The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1214: This is NOT Financial Advice w/ Ben Kelleran and Stormy Waters

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

119 MinutesStormy Waters is a managing partner of a venture capital firm. Ben Kelleran is the host of the Kontrarian Korner podcast and writes at Substack under the same moniker.Ben and Stormy join Pete to offer an overview of their market analysis, explicitly clarifying that they are not providing financial advice.Stormy's Twitter AccountBen's PodcastBen's SubstackPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on Twitter

You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera.

Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Thuron Financial Services, Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings?

We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.

Liddle, more to value. Great to see you back at Spex Savers. Okay, could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right, yes.

Our Black Friday deals are eye-catching, but the letter chart's over here. Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals, like up to 70 Euro-I. off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and add free, head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you

support me through Substack or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file, and you can listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows me to basically put out an episode every day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two, even three a day. And, yeah, can't do it without you.

So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. Well, if you never caught one of my live streams before, there's the intro to it. I forgot to remove it before I started recording this. So, yeah, I'm a professional. Hey, hey, everyone. How's it going?

I was about to say that was, I've never heard that before, but man, that sounds, that sounds good, actually. Yeah, that's the intro from my stream. Okay, so I got Ben Keller in here. I got Stormy Waters here. This is the way we have to start out this episode. Total disclaimer. Nothing here is financial advice.

People have asked for an episode like this for a while. We're going to do it. please do not do not click buy on anything because of anything we talk about here now saying that i know that that's probably not going to happen but i have to put the disclaimer out here nothing here is a recommendation or a guarantee that you are going to make money so that's it stormy feels like i haven't talked to you in like 24 hours how are you doing doing good and is not investment advice. Ben, how are you doing?

Doing pretty good. I definitely have to echo that. Like, I can't, I do write a substack. I was focused on investments and all these different things. But at the end of the day, like, I can't reach through the screen and press the buy button or sell button for anyone. So your money, your responsibility is a way I'll put it. Yep.

100%. All right. Who wants to start giving an overview of what we're looking. at as far as the markets go. I'll, uh, I'll let stormy lead off. We can maybe, um, start specifically with commodities. I think that's, uh, well, yeah, how about you kick off commodities and I'll take it from there. Okay. Um, so basically, I think what a lot of people are missing as far as cycle changes,

some of these different things in markets that typically last 10 to 15 years and you see it in bonds, you see it in equities, you see it across markets. with commodities specifically it's like 10 to 15 year cycles and gold specifically tends to lead those cycles where anywhere from a year to two years ahead of the rest of the commodities it'll take off right and gold is gone from what 16 1700 ounce to like well over 3,000 in recent weeks so I think that's basically the smoke signal kind of signifying that something's different where it's not just going to be you get to own the S&P and passive invest and you like automatic 20% returns because this is America.

So I think it's going to be a little more difficult as far as finding opportunities. But I think commodities are extremely cheap right now. I think energy is extremely cheap right now. But basically there's a lot of different sectors and businesses and different ways to kind of express that view, whether it's like you like natural gas, you like uranium or coal stocks or whatever it is. There's a lot of different ways to potentially apply the view that we're probably going to be getting higher interest rates and other things that'll be very good for another five, 10 year run in some of the different commodities. Yeah, I think interest rates is going to be a

component that everyone wants to focus on because it is going to go contra to pretty much everything that you're hearing. So much of what you're hearing is, at least again, this is just my perspective.

You know, I'm not I'm not bad at giving predictions, we'll say. But so much of what you see when you see the dialogue in the investment media is, how do I put it? Everyone listening to this podcast probably has an inherent distrust of the media,

and that's good. That's important. And the place that you need to be the most suspicious is in the financial media. The shilling in the financial. media is going to be much worse than anything else that you have probably, like, worse than anything in the mainstream media. So keep that in mind when you read stuff about interest rates coming down at any moment or Powell going to pivot, things like this, these things aren't going to happen. What you're seeing is financial institutions that,

desperately need rates to come down, leaning on policymakers to make those decisions. They're trying to quite literally manifest the market conditions to a very important book, as much as I hate the man and hope that he is rotting in hell in the very near future. one George Soros. George Soros wrote a book called Narrative Markets. And I think that everyone should read it if they want to understand basically

how to navigate the media environment when it comes to finance. COVID made me really understand the book because I thought I understood it, but I didn't. I was like, oh, okay, so what George is saying is that the market doesn't really care about fundamentals as much as it may seem. What it really cares about is stories. And investments have stories. And it's the story of the investment that are making people

pull the trigger or hold the investment when they otherwise wouldn't. And I was like, that's a really novel concept. But then I watched the media be controlled in a way that I couldn't unsee. Like, I knew it was bullshit most of the time before, but never, that was the first time, so I was too young during 9-11, when I actually watched a narrative rollout. Like, you got to see the machine turn on and hum. And I was like, oh, shit. He wasn't talking about taking narratives that exist and trading a security based on the story about the security. and not the fundamentals of the security, he was talking about making the story and creating the market. That's what they're doing.

So interest rates are not coming down. In fact, I don't know how old Ben is, but I can probably say that Pete is close to me in age, and we will likely never see interest rates as low as they will. were in 2022 or 2023 or likely even now for the rest of our lifetimes. Pete and I will be dead before we see a 2% interest rate again. Right. So interest rates are not coming down. And this makes leverage very expensive. Right. Leverage costs money because you're basically getting a line of credit, line of credit at an interest rate. even if it's only in your trade, even if it's only in your e-trade portfolio, you are still paying interest

points on it. But since interest rates have been so low for so long, and always going lower, at least in my entire lifetime, right, when I was born, was like peak Volker. So literally my entire life, since I was born, every quarter or every six months, you can pretty much set your watch by interest rates getting lower, which allowed a bunch of bullshit to happen. First off, I'll explain why Ben is correct in his assessment of commodities and the future of them. And I'll have, funny enough, commodity futures, ha ha. If you're a company that isn't really fucking good at your job, right, eventually you would go out of business in the before-time. times, right? So pre-Vulker times, you would go out of business. But in the post-Bulker times of knowing

that the interest rates are going to come down every single quarter, what you do is you borrow a bunch of money, right? And you use that borrowed money to run your business, the operational costs. Or buyback stock? Well, that is what for when you have excess cash. Usually don't borrow money to buy you don't usually don't buy stock back with borrowed money, right? Because of the capital cost. What you do when you buy back stock is when you have a bunch of cash on hand and you don't want to issue a dividend and return that money to shareholders, which is what you're supposed to do. But if you spend that money before you have to return it, then you don't have to return it. and if you know that most of your shareholders are hedge funds or, you know, money market funds or shit like BlackRock,

who care far more about returns than they do about actually getting dividend money, like physical money back, then you know that they won't have a problem with this, that they'd much rather you take the cash on hand and pump the stock then invest in any long-term, like long-term, whether it be new research and development or new facilities, right, anything to actually make the business more valuable long-term. They don't really care about the business. It's really just a like three or four-letter combination and then a value number attached to it. They don't give a fuck what the business does, who it employs, where it is, like, they don't give a shit. Ready for huge savings

We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th Because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items All reduced to clear From home essentials to seasonal must-habs When the doors open, the deals go fast Come see for yourself The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale

28th to 30th of November Liddle, more to value You catch them in the corner of your eye Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro.

Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera, design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Savor sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the Wild Atlantic Surounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the

gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump Dunebeg. Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. It's a trading trading sardine in the casino, basically. Yes, exactly. 100%. So they don't really want you spending any excess money on any long-term growth plans. They would much rather you pump them by the quarter. But anyways, all these companies that are very bad at running their business, profitably, they borrow a bunch of money. And what they do next quarter, when the interest rates go lower, is they refinance that debt. This is going to be like, let's say you have a minimum credit card payment. And all of a sudden, your interest rate lowers for some freakish reason,

because that lowering of interest rates only happens to businesses that never filters down to you. maybe if you're getting a mortgage, but that's about it. Right? So let's actually the mortgage would be better. Let's say your mortgage payment is X amount of dollars and you refinance at a lower interest rate. And now your payment is less. Let's say it's 20% less. You had a $4,000 payment and now you have a $3,000 payment.

Did your salary go up an extra $1,000 a month? No, it did not. Just because you have to pay less on your mortgage doesn't mean you, earned an extra $1,000 a month. It just means you have to spend $1,000 less. But that's not what these companies have been doing. They've been refinancing their debt and the money that they don't have to pay in interest payments anymore, right, the reduction in mortgage by $1,000, they've been chalking that up as revenue, right? Like their business earned that money. So, it'll come as a surprise for you to hear that 25%, one in four stocks on the New York Stock Exchange,

and this problem is far more metastasized in European stock markets, Japanese stock markets, and Asian stock markets. But we'll just take the U.S., which is the best of the bunch. One in four publicly traded companies pays more in debt services, right? So it has to pay more in interest than it earns in top line revenue, right? So that means they're paying more in interest. They owe more in debt services than they make as a business doing business. And if it wasn't for the ability to refinance this debt every quarter or every six months, they would be out of business already. They would have blown up. Right. So the last gasp of 2023, like the last, you know, bit of COVID gave a lot of these companies a chance to refinance hard. And they did.

