Enlightenment - A Herold & Lantern Investments Podcast

Why A Strong Mind Beats A Volatile Market

• Keith Lanton • Season 7 • Episode 42

Share episode

November 17, 2025 | Season 7 | Episode 42

Markets don’t wait for your plan to catch up. We open with a clear framework for year-end positioning that blends mindset with mechanics—how identity-based habits and focus can keep you from selling lows, chasing highs, or ignoring life changes that matter more than headlines. From there, we map the macro forces likely to shape returns over the next few quarters and what to do about them.

China’s deflation is no longer a blip; it’s a loop. With broad price declines, soft wages, and pressure on multinationals, the ripple effects are reaching U.S. margins and global pricing power. We break down why zombie firms appear when prices fall faster than costs and what a real Chinese stimulus—monetary or fiscal—would mean for cyclicals, luxury, autos, and U.S. brands tied to Chinese demand.

On the home front, the AI buildout is massive, but so is the debt financing it. We connect the dots between data-center capex, falling hardware costs over time, and the unforgiving math of credit. Equity investors can spread bets; bond investors cannot. With credit default swaps flashing caution and the Fed signaling less certainty on cuts, balance sheets, cash generation, and pricing power move to the top of the checklist. We share practical steps: tiered cash buffers, laddered fixed income, disciplined rebalancing, and a focus on businesses that earn their keep at higher discount rates.

We also zoom out to your “life portfolio,” including the rise of concierge medicine. It won’t guarantee longevity, but it can improve access and coordination—now with limited HSA support. The real lesson is integration: healthcare, liquidity, and goals belong in the same plan as your asset allocation. Finish with a punch list for 2026: update goals, retest risk tolerance, stress test for higher-for-longer rates and China-driven disinflation, and trim exposures that only work if everything goes right.

If this helped sharpen your playbook, subscribe, share with a friend who’s planning year-end moves, and leave a quick review with one takeaway you’re acting on next.

** For informational and educational purposes only, not intended as investment advice. Views and opinions are subject to change without notice.

For full disclosures, ADVs, and CRS Forms, please visit https://heroldlantern.com/disclosure **

To learn about becoming a Herold & Lantern Investments valued client, please visit https://heroldlantern.com/wealth-advisory-contact-form

Follow and Like Us on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn | @HeroldLantern


Alan Eppers:

And now introducing Mr. Lanton

Keith Lanton:

