Transcription
We're counting down towards some big catastrophic event. The dollar is becoming more vulnerable. It's approaching some sort of black swan event or major economic change threatening its reserve status.
If you look past the surface level, the Chinese connection in all of these events, this goes much deeper than people realize it does. The Department of War now had no idea how many of its essential resources, the metals that go into missiles, radar systems, and everything we need to keep the country safe was completely dependent on China.
"Oh my god."
We have things that go into missiles where 100% of the supply chain is Chinese controlled, and they didn't even think to look until the United States economy is going through some of the biggest shakeups that we have seen in many of our lifetimes. In 2025, we saw the tariffs put on countries around the world. In 2026, we captured the president of Venezuela, and now the United States is still attacking Iran, and there's a lot of conflict in the Middle East.
Now, the reason I want to make this video specifically is because there's one common denominator with all of these changes that are happening geopolitically, and that's China. And that's why today I wanted to sit down with my firm's head of investing research, Jackson, to dig a little bit deeper. Do you agree that a lot of this has to do with China? And if so, why is the United States so concerned about China?
"Just read, I think the major common denominator between all of these is China. And if you look past the surface level, the Chinese connection in all of these events goes much deeper than people realize it does. And the US has a lot of reasons to be concerned about China. But the biggest and sort of most glaring is for years now, we've been projecting that the Chinese economy will outgrow the US economy to become the largest single economy on Earth. And those projections, while they've slowed, are still on track. And if you look at actual production power, China is currently ahead of the United States."
"So I've heard that too and I've talked about that pretty extensively that I think it's like somewhere in the next decade or so, China is projected to be the largest economy in the world. Obviously that's a threat to the United States because then we would not be the largest economic superpower. But what does that mean to the average person? And what should the average person be paying attention to? Because there's all this talks about China. There's all this talks about the dollar dollization, the dollar losing value, inflation. Break this down for us. Talk about why we should be paying attention and then where the opportunities are."
"So, you and I benefit a lot from the US and the US dollar being the global reserve currency. We benefit from it in ways that we don't even realize. And what I mean by that is what is a global reserve currency, right? It is the currency that is sort of kept in mass internationally. Large stores of currency are being kept to sort of be strategic reserves of various governments. They keep a lot of value in the US dollar. The US dollar is the de facto currency for a lot of international transactions. If you look at major trusts out of the World Bank and how foreign aid from various countries, uh, from various NATO initiatives affects many countries around the world, they're denominated in the US dollar."
"And the US dollar has purchasing power beyond its capabilities in the United States, which is relatively rare. There are a few major currencies, the great British pound is another one, uh, as well as the Chinese R&B, where the value of that currency actually goes beyond its borders, right? That currency has value abroad. But the US is sort of the de facto currency for a lot of things. Have you heard the term the petro dollar?"
"Yes."
"The US dollar. A lot of Middle Eastern currencies, a lot of transactions in petroleum are linked to the US dollar. So, it ends up being the currency that sort of controls the flow of energy."
"So, because we have the world's reserve currency, this United States dollar, it has more power. Your paycheck has more buying power, your savings have more value because we're the world's reserve currency. And you're kind of hinting at that one of the reasons why we are holding on to the world's reserve currency is because we are the world's largest economy. If we are surpassed by China, China becomes the world's largest economy. Is the concern now that the Chinese yuan could replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency? Because a lot of people say there's no way that the yuan could take the place of the dollar."
"That's a fair assessment and it wouldn't happen overnight. But again, we have to look at world history and the global reserve currency has been replaced in the past. The pound sterling, the great British pound was the global reserve currency for a long time. Believe it started back in the Victorian era, maybe even before that, but through sort of the bulk of British colonialism. The pound sterling was the global reserve currency. And it took two world wars, the complete obliteration of the manufacturing capability of the United Kingdom and the rise of US dominance, world dominance to sort of replace it. Now, a lot of our allies are actually treaty-bound to use the US dollar as a global reserve currency. And what we see is a lot of smaller nations just kind of follow suit. Basically, everybody's doing it, so they do it, too. But we've seen this rise especially in the Chinese-led BRICS alliance of, uh, Chinese R&B, the Chinese yuan becoming a larger part of the currency reserves of various nations both within the BRICS alliance and without."
