Macro Meltdown or Market Shift?

0:00 The market, of course, adjusting now in a big way. We are going to talk about oil today, what kind of impact that might have on crypto and also the traditional markets. We'll also look at DeFi, maybe stabilizing. We'll get into the CPI. Everybody wants to know what these numbers mean in terms of investing. And then, of course, we'll also take a look at the growth of where the traditional finance market could be. Because if you look at earnings, this is one of those areas that's been very good for the S & P 500. So we'll look at that. Because this has a huge factor in how it could play out toward the end of the year, especially with the CPI numbers. Who knows what this is going to do with Kevin Warsh. It's going to be

0:40 a good show today. It's a little different today. As you guys see, I'm out of the studio. We're going to be putting this show on the main channel and we're going to bring back in one of our analysts that has joined us. She actually comes on this show called The Digital Street over on the podcast channel. So you guys can check it out over there. But let me bring in Rebecca Walzer, who comes in from Walzer Wealth Management. How are you, Rebecca?

1:02 I'm great, Paul. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

1:04 Yeah, nice to see you back. So we have to talk about what's going on with oil prices. And obviously, that was one of the core elements in the CPI that everybody panics and the sky is falling. First of all, what did you think about them waiting out? Because oil and energy in general, specifically to diesel, was kind of the big part where this CPI number came in from.

1:28 But what was your first opinion when you saw the CPI data?

1:32 In a way, I was a little relieved, but also happy in the sense that you could dig into the numbers and see that over half of the increase was just energy related. And we just had this rule in economics that you... you don't look at policy decisions on short-term price action or short-term interruptions. The issue, of course, Paul, is that we've been expecting this Iranian situation to get worked out and then not get worked out and then get worked out. And so is it a short-term disruption?

2:01 Is it a short-term price action? Is it some kind of, or is it longer term? And is it something we're going to have to continuously look think about, well, we have to keep discounting and we have to keep inflating. We have to keep dealing with the fact that we don't know what's going to happen. But clearly, when you see that a lot of it was attributed to gasoline specifically rising, you know, massively, again, driven and derived from both the diesel and the wars.

2:29 Do you think that, I guess my question is, how long can the U.S., I know you look at the EU, Asia, China specifically, they are very dependent on Middle East oil, specifically from Iran. How long do you think this can handle? Because I think this obviously has been, I don't think it's going to have any impact on the midterms now, if anything were to happen in the sense of trying to stop this. So unless there was a magical, you know, in some way, a ceasefire or some sort of retracement out of Iran. But how much of long-term impact do you think this has truly on the market?

3:11 I mean, well, I.

3:13 Think if we could truncate it and have kind of status quo return to us, then we could get back to what we would really be talking about, which would just be all of the monetization, decentralized finance really coming into its.

3:27 Beginning to come into its own, we would be focused on that.

3:30 And we wouldn't constantly be going back and forth to Ukraine and Russia and Iran and the Middle East. But I will say that with the diesel situation and with the deal that Russia and the United States are trying to make around diesel, that is obviously causing us some issues with our Ukrainian support. And there's already, as you probably are seeing, that there's already Ukraine saying today that they've been cut off from their access to certain military-grade surveillance.

3:57 Satellites.

3:57 So all of this, Paul, is absolutely related and interconnected. The world is very, very interconnected, more than we've ever been. And it's interesting to see that, well, we've got a diesel problem over here. So now we're talking to Russia about diesel. Now that's affecting our Ukraine. It is all so connected economically.

4:13 And that's the point.

4:14 And so I think that investors are always already told investors, be investors, be in for the long term.

4:20 With nerves of steel as we go through this.

4:23 And that is even more definite as we continue to have these energy problems that are impacting, unfortunately, capital costs.

4:31 And capital costs are most important right now because this.

4:34 Is the age of not only government's funding, but also private sector needing massive funds for the monetization. So it's a big and challenging time to deal with all of these factors that consistently change every night.