Good morning. Today is Monday, November 17th. So got about ten days, I think, to Thanksgiving and six more weeks left here in the remainder of 2025. So certainly time continues to march forward and giving us wonderful opportunity here as we approach year end to think about positioning for year end, to factor in strategies for year end, especially as the tax code and the changes that were made in the big beautiful bill will increasingly impact portfolios and investments and to strategize, make sure that your investment portfolio is in line with your comfort risk tolerance and your station in life. As time continues to march on, you may be getting older, you may have a different view on your current employment, your employment prospects, your job security, all that may factor into what is the appropriate allocation in terms of assets for you in order to intelligently grow your portfolio. Uh life circumstances could be job, could be health, could be great news that you're planning for retirement, , you're planning for a big event, perhaps wedding or trip around the world, and you need to make sure that you have the financial wherewithal to accomplish what you were seeking to accomplish and that you're able to enjoy the rest of your life and pass on the legacy, whether it be to charities or to loved ones going forward, or the decision may be to spend all your money throughout the course of your life. Uh there's no right or wrong decision, but certainly things are continuing to evolve. Make sure that your plan is in line and in sync with what it is that you wish to accomplish. Think about what your goals are for 2026 and beyond, and make sure that your portfolio, and when I say portfolio, I'm not just talking about your investment portfolio, your life portfolio, your relationships are in line or in sync with what it is that you are seeking to accomplish. Things can easily get out of harmony, perhaps for good reasons. Uh markets and stocks move up so much significantly, interest rates change, , perhaps perhaps you can get more in fixed income than you could before. But whatever the reason is, make sure that you are in balance and sync as things have shifted throughout the year. Without grooming, things can easily shift and you can stumble on something that you did not anticipate being a barrier before. So this morning, I'm gonna start us out, talk a little bit about what it is that we can do to strengthen our minds so that we can hopefully accomplish more. Some thoughts from James Clear and Atomic Habits, which I like to speak about. Then we're gonna speak a bit about China, which has not been as prevalent in the American psyche as we've had obviously a trade disagreement. We've been importing less from China, but China being the second largest economy in the world, we cannot afford we cannot ignore the ripples and the ch changes that are taking place within China and how they may reverberate back to us here in the United States and how we want to think about that. And then of course we'll talk about what's going on this morning in financial markets. Uh what we're seeing right now is futures are slightly negative. They were to the positive side a lot of the morning, but seem to be deteriorating slightly as we as we head towards the open this morning. So let's talk about James Clear, and let's try and think about here as we approach year end, maybe resetting some of the things that we have in our minds, some thoughts about pointing ourselves in the right direction. When I say the right direction, it's the right direction for you. What's the right direction for one person may not be the right direction for another. So the thing to think about, remind yourself that a strong mind finds a way to stay steady even when plans fall apart. And that's certainly very applicable to the world of relationships, and it's very applicable to the world of investments. If things start deteriorating, if you start panicking, and you don't have that strong mind, you will probably have a poor outcome. The strong body finds a way to train even when the day doesn't go your way. The strong relationship finds a way to connect even when things get rough. And if you want to think about how it is that you can accomplish those seemingly difficult to accomplish endeavors, think about doing what it is that you love to do, and it becomes so much easier. If you're within that relationship with someone that you love being with, it's a lot easier to work on that relationship. If you are doing something that you love, it's a lot easier to stay the course than when things get rough. So one way to instantly gain a competitive edge is to work on things that genuinely interest you. The person who is having fun has a better chance of winning because they are more likely to stick with that activity when things get challenging. If it felt like a hassle from the start, you're likely to quit as soon as things get tough. But if you've been having fun the whole time, you're better positioned to work through the hard parts. Think about this in the same vein as what looks like a talent gap is often a focus gap. The all-star is often an average to above average performer who spends more time working on what is important and less times on distraction, the talent is staying focused. Again, going back to that thought process, if you're doing what you love, you're much more likely to be able to stay focused, you're much more likely to be able to work on that relationship, you're much more likely to stay on course when things get tough, and it goes back to having that strong body. If those other actions are in sync, it's much more likely that you're in a good mindset and you will be able to continue to make sure that your body is getting the exercise and the attention it needs in order for your not only your bind, but that mind-body connection to thrive and to have a successful outcome, whatever that may