"The Bond Market Is Going To Continue To Be A Problem" | Bill Fleckenstein

You got to really thread the needle perfectly, and it's unlikely that that's possible in the world that we live in. So I think the debt, the bond market, is going to continue to be a problem.

Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Tagert. It's said that the Trump put on financial markets is not on the S&P in the second term, but rather on the 10-year US Treasury yield. The rise in Treasury yield since 2022 has sent the cost of servicing America's federal debt to record highs, exceeding spending on national defense for fiscal year 2024. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant has indicated his and the president's desire to get the tenure comfortably under 4%. But that's proving difficult. In fact, after falling to 4.1% two weeks ago, the yield has quickly shot back up to near 4.5% as of the day of this recording.

Why is it proving so tricky to tame bond yields? And what will it mean for the economy and the markets if they can't be tamed? For answers, we've got the great fortune today of turning to veteran money manager Bill Fleenstein, founder of Fleenstein Capital. Bill, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me back, Adam.

Hey, it's always a pleasure, Bill. Um, there's so much going on here right now. Uh, it's hard to know where to start. Obviously, I want to talk with you about bonds, and we'll get there in just a moment. Maybe before we tackle bonds, if we could just zoom way up for a second. Um, I had the good fortune of interviewing one of your partners in crime, uh, Grant Williams. You guys do a great, uh, occasional, uh, podcast together. Um, and Grant, um, was a very thoughtful guy, but even more thoughtful than normal. And what we really dove deep into is sort of this, the sea change macro, uh, the macro sea change that he sees going on right now in terms of just sort of its scope. And in Grant's words, he said he feels like we're kind of going through or on the way to going through like a once-in-a-century type of change. Um, and a lot of this has to do with the switch, um, from globalization back towards sort of mercantilism and nationalism and protectionism and stuff like that. Um, but there's some other macro changes sort of tied into that. And so I guess my kickoff question for you, Bill, is do you see the world the same way? Like, do you see a sort of similar disruption to the status quo at that level, or do you have a different take on things?

Well, to be honest, I haven't had a chance to—you just did that interview very recently. I think I—we just did it, but but you've been talking with Grant, you know, recently. So, I'm just curious. We—when we get together, we—I'll wind up having the interviews, and we don't actually chitchat about what we each think.

Okay. So, I'm a little behind on on on on his view specifically. Um, you know, as to what is it—a more of a—is it along the fourth turning lines of things, or is it different? I would say yes. Yeah. I don't know if Grant ever really mentioned the word fourth turning or not. They might have. But but yeah, it was sort of on that level that just like he—his—his really kind of his main message to the viewer was just don't be too sure about anything because the type of changes that might occur. Uh, yeah, could be so—could be so like such sacred cows—things that today we just don't think—no, well, surely that could never happen. He's like, it might be that type of change.

Well, if you—if you just—if you just examine the politics in America for a second, um, you know, you—you—a person that would have been a mainstream Democrat 10 years ago is now considered far right, and a Republican is alt-right or whatever they, you know, so fascist.

The—yeah, the—the—the media in America is unfortunately so corrupt and so willing to lie about anything that fits their agenda, which dovetails with uh, a certain segment of the Democratic party and the liberal progressive type people. I don't know how you can call yourself progressive when you back some of the policies they've had—they back, but nonetheless. So, the—when you look at that and you look at at how things are stood on their head, that alone tells you that something unusual is afoot, or—or look at what they've done to free speech in England, uh, the direction it's going in Canada, you know, the direction we were here during COVID, you know, where—where—where Twitter shut down Alex Berenson and any discussion that went against the narrative—almost all of the narrative, which was wrong in what it said from a quote-unquote "trust the science" standpoint. So, we've been experiencing sort of a a dystopian twilight zone environment now for, you know, four or five years. It's—it's gotten continuing to get more extreme in other English-speaking countries. Americans kind of put their foot down and voted in Trump. Uh, now we'll see what happens in the midterm elections and whether—whether we stay on this path towards maintaining free speech or we get more totalitarian like the other English-speaking countries. So, um, you know, from a societal standpoint, there's a lot of kind of alarming trends, and when you bring that into the investing side, you've got those things that are at work. You've got this, you've got these macro issues, and then you've got the uh, schizophrenia that is generated by Trump's approach to everything, whether it's good or bad. I mean, you know, with these—the—the tape bombs that—that come and go and, "Oh, I was just kidding. I said 140, I meant 130." I mean, that's the way he is. He did it last time, and he's doing it again. So if you're getting caught by that, then shame on you because he already showed you the way he operates. Uh, and—and—and that's just—that's just his nature. And so we have this out-of-control spending. And what DOD has shown us is how completely and utterly out of control it has been and how willing the government has been to just—just incinerate money. And what's been even more shocking is that the—there's a contingent of the left that is going after Elon Musk for exposing the incineration of our taxpayer funds. I mean, that literally should be a Twilight Zone episode. Uh, so I—I—I think I think the bond market is the—is the—is the key to everything, as Bess has noted in focus, because we're kind of at the point of no return or past the point of no return given the size of the deficit and the apparently intractable nature of the—the—the—the deficit. Did I say deficit? I meant national debt—and 37 trillion and growing quickly. That's a big problem. And I think the last time we were on, I said—I said Bess's big trick is going to be able to try to promote economic growth to get us to be able to grow through this without having interest rates go up so he can try to get the debt refinanced to get us through this period. And—and the bond market's kind of holding the cards. And you know, so as we had the—the momentary weakness in the stock market where bad news and fundamentals were big enough to trump the passive bid and the market plunged, rates went down to—to some degree. Now they're back up as you noted earlier. So uh, the bond market is still a problem for the—for the country. It's a problem for this administration because they're in charge now, but it was going to be a problem. It would have been a problem, an even bigger problem had the Democrats won. Um, and—and—and but we don't know when—when—when the markets would have focused on it. I think DOD put a spotlight on the problem, and since the media hates Trump and anything to do with MAGA, you know, all the news gets spun negatively. So, uh, it—it—it—I'm kind of—I'm kind of putting some flesh on your bones of this being a kind of an a wild period, and—and it is.

Okay. Um, all really useful stuff. Um, I will at some point maybe rope back to this because I'd be curious to get your thoughts on sort of globalization versus, you know, more—more nationalistic mercantilistic policies going forward. But you put your finger, I think, at the heart of the matter. So let's dive into it, which is the—the bond market and um, whether, you know, the US can get its books in order enough uh, to try to give the bond market some confidence to start getting the 10-year yield down.

Let me start because you did talk about the dangers of the debt, but you also, you know, mentioned that DOD should have exposed the out-of-control fiscal spending. So we've got this new administration, um, we've got its—its at least lip service focus on um, cost containment. um, it—they implemented DOD. DOD has released all these findings, right? But if you look here at um, uh, the deficit for this fiscal year, um, you'll see it is running ahead of—of the previous—it's the worst it's ever been, right? So like, even all this lip service that's being given to it, um, we're—we're still seeing the out-of-control spending continue, right? But—but to be fair, I'm not 100%—I'm not really super current on this, but I thought I had read recently that part of the problem is things that kind of got front-loaded by—by Biden on the way out the door. And is this for the fiscal year? What—what fis—when—when does this fiscal year end? In September?

Yes. So—so this—so roughly—so not too much of this reflects the Trump administration yet. This was the tail end of the Biden administration.

Yep. So, um—um—okay. I just want to be clear about that because that—that's what I thought, but I wasn't—I wasn't 100% certain. I mean, uh—um—yeah, I mean, so here's the hard thing to—to—to—to get people to focus on. We have a math problem. The deficit is a math problem. The numbers don't work, right? It's too big. Y—you know, DOD and a lot more goes out than comes in. DOD showed up probably—my fear that—and I talked about this last time we got together was that, you know, DOD was four to six years too late. And that may be the case. I'm hoping not. I mean, despite the fact I spent a long time on the short side, it didn't mean I was rooting against America. I just thought the policies that were being pursued by the Federal Reserve were negative, and the bubbles had gotten out of control, and I was betting against that—not—not betting against the country. So I want—I want whatever is the best for the country to occur, and—and the Trump—the current administration—if I leave the name Trump out, people's hair won't get on fire—the—they—they—they inherited a really bad hand to play, right? They—they—they—they have a—they have a bad hand to play. So a train wreck was coming. We didn't know exactly when it was going to hit and what was going to be the catalyst. Now, if we'd have had Biden in there, we'd have had—we'd have had a train wreck. It likely would probably have been worse. But here it is. So, what I'm trying to get at is nothing the Trump administration has done has caused the current problem to—to exist, right? The—the current problem is—is from the sins of the past. Now, we can argue about whether the disruption of the present is helping or not, but yeah, he was part of—of the government for four years. So, he contributed to the debt pile, don't get me wrong, but—but—but Obama and—and—and uh, Sleepy Joe, I mean, they really piled it on. So, in any case, here we are. We have to deal with this. And the question is, how's it going to get done? Now, you can kind of see what the Trump administration's hope is. Inflation will stay under control. You know, they got the price—the price of oil down. I think the Saudis have helped, you know, probably for a favor to be named later. Uh, and so oil's down. Um, uh, you know, these tariffs are going to cause disruption in price increases, but they're hoping to get growth to try to grow our way through this. And they'd like to have the bond market not freak out while they try to, you know, term out the debt or at least get the—the funding schedule to be a little longer, the average maturity than it is today.

And sorry to interrupt, but I think that's exactly the—the strategy in a nutshell. It's grow out of this, but in the interim just try to keep the bond market patched together.

