partial ownership in businesses, that when you become a shareholder of a company, you basically own a piece of the business, then you really need to think about these businesses that you when you become a shareholder of a company you basically own a piece of the business then you really need to think about these businesses that have been around for 40 50 70 years 100 years they're not going away because china and the united states are now negotiating trade deals people are not buying less uh you know less toilet paper because Trump is not agreeing with President Xi. So, for example, Kimberly-Clark, just to give you people an idea because that's a company everybody knows, or Starbucks,

it doesn't sell less coffee because of what's going on. So you need to really differentiate between stock market action and the fundamentals. And if you can do that, then you can find bargains. It would be the same as your neighbor selling his house now for 30 grand less than you think it's worth just because he needs the money tomorrow. And you're like, okay, I'm not going to, because he does it, I'm not going to sell my house for 30 grand less. So if he's working in an irrational way, it doesn't

mean that I have to do the same thing. So that's where I think we're at. We're at a point where people are realizing that there's a problem, there is fear in the marketplace, but whether or not it's justified for each and every stock, that's the real question. That's what an investor needs to find out if he wants to beat the markets, beat the index. He needs to make sure that he finds companies that are going down for no fundamental reason, but just because people are fearful

and they're selling many stocks in their portfolio broadly, just cashing up. And that's what we obviously, that's what I focus on also in the newsletter and in Wealth Research Group. So that's where I think we're at, Chris. And it can get a lot worse before it gets better because the Fed is tightening its monetary policy. So not only is it draining liquidity from the bond markets, it's also raising interest rates. And when you raise interest rates, what happens is the incentive to move some of your money

from stocks to bonds gets bigger because the yield on bonds is more attractive than the dividend on expensive stocks. When prices go up for companies, for the S&P 500, for the NASDAQ, etc., the yield that the company pays, that companies pay in general, is lower. And so as stocks get more expensive, bonds get more attractive.

And if you couple that with raising rates on bonds, so raising the yield, it becomes almost at par with each other. So you see a lot of investors moving from stocks to bonds because of the yield. And that is something that goes on right now. There's a big outflow from clients that are taking money from stocks and moving it to bonds. And that can continue if the Fed continues to raise rates. And it can continue if America continues to antagonize with its lenders. So what's unique about the United States is 40% of the deficit is funded by other countries.

So every time you fire a gun, every time you ignite a tank and you start, you know, or an F-16 goes up in the air, or you pay a social security payment for a retiree or whatever else you do, 40% of it, that's funded by China and Japan and other countries. And so when a presidency or an administration antagonizes that, it creates a situation where they're thinking twice before they come to the auction and buy our bonds, especially at low rates. So this is a situation that is changing very fast,

and it's a new situation because for the past 36 years, the bonds have been going down in rates. And other countries have still come to the auctions and bought them. And now it looks like it's changing. And that is the biggest change in the economy, in the big picture. If you want the big picture, it's foreign countries that are de-dollarizing. They're moving away from the dollar and they're looking to build a different sort of system for international settlement. And that's something that can really hurt any American. It doesn't matter if he's rich, poor, middle class, etc. Because it's something that can make the dollar go down by about 25%.

So a quarter of the purchasing power can go down in the next four to five years. And I wrote about all of this. If you're an avid reader and you want to go into this in depth, if you go to wealthresearchgroup.com forward slash crash, forward slash portfolio, or forward slash top, you can really access these exclusive reports because I know your audience is very sophisticated. I watch many of your shows, and I know that in one interview you can't get into everything. But I am very bearish on the dollar, very bearish. Yeah, I mean, Russia pulled out a lot of money in the dollar it was said they did it mostly so that they could they could

move their money into offshore banks and different banks that could keep from getting seized by the US government or censored by the US government but they did pull a lot out and do some and the heady stuff I mean China owns a lot of our debt so what you guys do wealth debt. So what you guys do at wealthresearchgroup.com is you guys do these reports, do these advisements, help people decide what they want to do, help guide people on what the best investments are to place and all that good stuff.

Well, yes and no. So the Wealth Research Group was founded three years ago as a labor of love, basically. For many years, investing for myself, I've had people around me asking me, hey, what are you investing in right now, et cetera, just on a friendly basis. And then in 2013, when I sold the real estate business, I opened a boutique fund for very well-to-do people. It was a very short list of people, clients, but wealthy individuals.