mean for you. Alright, so that's the thought process. Start your Monday morning, start your week, start in the second half of November. Let's talk a little bit about let's talk a little bit about China and what's taking place in China and which hasn't been getting as much attention here in the United States, although I would say we are feeling lots of the effects of what I'm going to talk about, and that is the fact that prices in China are falling. In fact, what's happening in China is at the moment somewhat reminiscent of what started happening in Japan in the early 1990s, where prices in Japan started to go down. And what is the reason that prices typically go down? Well, the reason is because you've built up a lot of manufacturing in some cases, you've built up a lot of supply of something, and suddenly there is less demand. And certainly in the case of China, there's less demand for their goods here in the United States, but importantly, there's less goods for demand there's less demand for goods in China. We'll talk a little bit about that, and we'll talk about the deflation in China, and it certainly has an effect here in the United States. If you've been following stocks like Starbucks, or Kering, which owns Gucci, or LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, or McDonald's, you will have noticed that sales in China have been declining for a couple of years now. Now, some may have attributed that to perhaps the Chinese seeking more domestic brands, but in fact domestic brands have been seeing falling sales as well. And this phenomenon is very important and it makes it difficult for American manufacturers to compete, even with tariffs, if prices in China are falling. The competitive challenges for U.S. companies to compete against a Chinese competitor that is perhaps losing money because prices are falling but still producing makes it challenging and makes some of the policies here in the United States more difficult and challenging to implement. So what is happening in China is that we are experiencing deflation, and that is when a lopsided economy where supply dwarfs demand, and then you start getting into a cycle, which is what we are seeing in China as consumption weakens, businesses spend less, activity slows, debt burdens go up, which then causes deflation, and that then causes more deflation, and we wind up in a downward loop known in economics as a deflationary spiral, which feeds on itself. This is what the Federal Reserve was concerned about during COVID, during the Great Recession in 2008, and this is what happened in the Great Depression here in the United States. So, as I mentioned, this trend carries global implications. Cheap Chinese exports start weighing and depressing prices abroad. The International Monetary Fund is projecting that consumer inflation in China will average zero percent this year. Chinese official CPI figures, which offer limited item level details, have hovered around zero since 2023. Bloomberg News analyzed prices for dozens of products in China in 36 major cities across China to get a sense of how much cheaper things have become. And the Bloomberg analysis showed that prices are dropping 67 items out of that they took a look at. 51 of them dropped over the last two years. So different than here in the United States, where we're seeing increases in prices for lots of goods and services. In China, we are seeing eggs from 2023 to 2025. Eggs gotten tons of attention here in the United States for their price increase. In China, eggs have declined 14% in the last two years. Home prices, another big big political hot button here in the United States, and something that's really weighing on younger families, young people starting families, home prices in China down 27% in the last two years. Cars, BYD, the biggest manufacturer of cars in China, the average selling price of a car down twenty seven percent, potatoes down 17%, beef shanks down 14%, microwave ovens down about 8% in price in the last two years. But what the flip side of these lower prices is that we are seeing businesses starting to suffer and lose money because the flip side of lower prices isn't necessarily the prices are lower because the costs are dropping as much. It's because in order to clear inventory you need to drop your prices, and you're starting to see lots of companies in China where they can't cover their interest payments or their debt. These are known here as well as in China now as zombie firms, and we are seeing, as I mentioned before, some of the multinationals getting caught up in the wave of the Chinese cycle where if they don't lower prices, they are seeing that they can't sell their goods. And I mentioned a few companies before that have suffered some sales slumps in China. Apple was experiencing before the new iPhone 17 a lot of challenges with their product. Some European companies and Japanese companies, Volkswagen and Honda, have sold 30% fewer cars than they did before the pandemic. I mentioned Gucci, but also a lot of the makeup companies like Estee Lauder here in the United States, L'Oreal in in France experiencing challenges in China. And what is also happening is that wages are now starting to decline in China as well, and this is feeding on itself, as I mentioned earlier. If if you start to get lower wages, you can afford less, prices drop more, and it becomes a spiral. So, how do you fix this? Well, the way that you fix this is something that the Chinese have been reluctant to do, and this is something to be on the lookout for because the Chinese do seek to find solutions. This may be something that stimulates the global economy. And the way you fix this is kind of what the United States did in 2008, perhaps we went overboard in 2020, and that is that you do some sort of quantitative easing. You lower interest rates, you provide money in some way, perhaps through tax programs or you know, or or