But it doesn't mean their businesses got any more profitable. Right. So that means one and four companies are basically a ticking time bob for interest rates to go up to a point where it cracks the math, and they are no longer able to operate. And since they've been operating on borrowed money for this long, when they go, they will go really quickly. So keep that in mind when you're buying stocks. Just know that, you know, one in four companies, one in four of those stock tickers is a fucking zombie company time bomb. That can go to zero really quickly. All right, with that being said, the other thing that interest rates do, and tying this back to leverage, and why commodity prices have been so cheap for so long and why commodity prices are going to go

up more in the near future. In fact, they are going to go up proportionally to interest rates going up. Well, Stormy, why is this? Well, because it's kind of a dirty secret of the Western world that we take our cheap interest, our cheap money, and we use this cheap interest, right, this debt, our ability to borrow tremendous amounts and pay very little for that borrowing, to leverage up futures contracts, right? So let's say you have $100, and let's say interest rates are 1%. So inflation's 2%. So that means that interest is effectively in real terms free. All right.

So we have free borrowing capacity. What we're going to do is we're going to take our $100 and we're going to get a 10x leverage from our securities broker. So even though I have $100, I will be trading with the equivalent of what? What is that? $10,000? I'm really dumb today, boys and girls, so please bear with me. So I have a thousand dollars. Wow, that was really, really dumb.

Okay, anyways, I have $1,000 when I only should have $100. So that means $900 of those dollars aren't really real money. But I'm going to place very real bets on the futures exchange, betting that the price of X commodity goes down. right so when i pile on a bunch of futures contracts that are basically betting that something is going to go down if i pile on enough of those i will effectively manifest that reality right a company that is shorted nine times for every one person that is buying the stock hoping the company goes up that stock's fucking going down.

Because markets operate on a little bit of consensus, actually a lot of bit of consensus. Everyone just follows on to what everyone else is doing. So if everyone is seeing a bunch of shorts pile on and pile on and pile on, they're going to assume usually correctly that somebody knows something that they don't. And that sounds like money. And they're going to do the exact same thing. They're going to pile on their shorts. And then that reality, or sorry, that, you know, story will become reality because the price of that thing is going to go down because of everyone shorting it.

We've effectively done this with commodities to keep resource producing countries nice and poor. Because if the commodity price goes up, these countries that only have natural resources to sell, right? will have a ton of money sitting around, and they may use that money for industrial production to take those raw materials and turn them into finished goods to sell into our markets, and we don't want that. We want them to not be able to do that, right? We want them to have no other choice, but to sell us the raw materials. We turn it into finished goods, and we turn around and sell the finished goods back to them. We do the value-added manufacturing, which is where the is not you, you uppity, you know, I don't know, Nicaraguan or whatever. So that only works if

interest rates are very, very low. But if interest rates are not very, very low, the cost of that leverage becomes very, very expensive. And it becomes no longer worthwhile to do it. So we've been doing this for nigh on, I don't know, 30 fucking years, 40 years, 40, years. So commodities have been artificially suppressed using cheap credit for about 30 years. So when that pressure comes off, right, and now that short pressure goes away, what do you think is going to happen to those commodities? Ben? They might go just a little bit higher. I think to add to your point when you see something like oil and you see basically positioning where some of these large traders are as short as they were in the COVID like crash cycle where like

say what you want about the economy it's not as chaotic or uncertain as things were in like March 2020 so you see that kind of positioning and oil kind of just bumping around like 60, 65 a barrel, like, dip down in the 50s briefly. Like, you look at it and I kind of view it as there's a whole bunch of kind of kind of kind of waiting for a spark. But I think you see it across different markets at different times. It gets more extreme. Like, you kind of see the pressure release valve being gold.

And they, I think, have kind of taken their thumb off the scale on gold specifically in the last, I don't know, a couple of years. Because I think everyone, whether you look at China and their central bank buying, I think that's a big driver. And I think basically everyone, as far as I can tell, except Europe, is totally fine with gold, rising to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 an ounce. I think it'll end the decade. Significantly higher.

But part of that's obviously currency devaluation. whatnot, but I think like you're saying, all these different commodities when you put your thumb on the scale and it's basically a constant headwind when you eventually get to a point where that you stretch that rubber band far enough and just snaps. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.

Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30. because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself.

The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebag. Unwind in our luxurious spa, savour sumptuous farm-fresh dining, relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds.

Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Farage. Yes. Gold is also going up for another reason, right? and that we're going to have to talk about separately. That'll probably, we'll save that for the end,

which is derivatives. Basically, gold is not an inflation hedge. Libertarians are wrong. Really, libertarians are wrong about pretty much everything from politics to economics itself, which is, deliciously ironic, as Thomas would say, because they've turned economics into both politics and religion, which is, well, it's funny, considering they're wrong about it.

You can be right about economics if everything you're doing is working in theory, because you can just declare, oh, this is better, this is better than what's happening now, in theory. Okay, well, show me how it played out. Well, no, this is better. Friedrich List has been proven as a crank. Oh, yeah, who did that? Oh, you mean somebody whose economics is never going to be implemented? Nice try, buddy.

Nice try. Have a nice day. Head pat. Yeah, he was disproven in theory. But Frederick List has actually been, you know, proven in fact. But go on. I was just going to say it's looking at the world the way it is versus the way you want to be, I think is basically what you guys are getting at. Yes.

Economics doesn't exist. As in economies exist, right? Those exist. People buy and sell. I actually did a post about this recently, and everyone, particularly the Lulberts, got all retarded on me. So let me use this time to clarify. difference. Economies are real. Economics, the academic profession and study is not. Because like Pete and you, Ben, said, paraphrasing, they have to operate in a vacuum where the only people inside

the vacuum are the buyers and the sellers. Right? You only got millions and millions of buyers and millions of millions of sellers, the buyers trying to get the most value for the least amount of money, and the sellers trying to get the most amount of money for coughing up the least amount of value. And somewhere in this magical process becomes price discovery. If there are no external non-economic factors involved. Like let's say for oil prices, we could say, let's say like the geostrategic imperatives of Vladimir Putin's Russia, Ben. Right. So if, let's say, Trump and Saudi Arabia have been keeping oil prices artificially low via overproduction, right?

And narrative, like you were talking about earlier. Mm-hmm. Yes, the recession narrative is very important for oil prices. because, and this is the brilliant economics, sorry, the brilliant economics theory associated that, oh, if GDP backward dates for two quarters straight, that means recession, and that means people will be driving less, and less goods will need to be shipped around because the GDP number went backwards for two quarters in a row. That's, that sounds retarded, but that's literally like, economics dogma.

All right. The correlation as causation bros are just anyways, but the people don't know. The people that tout economics as a reality, as a real thing, there's really no hope. But the reason I bring that up is because particularly when it comes to narratives and versus realities, there is a narrative amongst libertarians that gold is a hedge against inflation and that if we were to just get rid of the fiat money, then not only will everything magically be right in our society and our values, Pete, our Jews, our Judeo-Christian values will return,

and trannies will go away, and James Lindsay will have nothing to talk about, and we will return to the magic good old times before, if only we went on gold-backed currency, then all of the other problems in society, from homelessness to drug addiction, actually I think libertarians are largely responsible, at least in their own part for drug addiction numbers,

because they're fucking stoned all the time. Anyways, they think that all this will be fixed if we just go back to gold and that inflation will go away. In fact, inflation will be impossible. But this is incorrect because, I mean, Pete, you and Paul Fahrenheit did a series on the Spanish Empire. And I believe there was tons of inflation in Europe in the Middle Ages during periods of time. and there were also periods of rapid deflation. And Spain was flush with gold. Yeah, in fact, gold was the only currency

any of those nations ever used. So wait, if not only Spain was on a gold standard, or literally physical gold as currency, but every other nation they traded with used only gold as currency, how did all of these nations experience inflation? Or then deflation? How was there any fluctuation whatsoever in their currency if they

used gold as money? Well, my dear friends, causation are different things. Because when something is a commodity, like Ben can tell us, a commodity is itself a hedge against inflation. but when you use something as money, no longer is it a commodity. It's now... And funny enough, money trades differently than commodity. If you take a commodity and you make it money, it no longer trades like a commodity. It trades like a currency, which can inflate and can deflate. So keep this in mind.