And so in 2015, I really wanted to shift my focus and say, look, I want to reach a bigger audience that doesn't have a threshold. I don't need to manage their money. I want to share the research with them. And that's how the free newsletter came about and trying to share what's going on in my personal life in terms of just in general in entrepreneurship and also in investing. So the newsletter is my way of transferring

whatever I'm researching myself to the audience, to the readers. So that's the best way to put it. And then on top of the audience, to the readers. So that's the best way to put it. And then on top of the newsletter, I really like to publish exclusive PDF reports that you can find on the website because I am passionate about education. I think education is the plague of our society

because everything can be fixed with the proper education. And I think people spend so much time absorbing information that is irrelevant to them, doesn't make them happy, but just makes sure that they don't think, you know, deep. They're just entertained. But they never get, they race in circles their entire lives. And I really hope that with Wealth Research Group that the information that we give is actionable, that you can do something with it and do more of the diligence once you get the information and become a person of value, an investor, a saver, somebody who gets out of debt, that gets ahead in his business or in his place

of work. And that is what we provide. We provide value by way of research and sharing what I do. And if it's valuable, obviously you can emulate it, copy it, and make it your own for your own life. So that's the newsletter. That's what we do. It's big picture, but it's also, you know,

if I find attractive opportunities that I like and I invest in myself, then I share them as well. And we've had in 2016, for example, when gold was very strong and the miners were very strong, we covered 12 companies that more than doubled in price in eight months. Some of them went up 400%. As I told you, we were very early on Bitcoin, $400 or $312. I actually was very early on Monero that went up to like $400,

and we covered it at $19. So, yeah, that's what I like. I like to marry value investing, so long-term brands that everybody knows, and I like them when they're very cheap. I also like cutting edge, like blockchain tech, the commodity sector, which I like because it's very cyclical, and the cannabis legalization because I feel like that is something where people do not understand how legitimate that industry is going to become. And so that is sort of the wealth research.

If you go to the website, if you go to the homepage and you subscribe, you'll start getting the newsletter and then you'll get a better idea of how this plays into your life and how it becomes part of the uh of your reading uh material that's awesome man and it looks like you guys uh what's kind of interesting about this whole thing with what's going on at the market right now is you guys have done several guidance and different calls on different uh cryptocurrencies like you guys called out like you mentioned earlier uh ethereum in march of 2017 you guys covered it uh it was at 12 at the time it's rallied 8 573 percent uh by september that year uh you guys called out the rally of ripple xrp cryptocurrency and now to the hour i'm not

to the hour it was a very interesting story i I didn't know this. I released the report at 27 cents. An hour later, I didn't know this, Bloomberg adds Ripple to their terminal. The price goes 10 times fold in one month. I didn't know Bloomberg was going to add it. I knew that Ripple was becoming very legitimate, but boom, it just, it was a, you know, a combination of luck and a bull market and just doing research, I guess. One of my friends is Michael Arrington. He has a, I think he has a $100 million fund in Ripple and XRP.

Yeah, it's a. I don't know how it's doing now i think i think there's been you know there's this whole correction going on with cryptocurrency yeah it's down ripples down on like 90 percent yeah it's it's a huge hit and then my other friend brock pierce who sits on the bitcoin foundation um uh you know know, he's, he, I remember, geez, was it 2014, 2013 when I friended him? Uh, and I was at a seminar or something. He came and talked about Bitcoin and just a brilliant mind on, on what Bitcoin was. And, uh, the interesting time in cryptocurrency, but what's, what I'm getting to is I guess crypto in the last few days since the 15th has increased about 800 to 800 to 900 dollars and in fact it went up today so there are people that are moving out of the stock market and moving

it into crypto I think there's a big big event that is coming January 24th. The New York Stock Exchange owner, a company called International Exchange, International Exchange Inc., the ticker is ICE. They own the New York Stock Exchange. They're the largest operator of exchanges in the world. They're launching a custodian service called Bucked. It's the biggest event in cryptocurrencies because a custodian services is basically what allows institutions to become investors in cryptocurrencies.