4:47 You've got the crude oil chart. I'll bring it up real quick. it's not back to the all-time high, but definitely hovering right there, almost near $ 100. It's at $ 95 trading right now. We saw that pullback a few weeks ago where it looked as though there might be some sort of reprieve, but that did not happen. However, you look at this low back here at $ 68. I mean, do you think, because the market has been performing regardless of what has been happening with oil. At some point, does the market finally kind of throw its hands up and say, okay, we're done. We think this top is in.

5:26 You look at the earnings data that we saw from Q3. What do you think is going to be the factor here? Do they care about where oil is or not?

5:36 Yeah, and I think what you're seeing, Paul, is you're seeing the market doing crazily well right now in the face of everything that's happened because you have had a substantial run of time, and I'm talking about over a decade, of hyperscalers and Mag7 and all of these companies having massive free cash flow and building up. Look at Apple, for example, building up just a war chest of cash and then now starting to monetize. So in other words, what I'm trying to say is we are less than a year into this war, although it doesn't.

6:11 Seem like that.

6:11 It doesn't feel like that.

6:13 It seems like it's been three years because of how much back and forth it is. But I think that the action started on February 28th, really the beginning of March. And so what that means is we're not even a year into this. And so companies that had substantial reserves are going to be able to kind of deal with short-term temporary price increases without massive drag on maybe share price or even revenue expectations and profit expectations. Until it is no longer short term, until it's like, okay, now this is going to be a medium term threat and we're going to have to deal with it in the medium term. And that's when you're going to start seeing things change. I think a lot of companies have made

6:51 a lot of effort to keep the price increases on their end. Because the consumer, obviously, especially at the bottom of the K in this bifurcated economy that we have, they can't really take on more. And, you know, when you see McDonald's dropping in sales because the person that goes to McDonald's can't afford to go to McDonald's, that's when you know, like, they're tapped out. ironically, we still have retail sales.

7:14 The last number for August come in surprisingly high. And part of that though, yeah.

7:19 And then, so you're like, you've got a, you know, a dismantled consumer, higher prices, yet they're still spending. Part of the increase in spending is the cost is that it's more expensive, but still it's not more expensive enough to make the actual sales go down. But we're getting there, Paul. It's been almost nine months and we're starting to get there.

7:39 Well, you mentioned McDonald's. That was one of the performers. I think it's up two and a half percent, which is good for a stock like that. But to your point, maybe this whole issue with the CPI coming out and consumer data coming in a little soft, but not necessarily that much, even though we reported yesterday that there is almost 75 percent of consumers that are looking at ways to reduce spending during the holidays because we're getting ready to to roll into one of the biggest retail seasons.

8:07 When you go back to the earnings data I just showed on screen, just for you guys, actually, let me share that with you guys again so you can kind of follow along here in case you're listening to this on the podcast side. Let me go over here. Yeah, here we go. All right, so this was the Q3, year over year. Earnings were expected at 30.6. That would be excluding the energy sector. It came in basic estimate right now at 26 and a half. Of the 19 companies in the S & P 500 that reported earnings to date for Q26, Q3, 84.2% reported above. So at some point, does this market top have to stop? I mean, I just can't see this continuing with all of the macro pressure that we have.

8:57 You know, your question to me from an economic perspective is what is the ultimate source of this wealth?

9:03 I mean, where is it coming from?

9:05 Yeah, exactly.

9:06 You know, right now the.

9:07 Hyperscalers have a substantial war chest and they are happily able to sell bonds. And they are happily able, even like we've seen Alphabet issue stock, which that is a little bit alarming. When you start to, when you leave the using your free cash flow and you leave the, you raising capital through bonds and you start to issue stock, that's when the market doesn't like that as much because the market wants you to use bonds and use stock only for, I would say really IPOs, unless there's some, unless you have some kind of new formula or something, you know, so really, Ultimately, we're able to do this on a very short-term basis. We can very short-term use our war chest. We can very short-term cover higher energy costs.

9:52 We can do all those things. But ultimately, where does the wealth get originated from?

9:57 Right.

10:00 Source to be able to continuously build that fortress and spend more on energy and do that, it will stop. And that's the question, Paul, is, Who is the ultimate source of going to be able to consume all of.

10:12 This AI for what it is costing?