The only thing gold is a hedge against is government, instability. It won't protect you from inflation as long as any commodity. We could take all of our money and put it into barrels of oil and we will be equally as protected from inflation. than we would if they were gold bars, or platinum or palladium or, you know, timber, all of these things. So gold, when you see everybody rushing for gold, particularly the central banks, what they are worried about is governments.

Not so much their own, partially their own. but primarily counterparties, right? Because governments loan other governments money. And there has been more central bank gold buying in the last three years as there has been in the last 60. So in the last 60 years, all the gold buying from central banks that's happened, which there has been a bunch,

two, almost three times as much of that gold buying has happened in the last three years. So what does that tell you? That tells you governments are worried about other governments going bankrupt or going away. And that is going to be largely the driving factor of gold because it's a commodity. Central banks aren't buying it to turn it into currency. They are buying it to backstop counterparty risk. That being said, I think that.

Ben is correct. I think gold is going to be probably 5 to 6,000 by the end of 2027. So three years. Gold will probably 3x from where it is now. Actually, sorry, 2x from where it is now. And then you're like, oh, well, that's a 200% return. I'm going to go buy gold. Well, you could do that. But really, that isn't all that great because there's going to be other things that go up a hell of a lot more. Right. So just park the gold conversation and anyone talking about gold off to the side. Right.

Have some of your money in gold. Yes. But no more than 20% at the absolute maximum. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive.

The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria.

Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? Mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself.

The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. farm fresh dining, relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg.

Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiug, Kush Faragea. Well, especially after the run, it's had, right? There's time to buy these things, and it's generally not after it's gone vertical. like year to date. I'd have to look it up specifically, but it's up at least 20 or 30% in what, four or five months. So I think there's part of it too where when like if you're listening to investing podcasts or different people talking about it and everyone's talking about gold and gold miners and all these different things, when something gets hot that's generally not the time to be like

piling in, right? It doesn't mean you automatically sell either. I think gold's going higher. I don't think it's a sell at all, but I don't think it's something where it's made the most attractive place to be buying. But the thing on gold, I think, is interesting too. It feeds into the GDP. I don't know if you saw this, but the, I think is people are complaining about Q1 GDP being negative because the U.S. imported so much gold, which if that like doesn't set off alarm bells of GDP not having actually anything to do with the economy. I think that's a, it's just interesting that people are saying, oh, GDP's weak. It's like, okay, what is importing a shitload of gold actually have to do with the health of the economy?

Like next to nothing, right? And when you kind of look at some of these different things in the narratives and recession narratives of oil and copper and all these different trades and like, oh, there's going to be. supply chain issues and shortages and you're not going to be able to get your Chinese whatever from the grocery store from Amazon whatever it is because container ships and all these different things all the ports are empty all these narratives you see on social media and then you listen to a guy like I won't claim to be a shipping expert but if you go listen to a guy like Sal Mercogliano like he does daily like or at least like three or four times a week he does

updates on what's going on the shipping that's the name of his channel and he's basically like yeah, look, it's not a, it's not business as usual, but it's not like the end of the world, like COVID supply chain shit show. So I think the narrative, and this goes back into the narrative and flows and some of these different things that drive markets in general, but I think is pretty interesting. I've had conversations with friends on the phone recently, like complaining about fake and gay markets where you kind of like look at all this stuff where you have passive investing, like creating massive. distortions where I think it's like 50 to 55% of like passive of investing is done by passive vehicles. That's like your S&P 500 funds, your SPY, VU I think is a Vanguard one. But the point is that like it really is as simple as if you give Vanguard money, they buy. If you take money back, right, they sell. There's no human being like making decisions there. And that creates

distortions where you have like seven or eight tech companies or like the top 10 in S&P basically account for I think it was like 40 40 or 45 percent of S&P 500. I could be off on that. But it's even worse for like the NASDAQ and some of these different things where you have passive distortions. You've got concentration risk in those index funds. You've got narratives and flows and all these different things. At the same time, you have Trump doing his thing with constantly tweeting or putting

narratives and my buddy was talking about this uh when trump says it's a good time to buy stocks it's uh like obviously do your own make your own decisions here but he was like i'm going to buy and that was like late last week and then chinese trade deal or like when like the whole tariff circus was going on in early april and he's like it's probably pretty good time to buy stocks and then they like pump the markets basically i think when you have trump doing like tape bombs like that in like short-term trading. Like it's really easy to get chopped to bits, trying to like trade in and out and do all these things.

And that's why I'd rather just buy something that's cheap and hopefully it has a catalyst and let other people figure it out later. But I was thinking maybe if I could redirect here too, and maybe ask a question of you stormy, I think the thing that was, I've been thinking about lately with the economy and some of the narrative run tax cuts, the question I have is

like everyone's bitching and moaning like investors are complaining about debt and deficits and all these things like it's going to be like the sky is falling it's all over if we cut income taxes on people making less than 200,000 a year like I've been hearing but I think the thing that like first order effect if you cut income taxes

excuse me income taxes to zero for that like group of people doesn't the economy just like like rip in the next three, six months? Yes. Like, this is just take off? Again, never. So basically the first two months, the first two to three weeks of Trump's tariffs were the

financial media's COVID, right? Talk about a deliberate scare campaign. Because remember the institutions that don't want the trade deals to happen. Every country in the world. All of their intelligence agencies, right, and all of their very, very wealthy people are going to be either funding and or pressuring media organizations, financial media organizations, to basically say how this is going to be a disaster. Think about it. This, if Trump, the onshoreing of U.S. manufacturing is going to crater China's economy. It's going to crater a lot of these emerging market economies.

But let's just take China, for instance, because I actually have some clout. The number one priority, then, of all of the Chinese intelligence apparatus has one priority now to try and stop Donald Trump from doing this. Europe, same thing. UK, same thing. So the problem about globalism is when you try and make national policy decisions that involve economics in any capacity, you now are in direct conflict with large swaths of the globe who are going to influence just like U.S. intelligence influences,

just like Israeli intelligence influences. The number one thing that intelligence agencies like to influence is the fucking media, right? Because if you're China, the onshoreing of manufacturing and the application of tariffs is now an existential threat no different than Ukraine joining NATO on Russia's border. It's that big of a deal for you. If I could jump into an ad on the China thing, like when you look at the Chinese economy and the subsidies and distortions that are going on in manufacturing in real estate where it's like, oh, yeah, just take a zero percent loan to start up this electric vehicle company and

like all these different things like i think there's so many distortions that go on underneath the surface in manufacturing where if you overinvest in some of these sectors it crowds out other areas and it really um like i think the distortions in their economy because they're basically toggling switches and monkeying with the controls i think are like i potentially even more extreme than some of stuff you see here in the u.s yes uh the national socials had the better idea, obviously, which is where the government would give directives. Like, hey, we're going to need this in a couple years. We want you to go in this direction. And businesses would then go pursue that initiative themselves. China does it a different way. China is a very transactional society,

and they basically have to straight up have to pay businesses to achieve any of the policy needs of the state. Right. They're not unified in that capacity. Right. Like they're not unified in common purpose because, well, they're cynical. Right. Like the Chinese people themselves are cynical.

Like they don't give a shit about the Chinese government. You know, it's not like it is in European countries or, you know, where ideals matter. Not ideas, ideals. So yeah, they have to straight up. cut checks to get these things to happen, which leads to massive distortions like you're talking about and massive concentrations of debt risk. So when you're talking about the distortions and the bubbling out in certain areas, you're just talking about the capital on one side of it. But underneath the surface, there is a bubble in the opposite direction.

Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30. because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value.

You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range For Mentor, Leon and Terramar Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro Search Coopera and discover our latest offers Coopera

Design that moves Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Subject to lending criteria Terms and conditions apply Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

And now this is the Reh-Vos Nation of Hamstere. It's leargoal to a guy and not great gree in Aundun, and lay in the Gala to give the father Gaule to Deirin. In Ergred, we're dig tour

in Woonaha with Funeveh, one of Univein'O, each other Lekyllis, on as good people tariff in one tassie. There's error of Cooctoo Agen. Fallen this moll in airgrid Pongahee. Yeah.

Which is debt. Bubbles create anti-bubbles too. Commodities is like the anti-bubble. Yeah. At least where I see it right now. Yes. So, yeah. Everything that has happened in the financial press and the regular press over the last two weeks

has been deliberate scare bullshit to stop Donald Trump from doing exactly what he's doing. And that's why it is so divergent from the reality we see. Like literally, the financial press was like as bad as the regular press during peak COVID as how fucking shameful it's been. So yeah, completely overblown nonsense. But it's understandable why a lot of these nations are leaning on a lot of these media organizations because to them it really is existential. And this is over the broader thing that we're talking about that nobody's really going to understand. A lot of people will understand like if I say globalism is fucking over. they'll say, oh, okay, that makes sense.