Yeah. Right. And—and if we ever can find a chance to plug the, you know, plug them with a whole bunch more bonds, great. Now, a mistake that they made was they—that they—that they that they seemed to be kind of unfriendly towards foreigners vis-à-vis our currency—right—sort of like saying, "Well, maybe it should be a tax for you guys to hold because we're the world's reserve currency, we—" You know, that causes—yes, we like it, but it causes us some hardship. So they've done a few things that have made them seem like they don't appreciate how much we need foreigners, and the dollar weakened as a result. That's not—that doesn't—that—that—that's a—that's a own goal, as the football players—the European kind—would say. Um, and—and you know, Bess is smarter than that, and I—I—I think given the hand he had to play, he's done a very good job so far. I know a lot of people aren't happy, but it's an impossible job. I mean, we have to deal with this. You know, there are some people that all they care about is their social agenda. They don't know anything about anything when it comes to finance. But this is a train wreck. And the question is, can we keep it from being really, really bad? I'm speaking about the deficit and the national debt.

Yep. Or not. And—and I don't know the answer to that question. I think we've probably—regardless of what you think of Scott Bessant, I think he's probably the most capable uh, Treasury Secretary we've had—with certainly the most capable Treasury Secretary uh, that we've seen in my lifetime as an investor. Um, so it—it's good because it's a complicated problem, and—but I don't know how you can know whether—whether or not they're going to be able to pull it off.

Yeah. Um, so let me ask you this. So, in the intro, I started by talking about how the bond market recently went from 4.1% up to I think it's like 4.45 or something like that—we're talking—but—but a lot closer to four and a half, right?

Yeah.

And the last time it was at four and a half, you know, folks were starting to freak out because it had moved so quickly that uh, the basis trade folks got caught uh, underwater, and—and there was some systemic stress because of that. Um, actually, I don't think it was as bad as everyone said. Just so that—there you go. My main man who understands the plumbing better than anybody—that would be James Akins, aka the lord of the dark matter—really kind of said a lot of that was blown out of proportion. Just to throw that out there as a—as a—as a—as a counterveiling thought. Um, and blown out of proportion by people who just didn't know better or blown out of proportion to try to put the administration on its back foot. I think people that just—look, we have—we have instant experts on every complicated topic you could ask for in about 10 seconds on Twitter. So I think I think this—the—the—the—the Twitter sphere, whatever you want to call it, the X sphere, uh, you know, gets—gets itself all wrapped around the axle sometimes on problems that they don't really have uh, a deep understanding of. James never—never basically flinched through that whole thing. And—but—but—but I would say the media in general was—it wasn't just the X sphere; it was everywhere.

Yeah. We know how the media—

Okay. So to your point that you were thinking that was more ammunition to try to keep Bess straight.

Yeah. I mean, anytime you can spin a news item and conclude "orange man bad," that's what they do, right?

Okay. All right. So, so anyways, my point was sort of last time we were at four and a half percent, you know, we were being told kind of the world was endangered—it was in danger of ending. Uh, not hearing that so much this time around. Um, but certainly not going in the direction that the administration would like here, right? Um, so I mean, I hear what you're saying, which is look—super complicated—these issues of curtailing the national deficit and getting the—under control—like massive problem. You know, even if people are super smart like Bess seems like he could be, uh, is this—is a problem that—that anybody, any human, you know, can—can resolve in any near-time future?

Probably not. I mean, terms of deficit spending and debt, for sure. But I guess where I'm going with this is um, as you look out at the probabilities extending from here, do you see the bond market quelling more likely or do you see the bond market getting more and more concerned?

I think the risk is to rates on the upside. I mean, I—I—I—I really—I have a hard time seeing them get the—if we're talking a 10-year, I have a hard time seeing it below four just because of the size. And—and then there's the inflation issue.

Sorry. The size of what?

The size of which—the deficit—kind of debt we got to roll.

Okay. Because that—that debt's not going down anytime soon.

No.

No. So I mean, that—you know, people for the longest time would say, "Well, you know, the US isn't so bad because it's only 110% of GDP, and XYZ nation over here is at 140—they're way up." Yeah, maybe. But we got so much more size to—to—to deal with now. We have—we have a big country uh, to, you know, uh, and a lot of wealth. But anyway, it's—it's a—we—the joke on Wall Street always used to be is when you have a position that's too big—like it's a "who" problem. Who—who to sell it to? Who—who you gonna—who you going to unload it on? Right. So the size is—the size is an issue. I mean, it really is. And uh, so you just need—I mean, you basically need the perfect outcome. You need the economy to be strong enough that people are kind of optimistic and it's growing and people aren't freaked out about what would a recession look like, and you need inflation just to stay kind of tame. So, you got this perfect little world where we got uh, call it a couple of percent GDP growth and a couple of percent of inflation, and then maybe you can finance this mess at four or five, but you got to really thread the needle perfectly, and it's unlikely that that's possible in the world that we live in. So, I think the debt—the bond market is going to continue to be a problem. Now, as for the stock market, you know, the passive flows and the mechanical flows, they—they win all the time, and they trump the fundamentals—no pun intended about Trump—um, on a regular basis, unless you get the bond market under pressure and the dollar under pressure and a bit of bad news, and then you can swamp the passive bid, especially if positioning's too bullish. That's what we saw happen on the last market break. But it kind of righted itself, and news got a little better, and that—you know, the—the bond market's still—you know, it—is—is still uh, under pressure—is under pressure once again—or not under pressure, but it's weakish, but now the dollar's bounced right. So the—the passive flows and the mechanical flows seem to hold up the stock market. So the whole game is—is kind of the bond market. Um, I don't have a position. I covered my bond short in front of the election, and the prices are a little bit plus or minus where I—where I got flat, and I've stayed out of the way, and I've kind of stayed out of the way of the stock market to a—to a large degree uh, because I was afraid that given the complexity of the situation and the potential for Trump-inspired uh—uh—uh—um, you know, uh, tape bombs—news-oriented—y—that it'd be too difficult to try to—to get through, and you get whipsawed to death and make all kinds of mistakes. So, I—I personally am carrying a whole lot of cash because that—that—that was my way to deal with the, you know, kind of throwing my hands up in the air and say, "Yeah, this—this is in the too-hard pile. Unless I find something that's not in the too-hard pile, I'm going to be way more careful and not—and not get involved unless I really have a strong opinion or something looks really set up for me." And uh, so that's—that's—that's kind of my attitude.

Okay. So yeah, if I hear you right, you're saying, "Look, um, for the system to kind of keep trundling along, it's got to really stay in that—in that Goldilocks set of conditions, but that band is—is narrowing."

Um, it's narrow. It's—it was narrow; it continues to be narrow.

Exactly. And it is narrowing as time goes on, right? As the debt and—as long as the debt and the deficit continue to grow, that is going to continue to narrow.

Right. Gets trickier.

Yeah. Yeah. It gets trickier and trickier. So the—if Scott Bessant were here, he would say, "Don't worry, guys. Capital is coming to the rescue. You know, we're going to lock in the old tax cuts. We're going to cut taxes even more. We're going to be reshoring jobs. We're going to be employing more Americans. A lot of capex coming into this country. Tariffs are going to generate revenue for our baseline 10% tariffs and—and our better trade deals." Right? So, they're saying, "Okay, all that's going to come, and we're going to start growing our way out of this, right? And—and we'll start expanding that Goldilocks uh, band, right?"

Um, perfect. You perfectly summarized the situation, I believe.

Yes.

All right. Thank you. So, now let's get to your level of confidence. So, um, are you—are you more confident that, "Hey, with enough time, yep, we'll get there, and—and they'll hopefully be able to keep it kind of in that—the narrow band until it starts expanding," or are you more in like, "Whether or not we ever get there, we're—we're definitely—we got some harder days ahead of us before we get to—to that type of an future?"

I'm hopeful that he's right. I think that he has to say that, and he has to believe that, and maybe he's got a bunch of spreadsheets that show it's possible if everything goes right, and—and—and I hope it does, but uh, I don't see how you could have a lot of confidence that it—that it—that it will play out like that. You know, if we're sitting here a year down the road and they've got a bunch of debt sold, they got the—got the—the—the maturities lengthened, and it looks like some of their ideas are starting to work. And remember, the Congress has to pass some of this legislation to make it actually be law, right? So, we got to get that to happen. And it's got to, you know, and then we got—it's got to—and then we got—it's got to look like they're not going to get washed out in the midterms because then nothing will happen. So, a lot of things need to go right for this to work. Again, I want it to work. I'm not rooting against it, but uh, I wouldn't put up any money on betting that it will work at this juncture. I'm not necessarily betting that it won't, but um, I mean, I have my insurance—my skeptical insurance—in terms of gold and gold miners that I've had, although I reduced my gold miner position quite a lot coming into this year simply because I wanted to own more cash, and I had—we'd had—I'd had a lot of appreciation in—in the handful of names that I owned. And I just—I just felt like, you know, I—I kept raising cash until the point where I stopped thinking about it. And—and—and now I feel like, okay, you know, I'm not against looking at ideas either long or short, but—but I think having a big cash buffer makes a—

Lot of sense as long as you've got your cash protected. You can't own cash without owning precious metals or some sort of a some sort of a inflation hedge in case we end up going down that path. And uh we we easily could. Okay.

And I actually I'm really glad that you underscored that. Um, and actually, let me underscore one thing you said, too. You said you um you were selling your miners um a because you'd had some appreciation, but you wanted cash. You basically said, "I just I sold until I stopped thinking about it." And I I I I think that's such a great way to it's kind of finger to the wind risk in your portfolio, which is if you've got a position that is causing you to just lose sleep or it's just nagging at you, it's probably a sign that you need to reduce it, right? It's just it's your subconscious kind of speaking at you.

I'll share something that I I've I've uh I've shared with readers of mine a number of times which I learned you know from getting caught when I was running my short only fund. was something was always I was something was always going wrong for me or my positions and you know sometimes you get kind of you feel trapped you can't decide what to do and what I found is when you you say okay I think I'll try this and you start doing a little bit then you see how you feel it makes you feel better you do a little more of that and you can start to work your way out of problems by doing a little bit and then eventually you you you'll figure out what you really want to do and uh you know you'll you'll you'll start to extricate your yourself from the problem or you'll make the problem smaller and then you can be more clear-headed and decide how you want to you know attack it from a different uh uh vantage point.

