Facts vs Feelings with Ryan Detrick & Sonu Varghese
This podcast takes a deep dive into the market-moving events to cut through the noise and help you identify what really matters. Facts vs Feelings is hosted by Chief Market Strategist, Ryan Detrick and VP, Global Macro Strategist, Sonu Varghese, and is a product of the Carson Investment Research Team.
The information included herein is for informational purposes and is intended for use by advisors only, and should not be copied, reproduced, or re-distributed without the consent of CWM, LLC. Carson Partners offers investment advisory services through CWM, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Carson Coaching and CWM, LLC are separate but affiliated companies and wholly-owned subsidiaries of Carson Group Holdings, LLC. Carson Coaching does not provide advisory services.
Facts vs Feelings with Ryan Detrick & Sonu Varghese
Live from Chicago with Jim Bianco and Jeff Kilburg (FvF Ep. 191)
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In Episode 191 of Facts vs. Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and Sonu Varghese, Chief Macro Strategist at Carson Group, go live from Chicago with Jeff Kilburg, Founder and CEO & CIO at KKM Financial, and Jim Bianco, President at Bianco Research, for a wide-ranging conversation on where markets stand now and what could matter next. The episode centers on the bull market’s concentration in AI and large-cap tech, the durability of the rally, the role of active management, and why diversification may need to look different than it did a decade ago.
The conversation also digs into earnings momentum, cross-ownership in AI, the impact of higher bond yields on long-duration assets, and whether software is being transformed or disrupted by AI.
From bubbles and breadth to bond yields, oil shocks, and portfolio construction, the episode connects live market commentary to the forces shaping returns underneath the surface.
Jump to:
0:00 — Live Crowd and Big Questions
1:48 — What A Bubble Really Means
6:00 — Earnings Momentum and AI Optimism
12:35 — Circular Ownership and AI ROI
16:05 — AI Replaces Software or Adds Cost
21:55 — 60/40 Is Not Dead Just Different
30:10 — Return Stacking and Better Diversifiers
36:30 — Oil, Inflation Volatility, and Bonds
41:40 — Concentration, Active Picks, And Dispersion
47:20 — Hard-Won Advice and Closing Thanks
Connect with Ryan:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandetrick/
• X: https://x.com/RyanDetrick
Connect with Sonu:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonu-varghese-phd/
• X: https://x.com/sonusvarghese?lang=en
Questions about the show? We’d love to hear from you! factsvsfeelings@carsongroup.com
Welcome to the Facts versus Feelings Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Dietrich, and I'm joined by my co-host, Sony Varghis. Cutting through the noise each week with Ryan Dietrich, our chief market strategist, and Sonic Vargis, our chief macro strategist, taking out the boring and helping investors focus on what really matters. Sonu, myself, the entire Carson team were in Chicago, the Windy City, for our second quarter summit with our incredible Carson advisors. Sonu and I were kicking around the idea of doing like a live Facts versus Feelings while we're in Chicago. And by the way, Chicago is Sonu's hometown, so we had um some inside information on where we should go, what we should do. So we found a the Swift Tavern right across the street from Wrigley Field. We did a live version of Facts vs. Feelings open up to anyone but one of the come, uh, some or Carson advisors made it, industry friends made it, just a lot of industry people from Chicago came on over. And when we thought about it, we said, you know, we want to make it feel like Chicago, we're right across the street from Wrigley, where we went to the Cubs game as soon as we were done. Swift Tavern was awesome, they did a great job. And our friends over Wisdom Tree, by the way, sponsored the whole thing, so Charlotte Wisdom Tree. We were thinking, who do we want to have join us? I guess my ditco was not available, so we had to go. Uh Jeff Gilbert over at KKM Financial, and uh also a CNBC contributor, founder of KKM Financial and CIO. A big fan of Jeff, watched him for a long time. And then we also had Jim Bianco. Jim Bianco is a legend in our in our industry, he's the founder over Bianco Research. Uh both of them, along with Sonia and myself, we had a lot of fun. We talked about all the stuff that's happened out there, so many different angles and things we talked about. Uh it was fun. Um we had some laughs, but I think the crowd enjoyed it. And uh this week we want to share with all of you. So without further ado, here is episode 191. We are inching closer to 200 of Carson's Facts versus Feelings live from Swift Tavern in Chicago. And we are live, episode 191 of Carson's Facts versus Feelings. Let's hear it, Chicago.