"So, I want to talk more about a couple of things you just mentioned, which is this BRICS alliance, but I want to go back to what you said about the petro dollar just for a second because the United States dollar used to be backed by physical gold. And so, what that meant was the dollar had value, not just because it was the world reserve currency, but because there was this wealth or gold that backed it. That changed in 1971 when then President Richard Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard. After 1971, now the dollar became fiat currency. It's just backed by a promise that this dollar has value. Then 1974 was when this petro dollar system was established, which was where the United States and Saudi Arabia worked together to say, 'Hey, all oil transactions globally have to be priced in the United States dollar.' Why does that matter? Like you mentioned, if transactions are happening with the United States dollar around the world, people naturally have trust in the dollar because they're using the dollar. But you mentioned this idea of treaties in NATO to use the United States dollar. Well, the petro dollar system started between the United States and Saudi Arabia where they said, 'We're going to sell all oil in the United States dollar.' As of just a few years ago, Saudi Arabia started selling oil in the Chinese yuan. So that is where now people are starting to get concerned that sure maybe the United States dollar was valued because of oil, but we're starting to lose that value and the Chinese yuan is starting to pick that up. So why does that matter now for somebody listening to this?"
"So there's a lot of things to cover here and I think it's good to just for hygiene go over the basics of what fiat currency actually is. So yes, the dollar was moved off of the gold standard. All the world currencies were moved off of the gold standard. One of the reasons that we did that is because we weren't pulling gold out of the ground fast enough. There's just not enough gold. And so it actually limits your ability to grow your GDP by how much gold you can sort of amass to back it. Now fiat is a Latin word meaning proclaimed or to proclaim. A lot of people like to say that fiat currencies are kind of worth nothing. That's not true. It's worth the economic power of the United States. It is for all debts, public and private. That is a mandate. You have to use the dollar in the United States. And as long as our government is around, the US dollar will have value. Now, by being a reserve currency and being something like the petro dollar, it adds to that value because it says not only will you always be able to go back and purchase things in the United States, but you'll be able to conduct oil transactions. You'll be able to sort of have this purchasing power in the global economy and not just in the US. And so it's, it gives this the value to this dollar and protects the dollar from a lot of hyperinflation from a lot of deflationary practices and as that erodes over time so does the economic power of the United States."
"Well, you mentioned something very interesting that the United States says you have to transact with the United States dollar."
"Yes."
"But the Trump administration has also been pretty um, in favor of crypto, Bitcoin specifically. Uh, and so we've heard about, you know, the strategic Bitcoin reserve and all these other things. So wouldn't that, this whole idea of Bitcoin, especially if the United States is supporting it, kind of counteract the value of the United States dollar? If you think of cryptocurrency as currency, yes, but we also keep strategic reserves of other currencies as well. And we keep strategic reserves of things like gold."
"In its current iteration, cryptocurrency is more of a commodity than it is a currency. It's not good for transactions. Bitcoin specifically, the node structure is fairly old. It takes a long time. If you were to ever have a credit card that used Bitcoin and you swiped it at the grocery store, it would take about half an hour for that transaction to go through."
"Wow."
"And there are people, I know people who call themselves Bitcoin Standard, which means they believe it is the currency of the future and what everyone will use. And they actually go to the store and when they tap their card or tap their phone, they're using a service that converts it back to US dollars to then do the transaction because the grocery store takes, takes US dollars. It doesn't really weaken the dollar as long as there's not this widespread adoption of Bitcoin or of cryptocurrencies. We've seen a large push towards stable coins. That's kind of the hot new term. There's been a lot of talk that the US might have a stable coin."
"What is a stable coin?"
"A stable coin is a cryptocurrency that is tied to a specific asset to make sure that it is stable. So the United States dollar."
"Yes, most of them, almost all of them are actually pegged to the United States dollar. And that is actually good for the dollar. It adds more of that, we'll say, global certainty, right? More of that power because it's not just the currency in the United States. It's also the currency of anyone using a stable coin like Tether. And if you look at the developing world, they are largely adopting stable coin practices and digital currencies. If you look at rural and agricultural, uh, areas in the world, South America, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, they'll have a lot of countries and a lot of currencies and very little banking infrastructure over a fairly large area. And so it's not uncommon for somebody to cross a border into a new country and work there for three to six months, get paid in different currency, have difficulty getting that back in their home currency or spending it at home or sending it home. And digital banking and digital currencies are changing a lot of that. And the result is a lot of them are using stable coins that are tied to the US dollar. So those are actually becoming US dollar economies and they don't even know it."
