114 - We're Not Waiting on the Fed—Here's Where We’re Investing Instead

The macroeconomic landscape just changed—again—and most investors are still trading like it’s 2024. In this episode, we break down the real trends driving markets for the rest of 2025, from inflation pressure to slowing job growth, tariff-driven stagflation risks, and why the Fed’s rate cut dreams may be dead.

But we’re not just here to rant about bad policy—we’re here to capitalize.

We’ll walk through undervalued sectors, contrarian dividend plays, and overlooked global trends (hello, India & blockchain) that could deliver big gains when the rest of the market is distracted.

If our past calls on nuclear, utilities, and AI were any indication—these next bets are worth paying attention to.

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Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to roaming returns a podcast about generating a passive income with dividend stocks so you can secure your finances and liberate your life.

The economic climate has shifted—again—and if you’re still investing based on last year’s forecast, you're gonna miss some awesome opportunities.

In this episode, we unpack the updated macrotrends shaping the rest of 2025: inflation rising, stagflation looming, and surprising sector shifts the market hasn’t priced in yet. These are the contrarian bets that could explode. We’ve used this exact approach before—nuclear, utilities, AI—and it paid off huge. So let’s run things down.

All right. So this week's episode is going to be freaking awesome because I love macro trends. They're so much fun because Tim tends to do his little oracle bubble thing and cool shit happens.
But they're very difficult to research. Like it takes a lot of a lot of time. Well, that's why we freaking watch you do the freaking big buck stuff and just piggyback off your awesomeness.
Okay. Well, when I did this, I did this, uh, I don't know, July 4th around there. So we had like a half a year's worth of data with half a year's worth of data.
You should be able to identify potential macro trends. And so before I did that, though, I wanted to go back so we could look at like what I said. And I wanted to go back and for you to basically say why this is important, because yeah, show, show them exactly like how many of the ones that we had in the last prediction.
If you go back to whatever episode that was, how many hit? Okay. And December 20th, we had an email. I don't remember when the podcast, the podcast was before the email came out or after, I don't know, but it was towards the end of December.
I had a couple of macro trends identified at the first was nuclear stocks would pop off and they have popped off in our NLR, which is our closed ended fund that holds like all of the nuclear stocks that I like. We are up 42% in that one right now. So nuclear was good.
Good call. I said oil stocks. Oh, wait.
I said boring old utility, electric utilities would pop off and they have like BKH is up with it's only 5%, but ES is up 14% and a couple of other utilities. I don't remember exactly. They're up like around 20%.
So the boring old electric utilities, but that's like a no brainer macro trend. Like if you're, if you have like all this stuff drawn on the power, you're going to need to like power it with electric. So that was what it was.
I said, oil stocks would pop off within two to four years. So stocking up on undervalued oil stocks would be a smart play. Well, it's too early to tell because the price of like the crude price has been fluctuating between like 65 and $74 a barrel.
There was a time there where it was up to like 80, 82 or something like that. So when we bombed the overlord bombed Iran, but like it's since settled back into that 65 to 72 range. So that one's going to take some time to see how that'll play out.
I said, data centers would be huge and they have been the problem with the data centers is trying to find like an actual data center stock. And that's very difficult to do, but like if you can, you can like, we don't have any of the portfolios. I don't know.
Like I won't know until the end of the year when I do this, like the actual recoup, how, how much they, how much they made. I also stated NVIDIA wouldn't be the biggest gaining AI stock. And I'm a planeteer is just killing NVIDIA so far.
Palantir, planeteer, whatever you want to call it. So that's going to be accurate. Like I don't think NVIDIA is going to be able to catch up to Palantir.
Palantir we're up like 600% this year or some shit like that. It's crazy. Seriously? Oh crap.
Nice. Makes up for a long time. We bought it in your mom's portfolio, like right around the time I did the 12, 20 year podcast and she's up 683%.
So it might not be 683%, it might be 585, but it's around 600% what Palantir is up since January. I also said REITs would be a good play due to interest rate cuts, but you, you know, you can't like foresee everything. I would be surprised if we get an interest rate cut this year.
The, the, the regime keeps badgering the fed to cut the rates, but like it doesn't, like you can't cut the rates if inflation data is coming in high and employment data is not really like that terrible. Like there, cause that's two different sides of the coin. So they're in like a conundrum because they can't do both.
So I'm sure they're just going to wait and see what, cause the tariff, the tariff stuff is starting to show up in the inflation data. I don't think it's actually affecting the employment data as of yet. So there could come a point where like inflation's up employment, like unemployment is way up.
So the labor market, labor market's really soft. And then we're going to have stagflation. And then when we get to, when we get to that point, we're fucked because stagflation is like hard to get out of.
I said, good, good, well-run BDCs would pop off and they have like mainstream capitals. So again, it's up, it's up to the 2.1 area where it's a price to nav. So it's super overvalued.
Hercules has done pretty good. ARCC has done pretty good. So like the BDCs are doing what they're supposed to do.
They're giving you a little bit of price appreciation, but then you're getting a lot of total returns. You're collecting, you know, 11, 12, 13, 15%, except for Maine. Maine's only like a 6%, five, five and a half, 6%.
But you warned against that one. I think when we did it, didn't you? Yeah. I also said that big banks and crypto related investments would pop off and like, they're the biggest gainers so far, like the crypto related investments.
Especially with the recent news. Big banks just reported earnings are crushing it. Like JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, they're all just crushing their earnings.
So like, I think the financial, like the big, I think it's going to be big banks, not like small banks, not like your local credit union, your local bank. And it's like nationwide banks like Wells Fargo. So far it's been doing pretty well.
Yeah. Well, the federal credit unions are under a different umbrella, basically. So those don't count.
But the crypto stuff's just gone crazy. Like Coinbase and stuff. The genius bill.
What the heck? There were two more that just came out. Tim sent me an email about it. It was fascinating.
The stable bill, the genius bill. And then they just did something where like, well, one of them was it like they have the regulation require like regulations and requirements on stable coins. That was the stable bill.
The genius bill is where they said that the government's not going to be involved with anything for the most part anymore. And they just did something else. I forget what it was as well.
But there was three things that just came out where they just sent crypto up a lot. You know, so you saw Bitcoin hit like 122. You saw Ethereum still climb.
Last I looked, it was like 37. And it went from like 27 to 37 within like two weeks. So that's up like 33% or whatever in like a week or two.
But the reason I bring this up is not to toot my own horn, tout myself, but like, because like the macro trends, they're in flux. Like your portfolio is in flux. You have to like revisit your portfolio from time to time to make sure you're in the right things.
Well, you have to revisit the macro trends as the data says fit. And right now, the data is saying something different than what I had originally predicted because of the overlords tariffs. Those tariffs are fucking everything up.
And then we have this America first isolationist type of view on the world that's messing stuff up. And so there's like, there's a couple things that we need to look at to identify to see like where we should have our money and where we shouldn't have our money, basically. But we will go over my 2025 macro trend predictions probably at the end of November or middle of December, because December is, the first week of December is a conservative portfolio dividends.
The second week is van life dividends. So if we don't get to it, like our after Thanksgiving, then we'll have to wait till mid-December, but we will totally go over it. Let's get into the macro trends that I see like playing out the rest of 2024, the remaining half of 2024.
The first one is, should be a no brainer. It's the global economic slowdown. This just isn't about United States, but the United States is going to be hit the hardest, but the rest of the world is going to have a potential for a global slowdown.
Like a UK is already shown, like it's economy is slowing down. Germany's economy is already slowing down. China's isn't.
And like, so the Asian area is doing pretty well. And that's one of the things that we actually address later on. Okay, so GDP projections for the US are 1.8% growth.
Coming into 2025, there was a projection of 2.8% growth, because that's what we actually know. They said it was going to be a probably 3.2% growth because we had 2.8% growth in 2024. But the substantial decline in growth is due to the tariffs.
The tariffs are wrecking the economy. No matter what the new media is saying, because the media is all compromised. It's very difficult to find media that actually reports stuff.
So like when the time a report comes out, you literally have to go into it and dig out the information for yourself, because the media is going to spin it to fit the narrative that the regime's trying to present. Media is compromised. So if you do this, like when the inflation report comes out, like don't just read like the bullet points on your news sources, you can actually click on the actual report.
Or you can just Google it, just Google like the PCE report for whatever month you're in. And you can actually go in and you can get the PDF and you can look at the numbers for yourself. That's what I've been doing for the emails.
I was just thinking like if you're lazy and don't want to read, but you want to get the actual data out of it, like you could probably just copy and paste the whole dang thing into chat GPT and ask it questions. Probably. We should try that sometime just to see what happens.
So our projections for global growth are around 2.9%, which is down from 2024, where global growth was at 3.3%. Again, coming into 2025, the projection was, I think, 3.1% for global growth. So it's down slightly. So it's not down as substantial as the United States growth is, because they actually are all the other countries that the regime is just like fucking with is they're just making deals with each other.
So like their tariffs or whatever. So they're just going to cut America out. And they will.
Rightfully so in a lot of ways. Yeah. Like seriously, but I didn't know the global economy was in that much of a dire thing.
The Asia thing makes a lot of sense to me. The uncertain U.S. trading policies are causing havoc globally. The risk of a U.S. recession currently sits at 40 to 60%, depending on whatever model you look at.
Believe it or not, this high number is down from 2024. At the end of 2024 coming into 2025, the projections were 80% because they didn't know exactly what the level of tariffs are going to be. Since the overlord has pulled back some of the tariffs a little bit, like if you remember, like on Liberation Day, whatever the hell it was called, it was like 140%, 125%.
Well, that's come back down to like 60% or 80%. They're still ridiculously high. So they're not as certain.
So like the number, like the risk of recession has obviously got that new data and it's declined some too. Well, I would imagine too the crypto situation might actually be putting that on pause as well. Like, so if you go into like the, when you're looking at a recession, the main areas of concern when it comes to recessionary policies are tariffs, consumer sentiment, and inflation.
Like we've discussed this before, the consumer sentiment, I don't put stock into like the actual like report or survey they publish, but it's a glimpse into the eyes of a portion of the populace and the populace is not willing to spend money because they know that it's going to cost more. And most of the people in America know that tariffs actually are a tax on us, not the company or country that sends us stuff, like the overlord keeps spouting. I don't know where he got his economics information from, but like it is fucked.
The whole, well, whenever we put a tariff on Canada, Canada pays the import tax. That's not even remotely how it works. So whatever.
But then if you expand out from 25 right now, the projections for 2026, the U.S. growth is projected to be 1% and global growth is projected to be 2.8%. So the U.S. economy is again projected to be much worse than the global market. So like if we go the rest of 2025, it looks pretty bad, but 2026 looks worse. And that is because we just had like, obviously we had the tariffs, but then we just had the policy, the budget that was passed where like everybody, but the people that need money get like the breaks.
So, oh, look, there's the bugle, the bugle baby. So that is the probably that's why it's number one on my list. The number one thing that's about to happen is the economic slowdown, both domestically and internationally.
Oh, you're doing bullet points now for what the macro trends are? Yeah. Before we get into stocks that are actually applicable? Yes. Yeah.
So that's, I think we should have said that at the beginning of that freaking long monotone. So we're going to go into the actual like boring, dry data, but then we're going to extrapolate that to what you can actually invest in if you listen through this boring, dry data, or you can jump ahead to your call. Yeah.
So the second, oh, big cat. The second bullet point is monetary policy. Like we just brought up about interest rates.
The Fed was once projected to cut rates three to four times in 2025. And the Fed chair even said, what's his name? Powell. He even said like, if there was not tariffs in play, their interest rates would have been cut already, but the tariffs are causing them to not want to cut interest rates.
They have to see what happens to the economy before they do that. So the best case scenario is we get one rate cut in 2025. That's domestically.
Internationally, global monetary easing will continue. The global interest rates range from negative 2% in Japan, but Japan's been like a negative interest rate for like ever, to 4.9% in Indonesia and the Philippines. I expect the global rates to be cut to a range of negative two to 3.5% by the end of 2025, beginning of 2026.
So that top number 4.9 is probably going to get down to the 3.5 area. Negative two should probably stay the same. I think the US rates will remain elevated due to higher inflation.
Like I'm one of the few that's been pounding the table for months now saying this inflation is going to go up. Inflation is going to go up. And people don't agree with that.
And a lot of the talking heads are like, oh, inflation will go down. But I am adamant inflation is going to go up. And the last inflation report that came out in July actually showed that inflation went up 0.3%. Yeah.
All the variables that go into that. I don't know how people aren't making that same conclusion. Crazy.
The part that's scary, and the reason I think inflation is about to become a problem, is because if you go into the latest report, the areas that kept inflation in the 2.5% range, like energy and utilities and shit like that, all went up a lot from, I think it was May to June. They went up a lot. Energy went from a negative 8% up to negative 2%.
So it went up like 6% in a month, which is crazy for a jump like that. Once energy and things of that nature, the things that were holding the inflation number down start going up, inflation is going to go up. If you look at the consumer sentiment, they're saying 4% to 5%.
I could see a case where inflation does go above 5%, again, just with all the data that's come out. So we're about to be back where we were in 2022, I think, or 2023 when inflation was 9%. We won't get that high, but it's about to go up a lot.
Damn. So I think by the end of the year, we'll have a 4% to 4.25% range on the interest rates. If you look at the projections from all the experts, they're saying that we should have about 1% interest rate cuts in 2026, which would take that down to 3% to 3.25%. I could see a point in 2026, if shit goes like it's going to go, that they'll actually raise interest rates.
That's all I'm going to say. I was going to say, I kind of think that- It's plausible that that could happen. So best case scenario, worst case scenario.
So the third one, the third bullet point is inflation. We just talked about inflation. So if you don't know, the Fed target rate for inflation is 2%.
They want inflation to be 2% year over year. The current rates are well above that. The current rate is 2.4% to 2.8%, if you believe the government data, which I don't.
I think the actual inflation is above 3%, probably 3% to 3.25%. And the projected peak, according to the experts, is supposed to be 3% to 3.5% range. I think it's going to be above 4%. And I do see a situation where we could hit 5% depending on the data.
Holy shit. Because if you think about what's going to happen with the tariff policy, we're going to start to have supply chain constraints again, like we did during COVID. And part of the reason that inflation was so high about right after COVID is because the government was printing money to give everybody incentive to stay home.
That was part of it. But the other part was there was supply chain disruptions everywhere. So stuff that costs like $2 was costing like $8 or $9 because you can only get like 10% of that product into America.
So if you take the supply chain constraints, which I see happening, combined with the tariffs, so they're going to be tacking on the tariff on top of this supply chain thing, dude, prices could shoot up 100% on like a lot of items. It's going to be insane. So there's a very real possibility that we're going to go back to the dark ages, again, when it comes to the inflation rating.
I'm not, it's not all doom and gloom. I'm saying there's a possibility that I don't think it's going to do. Like I said, I think 4% is probably where it'll be between four and five.
I think in the worst case situation, it'll peak at five. But it's still like that's double where we are now. Yeah, that's still really bad.
And what all this stuff is contributing to is the real, real, real threat of stagflation, which is a period of high inflation and low economic growth. We already have the low economic growth and they are projecting lower economic growth. We already have what the Fed considers a high inflation, but it's about to go up.
So we could actually enter into a period of stagflation. Stagflation, like I mentioned this before with the podcast, if you remember, like if you were alive during the seventies, that was a big, very bad, bad period of stagflation. And if you studied, well, you can look at it and look at history.
Like what does it mean? Like what happens with stagflation is because inflation is high. Whenever inflation is high, they want to cut interest rates. No way.
When inflation is high, they want to raise interest rates. I'm sorry. Well, they want to raise interest rates to combat like the high inflation.
When economic growth is low, they want to raise interest rates to stimulate the economy. So when they're both going in opposite directions, they can't do both. So they're lowered interest rates to stimulate the economy.
That's what I just said. That's what I just said. When there's slow, slow economic growth, they want to lower the interest rate to stimulate the economy.
Oh, okay. I thought you said raise. No, they want to raise it when inflation's high.
So do you see like the dynamics that are about like with a wide state? There are enough to catch 22, right? Yeah. Like stagflation is like they just can't do anything. So they kind of just have to sit there because if you raise interest rates, you're going to kill economic growth.
And if you lower interest rates, inflation is going to take off. So you really like, you can't fix that. That's why like their number one priority is to completely avoid a situation like stagflation.
And that is a very, very real possibility given that inflation is projected to go way up and growth is just way down. It almost sounds like the AI robotics thing is driving the low growth. Oh, tariffs too.
Tariffs is the other big one. We'll see. I don't know.
But that's like, that's my biggest concern is stagflation. If that happens, we're going to have like 10 years of just sideways, which is perfect whenever you're doing like how we invest. So it's not like detrimental to like our investing strategy because we want to get dividend compound going on.
And so like when it's trading sideways for like eight years, that'd be perfect. You're not going to get like any appreciation in your brokerage account, but you're going to be accumulating a shit ton of shares. So it's a win-lose situation, but like I take it as a win because you're getting more shares.
So if you then you look at what we got here, so we have inflation, monetary policy, stagflation. What we're starting to see, we're just now starting to see it in like all the labor reports. The job growth is slowing and will slow further for the remainder of the year.
Some projections are for only 25,000 jobs added each month for the rest of the year and unemployment reaching 4.8 to 5.0% by the end of the year. Just in the way of context, like in the normal period from July through December, like their average is like 77,000 jobs per month added. Some months obviously have like 200, some have less than that.
But so like on the average, it's 77. So if the projections are right, we're only getting 25,000, that is like a 66% loss in job openings. And then the unemployment is currently 4.1. So to get to 4.8 to 5.0, we take a lot of people getting laid off, but we're starting to see that.
And it's not necessarily, this is where one of the areas where it's not necessarily just a policy that's causing like layoffs. We're starting to see like tech companies transition from employees to AI. So AI is doing like the menial jobs that employees do.
So they're laying off like the Microsoft laid off like 9,000 people, Meta laid off like 6,000 people, because they're seeing that they can actually fill these positions with AI and have the same amount of output, which generated the same amount of profit and they're using less expenses on jobs. So this is the one area where AI could contribute a lot more than like what people are saying. Because like what I've been reading is that people are like, don't fear AI, AI is not the world.
It's not going to steal jobs. We've never said that. I don't think I'm pretty sure we said it's going to take over the menial jobs.
You just have to learn to adapt to be able to program the AI or pack parts that the AI needs or whatever you'd like. So you're going to have to pivot from your current position to something else. But if you don't do that, then you're just going to be like sucking on the government's teeth because you're not going to be able to get a job.
They're going to start binding like that whole thing. I'm starting to hear waves come through with like, they're going to put you to work. Like Trump's doing all sorts of crazy stuff where he's going to start putting you to work, even if you're on like those unemployments and I don't know, disabilities and all that stuff.
So it's up to you if you want to be working anyway. I mean, that might be the easier way to get a job. I don't know.
And then the last bit of data that I was able to find, retail sales are slowing after consumer demand eased after a period of front loading. Remember, like we discussed this was like right after the tariffs came out with the 90 day pause. I said, I could see a lot of people buying all the big ticket items before the tariff take place or enacted, because that's just common sense.
Like why the fuck would you buy like a washing machine for 60% more than if you just bought it now and put it on credit and just pay off your credit card. So that period is over now. And we're starting to see that the retail sales are slowing.
May retail numbers showed a negative 0.9%. So almost a 1% decline. And this number is expected to get much worse for the remainder of 2025. Retail numbers were 2.5% in 2024.
And the experts are projecting it to be 1.2 in 2025. So like half, it's going to go down by half compared to like a normal year. We're just now starting to see the job growth slow.
And we're still just now starting to see the retail numbers slow down. So like the rest of the summer is going to be very interesting whenever the data starts coming in. Because what I'm seeing is people beating their chest because, oh, that the numbers aren't as bad as all the snowflakes said they're going to be, but it's because the numbers aren't fully in yet.
That's just part of the number. So it's going to get worse. So that's the economic data, the economic backdrop that's going to lead to a lot of the macro trends, potential macro trends that we should start following.
I know it sucks because it's dry information up front, but you kind of have to know where the economy's at before you can actually delve into like what trends are going to transpire. The whole point of this is to then project like where you think based on what's happening is going to be a good play from a stock investment standpoint. And that's how you get ahead of the sheeple, you get ahead of the institutions, you get ahead of like a lot of this other stuff.
And that's where you can make those bigger yields and price appreciation along the way. Okay. So because inflation is expected to increase, we should look at inflation protection investments like WIW, LTPZ, or GTIP, which would make sense.
LTPZ yields 7.3% and invest in TIPS. I remember we talked about these years ago. What TIPS are is basically they're like inflation treasuries.
So if inflation's at 2.8%, the treasury is going to pay you 2.8%. So that way your investment's keeping up with the rate of inflation. That's what the TIPS are. LTPZ invest in those.
GTIP yields 7.3% and invest in TIPS as well. Whereas WIW yields 8.5% and invest in inflation protecting investments with a sprinkling of emergent market investments and bonds. We don't have any of these, but the YouTubers that I like help with the portfolio, I put them in the WIW and it's actually done pretty well for the most part.
I got into it at the wrong time, I do believe, but the WIW is up 11% in 2025 and they're only down 5%. I've had them into these things for years. What you're basically doing is you're just collecting the 8% yield, dividend yield that goes into cash that you can dump into other things, but it's protecting the chunk of your money.
She has $8,000 in it, so we just have it on that. I like WIW, but I could see the TIPS thing that LTPZ and GTIP being optimal plays because we have no idea where inflation is going. Inflation goes up, obviously the yields of these two are going to go up as well.
It depends where you think inflation is going to be. Whereas WIW doesn't have as much in treasuries, our TIPS stuff, it doesn't have the inflation protection of the TIPS treasuries. It does have other things, but then it sprinkles in emerging markets and bonds.
WIW is when you think inflation is going to be the 2% to 4% range, whereas these other two, the LTPZ and GTIP was if you think it's going to be like 3.5% to 5.5% range, you probably want to get in those because you're going to get an additional yield on your investment because we all need that. They're pretty sick. These are pretty good places.
If we didn't have THTA or bullet shares, this would be a good place to keep your dry powder. That's the first macro trend dealing with inflation. The second macro trend is that technology will continue to carry the markets.
If you haven't been following the markets, you've just been whatever. The reason the markets are up as much as they are is because tech stocks. It's been like that since 2022 probably.
If you look at the S&P, 47% of the S&P is the best tech stocks. I expect that to continue basically because of AI and robotics. We haven't even gotten into robotics yet.
I'm a huge believer that that's the next area that's just going to slam off is robotics. Just this week, I literally just dumped a few thousand dollars in her mother's portfolio into a tech stock called CGNX, which basically makes eyes for robots. I'm a huge proponent of robotics.
I think Robotics is going to be like the, what the AI did the last couple of years where you made like, like 200, 300, 500% like returns. I think robotics is going to be doing that in the future because what the, just the numbers like it right now, it's only like a $1 trillion market cap for all the robotics stocks together. And they're, they're projecting that to be like 50 trillion in like 10 years, whatever.
So because of that, you want exposure to both AI and robotics, which AIPI has, and that yields 38%. I love the rec shares, like love, love, love them. AIO is only has a 7.35% yield and it's overvalued as a closed news fund.
So you probably want to avoid that one. FEPI, which is another one with exposure to tech, which is another rec share rate. It yields 26.8%. Again, love both of those.
I've had those for a while. We just initiated a position in QQQI a couple of weeks ago. It yields 14.09%. That's another option for the tech area.
QQQT yields 17.3%. Then you could just do the, the single, single stock ETFs like NVDY yields 92%. NVDW yields 14.4%. GPTY yields 14.2%. That one is literally just dealing with chat GPT. PLTW yields 58.84%. And a new, a new ETF that came out that I just can't find any information on the yield is CAJT chat.
But any of these, if you can find like the proper valuation, like AIPI and FEPI, they're not terribly with the valuation, but any of these, you'll get, you'll make bank and they have really good yields and you can just use the cash to dump it. Like, so what I would like, if I would say, for example, NVDY, we just paid that off. So we're getting a 92% yield on that.
So I'm taking NVDY, the proceeds from that, and then I'm just dumping it into NVDW, which yields 14.4%. I actually like what they have going on better, but then I'm taking the money from AIPI and FEPI, and I'm dumping it into QQQI to get to a point where I like, and then I'm going to dump it probably into QQQT. So what you do is you literally, I'm just talking, I'm just going to stack up all the tech stocks and I'm just going to use free money to do it because like for the most part, most of these are paid off. So that's an option.
But if you had to start anywhere, I'd start with NVDY because that's the one I know and I trust. And you can pay off a hundred percent yield, you can pay it off within a year. And then it's just free capital at that point that you could deploy into other stuff.
Second one would be AIPI. And the video with the good news, that one's going to just do some cool stuff. The reason I say AIPI is because just with our data, AIPI has a better dividend payout every month and it actually has a better volatility thing than FEPI.
So I would do NVDY and AIPI from this list. That's how I, if I was just starting, that's what I would do. So you have a WIW in the first one, unless you think that it's going to, inflation is going to go up too high, then you get one of the other two.
But for the tech ones, AIPI and NVDY is where I would start. And that is the second macro trend. Okay.
The third macro trend would be to start consider emerging markets. Countries like India and Vietnam and the Asian Pacific region present strong growth potential due to rapid industrialization and a rising middle class. Whereas like the European countries, they're not really as, there's not really a lot of potential there for price appreciation.
The closing is like, for my emerging markets, I always recommend closing the funds. I don't invest directly in companies. I just get like a basket of them.
DVYE has a 10.86% yield. IHD has an 11.24% yield. AEF has an 8.36% yield and EDF has a 14.04% yield.
I like IHD a lot, like so much so that I recommended that to the Van Life people that I'm helping with their portfolio. IED is up 11, it's up 25% so far this year, and she's up 13% total on that one. I really like that one.
The reason I like it is because it's so, the price is so low. July 1st, it was at 594 shares. If you dump a couple thousand of this, you get like bucco shares and then it has that high yield.
So then you're just compounding ridiculous shares. When she started this, she had 578 shares and she's currently at 1,463 shares. So they compound quickly.
So I really like IHD. And if you don't like IHD, if you don't like the Indian part or that's from the Indian country, if you don't like that, then you just invest in EDF. It's a conglomerate of all the emerging market countries and that's a pretty good one.
So that's the third one. Think about emerging markets. Fourth macro trend is, I mean, we've been beating on this for two years, blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, blockchain.
AKA crypto? No, blockchain is completely different than crypto. They're two different things. Interesting.
You're separating them out. Do explain. Well, first of all, don't be a dinosaur.
Don't be a T-Rex. The blockchain, whether you like it or not, is here and it's here to stay. And it's being implemented like quickly, like day to day, like it's just like the implementation is just crazy.
So you might as well make money from it, no matter how you feel about it. Blockchain is different than crypto. Blockchain is like the actual infrastructure, whereas crypto is like the different programs.
So like think cell towers versus the actual like service generators, right? Yeah. Comparable to that. But without the blockchain, crypto doesn't exist.
Crypto wouldn't even be a thing without blockchain. Exactly. It's the backbone of crypto.
I found a few different things. BKCH only yields 7%. So BITS yields 27%.
So that's pretty good. DAPP yields 3.5%. Again, BLOK yields 4.5%. Oh, never mind. BLOX is one that I just researched for next week's podcast.
And it is banger. It yields like 20 to 23%. Like I don't have an exact number.
It's only been paying dividends for a couple of weeks. Are we getting into it? Well, BLOX. Okay, hold on.
Let me find it in my notes. I think I'd have all this shit prepared. Are we getting into it? It invests in companies such as Coinbase, Robinhood, MicroStrategy.
Are we going to get into it? At some point. As well as Bitcoin and Ethereum. So like this is like the best of both worlds.
Like this is where you combine like the companies that dabble in blockchain and you also get ETFs that dabble in Bitcoin and Ethereum. So BLOX is sick and it pays a weekly dividend. And it's done pretty well.
Since June, it's up 19%. So it's doing pretty good. But I like that one a lot.
Like a lot, a lot. Yeah, that one has my tip of my fancy. That's my favorite one.
And then BITS. But I understand BITS has a higher yield. But what BLOX encompasses is so much superior to what BITS encompasses.
So BLOX is where you go with the blockchain. Crypto, on the other hand, is like the different programs, like Ethereum, like Bitcoin, Cardano. The individual programs.
So there's like for the rest of 2025 going into probably half the first half of 2026, maybe beyond because it's being so like widely implemented that crypto is just going to just explode. It has exploded. If you've got into crypto because we talked about it last year, you're sitting on some nice piles of cash.
But then when it comes to crypto, there's not a lot of places to actually trade though, like stocks or ETFs. There is BITO, which we did really well in, but BITO literally just focuses on Bitcoin. It has a yield of 55%.
I like CEPI because it's all the crypto companies, again, like Robinhood and Coinbase and things of that nature. It's like the difference between blocks, like the companies that BLOX invests in are like the blockchain companies. There's going to be some carryover between blockchain and crypto because that's just the nature of the beast.
So you're going to see a lot of similar companies in BLOX as you're going to see in CEPI. CEPI is another REC shares. That means they actually hold the shares of the company and they just write cover calls on it that yields 42%.
I like that one a lot. YBTC, which is a weekly payer that yields 44%, it's okay. We're in it currently.
We're doing all right in it. I'd rather be in CEPI, but CEPI costs so much compared to where it should be. We're also in LFGY, which is a lot like CEPI, but it's a weekly payer and it yields 32%.
I really like LFGY. I like it so much that I actually put like 5,000 in her mom's retirement account in LFGY. That's the more conservative portfolio, so that says something.
It pays weekly and you get like 48 cents a week for every share you buy. It's pretty sick. It's just consistent.
So you can say LFGY, it's not up at all this year. We're up 22% now, whereas YBTC is up 13% this year and we're up 14%. Just LFGY, I think from an Inco perspective, you're not getting as much back.
That's true, but I just like LFGY. I just like what they have. And what was the last one? BITX.
That's a Bitcoin, two times the leverage. So what they do is they invest in Bitcoin ETFs at double the leverage. So if you truly believe in Bitcoin, you can get an 11% yield plus price appreciation if you invest in BITX.
I'm not a fan of anything that's heavily leveraged because you have more risk than I'm willing to take on. And I'm a pretty risky dude. So I don't like things that are two or three times leveraged because of that.
You can lose your ass in a two-day period. So everything that you've built up for a month can just disappear in two days. It's crazy.
Of these, it would be LFGY is what I would invest in for the crypto realm. And what we do invest in? Yeah. Utilities are going to continue having a strong year.
They're probably going to continue having a strong decade because if you've known anything about the power grid, we are so low when it comes to electric power that there's some areas that have rolling blackouts because there's much talk about electric being drawn. So utility companies are going to basically go a shit ton in debt because they're going to be building a new infrastructure to build new electric centers so they can power everything. So that's the only area where it's like, well, we have to watch their debt when you look at the companies.
DNP is a closing fund that yields 8% that holds a lot of utility companies. I like that. TYG is another one.
It's a closing fund that yields 10.5% that holds a basket of utility companies. And this is one of the few areas where I go stock specific because ES, POR, and BKH, they're all dividend kings or aristocrats or achievers. I forget.
Those high categories. They have so many years of dividend increase. ES yields 4.5%. And if you remember, it's one of my stocks.
I think it's so undervalued. It's probably 40% undervalued and it is up a lot in this year and it's still 40% undervalued. What is it up? ES is up 14% this year and it's still probably 40% undervalued.
Portland, POR yields 5%. We don't hold that one. I wish we did, but we don't.
And BKH yields 4.7%. And that one is actually down 2% this year. So it's a perfect time to buy it. Ooh, nice.
Yeah. We're definitely a huge fan of that one. And again, because these aristocrats, kings, whatever the heck they are, those low yields don't really matter because they're growers, they're dividend growers.
Meaning if you get into them low, that yield is going to go up for your original shares year over year. They do. When you get into dividend aristocrats and kings and achievers, you hold them.
So those are 10, 15, 20-year holds. And if you think about it, if they're raising the dividend 3% to 5% a year, after 10 years, you're getting a 30% to 50% increase. After 20 years, it's 60% to 100%.
So you just hold these forever. They're sick. If I could go back in time when I was young, I'd be like, mommy, daddy, put money into BKH.
They wouldn't have, but that's where I would go. They had no money to give. I don't know.
Whatever. Not my problem. I was a kid.
The next macro trend is volatilities here for who knows how long. Shit's going to be crazy. You're going to have days when the market's 5%.
You're going to have days when the market's down 3%. It's just how it's going to be. Because of all the economic factors, because we have the overlord in office and he just says the craziest shit and just takes the markets.
Last week, he said, I'm going to fire the federal reserve chairman. And the markets went down 3% because that's crazy. It's an independent financial institution.
You don't insert politics into that. When he did that, the market went down. But then the next day he said, oh, I was just joking.
I'm not going to fire him. The market was up like 4%. That's just how it's going to be.
When the horse is in the hospital, if you've watched John Mulaney, when the horse is in the hospital, it's basically like a parody about Trump. We're well past the hippo in the elevator. There's a horse in the hospital.
It's very funny. If you haven't seen it, just Google John Mulaney horse in the hospital. It's fucking hilarious.
It's a perfect play on Trump. As long as he's in office, the markets are going to be volatile. Then that sucks because your portfolio balance is going to be all over the fucking place.
When it's high volatility, if you can't master your psychological biases, you have to just avoid looking at your portfolio. But volatile markets are really good for getting in during dips. If you want to get into some of these, wait for one of those stupid announcements to pull back and you can get stuff at a big discount.
Then if you get your drip or dividend, you can try to time those because they're inevitable. The news just keeps up and down, up and down, up and down. That's what I have.
My next point is volatility is awesome because you can bargain hunt for dividend growth stocks like Pepsi, 4.2% yield. UPS, 6.4% yield. Clorox, 3.8% yield.
Target, 4.4% yield. Chevron, 4.4% yield. ExxonMobil, 3.5% yield.
Enterprise, is that what they are? I forget. EPD, 6.8%. These are all stocks that have more than 20 or 30 years of dividend growth. If you can get them at a deal because the market's volatile and people are panicking.
Yeah. All of those were really high. Normally those are in the 3% yield range.
We're talking four, six, four, four, almost three and a half, 6.8%. That's crazy. If you remember, we just talked about the utility stocks. If you hold them for 10 to 20 years, you're getting a lot of dividend growth.
These are the exact same things. That's why every time there's crazy chaos happens and the market drops 10%, I'm like, what's on sale? Then I just put it in her mom's retirement account. Is the market dropping? What's on sale? Yeah.
That's that one, the volatility. The next one is pertaining to interest rates and policy. REITs, BDCs, and oil are going to struggle the remainder of 2025 and probably all of 2026, maybe, but even best case scenario, half of 2026.
You can actually start investing contrarian and pick up shares of your favorite investments in the BDC, REIT, and oil realm. Examples like ABR, almost 11% yield. IIPR is a 13.5% yield.
TRMD is a 22% yield. Hercules Capital is a 10% yield. Civi oil stock is 9.4% yield.
Trinity Capital is a 14.2% yield. You literally can just start dumping a little bit of cash into whatever your favorite BDC or your favorite REIT is and just start accumulating shares because they're probably going to be trading sideways for the most part, but it's going to be a sideways down-ish thing until when they do the one rate cut this year, if they do that, then it'll peak up a little bit. That rate cut comes in September.
If you want to get into any of the ones that are interest rate sensitive, you probably would want to get in in August before the Fed meeting if they cut the rate in September. If they don't cut it in September, then they'll have another meeting in October. You just follow the Fed meeting schedule.
At some point, they're going to make an interest rate cut, I believe, in 2025. You would pick up whatever stock you want because they're going to go up a little bit because of the interest rate cut. That's just because they're interest rate sensitive.
The next one is something that I have never talked about, actually. Until the government gets the debt deficit under control, gold, silver, and Bitcoin will always have a place in most portfolios. If you're not familiar, the debt currently is at $37 trillion and it's projected to go up to $40 trillion in the next two years, which is fucking ludicrous because it's almost 100% of our GDP.
That's insane. It might even be over 100% of our GDP. I don't actually like to hold physical gold or silver or Bitcoin for that matter, but I just do because we found ITRUST and ITRUST holds it for you, so that's whatever it is.
I'm just starting to see ads for ITRUST. I find that funny because we got in that like, what, 2022? Yeah. Just because I was like, oh, I have this TSP government retirement.
I don't want to leave it in there with those really limited funds. I was just like, eh, because you can't keep contributing to it. I was like, all right, I'm going to roll this out somewhere.
Crypto was at its highest worst time to get in, so it was a huge mistake from that perspective. But I was like, I wonder if there's any IRAs that are crypto. I just Googled it and found it and I was like, rolling full 100K over.
It's hilarious. Yeah, but you've done well. Your mom's done really well.
Yeah. We did the same thing with my mom. Took a big chunk of her retirement and moved it over.
Like 113,000. She's over 200,000, so I'd say it's doubled. Her ITRUST is doubled, just holding Bitcoin and a couple of stable coins.
But I don't like the whole physical gold symbol, so this is when I use ETFs, like IGLD, which yields 16% around there. GLDY, which is like 40%. I'll get to that one in a second.
GDXY, which is 50%. SLVO, which is 22%. Or GLDI, which is 15%.
All these ETFs, what they do, they don't hold actual gold, but they invest in companies that hold gold. So you're getting exposure to gold or silver, but without actually having to hold it. If you go into the ETFs that hold the physical gold and silver, their yields are non-existent if they even have a dividend yield.