So so I did kind of a variation of that. I I'd wanted to hold a lot of cash and then I you know and and and and the miners that I had sold were up three or four fold. It wasn't like they're up like 30% or something, right? So, I had some pretty good sized gains in in in these names. So, anyway, I decided to ring the cash register and uh have less risk and less stress. Okay. All right.

So, um let me ask you this. So, so I liked how you put it where you said, "Look, I'm rooting for the success. I'm totally not willing to be putting money on it though right now." um you're not you're not so pessimistic about it that that Bill Fleenstein the short seller is, you know, jumping on his short horse again and and and riding, you know, to the short rodeo. Um so you're kind of just, you know, kind of parking in cash and gold until you sort of have more clarity. I mean, I have I have I have tiny short position meant to kind of offset the market risk of some of my longs, my my non-metal oriented longs, and it doesn't really work that way, but it makes me feel better. Yeah.

And and on the long side, just real quick, normally we do this at the end of the conversation, but we're kind of getting it now, so let's just do it. Um, so you got a you've been you've been building cash, you're hedging it with gold, you've reduced your miners, um, and you do have some longs. Are they still the what you used to call kind of the the rifle shot uh what I'd like to say is idiosyncratic ideas where I think that they have enough uniqueness and uh their their business has enough proprietariness um and it's not particularly GDP sensitive such that they can do well in a sloppy noisy period like we're going to be going through. That doesn't mean the stock price won't get ripped around, you know, and yanked all over the place. But it means if you look at how the business can can we look out two years and see the business is going to be in a totally different place regardless of what happens in the world, regardless of, you know, 90% of the outcomes in the world. Um, and you can see how it could have a much higher valuation. You can get from, you know, here to there even if it's a bumpy path. And and that's what I've tried to that's what I've tried to do is find some things that can can that can can can grow and do well regardless. That doesn't mean again that the stock price won't be in under pressure week to week, month to month if the market's bad, but I feel like I'll be in a much better place a couple years from now with them. Okay, great.

And and to give people an example of kind of what you're talking about, it could be like a biotech company like, hey, if if if if their new drug gets FDA approval, bang, that stock gets a massive rerating, right? Sorry about that. Um, yes. I mean, in this case, I mean, I could give you the name if you want an example. Uh, I mean, I wasn't I wasn't fishing for it, but if you want to share it, I'm sure no problem sharing it. I' I've I've I've slobbered all over this company on social media in Twitter. I mean, I write about it in my column. I'll give you an example. This is not meant as an example that everyone should run out and buy this. This is meant to be an example of what I'm talking about. So, there's a company called Pure Cycle Technology and they are um taking polyropylene and turning it recycling it turning into usable plastic again. Okay. It's kind of the holy grail of recycling. People have wanted to be able to do this for years. um they licensed some technology from PNG and uh they've been trying to get the it's basically think of it as a big refinery even though it's not a refinery and it's they've had all kinds of growing pains trying to get it to work. It's been uh several years of two steps forward, a step and three/4ers back blahy blah blah. But now they're kind of at the moment in time where it looks like the facility is running at its 90% of name plate capacity which is what they need. probably we need another couple quarters to prove that they can really do that. Then the plants that they have that in the down the road will be more efficient, cost less and they'll have bigger footprints. Well, they there's no competition for that and they can get a pretty good price for the selling the product because one of the things they're doing is they're they can't possibly make enough recycled plastic to supply the world's demands. I mean, a lot of of man of companies that sell products would like to say, "Hey, we're using some recycled plastics here, right? It's, you know, we we've sent a lot of our our our used plastic to China, got put in landfills. We're not doing that anymore." And anyway, so they will be a and they're able to charge a pretty good price for what's a blended plastic. So, instead of taking 100% recycled, it'll be say 30% or 50%. And the pricing looks like it'll work such that you know these plants can play that cost about a hundred that that uh where a new line might cost um I think it's around $100 million. They they can pay for themselves in about a year. I'm a little off on my numbers because I haven't looked at them recently. The the bottom line is you have a company that when this first plant works well, they've got another one lined up to do in Augusta and they've got a couple other ones lined up and and it's the kind of thing you can debt finance. So, you don't need to issue lots of equity. So, you can imagine now now let's let's let's know I've been skeptical as to whether or not they can actually do this, but let's say they can. Well, now you can just kind of cookie cutter these things that just the the these these these lines will make money and you can put up new ones. You can debt finance them so you don't need a lot of equity uh raised so shareholders don't get diluted. Yep. Right. And you just it just grows and you can just look out in the future. How far how you know how big how far do you want to mess around with your spreadsheet about what they can ultimately make down the road in five or 10 years. It's one of those. Now, it's not it's been I haven't talked about it very much for a long time because I thought it was too speculative to mention to the general public because, you know, every quarter in this year they've they've moved they've gotten closer to name plate capacity. They've got a few POS already. Now, we haven't got any they've got about I think 20 or 25 different trials where people are trying their recycled plastic to see how they like it. If they get a bunch of POSs, they run the thing at capacity for another six months, there will be there won't be any more question as to whether or not they can do it, then you'll have to start saying, well, how much money can they make and what can how fast can they build these lines and all that kind of thing. So, it's a really exciting story. It's kind of a feel-good thing because we're taking something we used to throw in the trash and now we're recycling it. And I think you know that there's a green idea that might actually make money and everyone was looking for green ideas a few years ago. So, it ticks a lot of different boxes. Um, and there's uh some really I I think the people that are doing it are are quite smart. It turns out they needed a little bit of uh one of the one of the concerns people had is that they they have a fair amount of debt as they've done this, but they also have some some revenue bonds that that they had issued that they bought back. any case about a few weeks ago um they needed they needed some more money and so they they sold some of these revenue bonds that they had repurchased to Stan Ducken Miller. So I think when people say well gee if he's confident enough he's probably looked at he's probably smart enough to handicap it as as people get more confidence it's just one of those kind of ideas that you can see doesn't really depend on the stock market. Now, the stock will get bounced around and then parenthetically there's 50 million shares short, which is a lot considering it's it's about 30% of the float, but the float's pretty tight. I've heard the short thesis. It's pretty as a guy who ran a short only fund for 12 years. It's one of the worst short thesises I've ever seen. Any case, I'm getting I'm spending way too much time on this one idea. I was only trying to give you an example of something that could do well that's really not caught up in the dynamics of the stock market and the bond market and all that. Um, and so I probably gone on too long about it, but there you go.

No. Well, I think you cut a lot of people's interest. So, first and foremost, folks, you know, this is not uh Bill's personal financial advice. Do your homework, you know, if you decide to own this. Um, yes. You have to realize it's very speculative. They've got a leveraged balance sheet. Nothing's totally proven. as I told you, they have to they have more things to prove, but they're getting close. They're in the eighth or ninth inning of getting everything proved up they need to. Having said that, there's a difference between, you know, eighth and ninth inning and game over. Yeah. In a good sense. Yep.

And you're understood a point that I think a lot of folks I've interviewed have made over the past, I mean, honestly, couple years, which is we we've become so habituated to the period that markets have been in for much of the past two, three decades. Yeah. Right. where just passive passive the passive investor did great, right? You just bought the market and you held and you did fine. Yeah, we may be entering a period where um that's not going to necessarily be the case anymore. You've already said you think it's going to be kind of a can't remember your ex sloppy, right? Um and so um you know an active approach kind of an old school active approach or hey what are the individual companies that have the best growth prospects irregardless of of what or or regardless of what the economy does. Um you know those that approach is probably going to be superior in this this future environment that's much more sloppy and uncertain. So great example. I ha I hatched up this idea when I was when I was I wasn't sure that we were going to ever get the the the I I said to myself, what happens if all the things I think are going to happen and and gold doesn't really do what I think it should or the miners don't do what it should? I want to have something else that'll work. So, I wanted to find unit growers with some sort of barrier to entry so that I because if you have a good unit grower with a barrier to entry, it can go through a low inflation period or a high inflation period. And uh so I I I looked around and I' I've got a a a very small handful of idiosyncratic ideas like that that that tick that box for me. So um you know, will I be right or wrong? I don't know. We'll find out in a couple years. But um that that's what I've tried to do. Okay.

And I really like that description. Look for good unit growers with barriers to entry. Um it just gives you know the investors watching this video kind of the downside for looking at these sort of undiscovered kind of you know companies like that is because of the passive dominance there's few of us it people looking for idiosyncratic ideas. So it seems to take longer for ideas to catch. Now, you can have some goofy ass idea that's a memeoriented name associated with some other thing and it can go to the moon and trade for billions and billions of dollars. But to find names like this to get them to get traction has been much harder. Um, it's because the active guys are getting redeemed and the passive guys are getting the money and the public before they want to go chase some meme stock they know nothing about. It has to get kind of hot, right? some of the things that I'm doing are not I'm hoping they're going to get hot and those people can chase it later, but it's it's hard getting it the party started in this environment. Okay, that's a good point.