"Wow. That's I never even thought about it that way. But I want to go back to China. Yeah. Now,"
"So we've kind of established that globally, well, maybe let me re-ask you this. Is the dollar then losing status globally or is it gaining status globally based off of the discussion of stable coins?"
"On stable coins and digital currencies, I think the dollar is actually gaining stability. The US dollar is under more threat now than it has been in the past. It's not a sure thing that dollarization is going to happen. It certainly will not happen in the short term. And if it does happen, it will be a long slow process. The threat is growing, but we're not there yet. It's this like this idea of the doomsday clock, right? It's we're kind of counting down towards some big catastrophic event. Uh, the dollar is sort of approaching, it's becoming more vulnerable. It's approaching the possibility of some sort of black swan event or major economic change threatening its reserve status. But it, it hasn't happened yet."
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"And so, this is now let's go back to what I was starting this discussion with. We have now this conflict between United States and China, right? We, we've known that even before the Trump administration that the Chinese economy is growing faster than the United States,"
"But now it looks like we're trying to actually in a way fight China."
"Yes."
"But not actually fighting them. I mean, when we announced these tariffs, some of the biggest and largest tariffs were on China. Why? Because we wanted businesses to leave China to, yes, bring manufacturing back to the United States, but also hurt the Chinese economy. When the United States invaded Venezuela, well, Venezuela is one of the, or their largest seller of oil. They were selling oil to China. And so, they intercepted that oil source for China. Iran was a large producer of oil for China. And Iran was selling that oil at a big discount to China below market value, which gave China an edge to produce products cheaply. And so it seems like the United States is almost like trying to fight China economically as a way to try to slow down their growth because we're worried and concerned that China is going to beat the United States."
"Yes. And I think we can look at a historical example here. If you were to ask the average American at the height of the Cold War if we were at war with Russia, a lot of them would have said no."
"Really?"
"Yeah. My father was a Vietnam veteran and he, you know, he came back and he saw that firsthand that a lot of people didn't realize that thought we were just in, you know, colonial conflicts all over the world and didn't realize that this was part of this greater thing that we were calling the Cold War. Conflicts don't look like they used to. There's this idea that they're fought through proxies. Israel being a famous proxy of the United States and Hezbollah in Lebanon being a proxy of Iran and there's this additional level of economic dominance and global supply chain and when it comes to global supply China has actually been beating the United States for a while and we're just now realizing that and again, it's hard to imagine that Venezuela like, oh, we want to get rid of Maduro, we want to oust the sort of terrorist leader, leader of Venezuela. What does that have to do with China? As you mentioned, I believe it was 80% of all oil coming out of Venezuela was being sold to China. Now, they're signing treaties to sell it to us. That is a massive swing. We're looking at Iran and their sort of oil pipelines. And yes, it's sold to China. It's actually named something else. They sort of change the labeling on it before it gets there, but they were a big supplier to China. What else happened in the Middle East right before this? We had the UAE leave OPEC."
"The UAE, major producer of oil, also member of the Chinese-led BRICS Alliance. We have been fighting China in the Middle East about energy consumption and the energy supply chain for years now. Russia's involved in this, too. Remember, as Russia invaded Ukraine and that conflict began, Russian oil exports to Western allies dropped by over 90%. Uh, it's closer to a full stop. It just kind of depends on how you're looking at the supply chain. But China came in and said, 'Look, we'll keep buying Russian oil. We have no issue with that. Cut us a nice discount, give us that competitive edge, and sure, we'll keep buying Russian oil.' And so, we've seen Russia manage to sustain itself despite losing most of its customers by still selling to China."