or or even programs where you send out stimulus checks like we did here in the United States. So you come up with monetary and fiscal stimulus in order to reinvigorate the consumer and to start to clear up that excess supply and create a situation where supply gets met by increased demand. Clearly, this adds to the national debt like we've experienced here in the United States, and perhaps that's one of the reasons that the Chinese are hesitant to do this. But if you see some talk out of China about them doing this, this could benefit not only Chinese firms, the global economy, U.S. companies that do business in China as well. So this is an important factor to focus on. If deflation continues in China, that can have m multiple geopolitical implications. So this situation, which is getting limited attention, could have significant implications. All right, so let's talk about what's going on here in the United States this morning. As I mentioned, futures are are weakening right now this morning from where they were a little while ago. Dow futures are down 65, NASDAQ futures down 25, SP futures are down about 10 points, 10-year Treasury, which was down to about 4.125 yield, is now at about a 414 yield, which is down about one basis point. In other words, we were at a 415 yield a little while ago, and now we are at a 414 yield. If we take a look here at some cryptocurrency, let's take a look at Bitcoin, which is down about 25% off its highs, has wiped out its gains for the year. Bitcoin was also higher earlier, now Bitcoin is slightly lower. Uh Bitcoin's around $94,000 per Bitcoin. Uh once again, Bitcoin proving to be more of a risk-on, risk-off asset than a hedge against against a falling equity market. So just to keep that in mind, if if you are an owner of Bitcoin, just think of how you are positioning it and how it reacts in different market situations. Gold this morning also slightly weaker, down about $24 an ounce to $4,070. Oil up slightly this morning. Brent crude is up about a quarter to sixty-four dollars sixty-five cents. West Texas Intermediate, which is oil here in the United States, is right now around sixty dollars and sixty-five cents. So last week we saw a midweek sell-off, and then on Friday, that sell-off was continuing, and we got a reversal on Friday, especially from some of the tech stocks, to position the markets such that while the end of the week was to the downside for the for the overall week, we saw relatively you know flat markets. We'll talk a little bit about more about the specific numbers. Some specific companies that are in the news this morning. Alphabet, the YouTube and Google owner rose more than 4% after Warren Buffett's Berkshare Hathaway revealed it took a stake in in Alphabet, and that is after revealing that they also had reduced their stake in Apple, which is down this morning on two stories. One that Berkshire Hathaway disclosed it sold ten and a half billion dollars worth of the iPhone maker stock, but also there is a report in the Financial Times that Tim Cook, the CEO, could step down as early as next year. It's one of the factors I think weighing on some of the weakness in the market is the weakness in Apple as a result of that story. Uh Berkshire Hathaway also sold $1.9 billion worth of Bank of America stock and $1.2 billion of Verasign as well. They did buy $1.2 billion worth of Chubb. The amount that they invested in Alphabet was about $4.3 billion. Talking about the Chinese market, Chinese electric vehicle maker XPeng, symbol XPEV, reported a loss of about $20 million on sales of about $20 billion yuan. So that's the equivalent there of almost $3 billion in sales, showing a loss, kind of reinforcing what we were talking about earlier about the challenges of making money in China. In the biotech space, Zymeworks, Drug Maker, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals have reported positive phase three trial results for a cancer drug. Zymeworks is up about 35%. Jazz is up about 21% this morning. Other companies in the news this morning, Tesla is down about four-tenths of one percent. Wall Street Journal reporting that Tesla has been requiring suppliers to exclude Chinese-made components. Significant call this morning from a couple of analysts on the hardware makers Dell stock being reduced to underweight from overweight at Morgan Stanley, and HP also being downgraded at Morgan Stanley to underweight from equal weight. They cut their price targets on both those stocks as well. On Dell, they cut their price target to 110 from 144. HP, more modest cut from 26 to 24. Analysts at Morgan Stanley say they believe the memory super cycle brings downside risk to hardware manufacturer earnings heading into 2026. Nvidia stock is weaker this morning at the open, with the leading maker of artificial intelligence ships scheduled to report its quarterly earnings after the closing bell. The results are likely crucial for the broader market as they will give investors a sense of how demand for AI is holding up amid lofty concerns about valuations, looking for earnings at NVIDIA of about $1.25 per share when they do come out. Also reporting earnings this week are Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, and Target. Those companies could get lots of attention with respect to their earnings because of the lack of economic data that we've experienced. So, sort of some crucial insights into the consumers coming from these major retailers this week. Uh some are suggesting that the aggregate earnings and outlook from these companies could even be more important to the overall markets than what we hear from NVIDIA. Also, we get earnings from other companies this week, like Medtronic, Palo Alto, Intuit, TJ Maxx, Ross Stores, and the Gap to round out a few different ones coming out this morning. Some news here from Washington. Senator Cassidy said in an interview he's working with the White House on