And I want to ask you about status of of passive capital flows in just a minute real quick just on this, this is just out of personal curiosity, this pure cycle technology opportunity. Um, you know, we we all kind of remember when we were told, hey, remember all the all the plastics that we, you know, were told we were recycling. Well, actually, they were just going to China and China was just, you know, putting them in landfills or or the ocean. We've got the Great Pacific Guyire and all that type of stuff, right? And and China eventually said, "Hey, we don't want anymore anyways, right?" Um, so it right now is all that plastic just kind of from a US perspective, it's just going into mostly US landfills. In other words, do these guys have kind of a pretty clear field if if they're able to figure this out, do they not have much competition? There's not going to be well there's I mean I don't I heard of one kind of quasi startup that supposedly has another approach which when I checked out with the person that I that had originally got me involved in the idea, it didn't make much sense. So, but in terms of feed stock, there's plenty of feed stock in the world. They're not going to put out a feed stock. Feed stock being used plastic was what they need for the feed stock to make the clean plastic. Right. Right. I guess my question was just I mean, are we do anything anything constructive with used plastic in the US anymore? Or is it just going to landfills here? I don't believe we're doing anything constructive with it. I don't know what they can I mean, you know, we can we can make people in California use paper straws. Yeah. I mean, we're we're using paper straws, but I think we're putting our plastic cups in in the dirt. The appro Yeah. Anyway, yeah, let's not go down that path. Okay, but Okay.

So, um All right. Well, look, uh so, um you and I have talked an awful lot in the past about passive capital flows. Um I know you like to defer to your peer, Mike Green, on this. Um and I will definitely be interviewing Mike again at some point. Um, but I know it's something that you pay attention to. So, uh, you know, is it just sort of business as usual right now where the the passive capital flows are just continuing to march on and and providing, you know, sort of inexraable floor under this market. Um, you know, yes, there are certain things that could happen in the near term that that can overwhelm the passive flows like you were talking about what happened a couple weeks ago, but beyond that, um, you know, are we just seeing them sort of steady as she goes, or are there any cracks in the system you're seeing that you haven't seen prior? I don't think there are any cracks. I think it's the same uh, as it's been. Of course, I would defer to Mike, but I mean, I'm pretty sure if something started to change, you know, he would say something in one format or another, and you you you'd know that that the that the game had changed. I think what we need is for for for for the for the passive bid to be dented, we would need layoffs or not enough hiring relative to maybe funds that were being redeemed or turned into more fixed income by by baby boomers or people retiring. Um, so you could get some tilt inside the passive machine. So far, we don't seem, you know, you could get some people wanting to redeem their 401ks. You could get that some combination of those things. But I don't doesn't seem like that's changed in very much. I mean, it it it could have changed for a couple of weeks at the same time bad news hit and that's why we had the plunge we had. But I think one has to expect that the passive and the flows associated with that which basically just reverse engineer the momentum and things that it's created are still the dominant force and it's going to lead to a disaster at some point. Um um uh but when it's hard to say um but I think you still have to be aware that that's it's it's only worked to the upside but when it works to the downside it's going to be brutal, right? And that's why we talk about it and and I don't want to because everybody needs to factor it into what they're doing and and um and the longer it goes without causing trouble, which has been the case, the bigger the problem's going to be when it finally causes problems. It, you know, it it won't have mattered until it matters. And when it matters, it'll be the only thing that matters. And it'll be too late to do anything about it. Yeah. It's um this isn't a perfect analogy, but it's not I live out in California. It's not unlike living in California with the fault lines here. Um, which is, uh, you know, it's a beautiful state. Uh, there's a lot that's possible here. And so, um, we build, you know, we build and we run commerce. You know, we run our cities. Um, and you you you kind of just get used to the risk. You kind of forget about it, right? Um, and so right now it doesn't really matter. Now, if and when the big one hits, it's going to be the only thing that matters. Um, not a perfect analogy, but but but in terms of the disruptive disruption, you have you have to you have to keep in mind that it's there and be aware of the fact that it could change and if it changes, it's a very big deal because you you can notice a problem start to happen and you could take defensive action. You know, when the San Andreas fault starts to go, you're not going to be able to sell your house and move in time. Right. Right. In this case, you you can maybe get out of dodge if you start to see trouble, if you're aware of what could happen. So, you can maybe avoid the earthquake, you know, uh in this in the in the case of the markets that you can't avoid in the case of your house in Right. Like I said, sort of imperfect analogy in that way, but I was just tweaking it. Yeah. Yeah. But but accurate in the sense that when it does go, it's going to be the only thing that matters at that point in time, right? Um and and again I don't want to you know reexlain it for everybody but basically we're talking about how um there is just money entering the markets programmatically every month largely coming from uh corporate retirement accounts which are price blind buyers. they're just coming in and whatever the price is, they've got to they've got to invest that month's, you know, retirement uh chunks that they're taking out of paychecks and uh it provides a bid under the market and kind of provides upward pricing pressure. And over time with some of the concentration elements along with it, it it pushes the markets up higher, the indices up higher, it pushes certain stocks up higher more than others. And you know, if left alone, it it sends things higher. problem is is that won't last that way forever. And if it goes into a reverse, it's sort of like our our our fault line breaking. Uh it can just take things down much faster and much more than most investors can imagine right now. Um so let me ask you this, Bill. Um so you said for passive to start getting compromised, we need to start seeing sort of layoffs at scale, you know, economic slowdown, etc. Um there's a lot of people who can make, you know, the recession case. I've got a few on the program this week who'll be making the case for a recession, you know, in the next 12 months or less. Um but let me ask you this. So right now, largely because of the administration's um aggressive trading policy or trading strategy, right? uh the tariff wars. Um we've had seuite executive business owners really re in the reigns on capex because they just don't know yet how this is going to resolve right now. We've had some well we we have what did you call them headline bombs or whatever. Um, you know, we we had one this week that uh, you know, oh, we met over the weekend with China and then, you know, we're going to have this 90-day cooling off period and we're going to bring these down and things are looking good, right? But we have no idea right now how long that's going to last and maybe they get ramped back up, right? I I I my point is I don't think that's enough to necessarily unthaw uh the freeze in a lot of capex spending. And so my question is is the longer this uncertainty continues, the longer that that capex isn't getting spent, there's economic activity that otherwise would have happened that isn't happening. So are we creating sort of a lag effect that is going to pull the economy or is going to additionally slow the economy because we're not doing that economic activity right now. Yeah, it's possible. and and uh if they actually cut off some of the funds that it looks like they're going to cut off from the the deficit, that'll that'll be an undertoe. Um you know, the the the recession risks are, you know, I think pretty high, but I mean um whether or not it really becomes a recession that that that that breaks into the open and feeds on itself, I think remains to be seen. I don't know that when bubbles burst, catastrophe is pre-ordained because you've just shattered the psychology and the thing that was holding things together. If the stock market were to collapse, I guarantee you we'd be headed to recession quickly because that be enough to tip everything over because of the size of the the stock market relative to GDP. But if the the passive bid can hold it together and then the you know that the we we can we can skirt near the in recession line maybe dip dip in a little maybe not too much. I don't know. Maybe we just kind of meander around until something pushes us one way or the other

Other. I, I, I just don't know. I mean, if I had a real strong opinion, I wouldn't sit with 50% in cash.

Right. Okay. Well, what will you be watching then?

Um, it doesn't necessarily have to be about recession and necessarily the reverse and the passive capital flows, but like between now and and at whatever point you decide to change your your positioning, what are the things you're going to be monitoring most closely to try to get a sense for where things are going? Credit spreads, is it is it the capital flows themselves? Like what are the things you're really—

When credit spreads start to be a problem, you don't have need a magnifying glass. You find out, right?

Um, uh, so I, I, I think just uh, you know, if you start to see companies talking about laying people off, we start to see layoffs that you know, they, they, they tend to gather momentum on their own. So you would want to look for that. Um, you know, uh, we want to see how the stock market responds to news. I mean, if if the stock market itself were to be able to get weak, but again, as I as I've laid out the argument as I as I feel like it's set up, it'll take a lot to disrupt the passive flows. Now, I think if the dollar rolls over again at the time the bond market is and then you start getting some other bad news, you know, maybe it can feed on itself. I mean, I think recessions feed on themselves, right? And you got to kind of just like declines feed on themselves in the market and the markets feed on themselves in the upside reflexivity and all that.

Um, so I don't have any one thing that I'm watching particularly closely. Um, it just it'll be kind of an amalgamation of of of events and news and market action that says, wow, you know, if the dollar was grindingly weak like it was recently, it gets start weak again and bond yields pick up and uh, you know, you have companies start, you know, talking about, you know, weak profit margins and layoffs and you got to start really getting thinking, wow, maybe we're going to have a recession, then you start to have a recession and the bond market rallies because of the recession and you know, just all these interlocking loops that you have to kind of pay attention to. So, like I said, it's really in the too hard pile, which is why I mean, I'm willing to take some pain and I'm willing to get involved in complicated situations and I'm willing to put money behind my opinions and uh, I, I kind of just said, no moss, got a bunch of cash. So, it shows you how confident I am at sorting out the environment.

Well, I, I actually think almost more than anything else we could discuss, that's um, should be the most important signal that the viewer takes from this video, which is that a guy who's got a lot of experience and I would say a lot of self-confidence in in, you know, putting his capital on where he thinks things are going is saying, "This is above my pay grade. I'm stepping out."

Right? So, if you're like an individual investor who's just trying to, you know, trying to outtrade this market, you better be a lot more capable and and confident than Bill Fleenstein uh to be long right now.

Yeah. I have a big opinion and my own opinion. I'm willing to put money behind it, but it's too hard right now, at least for me.

Yeah. So, okay. Um, All right. Well, this is it's always so fun and fascinating talking to you, Bill, but I got to start winding this down.

Um, let me ask you this, getting back to bonds for a minute here. Um, let's say that the bond market continues to not like what it sees. Um, I, I, I asked you this question in a recent interview that we were on and and you said, "Hey, it's kind of above my pay grade, but but let's say that that the US 10-year yield starts cracking north of 5%."

Right? like at at what point at what point does the US 10-year like really start to create major troubles for the economy and the markets?

It's hard to say. Um, you know, it'll kind of be up to the bond market to decide, you know, where where does the weakness feed on itself? But then when the stock market gets weak in sympathy, then the bonds will rally. I, I just went through that little loop with you. So I, I mean, I think look the problem is so big. I mean, we'll be lucky to refinance this, you know, get the deficit financed at 5%, you know, four or five I think. So I, I know I see smart people who think, ah, no, well, it'll be 3% or below three and all that.