So a hedge fund that manages billions of dollars, it cannot buy Bitcoin outright. It has to have like a third party that stores the assets. So when you go on your Fidelity account and you buy a certain stock, Fidelity has a sub broker, their own sub broker that actually holds this in custodian for you. And before Buckt there was none so institutional investors could really not become really big percent participants in crypto and and so when this launches January 24 and we're talking the owner of the New York Stock Exchange is not a small company that is gonna run this this is the biggest in the world it's gonna be a very big event for cryptocurrencies and this is a done deal they're gonna launch they're gonna go live on January 24th

now just like I know that cryptocurrencies have bear markets to take it down by 85 to 95 percent so do all the billionaire hedge funds and so when they saw the price going up to 20 grand and then starts to crash they didn't buy the dip at 15,000 they didn't buy the dip at 15,000. They didn't buy the dip in 10,000. They didn't buy the dip at 6,000. They waited until it's very, very cheap and very natural for these markets to go down by 90%. And I think if you see institutional investors going in and buying as bucked goes live,

then this sector is going to turn around for sure. If not, it can weather away and become something that's on the sidelines, on the fringes, not something that's very important on the global scale. Just like gold is, right? Gold is owned by less than 1% of the population. We talk a lot about gold, but less than 1 in 100 people own it. So it can become something like that, where I'm not talking about something that's very on the fringes, but it's not going to change the world, as some of the crypto enthusiasts say. So we'll see.

This is like three weeks away, and we're gonna see what it does we're gonna cover that what do you see in the next year do you see us moving into a heavy recession what do you see going on there's a lot there's a lot of political forces that are going on with the marketplace we could see a presidency unravel uh we could see the more impact of more tariffs uh next year um and the continuing the continuing impact of tariffs uh certainly gm gave guidance and warned in june or july that the tariffs might cause layoffs and they had a huge amount of layoffs recently um there's a lot of political unrest that we could be heading into in the next year or two on top of you know just to reset with the uh federal reserve continuing to increase uh interest rates to cool the inflationary market i

mean we have more jobs right now than we have people to fill them so um you know what do you see coming for the next say year in the future so i think i think in terms of a recession in 2019, I do not think so. So there are many indicators that are still very positive, many problems, right? But a recession itself is unlikely in 2019. We shall see, right? But a slowdown,down sure the economy is going to slow down because tax the tax cut stimulus for corporation is is withering away it's becoming less important and it's also becoming baked into the into the pricey of these companies so a slowdown for sure but i think But I think in terms of 2020, a recession is almost certain. So when you have such low unemployment, as we do right now, 3.8%, 3.7%, the road from here on is up. The road is for more people to be unemployed.

Companies, when they reach a point where they're hiring, hiring, hiring, and not only hiring, but raising wages, at some point, that's it. That's all the company can absorb without disrupting its margins and its profits. And when CEOs sees that their margins and profits are being shrunk, the first thing they do is start laying off people because that's a very fixed cost. And they just start telling off people because that's a very fixed cost and they just start telling their other employees that they're gonna have more responsibilities. So you are gonna see the unemployment starting to go up back towards the four to five to six percent and that's when

recessions start. When you have rising unemployment in the United States that's when historically the United States is started to go into recession. And the reason I say that the market could have a last hurrah is because usually the stock market goes into bear markets or a very severe decline only after the recession has already started. So usually the turn of events is the Fed raises rates disproportionately, messes it up. People say deliberately or undeliberately, it doesn't matter. They mismanage the tightening cycle. The economy starts to go into recession. The stock market goes down, and that's the chain of events.

So where we are right now is everyone's worried about mismanaging the tightening cycle, and that's the chain of events. So where we are right now is that everyone's worried about mismanaging the timing cycle and that's where we are. Next comes the recession, next comes the stock market crash and usually that's the way it goes and I think what's very interesting, Chris, is this is all going to unfold right as we go into election year. So that is something that's important to understand. Now, a split Congress, like a Republican president with a Democratic House, people think it's bad. It's usually not bad. It usually means that a lot of things are going to get done because the Republicans, neither the Republicans or the Democrats want to be the scorn, right? They don't want to be the one that is projected to be the one that's causing trouble.

So many things do get done when there's a split Congress and presidency. So you will see a lot of new initiatives going into 2019. And I think the markets will be surprised by a lot of these problems that we have that will probably get solved. And so a lot of relief rally is going to be in there. Companies, CEOs are continuing to buy back stock in

billions of dollars. We just had the most the biggest year of buybacks ever and that is not going to stop, especially now when the stocks that are buying are even cheaper because of this correction. So it actually makes more sense right now to buy back stock.