a healthcare plan that would involve sending subsidies to Americans instead of to insurance companies. Separately, the Japanese 10-year JGB, which is their treasury, has hit its highest yield since 2008. And this is on talk that the Japanese are doing what perhaps the Chinese will start thinking about doing, and that is that they are increasing spending, especially with the new Prime Minister there, and that is causing interest rate mindset to to pick up in terms of in terms of treasury yields in Japan. And Treasury Secretary Besson said the U.S. is targeting completion of a rare earth trade agreement with China by Thanksgiving, with the expectation that the U.S. military will not be excluded from the deal. All right, what's going on this week? Perhaps the biggest event this week is that the Federal Open Market Committee will release minutes from its October monetary policy meeting. At that time, the Federal Reserve cut the federal funds tar rate target rate by a quarter of a point to 3.75 to 4%. The next meeting is around December 10th, so we will get some get some insights there into what the Fed was thinking. It is increasingly important because the expectations for a rate cut at the next meeting have shifted dramatically in the past week or so as we've gotten more commentary from Federal Reserve speakers, so what they were thinking back then taking on increasing importance. Also this morning, Novo Nordisk is cutting the direct to consumer price for Ozempik to $349 per month. All right, so last week we had a sharp sell-off on Thursday, Dow was down almost $800 points, NASDAQ down over 500 points, lots of volatility. But by the end of the week, when you looked out and the dust cleared, what we saw was the SP ended last week up just slightly over break even and about two percent below its all-time high. The NASDAQ, which had fallen on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, bounced back on Friday, settled down about half of 1% last week. And the Dow, which was the strongest of the indexes last week, was up about a half a percent for the week and just about a percentage point away from its all-time high. At the moment, there remains a buy-the-dip mindset. Lots of investors have not participated as much as they would like in the rally, and there is money on the sideline still waiting to get into the market if there is a sell-off. But what has been weighing on investors' minds? The two factors, the two big themes. One, artificial intelligence, and what that's going to look like over the next six to twelve months in terms of the build-out in artificial intelligence and whether or not the build-out is gonna translate into earnings. And the second big factor that the market is is weighing at the moment is interest rates and whether or not the Federal Reserve is going to be cutting interest rates. And last week both of those both of those key pillars faltered. Fed board members questioned whether it makes sense to cut rates again in December, and now traders see less than a 50% chance of an interest rate cut happening. What happened? Well, in the AI space, data center owner Corwe, CRWV is the symbol, said on Monday it was having trouble getting its data centers ready fast enough because of a supply chain problem, a third-party developer. Stock dropped 16%. On top of that, there has been growing concern about the debts at some of the big technology companies, and they have been particularly the ones that have been increasing their debt have been particularly vulnerable to the sell-off. Among the most prominent decliners outside of Core Weave was Oracle. Oracle stock had run up to the low 300s, 320, 330, and it had sold all the way back off into the mid-200s. The fear is that they are taking on lots of debt and whether or not the revenues will be there to cover that debt. So last week fear started taking over from the emotion of greed, and the folks are starting to worry of whether or not the AI bubble will pop, whether or not not some of this debt that's been piling up will come due, and whether or not AI would be pumping out enough cash to cover all of that debt. Of course, the big worry here with the interest rates is well, if the Federal Reserve is not cutting interest rates and you're piling on all this debt, well, well, well then it becomes more challenging to service that debt because you've got to pay a higher interest rate, and this worries that perhaps the growth won't be there to service that debt. And there are some examples in history which we'll go over. So this is not the first time we're seeing this narrative, this movie, so to speak. Of course, it always plays a little different, but if you go back in history, you'll see that it certainly does rhyme when it comes to when it comes to what we're experiencing here. And what we're talking about is if you're thinking about this AI build out and you're thinking about all the money that's going into AI, and you're thinking about this is unprecedented, this is unbelievable, I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime, and you know what? In your lifetime, you probably haven't ever experienced anything like this. But in the course of recent history, which again going back a couple hundred years, a hundred years, hundred and fifty years may sound like a lot to us, but in the course of human history, it's a blink of an eye, and if you go back just a little bit a ways, there have been similar episodes, and they didn't all end so well. So you need to be mindful of history. But think about what railroads look like in the nineteenth century. Suddenly you could go from the East Coast to the West Coast in four days. Four days! Something that took 30, 40, 50 days previously. Now you could get across the country in just a matter of days. Think about how revolutionary that might have seemed to you if you were alive in the 1800s. Think about electrification in the early 20th