Um, okay. If that happens, if you can get rates that low without the market completely imploding first, um, then you might be able to to to to make the market, you know, kind of trade in a big wide range, you know, and go sideways in a big range but not get super weak. Um, but I, I just don't I don't see the ability to finance a giant chunk of the debt that much south of where we are right now. So, I think it's here or higher. So, if I like I don't have a strong opinion about that. I'm not putting up any money on that. I'm not short bonds. But, um, you know, let's put it this way. If you said, do you think it could be short bonds next or long bonds next? I would say I'll be short them before I'll be long them.

Okay. Well, that's that's helpful. And really where I was kind of going was like, let's let's see what were to happen if things were to get bad, right? So, you you've said many times that you think the bond market's going to take the printing press away from the Fed and all that type of stuff. So, if the bond vigilantes like really got going, what would whatever whatever whatever 10-year yield we started to think, okay, there's a real problem here. What are the options of the um central planners?

So, what do you think that how do you think the Fed would be likely to respond and how do you think the administration, Treasury would be likely to respond if they were like, "Look, the bond market's just getting away from us here."

Well, it depends on how dire they feel the situation is. I mean, they could always try yield curve control, which I think would probably backfire, but maybe they could get away with it. I think you'd need some kind of a crisis that was not specifically the the debt crisis for them to be able to pull that off. Or maybe they would try it even in that. I, I, I don't know. I mean, you know, you we know what the BOJ did. People used to freak out about the size of the debt to GDP in Japan and they wound up buying half of them. They got away with it. They pulled it off. They were lucky they did it in a period when we had COVID and the rest of the world's rates went to zero and all that.

Um, you know, uh, there's no way this Fed would monetize that. I mean, they've they've had no problem doing QE in the past irresponsibly in my opinion and fermented a lot of this can kicking. Let's face it, if they hadn't have done QE along the way, we'd have had some serious economic problems to deal with and we'd have had to settle up this budget deficit issue or sorry, national debt issue before it got to here. So, the Fed's QE has aided and abetted the worthless politicians that we have. They're stealing from us every day and won't do anything to fix any long-term problem. They've allowed that can kicking. The Fed's policies have allowed that can kicking. So, part of the reasons we're in the mess that we're in is because of the irresponsible idiots at the Federal Reserve. So, I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I certainly wouldn't.

Let me ask you this question because you're you're kind of taking it in the direction I want to take it in. So, um, Powell, whatever he does, he's gone in a year.

Yep. Right. Um, the president will appoint somebody else, presumably somebody who'll be a little bit more—

Yep.

willing to play ball with the administration. Um, no guarantee, but presumably. So, my question is like, should we ex—

Well, I, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Should we expect that they would do anything differently in the future?

It's hard to say. I mean, uh, you know, uh, why wouldn't they go back to QE? Why wouldn't they just start buying a whole bunch of of US Treasury stock?

Well, because the the the leading candidate at the moment in it seems to be thought to be Kevin Warsh.

Kevin Warsh.

Yeah. Friend of Stan Druckenmiller's, who is, you know, an extraordinarily smart individual.

Yep.

Um, and I think he's also friendly with Scott Bessett. The problem is as I have read what he has said in the past, I don't think he would be going down the path of QE and let's uh let's do some yield curve control operation twist to get us through this tricky period. Now, maybe he would. I don't know. I think they're going to have to try to get a guy who will allow them to play, you know, some sort of operation twist or yield curve control or something to get them to use their balance sheet to help this out. Now, I don't really think that's a good idea. It's going to it's going it's a form of can kicking. Um and um I think gold will will will uh experience a big move if that happens. So, I don't really know how they're going to get through it. I, I you know this Fed won't do anything for them. I mean, you know, Bernanke, Yellen, uh, those fools and and and Powell, I mean, they thought nothing of doing QE to bail out problems that they—well, in the case of the real estate bubble the Fed helped create and stock bubble they did create it and in in COVID they didn't create the problem but they sure made it worse in terms from a financial standpoint. So the the the Fed is as is as responsible for the predicament we're in right now as anyone. Though they never get the blame. They only get the the the har—They never get any of the criticism. You know, it's the the Jim Grant analogy. You know, they, they light the fire and they come up to put it out and they get credited for being the firemen, but they don't get the blame for being the arsonist that created it in the first place. And that's where we are with those fools, which is why you got to own a bunch of gold or gold miners or something—unit growers to protect yourself from the inflationary consequences of their policies. The long-term problem is I don't see any way out but to try to inflate our way out of the debt. Now, they're going to try to inflate it out without too much inflation. I'm not talking about hyperinflation, but that almost has to be a component of trying to get us to grow past it, even though nobody from the administration would say it that way.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

All right. Well, as usual, uh, fantastic, Bill. I, I hate to start wrapping things up here.

Um, I got I got one last question and then we'll just get to, you know, the wrap-up of where folks can follow you.

Um, you know, a lot of what we're talking about, I like the fact that you've said, "Hey, look, I, I'm I don't know where this is going to go." So, you're you're not, you know, you're not jumping on the short train, at least not yet. um on a macro basis, not not on as an investor, you know, with a rifle shot or whatever, but on a macro basis, where if if anywhere do you have optimism right now, you know, um like if someone were to say, what's what's Bill bullish on? Is is there any macro trend that you are bullish on?

Well, I'd like to be bullish on the yen in Japan. I mean, they got a huge demographic problem, but so do most of the developed world. So does most of the developed world. I think the yen could be a very strong currency. Um, both from a purchasing power parity standpoint, proving it's cheap now and the fact that um, you know, they've gone through a a number, you know, a few decades of not of low growth and all of that. Um, but the BOJ just seems to not want to do the right thing. um which is a central banking problem worldwide. So I, I, I don't know. I don't I don't have any area of the world that I'm particularly bullish on. Uh, you know, everyone's got a variation of the same kind of problems. Europe's got the same problems we do, only a lot of them are way worse. Um, you know, Australia, New Zealand, I mean, Jesus Christ, they talk about totalitarians. Look what goes on down there. Look what they did to people during COVID. I don't want to be there. Canada, that's a joke. I mean uh uh in terms of free speech and these kind of freedoms that I think are fundamentally important. So it's it's pretty hard to get excited about any place in the world really. I mean, okay, that's the green—that's that's why all the colored paper is losing against gold because people have figured this out. You know, central bankers—uh, non-G7 central bankers I mean to say have sort of figured this out and said, look, we don't want anybody's colored paper. We'd rather have we'd rather put our marginal dollars in gold because nobody can print that thing.

So interesting. I know I said that was the last big question, but now I got to squeeze this one in.

Um, from my understanding, the the buyers of gold right now continue to be sovereign players um and continue to be sort of eastern investors. Um, the western speculators and speculators. There's a lot of speculation going on in China. There's a lot of action in the futures market there. So on top of the consumption by the central bank, I mean the PBOC, by the insurance companies um um and individual investors, there's a wild amount of speculation going on on top of that over there. Not here, but over there.

Okay. So very much appreciate that clarification. But that's why some of the why the volatility's picked up so much, I believe.

Okay. But I want to underscore that those are eastern speculators, right? So it doesn't seem that to your point you were saying that's why people don't want to hold the the colored, you know, paper money anymore. They want to own gold, right? But it seems like that trend really hasn't picked up yet in the west.

Has definitely not. Okay. Look at the if you look at you can look at the uh tonnage held by the GLD, you know, that's that's that's down from where it was 18 months ago, two years ago during COVID even—um, if you look at the open interest in terms of the futures here it's at it's at an area that tends to be at the lows of moves even though the gold recently made a new high, so there's no—you look at the GDX, you look at the action of the miners for the most part there's no signs of any even moderately intense speculation on the part of the west yet, I would say. I think it's coming. It'll happen, you know. Um, but it it's we haven't seen it yet.

Okay. I was going to get I was going to go to that yet part. So, okay. It sounds like you do have in general confidence. Let's even say you're bullish. I have a hard time believing we're going to have this massive move as we've seen in gold and people starting to understand that it belongs in the portfolio for diversification reason. Um, uh, diversification reasons. It's kind of like an insur—financial insurance policy, however you want to say it. It seems that recognition is dawning on people. It it seems to me impossible that that idea or that movie is going to end without the US public getting involved pretty aggressively and uh and and I could be wrong about that, but I think that's still in front of us. So, let's assume that that aggressive involvement happens. What impact would you expect that to have on price?

Oh, go up. Yeah. But go up by a little or go up by a lot. I mean, when we saw when we saw it happened in 1980, it went up by—

Yeah. I, I don't I don't know. Up. I mean, I never had a gold price target. I just knew that the policies we were pursuing would pressure it to higher. I mean, I know what the cost of gold production is for the average mining company. I know what the better ones can do it at. I know what the crier ones can do it at. So, if you just thought that, okay, it it costs, let's call it 15—$1,500 to make an ounce of gold. Well, it's 3,000. Well, okay. Well, if somebody said, you know, what's it cost for the marginal cost of barrel of oil? Now, that's different because the dynamics of a of a of an oil well and a mine are different. But, but you say copper, I mean, if if copper sold at two or three times the cost of production, which it has in the past. Um, you know, so I never thought 1,500 or 2,000 or 2,500 was a very big price vis-à-vis what it costs to make the stuff, particularly when you start to think about how hard it is to find new deposits and how long it takes to bring them in. So it's so the the marginal ounce of gold is going to be even more expensive than what I just shared with you. And if you thought you had a pasture that had gold in it, you'd be 10 years and, you know, three, four, 500, $600 million at the at the low side before you could get that out of the ground. Having said that, all the gold that's ever been made is still in existence for the most part. So there's a huge above-ground stock. So it's hard to, you know, try to amp, you know, parse those two and figure out what what what price should gold trade at? I don't know. And I'm not I never thought I would know. and I don't have any target for where it's supposed to go. It's going to go up until it doesn't. But right now, you're just like bias is higher. And I feel good about that. And I, I actually think that's a right way to think about it. When it's done going up, I hopefully I'll recognize the intense speculation. And I'm hopeful at that moment in time that the treasuries are forced. They're having they're having to do the right things to the treasuries and I can sell my gold at a big price and buy treasuries with a big fat coupon on them. That's my happy ending.