SPEAKER_01So we've never done one like this. Sona, where are we again? What's the name of this place? Swift Tavern, right opposite Wrigley Field. So thank you all. We have quite a crowd here, by the way. Yeah. Um, well, I've had a couple beers. Sona, why don't you start? Yeah, it's just warner for me. But uh so we have Jeff Kilberg here with us and Jim Bianco. Thank you guys.
SPEAKER_03Pleasure to be here, guys. Go cubbies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, looking forward to it. And Jeff almost didn't make it.
SPEAKER_03It was close. It was touch and go. I think Kelsey had what it was at 42% and ticked up a little bit. Yeah, but we got here. We got here, Sonu.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, send us a message. I don't know. Tim this morning said your plane had a little issue, but you made it. And Jim, your ride was smoother. You're you're right up the road, right? Or down the road.
SPEAKER_09Uh well, I could have I could have walked. I lived this close to Wrigley Field.
SPEAKER_02You're just rubbing my face now, Jim.
SPEAKER_07Everybody out here, can you hear us okay? Good enough? Okay. All right. Well, what do we want to talk about? Sony, what do we want to start with? What are we gonna do today?
SPEAKER_01I thought we'd start with politics and religion. That's what Jim wanted to start with.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I thought we'd start with our paychecks, politics and religion, and then we'll get into the sticky issues that we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_07Spencer Pratt, no Spencer Pratt. We can go that route. Stop socks. Yeah. I see let's let's start with this.
SPEAKER_01Uh, are we in a bubble? Jim? Yeah, are we are we in a bubble?
SPEAKER_09Is there a definition for one?
SPEAKER_01That's all I was waiting for you. You can define it.
SPEAKER_09Um yes, and bubbles are the best things to invest in because they go straight up and you make a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01Um and to be clear, bubble doesn't mean it's going to burst immediately.
SPEAKER_09Everybody thinks bubble means it's going to pop you know in about two hours and then the market's going to go straight down. Bubble can also mean it's going to go straight up for three years and double or triple or quadruple. So I'll say yes because I think that eventually this rally will end in an extreme unsustainable position, but that might not be for several months or a couple of years. It doesn't have to be Tuesday, is what why I would say yes.
SPEAKER_07So, Jeff, you've been bullish, and I will give you some flowers. I believe it was March 30th. You were on um either the exchange or power lunch with Kelly Evans. So you said the low was here, and just like those sirens are going off right now, people thought you were nuts when you said that. I was with you. Why did you think the lows were near, and are you still pretty optimistic?
SPEAKER_03Well, it was a lonely view, but you were side by side, and we were hip to hip on that view. And I think it really kind of took to the fact that what do we see in earnings? Let's rewind. Remember Andy Jassy? Remember when he talked about we have quantified the ROI, meaning the capex that we're spending, which used to be speculative in 24, 25. Once he realized that we are not no longer speculative, we are actually matching ROI. Everything we spend, we have a match. We have customers waiting. That was a couple months ago. And then we all of a sudden had the Iranian war, which threw in some volatility. We saw the VIX pop up and we saw a 10% correction. But on March 30th, when I did take that sand in the line, I saw it as a great opportunity because of the earnings season. And what happened? Earnings came in just gangbusters. So that earnings. It's going vertical. Like forward estimates are going vertical. Remarkable, Sony. So that's why I was so bullish and I had comfort. And we looked at some of the blue chip boring names, but also we started in March, we started kind of dumpster dive on a little bit of names, and back in late March, it was an opportunity to look at some of those quantum names. Like, believe it or not, you can't say dumpster dive and IBM in the same sentence. But when we talked about just buying IPM added to the position two weeks ago, it's up 35%. I know we had a little bit of profit taking today. You had a great tweet today. Today was almost the 10th.
SPEAKER_07Almost.
SPEAKER_03Almost. Almost. But that's why I was bullish, and that's why I remain optimistically cautious, but at the same time, bullish.
SPEAKER_07So I don't know if I gave a shout out, Swift Tavern. That's where we are. Did I say that or not? We're at the Swift Tavern. Hey, shout out to Swift Tavern, right across from Wrigley Field. Part of the poker group. Yeah. Oh, Rob Katz and Kevin Bain. Chicago we go. We'll be going um to the rooftops after this with our amazing Carson advisors in a little bit. Uh, Jim, what is um one thing you're watching that maybe other people aren't talking about? This kind of quiet out there. What are you watching that we need to know about?