century. Think about not having electricity and suddenly being able to have lights. Forget about the other electrical products that were later dreamed up. But not to be able to have lights and suddenly at night you can see in your home, you can work in factories. Think about the implications and the productivity growth and the change in lifestyle that was taking place in the early 20th century. And more recently, think about the internet boom at the start of the 21st century, at the end of the 20th century. And in each of these cases, there were significant capital expenditure booms, just like we're seeing with AI, and there was a bust. Doesn't mean there'll be a bust this time, but there's a possibility. A comp key component of the peak and turn of those cycles was what we are seeing now, the increased reliance on debt to finance massive expenditures. So the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent to build and equip data centers have become a key focus of the equity and the credit markets in recent weeks. It's not only the enormous funds being spent, but the uncertainty of the future payoffs that concern investors. And this is especially true if you're a bond or a fixed income investor. So if you're an equity investor and you invest in five to ten of these AI companies, whatever companies it is that you may think have the greatest chances of success, if one or two work out, it can more than dwarf the success. In those two cases, the success there could dwarf the failures that you may experience in the other companies in your portfolio that are in the AI space. But if you are a bond investor and you are earning a fixed rate of return, your upside is limited to your coupon and your downside is limited to your entire investment. So you better be really careful about how you are allocating your fixed income portfolio if you're thinking about investing in some of these AI scalers. Even the names that you think to yourself that look super safe, you really need to do your homework and think about, is the risk worth the reward? And they they may squeak out, they may make it, they may thrive, but is the risk worth the reward? And nobody is more familiar with this risk reward calculus and credit than Dan Fuss talked about in Barons, vice chairman of Loomis Sales, known to many as the Buffett of Bonds. He's 92 years old, three years younger than Buffett, and he no longer manages portfolios, but he still does lead morning meetings at Loomis Sales, and he says that current data center deals are, in his opinion, too speculative, the risk is too great, and future revenue too uncertain, and the yields right now he's saying aren't enough to compensate us. And if you take a look at the credit markets, you can see this wariness if you look at the credit default swaps, and those are the basically the bets by the big institutions on whether or not a company will no longer be able to service its debt. The cost of credit default swaps has more than doubled for Oracle since September, and the cost for credit default swaps for Core Weave gapped higher last week, mirroring this the slide of the data company stock. So all of what we're seeing echoes past capital expenditure booms. One factor to be mindful of when we're thinking about these big capital expenditure booms and the future revenues that this capital expenditure will bring forth and bring forward is that as technology gets better and better, as it gets built out, great news for the consumer, it tends to get cheaper, but that means that the analysis that's being done in terms of how you're gonna pay back all this debt sometimes doesn't work out as as you would like. And if you do get a capex bus, like happened in 2000, like happened in the in the 1920s, like happened in the early part of the 20th century in 1907, well, that hits asset prices, markets decline. So we need to be very concerned about all of these factors. And what we do see, the math that backs up what we're talking about here is we are seeing. Corporate bond borrowing is set to rise to a record $1.81 trillion. Next year that would exceed the peak back in 2020 of $1.76 trillion. Big factor in terms of all this debt is what is the interest rate going to be that many of these companies have to pay on this debt. And as I talked about a little while ago, Federal Reserve is sending signals that perhaps the three interest rate cuts that they had signaled just a couple of months ago, and two of them have already happened, the third one was anticipated to happen in December. Well, it may not be as as cookie-cutter clean as the markets were previously thinking. Fed chair Jerome Powell warned that the Fed is driving in the fog right now because of the lack of data that the Fed is getting from government data because of the government's shutdown. And this lack of data may put the Fed on hold, something that was not expected just ten days ago. Fed officials have begun to see the risk of persistent inflation as greater than that of a cooling economy. Recent concerns about inflation, which remain about a percentage point above the Fed's 2% target, and the risk that easing too quickly could stall a disinflation, disinflation process, have grown more prominent. Right now, Neil Duda of Renaissance Macro Research said close calls no longer go to the doves. That's the folks calling for lower rates. Close calls probably now, in his opinion, go to the hawks. December will be the first test of that presumed shift. So the combination of delayed economic data, firmer inflation readings, and the economy's headline resilience have complicated the picture for the Federal Reserve. Perhaps we'll get some insights on Wednesday when that beige book comes out. One other factor that perhaps is complicating the Fed's decision making and thinking, Baron's talking about the labor market, and one of the reasons perhaps that employment and the unemployment rate have