In fact, even Warren Buffett is buying back his own stock right now. What was it, $1 trillion was bought back since the changes to the fees for corporations and stuff. Sure. And just so people understand why CEOs buy back their own stock, if you and I own a company, 50-50, and the company is worth $1 million, and we take the profits of the company, and I take my share, and I say, let me buy some of your stock.

And I reduce the share count. Instead of having 1 million shares that all are worth $1 because our company is worth 1 million, we buy back 100,000 shares. So now the company is worth 1 million, but we have 900,000 shares. So each share is worth $1.1. So we just added 10% to our share price by buying back some of the count. It also helps all of the existing shareholders to get a bigger dividend. And it's tax-free, right? You're getting a bigger dividend, and you did nothing towards getting a bigger dividend.

So that's why a lot of companies do that. But a lot of CEOs are also stuck. They have a lot of cash. The company is very profitable, but they don't see opportunities in the stock market when it was very expensive. So they're basically absorbing stock, absorbing stock, absorbing stock.

And then once they have a market crash, they're going to be able to absorb their competition that is not as strong as they are. So that's another reason that we see a lot of buybacks and it's not going to stop in 2019. So when you have such a big demand already in the marketplace for stocks, it's very easy to have these rallies of relief whenever good news is released by politicians, by

essential banks, etc. So that's why I say people are waiting for this financial reset, another 2008 and it may not come. And so if you're like me, you're like dancing on graves when things are very cheap, that may not happen. So you need to really become more flexible on the type of discounts that you look for. You may not be able to buy stuff at $0.20 on the dollar like you did in 2008, but you could buy them at $0.60 on the dollar, and that's really not a bad deal. If you go to wealthresearchgroup.com forward slash portfolio, you can actually see what I'm doing with my own money.

And we are going to cover new opportunities as soon as January, especially in the gold sector that is now erupting. As you can see, it's already at 1260. And when we called the bottom for it in August, it was at 1180. So we are seeing a very good gold market right now. I think the really big bull market for gold will only happen when rates are cut. So when the Federal Reserve moves back to cutting rates, I think that's the end for the general equities, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and the beginning of a commodities bull market.

But I do like to make sure that I have some of the positions in advance, and I'm willing to sit and wait because the prices are very cheap right now. Some of these gold miners, 11 out of 12 gold mining companies or silver mining companies have gone down to 52-week lows or all-time lows in September. So that's how bad the sentiment is for hard assets, commodities, because they're very inversely correlated with the general markets. Whenever the NASDAQ and biotechnology and all that sexy sectors go up, hard assets go down severely. And definitely with tariffs, they go down even further so that's what that that's another big thing for 2019. it's going to be an interesting ride one

way or another uh you know you give me uh pause to think about one thing i we've seen recessions where we go through market corrections up down down. What's interesting about what will happen in the next year or two is, like you say, companies have a lot more cash with the tax breaks they've been given. And so they'll be able to buy back stocks and kind of pad themselves a little bit more in recessionary times. I'm sure layoffs will continue to increase if we go through a correction, but they'll be able to kind of pad their stock prices

with being able to do their own buybacks. So that would be kind of interesting to see how we go through this trough. If there is one, it seems like the beginning of one, but how deep it goes is anyone's guess. like yeah beginning of one but how deep it goes is anyone's guess and if you can figure out how deep it's gonna be you'll be probably trillionaire you know something that's very interesting Chris fundamentally like demographic wise the United States is in a very good

situation from from the year 2000 to about 2016 there were more people exiting the workforce than getting in. The baby boomers were retiring, retiring, putting a lot of deflationary powers on everything, selling stocks, selling their real estate holdings, moving from giant houses to small apartments, and putting a lot of pressure on the economy. Also, all of them had homes, they had cars, they had those cell phones, they did less traveling, less vacations. So the consumption economy in the U.S. from 2000 to 2016 was very weak in general. Now the millennials have eclipsed the size of baby boomers, and this generation does not have cars, does not have homes, has not hit its peak earning years, it's not starting to go on vacations.

So there's a big spurt of growth that's going to come in from these 83 million people. A quarter of the United States, less than a quarter but a little bit less than a quarter, 24% doesn't matter this is a huge demographic group that is only beginning to get better jobs because they're inheriting the jobs that the baby boomers are moving away from because they're retiring they're gonna have they're gonna start taking down their debt levels do student debt levels and that will mean that they can qualify for mortgages. That will mean that they can get into homes, construction, obviously being America's number one industry throughout its 250-year history. And so, you know, in the next few years, we will see a lot of good fundamental reasons for America to grow.