"So, this is where I get a little bit confused. I want to dig into this with you because there's this, like you mentioned, this economic conflict with China. So everything with the tariffs, Venezuela, Iran, all this is kind of in a way to fight China. But now because of these economic conflicts, we're also risking the health of the United States dollar because the most recent impact of the war in the Middle East is oil prices. Oil prices have shot up. Everybody sees gas prices are expensive. Grocery prices are going up. We just got the recent inflation report which showed that if you take out energy prices, you take out food prices, inflation is almost double where we were three months ago. Now, if you add in energy costs, you add in food costs, inflation, I'm sure, is even higher than that. So, when you have these concerns about inflation, that now brings back concerns about the United States dollar. So, we're trying to fight the Chinese economy, but we're also, are we hurting the United States dollar by doing that?"
"Yes and no. It's nuanced. It comes down to the sort of larger strategic plan and experts are divided on whether or not it's working or it will work in the long term. But one thing that China is very good at where the US has struggled is again, we keep coming back to this idea of the dollar and the reserve currency. China is more of an asset-based country and they work more in absolute value and they're less concerned about about currency. Think, what is a currency? It's a trade note, right? Currency only has value in its ability to purchase things for you. It only has value in its access to goods and services. We've been obsessed with making sure that the United States dollar has the best access to goods and services in the world. China's been more concerned with the Chinese government controlling the supply of the actual things you buy with currency. Have you heard of Chinese commodity price crashing?"
"Yes."
"Yeah. So, it's this idea where China is coming in and just flooding the market with commodities. And, uh, this happened very notably in lithium. Lithium carbonate had climbed to somewhere around $80,000 a ton, which isn't realistically an absurd price, but had climbed that high, and it dropped to under $10,000 a ton because China flooded the market with their strategic reserve. And they lost a lot of money on that. They absolutely harmed their value stores by flooding the market. Why did they do this? Well, because it's so expensive. Because it's needed for so many things. Because electrification was picking up, we had a lot of companies and a lot of countries going and saying, 'We want to, we want to mine lithium carbonate now. We want to start up an operation. We want to start producing this and selling it.' Well, when the price crashed, these companies couldn't find funding. These new operations shut down. What happens? Well, all right. It's, it's $10,000 for so long. All of the new operations shut down. Who's in control? China. 80% of the world's lithium is moving through the Chinese economy before it gets anywhere else. Now, everyone's given up because it wasn't profitable. So, what happens? The price starts to creep back up. They start to rebuild their reserves. They take that hit to the money they have to maintain control over the entire supply chain."
"Interesting. But that's kind of like we've seen this in the startup world all the time. Like Uber goes into a new market or when they were growing, they would underprice Lyft. They would underprice the taxis, lose money on every single ride just to get the customers. Once they had you at a user and they knew that people started to use Lyft, Uber regularly. Then they started jacking up the prices and they knew that you're not going to leave now because you don't want to go to a taxi or a Lyft. And that's when they started making money. So you're saying China is essentially doing that but from the government level, not from the country level, the company level."
"And lithium is just one example. China does this all the time. It's this widely studied thing and actually we have several congressional acts moving through the government right now to try to establish a critical minerals price floor, which says that the US and Western allies, basically anybody that we can sort of enforce our economic will on, has to set a minimum price floor for critical minerals and this might extend into other commodities or other things might be declared minerals as well. And the, the price of it, this commodity cannot go under that. And that is to protect companies from Chinese price crashing. Now again, our influence and our ability to enforce this globally, well, that's limited by the dollar as a reserve currency. It's limited by our trade alliances. It's limited by our general economic strategy around the globe. Right? All of a sudden, we have this price floor where our companies have to pay X to get lithium, copper, neodymium, rare earths, all these things. Well, do we think the Chinese BRICS Alliance is going to abide by that? Do you think they're going to care? Or are they going to potentially leapfrog ahead of us because all of their companies are buying at half of what we are, a fourth of what we are?"
"I want to dig deeper into metals because I know you are a real specialist in metals and I don't know if all the listeners know this, but you head our firm's investing research. So we publish a, a newsletter for investors. We also sell research to institutions, RIAs, and other things like that. But when you go out and do this research, you're not just like reading ChatGPT. You're going out and talking to people. You've been to mines around the world. You've been invited into congressional summits learning about, I think you went to the recent congressional summit of minerals, right?"
