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the stock market is hitting record highs job numbers are good inflation is falling and the Federal Reserve might be
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cutting interest rates also um consumer happiness is rising according to all those consumer happiness um surveys
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they're moving it's ticking upward looks like the US economy might be able to avoid a recession according to a recent
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survey of Economist not even a soft Landing um what do you what do you think we what's going on Treasury secretary
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Janet Yellen was touting soft Landing weeks ago and said My Hope Is it will continue I guess we're continuing to
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soft land if at all um what is your take on all the good news it what strikes me is more so than
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all the good news which is exceptional is the consumer dissonance or the citizen dissonance and that is Americans
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have a unique ability to credit their character and their grit for the raise they're getting and then blame the
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government for inflation and so even though the even though that uh wages are rising fasted than inflation now there's
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real wage increases they still blame the government it's just this this Quant it
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must be driving it's ticking up it's ticking up that that Michigan survey just suddenly went the other direction I
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hope so yeah yeah but it's just very strange the White House doesn't get any credit for it yeah it's starting and I I
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hope you're right but and you know this goes to my win we literally have now granted it's not distributed equally we
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have no one could have predicted if someone had said America is going to pull off this economy they're going to
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figure out a way to have the lowest inflation in the G7 by the way they're massively increase for all the ship
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posting and all the far right lights to say drill baby drill we're producing more energy than ever we're the largest
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energy producer in the worlded and if you look at if you look at our competitive advantage against China if
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China decides to get into a hot war with anyone yeah and they start S and at any
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number of Choke points their energy Supply gets gets um yeah down Russia they're going to have to in they would
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they would be in such a world of hurt and we're energy independent we we we're not only energy independent we produce
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more energy than we consume which is remarkable given what gluttons we are yeah so it's you know it's is striking
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that consumers don't feel better it's getting it's getting better it's ticking up it's absolutely ticking up I think
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people still feel they're paying too much for food or the kind of the daily but although I went and got gas and I
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was like oh this is low this is like an I mean I I guess I'm one of those people
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who doesn't think about it that much compared to people who have a really tighter budget but I was like wow this
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is not expensive for the first time in a while and I paid attention to like the four and five gas um employers added
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26,000 jobs in December which is a larger than the expected number weekly jobless claims reported were the lowest
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since September of 2022 uh there's a lot of layoffs in a number of sectors but I
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think that's people cleaning up like all the stuff in Tech looks like it's around
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assistant which AI they're getting ready for AI and getting rid of stuff they don't need anymore um so that seems to
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be to be clean up right of where things are going or or getting ready for something else um so if you were if
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someone uh two things if if you were looking to invest right now what advice would you give them and then I want to
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ask you a quick question about the housing market where would I invest yeah look my my feeling is it's dangerous to
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listen to people like me and Talking Heads on podcasts uh make stock recommendations and I like it because
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it's fun and I tell young people take a third of your money and put it in stock because a you'll learn you learn about
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the markets and also it's kind of fun and you can feel good when it goes up and beat yourself up a little bit when
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it goes down but for the most part what you want to do if this Market has taught
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us anything don't try and pick the needle and the Hast stack pick the whole Hast stack and buy the whole Market
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because H stack approach go ahead it's true unless unless you were a genius and maybe you weren you didn't have to be a
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genius but people talk about their wins and they don't talk about their losses seven stocks were responsible for 70% of
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the gain last year and you think you're smart enough to pick the seven of the 500 M so instead just buy the entire 500
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and what do you know what were you up in the teens last year if you do that if you compound going into your Prime
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income earning years what the market has done since 2008 at 11% that means every
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seven every seven years you're doubling your money and just from an emotional and mental well-being this is what you
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want to do you want to focus all of your mental physical and emotional energy on
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your day job and you want to turn your investing over to an outstanding professional that is really good at what
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they do but at the same time is really inexpensive and that's called an index and an ETF fund so if you could get
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someone you're not good at building your own home what if you could find someone
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to build your home that was outstanding a building homes and was really cheap that's called an index or an ETF fund
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don't buy a stock buy the market and the temptation to believe that you're smarter than everybody and all of these
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the financial industrial complex which will teach teach you that this old looking guy or these all these Quan
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people in phds have some sort of special Insight or they're investing in ESG whatever it might be whatever whatever
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The Branding is they are ripping you off yeah they are ripping you off so anyways
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my right recommendation on where to invest is just start investing in investment index or ETF funds spy S&P um
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the economy uh the housing market is still kind of all over the place because of the the interest rate and the 30-year
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interest rate is it 6.6% higher than before the pandemic obviously how home prices are higher but that's because I'm
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just talking to a friend of mine who's a very big realtor in DC and she was saying there just isn't stock people
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it's in the middle area she goes in the top area and the lesser the the cheaper area it's doing okay um but it's there's
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no stock to sell she said she didn't think people were as fixated on rates as they were they don't want to move
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because of that you know and and that's one of the issues is is is not having enough in the market to to to move it
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around and she was thinking it was going to jump in the spring she felt like people were just like ah I feel I'm I'm
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tired of waiting kind of thing or to move or to buy um but that's one area that's been sort of a lagger yeah one of
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my predictions from my 2024 deck is uh that housing is going to Boom not price Ian what happened last year was sort of
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suspended that you had to suspend the suspend the natural order and yet housing prices went up you never see
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that because what we unintentionally did was created these unex of you know unexploded devices inside a home called
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a mortgage at 2 and a half% where no one wanted to leave that life is aggregating
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at the dam what I mean by that death divorce disability people having kids people needing to move for a job
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whatever it might be all of that demand is building and the moment I think interest rates get kind of below
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sixish uh the moment that people start dying and more housing stock comes available the moment that some of the
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supply that's being constructed comes on the line I think I think in Q4 you had the lowest transaction in like decades
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that's what she was saying yeah she said it's right in the middle she said it's not at the high it's not at the low you
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know what I mean like the apartments and things like that but go ahead I I I think you're going to see back half of
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this year just a ton of people I don't want to say throw in the towel but go okay interest rates are below uh you
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know maybe I can pick up an a mortgage with a five handle on it we've been talking about moving home we just had
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our third kid oh did you hear the house down the street Mrs Robinson just died there's a house I just think that all of
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that life doesn't stop marching on yeah and when you think about housing the biggest component in housing are life
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events and those have not stopped the last here they're just building up so I think I think the finger out of the
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prices are are higher are higher yeah but you're seeing wages go uph um you're seeing interest rates come down and life
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continues to march on I think we're going to see an boom in sales volume it'll be interesting to see if the
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economy helps Biden I think people it may be perfect timing for him I'll tell you that we'll see we'll
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see