Episode 16: Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chairman...or...Con Man?

I asked rhetorically in a research piece I wrote last week...is Jerome Powell a "con man"?
 
Of course the answer is a resounding NO. Jay Powell has talked the talk and then walked the walk. He has told us what he thinks, he has told us what he will do, and then he does it, ever since 2018 and the publication of eleven Fed White Papers defining the "new monetary paradigm", which proposed to let inflation rise to whatever level it wanted to without "tolerance bands", to rise high enough to lift the eight-year average rate  above 2%, and then if needed apply the Volcker playbook with draconian monetary tightening to bring inflation back down to their target. 

I say, "con man" not because Powell has tried to "play us". Rather, he has been fully transparent. But now that is kind of the problem, because he has NO "confidence" that the Fed has tightened policy to a degree where it IS "restrictive enough to finish the job". The word CONFIDENCE was used in a negative way repeatedly during Powell’s most recent post-FOMC meeting press conference. Thus, my play on words, and "con man". 

And rather than a dovish stance, he in fact clearly stated that IF the economy continued to grow at a rate above trend, it "could cause the Fed to tighten further". 
 
But what if the economy is already IN a recession...AND...inflation rises again?

And if "stagflation" becomes the dominant macro-trend, what action should investors take to protect their money and wealth?

I discuss this, and SO MUCH MORE, in today's episode of "Money, Markets, and New Age Investing.”