All right. Great. Well, look, I, I hope you get there and I hope when you do, you come on this channel and tell us and give folks the opportunity to follow suit.

Um, all right. Well, look, I got to wrap up here real quick though, folks. Um, if you are thinking about uh, you know, investing in gold, um, and if you're, you know, new to it, um, or not very experienced in it yet, uh, if you haven't already read my free guide that kind of just walks through all the different options out there to help you think about which ones might be more appropriate for you, um, you can read that for free at thoughtfulmoney.com/gold.

Um, all right, Bill. Well, look, um, great as always. Um, if folks for the folks that have really enjoyed this conversation, which I mean, let's admit it. It's got to be 100% of the viewers, Bill, right?

Um, I doubt it's ever 100%.

Uh, okay. 100—110%. You could hand out free money and you could hand out free money and some people would still at him.

I know.

Um, but but for folks that would like to follow you and your work between now and your next appearance on this channel, where should they go?

Uh, my website is fleensteincapital.com. I write a a column there and answer questions every day. Um, and it's 130 bucks a year. So, if you got a paper out, you can afford it.

Okay, great. Uh, and Bill, when I edit this, I'll put up the link on the screen here. And folks, the link will also be in the description below the video if you just want to get there with one click.

Um, uh, Bill, hold on one sec. Just a couple quick housekeeping and I want to give you the last word here.

Um, first off, folks, please thanks Bill for coming on the channel. Show him how much you'd like for him to come back on again next quarter and give us an update on his outlook. Uh, to do that, just do it by hitting the like button and then clicking on the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it.

Um, Bill has given us, you know, a lot of reasons for uh pause—concern about how to, you know, make it through this sloppy period that he sees is likely to persist ahead for a good period of time. We might even tip into recession. Who knows? But it's a potentiality here.

Um, so if you're looking for help in terms of how to navigate your financial wealth through this, um, recommend that most people watching this channel, if you're if you don't have the kind of DIY tra—investing success that a that a guy like Bill does, and Bill's even out of the market right now largely as he mentioned, um, then I highly recommend you work with a good professional financial adviser uh, to come up with the plan for how to navigate your assets, but then to actually execute it for you as well. If you've got a good one who's doing that for you, great. Stick with them. If you don't consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the financial advisors that Thoughtful Money endorses, these are the firms you see with me in this channel week in and week out. To schedule one of those free consultations, just fill out the short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. And a reminder, only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form. These consultations are totally free. There's no commitment to work with these firms. It's just a service they offer.

Thanks for waiting, Bill.

Um, so last question for you again is you know we most of the people watching this video—yes, we do have um a fair amount of professional investors that watch, but the vast majority are just regular people—folks that have worked hard to uh build a financial future uh, you know, some financial wealth for their families. They want to they want to give their families a good financial future. uh, they're concerned about a lot of the the issues that you've talked about here and most importantly they just don't want to get wiped out um by you know some of these forces. They don't want to become u—unwilling collateral damage if things unfold in the way that you think they could from here. What what would your parting bits of counsel to those people be if any here?

I think that people need to familiarize themselves with financial history. I think the last couple of decades people have learned the wrong lessons about how markets work and how things tend to go. This has been a very unusual period in financial history even though it's gone on for about 20 years. I'm talking about the activist central bank era that Greenspan sort of ushered in uh and and Bernanke really got going when they when they tried to bail out their mistake with the two bubbles. Um and I think you need to understand financial history. So I think books like um *Only Yesterday* or Eddie Chancer wrote a good book called *The Devil Take the Highest*, which goes through various different manias in his in throughout history. You have to understand how wild things can get and if they go on long enough people think what is really outlandish is the norm and it's not. And uh I think that'll I think the more perspective you can have about how things can go and how much is a function of psychology working in the right way, the better prepared you're going to be for when the passive bid finally—when the pin hits the bubble because it's going to happen. And I, I, I think that I think probably very very few of today's market participants have any working—had any decent working knowledge of financial market history over the last couple hundred years. I mean, I have other books I could recommend but those two would be a good start and uh and and and so if that—what *Only Yesterday*, you can you can—the period was quite like now in in the 20s and that people thought that the market would always come back. I mean

It didn't have anywhere, anywhere near the flows that we have today, but it had other illegal things: investment trusts and things like that where they were manipulating stock prices. But the psychological damage and what happened, and of course the depression, was more a function of other things—not just the market breaking. But people need to understand financial history, I think, and I, I, I, I suspect that most people today don't—most non-professionals, even probably a lot of the younger professionals, don't know much about it either.

I, I, I would sadly agree with you, and a huge part of that obviously is because we do a terrible job of teaching financial literacy in this country, which—well, we don't teach much literacy very well in this country these days, sorry to say.

Yeah, yeah. And I've railed about that a lot, but I very much appreciate you—not only the sentiment but also, um, you know, making two specific book recommendations. The audience is always asking me, "Hey, how can I get smarter? What are the what are the books or the the publications that have influenced—" Well, if you really want to get carried away, the best book ever: It's called *Economics and the Public Welfare* by Benjamin J. Anderson. Anderson with an E. He was an economist with, uh, City Corp in the teens, like as in the 1900s, and was a critic of the Fed in real time from through the 20s. And he goes through how the the the financial and economic environment were intertwined, and you know how the repatriations from World War I helped lead to World War II and what happened in Germany and what—but his how he covers what happened in the 20s and the 30s is a real up-close and personal look of of the distortion the central banks can cause.

A lot of people think I'm Johnny One-Note when I'm always criticizing the Fed, but that's because I think most people don't really understand the amount of damage they have done and will continue to do until they finally get, get forced to stop somewhere down the road. So, um, for those of you, it's a big thick book, but it's really, really good. I've read sections of it five or six times. I so much appreciate the recommendation. And folks, I'll have the links to all those books in the description below the video, too, if you want to go check them out.

Um, Bill, can't thank you enough. Uh, it's such a pleasure as always, and again, look forward to having you back on in a quarter. You can give us an audible update on where things are then.

I always enjoy talking to you, Adam. You always, you always make conversations so interesting. I always enjoy it.

Well, thank you. Um, it, it, it's largely just by having a a wonderful mind to bounce these questions off. So, thank you.

Well, I'm flattered. Thank you. All right. All right.

Well, now is the time in the program where we bring in the lead partners from New Harbor Financial, one of the endorsed financial advisory firms by Thoughtful Money. I'm joined as usual by lead partners John Lodra and Mike Preston.

Um, we're recording this, uh, after we recorded, uh, I recorded the initial interview with, uh, Bill, and that's why you can see the different shirt that I'm wearing here. Um, there's also a couple updates that I'll mention in a moment. Um, most notable one being that I was talking with Bill about the deficit for 2025 and how as of March, uh, it was, um, the highest deficit on an absolute basis we'd seen in any year. Um, a few, uh, hours after I recorded with Bill, um, the government announced the April data, which was a rare surplus, um, in fact one of the second largest surpluses I think we've ever had for the month. Um, so actually a notable, uh, difference from, you know, just the the data point that I was initially talking about with Bill.

Uh, but John, look, why don't we start with you? I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about, um, the discussion with Bill on the day we're talking here. Um, the tenure is now like officially up at 4 and a half percent. So it's the yield has continued to increase since my discussion there with Bill. Um, love to hear any thoughts you have on that as well.