But they don't understand what that practically means in their, like, reality, right? Like at the grocery store or, you know, when they go to buy things or things like that. We're talking about a fucking, a shift so great that it's hard to conceptualize what this actually means. Making things in America, onshoreing U.S. industries. These all sound really good, but what's happening is going to be profound in a whole bunch of ways in people's day-to-day lives that they're not seeing. And when you get to thinking on that, when you're thinking about the second and third order effects, that's when there's opportunity to make money. Right. So, for instance, I've been accumulating a bunch of, I won't say the specific stock, but let's just say there's a bunch of publicly traded junkyards.

They have super low debt, almost none. So that means all the revenue is not getting eaten up by interest payments and basically credit card payments. So that means they have a ton of cash on hand, and if they ever needed to rapidly expand, let's say, that credit is available to them. They can go get debt because they're not in debt when they need it. And why would I be buying junkyard stocks? That sounds retarded.

well, making things in America is going to be very, very difficult when it comes to who has been making your auto parts, right? And who has been making your automobiles? Well, there's something called, and this is something that you should think of, Ben, when you're allocating, is how long the country has been really not just the country, just the entire global economy has operated on planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is something very important to think about because businesses got, well, they got fucking lazy. Rather than come up with a new technology that's going to do new things, that's risky. Who knows if it pays off? Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. Who knows? Who knows? If only we could figure out a way to get these schmucks on a subscription plan.

Where, you know, they're basically renting that shit for me every single year. You know, and they're upgrading every year, like a cell phone. Well, how do I make sure your cell phone gets upgraded? Well, isn't it funny how your fucking iPhone all of a sudden commits ritual suicide? Every time a new iPhone comes out, all of a sudden this motherfucker is breaking. in every single way that it's bought, like it becomes the worst. Isn't that funny?

Or dishwashers and like laundry machines. Dishwashers, laundry machines. Yes. But if I get a refrigerator from the 30s, it still works. Yeah, my grandma still has one from like 40s, 50s. I literally just bought one. I think everyone that's listening

should be taking what money that they have available, not in your investing money, not your IRA money, whatever. I'm talking about like spare cash you have. And buying old appliances, buying old power tools. These things matter.

Because, like Ben just said, his grandmother has a refrigerator that has stayed running perfectly fucking fine without ever breaking since 1940. But any refrigerator that you bought in the last 30 years will not last more than four years without something breaking because the goal isn't to sell you a working refrigerator. The goal is to keep you buying new refrigerators.

The price of globalization didn't drive prices down, right? Planned obsolescence drove things down because they were able to sell you shittier stuff and to build it where it lasts forever, cost more. right so really what you think is globalization and cheaper manufacturing places lowering the cost of goods like any fucking libertarian open borders faggot will tell you oh just the larger we make this everything gets cheaper no things have just gotten cheaper in the last 30 years and you're looking at that like it's the fucking rule and that if we just replicate certain societal changes this will happen in every instance but they're wrong about what the actual cause of things getting cheaper is. It's not manufacturers being able to manufacture wherever they want.

And in places without regulation, like none of that is real. In low-cost labor. Yes, exactly. Prices went down because they're selling you shit, like literal pieces of trash that won't work for more than two years. When before, to sell you a refrigerator, I would have to sell you some shit that would last 80 years. like your grandmas and that shit's expensive so buy here's uh 100% here's a little detour and a business idea if there's any uh mechanical engineers that happen to be listening or um people that want to actually manufacture stuff like if you have the skills to go out and build a

refrigerator a washing machine laundry machine all these appliances and they're indestructible bulletproof and on top of that you said yeah it's going to cost you a small fortune but it's going to last forever and we'll come out and repair it like free charge in the future if it does break if you can like line up an idea like that i think uh there's there'll be plenty of people that would pay for it but that's a a project for the future maybe if someone has that area of expertise but i think there's something to be said for the subscription model like you got to have revenue coming in all the time and people get caught up in. Like it's the same, like it really is the same deal.

That only matters if your business needs to be steady because you owe a lot of money in debt. Subscription models become necessary for companies that are borrowing a lot. But sorry to cut you are, continue. And they have to try and grow their way out. Yeah. But yeah, with the, like, Like, it really is no different than Netflix if you're, like, laundry machine, if that shit breaks every three to five years, I mean, it's a one, like, one-time big ticket purchase in theory.

But if you're doing it every five years like clockwork, it really is no different than $10 a month for Netflix, whatever it is. But I think it is one of those things where, like, and this is where I think there's other distortions that I think are really interesting because you have private equity, you've got private credit. you have all these endowments that are locked up in, I think it's like 60 or 70% of Harvard's endowment. Don't call me on exact numbers, but a whole shitload of endowments are in investments that are very illiquid. And you see all these different firms like launching, oh, here's a private credit and a private equity ETF. We're going to launch this illiquid garbage. toxic sludge to public investors. And like I said, we said no investing advice at the beginning.

Please do not buy private equity, private credit, ETF junk from these people that are trying to dump on retail. Like at least if you want to, if you really have to, like know exactly what you're buying. And when you have some of these other distortions, private equity, private credit and these guys that can't survive on, I mean, they're struggling at like four. or five percent rates. And if we go like, oh, six, seven, like, I think we're headed for double digit industry rates over a long enough period of time.

And you look at what that does to a whole bunch of different industries. Like, that's where the balance sheet of different companies becomes important. And like the cash flows of what the business actually does is going to be tied to inflation. Like, is there debt rates? Like, are they fixed or variable interest rates? How long? Like, what are the maturities? When like all these different things that kind of when you're looking at different businesses,

this is one of the advantages of actually doing the CPA and public accounting is you get to see a whole different like variety of companies and sectors. And when you see, I'll give a personal example, I think the statute of limitations have probably passed. But when you see, I think it was Apollo, it's either Apollo or Ares. And they go and buy Value Village and they levered up to the tits. and they're trying to dump it on public markets and IPO it. And it is like the balance sheet is just stuff of nightmares. And they're trying to like dump it on public markets. It's like just avoid that.

Right. So I think there's a whole bunch of things where if you know, like it's, it's pretty easy to back into some of these things where if you know, okay, I need to avoid X, Y, and Z. And one of those things is crappy balance sheet. And one of those things is like, bubbly valuations or it's something that is very hot in news and going to go buy AI stocks or quantum computing or like some of these things where if everyone's talking about it

and the stocks up like 50, 60, 75% in like the last couple of months, like the chance like that opportunity is passed for the most part. So the one one question I had to and wanted to see what you thought in this stormy with the rate side of things. It's amazing to me that people think rates are going down significantly from here because you don't have interest rate cycles where you get 40 years of declining rates and then like we go up for five years roughly and we come down a little bit, but we're going to be going down some more from here. Like long term, I think rates are going way higher, but like 40 years of declining rates doesn't lead to five years of rising rates and then that cycles over, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself.

The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eyes. I. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar.

Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera, design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria, terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. And now this is over the House of National House. It's leargoal to goehe and not great gree in Aundoon,

and leander gaol to gaol far away to deirin. In Ergird, we're dig tour chaw-in-vue in one-hae, with Furniwain from Woonagh. There's a lot of you do not on a lot of lecturers on as to refer to all the town, Gno and Pobble

tariff in Tashdie to Wagon. Follam Nis more in Ergrid Pongahy. No, like I said, I think we're going to see double-digit interest rates by the end of 2028.

I think we'll probably see it I think we'll probably see and this is Fed funds rate, not mortgage rate rate. I think you will probably see an 8 to 10% Fed funds rate by the end of 2027, mid-20208. But back to what we were saying about things that are, so basically people are not going to be able to just go buy a new car every year, right? The dealerships, make their money on car repair. They don't make their money from selling you the car. They make money on you having to service it. And that's why it's so expensive. People are going to begin

to have to repair things because new ones every 10 seconds. Whenever this one gets dirty or, you know, its warranty is over. I have to sell this car. I'm going to, you know, sell this car that I bought because its warranty is about to expire, and that means I'm going to have to pay to repair it. Right. Well, if you can't get replacement parts very easily because they're all made in China, then that makes repairing that a big problem.

So buying a brand new car will mean that there will not be a lot of replacement parts available. if all of a sudden they are flooding in from China and then no longer flooding in from China. So if people have to repair their own things and the repair parts become very scarce, then things like junkyards, right, selling, what do they call it, refurbished parts are going to be a huge deal. They're going to be vital. And those parts that those junkyards are sitting on, right, that they got for virtually nothing, right?

They're buying totaled cars for pennies from the insurance companies, right? Those are going to be like, you know, 30, 40 foot tall towers of gold. Because every single part that makes up those cars are parts that are very, very hard to get. and to what you were saying about, you know, that anybody that knows anything, a little bit of engineering, might want to start thinking about making parts. Well, I'm going to give you this example. I'm on Facebook Marketplace for Detroit, Michigan right now. This is in Reading, Michigan.