"I'd actually love to touch on that too because it really highlights some of this. Uh, I was at, it was end of 2025, December 2025, I was in a congressional summit for, uh, rare earths and critical minerals. In that summit there was a"
"This is in Washington D.C."
"In Washington D.C. Uh, you know, at Congress, there was a retired admiral still working with the DoD, still working in the defense space and he was very candid and he said the, the DoD had, or the Department of War now had no idea how many of its essential resources, the metals that go into missiles, into radar systems, into everything we need to keep the country safe,"
"Oh my god,"
"was completely dependent on China. We have things that go into missiles where 100% of the supply chain is Chinese controlled and they didn't even think to look until last year. And so now they're going through and doing a sort of self-inventory. They're looking at how much of their supply chain is vulnerable and how much of that is controlled by adversarial nations, not just China, but adversarial nations in general. And I mean, it's shocking. It's, it's completely shocking how much we rely on China and other nations to give us these things that we need to make weapons, we need to make defense, we need to make boats and missiles and helicopters. At the same time, it's no coincidence now we're seeing ideas of price flooring and strategic reserves and all of this scrambling to restart mines here in the US. The US government is buying up equity in rare earth processing and mining companies left and right. And the one thing they have in common, they're in the US or in Canada. They're trying to onshore or nearshore, basically bring that production, mining and production home. So that China can't just say, you know what, no more rare earths. That's it. You guys don't get anymore. Which is what they did last time we had a major trade disagreement. So the reason why I think that's important for the average person to understand, not just to say, oh, you know, understand what's going on with lithium or copper, but understanding that all of these changes create investment opportunity because, you know, we're not a political group here, we are a research organization and we have investment research that we publish and we have a fund that you manage and I'm going to, I wanted to talk about metals specifically because this was a big win for you because you had all this this knowledge which we were publishing and you were talking about these metals because at the end of the day, I'm going to take one step back. Investing as an active investor, not trader, but active investor for the long term, is understanding where the money is moving and investing your money into that industry or stock or fund before everybody else knows about it. So you talk about these metals. There's all these geopolitical events happening between the United States and China. The United States is buying these metals from China. Whether you care about lithium or whatever, it doesn't matter. But we're buying all these metals from China. And we need these metals for things like our defense. We also need them not just for missiles, but also for our iPhones and for other technologies and cars. So our entire economic e"
"ChatGPT problem GPT our entire economic ecosystem relies on these metals. Now we get into these, you know, tariffs and trade disputes with China and China says, 'No more rare earths for you.' And you immediately said, 'Uh oh, this is going to create some sort of investment opportunity.' And that's when you started digging into these metals. And that's when you were able to find some very lucrative and successful investment opportunities obviously for our fund, but also for, uh, the people that have been subscribing to your research. How do you find these investment opportunities? And just for anybody who's listening, if you do want to learn more about how our firm comes up with investment research and our, uh, methodology for the research and our entire, how do you start investing and find investment opportunities, I have a free investing master class you can go through. That link is for you down in the description. When you sign up for the master class, you're also going to get access to Market Briefs, which is our free newsletter for investors where we break down what's happening in things like the economy, housing, stocks, crypto, and global markets. So, if you want my investing master class and Market Briefs all for free, all you have to do is sign up and I have the link for you down in the description. Now, Jackson, why and how do you find these opportunities and how does that create opportunity? Because we talk about all this stuff with China. Some people hear this and get scared. Some people hear this and say, 'Oh my god, this is amazing.' Doesn't matter what the emotion is. What we talk about here is anytime something changes, there's opportunity. So now somebody who is hearing all of this stuff, where should they start looking for opportunity? What does this mean?"
"You know, we, we approached this with what I guess at the time Wall Street considered a crazy tactic, which is we said a guy who is pulling metal out of the ground or runs a metal operation probably knows more about it than somebody at a JPM trade desk."