10:16 And the interesting thing is that the very consumers of it are the people that will be supplanted by it. And this goes back to the same concept we keep talking about is how are we going to make money after we no longer as an individual human contribute either gross domestic product or service to our GDP?

10:35 That is the question.

10:36 What is the originating source of wealth on a continuous basis once we get to this phase? Because no, we cannot on a continuous basis keep up investment and expenses like we have without some additional source.

10:52 And the source of wealth, Paul, has always.

10:53 Been us creating value of something.

10:59 And if we're not doing that anymore, that is the. Atmospheric question that no one can seem to answer.

11:04 Well, it definitely is. It's a big question. Many people are on two sides of this. There are the AI doomers that are out there saying, you know, this is going to kill us all. We've got this also doomerism saying that this bubble is going to pop. So you have that angle. Then you have the opposite side of the trade, which I'm looking at right now. That's the S & P, guys. And if you look at this date right here, that was March of 26.

11:28 Hmm.

11:30 And what a great time to be in the stock market, right?

11:33 Right, right.

11:35 March of 26, if you were entered at that time, we haven't seen those kind of numbers in a very long time. But even at trading it today, 20% on the year so far, and it's what, October 15th as we record this. So not a bad performance if somebody's out there. The real question is, does it actually crack 8,000?

11:54 What would be your prediction on that? Do you have one? Do you think it hits 8,000?

12:00 I mean, I think that we are going to skip an October hike and it's just never, we don't, we don't hike this that close to an election. And that would, I think, give the markets a little bit of just knowledge that, okay, we've got set policy through until at least December. And, You know, I think that what we might see, Paul, what I'm starting to kind of get feelers out economically is that we might see some jobs data come in negative in the next, you know, couple of reads before the December hike, in which case, if we were to get that, then I would hope that we would start to think about.

12:32 And here's what I'm concerned about, Paul. Just let me just cut to the chase.

12:35 What I'm concerned about is that we have had the energy prices disguise the fact that overall we don't have the breadth that we need in this market. It's not, even though you pointed out that it was beyond just the hyperscalers, it's not as deep and as wide as I would like. And for that reason, any kind of economic malaise, like jobs starting to, you know, the jobs claims going up, jobs numbers being missed. Those kinds of things, I think, are or would not be, they're being obfuscated right now by the fact that everything is still more expensive as if this energy and this whole economy is taking off. And the economy has done well. The S & P has done very well. But I think if you look at the breadth and the depth, you'll see

13:18 that it's still really relegated to tech.

13:21 And we need a broadening out.

13:22 And right now that isn't happening in the bifurcated economy. That isn't happening for the bottom half of the country. They're thinking that we're basically probably in a recession. That's how they're feeling. And I think that you can have a one sector that's rising the boats and it looks good until you really look under the covers and you realize, wow, this is really an inflationary time with some jobs issues. And, you know, that can switch really quickly to, you know, a disinflationary problem.

13:53 Yeah. Well, do you think that because we've had bad news coming in from OpenAI, then good news on Anthropic, they're just their quarterly, I think, jumped like 45 percent up to almost 17 billion, I think was the numbers I'm looking at it here.

14:11 Yeah. Yeah.

14:12 Yeah.

14:12 16.8 billion.

14:14 So that would be a pretty significant variation in a very short period of time of these major AI companies losing money, then all of a sudden earning money. Is it somewhat cyclical here? Are there other things that are brewing that really kind of cause the market? And I guess the real question is, is what other stock sectors win?

14:38 If AI does get a bid here and continue its climb above 8,000 for what we're seeing on the S & P, what do you think it would be?

14:46 Well, so it's interesting you ask that because I would have expected utilities to have a banner year with the data center build-outs because they're absolutely massively integral.

14:55 Exactly.

14:56 And they're the second worst performer of the year to date.

14:59 I mean, you've got consumer discretionary, not like an 8% decline year over year, but utilities are off over 5% year over year. And that's unusual because you would have thought that the demand... would just be massively picking up. So right now, outside of tech, I can tell you where I won't put money, and that's financials. I just feel like I'm not a huge financial... I'm not a bank fan because I know that their time is limited.

15:26 And for the ones that can figure out how to continue to remain relevant, they will be winning. I think Wells Fargo is starting to really look at that. But otherwise, it's hard to pick a winner, to be honest. What I would normally say What I'm feeling right now, Paul, is that you should probably look at consumer staples and utilities as kind of your your laggard. You know, they will stop.

15:50 They are a backstop. Yeah, they are a backstop. Exactly.

15:53 Because it does feel recessionary. I'm feeling recessionary right now.

15:57 It's not good.

15:58 I know. Oh, Rebecca is feeling recessionary. That's not good at all. I know. Because normally you're very bullish on the market.

16:04 I am. I am.

16:05 And that's the dichotomy.

16:07 How do you reconcile what is happening with AI and the fact that you do have a lot of corporations, multi corporations, national corporations that, you.

16:17 Know, will be able to withstand a short term. And what does short term mean? Is it two years?

16:22 Can they do this for two years? Can they, is it, or are we going to, or is it a year and that's it? And we need energy prices to come down and we need, you know, yields to come down.

16:31 It's just a really unique, unique time.

16:33 This was the IMF kind of referencing that is that they're saying that basically that this is going to job changes from AI are going to gas the economy a little bit. AI investment boom already delivering advanced shock and an investment shock. We've seen that already. That could boost growth in advanced Asian economies by half to a full percent.

16:58 And then the emerging Asian economies by 0.2 to 0.8. So where do you think the growth is really going to come from? I mean, we've been watching Japan. We've been watching what's going on in Korea, Hong Kong specifically. Do you think that tech is going to slowly migrate to Asia versus what we've seen coming out of Silicon Valley for so long?

17:24 Oh, gosh. I mean, it is it is a huge concern.

17:30 Right. I mean. you always had Taiwan and the semiconductors and Taiwan's to me, you know, they, they have, they have really been dominant for, you know, decades, you know, so it's not like we haven't already seen that Paul and past, you know, technology developments, but this is something different. This is, really saying that you could see IT development, production, manufacturing really continue to expand beyond the American multinational corporations.

18:05 And that is what is alarming is that Again, we get in our own way.

18:12 We're such a bureaucratic machine now.

18:14 We're so massive that our enemies really, if I was one of the United States' enemies, the easiest thing in the world to do is just divide the United States.

18:22 Just put some money into some NGOs.

18:25 Over here that will blast your message to half the country that will agree with you anyways. And make it a divisive topic and that's what will happen. And so this is why I've been so hard on the bank saying, do not do this to us because you're not going to preserve your industry.

18:42 Nothing can save it. It's over. It's time to innovate.

18:45 And yet it could cause the United States, our lead in DeFi, and it could cost us our lead in the data center problem. We had 30% of the country only last year, just last year in 2025, opposed to data centers, just 30%.

19:00 That and 60 plus.

19:00 That's probably skyrocketed now. That has flipped completely. You had a ton of money coming in. China's not dumb. They know how. Yeah.

19:09 To get America to be against our own interests.

19:11 Just get everybody complaining about it. Just get everybody complaining about it.

19:15 That's what I'm saying.

19:16 I saw this meeting, this local town, Paul, where they were having their town meeting. This town was 200,000 people had dwindled down to less than 20,000 people. So you're talking about not even 10% of the population left. They're having a town meeting and you had a gentleman get up and say, not this, something else.

19:34 We'll wait for the next thing. And that's America. That's the American statement right there. We're so arrogant.

19:40 We expect to be what we have, what we built, how hard our forefathers worked.

19:45 They built things. They migrated west with nothing. They built tunnels under us. rivers.

19:50 And I mean, the stuff that they accomplished when we had nothing, and that was because they had to do it. And now- China can come and fund some NGOs over here to be anti-data centers in America. And just one year can be completely majority anti-data center. And the guy can stand up at a town hall and think that there's something else that someone's going to want.

20:10 To come along and bring to their town and give jobs. This is it. We either, and that's what my advice is.

20:17 Take the data center, but negotiate at the table with multinational corporations and say, I need a five-year plan on water reclamation that's completely self-sustaining. I need you to build your own little mini power grid and be able to fund our town when the grid goes down. Like, these are the things that you can negotiate.