Transcript

Economy and Stock Market Reactions

Germany and Japan

Speaker 1 0:02

Hi, greg Weldon here and welcome back to another episode of Bunny Market's and New Age Investing, and I just recently did a piece for my clients and I asked the question is Jerome Powell a con man? I mean, when you kind of started to break it down, it's interesting because of the play on words I use here. Okay, is he a con man In the vernacular? No, he's not a con man. Of course he's not a con man. All right, he has talk to talk and he has walked the walk. All right, he has told us everything he's going to do. He told us what he thought, he told us what he's going to do and then he went out and did it, and this takes back to 2018. Jackson Holt's speech. He's a Paul Voker disciple, all right. You remember 2018, 11 white papers published by the Fed, 310 pages worth. They're at every page and it was the new policy paradigm. It laid out R-Star. They laid out tolerance versus intolerance in terms of bands of inflation that might be acceptable and other ways you could go about inflation targeting. It talked about averages what would be the average. Powell said we're going to adopt this and basically let inflation run and run to levels to wherever it wants to go. We have no tolerance bands, which is really an intolerance band, if you understand what I'm saying and we would want it to be above average on an eight year average basis. And that's interesting, given over the previous eight years the average had been so low. So it kind of made sense and he said he would do this. And he said, look, this is a bigger problem than having this whole thing kind of implode into itself. Debt deflation and absolutely I wrote in my book in 2006, gold Trading Bootcamp that when peering into the debt deflation abyss, central bankers will choose to reflate every time, no matter what the cost. And have they not proven that since? I remember being on CNBC and Joe Kern called me a nut job in 2007 when I suggested to Feb will have to print money, monetize government debt and basically to save the consumer. And that's exactly what happened. So, in the context of where we are now, all right, this is where the confidence comes in, because he said he would pull a Paul Volcker and he has the difference, and I said this so many times. I've compared the speech in 1978, the first Humphrey Hawkins testimony of Paul Volcker, to the things that Powell has said recently, in the last year, year and a half. They're exactly the same, except for one thing Volcker mentioned we do not want to spark a credit contraction. Powell has kind of hinted, as several Fed members, that we need a credit contraction and we do. It's just that's walking the tightrope man that is trying to prick the bubble and put a piece of tape on it and hope that the balloon doesn't deflate. All right, so we'll see it. But that's not even the big question now, because it comes back to being a con man. All right, is Jerome Powell a con man? No, of course not, but in the sense of confidence he absolutely is. Because he is not confident that the Fed has achieved their goal. And when you look at what he said at his recent press conference a week ago, however many could have been two days ago, I worked so many hours. A week is a day. It's one long running day for five days. So, with the Fed meeting press conference, all right. What did Jerome Powell say? I mean, people are focused on the maybe we're done and that maybe inflation won't come back and that maybe the economy is actually not going to have negative below trend growth or whatever it might be. A period of below trend growth is what they're looking for and that maybe we're done. All right, that's maybe 10%, if not 5%, of the commentary, ignoring the totality of the commentary, which is what I'm going to give you right now. Here's what Jerome Powell said in the Q&A. The Q&A, well, the first one is actually from his statement, but the rest of it's Q&A. The first one we are committed to keeping policy restrictive until we are confident that inflation is on a path to 2%. He's not confident that the Fed is sufficiently restrictive, let alone to keeping policy restrictive. Because we're not even there yet. And here's where I kind of left when I see the stock market wants to run you think a new bull market is going to be born from a period where we're going to have now six to nine months of restrictive policy I mean, you're already seeing the cracks and to think and just to get ahead of it because, in terms, no, I'm not going to get ahead of it because I got to go to the recession. When we get to the recession in Powell's comments, I don't want to talk about that. Let's continue with the comments. We are committed, powell, to achieving a stance that's sufficiently restrictive. We are not confident yet that we have achieved such a stance, not confident we're sufficiently restrictive, again, let alone how long we have to stay restricted once we get there, because we haven't even. We don't feel confident. We've even gotten there yet. And then what's interesting is, after that statement, here's the follow up from one of these media guys. Just a quick follow up to be clear. You seem to imply you are not yet confident that financial conditions are restrictive enough to finish the fight. Is that true, powell? I see him with his head in his hands, just like shaking his head. Smh four words. Yes, that's exactly right, bam. Next question Are not confident financial conditions, monetary conditions and policy are restrictive enough? How many times I got to tell you people, mcfly? I got to hit you on the head with the cane over and over until you understand what I'm trying to tell you here. Here might be really kind of one of the more significant comments. He talks about tighter financial conditions from higher bond yields all right, and quote unquote other sources like the stronger dollar, and that quote unquote. Tighter conditions would need to be persistent and that remains to be seen. But that's critical. Things are fluctuating. That's not what we're looking for. Come on, that's pretty straightforward. I mean, you can't get much more transparent. Just think about what he's saying. All right, tighter conditions need to be more persistent and need to exist over time until we see persistent data results, not this up and down flip-flop. Even the markets, I mean, go nowhere, but sure as heck go up and then sure as heck go down. False breakouts. False breakdown, I mean it's all over the place. It's polarized like everything else. And here's the next comment, and I picture Powell with this, and there's a YouTube video of this. By the way, this entire breakdown of all these comments you can find on YouTube. I'd post it for free. It's on my YouTube channel users backslash Gregory Weldon, in terms of here we go. This is what he says, only the beginning of what it will take to build confidence. In other words, inflation is moderated since the middle of last year, all right, but a few months of good data are only the beginning of what it will take to build confidence. The process has a long way to go, only the beginning, long way to go. How is that? We're almost done. Maybe it's not, because what he's saying is you know, we have a long way to go before we feel confident, and we're not. You know we're not budging until we're confident, because the goal here is to get inflation down. Next comment is here we go. Next comment Asked about is the recession been put back into the baseline in terms of the macro forecast which we'll get in five or six weeks into December? Meeting the staff and this is Powell, the staff did not put a recession back in. It's just too early. We just don't know how persistent this will be. In terms of policy, all right. In other words, there's no recession because we need more persistent policy to achieve the goal of recession or, at the very least, below trend growth. 4.9 GDP is not below trend, all right. Now, it's not a valid number either. Gdp is not the number to look at. Gdp includes something like imports are down, that's positive, all right. Or that, uh uh, inventories are up, and that's a positive. No, they're not positive. So throw that out the window. All right. And that's what stock markets don't grab on to, anything that they can, that's positive. Here I don't see Powell as being positive, and you know that could be a for effect. Of course, we know that that's central banks work. That's why I'm giving you this translation from central bank ease, from fed speak into. You know normal person talk. Normal person talk is Powell is steadfast in his hawkishness. You know it's too early. Needs to be more persistent tightness. We don't know how persistent this will be. All right, now he talks about growth, because here is where he drops the bomb. This is Powell. We are attentive to recent data showing the resilience of economic growth. Evidence of growth persistently above potential could warrant further tightening a monetary policy. Our head translation If the economy continues to grow, we'll tighten again. We'll tighten further. We'll raise rates again. If the economy continues to grow, we'll raise rates again. How's that bullish for stocks? And I mean the economy has to grow to even reach where stocks have priced the economy. That's the problem. And the economy is rolling over, as I'm going to show you in about three minutes. And here was the kind of the pieced of resistance. All right, and this is the question. Here's the question from one of the media guys. Would you say the bias right now is neutral and there's no disposition to hike again? This is the follow up to that last question. And now we get all of six words, because four wasn't enough. Head in hand to Trump. Powell shake it his head. No, I wouldn't say that at all. You know translation. How clear do I have to be? Hello McFly, we're tilted towards tightening our disposition, aka. So this is the commentary from Powell and how you translate that into a bullish stock market reaction, I don't know how. Is this a breakout to a new bull market in stocks? I don't know. It's based on the market wanting to do it. It's based on the breakdown in forward interest rates. The forward Fed funds is already broken four and a half for the next year. They're pricing in two, if not potentially three, rate cuts next year already. I mean, that's Bing, bang, bam. And there you go. One comment from Powell 10% of what he said, not even. So let's look at the economy, because if the economy, you know, is going to be resilient going forward, now, maybe it is that the stock market likes how weak the economy is, because that will hold the Fed back. How about that one? The Bureau of Labor statistics. Give us this, the BLS, in terms of the employment numbers, straight up terrible, horrific, atrocious. Nothing in here that's positive, honestly. The number of employed down 348,000. The number of unemployed up 146,000. Household numbers the number of permanent job losers up 164,000. The number working part-time for economic reasons, aka need to pay the bills 191,000. Second month in a row. It's been up All right. The previous two months of data revised down in terms of jobs, with the headline payroll numbers by 101,000. I mean not in the labor force rose 416,000, almost half a million people dropped out and the participation rate fell. That is really weak. The number of persons unemployed in the last 5 months is up 849,000. The unemployment rate is up 0.5 in the last 5 months. I read somewhere there is some new theory by one economist on Wall Street that says 0.5 rise in that time frame has always led to a recession. So it's kind of interesting. All right, let's go on. Let's dig deeper. I mean, did labor markets to key? If the labor markets are rolling over, then all bets are off and that's why I like bonds and that's why I kind of turned bearish on the dollar. Here I have flipped my position to a large degree and I'm going to give you all those details. Hours worked we're down. What's interesting is the breadth here 14 of 19 industry sectors were down in hours worked, that's 74% of industries work less hours. Two of 19,. 10% were up. That's it. Average weekly earnings were actually down for the month, the first monthly decline since February of 2021, that's over. That's two and a half years. Two and a half years you haven't had a monthly decline in average weekly earnings and you just got one. Not only that, in terms of industry breakdown, out of the 19, 10 had showed declines. It was broad based. More than half of the industries that were monitored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics were down in earnings for the month, versus seven that were up. As a result, the year of year rate is down to 3.1. Now, well below inflation. Real earnings are back to deflation negative. Your check buys less by the time you cash it, so to speak. At 3.1 is the lowest in February of 2021. It's a two and a half year low in the year of year rate of wages, while inflation has turned and is now rising. And then there's the ISM surveys, always a treasure trove of information. Institute of Supply Management, the manufacturing survey. They break it down by industries 75% of manufacturing capacity in terms of a contribution of GDP contracted in October that's up from 71% and this, as far as I know, this is a new high for this cycle. More than that, the headline activity index posted its 11th consecutive month below 50. You haven't seen that, except for three other times in the last 30 years 1991 recession, 2000, 2001,. Tech bubble crash and 2008, 2009. Not even during the pandemic Was there 11 consecutive months of contraction in the ISM manufacturing survey headline activity index, the new orders index, the percentage of replies, growth versus contraction. 15% of firms say new orders are growing versus 27% of firms who say new orders are contracting. That's two to one negative. The new orders index subsequently fell to 45.5. Below 45 is considered really weak and that's down from 49.2. That's a big monthly decline and the backlog at 42.2. What a low level. All right, both of these indexes new orders and the backlogs have been below 50 in contraction territory since the middle of last year. The service ISM survey is even more impressive because, of course, service is a much bigger percentage of the economy. Services, particularly like leisure and hospitality, has remained very strong in terms of reflecting still growth in final demand from the consumer. But this is changing now too. We've seen it kind of in retail sales a little bit and in the service numbers that we got in these surveys. Really, really negative. Ism service, the activity index, was the sixth lowest reading in the last decade. Sixth lowest reading in the last decade. Yeah, it's still above 50, 54.1. But let me tell you, below 55 in the service sector is softening. It's into the danger zone, as opposed to 50 in manufacturing. Now, that's not the way they put it out there, but it usually I mean rare to see it below 54. The simple evidence of that is 54.1 is the sixth lowest reading in a decade. Four of the six lowest readings have come in the last 11 months. The other two are in the pandemic. Six low readings, two in the pandemic and four in the last 11 months. All right, new orders. Here's the percentage up versus the percentage down. Ok, when you're talking about a month ago it was almost 30% higher and 16% lower. Now it's 22% higher, 17% lower. So you can see the shift there too. In terms of employment, service sector is the strength of the labor market. The percentage saying their hiring fell from 22% to 15. The percentage saying they're laying people off went from 14 to 17. The differential from hiring versus layoffs went from in September plus 7.8 percentage points to minus 1.4. All right, and then in the service sector, I assume really interesting to note in terms of inflation commodity prices rising versus prices falling, commodity prices rising 11 commodities were added to the list in October and the list is less than 20. So more than half came in the last month, including on that list gasoline and food. The Dallas Fed survey all note for its service sector survey. They do retail, they do manufacturing, they do service. All three are in recession, all right. Service sector from Dallas headline activity minus 18.2. It's the lowest of this year. It's been negative 12 months in a row. The only other time we've seen that was in the financial crisis 2008, 2009. The revenue index from the service sector is 0.7. It's a three-year low, all right. It was consistently above 20. It's now 0.7. It's negative only last December and during the pandemic. I mean, there's a lot of evidence there to suggest that the economic pain and the blow trend period of blow trend growth that Powell has been asking for is right in front of us. It's at the front door. It's stopped ringing the doorbell, all right. It stopped knocking because no one's answering and it's starting to kick the door. It's the same in G3 around the world. We just talked about EU for a quick second Belgium, austria and Germany, core of Europe. Belgium CPI has collapsed. Belgium CPI has gone in the last year from inflation all right year-over-year inflation rate in Belgium from 10.6 to 0.3. It's 1.7% below the ECB's target rate. It's down to 0.03 in the last month on a year-over-year basis. Okay, and what's interesting is that when you take GDP, it's up 1.5, which is kind of so poor, but against a 0.3 inflation rate you actually have 1% plus real GDP in Belgium. The problem is the inflation number is I won't say it's faulty, but it is one-off, absolutely one-off. Why? Because the month-over-month rate was 0.3, same as the year-over-year rate, and last October, which you're comparing it to on a year-over-year rate, the monthly increase was 2.3. That's your 200 basis point decline. Right there, the base effect, the entire decline in Belgium inflation was a one-off base effect. When we look at the next seven months, going where you were from November, october of last year for the next seven months. So what are we comparing to for the next seven months? In Belgium? The next seven months, monthly CPI numbers were minus 0.55 cumulatively. In other words, you're talking about minus 0.7, kind of on a month in February and April, both months 0.7 for the month. You are looking at huge increases in inflation in Belgium in the first quarter on a pure base effect, just like the collapse came All right. Let's talk about Austria, and the reason for this we're talking about is because of stagflation, the S-word that no one wants to talk about. That is really permeating everything right now. All right, and this is a good case in point. Is Austria All right? Gdp fell for the second quarter in a row on a year-over-year annualized basis Down 1.1 in the second quarter, down 1.2 in the third quarter a deepening decline, all right. When you're talking about CPI, all right, it was 11.2, all right, but now it's all the way down to six. But that is still three times the ECB's target. So you have a basically a 4% check that you have a 2% real rate in terms of the policy rate, which is a four or four and a half, depending on which one you want to have. Look at it, there's three ECB policy rates. Let's use the lowest one, 4%, against 6% inflation. You have a 2% negative real policy rate. Into a recession, I mean into inflation. That's 6%. Not only that, you're talking about food inflation running at nine in both Belgium and Austria. Come on, man, I mean this. You know this is stagflation all over the place. Let's talk about Germany. Cpi fell that's great to 3.8. That's great from 4.5. That's great. From the 8.7 high in January. That's great, it's all. Energy energy down 3.2 year of a year. Food up 6.1. It's base effect Since the big. And in terms of energy, since the beginning of 2022. The finance ministry tells us that all leave the energy sources electricity, natural gas. He knew anything you're using for electricity, fuel motor, you know gasoline the minimum gain nominally since the beginning of 2022. So you're talking 22 months. The minimum gain out of all these sectors is 40%, the max gain, even though you know natural gas has come down relative to 2022. It's still much higher, 200% gain in some cases. And In the same time, german Inflation, you know okay, hanging around 3.8, with food at6. Gdp hasn't grown a single quarter this year. Gdp in Germany was down point two, the first quarter Unchanged. The second quarter down point three, just reported. And Then we ECB real policy rate is rising as inflation comes down in Germany into a recession. You have a recession. Let's talk about Japan real quick, because this is really interesting, because the inflation there is rising. All right, you went from 2.8 to 3.3 on the Tokyo inflation number. All right, you violated the downtrend line you've had in place. All right, food rose from 8.6 to a new high of9. Food inflation in Japan 9%. Japan inflation no, wait a minute, hold on, you can't use those phrases together, can you? Yes, you can. Food inflation in Japan is 9%, the highest since June of 1976, a 47 year high in Japanese food inflation. Of 92 components of the food CPI in Japan, 48 of the 92, or 52%, are in double digit inflation. 30 of them, or 33%, one third, are above 15% year-over-year and 22 of the 92 components in food in CPI in Japan, 24% of them are above 20% year-over-year, that's half above 10, a third above 15 and a quarter above 20%. 20% year-over-year rate of inflation in Japan for one fourth of the food supply. Come on, man, the PMI, the G boom Bank PMI all right, below 50 the first time in the year. All right. The service sector was down 2.7 for the month and G boom bank says the service sector rate of growth was the slowest of the year and the meantime imports in Japan down 16.3 year-over-year. Six months in a row, negative. Two months in a row, now back-to-back below 15% year-over-year deflation. Okay, the only other time you've kind of seen this depth and this length, this sequence, I was in 2008-2009. The depth from the peak to the trough, I should say from growth to bottom, the same now. I mean it's virtually the same now as it was from the peak in 2006 to the bottom in 2009, which really came before 2009-2008. Let's run down some of the import numbers Minerals down 38%. Petroleum down 32%. Liquid natural gas down 45%. Electrical machinery down 8%. Semiconductors down 23%. Chemicals down 24%. Medical down 32%. Nonferrous metals down 25%. Raw materials down 10%. Where there are increases, yeah, three categories Transportation 19%. Vehicles 7%, and science and optical equipment up 2%. Japanese economy is kind of cracking. Inflation is rising. It's stagflation in all three G3 countries right now. So what are we doing in the markets with all of this? Well, the first thing you really should do is check out the portfolio playbook and yeah, I'm going to throw a little commercial in here, because the mission statement is to help people and that also includes building the business and helping my family. So to whatever extent we provide value here, that is, I think you know, worthy of the cost, because it's not really a cost, it's an investment. And you know you can check me out, email me at sales at weldononlinecom for more information, because we manage money all right. So high minimum accredited investors only. You have to talk about that. We have to make sure you're a fit for me and I'm a fit for you In that case. And we really don't market that much. But we are accepting new money because the opportunities are tremendous in the markets, particularly in some of the markets, most people don't trade. You've got to get out of just being stock-centric here, just being passively or indexed or 60-40 is already dead, finally blown out of the water. Next thing is buy and hold because it's all well and good. The stock market goes up, but if it goes up at less than the pace they debased the purchasing power of your money, it doesn't matter. We're Argentina. Well, the stock market makes the new high every year, but the standard of living goes down because inflation is so high and the money is destroyed in terms of its purchasing power. We see that in gold, which is hovering at $2,000 and about to explode upwards because no one's involved. Everyone's liquidated their gold ETFs, everyone's liquidated their gold. The open interest in the futures is way down. Bitcoin is huge potentially. Here too, it's just a kind of almost a natural hedge against the dollars, a natural hedge against geopolitics, where and when, in places and in times when people can't run to the local gold store and buy a bullion. You know what I'm saying. So there's value there too. Certainly, in the commodity space there is tremendous value. A whole list of agricultural commodities cocoa we've talked about new highs coffee the next comer sugar, huge bullish supply demand fundamentals in the backdrop. We