SPEAKER_09Um, I'll go off of what Jeff was talking about and about earnings and about other income. Um, Amazon and Microsoft collectively made $50 billion of other income based on their holdings of um anthropic. To put that in perspective, you were mentioning about earnings going up. Year over year, earnings are up 17%. The anthropic holdings other income was 10 of that, I'm sorry, 27%, was 10 of that 27%. It's incredible. That number could be triple in the second quarter because anthropic had a $380 billion market cap uh valuation in Q1, and now it's 965. So those were those those equity positions are going to get revalued higher. This is part of the reason why all these are going up, and I'll throw it out this one at you. Remember last year we were all getting worried about all the cross-ownerships of all these tech companies, and even I tweeted out you know. All the circularity charts. Yes, the circularity charts, and even I tweeted out the one with the um of the power strip plugged into itself to try and explain how they this is turning out to be the best thing for 2026 because anthropic is going ballistic, they all own it, and all of their earnings are going straight up right now. So, what's interesting is if you look at the metrics in the market, the valuations are not going stratospheric. Now, they've never been cheap, but they're not going stratospheric because the earnings are going up as fast as this market is right now.
SPEAKER_07Well, what's going stratospheric? Where's Derek? Shout out to Wisdom Tree for sponsoring, give them a hand. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Wisdom Tree. He was there. Yeah, go ahead, Sonic.
SPEAKER_01No, to that point about circularity. I mean, just for our audience too, so it's like Nvidia pays uh OpenAI $100 billion, open AI gives that money to Cisco, and then Cisco goes and buys NVIDIA chips, yeah, right? And then one person's Capex is another person's income, and that you know, that's recycled into CapEx. How long is this sustainable?
SPEAKER_09As long as these companies continue to show the promise that they're going that uh AI is going to fulfill its transformational change. Now, that's fancy, that's a bunch of words. Let me explain it this way. Uh, I'm very bullish on AI, and I think we're early on in the process. And I'll use an analogy that I've been using, the iPhone. Why do you all pay, why do we all pay $1,100 for one of these things?
SPEAKER_01Dietrix got the Google something. Not the iPhone.
SPEAKER_02I'm a Pixel guy.
SPEAKER_09We were really getting it. We were friends until now, weren't we? Yes. You're a green bubble now, so I'm not gonna have to listen to you anymore. But why do we pay $1,100 for a phone or $1,000 for a phone when we don't even make phone calls on it? And the answer is because it's about 15 different devices at once. It's a tape recorder, it's a camera, you know, it's a calculator, it's a map, and you could go on and on. I don't have to buy all those other products. So I read I put all that money back into the iPhone. Now, if you look at a corporate computer, a quick the average corporate computer in America has about twelve hundred dollars a month of SaaS software on it. You have Windows, you have uh Office, you have Outlook, you have probably customer relations monitor, you have other compliance software in your in your IT department is spending hundreds, if not a thousand dollars more a month for each corporate computer in all that SaaS. Salesforce service now being some of the biggest winners. What if I can replace all of that with AI? What if I never need to use Outlook again? I just have a little context box and I say, here's some data, make a table and send it to Ryan. And there, I'm done. I don't have to open Excel and spend 10 minutes formatting it. I don't have to go find your email in Outlook and go send it to you. I just have to just say it and it's done. I don't have to buy all that other software. AI is worth hundreds of dollars a month to every company. If it doesn't fulfill that promise, and I have to buy Windows and buy Office and buy Outlook and buy Salesforce, and then they come to me and say, and you need AI, that's a $20 a month product. And then it's a massive overbuild. I think they're gonna fulfill that promise and that that AI is gonna be that transformational. And that's why I think we're in early days with this.
SPEAKER_07So we're gonna have a question for Jeff. John, get up here. You're at the bar. Come on, John. Come here.
SPEAKER_03One of our the bartender is very popular.
SPEAKER_07Come here, Jen. Come on up. Watch your step right there. I tripped on that. John's gonna ask, even though we're doing this, first introduce yourself, sir, and ask Jeff a question.
SPEAKER_08I'm John Kozick. I'm in the Carson Welch, Naperville office. How about that? This is why Carson's fun, because we just bring our advisors up. Let's start asking questions. All right, when is this gonna end? The AI. The AI.
SPEAKER_07I thought you were gonna ask him about the Bears, by the way. John's a huge bear. We'll talk bears next. Wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_09Central or north, if you're in Naperville. That's the way we have to define Naperville.
SPEAKER_08We're north. We're north. Yep. You're next. That's my Naperville.
SPEAKER_09We weren't Ville South, right? You're okay. You're North.
SPEAKER_03So to answer the question, John, to answer the question about AI, I don't think we're going to a Cubs game today, which we're very excited about being up on the rooftop. And thank you, Carson Weld. But I think we're in the second or third inning. And why? He talked about the promise of AI. I'm talking about the last earnings season, why we had expectations of 131%.1%, and why it came in at 27% year-over-year growth that blew it out of the water. Why? Because we have realized revenue. We have tangible revenue. We have these data centers going up everywhere on Earth and in space. But quick question for the crowd, maybe for you. Does anyone know what the average year-over-year growth on a 10-year average? What's the average year-over-year growth? No, you're not supposed to answer that. No year-over-year growth of what? Of earnings. Oh, for all earnings. For all earnings. SP 500. Is it 5%, 10%, 20%? What's the average on it? It's 8.4%. So we just had a 27.3% earnings. I wasn't a math major at University of Notre Dame, but what is that? Is that three X? That's good. It's pretty good. So that's that's my answer is that we are still going because now, just like Andy Jassy at Amazon, he can show if we spend extra in CapEx. Google just raised money to spend more in CapEx today. It did. And it got oversubscribed. But if we can identify that ROI in a shorter term line versus the speculative building, that's where this thing really has a couple more legs.
SPEAKER_07All right. Shout out to John. Thanks, John. Thanks, John. All right, we're going to take a little turn. This is the stuff I think is interesting. Hopefully, you guys agree. Notre Dame, you were there in 93. Tell us about that loss. We talked about a little bit. It's a little more personal, but I know, I know. Peel that band-aid off. Are you still mad? Not about anything.
SPEAKER_03You know, you worked in, tell me about Notre Dame. I smiled and I said, talk about the loss. And I almost fell out of my chair. 1993, I was a freshman Notre Dame. We had an unbelievable team. We had four first-round draft picks from Jim Flanagan. Who were the four? Do you remember? Jim Flanagan, Jeff Burris, Aaron Taylor, first round draft pick one for Lombardi award winner. We had some unbelievable, but we are you their advisors now?
SPEAKER_02Are you their advisors? No, I'm not an advisor. I'm an asset. You're not advisor. You help advisor that. You help advisor. You're right. You're right.
SPEAKER_03But we played Florida State at home, beat them 31-24. It was the game of the century. It was the first ever ESPN game day. Chris Fowler said, you know, wouldn't it be cool to take a little table and go up to South Bend? So they set up the table, they did a one-hour show, and that's how game day started. Now it's obviously evolved into multi-million dollar kicks by Pat. But at the end of the day, we won that game. The subsequent week, we had a little bit of letdown, lost to Boston College. And this is pre-BCS, pre-playoffs, and they crowned, and I use the word crown, Bobby Bowden the national championship. So yes, I am a little surly and I have an orange bowl ring on here instead of a national championship ring, but I felt like that was a compliment at the same time a little jab in my ribs, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_07No, no, I well, no, congrats. What position did you play? What were you?
SPEAKER_03I recruited a linebacker and Coach Holtz, who just passed away. God bless Coach Holtz. Um, he lied to every linebacker he recruited. They put 75 pounds away and played center. So I was lucky enough to have Coach Holtz, and uh all the things that he taught us have kind of passed along like kids. You even hear me probably talk about in CNBC sometimes. So uh forever indebted.
SPEAKER_07One of my favorite Holtz quotes, I use it all the time. Life is 10% what happens to you, 90% of you respond to it. Did he really use that? I mean, I've seen it. He really said something like that, probably.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I mean, he gave us teaching points, and it was amazing because on Monday he he'd you just tear you apart, you're the worst team in the country. Tuesday, we're getting better, Wednesday's be okay. Thursday, we're looking good. Friday, we're the best team in the country. We'd win on Saturday, on Monday again, we're the worst team in the country. So he was absolute mental warfare. But some of the things he talked about, and we talk about this in investing all the time, and here we are with advisors in the room talking about June. We're in Q2, repositioning, rebalancing. Are we in a bubble or not a bubble? But the acronym that he used was W-I-N, and it stood for what's important now. And I I teach my kids that I talk to the advisors and family officers we work with, but what's important now is applicable on and off the field, and it's so true to use that in life.
SPEAKER_07Now that was awesome. Go ahead, Sony. We've changed that to WTF now, and you know, 30 years later.