On the flip side of that, unfunded liabilities are at a point where they're unpayable. You cannot pay Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with regular money. It's all going to be funny money. In other words, it's all going to be deficit spending and it's all going to be new debt that pays out these unfunded liabilities. And so if no politician will come to the table and say, hey guys, we need to cut this. We need to trim this. We need to change the retirement age to 75. Unless people do very eccentric things, which I don't see politicians do, because it's a good thing to do, right? It's a hard thing to do.

Then you are going to see a lot of inflation in the economy. And so I think the next decade is going to be very unique because it's going to have good growth, but also inflation. And it's going to have a generational divide between the boomers who are going to say, hey, we were promised this, we were promised this, we were promised this all along, we want our money. And the millennials that are going to say, hey, they're causing a lot of problems to us, to our generation.

And this is going to be very much one of the key points in American politics. And the second key point that's going to happen in American politics is what's called the wealth gap. So the last 10 years, you know, when you see in the mainstream media, when you see people saying, hey, there's a recovery, there's a recovery. The rich have recovered in 2011. They're richer than post-recession back in 2011. They're much richer than pre-Leman right now. They've been recovering for years because they own equities.

They own stocks. They own real estate. They own businesses. The strategies and policies of the Federal Reserve has really helped them. But for the average person, no change at all. Stagnant wages, zero savings rates, and no real way of taking money from your salary and enriching yourself in other ways. So you see a really big wealth gap in the United States where if you take a cut of 1,000 people, Chris, the person who's richest owns more money than the bottom 900 people put together.

When you have a situation like that in a democracy in the United States, that is something that's very detrimental. You can already see the lashing out in France with the yellow vests, and in Europe you're seeing it for years. But if this can really come to the United States, this can really be a big issue, wealth gap and opportunity gap, people to think that, hey, no matter how good I work in my job, my wage is not going to go

up because I'm going to get either outsourced or my job is going to get automated or they're going to have one people do the job of two, etc. So people are very frustrated with that and that's going to be a big thing going forward. And that's some really great insight,

Ben, you've given there. This is all the more reason people should subscribe to your articles, and they should go to your website and check it out and subscribe. Wealthresearchgroup.com is Leo's website. You can take and subscribe there, and that's pretty much where they need to contact you, right? Yeah, it is. The best way is to follow the newsletter.

Definitely, definitely. And get those market insights and stuff. You've given us some great stuff. We could probably talk all day on this. But anything else more you want us to know as we wrap up our show? You know, for people who are just getting started in investing, it's important to say, and you know this better than anyone else, investing is a profession. Though you don't go to college for four years and get a degree, right? But you don't get a degree for real estate as well. And 76% of America's millionaires are real estate people.

So there are professions that are making a lot of money, but they're not these standardized cookie cutter. Zero training. And I think that it's important to really understand it's a profession. So what I'd like to share is if you go to wealthresearchhub.com forward slash rich books, these are the books that really helped me personally. And there's a list of them over there and summarized. And obviously, you can get the real copies, the real books, which I highly recommend. I still read them periodically myself.

And I think that is what really I'd love for more people to do, to educate themselves through podcasts like yours, Chris, and everything you do on your channels and worldwide. This is what people need. They need education and not indoctrination and fitting into other people's plans in life, right? Because that's all the mainstream media does. It puts you into a path in life where you enrich the people that are richer. You go out every day, you commute to work, you pay oil, that's going to like 20 families. And then you consume food, going to 20 families. The way people

live enriches a very small amount of people. And you really need to educate yourself on how to escape this little system that they've built over centuries. Most definitely. So everyone, go check out his website and all the good stuff. Do you want to take and subscribe? I appreciate you being on the show. Be sure to go to YouTube.com, for instance, Chris Voss and hit that bell notification button. We've got the

Siberian Husky Pop in the background. You can take and check her out, all of her videos as well. Be sure to check out our coverage of CES 2019. Just yesterday, we had the CEO of CES show, CTA, Gary Shapiro, who was on, So you can check out that.

We got an interview on him and what the future is of technology and what's going down at the CS Show. So it's pretty exciting what we're going to be doing, our coverage there. We'll be doing live interviews and coverage on the show. Be sure to go to iTunes, Google Play, go to Spotify, iHeartRadio, and all the different places the Chris Voss show podcast is distributed and sent out we certainly appreciate everyone for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time