Yeah, great to be with you, Adam. Thank you. Always enjoy Bill's, Bill's talks with you. One of the things that I like most about him is he's a pretty humble guy. In fact, I think he pretty much—as seasoned as and as experienced as he is—he pretty much kind of said, "I don't have a lot of conviction right here." And if I could, you know, hold 50% cash, I would, right? So, so holding a big cash pile is essentially one of the key messages he came through today for me. And I think that speaks to—look, we here we are, um, May 14th. Um, the month of April was quite a doozy in markets, and—but if you woke up today, it's like nothing ever happened. The stock market, after having registered a technical bare market—down more than 20%—peaked the trough at at the lows in in April is now I think slightly positive on the year, you know, flat to positive. So it's like it never happened. Um, you know, uh, so but there definitely has been a lot of, uh, movement and probably most notably in the bond market in the yields. And let's take a step back and remember what the the telegraphed policies of this administration have been, and whether Donald Trump or Secretary of Treasury Scott Bazant, they made it very clear that, "Hey, we have a big problem—a fiscal problem, a deficit problem, an interest great problem—and we got to tackle those, even if it means some pain in the markets." We certainly got some pain, but so far that pain has been quickly reversed, in no small part because of, you know, rather, um, drastic swings in policy—tariffs. You know, tariffs on one day, off the next; this level one day, this level the next; pause, no pause. What this really speaks to is, uh, I think a a situation where folks would be, I think, misguided to think that uncertainty has gone away. In fact, I think it's quite still a bit been uncertain market—very uncertain—because these are things that can change on a dime. We've had a very sharp reversal in markets, and and, um, you know, we'll talk about that in a moment. But what we do for everyday clients is, you know, we're we're here to help them make sure their financial security is preserved, not just for today, but for their for their life really. And we've never been big fans about like forecasts, like point forecasts, like we think the market's going to end at X at the end of the year. That is, I think, an utterly naive way to think about markets. In reality, one should—and we certainly do—think about things in terms of a range of outcomes, probable outcomes or improbable outcomes as as that might be, and essentially assign probabilities to those. And I think one blanket statement I feel very comfortable saying is that the range of probabilities is pretty wide right now. It's it's very uncertain. If you think about a simple statistical curve, markets don't behave with a bell curve, but if you think about a, you know, bell curve that, you know, stats 101 teaches you about, the width of that curve is the range of uncertainty. I think it's safe to say that even if you have a expected, you know, best guess, the range of outcomes around that best guess are, I think, are categorically wider than they were, you know, six months ago. So, I just want to set that, and I think Bill basically touched upon that by saying, "Hey, I don't know, holding a lot of cash seems about right to me," and and we would, we would agree with that. So, we're still—even though we've seen some really, um, powerful changes in the market, uh, that suggest that the near-term is likely to see further upside ahead—we're still very comfortable suggesting folks, especially those that are in retirement, to remain underweight equities relative to a full-on, uh, weighting. So, let me just—I want to share a couple charts here. Um, the first thing I want to talk about is the bond market because this is really, if you go back to, you know, kind of the the freakout moment in in April. I know Bill played it down a little bit, but there definitely was some stresses in the bond market that we think no doubt probably had more sway than the stock market selloff in causing a change in policy. So, what I have here is a a comparison of Treasury curves at different dates. Okay? And I picked some dates that are notable: one is the election day—November 5th, 24. Uh, January 14th, actually, has that was the the peak in the 10-year yield so far this year. I think it was about, uh, closing in on five. We'll get to that in a minute. Um, and then the low for 10-year yields on the year—4.4—right after liberation day—yields actually crashed because the markets assumed that economic growth was going to get, you know, hurt, and and, you know, um, you know, typically bonds rally and yields fall when when growth, you know, it looks like it's going to hit a stall. And then very shortly after we had a a freakout in the bond market—very sharp rise—April 11th, the 10-year tagged 4.8%, 8%, and that's essentially the next day was, "Hey, tariffs are on pause—90-day pause"—and then here we are today. So what I want to call out a couple things. So again, this pink line is or future whatever that is is the election day. Um, so where we are today is this, uh, blue line. We have seen, uh, short-term rates come down since the election. Okay. But look what's happened to the long end of the curve. And we, we talk a lot about the 10-year because that's a very bellweather, um, point of the curve. But look what's happened to the 20 and 30-year. And if we talk about extending debt or our massive debt out even further, this is a problem. We've had a very, very significant steeping of the bond curve to the point where it's essentially unchanged on the very long end from where we were, uh, back at the peak of interest rates this year of January, uh, 14th. So you can see the steepening is is is quite dramatic. Uh, and even, even if you compare it to the, um, you know, kind of the the freakout moment in the bond market in April, April 11th, it's essentially the same place. So—so what caused such a drastic policy change in in in April? We're right back there. So there's been no ground gained in terms of the the main publicly stated objective of of lowering interest rates. This is a really, I think, important thing, especially as we get closer and closer to some of the, um, the budget, um, debates in Congress about tax cuts, the salt, you know, um, you know, discussion. Really challenging set of, I think, circumstances here because, you know, how do we get these rates down? Um, you know, one way is to get the stock market to tank again, right? It's it's this tricky, um, you know, policy statement that's now looks like it's it's very much, um, going to run into some problems with some of the other objectives of the administration—namely extending and and further tax, tax cuts. Um, I'll pause there, Adam, and we can certainly talk about the stock market action too.

Well, so let, let's do that and then maybe, uh, find our way back around to bonds. So you know, uh, all of April's losses are now gone; uh, they've been made up. Um, the S&P is now green for the year. Um, so everybody that was freaking out and saying that, "Oh, all this trade disruption is, you know, basically cratering the markets," Um, uh, those seem to to be misplaced fears. Um, uh, so I, I guess the first question—and and what's different between when the market really, uh, you know, hit its lows following the liberation day surprise—um, uh, you know, what's very different from then is we, we, we're starting to have some more clarity—right, we've got the UK deal struck—um, China, who everybody sort of thought was going to come to the table last and be the most intrigent trading partner and and was denying any engage engagement with the US is is now just met with us, you know, in in Switzerland last weekend, and, uh, you know, good news has come out of that presumably. Um, so, uh, it, it's looking like, uh, you know, winds are are going to be put on the board relatively soon. Of course, we got the UK trade deal done, but presumably there's a bunch of other countries that are close to striking some sort of, you know, at least memorandum understandingish type documents with us around trade. So markets clearly starting to get more bullish from all of that. So, um, are we, are we back in a in a in a bull market trend at this point? Um, you know, is—for a lot of folks were getting super defensively positioned—is this time to get offensively positioned? Um, or a, have we come too far too fast? And or b, is this headwind of these higher bond yields—is that something that's going to express itself no matter, you know, what the stock market hopes at this point?

Yeah, that's a great question, and and, um, emphatically our technical signals have registered, uh, quite a turn for the bullish. Um, you know, we, we have taken out some key—and I'll share some charts here—and I'm sure Mike can add, add commentary as well. Um, but here's a chart of the S&P 500. It's a daily chart. Um, this was the whole swoon in in in April, and here we are today—dramatically bounced back. You know, we had busted through this downtrend here. Uh, we, we had a a brief stall of of resistance here at at these the confluence of some important moving averages. This green one is 50-day moving average. The orange one is 200-day, and the gray one is 100-day moving average. We are now soundly—three days now—with this gap up, uh, healthily above those moving averages. You know, simplistic technical analysis suggests at the very least this serves as a new level of support. It's not quite that simple—that we look at a lot of different things beyond moving averages—but, uh, purely on this, you see a a massive breakout. And the technical conclusion here is that we're we're probably more likely to retest, if not take out these highs, than to revisit these lows as the as the next move. That's just kind of historically the tendency. Um, it's not a guarantee, and we'll certainly, um, be, uh, shrew, you know, kind of adapt at at making position changes. But if you look underneath the surface, we have, um, participation indicators. Uh, uh, over 50% of the stocks in the S&P are trading above their 50-day moving average. Bullish percents—another way of measuring the kind of uniformity of buy signals across different markets—have moved strongly into favorable territory. A whole suite of technical indicators that we look at have, uh, registered very powerfully strong signals. Now, these will change sometime, but we don't need to anticipate that. But for now, um, you know, we, we the the the ball is in the offensive side of the the court, and, um, you know, we'll see what the market does with—but the the the read on this, in our opinion, is that we're likely to, um, you know, turn higher here rather than lower. And what did we do to that? We actually added a little bit of equity exposure. We added some, some sectors—utilities and and technology—which have reexerted themselves as relative strength leaders. We've taken some hedges off, relaxed some hedges, but we're still only about synthetically about 40% in equities right now. Uh, we may choose to up that to 45, 50% perhaps. Uh, we'll see how this plays. But you know, point being is we still think it makes sense to be underweight equities. Um, but we clearly are not as concerned as we were in in April. We were very happy to have taken off some put option hedges that we had around here, um, because we were able then to enjoy the the, you know, for the amount of equity that we didn't have unhedged—that we had unhedged—enjoy this rally here. So, um, that's our, that's our pure, uh, unemotional read on the market right now.

All right, and I appreciate you—I was going to ask you about portfolio changes. So I appreciate you anticipating that. Mike, let's head over to you. Um, so one of the things, uh, I know is on people's mind right now is, uh, gold. Um, gold has had a a great run; uh, you've been—you know, you were way in front of that last year saying you expected that to happen. Um, but now as the market has turned back to bullish, um, and you know, perhaps we have some more clarity now on the trade side of things, um, I think people are beginning to wonder, "Well, has the uncertainty that might have been propelling gold higher, um, is that now—is that—is that tailwind now turning into a headwind?" Gold has had some pretty big down days in the past week. Um, so I guess, I guess the big question is, is, uh, is the run over in gold? Um, or, uh, is there still more potential upside here? What do you think?