Sorry, this is actually Reading, Pennsylvania. Another place, I did like a 500-mile radius of Detroit. which is crazy. But, right, I'm looking at, you know, Reading, Pennsylvania, another one of these former manufacturing hubs that because of the politics and the taxes that these blue states have, it has effectively become impossible to run a manufacturing business of any kind, out of Michigan, out of Illinois, or anywhere in New England, including Pennsylvania. The economics don't make sense because of the government policies and the amount of taxes. So all these manufacturing businesses are going to go are going out of business.

And likely never recovered after COVID if they were already barely hanging on. So I'm looking at a Deccal Maho, which is a. FPS 500m-NC CNC milling machine. It is a four-axis CNC milling machine manufactured in Germany. This particular machine that I'm looking at is seven years old, which in industrial equipment is not a lot at all. And this machine new costs roughly about a quarter of a million dollars. And if I go to, you know, any of these manufacturing equipment wholesaling companies,

they will sell me the same machine with roughly 15 or 20,000 hours on it for about 80,000 euros, which right now is, you know, about 100 grand. So this machine is worth about $100,000 used. this Facebook marketplace ad is for $9,000 because this man has gone out of business. $9,000 for a 4-axis CNC machine and a very, very nice German one at that. I can just go down the list. Here is a Mitsubishi or $30,000, $30,000, $39,000, sorry, in Detroit. Michigan, right? They're 2010 machines, so they're not the latest five-axis. These are five or four-axis

CNC machines, which are more than enough to make all types of parts. But I can buy five of them, five CNC machines for $40,000 because this guy in Detroit, Michigan, he's out of business. What about this other one? Here's a CNC lathe. $12,000. That's a big, that's very large. It's a very large machine. If you wanted to make really large parts, that's what you would need. And because these states and their politics have made it impossible to run a manufacturing business, all of these poor business owners are going out of business. Here's a plasma CNC machine. I'm sorry, a plasma table and CNC machine.

So that means you can do the CNC milling and also do the plasma cutting all in the same place for a whopping $15,000. Here's a five-axis CNC machine. Five-axis is important because that's where you get in the really, really kind of, what's the word? High-precision manufacturing that you would need for like aerospace stuff. It's a 2019 and it's $60,000. And this machine, new, also German, retails for about $390,000.

So come on, guys, all of you engineers, maybe the best thing that you could be investing in is yourself. And if you know that the nation is going to be short on parts and it's going to take a very long time for all these big companies. Because a big company is a lot like a battleship or a cruise ship. When it wants to turn around and change direction, it takes literally years. Just the giant bureaucracy. Yep. And then it's got to build new factories and facilities here in America. And that's going to take time.

All right. So these supply chain issues might not get sorted out for six or seven years. Well, that's going to create quite a part shortage, is it not? Demand piling up for six years with no sense. new increase in supply, you don't need to be a libertarian economics person to figure out what the fuck happens there. So it's a very risky time and a very uncertain time. And unfortunately, a time where startup capital is going to be virtually non-existent. Because everyone knows that a bunch of bad things are coming down the pike and a lot of uncertainty is happening. The idea

of you getting an angel investor or a VC to come throw you a bunch of money for a hardware business is going to be very low next to zero. And because of the credit market, like Ben and I have been saying, is going to be very, very tight. Because not only is interest rates going up, if interest rates go up, that means more people are going to default on their loans. Right. And if more people are defaulting on their loans, that means, lending becomes a lot riskier, which means banks are going to be more hesitant to lend. So if you can't get bank startup money and angel investors and venture capitalist types, their pocketbooks are going to be really tight. Well, if you're really clever and you're willing

to drive a bit, you can accomplish the same goal with very, very, very small amounts of money. in comparison. There's still going to be a bunch of technical know-how you're going to need. These machines, like people go to school to learn how to use them. I'm sure they're not fucking rocket science. But this may be something you want to invest in. If for no other reason than your own capabilities to make things for people in your community.

Don't get me wrong, you're not going to be like a mega-part supplier supplying things all around the world, or sorry, all around the country, but you may be. But no matter what, you will have the capacity to make the things that your community is going to need. So it may not make you mega rich, but capital equipment is capital. It's worth money. So right now, because of the asymmetry in regulatory environments, capital equipment, the price of capital equipment is artificially low. And we know that the need and demand for things that is manufactured by this equipment is going to increase exponentially in the near future.

This makes a huge pricing mismatch. Wouldn't you say, Ben? Yeah, I think the thing I'll add, too, is when, like, what you're really saying and what I'm hearing is as far as like what you're investing in or looking at or considering, I think from where we are now moving forward the next five, 10 years, maybe longer, like you're going to want to be looking at things that are tied to the real economy, tied to stuff that can't be printed, tied to businesses that produce stuff that can't be printed, oil, gas, coal,

like agricultural commodities, whatever, like, whatever it is. I think there's different strategies and ways to apply it, but I think what stormy is saying is important where, like, you're probably not going to want to own something that is built on a mountain of leverage on basically the status quo continuing as it is, whether that's like looking at certain banks or certain financial institutions that might be a dumpster fire and they might have like off-balance sheet derivatives like some of the European banks where it's just a complete shit show, right? And I've been hearing about people saying the European banks are cheap and those stocks are cheap.

defense like they've gone up a lot like great fantastic but if you have systemic shit happening like i think the european banks are the first to go so like there's certain things where if you can narrow it down to like know what you want to avoid know generally the areas you want to look right there's going to be different ways to go about doing that whether it's right buying cnc machines or buying uranium producers or buying like natural gas stocks, whatever it is. So I think that's at least the way I kind of look at where things are headed is you want to be tied to the real economy, production of real goods or commodities or services, and not just something that is financial wizardry, you know? Yep. And debt's not necessarily a bad thing, since we're talking about the Eurozone.

If you own, if you're buying any of this bullshit about, because Ben can probably tell you, when I get set on an idea and I know my thesis, basically I know that I'm right and I know without a doubt that I'm right and I set my positions, I stop looking at the financial press. I don't give a shit because nothing that is going to be printed in that news. is going to make me not right. Like, you know. Yeah. Once you know something cold, there's no surprises left.

Exactly. But I do know that over the last couple weeks, there has been a lot of hype in financial media talking about European companies, and they're going through a boom, and you need to take your money, and you need to invest in European defense companies like Rine Metal and stuff,

because they're going to get this, huge stimulus and all this stuff and Europe's got to rearm and all these things. If you put a dollar into Europe, you're a fucking idiot. If I could jump in for a sec, Ryan Metal up.

230% in the last year, 177% since the start of this year and trading at almost 100 times last year's earnings. So... Can you explain what that means to people? basically there let me pull up there we'll got a screener here if you give me a second so

basically like right now the u.s. traded version of the stock is like 1,800 bucks if you have P.E. of 100 then their earnings per share over the last year is like 20 bucks so you're paying $1,800 for $20 of earnings, which if you say had a rental property, I guess the simplest way to put it, and you basically had like 1% cap rate is the way, like it take you 100 years to your money out, right? If earnings didn't grow or something didn't happen. And that's a company that is $87 billion. So it's not some small company that's going to grow. at least can't grow to the sky.

So it's, I would avoid it basically. I always said not advice, but I, they're a better place to be. I'll leave it at that. Yes, exactly. That's what I said. Like, just, I can't say a specific investment. But I can say, like, I wouldn't put a dollar in the Eurozone. Because if you know anything about the news and your economy, particularly their energy,

costs, then you know that there is no case, there is no bullish case for the European economy, period. And if you see central banks all rushing to gold, remember I said about counterparty risk? And that's what they're, like, gold is a hedge against governments. At a personal level, gold holding is a hedge against your own. When banks do it, it's a hedge against other governments. So if you see all of these nations, central banks, rushing to buy gold, and remember, they're worried about counterparty risk, right? So like if I lend Ben a bunch of money, right? Ben is now my counterparty risk, right? Ben's ability to pay his bills is now risk on my balance sheet. So if you see all of these nations running to cover counterparty risk and one group of

nations not running to cover counterparty risk, which one do you think is the one that's that full well knows it's not going to be able to pay its bills? The one that's not buying a bunch of gold, huh? Because they already know. If they're the basically the person, that pissed in the pool. The person who is in the place that, you know, those pools that turn like blue or red when somebody pees in them, the person standing in the middle of the fucking red is the person that peed in the pool. The person not running to buy gold is the one that is the counterparty risk, that the other

nations, central banks are running to cover. So yeah, Europe is a whole different thing. If you're a European listener, you can hop on a train and go to Switzerland. And this is an investment advice. This is banking advice, which any asshole can give. I strongly recommend you hop on a train. And to my British friends, I recommend you hop on the train that goes under the channel tunnel and then take another train to get to Switzerland if you don't want to fly.

And you set up a bank account. And that bank account is going to be denominated in Swiss francs. They will hold euros for you. You can have euro deposits or you could deposit euros to the bank and have the bank deposit Swiss francs into your Swiss account. You're not like hiding from taxes. It can be under your name. You're not doing any of that.

But your money is outside of the European Union's dis, you know, outside of their purview, right? The European Union cannot, you know, set monetary policy and fiscal policy for Switzerland. nor can the UK. So if you are a British citizen with British bank accounts and you're a European citizen with European Union bank accounts at European banks, you need to get your money out of euros and out of pounds as fast as humanly possible and into Swiss francs if dollars are not an option or crypto is too complicated for you. This is of the utmost imperative.

And I've put my money where my mouth is on this because I've borrowed against my entire portfolio. All of my liquid net worth, I've leveraged and I've borrowed in euro. So I've taken the entire value of my portfolio and borrowed the same amount of money, right? Except for I borrowed that money in euros. Why would I do that? Well, that's exactly why. Because the EU is going to collapse by 2030. That's exactly why.

If not sooner. And so not only do I get the trade with twice the amount of money and have twice the amount of returns, which is nice. I enjoy it. It's good. But at the end of the day, there's going to be no one for me to pay that loan back to. And before that day happens, when the currency is in freefall, which it will be, $1. will be worth several hundred euros. So if I did want to pay them back before it all goes tits up,

it'll probably cost me a couple hundred bucks to pay back the amount of euros. Yeah. Got to keep a couple of those tokens. So I am that confident. Just to give you an idea how bad it's going to be, Keir Starmer has announced today that they will be closing the borders and going to digital ID. Why do you close?

Go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, no, this is beneficial. It's been getting blasted ever since we started. But why would you close the borders and go to a digital ID, especially for your diaspora around the world if things are getting better? Why would he do that? that specifically there. I know why we would do. I know why we would close to borders. Yeah. I mean, you look at some of these policies. You hear talk about a European Union.

Talks. They roll it out in October. What are you talking about? That's the European Central Bank said that last week. It's not in talks anymore. It rolls out in October. No, I understand. I'm just saying all for some of these things, as far as actually successfully rolling it out, I'll believe it when I see it. like it's definitely an agenda plan i'm just saying there are certain things where i i kind of you're saying you're saying are they able to roll it out as in like will the roll out be such a shit show that it'll be really embarrassing and all fuck up

yes are they so incompetent that's perfectly possible so how scared are they about what's going to happen to the existing euro in the existing financial system for them to take that risk. Right? Because it's not like a... Well, scared enough to be threatening more conflict for Russia.

Right? You see some of that. Whether the rollout becomes an absolute shit show doesn't matter if the regular Euro's in freefall, does it? Then the shit show rollout will still be better. Yeah, I mean, Band-Aid on a bullet hole at that point. Exactly. Yeah.

So if you notice, the person that's been flogging digital ID is Mr. Tony Blair and the Tony Blair Institute. First, the digital ID was how they tackle COVID. We need digital ID because we need vaccine passports. Well, then COVID went away. And then you heard Tony Blair switch to immigration, right? we can stop illegal immigration with digital ID. So if you notice, it doesn't really matter what the problem is that he says he's trying to solve.

What seems to really matter is getting the government to adopt digital ID. Right? Because it's apparently a magic solution to every problem, which means it's a solution to no problems. Yeah. That they're telling you about. but is a solution to something else that they're scared to tell you about. Because if they weren't scared to tell you about it, they would tell you what the solution,

what the problem is that this is actually a solution for. Rather than changing the problem every 10 minutes. So who funds the Tony Blair Institute? The usual suspects. Probably the usual suspects. Yes, that is correct. Anyways, so you need, why do you need central bank digital currency and why do you need digital ID?

Why do these things matter? Because currency controls are coming. Central bank digital currency does a lot of things. It allows them to literally spin up money instantaneously. But this would be a huge problem because the exchange rates of these currencies would collapse. China figured out a way around that. And they have, Pete, I think you and I've talked about this before, I think privately. For that, they have the onshore one and the offshore one.

They have a separate currency for people that are inside the country. And it is illegal for you to have that other type of currency that they use to transact with nations. Because when you transact with another nation, you can't give them, you know, Chucky Cheese tokens. they need, you know, real currency. So the digital ID is for the people, not the institutions, is Barclay's going to get a digital ID? No, they're not. No, because they're an institution.

Yeah, they're not. That's a city of London. The digital ID is for you, the person. The CBDC is for you, the person. And that means capital controls. So unless you get your money out of these economic zones before this becomes policy and put into place, you will never get it out. And that means you get to ride the fun all the way down to the bottom. Take a look at Chile.

I think it was Zimbabwe, you know, Fimar, Germany, take your pick. So yeah, go to fucking Switzerland. Like, there's a reason gold's coming to the U.S. right? That's not a fluke. And in size. How much size? Right. I'd have to go look, but like I was saying earlier enough to distort

more than the Bank of England has basically. The Bank of England has had to, its gold has been, its gold holdings have been exhausted. And right now it is borrowing gold from other gold banks. Because there are banks that only deal in gold in the UK. It has to borrow from them. So if the central bank of your country is out of gold and has to borrow it, how is that possible? Does that mean that the central bank has promised more gold than it has?

Yeah. Isn't like 100 to 1 or something? I've heard rumors about 101. And that's an open secret. So you imagine, I mean, that lets you know that it's actually way worse. So anyways. Yes. I've heard 200 to 300.

the scenario. Because again, they use those paper gold coupons the same way as the U.S. has used derivatives, right? So the whole purpose

of both of these things is to lever up futures contracts to suppress the price of commodities. So you can buy them cheaper than they're actually worth. So the same reason the gold is leaving, Ben, is also the same reason why your commodity super cycle is coming.

One and the same. All right. So what not to invest in? Let's talk about that for a little bit. What would you not invest in, Ben, that everyone else is investing in? I mean, like I mentioned private equity, private credit. How would somebody know what that is? As in like they're only looking at stocks, things like that.

They're probably going to read and check up other places because they're definitely not going to fucking make investment decisions. on what we say. So they're probably going to do a lot of research afterwards. So how are they going to know like what tickers and stuff, private credit and private or PE and PC is? Yeah. That's going to be your big name firms, at least on Wall Street from,

I think it's Apollo, Ares, KKR is one. I don't know the tickers exactly at the top of my head, but I'm just listening off the biggest ones I can think. of, but I think Black Rock is more asset management than private equity. Blackstone's another one. As far as private credit, I think they're basically rolled up into a lot of the same companies. As far as I know all the big guys have private equity and private credit and a whole bunch of other crap, but those are like the public tickers. I think there's like there's basically going to be problems with that whole

business model, an idea with rates being where they are. And it basically, with the way things have seemingly frozen up, like the whole thing is they can't even send distributions out to investors without basically telling them, hey, you have to re-up and invest in the next fund like that's what i've heard is going on it's like basically you're either locked in or like you get extended is what i've been here no yeah they're trying to extend and pretend is is the terminology which tells you something else is happening um now let's talk yeah nothing good nothing good though what about tech what about the mag seven uh what about invidia oh fuck

know. If you look at some of these industries, I'll give a free book recommendation out for anyone that wants to understand markets and the way these cycles typically tend to work. It's called Capital Returns by Edward Chancellor, I believe is his name. But if you look at what happens when all this money crowds into one area of the market, whether it's big tech and our example, right, it literally drives the returns down moving forward and it starves capital out of places where, like, that's where your money should be going. And like, that's what I'm talking about with commodities and these other things. But when everyone's crowded into big tech, like by definition, right, even just from a market dynamic perspective,

there's fewer and fewer like buyers at these higher prices. And you go look at like, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, like, their valuations on basically any way you slice it, it's really hard to see a way they go up other than narratives and flows and passive distortions, which we've been talking about for a bit. So I'm not saying, like, go out and sell all your positions if you have any tech companies. But what I will say is it's really hard to build a bowlcase, say, for Apple at, let me pull

it up. I haven't even looked in long-ass time. Apple's close to 30 times earnings and it's close to a $3 trillion market cap. Is it going to $10 trillion? Are they going to buy back 20% of their stock over the next five years? What are you pricing in really at some of these valuations? It could go up for the next three months or six months or 12 months, right? If the money keeps coming in and you've got all these retirement plans that every two weeks pile into the S&P and all these different things that it's the cycle that reinforces itself and makes markets less efficient, really, if you think about it. But like on an actual business return perspective, right, Apple 30 times earnies not a great idea. Microsoft, wherever it's at, like it's the same basically

across the board. I know some people like Google because the valuation is relatively cheap, but I mean, just know you're investing basically in the NSA, CIA. I mean, your government agency, alphabet soup agency at that point. But I think as far as big tech and avoiding that specifically, you're going to want to be looking at other places where like maybe there are some technology companies that are small caps and undercover and you find something where like, hey, this is a real business. And it's trading at like 12 or 13 times earnings, whatever it is, but it's growing like top and bottom line, like revenue and earnings, like 25% a year. Like, there are going to be real businesses

in the technology sector, but just crowding in with the herd into big tech, I think is a sucker's bet. So what are the sectors that, you know, I guess this is where you have to be careful because you can start making recommendations that people start jumping on. So going forward and everything we're seeing with the with the Trump era and everything that's happening what are the sectors that you know you think you both think we'll be making money in the in the near future um as far as public markets I think the best place to look are going to be broadly commodities gold I think we talked about this a little bit but there's a lot of reason to believe that it's going to 4,000 and 5,000, right?