So you kind of have to have this tertiary type thing where you get like a covered call on an ETF that they hold. But GLDY is my favorite. I literally just covered that one when I was doing the notes for next week as well.
Where is it? Where are you? GLDY, it invests in the GLD, which is the spider gold shares. So spider gold actually holds gold and they write options on, they write a covered calls on the GLD and it's yielding about 40% and it pays a weekly dividend. And it's only up 1% since it came out in June 20th.
So now would be a good time to actually get into that one if you want exposure to gold because you're getting a weekly income from an ETF that's holding, holding an ETF that holds gold. That's the way to do it, in my opinion. But if you like to hold gold and silver, then you can hold gold and silver, but there's always going to be a place for those types of things in your portfolio until the debt gets under control, which it won't in my lifetime.
So like 5%. And the last macro trend, the one that shocked the shit out of me is bonds, which I thought were overvalued at the end of 2024. They've actually made their way back into the buy range.
Really? Because we sold PDI, YYY and DSU, didn't we? We sold PDI and DSU and YYY in the van life portfolio and we sold PDI. Do you remember what their gains were? It was 40, 50%. It was crazy amounts.
They're crazy. So they were overvalued and we were like, nope, we're cutting our freaking, locking our gains in. And now they're back undervalued.
We did say we'd get back in when this happened. They're back in the buy range. They're not undervalued yet.
So that's just going to take another month or two. But again, on the radar, they're coming back on the radar. So that's cool.
They're on the radar. Like PDI, I love 14% yield. YYY is a 12% yield that's done really well.
Her mom's still in YYY. I don't know why I didn't sell it, but I'm glad I didn't. It's up 8% in 2025 and she's up 40% in that one.
That must have been another one of your Oracle gut instincts by accident. You seem to do those quite frequently. But if you don't want to do the closing and fund, DSU, I forgot, yields 11%.
So in order, it would be PDI, YYY, DSU. That would be the order to look at these. But if you want to actually just hold bonds, you have to do that.
Or if you have to go back and visit the bond podcast we had, because it's crazy shit. You actually have to go in and do a bunch of stuff. If there's enough interest, I can walk you through how to do bonds and Schwab at some point.
It's an extensive process. That's why I think closing the funds are probably easiest for most people. But she's her mama.
We still have her mama in Altria. Altria bond, Mylon bond, and the Nine Energy Services bond, and they're doing okay-ish. The Nine Energy one's not doing too hot.
She's down 20% in that one, but it has a 10% yield and that'll turn around at some point. But Altria, she's up 36% in Milan. She's up 21%.
We're just holding those and just- Those are without the coupons, right? No, they have coupons. No, but I'm saying those percents, you said they're up. Does that include the coupons or no? Yeah.
The way you have to calculate this is you actually have to- When you buy your bonds, it'll give you a cost basis price. And then you have to look at where it currently is at, and then you'd multiply that times how many bonds you have, and then you add in your interest that you've earned. It's a complicated process, but bonds are back on the radar.
And I do think because interest rates are going to be held pretty elevated that they're continuing to be in the buy range, and they may actually become undervalued at some point, and they're definitely in the buy range. So that's one to just keep those on your radar. Pretty much every ticker that we went over today, you should put on your watch list, and then rank which ones you want to get into.
Whether you want to get into something safe, that's a dividend aristocrat, achiever, whatever. Or if you want to get into something that pays money, weekly dividends, or if you want something that is specific to crypto or blockchain, so you take the 20-some tickers we gave, and then you just put them in rank order. Like, well, this is probably the one that I want to get into the most, just based on the macro trends.
And I'll put a link to the actual- To what I recommend. ... that we talked about in the episode in the show notes, so you don't have to remember. That is that.
Those are the macro trends for the rest of the year. God, that was a lot of shit. It was a lot of shit, but- Next week is going to be a treat, because one of the areas we get the most views and most interaction are the risky dividend payers.
And we just did a podcast- On the 22? 6-22, so literally just a month ago, on about weekly dividend payers. Well, at the time we did that podcast, there were 23. There are now 42, so there's 19 new ones that came out in the last month.
And I go into a dive next week on the 19, and see which ones are good, which ones aren't. Yeah, that's crazy that they just freaking popped up that many overnight, or in a short period. It sucks.
Do you know how long it takes to research that shit? They need to stop doing that. I have a feeling that's going to keep continuing, so we're going to have to figure out an easier way to analyze them. Maybe that's a GPT project.
Maybe so. That's next week. I'm soon going to be back in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it. At some point in the next couple of weeks, I'll be back in Pennsylvania. My family was here for like two and a half weeks, and it was super annoying.
I about left because it was so loud and obnoxious. But they all left now, so it's just me again. So you're not going to want to come home.
I was just talking to Carm before we started recording the podcast, and there was a cow in the yard. Just a cow just chilling in the yard. Oh, my God.
All the animals came out. Tim's been feeding the rabbits carrots, and then they put hummingbird feeders on. He's got like 40 hummingbirds out there chilling in the middle of nowhere.
There's rabbits, and there's hummingbirds, and there's a snake that I think eats the rabbits, so that's kind of counterproductive. And then there's obviously cows, and there are elk that come through every night that you can watch, but I can't really record them. And there are... There have to be deer, because there's like things creeping in the yard.
Well, right down the valley, like right behind the house, there's coyotes or wolves. I don't know which one they are. They're out every night howling.
Dude, there's so much wildlife, and they all just visit me because I'm awesome, and my family's loud and obnoxious. Hilarious. So I hope you guys have a good week.
See you next week for Weekly Dividend Payers. Another weekly. Very nice.