20:34 It'd be easy.

20:34 Trillions of dollars being spent here.

20:36 Don't say no. Just the tax dollars alone.

20:39 Say yes and then add your conditions. But don't say no. There is nothing else coming. We lose this. We lose who we are.

20:47 And I don't think Americans know how to be not American. Like I went to school with a lot of Europeans. And it's different when you don't come from the country that's the number one economic power or the number one military power in the world.

20:58 It is different. And we aren't used to that. We don't know how to be that. So I think America needs to wake up.

21:03 I like that. I like your fire today, Rebecca. You always bring it, too. Explain this to me. I'm going to share the gold chart with you because I know you are into and really analyze what's going on in the gold market. You get the CPI data yesterday. It comes in soft. Then, of course, we come in and gold pulls back. Then immediately the next day, it's as if it didn't happen. And gold just spikes again. So we're up around, what, 4,157 right now. It dipped down to the low 4,100. How do metals respond to this?

21:37 with what we're seeing right now in the inflation data, what we're seeing with essentially is dollar debasement, you would think that gold would be up.

21:47 Yeah, it should be. It should be up massively.

21:50 And as you know, I think it's extremely undervalued and not reflective really anymore of what it really is valued at with the inflated dollars that we've printed in the world, especially since 2020 coronavirus. But I will say, so yesterday, Paul, when you had inflation come in higher, there was a sense that there was a possibility that we could see an October increase.

22:13 Like, you know, when you have inflation saying, oh.

22:15 It's sticky, oh gosh, it's higher than we expected, that immediately sends your short-term, you know, statistical probability of a rain increase Faster. And that is going to make metals pull back because anytime there's higher passive yield out there, then a lot of investors will roll out as soon as they can get passive yield higher than what they can get in gold. So you see transition out, you see rotation out. But then when you see that, OK, there's some resolution potentially with the diesel problem and with this deal potentially with Russia, then metals say, oh, well, that will be disinflationary. That means the possibility of rate increases possibly for December may go down and people will

22:59 rotate back into gold.

23:01 It's that fast.

23:02 The machinations of how price action users are looking and buying and selling.

23:06 Into gold It's that fast, Paul. So you could get.

23:09 Positive reasons that it could go up with an energy resolution or potentially less energy price pressure. And then you get inflation rate and again, it goes right back up.

23:20 So this is a very fluid thing.

23:23 And it's not anywhere reflective of the true risk of the world moving forward. And I actually think that the blockchain is much more financially stable than what our current system is because our current system, fractional reserve, where we don't actually have the reserves and there's no real backup to the assets in our system. It's just not a very solid system right now. It's very fragile.

23:45 Yeah, you look at the, I'll show you the stablecoin market right there, and I'll kind of zoom in on this a little bit for you guys. This has just been going up and up. So it correlates to what you're saying is that even now, next generation investors are chasing some yield here. Because this, of course, will affect everything from USDC, USDG over on Robinhood, which is paying just insane yields. But even what we're seeing right now with a 300 billion market cap for just stable coins in general, if this thing goes to, because, I mean, you look at where RWA growth is going, what that's going to look like, you know, both with institutional assets.

24:25 But more importantly, I think the question is, is When do you think or do you think we will see an institutional shift to mostly stable coin transactions? Do you think we're going to see that anytime soon?

24:41 Yes.

24:41 And I think it's going to be brought about mostly because people are going to start tokenizing their stocks.

24:49 Yeah.

24:49 And that tokenization process of stocks is going to make them feel more comfortable with tokenized assets. And I think that will actually increase. So what I'm trying to say, Paul, is that maybe banking wasn't going to be the lead into DeFi as the mainstream.

25:04 Maybe it is tokenized stocks. Maybe it's investing.

25:07 Maybe it's investors saying, well, my stocks are tokenized and I can trade them 24-7. And so why not move my money to a similar situation with stablecoin and decentralized finance that way? So I do think that because we have this five-year innovation exception now from the SEC, and that means you're going to see a lot of activity even by the end of the year. I bet you will have a substantial amount of activity that has already happened around tokenizing stocks. And then the second that you tokenize stocks, it's almost like how putting Bitcoin into an ETF democratized it to the mainstream.

25:44 I think that's what it's going to take.

25:45 It's going to take, yeah, the mainstream is understanding that now we're going to be able to have these digitized representations of assets.

25:53 Okay. So with that being the case, because this is all going to a point of where assets are being held, whether you're holding it in metals, you're holding it in crypto or DeFi, you look at just the 12 month percentage change, we've saw some pretty specific growth in the consumer price index. This obviously being one of the bumps that or is in the road again. It was flatlining there for a while. Let me see if I can bring up this chart because I want people to see this.

26:23 This was flatlining slightly. And then all of a sudden we start to see this movement coming back in. I think it's important for people to see this. And this is, here we go. All right. This is the chart I'm talking about. All right. So Rebecca, this is what I'm looking at right here is you look at the performance here.

26:41 It goes all the way back to 2020. Obviously we saw the spike. Somewhat flatline. And then we start seeing this climb and this push that we've had a problem with. Of course, the Fed adjusts that. And are we in a position now where we are in another climb? Or do you think this is just a do you think this is temporary? Here's my question.

27:02 Yeah.

27:04 Can you go to the bottom?

27:06 That started at the beginning of March of this year.

27:08 Right here. That was February.

27:10 February.

27:10 2.4.

27:11 So as soon as the Iranian situation, which started February 28th, began, we started to see this run up. And then it did come back down. And I think that that coming down was kind of the MOU beginning. Yes, exactly.

27:26 Exactly.

27:27 So it started to come back down. And now we're starting to see a reverberation back to the upside. Right. Obviously, if we want to get back to baseline, we have to go back to prior to 2020. So that's not happening. We printed a ton of money. What we haven't done this year, Paul, is print a ton of money to get through this Iranian situation. So that is a positive, which basically what I'm trying to say is that we haven't irretrievably impacted our balance sheets yet so that if we can get clarity and resolution, we could potentially come back down to baseline. But if we don't get solid resolution to Iran that is going to be reliable for companies to count on, to understand what how their shipping policy,

28:10 you know, is going to their insurance.

28:12 Costs, their all of that.

28:14 If we're not going to get that resolution, then you're looking at more shifting to it. Not yet, but after we're shifting towards more immediate solutions. type of threat that is going to be baked in more and that baking in more is the issue.

28:28 That's the problem.

28:29 You already have so much inflation of need of money, capital need with what is happening privately in the private markets of AI and DeFi, you have capital need. That's already inflationary. When you combine that with energy inflation.

28:48 You get a problem.

28:50 And that problem cannot go on beyond what companies can kind of withstand because of their war chest.

28:56 And after that, it's going to be absolutely impactful. And that's the problem.

29:01 We really can't afford this inflationary geopolitical pressure while we're already under such massive inflationary pressure because of the capital need. Yeah.

29:10 Well, I think the point you're getting at starts to affect the rotation question is, do we see a rotation? We're showing the Bitcoin chart right now, holding and responding back up, almost edging to 82K right now as we start to record this one. ETH also trying to come back, but still at around 2400. And these are some of the strongest assets out there when it comes to digital.

29:33 Most of our audience is either a Bitcoin or Ethereum or a Solana holder. You look at the rotation. opportunity here with everything that's happening with this kind of quasi performance boom that we're seeing in terms of earnings. Is there any point in which an investor is simply going to say, OK, I think the rotation time is now?

29:59 Out of BTC and Ethereum into stocks. I mean, yeah, I think that it is, but I also think that that is also, it's going to really sound odd to you, Paul, but I also think that that same BTC, Ethereum, Solana investor could be not rotating out to stocks, but they could also be just rotating.

30:21 Into 10-year treasuries.

30:22 I mean, you've got the 10-year above 5.2%.

30:25 You know, this is crazy.

30:27 Yeah.

30:27 5.2% 10-year treasury, I have to understand that my real yield is so low on that because of inflation that it's not worth doing so that I then take the risk of going back into a stock or I stay in BTC because I do think that that is eventually going to be you know, the ethos that we exist in and it will be a much more relevant player when that all comes to fruition.