stayed very favorable for the economy, meaning that unemployment rate has stayed low, even though we're seeing lots and lots of news about layoffs at the moment, is because many smaller businesses and mid-side businesses, they are still not comfortable letting workers go, even though they may not need those workers, because the mindset is you remember what happened recently, and recently, if you let workers go or you lost workers, it was very hard to replace them. So we're now in a period or a mindset when perhaps many of these companies do not need all the workers they have, but because they are scarred by those recent battle scars of not having enough employees when they needed them, they are very hesitant to cut workers. But that mindset, Baron suggests, is starting to shift, and if that shift and that fear starts to alleviate itself, then you could start seeing much more significant layoffs, and layoffs could be get layoffs. So this is something the Fed needs to be mindful of and weigh in their thinking because if they don't cut rates and businesses get more comfortable in shedding workers, well, perhaps the decision not to cut rates would not be the right one. So they've got to weigh all these things, tough decision, tough environment for the Fed. Very glad I'm not a Fed governor right now. It's it's it really is one of the more challenging times. It's never easy to decide what to do with interest rates, but this moment in time is perhaps amongst the most difficult that I've seen in quite some time. All right, finally, I'm gonna conclude with a separate topic, and this has to do with medicine and taking care of yourself. And Baron's talking about an aspect of medicine that is booming, and that is called concierge medicine. And all of us might think to ourselves, well, what is concierge medicine? Is this something that I should be doing? Well, concierge medicine is a practice where medical offices set up what some would call like VIP clubs for health care. They charge annual fees, they have a limited number of patients, you get more personalized service, and you get doctors who actually handle things from A to Z potentially if if you are to get sick. Now, there is different levels or extents of of concierge medicine. Annual prices range from fifteen hundred dollars a year to fifty thousand dollars a year, and as the cost goes up, and this is outside of your insurance, this is separate from your insurance, but as those costs increase, the level of service generally increases as well, and you can expect more and more white glove service as as you pay more and more. Some would argue this is just a further separation between the haves and the have nots when it comes to when it comes to all sorts of different services like aircraft and first class and coach. Now we're gonna see medicine become further stratified between those who have concierge services and those who do not. One aspect of the big beautiful bill now allows if you participate in a health savings account, well, you can use some of those savings toward your concierge medicine. Anywhere between $150 a month for an individual and $300 a month for a family from your HSA can go towards your concierge medical services. And doctors starting to understand the economics here. The system creates revenue for them, it's kind of like a Netflix, right? They now have this monthly income stream that's gonna come into them that they didn't have before. They don't have to necessarily run around and make rounds and run around their offices at a super fast pace and see as many patients as they can and think what they're gonna get reimbursed from the insurance company because now this business model is is is much more automated and automatic. So right now, about 2% of all U.S. physicians are in a concierge group, and that number is expected to grow. So for patients, concierge medicine offers a cocoon for mounting pressures on the medical system. So something that if you know it's something that is something that you can potentially afford and it's something that you value, concierge medicine is perhaps something that for yourself or your parents, you know, certainly an additional expense, but taking care of your health is certainly something that you may view as a worthwhile expenditure, although data at the moment shows that if you are a concierge medicine patient, studies have shown it does not enhance longevity, so you may not live any longer than you would otherwise, although some suggest that that data is somewhat biased or skewed because people who are the folks that join concierge medicine are the folks who are most focused on their health, may in engage in the most healthy lifestyles, um, so it kind of becomes a feedback loop. But nevertheless, it is a product and service that is becoming increasingly available in the marketplace, and as it does, it may further make the difference between those who are participating in concierge medicine and those who aren't, as the aren't are seeing less and less doctors, if more doctors ship to the concierge space. Um, you can see that that gap actually widened going forward. That's everything I've got.

Alan Eppers:

Thank you for listening to Mr. Keith Lanton. This podcast is available on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify. For more information, please visit our website at www.heroldlantern.com.

Sophie Cohen:

Opinions expressed herein are subject to change and not necessarily the opinion of the firm. Test performance is no guarantee of future results. The information presented herein is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide personal investment advice. It is important that you consider your tolerance for risk and investment goals when making investment decisions. Investing in securities does involve risk and potential of losing money. The material does not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations.