You know, if you're gonna grow a long beard at this point, you know,.

It's taking a while.

It not only is taking a while, but you're picking the wrong times, brother.

Why?

Just culturally, man, you gotta have to.

Pre.

Pre.

Pre war, I have been persecuted for having this beard.

Like, this beard is not without its pain.

Pre.

So many jokes, so many skews.

We good?

We are.

We live.

We live, baby.

Good.

All right, let's go.

Welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.

This is the higher standard sitting in front of me in no merch.

Shame on you, sir Christopher Nahibi.

I'm equally as surprised as you that I'm not wearing merch, because that's 95 of my wardrobe.

Right.

You got fancy today.

If I'm being honest with you, it's because none of that stuff was clean.

No, it's because you forgot that you had a date with me tonight.

That's what happened.

That.

That is also accurate.

I. I was at home eating kung pao chicken.

Heavy on the garlic, by the way.

Okay, Full disclosure.

And I got home and I'm like, oh, God, 11 hours today.

And then you guys sent the text messages.

I'm like, why?

Why would.

Why are they gonna be.

This is a joke.

No, you send a calendar invite.

I know it's on your calendar.

Watch.

And I'm like, what are they?

I'm like, oh, so.

So, yeah, that's the real deal.

Yeah.

Sitting across from me, my partner in Time, who is equally unprepared for the episode and that he's not wearing a quarter zip.

There you go.

I did it for you.

See?

Yeah.

One of us had to wear the merch.

I had to.

The one of the only.

Say, you know, more, everybody.

Thank you.

My man.

Sitting behind the desk in the production suite, Slim fighting Fijian Rajeel.

What's up, my guy?

How you doing?

Hello.

Good, good.

How are y' all doing?

Hi.

Definitely good.

Looking ultra slim today.

Thanks.

This is black.

I apologize to everybody in advance.

There's a new mouse back there.

It's the Logitech MX Master 4.

And Jill is all about it right now.

He's all about it.

He said he.

It's.

He has so much energy because you know what he did?

He went to join Fridays.com, got himself on the higher package.

That's our code is higher.

You can get yourself all the good stuff.

Get yourself more energy.

Looking good, feeling good, all the good stuff.

I feel like you're getting better at that.

Yeah, yeah.

Plug in the show, I do it literally four times a week.

Yeah, I'm pretty juiced with it.

Well, I was watching the headlines all day today, so before we get into the show, I think it's probably good to give context at all times.

I usually have four news channels going on one screen, and then usually Bloomberg, which has.

If you haven't seen Bloomberg television, they have a bunch of graphs and charts going on the right side and then like a kind of a smaller portion that's actually show.

And then it's mostly just data.

And on the screens, I usually have cnbc, cnn, either Fox or NBC local, just, you know, I kind of mix it up just to see what's going on and usually to challenge the narrative and perspective.

And then I also have data coming in from places like the St. Louis Fed and all these places that we're aggregating data from for our AI tools and for our show.

And even though today wasn't what I thought was show day, there was a litany of things that happened just yesterday and today that kind of mandate, this being the most opportune time to have a conversation.

Absolutely.

Look, we would be lying if we didn't say that one man in this country has the power to create $3 trillion in market value with one tweet.

I know it's going to sound political.

There's going to be people like.

Who are.

Yeah.

People are like, no, he's the devil.

And I'm not taking an opinion one way or other.

I'm just saying this geopolitical conflict we, like we had predicted was going to cause volatile markets.

I think we were pretty clear about that.

Right.

And I'm trying not to be negative about it, but at the same time, some days you see this positive swing and you're like, I don't understand if.

And correct me if I'm wrong, if I was, let's just say, managing a hedge fund that had hundreds of millions of dollars, and we were walking into a time that we're currently in right now, and it's so volatile where a tweet can change everything.

Yeah.

I don't know if I'd be willing to shell out $500 million.

For.

What's going to happen in the future.

Well, there was also some really interesting bets that were placed on poly markets and Kalshi betting on things that benefited announcement.

Literally, like within hours before the announcement was made.

Within 15 minutes, sir.

Yeah, 15 minutes.

Not.

No, not hours.

15 Minutes.

A billion dollars was made.

You know, I got to be honest.

Let's Just say I work and.

Wait, hold on.

And what is the SEC saying?

There's no room to investigate here, mind you.

That bet four times the amount that anybody else was making bets.

Look at.

If I were in, let's just say, hypothetically, the White House.

Hypothetical.

It could be a black house, could be a blue house, but I'm in a white house.

Okay, I see what you're doing.

Okay.

And somebody who cohabitated in said house with me happened to stumble upon some information which strategically was going to be used to make changes to the market.

And this guy.

Or girl.

Or girl.

Yeah.

Comes out and says that he or she is going to make a really huge announcement.

Huge.

Huge.

Huge.

Yeah.

I can't do it anyway.

And I had that information sitting in my.

My back pocket, literally burning a hole.

Now I know that this person knows they're going to move the market.

This person also has access to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Is this what we're.

Is this what we're doing?

I'm just saying, like, you know, let's call.

Let's call a spade a spade.

Okay.

Please do.

What's the spade?

No, there's.

This is.

This is blatant insider trading.

And.

And bud.

And.

But what if you.

If you see the interview with Kalshee and poly markets, like, CEOs on these topics.

No, I think it was polymarket CEO.

I'm them.

I'm hiding from this.

Where poly market CEO came out and they're like, you know, don't you.

Aren't you concerned about the insider trading?

And he goes, no, no.

And then he goes, why?

And he goes, isn't that a great predictor of the market?

I mean, insiders are going to know.

People are going to start moving the markets, and they bet.

Like, don't you want to see insider trading?

And I was like, you dirty son of a.

He's not wrong, but he's not right.

But then.

But that.

Yeah, that also means you got to stay plugged in.

I think that's the way society's heading, though.

Like, you just got to be plugged.

You either got to be plugged in.

If you're going to do the daily trade thing, you got to be so plugged in everything.

Everything in life, if you're not plugged in, the rug pull happens.

I'm not just talking about crypto.

I'm talking about, like, everything.

Yeah.

You know, if you're okay, let's just.

If you're saying, hey, Chris, I'm in project management right now, I love what I do.

I'm really good at it.

I use some programs, here's some software, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If you're not learning AI, you're not plugged in, you're probably going to get the rug pull.

Yeah.

You know, I'm just.

I'm just being honest with you.

Right.

You got people literally saying to executives, Jamie Dimon does this.

He has his executive meetings in the morning.

And when he has executive meetings and everybody gets around the round table, he says, how are you leveraging AI to everybody in the table?

And they have to tell him how they're using it to get better.

If that's his expectation of them, what does that tell you about where their jobs are relying on right now?

Right.

I mean, it's meaningful.

Yeah.

There's no hiding the fact that this tool should be making you more efficient.

Yeah.

Right.

And by becoming more efficient, you should be able to utilize your time.

It's not like you're more efficient now.

You have free time.

Go enjoy your free time.

No, no, no.

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

That's, that's, that's the.

Yeah, that's dangerous.

Now it's like, no, no, now you're more efficient.

You have more free time.

Now you should be doing more.

What are you doing more with that extra free time?

And that.

This I have found myself.

I don't have anybody sitting over my shoulder saying, are you more efficient?

Let me count your work product.

Let's go, let's go, let's go.

But at the same time, there is an addictive component here that nobody's.

Nobody's talking about.

And it's wild.

So you know how on your phone, like, there's the infinite scroll loop, right?

Where are you scrolling?

Doom scroll.

You get on the social media and they found the best way to keep people engaged in the app is to trigger the same dopamine response as gambling.

Right?

And that dopamine response is you get a hit of something that brings you some type of response, and it's biological.

It's not.

It's chemical.

It's real.

Right.

The infinite scroll loop stops the hesitation for you to go, what am I doing?

And you put the phone down because you just keep going, right?

So that infinite loop and the shorter duration of attention and all these things, it's gambling.

It's gamified systems.

They actually hired people at a lot of these social media companies to help them gamify the apps to keep you in them longer.

It's the same concepts to keep you in casinos when it's dark outside.

So at our house, we're trying to be very active with this and making sure like okay, after, after dinner time, there's no scrolling whatsoever.

Because we, you know, we've, we've both admitted to each other that sometimes you get caught doom scrolling and what you guys calling it fubbing when you're both doom scrolling.

Not right where it's like you're look, you're just looking and openly admitting.

I just got to find that one, that, that one more that hits home and then I'll be good.

And it's like, see not.

This is terrible.

I do so much like social engagement stuff throughout the day that when it comes time to night, all I want to do is read.

Yeah.

Like I'll read on my phone, I'll go through the app, the Apple like news app, and I'll read that.

Yeah.

But to my main point, the what I found with AI is that it's got a similar dopamine like response.

Because here's the way it starts off, right?

Let's you say, okay, you know what?

I've been using these LLMs, chat, GPT anthropics, you know, and I've been using them generically to help me out with like writing stuff or to cross reference stuff or even almost like a search engine.

I think most people use them as search engines, right?

Yeah.

Then you go, okay, you know what, I'm gonna step up and I'm gonna learn to code or I'm gonna play with coding or I'm gonna, I'm gonna use to build a website or something like that.

Right.

And then you struggle for like the first day or so.

You have some wins, you have some losses, you struggle, but those wins keep it going.

And then the light bulb goes on for most people within 24 hours.

Oh my God, I can make all the stuff in my head like, the sky's the limit.

Yeah.

And then you wind up in front of a screen or two just vibe coding because now you don't even know all the technical terms and nonsense.

You should be able to tell this interface, right?

I want this to look like this.

Yes.

And then there you go.

The image that I get in my head is like Neo in the Matrix.

For the first time understanding that, wait, I could just download and learn.

What is it?

Kung fu or Taekwondo or what was it?

Yeah, you know, it's just like, yeah, give me more, I want more, I want to learn more.

Right.

It's like every now everybody has the ability to just ask a Question.

And start building and learning and growing and into something that you want to learn more about very easily, right?

Very easily.

Not only that, but it's not just learning more about it.

It's like you can produce other things.

If you wanted to produce a mobile app right now, you could do it in 24 hours.

End to end, bro.

Fake it.

To fake it till you make it right now is like there's no excuse anymore.

Oh, you can, you can fake, you.

Can fake it till you make it right now.

All these guys who had, you know, like all these weird bio, a CEO this or you know, this crypto company back.

Anybody can do that now.

Yeah, I can literally build a website and make up an entire social presence in like an hour.

Right.

Like social notoriety, credibility, it's almost impossible to discern between and stuff these things can do.

It's crazy.

So it's addictive and people get really, really steep, steeped into it.

And I get the draw.

So anyway, let's, let's get back on point with the markets.

I think that it's important to.

We're going to point out some technical pieces tonight which are probably a little more technical than most about how there are signals in the market which don't seem to reflect what we're seeing in the stock market.

When I talk this show about the market, I mean everything.

Bonds, equities, the stock market.

I'm talking about the real estate market.

I'm talking about the entire world around us is the market.

But there are certain parts of it that is the stock market.

Okay.

Which will move and boom.

In a positive way.

Yes.

On headlines.

So let's talk about that parasitic cycle because it's gonna be important for this conversation.

Data comes out.

If it's government related data from the BLS or if it's from, you know,.

Some scheduled data point that everyone's anticipating.

Or waiting on, it'll come out super early in the morning.

And when that data comes out.

Right.

People will cover it in the traditional media.

It'll make the rounds either on television or on the interwebs.

Right, in the interwebs.

I mean social media.

And then it starts circulating depending on how attention worthy it is, how important is that data.

And then there's a cohort of people who will interpret that data in one way or another.

And then they'll spend out their interpretations of the data.

Good, bad, ugly, compare it to other things and so on and so forth.

And now you've gone from release to media to consumer to what happens next.

And in that Place the consumer of the information, not the person like the retail investor.

The consumer is whoever's taking that data in.

There are certain people who are plugged in, I. E. Hedge funds who are active in the market who get that information straight from the source.

Like, like the media does and they act on it, but they don't report it.

But then the retail component kicks in and it starts making the headlines and those headlines, what do they do?

They feed more social media and it's this parasitic cycle of behavior that happens, right?

And then some hedge funds, right, are so big that if a certain piece of information or data point comes out or there's some headline risk to something and they decide to go heavy in one direction or another, that can, that can create its own parasitic cycle of headlines, right?

And now everything is shifting again, right,.

Because a lot of these companies have to publicly report or are publicly visible, right, that they're going to, that they're making certain moves.

So everybody's going, okay, well why is this fun buying all this gold right now?

What do they know that we don't?

And it goes back to the old school Trading Places Eddie Murphy movie where they knew that the orange concentrate commodity price was going to move and they made a huge bet against it because they knew where the market was going to go.

And I love that movie by the way.

It's a great movie.

And I think that that's, that's kind of the nature of what we're seeing here.

But in the stock market responds.

So let's, let's set up a crazy ass series of events that whether you believe it or not, are real and happened this week.

Yeah, I woke up, I think it was Monday morning.

We were recording this on an unusual uncharacteristic Tuesday the 24th.

So the same day our podcast came out.

A week from today this episode will come out.

So on this particular.

Oh, the screen went out rail.

Yeah.

What you do, what you do.

Can't leave him alone back there.

They won't know him.

Post though.

Oh, you got it, it's back on.

Yeah.

Maybe because his finger and my finger are the same.

ET flown home.

Yeah.

So absolutely insane news that happened.

So at 7:04am Eastern on Monday, President Trump said the U.S. and Iran have product have had productive discussions to end the Iran war.

Now this isn't the first time he's also said this.

This is right, like he's made this inference.

Yeah.

Several times now.

And my issue with this is, is I don't know who to believe because you got the other side saying nope.

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, by 7, 10, 6 minutes later, the S&P had surged to 240 points, adding $2 trillion in market cap at end of the day at over 3 trillion.

As a high 27 minutes after that, Iran completely denied all of President Trump's claims and said that there has been no contact with the U.S. yeah.

Weird, right?

You getting that scan line on the screen by any chance?

No.

You're not.

Would you tell me if you were?

Oh, yes, I am actually.

All right.

See that remote, the second one away from you?

Yes.

Yeah.

Take that point at this tv, turn it off and turn it back on.

Look at you.

There you go.

And it's going to turn.

When it turns back on brighter, it's going to be.

Oh yeah, press center button and then go to that PC right there.

There you go.

That's the one.

Pick that.

Oh, he pushed it so well.

That's gonna be there.

See how it's brighter?

That's how you can tell you're not getting scan lines.

Because I've been in the studio for so damn.

You know how to work at all.

I know, I know how it works.

The magic touch, man.

The magic touch.

It's the Fijian touch.

Anyway, so yeah, huge swing in the market.

And then you have.

And again, how does that make you feel though, honestly?

If you got, if you got.

It's like, let's take it down to a real basic level.

You got it discourages the out of me, man.

It makes me, it makes me feel like the market is a game and manipulated when it's supposed to be driven off of basis.

So you think this is a place strictly on market?

No, I'm honest opinion, yes.

Okay, here's what I think happened.

I think going in Friday, there was a sell off.

It was a big sell off.

You had literally panic selling for selling.

It was contained, but it was still a risk off forced selling, liquidation position in the markets.

And I think had there been positive headway in anything over the weekend, you would have.

Had the markets been able to recover by Monday morning, there was nothing.

So the President was faced with a choice.

I can let the markets tank or I can make a statement that is hopeful and you know what, it may come true.

But at the time was hopeful at the very least.

And I think he thought, okay, look, what am I doing here that's so bad?

Am I stemming the tide of loss in the markets and saving in this case trillions of dollars?

Yes.

Is that market manipulation?

If I were to do that.

You were to do that A hundred percent.

Yeah.

Are the rules different for you and me?

They're not supposed to be.

Right.

And it really sucks because as somebody who's building a model and who works in the space with you guys, one of the things that bothers me are those unpredictable, wild, rogue variables that have nothing to do with the actual tangible metric.

I mean, if Nvidia came out and they were forced to, like, they reported the world's shittiest earnings in the market tanked, I'd be like, okay, look, that was a variable that we probably should have saw coming based on, you know, some type of, like, global, like, triage that we missed.

Yes, I can own that.

But when one man comes out and makes a tweet to save the markets, you know how many shorts you probably kicked in the ding, ding that were placed?

Yeah, a lot.

A lot.

A lot of money.

A lot of money happened.

So, yeah, it's very discouraging.

And Rejeel, pull up the chart that you got there on the Khabisi letter.

Yeah, that one.

Look at this.

This is a timeline with the candlestick chart.

Yeah.

And for the purposes, green going up, red going down.

That giant green line going up was literally right after the President made the statement at 704 saying, there's product talks.

Yeah.

And then literally by seven, 10, six minutes later, $2 trillion in value had been added to the market.

I mean, that's.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then, of course, Iran makes its statements, and then it starts to.

To dwindle down throughout the day.

And then it actually closed back down.

And then the next day, today, another for selling.

But today was unusual.

Today was one of those days where the market was me.

It wasn't like, for selling.

It wasn't panic, but it was certainly a little more volatile.

Go to rigid.

Go to CNBC and pull up the vix.

It's in my search history.

If you go to cnbc, in the top right search bar, there's a just type in V. It should be.

It should be on down there.

Vix.

Vix.

Yeah.

I think it's.

Was it above 30 today when it closed?

It went down to 25.

Yeah.

It came back up 26 9.

Okay.

So there you go.

Perfect CBOE volatility.

So you're at 26.

Nine for the day.

Anything above 20 is elevated fear.

Right.

Yeah.

And let's remind everybody, this is.

This is not just like a consumer sentiment report.

This is actually taking into account people placing shorts.

Yeah.

Right.

And so this is people putting their money where their mouth is, they're really genuinely afraid of what's, what's about to happen.

Anything above 20 right now it's been much higher.

50.

Yeah, it's been much higher.

Not recently.

Historically.

Historically, correct, yeah.

So, but anything above 20 to Chris's point is considered elevated, like fear.

So one of the things that I noticed yesterday is so I pay close attention to the bond market, particularly the 10 year treasury and I look at all the Treasuries we got out of one of the, I think there was longest yield curve inversion in history about a year or so ago.

It's where the two year treasury is, got a higher price than the 10 year Treasury.

That's a yield curve inversion.

And typically when you get out of the inversion and the 10 year starts to creep above the 2 year, you head towards a recession that has not happened at least in the year since then till now.

But I've got a good esoteric argument for that.

Right.

As to why it hasn't happened yet.

Yeah.

And that's simple.

Right.

It's.

We were in a prolonged period of economic prosperity where we effectively doubled the period of prosperity we've historically experienced seven to 10 years, we had close to 20.

So it's going to take a longer period of time to see the ramifications of change that would otherwise be a not prosperous economy.

I don't want to call it a recession, but a corrective economy.

Right.

If you think of the economy as a pendulum.

Right.

And if historically it was every seven to 10 years and it was swinging back and forth.

Yeah.

And then out of nowhere you had a really positive swing.

Swing really positive, significantly further out, think how much longer is going to take for it to come back and smash it back the other way.

Yep.

So right after this there was a Wall Street Journal article that came out, headline.

The article says the whole thing.

Trump postpones Iran strikes five days in.

Iran denies negotiations.

Mm, Sounds like a pretty State of the union set of circumstances.

So this came out today.

Now I know if you're looking at this from yesterday, you think to yourself, okay, he's not telling the truth.

These are lies or manipulations.

Okay, well what say you about what I'm about to read to you?

Ready?

Mediators aim for US Iran meeting by Thursday, two days from today, the date of recording this.

Officials from Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan are pushing to have talks arranged between the United States and Iranian officials.

But both sides are far apart.

So were they having negotiations?

Are they not having negotiations?

Are they talking to Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan?

About Iran.

And those are the fruitful conversations.

I don't know.

Yeah, so it goes on.

Both sides remain far apart.

Pakistan offered to mediate peace talks between the US and Iran to end the war.

And overture that was amplified by President Trump on social Media.

Right.

The U.S. has sent Iran a 15 point plan to end the war, which centers largely around previous Trump administration demands of Tehran.

Now, this article concludes with something that I want everybody to pay close attention to.

We're going to read two more paragraphs, I promise.

So the Gulf Arab states are growing alarmed by Trump's eagerness to do a deal.

The leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are lobbying Trump to stick with the war until Iran is sufficiently weakened.

Weakened.

That it won't pose a threat.

I found that to be interesting.

I would think that the countries that are largely being hit by Iran would not want that.

They would want peace sooner rather than later because they are literally in the way.

Well, I think the fear now is, I mean, up until now it was just what everyone thought was that I think the, the distance of the missiles that they had, you know, in their arsenal was like 2,000 kilometers.

And now they've reached 4,000 kilometers, meaning it can now hit anywhere in Europe.

So was it.

Wait a minute, hold on.

They're way more powerful than we thought that they were.

So that's even more concerning for people.

No one's ever said that about me.

What?

He's way more powerful than I thought he was.

Just once I want to hear someone say that in like, a meaningful way.

Yeah.

You know, Chris, you're way more strong than I thought you were.

I'm gonna have to take you out now.

I don't want peace now.

I gotta really make sure I put you out.

I don't want peace.

I want problems.

Always.

Arguably one of the best memes out there the Pentagon is planning to deploy about, and they did today.

3,000 Soldiers from the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle east to support operations against Iran.

Officials cautioned that a decision to put boots on the ground in Iran has not been made as of yet.

So when you think about this in the context of the last two days, you had the President come out, make this comment, which led to approximately $3 trillion in market shift.

The bond market at this time wasn't buying it.

And this was my first kind of warning sign because I watched those bonds.

I knew that we saw a bit of a dip in the 10 year, and then it kind of rebounded back.

It was down like 7, like 07% and then went back up.

So 7 basis points and then went back up to I think two or three basis points back up.

But effectively the 10 year held and then actually rose a little bit today.

Yeah.

So even though the market's rallying, the 10 year still moving up, which means that there's some type of material disconnect in what people perceive as risk in the stock market versus what the bond market is signaling is risk.

Okay.

And because of that I was paying close attention to what was otherwise a very boring and mundane event that happened this morning I knew was gonna happen.

Happens on the clock.

A two year treasury auction happened.

Okay.

And normally these are very boring.

You offer treasuries to the market, they go, hmm, yum yum, yum, yum.

Give me more.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Okay.

Nothing spectacular, but in this case, and I'm paraphrasing here, the price just wasn't high enough and it was largely considered, and I'm quoting the media's comments here, a failed treasury auction.

Wow.

Why?

Well, I'm gonna read that to you from Seeking Alpha treasury auction data.

The two year note auction bid to cover 2.44 weakest since May of 2024.

Click the X button there on the corner.

Rajille, Bottom here, bottom down there.

There you go.

Click it.

So good.

Now I like Seeking Alpha.

Those people who don't, they have some slants from time to time and especially because the anonymity and some of the authors.

But there, there are reports that are on this site sometimes that you cannot deny.

They were early in the, in the jobs numbers or bullshit camp.

Almost a year and a half, two years early.

So not as early as us, but it's fine.

No, actually they were before us.

No, I pair I from, from when I first started the show.

We were calling BS shenanigans.

Yeah, but I was always stealing it from them.

Austin, that was three years ago.

Okay, I'm kidding.

So U.S. short Term treasury yields pushed higher on Tuesday with the rate sensitive US 2 year treasury yield, US2Y climbing 8 basis points to 394, nearing the key 4% threshold, following a closely watched auction.

So this.

So like we say, the ten year.

Right.

Closely aligns.

It aligns with mortgage rates.

Right.

The ten year goes up, then you know mortgage rates are going to go up.

If it goes down, the mortgage rates are likely to come down too.

Right?

What I should also point out in this time we've seen something very different with the 10 year that we haven't seen historically.

Typically the average for mortgage rates is somewhere about 2% over the 10 year.

You've seen something that market you've probably heard a number of times called margin compression, where the spread over the corresponding treasury, in this case the 10 year to the 30 year fixed has actually come down.

Oh, okay.

It's supposed to be 2 to, used to be 2 to 3% and now.

It's closer to like 1 1.80% to 2%.

That mortgage that spread over has come down and compressed over time.

So you're seeing this margin compression on the spreads over the Treasuries, which means that there's an inherently less profitable model for, for the people making the loans in it.

I see.

Because it's getting either more competitive or more risky or more pricey.

It's very weird here.

If you recall back there was a show we did, God, almost a year ago now where I expressed concern over the potential future of the bond market because Citibank was getting out of the muni bond space.

Yes.

And they were flooding the market.

Jane Frazier decided she wanted to be in the muni space and it's probably a good call from a credit risk perspective.

She was getting out of the market and they were going to flood the market, all these bonds.

And that happened.

But again, most people don't understand bonds.

Most people don't care or just so like agnostic to them that they don't follow it.

I follow it because my mentor was a bond trader for years.

Right.

And because I know it's a good.

It's one of the best predictions of market behavior.

The stock market can move a lot by social narrative, but the bond market, in my experience at least because it's not really traded by the retail consumer, is a lot more pure of an indicator today.

Okay, makes sense.

But what I was going to say about two year treasury, which we're covering now.

Right.

That's more indicative of what people believe the Fed is going to be doing and the impact that the Fed is going to be having on, on the market.

Right.

So if the two year.

They're saying the two year isn't high enough.

Right.

And needs to increase more.

What does that tell you?

What does that say about the stance that the Fed is likely or probably will take?

Yeah, well, the Fed is going to change dynamically their position.

And I should, I would be remiss if I did not point out that our models were calling this a long time ago.

And as much as I want to think that we're spectacular, JP Morgan called this to start the year JP Morgan was one of the first movers in the space.

Their analysts called and not David Kelly, who covers the FOMC meetings for JP Morgan Chase.

He didn't agree with this.

Jamie Dimon didn't really.

I mean, he assuages his opinion.

A lot of times he's like, you know, I don't know, he's very political about it.

It.

But their analysts had called early in the year there wouldn't be a rate cut this year to be a rate hike in 2027.

And that is looking more and more likely based on this bond market activity.

Our models predict that that's likely to be the case too.

As a matter of fact, there's.

There's about a 25 basis point delta from what you're seeing as odds historically to now, and it's held.

So the way our models work is it aggregates all this data in and it comes up with a score.

I'm going to water this down without technical jargon because I nerd out on it.

And the score is a confident score.

Anything above about 52 to 55% and you're pretty confident the data is good on whatever thing you're tracking.

Okay.

Whatever alpha you're tracking.

Right.

Each.

Yeah.

Each component has its own scorecard.

Right.

So.

Right.

Anytime we come up with what we think are deviations in the market from what the market thinks to what the data says, that's an alpha.

We think we've got a competitive advantage based on Market Data vs. What the Market thinks.

And it's betting on that advantage is most pronounced right now in the world interest rate probability, according to Bloomberg and according to Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Yes.

Their numbers do not align with what the data suggests will be a likelihood of a rate increase and when.

So I wonder how much of this has to do with the similarities that we're seeing back from the, you know, from 70s, from the 1970s to the 80s.

Because during that time we had a.

We had a huge inflation problem and also got hit with an oil price hike at that time.

I think it's easy to point in oil controversy.

And I think, I think you're looking at more of a stagflationary economy if.

You're mouse which what they were going through.

Right.

And then what they.

What did they have?

They had rates increase, but I think the Fed raised their interest rates up to like 20 at that time.

Yeah, but you also had inflation that was out of control.

You had a bunch of other stuff going on.

I mean, I believe that inflation is being Underreported.

I mean, inflation is out of control, right?

I think it's underreported.

I also think that GDP has been overstated.

We saw a revision today, which.

Did I. I don't think I put the gd.

Did I put the gdp?

No, you didn't.

I didn't.

Okay, so not in the show notes.

Don't worry.

I've got an AI assistant who gives it to me every single morning.

Oh, yeah.

So good.

Okay, so I was actually talking to.

Talking to the AI.

God, I'm such a nerd.

What happened to me?

Why did you like this?

Not to be.

Not to be confused with Allen Iverson.

Why?

Yeah, I.

You were not talking to AI.

I was thinking about calling him White Iverson for a while, but Saucy.

Saucy anyway.

Yeah, but I backed off.

I had to come up with a name that was somewhat professional.

I thought Atlas was cute, but maybe not cute enough.

I did a lot of.

Today was my biggest spend day on API calls because of all the stuff that I was doing with the AI intermittently throughout the day, which is super nerdy.

I recognize.

I'm looking for it.

I appreciate that you guys are waiting for me.

GDP revisions.

No, I wanted to read you specifically what Atlas had said about it.

It was interesting.

There was context into it that I thought was really fascinating us.

Q4, 2025, GDP was revised down to a 0.7% annualized growth rate from the initial 1.4% estimate, signaling a sharper slowdown than expected.

Yeah, and let me.

So I actually posted about this.

I'll just read my post.

Forget it.

I was trying to read you some.

Somebody smart.

I guess you're gonna deal with me.

So I posted about this in particular because I was concerned, but GDP got cut in half.

Revised from 1.4 down to 0.7.

So it's half right?

So over reported.

Clearly double in this case.

Yeah, reported.

Last I checked with Core, PCE ran running at about 0.4 in January and 3.1% year over year.

Slower growth, hotter inflation, which we know is real.

And not much room left for the Fed to really keep selling.

The whole rate cut narrative is now.

So if you were just watching the headline prints and not the revisions, you'd be like, oh, the market's fine, but it's this dirty revisions that keep happening.

I mean, a million jobs last year eviscerated, just poof, gone into the night.

Right now you got inflation, which we think is understated.

Imagine your son coming home, telling you, dad, I got a 95% of the test.

And then you're like, oh, great son.

Yeah.

And then he comes back the next day, you revise.

There was a revision.

Don't worry about it though.

Half of that.

Just focus on.

I'm on half of that.

Right.

So I'm at 45%.

But just worry about the headline though.

And let me be the guy who asked the question, like, I understand, like a revision from 95% to 91.

You know, there was an error here.

When you talk a half, how are your numbers that off?

I mean, how can I rely on your numbers when you reported 2x?

Especially when these numbers are the very thing that you're basing your entire decision on, on how healthy the economy is.

How crude can I be right now?

Yeah, extremely crude.

As crude as you want to be.

If I promise you three inches.

Right.

But I'm working with one and a half.

Yeah.

You going to be upset even though that.

That one and a half is not a big deal.

I call me crazy, but that's material misrepresentation.

Material misrepresentation, yeah.

You were going to be less satisfied with half.

Right.

Than you would have been with a full ppe.

You might not be satisfied.

Yeah, I'm.

I would not know.

Personally, I've never satisfied anybody.

What is satisfaction?

Can you spell that for me?

I skipped that chapter and I'm done.

Your satisfaction doesn't matter.

My.

Yes.

Everybody listening with their kids right now is like, damn it, there it is.

I also posted today, and this is on the same bond topic, prayers up for mortgage rates.

US 10 year treasury is surging today up from 3.9620 as of February 27, 2026.

About 50 basis points away from a 5 year high that was actually wrong.

It hit 502 in October 2023.

My friend Gordon who follows us and the show Gordon Miller on X pointed out that I was wrong and he was right.

Hit 5.02.

Honestly, me and Gordon Miller just became best friends.

Yeah.

GM bro.

Yeah, yeah.

Here correcting Chris, you and I are best friends.

He doesn't want to come.

You know, we engage a lot.

There's a lot of people like this sound creepy and weird, but there's a community of quantitative nerds who are really hard.

Some of them just like, we'll just like.

If you give a narrative that's not in their camp, they're coming after you.

Yeah, yeah.

It's war.

And some of them are like, let me point out where you're wrong.

Yeah.

Let me tell You.

Why?

You're wrong, chief.

And I'm okay with that too, but it's.

It's a weird community, ironically, which.

What?

This is going to sound crazy.

What platform do you think gets the most views for us right now?

Spotify?

No.

Instagram?

No.

Okay.

Threads.

Oh.

We are vastly approaching three quarters of a million views a month on threads.

Just threads.

Just threads.

Yeah.

I don't.

And I only got like 5,000 followers on threads.

And if you're tuning in via threads right now, head over to join Fridays.com.

No one tunes in Friday.

Come on.

Come on.

What is.

We could tell.

You could say it, though.

How?

You don't post it on social media.

And not understand social media.

I know.

We stream on Spotify, soon to be Apple.

We don't stream on Apple or Spotify.

We.

We release the show.

We released the show.

Yeah, we stream.

Yeah, we stream on YouTube, stream on Instagram, stream on LinkedIn, stream on X.

I'm working with here.

Stream on X.

You.

And you tune in Monday, Wednesday, Fridays at 11:00am Pacific Standard Time.

You were absent on the last show.

I was not.

I was there.

I was dealing with some things mid show, but I was there to start the show and to end the show.

You know, I. I could bring you up on Riverside if you want to ever, like, you know, have a conversation from the crib.

From the crib.

From the crib.

Lotso.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But we all know you don't want to be on camera revealing how massive your house is, your golden toilets and all that.

Yeah, it does have a golden toilet.

You just.

You just can't stand and pee.

No, he has to sit on that.

You got to respect the golden toilet.

It's haram.

It is haram.

You have a harem.

Yeah, haram.

I always thought the weird.

The word haram and the word haram were too close.

Oh, really?

They too close?

Those words are very confusing, you know, if you don't.

I mean, like.

Yeah.

How can one mean one thing, the other mean the other?

I mean, it just sounds like they kind of mean the same thing.

And I mean, in the negative connotation, like from a religious perspective, it's very confusing.

And also people are like, what is he talking about?

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't want to go down this path.

I don't know.

All right, so let's finish up this bond conversation because it does lead to a nice little segue later on.

Primary dealers were left taking down the largest share of issuance since October 2022.

Further underscoring the soft recession reception.

I can't even say soft reception without stuttering those.

Semi soft.

Yeah, soft.

The results point to growing uncertainty in fixed income markets where participants are grappling with how to price the Federal Reserve's next moves.

Volatility in oil prices added another layer of complexity which we all know, raising concerns about the persistent inflation and complicating the outlook for the monetary policy.

Furthermore, yields were up across the curve.

So, you know, the two years up, five year was up seven basis points to 405.

The 10 year was up six basis points to 441.

And the 20 year was at plus six basis points to 5%.

That's meaningful, kids.

The 30 year treasury was at plus four basis points to 4.966.

You got a market which is signaling stagflation.

Okay?

There is no way based.

And based on what we're seeing today, now, I know it's going to happen.

That's not just a term people should just let gloss over either a stack.

A stagflationary economy is a very difficult economy to correct and get back into balance.

Yeah, I will admit it is still better than a recession in some ways.

Really?

Tell me it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Well, it depends on what you prefer.

Like, do you prefer you are fuzzy?

Just to be clear, it's not warm.

Because you're not wearing your quarters, right?

That's the one.

So, you guys, not all of us can be on my humor level.

You know what I mean?

Somebody's got to be the guy.

Okay, that's you.

All right?

Jill and I have a thing.

Don't put him in your kid.

He sighs more with me than he does you.

I bought that mouse just because it vibrates his thumb.

That's not true.

It's.

It's really awesome.

See, I do don't believe this.

I'm doing it for his thumb.

Okay.

My love is tactile.

Regiel.

All right, so if you.

So if you.

If you like a stagflationary economy, you think it's better than a recession?

Why?

Well, I mean, there's arguments here, but a recession, you have a prolonged period of losing value and then the ramifications afterward.

Stagflationary economy.

You've got a prolonged period of slow, almost no growth and a lot of pain points in the economy.

But people aren't generally hurting as large financially right away.

It's a slower, more painful process.

Right.

Slower, more painful.

Death is not the word okay, come on, we're trying to be negative here or.

No, no, we're not.

We're trying to be positive here.

So you don't view it as, okay, a correction needs to be made and this is only.

A stagflationary economy would only be delaying the inevitable.

Oh, I didn't say that it wasn't going to happen.

I don't think that that's not going to happen at all.

So, yeah, I guess.

Would you rather, you know, your boss walk you in, sit you down, make you say all these nice things about you and then let you know that you're fired or have you walk in and be, listen, you're fired.

And then considering I lived through the first one, I can tell you that was torture.

So.

No, just let that sink in for a little bit.

By the time this episode airs, I think we'll be in the clear.

Yeah, probably will be.

So weird.

I think that going through stagflation gives a little bit of an opportunity for people to readjust.

If we hit a wall and went right into a recessionary economy and there was some type of event, candidly, if you would ask me a year ago, hey, Chris, like, what would a geopolitical event would cause it, but apparently not.

The market's really resilient, you know.

So if you were to ask me now, hey, you know, if this one time event thing were to happen, that would drive the market down, it would have to be pretty catastrophic.

Yeah, right.

People pointing to private credit, they point to the bond markets, they point to geopolitical conflict, they point to all these things.

Nothing has really taken the stock market.

I mean, it is riding this wave of euphoria.

And I've got a pretty baseline.

I mean, can we put our tinfoil hats on you willing to put your tinfoil?

I never take mine off, dude, come on.

Yes, you do.

Yes, you do.

I'm tinfoil hatted up all the time.

Oh, tip will hat all the time.

All the time.

If you know that we're overdue for a correction and you needed something to point the finger to.

Yeah.

And during that time when you know you're overdue and there have been plenty of reasons like, or opportunities to show that we were in, let's say, going down a very negative path.

Right.

Numbers are being inflated, Things are happening in the market that don't even make sense at this point.

Right.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars are being made off a single tweet.

Okay.

Right.

And there's geopolitical conflict that you have no idea the why we're involved in.

Could this not be the very thing to point to as to the reason why we do see some economic hardship down the road?

So let me distill this down here.

Did the White House or somebody initiate this conflict for ulterior motives which give people a potential out if things don't work?

Well, we're going down this path.

That's, that's the tinfoil hat, you know, hypothesis.

We're going down this path.

Let's do something.

If it works out, great, and if.

It might be some benefits that we.

Get from this, I can point to it as a necessity because we were.

All gonna, There was some existential, existential threat.

Okay, Yeah, I hear you.

The, the meme, the meme going around today that went, that went absolutely viral was, okay, I know you're right about Iraq and Iran, but seriously, Turkey is an existential threat?

That's, that's the, that's, that's the narrative going around right now.

All right, let me give you, let me give you some things to think about then, ok?

Wartime presidents have a greater probability of being reelected, statistically speaking, but this one's.

Not going to be reelected.

He said he wouldn't rule it out.

Come on, stop.

Three terms, triple term, back to back to back.

Yeah, you just call me three terms.

I hear you, but I.

Look, it's hard, man.

It's hard to rap.

It's hard to get behind and understand.

Let's have a conversation.

It's hard to understand.

Let's do it.

Okay, fine, I'll do it.

You're not going to have regime change without Boots on the ground.

That has to happen.

Yeah, you said that from day one.

I've been saying it.

Yeah, for like five, five episodes now.

What do you just shut the upground.

It matters.

I mean, I mean, as of, as of this morning, there's already 13 soldiers, unfortunately have passed.

Yeah.

You know, and boots.

May they recipes.

May the recipes.

And thank you for their service.

Thank you to their families.

But it's like, like, okay, now with Boots on the ground.

This is the first war where I think information is being very much contained and controlled and you don't have traditional media voices that are as prevalent as they once were to report the information, whether earnest or not.

And everything is so contested and so visceral and so politically charged that you don't even know what to believe from the voices that you do hear.

Did Trump reach out?

Is he having a conversation?

I don't know.

Is the Iranian stuff real or is it disinformation?

I don't know.

Are other countries like China, Russia, Israel, anybody trying to manipulate the narrative to crash our markets or to prop our markets up?

I don't know.

Yeah, the only thing that I know.

The only thing is that if you want regime change, there has not been a war historically where that has occurred without boots on the ground, soldiers on the ground.

And you have to think about humans here, okay?

There are going to be people who support the regime whether you like it or not.

Now, here's what we did as a country, like it or not.

Not a political statement.

You went in and killed a religious leader of a country.

We don't have one of those here during the holy month of Ramadan.

Okay.

Their foremost religious holiday that has a tendency to unite.

Unite people, not divide them.

And, yes, there's a younger populace.

And those are the.

Unfortunately, the ones who seem to be dying a little bit more in Iran right now at the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

How do you stop.

In Iran?

Weapons are not legal.

Every country has illegal weapons, I. E. Mexico, we supply them.

But the Revolutionary Guard has a lot more weapons and a lot more physical control, if you will, of things that are bad.

How do you get the people confident to get out in the streets and fight?

They have to see soldiers on the ground.

They have to have that visual connection.

There's just no other way around it.

If you want regime change and that's what you're really after, that has to happen.

The Iranian response is not a stupid one.

We don't wanna negotiate with the United States.

Why would you let me just.

Hypothetical situation here.

The three of us are Iranians in this conversation.

I'm the only Iranian in the room.

Yes.

Right.

And we say, okay, we'll negotiate.

Then Trump goes, kill the guy who said, we'll negotiate.

He's in charge.

Mm.

You're not gonna raise your hand for that, right?

So how do you.

How do you negotiate?

No.

Anybody who comes to you.

There have been.

There have actually been reportings on this, on how.

How it's played out.

The.

The press has reached out and released these statements.

Right.

That, you know, whoever is responding to the U.S. for inquiries on whether they'd like to engage in conversations.

Yeah.

They've decided to leave them on red because they said, we know this will be manipulated.

We don't know how to respond.

And by the time they've even come up with a response, it's already being, you know, reported that we're in negotiations.

Hold on.

We're not in any negotiations.

So if you notice the news today, the news cycle, and this really bothers me a great deal, the news cycle today and many of the days has been, they don't have a military, they don't have a navy, they don't have air defense systems.

They don't have all these things.

We've won the war.

As far as I'm concerned, we've won the war.

I would argue that's not true.

Yeah.

I would argue you're pointing to all the traditional mechanisms of war when they are not using those to fight a war.

What they are using to fight a war is the economy.

Yeah.

And that war, that's the real nuclear weapon here.

Can they get oil over $100 a barrel, $120 a barrel, and force a recession?

Inflict enough pain, inflict enough financial pain to where this country goes into fun?

Because that's the war that they know this president respects, clearly, when it came out on Monday.

Because they know it's an ego thing.

It affects his ego.

I don't.

Maybe it's ego.

Maybe it's pride.

Maybe.

Maybe it's.

It's his constituency in that he wants to get people reelected in the midterms.

I'm not here to put blame.

I'm just saying this is one of the first wars that I have seen where the economic war is the front line.

I always.

I always thought it'd be a cyber war.

Yeah.

I always thought that would be the kind of the.

By this time.

Right.

Yeah.

Or that it would be some type of, like, social narrative war.

Like, you're stupid.

But it's.

It's this.

It's an economic war.

Okay, fine.

So the crescendo of this conversation was.

I was having a conversation, my father today, and my father is just, like, beside himself emotionally about what's going on, because we have family there, and there's a whole thing tied to it.

And I'm like.

Dad is like, oh, they have to put boots on the ground.

I'm like, yeah, I hear you, Dad.

I hear you.

But do you really want that to happen?

Well, I want regime change.

I said, okay, well, that's the only way to get it.

Okay, I hear you.

Name a country we've gone into with boots on the ground.

And of course, he pointed to the most logical, two recent ones.

And he goes, oh, well, we went into Iraq.

And I'm like, you been to Baghdad at all recently there, chief?

Yeah.

Have you seen anything?

And he goes, oh, we went into Afghanistan.

I said, you been to Kabul at all recently, Chief.

Yeah.

Have you seen things?

They look decimated still.

Yeah.

So no secret.

My family's from Afghanistan.

And I remember.

And I remember being like a teenager fresh out of high school, telling my.

My parents, oh, I would love.

This is back.

This is back then, right?

This is 2004.

Yeah.

Graduate high school, 2004.

Just to make you feel.

1998, Baby.

2009.

Boy.

30S, 30s club.

30S club.

Just.

Just to be clear, I graduated law school in 2003.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I tell my.

I tell my parents, I was.

I would love to go back and, you know, see where you guys grew up.

And back then they looked at me and like, why?

That place is not the same.

I have what doesn't exist anymore.

It does.

What I grew up with does not exist.

And that's my fear of what that's going to happen.

Well, so.

Well, yes and no.

So what people don't understand about Iran is Tehran is metropolitan city.

Right.

But around it there are also.

The country is divided.

There's several different provinces.

We talked about this in the show before.

There's different ethnicities within the country that are just naturally there.

We talk about immigration here.

Like, there's a whole Hispanic subculture.

There's people from Europe.

There's Slovakian people.

There's all sorts of people, like, cultures that come here as a melting pot.

Right, right.

And we have communities.

There's an Ethiopian community in Los Angeles.

There's all these communities that we have established.

But unlike that situation in Iran, the way the geography and topography are laid out, those people have been there.

Yeah, yeah.

They look like that.

Right, right, right.

That's their heritage.

But they're not all aligned.

There's a whole, entire Kurdish population.

There's an entire, like, farmer population, which is why the mass majority of the country is not, like, highly educated.

Even though as much as Iranians value education and prestige most, the country has nothing to do with that.

They're like farmers and like Kurds.

They're.

They're, you know.

Yeah.

These are not like, highly sophisticated.

These are happy, enriched, healthy people, but they're not the same thing.

Right.

So who's going to unite the people in the major metropolitan city?

So that's where the decimation is going to happen.

And what does that do?

Like, do you want to go back there?

No, that country doesn't exist anymore.

Right.

That's the problem.

People don't understand.

They want Iran from the 1970s.

What you're going to get.

Yeah, this is great.

So if you look here in this map.

Good job.

Map of Iran.

So right there is Tehran, and above that is, like, Rashed and some of the places.

Kash and stuff like that.

In the north.

We say in the north, but it's really just one province above it.

Right.

But then you have.

On the left.

You have.

On the right.

There's very different regions.

Some are mountainous, some are desert.

Like, some people are Asian.

Some people are more Turkish looking.

Some people have these really beautiful green eyes.

Yeah.

And kind of, like semi Asian, like, skin tone.

Right.

But also look and speak Farsi.

It's fucking awesome.

I know.

Beautiful.

Came from Afghanistan.

I know.

I'm not gonna.

Okay.

I'm not gonna take it away from you.

Okay.

It's a cross between Afghanistan and Turkey.

There you go.

Okay, so you go.

I'm not saying you're beautiful.

People say, win for the homies.

I've met some damn beautiful Afghans.

Most of them Last name Omar.

Oh, hey.

I got you, bro.

Thank you.

Not.

Not Fijian, though.

Y' all ain't tropical.

No, you tropical as boy.

So, yeah, I mean, look, you got a very different.

Different landscape here.

But.

So, yeah, your conspiracy theory and the whole thing,.

I.

You can't get regime changes.

You don't go boots on the ground.

If we don't go boots on the ground, then I don't.

I don't know how you come.

I don't know how you, quote, win this war.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

How do you, like, just get out of this?

By claiming that we won.

We're out.

We did what we did.

We did what we set out to do.

So we can leave now at this point.

That time has now come and gone.

So that's why I don't think you get the.

You get the market response in the stock market because they want the headline.

But the treasury market says you're not fixing anything.

Yes.

Okay, so that's why.

Yeah, that's why you just got to stay plugged into the treasury, and that's.

Why you got to stay plugged into the Treasuries.

The Treasuries are the bigger, broader picture, and they're not swung by behavioral economics.

I don't think you get away from an oil crisis now.

Oh, yeah, I think you've got one on your hands.

There's no way to avoid that.

And I think because you cannot avoid an oil crisis is at some point, we have strategic reserves propping things up right now.

Crude oil coming in from Venezuela is still crude oil, and it's not.

And has anybody Heard a goddamn thing about that at all recently.

Right.

I mean, there's too much news to go around.

You want to know why all that oil reserve, first of all, is unquantified?

We don't know for sure.

Second of all, it's in the fucking Amazon.

How are you going to get it?

Yeah, let me know how that works out for you, okay?

I've seen some movies.

Okay.

Avatar, I've seen Avatar.

I know how it works.

Right.

Can't go into that jungle taking the oil.

You can't, bro.

Yeah.

Anaconda.

Yeah, I've seen that movie too.

Yeah.

Can't do that.

Small snake though.

It's tiny.

Come on.

Very unimpressive.

Very unimpressive.

Ice Cube did a great job though.

Petite.

What was that movie that Ice Cube did for Amazon where he was sitting in front of a computer the whole time as a remake?

What?

Amazon Ice Cube?

Yeah, he did that movie where he was literally in front of a computer the whole time.

And it was a terrible.

You could tell he was like, I got paid for this.

Yeah.

He's so plugged into Hollywood.

He was so.

Loves him.

War of the Worlds.

Yeah, the new world of worlds.

And I like the last world of world worlds were of the worlds with Tom Cruise.

Yeah, it was good.

Look at this good looking Ice Cube with a beard, like all manicured everything.

Like in front of this is all you see of him the entire movie.

This look.

See?

What does he remind me of here side Omar.

He reminds you of Saito.

The beard definitely looks a lot like say, Omar.

That's the beard you're going for, right?

That's exactly the look.

Are you going for that?

Yeah, I went to the bar.

Like make me look like him.

Did you really?

No, I would believe that.

I could totally see you with a beard like that in Malcolm X glasses.

There you go.

And boat shoes.

I got that.

That's you.

I could.

Yeah, you're going to do that, aren't you?

I can't do that.

Yes, you can.

And he's wearing a quarter zip.

Yep.

I was just going to say that.

I'm telling.

See Bril.

There you go.

Ey, that's going to.

Yeah, that's the thumbnail for the world.

Except you never see Ice Cube in the world.

It's kind of crazy.

All right, let's cap this conversation off with real world.

Real speak from the, the one, the only Goolsbee baby Goolsbee fedpres.

Yeah, he made some comments.

These floated by and nobody caught anything and said anything material about it, but okay.

Goolsbee is one of the FOMC members.

Okay.

And he made some comments in a speech and in particular in an interview where he commented about some changing landscape as it relates to the potential future of the Fed cuts and the rate decisions.

The monetary policy outlook at the Federal Reserve appears to be shifting away from interest rate cuts and toward potential rate increases.

With comments from Chicago Fred President Austin Goolsbee.

Solid name, right?

Ag the latest evidence of that on Monday, AG said the central bank may need to tighten monetary policy in response to the impact of rising oil prices on the US Economy.

Me.

Let's pause.

I am telling you now, that is unavoidable.

Yes.

It's happening.

That's happening.

Okay.

California saw a surge up to $8 a gallon and things back down a little bit.

I would know because I drive electric cars.

Yeah.

Shout out to my EV homies.

Right.

Yo, rejo.

Partially.

Yeah.

Prayers up.

Yeah.

All right.

So a major shift from just a week ago stance, the FOMC meeting this on the 18th.

In an interview with CNBC, Goolsbee said every option is on the table and interest rates could move in either direction.

I'm gonna read a direct quote from you and remind you.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is literally the week after, not even a full week after the FOMC decision came out.

Right?

Right.

And if you remember.

Okay.

If you remember, for the longest time now, it was at every FOMC meeting.

Okay.

We're trying to get to a neutral rate.

Right.

A rate that we can stay at.

We don't know if we're there.

Maybe we could even go down a little bit further.

There was no conversation over the.

The fact that whether it can go up.

Right.

And this is.

This is the.

The fed or the FOMC's way of, like, getting people comfortable with the idea of warming you up.

Like, we got one of our guys out there just softening you up before.

Before we actually come out.

He's the Fluffer.

Yeah, he's Mr. Fluffer.

You want a more.

A more, I guess, homely example.

You know how, like, when one of you wants some, but your spouse doesn't want some, but you got to, like, drop subtle hints to see if they could want some.

Yeah.

We're kind of moving mood you in,.

But you want to be forceful.

Right.

Like, are you.

Are you about this?

The problem is, as a guy.

Yeah.

Like, we know we've got to be sneaky about our intentions, man.

We should.

We should go to bed early tonight.

Yeah.

You don't look that tired.

Are you Honey, you know, I'm gonna take a shower.

Yeah.

You gonna read something inside?

Get mad.

It is prevent no more doom scrolling after dinner.

That's it.

Yeah.

Some of us got to get some ass around here, damn it.

Meanwhile, all women got to do is walk out in some underwear you haven't seen in a while.

You're like, damn it, it's on.

Yes, I am ready.

Yes.

It's an unfair paradigm.

It's very unfair.

I would love for.

I would love for the world to be a different place where I could be like, you know, honey, I don't feel like it tonight.

Imagine.

So good.

Imagine.

You know, babe, I would love to.

I just.

I kind of want to read this article.

Ghoulsby, I is saying some crazy.

Imagine.

This is wild, man.

Yeah, I just.

I want to get in this.

Just a bath and soak for a while.

Honey, I'm sorry.

We could be back to the environment with multiple rate cuts for the year if inflation behaves.

I could see circumstances where we would need to raise rates if it was going a different way and inflation was getting out of control, Goolsby said.

Basically walking by you with just panties on, letting you know it's on.

If Fed officials ultimately decide to hike rates, it would make a.

It would mark a big change in policy as officials have been laser focused on rate cuts over the past several months, said Tim Dewey, chief economist at SGH Macro Advisors.

Nobody cares, Tim.

At their meeting last week, Fed officials kept interest rates unchanged and preserved a path to cutting rates this year, with a minority of officials pushing for a change in the statement to say the next move could be either a rate cut or a rate hike.

Right.

I think that minority seems to have changed.

Or Goolsbee was one of those minorities.

I haven't checked the scp though.

Some of the economists expect that such a change in the statement could come at the Fed's next meeting in late April.

Ironically, Jerome Powell's last Potentially, potentially, yeah.

Never know the Fed has two mandates.

Stable inflation and how and low unemployment.

We know unemployment's bullshit and we know the inflation number real world inflation to you to meet everybody else is much higher than they've stated and if not, it's been revised and just never heard about it.

Yeah, oil price shocks can lead to stagflation, increasing prices for gasoline and food.

At the same time, they weaken demand and the labor market.

So yeah, you got a problem, kids.

Yep, you got a problem.

And the reason why they, they even do things like this because you got to think like, oh, you have no business coming out here and, you know, stand in front of a podium and, you know, he knows damn well what this is going to do.

Right.

And what kind of headlines this is going to create.

But the reason why they got to do this is because Jerome Powell just can't come out and shock everybody.

What would that do to the market?

Right.

So this is easing their way in.

You know, a few weeks ago it was, when are we going to see our next rate cut?

Now it's like, I mean, do we really even need any more.

Maybe we should hike.

Candidly, I can see a world where a hike is the most realistic response right about now.

I can see that being the real solution to at least.

Well, given the g. Well, the real solution given the data that's being presented to them.

I mean, if the job numbers were being reported the way they should be reported, and that's part of their dual mandate, then I think that there would be more skepticism over that decision.

I just don't understand why we're doing this.

Like why.

Why are we in a world today where some of this data is still lagging?

I.

It's intentional.

We know it's intentional.

I have a thousand dollar Mac, I just spit on you.

I have a thousand dollar Mac Mini plugged into all the APIs.

Yeah.

Getting real time data.

How can that for a thousand dollars give me better data than the Fed.

Yeah.

Am I high?

No.

I mean, it's just.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, I read an article today.

I don't know if I didn't make the show notes, but house flipping is no longer a economically viable business for most flippers.

There just isn't enough market margin in the home flipping.

Yeah.

This was when we started the show.

Everybody was talking about Airbnb.

I haven't heard a damn thing of you.

Yeah.

What happened?

Yeah, there's not a lot of Airbnbs like core sellers out there anymore either.

Everybody was Talking about Section 8 housing for a while.

That rhetoric's died down.

No, the new talk of the town is doing ADU well, that.

That's actually economically viable.

That's the new talk.

But it's not as simple or as affordable as most people realize.

Yeah.

And you have to find the right market.

You need the right market in the right piece of property.

You need to have the capital to invest in.

You need to get permits and plans pulled.

In some states like California, that can easier or harder, depending on what you're doing it as.

Although in California it is significantly Easier now than it had been, you know.

House flipping.

Yeah.

House flipping may lose money.

Yeah.

House flipping volume falls to a five year low.

Margins hit 2008 levels.

This is as of March 19th.

So.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean when you, when you're coming into, you know, a rate environment that we're in now where rates are increasing, I mean, I know I don't know where they're at as of right now today, but not too long ago, I think maybe at some point today or yesterday it was hovering around 7%.

Yeah.

So it was 644 before all the bond market activity last couple like today.

Yeah, I literally sat in that chair today and worked for like 11 hours.

I didn't get up and leave.

I went to the bathroom and came back.

I was right.

And I didn't look at the markets, but I saw the rate activity on the Treasuries and it was notable.

I.

So, I mean.

Yeah.

How can you, you know, price.

How could you even begin?

Because in that whole market, what kind of loans are they getting?

It depends.

I mean it depends on what your capital source is.

If like, if you're someone like me, you get a home equity line of credit or you get like a. I aggregate a couple of properties and I'll get a line of credit on all of them as a business working line.

Okay.

Secured.

And that rate floats.

Yeah, it's index plus margin.

But then you model that into your models and you figure out how you're going to, how you going to handle it.

But look, I, I just don't.

I've never liked businesses that are lumpy like that as a primary source of income.

If you're going to do it, have a job, like a W2 job or work for somebody else or have a business, whether you're an appraiser or whatever you do to make money, you're a cpa.

Buy investment, real estate, stabilized investment, cash flow positive real estate.

Because you'll get some equity appreciation over time in those and it'll increase your net worth.

Plus you'll get some type of stable income as long as cash flow positive.

Right.

Like the rent that you pay, that people pay you versus the mortgages is cash flow positive.

If you can't do that in the tomorrow, then don't buy them right now.

Wait until you can or you can put enough money down to make that happen, which I understand is a lot of money in some cases.

Not discounting how hard this is.

This is not the show.

If you want everybody to tell you how easy it is yeah, yeah, yeah, but and then if you do flips, then do that as like, like a secondary or tertiary like means of making money.

Because you don't know, right?

Like you just don't know.

So if you want to rely on that as a source of income, well, some of these margins aren't so good.

And if we have a housing correction, you're just walking into, it's like me looking at the stock market at the top of the market right now, going, okay, there's really only downside risk.

Yeah.

And people want to ignore that.

They want to go, no, it always goes up.

Well, let me give you a great example of this, right?

If I finish a new multifamily apartment building, and I finish building, it's beautiful, no rent control laws to worry about, it can rent it at top of market rents.

So what do I do?

I rent it at top of market rents.

Why?

Because I want the maximum amount of income so I get the maximum amount of loan.

Right, because your loan amount is determined on something called debt service coverage ratio.

Right.

The amount of profit you're making for every dollar in expense and the more profit you're making, that is the more aggregate rent, the more loan you can get.

So I rent it out.

Top of market rents.

I rent it out for each unit for the highest I can get in the market.

Right, Great.

Except the appraiser is going to come in and say, okay, hey look, that's $100 a month over market rent.

They're going to mark you and so the underwriters are going to underwrite you to lower of in place rents or market rents.

Right.

So even though you're collecting more, they can't give you credit for that.

So you're not going to get the loan amount.

Okay, Problem number one, problem number two is let's say I give you the loan anyway at the market rents, what are the odds that the rents in that market continue to go up versus continue to go down?

Right?

I'm not saying they won't go up, I'm just saying the odds of them going down are much greater.

Yeah, what are they on top of market?

Yeah.

And what are the odds that when you do experience a vacancy and you don't get at least that after two months, three months, that you yourself won't, won't bring it down?

That's right.

So when you look at the stock market, why don't we look at it under that same lens?

Like why don't we go, okay, some of these companies are valued at crazy ass multiples of earnings.

Some of this merry go round that we on seem to be top of market pricing.

Yeah.

They can go up a little bit more, but there's way more downside risk now.

Yeah.

And yet we want to ignore the downside risk.

And that's why you can't just look at a company's stock price and go, okay, that's its value.

You've got to look at things like the multiple being assigned to it, like the value that being assigned to that company based on its earnings.

Right.

Are the PE ratios, for example price to earnings, are those in lining or.

Calculating its intrinsic value?

Yeah.

You've got to figure out some of these nuances as a way to compare them to one another.

Use a cap rate, capitalization rate.

Right.

That's the way.

Compare one like investment to another like investment.

The problem is is everybody wants to look at somebody's stock price and go, oh, that stock's worth $1,000 a share.

So it's a, it's a better investment for me.

You don't know that, dude.

Yeah.

You don't know that.

All of these values in some cases before they go pre market or just, they're all superfluous numbers, somebody pulled out of his ass and said, hey, yeah, that's my value.

And you really have to analyze like is this, is this stock?

Can it handle a disruption in AI?

Right.

And how will this, how will this look on the other side of that disruption?

Yeah.

You know, the AI disruption is a. I know I talk a lot about on the shows now, but I don't know how you avoid it.

I don't know how, I don't know about you guys, but I don't know a world.

And it's maybe because I'm, I used to work in a very public setting with a lot of people around me all the time.

Right.

I was in the office physically.

I always have people around.

Yeah.

And I was in a very locked in ecosystem from a corporate world perspective.

And then now I'm here and I have the autonomy to use my phone, like my laptop and the computers and all this, all the IT products.

I don't know how you avoid.

Even with an ecosystem that's contained, like work from home environments, AI is just part of the equation.

Now you got to know people are using it.

Now the question is, do you care?

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah.

And do employers care?

I don't know.

Right.

And you know what's going to happen next, kids?

Well, it's already in my son's curriculum.

I Know it's in his curriculum.

But think about it this way.

Your son is taught by a teacher.

Right.

But we constantly worry.

I mean, look at Elon Musk's narrative about things that his children learn in school.

Right.

We constantly worry about the social prerogatives of our kids.

And how many times you open your social media app and see another teacher is taking advantage of a kid.

Oh, I mean, these are, these have been.

I don't, I don't know if it's just me, but they've been prevalent in the news feed.

Yeah.

And you're just like, what the.

Well, it's gonna, it's gonna be a tough sell at some point if they can figure out a way where.

It's no secret some teachers are better than other teachers.

Right.

Some, some, some teachers care more, some are more effective.

Are you willing to let AI teach your kid, though?

And then the question is going to become like, well, you can give everyone the same, the same teacher across the board where it's completely fair, or your.

Kid will go to class, learn from AI at your kid's own pace.

Right?

So there really isn't grades at that point.

It's just, how advanced are you?

And you start thinking about it in that context, you're like, okay, so we're gonna spot the Zuckerbergs early.

Yeah, yeah.

And then like these kids trained for the NBA because you were tall.

Your intelligence is measurable, calculated in real time at all times.

I mean, we had no.

And it's going to be able to tell you by the time you're in high school.

Let you know, this is the career path you should be going down because, yeah, I've seen you grow and I see this is what you excel at.

Yeah.

And I have your search because, look, you're going to go home and talk to the same AI about your interest and what you want to do.

You want to.

When I was a kid, you had to read these stupid ass Nintendo magazines to get cheat codes.

Now you just ask AI.

Hey, man.

Up, down.

Left, right, left, right.

AB starts select.

Yeah, about that Capcom Life, you already know, but it's a weird world, man, and I can see it going a lot of different directions.

I think technology always plays a part of it economically.

But so I keep telling people and I keep talking about on the show, you gotta get, you gotta get familiar.

We are all gonna have personal assistance built in.

Real personal assistance.

So what's our value?

What's our value?

Yeah, your value is going to have to be as, as an employee as a W2 employee, I think it's going to come down to how efficient are you?

No, not just in W2 employees.

Everybody.

Like, what's your value?

What.

What's my composition to the world?

I'm in a. I'm in a very cerebral business.

Right between the law and the banking, the finance stuff.

I think my only value is I'm gonna own stuff.

Yeah.

The fact that I own things, that's not cool.

Right, Right.

Like I, I.

You.

Chris is smart.

So what?

AI is smarter.

Chris can help me answer the question.

Yeah, so can I. Yeah, you go, doctor.

Oh, I always spend all this time in residency.

A.I.

Doesn't care.

Yeah, I can.

I think at the end of this, the most valuable people are the people that hold the most relationships.

Relationships are going to be harder to build down the road.

And whoever can protect those relationships and grow those relationships are the ones that are going to probably benefit the most.

I'm trying to think that through.

I don't know that I agree.

Why?

Okay, you want.

We'll do this.

It used to be if you were to date somebody, and now the three of us don't know because, you know, I've never been single.

I married my wife before I even met my wife.

Love you, honey.

Who doesn't listen to the show at all anymore.

But dating the way we did it when we were younger, go to a bar, meet somebody, meet somebody through friends, that ain't the way it happens anymore, dude.

There are very beautiful otherwise, like, desirable people who are very, like, alone because they haven't won the lotto of swiping the right person on a app.

Yeah, well, they also have one foot out the door themselves.

No, I think that's part of how it is now.

No, I think I, I've spoken to plenty of people that if something bothers them on the first date, they'll go.

They're happy to go right back into swiping.

Yeah, but that, that's not them having one foot out the door.

Yeah, that's, that's why.

I mean, ironically.

No, no.

Subconsciously, they have one foot out.

Not, not consciously.

Everything in life is subconsciously that way.

Now, that's why the divorce rates are so high.

Why do you think?

Arranged marriages.

You go into an arranged marriage like you're going to stick with who you're with.

It's more, it's more likely.

Yeah.

To work out.

Statistically, more likely to work out.

That's why maybe the east has it figured out.

That's a whole political can of worms that I am not going to open up, sir.

Why?

Because I'm not going there with you, young man.

Okay.

I mean, I wasn't.

I'm just saying.

It just sounds like you weren't there.

But I think it goes into like the whole, you know, you went into it regardless of the outcome.

I think people right now have too many options.

A lot of options.

Everybody wants the rich guy, everybody wants the model.

That's my point.

That's my point.

People have a lot of options.

But if you, if you've cultivated and, and taken care of a certain relationship, that's.

You're now a trusted source in a world.

Source for what in a world?

Could you give me.

Okay, here, here, I'll say this.

Let's just talk about the podcast, for instance, and the.

In the live streams, right, that nobody.

Watches because I'm not a trusted source yet.

Yet, bro.

I'm pushing 50, bro.

It ain't gonna happen.

But you got to think I would much rather trust someone that I know delivering this data than some AI tool that I don't know how it was manipulated.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, you can go to cloud right now, the, the desktop app.

I think you do this on any one of their plans and literally swipe one button and it'll access your iPhone's health app, give you a full diagnostic interpretation of what it says.

Yeah, you wouldn't.

You're.

Now you're making a sweeping generalization.

I didn't say all.

I didn't say.

I didn't say all things.

I'm giving you one example.

I didn't say all things.

Your cousin is a very handsome doctor.

Yes, he is.

Right.

Would you trust Claude to give you feedback on your health or your cousin in a traditional doctor visit?

Which one do you think you would trust more?

Here's the thing.

Here's the problem with, with AI, right, That I, that I've seen, right?

Unless you prompt it and give it all the data points to make a proper informed decision, right?

It's going to make a decision based on the data points that you give it.

That's a doctor too, though, right?

No, but a doctor will ask follow up questions.

So will AI.

Not all.

Yeah, well, not, not the prompts that I've given.

Rejo, you buying this bullshit argument?

So I work in primary care, right?

So I know how important the relationship of the provider to patient is.

But the AI will just be so much faster and it can get all your data from your phone.

Everyone walks with their phone, takes a shit with their phone, does Taxes with their phone.

You know, your phone has everything.

So it'll pull your health information.

It'll just.

Just run its.

Run its prompt and.

But that would.

That, that requires.

That requires what From.

From you to input into your phone.

Just.

Just giving it that access.

I don't think it requires that much.

You want to see how active somebody is.

Their steps are calculated.

You look at your Apple watch every day, right?

Well, that's.

Yeah, that's because I have an Apple Watch.

I think more and more people are going to have health trackers over time.

I agree.

I.

Look, I've never.

This is going to rub so many people the wrong way.

I love beautiful watches.

I still lust after cool watches.

But I can't imagine a world where I wouldn't wear my Apple watch.

Yeah, I need my Apple watch.

It's just.

I'm plugged in.

I would say the same about you, but you conveniently don't return the text messages in like a fast way even though you wear an Apple watch.

Which you're going to tell me you take it off when you go home.

I do.

No, you don't.

You don't want to see.

You can see the tan line.

I don't need.

I. Dude.

Yeah, I have a tan line.

My tan line is real.

Yours is not.

What?

What makes my tan line not real?

Do this hunt.

Because I actually respond all the time.

Look at that.

Look at that tan line.

Look at that tan line.

Oh, yours is bad.

So you are just not responding to me when you get messages.

What do you mean?

You get text messages from me.

I respond to your messages all the time.

What are you talking about?

Not fast.

You've always had this gripe with people.

Your 10pm response time is very suspect.

Oh, no.

We're actively going to sleep.

Trying to go to sleep earlier.

Actively, huh?

Yeah, yeah, actively trying to go.

I know what you're trying to do.

Try to actively go to sleep.

Hey, baby, you tired?

Me too.

It's a tough sell to the kids.

Hey, you need to go to sleep early.

It's good for you.

Your body needs it.

Why aren't you doing it?

I mean, damn.

Because you gotta close your rings.

Close.

Your rings are close to being closed today.

I haven't closed my rings.

Oh, look, it's all right.

It's already.

Look, it's already on do not disturb sleep mode.

Minus 2.

Mine goes on at 9:30.

10 O'.

Clock.

Yeah, mine's at 9:40.

5.

9:30.

Yeah, 9:30.

After 9:30.

If I respond to you, it's because I'm looking at my phone.

Right.

Which is pretty much all the time.

Yeah.

So.

All right, let's call it a wrap.

It's been a long show.

Yeah.

All right.

If you're listening to us on Apple or Spotify, please head over and leave us an honest five star review.

If you're on YouTube, you've stuck around this long, I hope you're subscribed.

Ring that notification bell.

Hit that, like, button.

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Thank you.

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You got anything?

No.

Thank you, man.

All right, good night, everybody.

Okay, bye.