Over time, it's going higher, is my opinion. And I think that's probably a pretty durable trend. There's been, right, we kind of talk about the problem with is the run-up it's had over the last, I mean, really a year and a half, but especially the start of this year. So it's in favor. All the commodity guys are talking about it. Like, they love the gold mining stocks. They're talking about, like, look at how cheap these things are.

I think you probably get a chance. I'm not making specific recommendations. But if you go look up the gold miners ETF, which is GDX, right? Just the full basket of everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, like the whole nine, right? If you go look up like that basket, what you're really doing is you're basically making a long gold and short energy, short oil trade with some of these businesses. because of how big of an expense the energy input costs are for all these businesses. So if gold's ripping and oil's flat, like it is now, these things print money. If oil's ripping and gold's flat, like, that's bad news for those businesses.

If they're both going up, gold's going faster, right? There's all these different inputs you can toggle. But if you kind of, like, I don't really find Goldmire's all that attractive either because, for the most part, they're really crappy businesses. Like you really have to hit a top tier mine and find one of those deposits or one of those things that separates it to make the miners really attractive. And that's most commodity businesses in the first place. There's a lot of pitfalls in the commodity sector in general with some of these businesses. But I think there are a couple of mining sectors that are pretty interesting.

And it goes back a little bit to energy, but also to, steel and we kind of talked about the reindustrialization of the country and some of the things that are going to be happening where a lot of people don't know this but like 70% of the world's steel production relies on coal and it's not going to come from electric arc furnaces is going to come from what's called metallurgical coal and there are companies out there that produce this stuff even here in the US and they're pretty cheap a lot of them have very good balance sheets like there are a couple that I can think of where I think one of them is basically, let me pull it up just to make sure. Yeah, they effectively have no debt.

So the stuff that Stormy is talking about where like some of these companies are going to be fine. And what's happening right now in the whole coal sector is like 24 and 25 has been rough. And so all these stocks have been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and just taken out to the woodshed over the last. year, but really last a couple of years. And so, you're the last year and a half, give or take. But when you look at some of these things, when coal prices start moving, especially if you think steel cycle and all these other commodities are going to move to, right? Coal is a very interesting way to play it, especially with some of these, the way some of these

companies are valued. If you want, you can just go look up what some of these coal stocks did from 2020 to like, 2024. Like some of the numbers they put up is like thousands of percent. So not a recommendation, but like they got that hated and that cheap where everyone thought they're going bankrupt. It was all over. Sky's falling. And then sure enough, it wasn't. It's capital cycle. They're all starved to capital. Commodity prices have to go up and then they print money for however long it might be. And so I think we're at or nearing the trough in thermal coal, which is for electricity. and metallurgical coal. I think there are definitely companies in that area that are worth a look.

You're basically going to end up looking at Australian companies or U.S. companies for the most part. Like, you're not going to find. I think there's like a couple companies in Mongolia and other places, maybe in South America. But the point is, like, for most of the big names that like you'll find first, they're going to be in the U.S. and Australia. And depending on where you look in Australia, you're going to get hosed on their royalty regime. So I would just be aware that like there's other factors too. It's not just like go buy coal stocks because like coal is cheap, right? There's different nuances for each of them.

But I think that's pretty interesting and pretty hated, pretty out of favor and all the commodity guys like they're all busy talking about other things. The one that I find interesting right now specifically is in energy. But the whole energy sector in general, I think, is. We were talking about oil and talking about what goes on with features and the number of paper contracts that are floating around out there. If I remember right, I was reading a book or listening to a podcast that the paper contracts traded is, depending on the time, I think it's 30 to 50 times the volume of what actually like the physical market trades. right so there's a whole bunch of extra basically people that are short paper barrels versus like actual producers that are hedging or whatever it may be so i think when you have what's going on and oil um getting manipulated down through narrative and um paper markets whatnot and conveniently timed opec announcements that where it's like trump like definitely made a deal with uh

the Saudis where on the tariff like April 2nd tariff day or whatever it was like oh here's our here's our list of tariffs and percentages on all these different countries and then same day OPEC was like yep we're uh increasing supply faster and expected and so oil pukes like 15 bucks in like two weeks like mission accomplished for trump admin which i think is actually a serious policy mistake but i'm not going to get derailed on that um but as soon as oil goes down to sub-60, what you basically do to the energy sector here in the U.S. is you're going to see CAPEX cuts in the Permian Basin in Texas because it's high cost, high decline rate.

You're not going to drill your best wells at $60 a barrel. And there's some talk that's a geological decline where it's like Permian and U.S. supply has peaked. It's rolling over. The U.S. is never going to produce as much oil again as like 13.4 million barrels at which if you look at other shale basins, whether it's North Dakota or other places in the U.S., they've already peaked. Like there's no doubt if you look at those production charts.

So if the Permian's peaking, and that's like 6 million barrels a day of production, that is a very big problem for oil supply because that's been effectively the entire world's growth for oil production over the last 15 years. So the problem is like they don't make. make any money at 60. They really don't make a whole lot at 70. And they might be able to raise production at 80, 85, 90, but how much? I have no idea. So I don't think it's that much. I think there's maybe something to be said for the geological argument that all the best stuff is gone. When you see, I'll just, I'll give you an anecdote so you get an idea of what's going on in the

Permian. When pioneer resources sold to Exxon in in 2023, I believe. I remember reading a tweet. And this was from like 2008, where a couple guys like field hands, like guys working in the oil sector, and they knew Sheffield, who's a CEO of Pioneer,

they basically said, okay, Permian and Shale's peaking within two years of that CEO selling because Pioneer was all Permian production. And so he sells in 2023. It's 2025 now. And he was on CNBC recently talking about okay, we're going to be out of tier one production or tier one acreage in 28 and out of tier two by 2032 in the Permian.

So I think there's somebody said for like the Permian is not going to be the best place to be if you're looking for energy companies unless you are very excited about natural gas because those wells are getting gasier overtime and some of these different things that are. are basically having an impact. So that's, I think, maybe somewhere to be cautious, I would say. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that specifically stormy. Not really on energy, but I'm going to have to bow out because I have, well, I've kind of overshot actually my hard stop by a little bit. But yeah, no worries. Oh yeah, I know you have another, you have a, you have a,

another commitment. So I have to bounce. But lastly, if I have to leave anybody with anything, I would say get out. I would put very little in the Mag 7 as little as possible. I mean, I've been short the mag, particularly in video. And really the whole AI thing. I think the AI hype is bullshit. And not that it's bullshit. AI exists, whatever, but as far as it creating economic value, it doesn't seem to be materializing to any of the companies making trillions of dollars in fucking CAPEX. Sorry, investing trillions of dollars in

data centers for AI hardware, for, you know, Nvidia GPUs to be everywhere. Yeah, but if anybody that knows about AI is that each of iteration of AI gets smaller and lighter and smaller and lighter and smaller and lighter. The big difference between chat GPT and what you would call it, the deep seek is that deep seek required, I think less than half of the amount of GPU usage. So if AI is getting smaller and smaller, then about the worst thing you could do as a company is invest hundreds of billions of dollars in data center.

full of GPUs for your AI future. Because any AI future would involve way less. So the AI of the future future will be small enough to run on your phone locally. I know you have to go about. I'll ask you a quick question. Have you heard of the, it's not floating point multiple. I can't remember what it's called. I have to look it up maybe after and send it to you.

But basically there are chips out there that can run these algorithms and they're like 95% more efficient as far as energy. And none of the that may or may not be possible. I have some investments in chip cooling in particular. But I haven't heard of that particular company now. Generally when I hear figures that like that, I become a little skeptical. And I would have to. I would then go like tap people. in my network that, you know, know about chip manufacturing, things like that.