participate in all of those. So in the context of that, the new age investing portfolio playbook is a very valuable tool. We have specific portfolios for different types of investors and even if you want to be buying old stocks, we give you those portfolios that track the best performing sectors. And it's not even really about performing. It's about the individual stocks in the S&P 500 that are the most bullish trends, that have the most robust long, medium and short-term bullish trends. We want everything to combine and those are the stocks that we then feed into the sectors. So we give you the top stocks in sectors too. You know we don't do individual stocks, but you know we also give it to you in terms of ranking the trends. So from that context, certainly energy has been a big play. If you've been listening to the podcast, you know we've been dead on All right. Now from here, you know stocks want to rally. I said in our research piece last Tuesday and then Wednesday morning before the Fed this market wants to rally, quote unquote. All right that you are focused narrowly on the word done in the Fed commentary, but not on really. The market is focused on one thing, but they're not focused on the same thing the Fed is telling you they're focused on. That's what's interesting to me. Okay, nonetheless, all right. You did get to the 38% retracing of the pandemic post pandemic rally in the S&P. You held kind of above the two year long-term moving averages. You had a five-wave move down, so a rally. In the context of this news from the Fed, that was going to be basically a six week window now where you can run whatever narrative you want to run. We already see the back end. Fed funds futures for next year are at 440. They're already pricing in three rate cuts next year. So already the markets gotten out ahead of the Fed. But you know what? To your notes yield breaking down, five-year note breaking down. I'm willing to play that because you have a timeframe here where that could be a powerful move and then we'll see what happens with inflation come December and really January, february, because that's then December, january numbers and you get the base effect really kicks in. So we'll see You've also rallied these things into overhead resistance. The cash S&P 500 above 44.30 is a mini breakout. The NASDAQ above 15,470. Key off the XLK. And of course we do all of this in the portfolio playbook Every week. We break it down in depth. It's usually 60 pages or more and it's not like hard reading. It's a lot of charts, a lot of technicals, the macro, the stats and the some of the quantitative stuff and it's not difficult to digest either. The XLK is key, of course. Infotech, the ETF all right. If you get above 172.83, that would be a breakout in the XLK and that's been the leader you can't dismiss if a leader breaks out. You know we made a little bit of money on the short side and more than less than we thought we would. But at the same time we got to be nimble, we got to adjust and we're adjusting. In this case, in the XLK, above 172.83 is a breakout. The closed Friday was 171.79. So you're right there, all right. The XLI, on the other hand, closed very poorly on Friday, all right, rejected it to 200-day moving average. So keep an eye on that, because if you get above 103.92, then you break that pattern in the XLI. Also watch the XLRE, the real estate sector. Okay, 34.98 on the upside would be a breakout in the context of the rally and the mortgage bond ETF, the MBB. You could have a story there where you know again, if the market wants to use this narrative, then the real estate and mortgage market is going to bounce. So that you know, keep an eye on that as well for clues. I don't want to be long stocks. To think that a new bull market is going to be born out of this backdrop is to me, really short-sighted and wishful thinking. It just is. It really is. If the CPI goes back to five, you wipe out the restricted policy of the Fed and they're going to have to move again. That's why they're not committing to anything here. A new bull market from that? No, the economic data I just gave you does that support a new bull market? No, the economy is going to worsen because the Fed, even if they're done, they're going to stay restrictive now for months. This is only just beginning, like Powell is saying. That's why he's saying it Curve steepening leaves the short end open for ownership, but it's a really low alpha dynamic. We talked about this last week. The Z-Roz are actually in the portfolio playbook, I should say on Wednesday. The Z-Roz, which is the zero coupon treasury ETF, and the TLT, the long treasury ETF, do provide better alpha. They probably have big rallies and, frankly, just to get back to where you were at the end of last year, you're talking about, you know, 25 to 40 percent moves in these prices. So that's worthy of participating and the context of this too. The dollar is key because this is the market versus the Fed. This is the Fed funds futures for the end of next year, trading at 4.4 percent. All right, this is a double top in the dollar, right at the 50 percent retracement, and you broke key support on Friday at 105.36. I have a list of currencies that we purchased that were bullish. I have a list of commodities that we purchased and were bullish. You know I'm bullish on gold. You know I'm bullish on Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can follow all of this with us by checking us out sales at Weldon onlinecom, the YouTube channel user slash Gregory Weldon. Follow us on Twitter at Weldon live or, of course, at money underscore podcast. And you know, hey, I got to tell you when I look at everything that's going on. Especially the Middle East is kind of taking a backseat to all of this, and the Middle East, for sure, is far, far from over. Stagflation is the key. That's the way to prepare in the medium term, and I prefer to have these other assets like currencies and commodities as opposed to stocks, and even bonds rather as opposed to stocks right now, because they just don't see a new bull market being born from this. The risk remains much too high. Greg Weldon, thanks for listening. Join us next time for another edition of money markets and new age investing.