30:53 So yeah, Paul, you've got a lot of choices right now.

30:57 It doesn't seem to be the choice that they're not buying gold at the dip, which I think that I wish that they would.

31:03 Okay, so your clients, Walls of Wealth, that's the conundrum they're in right now is when they're looking at asset and some of these classes, you have such a narrow sliver that's performing in the S & P And then you have these 10 years that are absolutely locked and loaded at rates we've never seen. That's kind of the question that everybody is trying to answer right now. Is that what you're saying?

31:25 Yeah, and I think that it's not a binary choice. It's not a zero-sum game. Like what I mean by that is you should always participate in risk to the extent that you can take the risk.

31:35 And you can take more risk with.

31:37 Your own portfolio if you will allow yourself to have a buffer, if you will build a foundation on gold.

31:44 I also would put in the foundation BTC.

31:47 I would put in some traditional, not necessarily transactional coins, but long-term hold on the DeFi block Those would be my foundation. I would have that as a foundation. And then with that foundation built, then I'm comfortable taking risk with money that I have to continue to keep ahead of inflation. You're not going to stay ahead of inflation, unfortunately, in 10-year treasuries. I'm just going to be honest because the inflationary number that is creeping in, plus your real risk is a problem in a treasury, a 10-year treasury.

32:19 There's a reason they're paying over 5.2%. So you but but they're necessary. So you have to have a foundation that's not risk based, you know, gold treasuries. I would put BTC in there. I would. I would put some of the original digital assets on the on the blockchain. That would be my foundation. And then the rest I'm comfortable.

32:39 I have to make sure that I have an income. I have to have an income plan. And as long as I know where my income sources are coming from. That is going to be a part, the most important piece. And then I've got, okay, now I have this and this amount has to chase yield and return and has to chase, it has to stay above inflation. And if you do it that way, you can stay the course because you have your basis covered.

32:59 And there's, for me, it's always an issue of how do you weigh the opportunity cost? Because if you do lock up like that, into some of these assets. Yes, it's a fixed yield, but in many cases, the opportunity cost disappears. Many people will say, well, that's okay, and I'm fine with that as long as we don't see a recessionary situation hit the market, which is where I'm locked into something that's performing versus what the market is doing with maybe a major pullback. And you've got, I think it was Paul Tudor Jones, he's very bearish. Then you have Tom Lee over here that's very bullish. It's like there's two complete separate sides of Wall Street right now.

33:37 Where do you fall?

33:38 Paul Tudor Jones is much more on the global macro side.

33:41 Myself, that is very concerned about really how we just are totally bankrupt as a world, meaning all central banks don't have the assets that they need to really back up the currency that they produce. So I would say that I'm both because on the Paul Tudor Jones side, I don't disagree. And I think he's onto something. And I've told you for a while, there is a global currency reckoning that is coming. And we are going to be moving to different currency. We won't be on just dollars, paper dollars, paper coins.

34:12 But at the.

34:13 Same time, I definitely with, you know, believing on the same that we are at the beginning stages of the largest economic shift in human history. And you absolutely must participate in that. I just want to quickly remind everybody that the safety of buying a 10-year bond is by buying that bond individually and holding it through maturity. If you buy a bond ETF, even if it says it's a bond ETF that's structured on the 10-year.

34:39 You are probably going to lose money. And I will tell you why.

34:43 Because you're going to buy that and you're not going to hold it for 10 years and therefore you're not holding it to maturity, but you're buying an ETF and the ETF is being managed by a bond fund manager and they're buying and selling all the time and you're not going to realize that safety. You cannot expect bonds to be safe unless you're going to buy the bond directly.

35:02 Don't just buy a bond ETF and think you bought a bond. That's not how it works.

35:06 Exactly. Yeah. That's a good tip for a lot of people because I think in many cases, people are maybe looking at bonds for the first time. So- Pay attention, guys out there. Rebecca Walzer coming in from Walzer Wealth Management. Thank you so much for stopping in today. We appreciate it.

35:20 Thank you, Paul.

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