"JPM meaning JP"
"JP Morgan trade desk. And if you look at Wall Street and institutional investors, and this is where they really dropped the ball on this, they've operated under this system that says we're going to model risk and model value based off of historical data and historical price points. Well, the problem is a lot of these commodity-based things and a lot of technological-based things are worth more in today's economy than they were 10 years ago. So the averages from 10 years ago really aren't as important anymore. And what we're trying to do is talk to people on the ground, talk to people in the industries and look into the future and say, 'Okay, it's worth this much in today's economy, which is probably undervalued. What is this worth 10 years from now? What is neodymium going to be worth in the economy of 2035, right, of 2045?' And that was our starting point. And I want to drive home, you know, we do all this kind of macroeconomic talk and macroeconomics is kind of my specialty, but that is to identify opportunity. If you understand how the economy works, you can understand how these things will be valuable now and in the future. And I want to dig a little bit deeper into that because I think there's a, uh, false understanding of how investing works or, or maybe different perspectives of how investing works."
"Yes. Because I think for the average person, and I'm saying this because I've talked to a lot of people, uh, investing is I'm going to open up a Robinhood account or, or whatever brokerage, it doesn't matter, and I'm going to go on to Reddit or CNBC or YouTube and watch a random guy on the internet and I'm going to see what stock somebody is talking about, and they're going to say, uh, Nvidia is going to take over the world, so I'm going to buy that stock. And what you're saying is something a little bit different. And it takes obviously a lot more work, but you're saying you're digging deeper beyond just like what people are talking about. You're looking into where is the economy moving?"
"Yes."
"And where is money moving? And it's hard. There's no way around it because people are going to say, 'Well, Jackson, how do I do that?' It's hard. I mean, people can. They can. I mean, we're not saying you can't."
"So, I guess walk us through your methodology. How do you do it?"
"Yeah. So, I'm actually in the midst of research, uh, right now and I guess as a little special bonus, I think one of the things of the future is going to be magnesium. That's what I'm currently looking into. Although there's not a lot of great retail angles into it right now. Um, but I'll start by just understanding. I'll see an expert analysis, a white paper, a trade industry report that talks about the vulnerability of the magnesium supply chain or a private company that is doing a Series A round that wants to start mining magnesium and producing magnesium here in the US. And then I'll go, 'Huh, that's interesting.' And just start diving into it. And you have to, you have to really understand the language of whatever industry you are researching and need to be able to kind of process their trades. Uh, in the sort of new era and if you're at home trying to do it on a smaller level, you can probably use AI to help you through this process."
"ChatGPT or Claude or"
"ChatGPT, Claude, probably take a prompting course first. If you just go in and say like, 'Hey, tell me everything there is to know about investing in magnesium or I think this is going to be a good thing to invest. Tell me how to do it.' You're not going to get good results. But if you learn how to prompt properly and you learn how to use it as a tool to help you gather industry reports, know where to look, you know, have it find out where experts in that field are looking. Um, conferences, trade shows, going to various events where these experts are and talking to them directly. That is ultimately the best way. No one will understand the industry better than the people that are running the industry. Uh, next month, I'm actually going to an event called World Mining Congress in Lima, Peru, because that's where they're all going to be. South America is one of the biggest mining hubs in the world. All of the executives from all the companies are going to be there. If I want to talk to scientists that are actually pulling this stuff out of the ground and processing it, that is the place to be. And ultimately, that is the best approach is to talk to people in the industry, cultivate these contacts, read their trade papers, also be very familiar with the government, right? Government funding, government, uh, regulations and restrictions, not just what they are today, but where they're going. What is moving through the house right now? What is anything at all being done to set up a strategic reserve to try to onshore production to try to limit our reliance on Chinese supply? You really have to understand these things and talk to the people. And then after all of that is done, after you have all of the information, then you also do need to do some traditional Wall Street stuff. You got to start bringing in finance. You know, don't ever invest in a company that you, again, you just hear a random guy on the internet talk about or that you don't understand their finances or you've never looked at their numbers. That's just not smart either."
"It's gambly. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."
"Have this, have this ultimate understanding of the economy and the industry and then start to layer in finances, risk modeling, quanting, long-term projections, price targets. Put all of that after you really understand the world economy and sort of where things are moving."
"I think that's, you know, the difference between a professional and the average person. Now, the average person should be an investor. Don't be overwhelmed by what Jackson's saying. That doesn't, I want to make sure that that's clear. Like this is what you do for a living and this is the only thing that you do. I know you eat, sleep, breathe this stuff."