So when I hear claims like that, I talk to people. I don't, when you hear stuff like that, if you. Sec, sector experts. Exactly. Like, I won't read. When I see something like that that looks exciting and looks a little too good to be true, but, you know, very, very good if true, that's when I stop reading and I start asking. Yeah, I think they're called Elmo is versus floating point multiplication.

It's like a different structure or something. I would invest, I would, if I could give people an idea what to do just broadly, I would probably have no more than 20%, preferably like 10% of your money in gold. And an equal amount in Bitcoin, adjust Bitcoin, no fucking all coins or other dumb stuff. Now, I don't like Farkcoin. So that's 20% of your money or 30, depending on how much you take my advice. Or, yeah, anyways. So then we're going to take 40% of your money and we're going to keep it on the side in cash.

Now, explain why you want to do that in a second. Right? So if I got 40% and 30%, that means I should only be investing. in stocks, bonds, whatever, liquid tradable securities, no more than 30 maximum 40%, right? So I want to have as close to 40 or 50% of my money free and ready to go in liquid cash or treasury. I mean, when I say liquid cash, I mean treasuries, right? Because this way you're actually, you're just pacing inflation. But if you stick it in literally cash in your mattress, right? You're getting eaten alive because the inflation rate in reality, boys and girls, is like 10 to 15

percent, right? It's not 5 percent or whatever fucking dumb number the Fed is trying to get you to believe. Yeah. Now, you're the real inflation number. number is probably closer to 10, right? So treasuries, at least 40% of your money, because you're going to need that because you're going to see opportunities. Right. So all of the investment ideas I could give you, Ben can give you, they're not going to be as good as seeing, like let's say, if interest rates continue to climb and no one can afford to buy a new house

there are people that still need to sell their house so if nobody wants to sell their house because they can't go buy in a new house and nobody wants to go buy eventually that is that's unsustainable right so the people prices will get cheap enough

So what's going to happen is the housing demand is going to remain consistent. Right. But buyers won't be spending more money. And sellers can only hold the line for so long. Right. Yeah, I don't want to sell because I can't sell up. Maybe I could sell a cross. But one thing that we haven't talked about is a lot of people are going to get laid off and they've already started to get laid off.

and they've already started to get laid off. Layoffs have been massive. A lot of these companies, like the five tech companies were talking about, the Fang stocks. Cuminatively, they've laid off almost half a million people in the last two years. That's a lot.

That's a lot of $300, $500,000 year jobs don't exist anymore. That's a lot of mortgage payments that can't afford to get paid anymore. And that's just in five stocks. There's going to be a lot of people that are going to lose their jobs during this chaos and melee. And that's going to be a lot of people that need to sell their homes regardless,

and they can't wait. So what's going to happen if nothing else happens, if nothing else, we are going to see rapid deflation in asset prices. And that'll actually mute a lot of the commodity in the growth in commodities, will be masked, right? It'll be disguised for a little bit by the deflation and asset prices writ large, right? So I don't know if anybody's in the market for a boat or a plane. I have been looking. And to say, well, let's just compare it to like 20-21 or 22. We're like 50% less, 60%. So in the really high-end stuff, the big expensive stuff, things are already half as expensive.

Things have dropped 50% in price, 40% in price. In anything used, obviously, if you want to go buy a new fucking plane, that's your goddamn business. Then it's going to start moving to homes. And you're already starting to see it. Because anybody that has a million, two million, three million, dollars or 10 million dollars, 15 million dollars for a house has the ability to wait. Right? They don't have to buy something. They're not in a position like somebody that's buying a half a million dollar house or a $400,000 house.

That person is buying because they have to buy a house. Right? Because of their family is growing because they have to move, right? Because renting is no longer an option financially. It's just not feasible. Right. that person has to buy. A person with a $5 million house, $10 million house, even a $3 million house, $2 million house depending on the area, the people that buy that house have money already.

They can afford to wait. So that means if anything looks dicey at all, any uncertainty, they're just going to go ahead and wait. And that means those were the people that were the biggest buyers. The big money stuff dries up fast. Because when rich people buy things, they buy a lot. And they'll all buy. They're very trend oriented and very trend sensitive. So 2020 to 2022, 2023, that was when they were all buying. And everyone, every rich guy you know bought a new thing. Whether there's a new house, a new boat, things. like that. But when things get uncertain and sketchy, they stop. To keep up with the Joneses. But the market is still putting homes like that on the market,

still building homes for that, you know, the $5, $10 million mark. But all of a sudden, overnight, it stops. So first you're going to see the falling, and I mean falling, of prices in those categories. I've been looking at houses recently. I won't say where, but I mean in the last three months I'm seeing price cuts of 250,000 300,000 some of them half a million dollar price cuts

yeah big chunks right so if you're dropping your price half a million dollars and you've only had it on the market for two months what does that tell me that tells me I'm probably the only fucking person looking at it right so it starts at the top

and then it works its way down and markets always overcorrect. If housing prices need to come down 30% or 40% to reach an equilibrium, that means they're going to go down 60 plus percent, and then they're going to slowly work their way back up 20 more percent to where they should have been. So if a market needs to be at 50 and it's currently at 100, it's going to go down to 30,

overshoot and then come back up. And that overshoot is why you need to have 40% of your money and cash. Right? Because the good deal, the fucking real game changer deal, the real game changing investment doesn't exist yet. You can't see it yet. But it damn sure is there. If you're patient and you're observant and you have money locked and loaded ready to go that you can move very quickly. Right? Because other people won't have cash money ready to go and can move quickly. So that 40% that you have in treasuries, it isn't uninvested. It's waiting for the right investment. And it will generate returns far more than any of the other shit you put your money in. So 40% off to the side, 20%, 15%, all right, gold, and then 20 to 15% in Bitcoin.

The stuff that you should have in the stock market should be like 30% of your network. Maximum 40%, because that's where we're going to see the most volatility. Gold, Bitcoin, it's not moving. right in fact volatility in uncertainty increases the price of both of those don't they right so you want to be hedged against that volatility so that's your gold and that's your bitcoin so at no point in time any of the conversations that pete and i and ben have had do you need to put anything even remotely approaching half of your money in anything and on that i'll leave you guys until next time pete yeah Good, good chat with you.

Yeah, you guys don't have to end on my account. I just got to dip out. Ben's got a show Sable offshore. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I'm looking. No, leave that, leave that for later. But I was going to say, if it does work out on the group, so. Looking forward to having. Happy to do it, man.

Happy to do it. Pete, thank you for your hospitality. Ben, thank you for joining me. All right. Yeah, of course, Tommy. Have a good one. Ben, I'm going to, um, um, um, um, Do you have anything you want to wrap with?

We can let's leave this open to do another one soon. We'll talk about some different things. I mean, because really only hit the large overview of everything today. So I think when I was talking about energy there, I think the last piece that I'll add to that is when you really like dumb it down to base level, like energy is the economy. All this stuff that oil goes into. It's not just going in people's gas tanks, right? It's in plastics and clothes and shoe. Like the amount of different products that oil and petroleum products end up in, I think, is something that most people just aren't aware of.

And if you look at what's, I think, is going to be a significant imbalance in supply and demand for oil, for natural gas, for the energy commodities, for coal, for uranium for these things that like really drive what an economy can actually produce, especially if we are going to reindustrialize and do all these things that we talked about. I think energy is going to be, if you're looking at equities specifically, I think energy is going to be one of the sectors to be in. Commodities broadly, I think is my favorite pond efficient, I guess is the way I'll put it. And if you guys like follow my substack or listen to my podcast. I haven't made any secret like what my favorite pick is right now. But if you guys are interested enough to go and look at my substack or listen to podcast, like I talk about

investment ideas, what's going on with oil, energy, all these different topics. And feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I don't want people to just see one name and do zero research and buy it and then stock goes down the next day and they're like look I have no way to tell you what stocks are going to do short term whether it's stuff in energy stuff in s and p like I have no idea I like to think that over the next 12 to 18 months some of these like trends will become apparent with different commodities different parts of the market and um I'm happy to talk with anybody about different ideas and different trends in the market, different commodities, different individual stocks.

And like, feel free to reach out either via Twitter. You can just look up Contrarian Corner with 2Ks. I was on Matt Ericson's podcast, I think six months ago or something. And he was like, you're 1K short. But the, if you look up Contrarian Corner, either on any of your podcast apps or Substack or Twitter, like you'll find me. Just look for that with 2Ks and you'll be able to probably pick my brain on what's my favorite idea. It's not a, it's not exactly a mystery, but I know we don't need to run more than a couple hours.

Well, yeah, I was just going to say, what's the name of the substack? The substack is also contrarian corner. So if you look up contrarian with a K, it'll be one of the first search results on Twitter, on Google, or on basically any of the podcast apps. Excellent. I appreciate it, Ben. We'll do it again real soon. Thank you. Yeah.

Thanks for having me.