Yeah, Adam, I don't think the run is over at all. And if you listen to what Bill Fleckenstein said, he didn't think it was over either. And when you asked him, "Gee, Bill, where do you think it could go?" He said, "I don't know, up." You know, it certainly makes sense, and, uh, he said it cost $1,500, uh, an ounce on average roughly, which I think is about right to take one ounce of gold out of the ground. Well, here gold is just below 3200, 3150, 3170, something like that. And everyone's getting a little bit nervous. They're thinking that the run is over. This is the old wall of worry that you so often hear on on, uh, in Wall Street. It is indeed a wall of worry that gold has been running up here for 2 years. And while I'm talking, I will just share this chart. Um, hopefully it will come up and show you a chart of gold. Here's a weekly chart of the gold ETF. So year to date, gold has gone, you know, up from two, you know, this on on the GLD, which is essentially the same shape as the spot gold chart. Went from 240 to, you know, to 32, uh, 320 or so. And that would be around 3500 gold. We're now down at around 3150 on gold. But take a look at this 4-week consolidation. We had the swing high around 3500 spot. We're just below 3200 spot. There's nothing in this chart that causes me to run for the hills. This has happened before. We had a multi-week consolidation here. We had a four, 3, 4-week consolidation followed by four weeks of sideways action. We had a triangle consolidation early 2024. The big news is that we broke out here at 2000. Let me go back to the monthly chart. It's a 4-year consolidation pattern after almost a 10-year cup consolidation. We went from 2,000 straight up to 3500. Going back to the weekly chart, I see nothing really to worry about here. Nobody knows what the ultimate price will be. Nobody knows when this trend will end. I will say that trends tend to follow; they tend to continue a lot longer than you think they can. And with the fundamental macro backdrop of a Fed that has no other options and basically a a world economy that has no other options other than the print, it's just very dangerous to call a top here. Uh, I, I think the charts say next stop should be up in the high 3s, but we don't know how it's going to get there, and we don't even know if it will get there, but it should. I can only say this that this is a healthy consolidation so far. Uh, if I could just turn to silver here. Here's a weekly chart of silver. You know, we're watching this closely. Silver has lagged, and it's a little bit frustrating that it's been lagging so much, but it's building what I see to be a triple top here right around 3500 on spot. And this is SLV, so it's a couple points lower, but here's one top. Here's a second top. And I believe we're coiling, and we're going to take out that third top at some point. Triple tops normally don't hold, particularly in commodities and in metals commodities. So I expect 3500 to break and then for silver quickly to go 38 to 40. Don't forget that the the silver to gold ratio is still around 100 to 1, which is, uh, you know, which is which is crazy high. I mean, it's been higher during co—it got up to 120—but that ratio would suggest that silver's got some catchup at some point. And yes, I know there's concerns about recession and concerns about industrial demand, but I don't really believe it. I think the trend is higher for metals because of what's going on with central banks, because of where we are in the story. And remember that Bill said, "Familiarize yourself with financial history." And don't think that the last 20 years is anything like any other time in history. It has been different this time for longer than it's ever been different before. You can look at charts of valuations, and even during the 20s valuations were only stretched this high for a couple years. We've been stretched this high for over 10 years, you know, because of quantitative easing. And so it feels like it's permanent. And of course, it sounds so—I don't know—what's the word—hyperbolic to say so that this is really that extreme, but it is. And we'll find out later when it kind of comes apart. But, uh, familiarize yourself with history, and don't stay in the party too long—in any of these parties, I should say. Uh, John just explain how a lot of our short-term indicators are very bullish. And it's true. They're very bullish. And I heard Bill kind of throw his hands up and say, "You know what, I don't really know. I'm holding a lot of cash." And that's not a bad thing for most people to do, particularly if you don't have the skill or the experience or the hedging tools that we have. And we're only at about 40% stocks. Why is that? Even though we think markets are going higher because we really don't know in the end. We think it's quite likely markets go higher for a little while, but then we think it's also quite likely that at some point they top out and crash, and we don't want to give back much, if anything, on the turn. So I, I didn't talk about miners, but I feel the same about miners. They too are in a consolidation. The charts look similar to the to the, uh, to the bullion charts. We think miners go higher. They did get very overbought a few weeks ago, and, um, you know, everyone was all in. I don't think the tops are in in miners either. We have a 10% position in miners still. We haven't trimmed that. We've sold some calls against that position in two tranches. We just took one off yesterday on this pullback. It's a way to give us some, some income or a partial hedge on our position. But we think the miners are going higher. So, it's a the miners/gold/silver thing is a longer-term trend. I'd expect it to go on a couple more years. Be careful about not being too overexposed. I guess I'd like to finish my thoughts with this. I just have a bunch of notes here with Bill's talk, and I'm circling the things that I think are most important. He said this: This is a gem for individual traders out there. Really hone in on this. Bill said, "I sold until I stopped thinking about it." Mhm. Hugely important. You know, if you're all in something, and I know from experience, if you're all in something and that's all you think about, you're probably going to make mistakes, and you know, the best-case scenario is that you're just going to feel uncomfortable, and maybe you'll get lucky, and the worst-case scenario is you get destroyed. You know, particularly because he ran a short book—shorts can be notoriously difficult to predict and dangerous. He would just start doing something and reduce the position. So for those out there that feel too heavy in things, including gold, silver, and miners, sell on the way up until you stop obsessing about it. It's really good advice.

Yeah. And I, I, I noted that too in the moment when he said—I think they've been talking to him about it—but that's just a really good rule of thumb—particularly, uh, I think you said traders, but I would just say particularly for the the average retail, regular person investor. Um, if, if you have a position that's kind of like a splinter in

Your mind that it just weighs on you. Your brain keeps going back to thinking about it. You're thinking about it at night. It's just your subconscious telling you you're too exposed in this. You're likely too exposed in this position that your your subconscious is telling you, "look, if something goes wrong here, you're going to regret it." So, take Bill's advice. Um, just start lightening up until, you know, you're sleeping through the night, right? That's probably a pretty good sign, right? It's not not super scientific, but I think it's it's finger to the wind. Probably a really good way to navigate.

Um, Mike, real quick, um, we're beginning to note that M&A looks like it's starting to pick up in the mining sector. Uh, I think Wheaten Precious just bought Mag Silver, if I'm remembering correctly. Um, what is that telling you that the the majors are starting to, you know, pick up attractive um juniors? I can tell you the CEOs in any industry, not just precious metals industry, are not going to really start going out on a limb making these huge investments until they see the future is brighter and brighter than the present. And this deal that you just talked about, it's just the first of what will probably be a lot more to come. It's very, very early. For for a lot of years, no one cared about gold and silver. For a lot of years, we said, "Ah, these executives made a lot of mistakes. They made bad investments. They wasted capital." That's all true. Those balance sheets have been somewhat repaired. And certainly gold up at these levels does a heck of a lot to repair even bad decisions. And it's just the cycle of things. When you start to see brighter futures in certain industries, you're going to start seeing these companies use their capital to gobble up other opportunities. So, I'd expect more of this to come. I furthermore, I'd expect a flurry of it to happen near what would might be the ultimate top or at least intermediate term top. But I think that, you know, we went from the world in a slumber about miners and gold and silver to actually being awake and interested. And as Bill said in his talk, okay, now more and more retail investors are starting to take notice. Okay, so that's a little bit further along the game. You know, maybe that's third or fourth or fifth inning of a baseball game. And then in the middle of the game before the seventh inning stretch, you're going to start to see consolidation and takeovers and M&A, etc. And then at the end of the game, everyone's going to be all in and it's going to be on the cover of Barron's and you're going to see a flurry of buyouts. But yeah, no, that's it's positive. Bottom line, it's positive. And in the cycle of things, you know, that we see happen again and again in industries, it's a really good thing and should provide fuel for the next, I want to say more than months. I mean, it could be months to years, that type of thing, you know. I don't think it's an a sign of anything other than um, you know, a good sign at least. And it's not really late in the game either. Okay. Thanks, Mike.

Well, so J, we're going to have to leave it there and start wrapping up here. Um, John, I've got one I'll let you have the last word here. Um, real quick, uh, I just mentioned that, um, uh, I wanted to make sure I put up this revised chart of the US cumulative fiscal budget deficit. And you will see here, um, it had been putting in, um, one of the highest, uh, annual deficit starts to the year. Um, I think second only to, uh, COVID, uh, the outbreak of COVID. But you'll see here it dropped from March to April. Um, so we actually did have a pretty large um, surplus in that month. Um, is that going to be the pace going forward? Should we expect more surpluses? I think it's way too early to tell. Like I said, uh, April numbers are always generally helped by, um, you'll see, you know, we have similar surpluses like this in previous years uh, by tax receipts alone. Uh, but now we've got incoming tariff revenue. Um, and you know, potentially we'll start to see some impact from Doge. Um, so TBD, but I I did just want to make sure that it wasn't all uh terrible trajectories. We we are seeing at least some relief here in the month of April.

Um, all right, John. Um, and wrapping up with you, um, I guess, you know, say any parting bits of advice to today's viewers you'd like to, but um, I guess one question is is you we we have this market that seems to be sort of increasingly schizophrenic. It's it's rarely it's rarely just sort of chill. It's either oh my god, the world is ending and we've kind of been in that mode for the past month and a half. Um, or it is, "hey, everything's awesome," right? Um, the needle tends to swing pretty dependably now between either like extreme FOMO or extreme fear. Um, seems to be flipping back to FOMO now. um, you know, are there dangers of of getting in uh too aggressively at this point in the markets? Yeah, absolutely. I think there is and especially for folks who panicked and sold for example at the worst of it in April and this this really is a lesson for each person and each investor to kind of get to know themselves and and really be honest with themselves. Uh, but even more importantly to that take a step back and remind oneself why are you even investing? Um, bring it back to your financial plan. We've actually been doing quite a bit of financial plans for clients of late. Um, because when when things get uncertain, people get less comfortable about how secure their future is. And it's really important to take a step back, put literally or figuratively pen to paper. "Am I going to be okay? What do I need? Do I need to be uh stressing out as much as I am? Do I need to be this exposed to risk?" Because I will reassert what you just talked about, Adam, there is is a categorically a a wider range of uncertainty. And I think um what this these times demand is um objectivity. This is not the time to dig in on narratives and you know, whether they be political or or economic or whatever. It's a time to be objective, but also adaptable uh to be to be tactical. Um, our approach is really meant to not get married to one one view too too too solidly because the markets time and time again, especially in these kinds of schizophrenic markets as you've talked about, um, they can move really quickly and that's what ultimately causes sleepless nights and stress and no one wants that. And there's a there's a happy medium and it starts with getting to know yourself, but also bringing it back to why are you doing this? What is it for? And never lose sight of that.

All right. Well, very well said, John. All right, folks. Well, look, uh, if you enjoyed the interview with Bill Fleenstein, would like to see him come back on next quarter to give us an update on where he sees the world, especially in terms of the bond market, please let us know that by hitting the like button and then clicking on the subscribe button below, as well as that little bell icon right next to it. If you'd like some help in navigating your financial portfolio, um given these, you know, schizophrenic waters that we we seem to continue operating in here, um highly recommend that most of the people who, you know, watch this video, uh do get good professional guidance from a good professional financial adviser. If you've got one that's already meeting those needs for you, great. Stick with them. But if you don't have one or you'd like a second opinion from one that meets that criteria, um, then consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the financial advisers that Thoughtful Money endorses, perhaps even John and Mike and their team there at New Harbor. To do that, just fill out the short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form. These consultations are totally free. You will get personalized bespoke uh advice from these advisers once they sit down with you and hear your personal situation. Um, and there's no commitment uh to work with these guys. It's just a service they offer to be helpful. Um, all right, John and Mike, as usual, boys, thanks so much for another great week. Um, everybody else, thanks so much for watching.