"Uh, this is not to say that the average person shouldn't try that. They shouldn't invest their money, that they shouldn't do things on their own. But there's layers to the game, right? There's levels to the game. And so there's, you know, the person that's just investing their money in the S&P 500. It's a great place to start. Then you can take it to the next level and you start, you know, dabbling in whatever research you want to and trying to find where the opportunities are. And then there's the real professional level, which is what you're doing. And so it's the whole idea is the more work you put in, the idea is you're trying to get slightly better returns."
"Yes."
"Because if you can get slightly better returns, every additional percentage point of return can lead to a lot more wealth."
"Is it guaranteed? No, absolutely not. Investing is risky. But the whole idea is you are spending all of your time, energy trying to identify where opportunities are. And so far it has done well. Like we have reports and research audited. We've been beating the S&P 500 since inception, which is nice. But I say this to help the listener understand that if you are investing your money, just understand that if you want to really invest, you have to have a strategy. Don't just blindly throw your money in places. There's a difference between a long-term investor and just being a trader. We're talking about long-term investing based off of a thesis. So, that's what you're doing."
"Yes."
"And let's summarize what we talked about in this video and I'll talk about where people can get more, learn more about your research. So, the United States is, and tell me if I'm wrong, the United States is at conflict with China, but not directly with China. The things that we saw happen with the tariffs, with Venezuela, with Iran, and, and kind of a lot of stuff globally is a way to compete with China economically. At the same time, there's talks about the Chinese yuan potentially replacing the United States dollar at some point. Now, all this conflict that we have going on has been raising the price of oil, which to some extent hurts the United States dollar. But like you mentioned, sometimes there's more to it than meets the eye. Like the Chinese economy has crashed their own value of commodities or currencies because they want to essentially take out other countries or take out other companies. That way they can be a supplier globally for commodities. That way the world relies on China. And that is also something that the United States has been victim to. We have been reliant on China for many metals, which hasn't been a problem until China ultimately said, 'No more of these metals for you. No more rare earths for you.' Now that puts the United States into a very tough position because now we need these metals to produce missiles. We need these to produce iPhones and we need it for ChatGPTs and everything else in the economy. Which means now there's all this investment, dollars and energy and time into building a new supply chain of those same metals because we need them to run our economy. All of this for the average person creates emotion. Anger, excitement, greed, panic. Doesn't matter. What we are saying and you're saying specifically is it creates opportunity. And opportunity is understanding where the economy is moving over the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. Because if you can identify where the economy is moving, you can identify where the money is moving, which can create investment opportunities. And now as an investor, your job is to identify what is your strategy, what is your, uh, interest level, and then invest your money based off of where you see opportunities, not based off of the news, not based off of the hype, which is what the average person is doing. Because if you keep doing what everybody else does, you're going to end up like everybody else. And unfortunately, the average person is not even getting the returns of the market."
"Yeah, which, which is kind of ironic because if you just put your money into the S&P 500, you will get the returns of the market. Does that summarize what's going on?"
"Yes. And if I can just give the 10-second version on this specific example, with AI and robotics and all the stuff of the future, energy looks like it will be the currency of the future."
"Energy is going to be more important. The US is at conflict with China. We're at a sort of trade war with China. Iran is a part of that. Venezuela is a part of that. We're going to take some hits. We're going to damage the dollar. We're going to harm the US consumer through inflation. But whoever controls the flow of energy for the global economy will be better off in the long run. As an investor, the opportunity I'm seeing is during this conflict, during the money and the effort and resources we are putting in to try to gain control of global energy supply, how can I ride that wave? What are we going to do now? What are we doing now? What are we going to do next? And where can I put my resources to sort of ride that wave and come out on top?"
"Interesting. Well, Jackson, thank you for your time."
"Thanks for having me. If somebody does want to learn more, they can go and subscribe to Market Briefs, which you're going to get for free when you sign up for the investing master class. If you want to subscribe to our firm's research, which is headed by Jackson, uh, you can purchase our Market Briefs Pro research, you can learn more about that on our website. And if you are an RIA or you run an institution managing money, we have a link for you down in the description as well. Thank you, Jackson, for your time."
"Thanks so much. I went through 2008. I think one of the bigger blind spots by this administration is going to be unemployment."
"Ken, you have something around a billion dollars of debt. Are you not worried about that level of debt?"
"Because of inflation and AI? I don't know what."