SPEAKER_01I thought it's FOMO now, but no, we were talking to a colleague Barry for during lunch today. I mean, to that point about when you have kids, don't sweat the little stuff. Yeah. Right? Think about the big picture here. So, but Jim, you kind of laid out, I think safe to say, the bear case for software. Yeah. Right? Yes. But software has been making a comeback.
SPEAKER_03So we just added a couple software names in our Gary ETF, and I kind of got ridiculed, made fun of, but we did some aka dumpster dial.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I mean, that that's the promise of what what's AI supposed to do is it's supposed to replace software and make it easier. Now, the software companies could be on the leading edge of that, or maybe the or maybe the labs, the frontier labs that are producing AI will be on the leading edge of it. But to me, what are you going to do with AI? Now, let me be clear on my terminology here. There's two words you use with AI there's generative AI and ingenic AI. Generative AI is your Google search on steroids. Ask a question, get an answer. Everybody's doing that. But what's taken hold, why we're talking about AI constantly this year, has been ingenic AI. Let me give a simple definition of ingencai AI. Take over my computer and do something for me. I want you to do make a file, send it to Ryan. That's it. And I actually do that right now with my computer. That's what Ingenic AI is. It will perform tasks on your computer, not just spit out an answer for you. And it's going to compete directly with software. Now, I think the biggest software companies that are going to have the problems are going to be some of the privately held companies. And I'll zero in on one software company that I have paid for 33 years a lot of money to, and that's Bloomberg. Bloomberg charges you $3,000 a month in order to use their service, $2,500 a month or so. Um, I've used it for 32 years, and for 32 years I've heard there's always gonna be a Bloomberg killer out there. And for 32 years I thought, no, there's not. But now I'm starting to think there might. And Bloomberg.
SPEAKER_01I think every day I see something on X about perplexity coming out of the Bloomberg killer, but yeah, no, I mean I use it all the time.
SPEAKER_09And it does, it does recreate a lot of the things. And this is what's gonna happen, uh, just conceptually speaking. A bunch of programmers are gonna leave Bloomberg if they haven't already. They're gonna call up Sequoia or they're gonna call up A16Z, and they're gonna say, give me some funding, give me a year, we're gonna rebuild the Bloomberg terminal. And then they're gonna come to people like me and go, We have a knockoff of the Bloomberg Terminal, and I'll say, Why should I listen to you? And they'll say, Because it's $150 a month. I go, now I'll listen to you. Uh and that's gonna be the that's gonna be the answer. And I'll conclude with this remark. The um this chief technology officer of JP Morgan was speaking at a conference in February I was at in New York City, talking about this exact issue. And he said, JP Morgan has $19 billion spend per year on technology, and was asked this exact question about whether or not they would wind up spending less. And then he said something to the effect of, well, we have good relationships with our technology partners. We love them, they give us great service and stuff. I'd say I see a hard time for us to switch. And the guy who was sitting next to me leaned over and said, he's about to be a former CTO if he continues with that kind of thinking, because he's gonna have to explain, they're really that good that we're gonna continue to pay them $19 billion a year. I don't know if anybody's gonna be that good. So yeah, I'm I think that AI is coming after software. It now, software could be part of that conclusion. Some of them are trying to be it. Otherwise, um, if it doesn't, if you still have to buy, I'll come back to what I said before. If you have to still buy all the software you buy now and they say, and buy this other thing, your budget is very limited to what you could spend on AI. But if it's like the iPhone and it's like, why do I only spend that much money? Because you don't buy a camera, you don't buy a tape recorder, you don't buy a video recorder, you buy this one thing and it does it all. Sure, I'll spend a thousand dollars for a phone.
SPEAKER_07So I'll give you the one second. Um, we sounded okay. Everything sounded good. Okay. Um, shout out to our producer Podpony, who flew in from Omaha to be here. So if you um if you need help with the podcast, look them up, Podpony. They do a great job. Um, this is episode 191 of Carson's Facts versus Feelings. Um, do we have a title like Live from Chicago? I guess. Yeah, I guess talking with Jeff and Jim. Jeff and Jim, live from Chicago. So Live from Wrigley. Live from Wrigley. So give us the other side. You you said you, and you by the way, this is not a recommendation, especially from Carson's behalf, but if you bought some stocks, mention it. People like to hear that while you liked it, but not a recommendation on our behalf.
SPEAKER_03No, not a recommendation. I managed two ETFs. We actually bought it, it was documented, it's in the ETF Gary. And we actually talked about it on Power Lunch recently. And a quick congratulations to the latest CMBC contributor. Well deserved, Ryan Dietzek. Welcome to the family. Yeah. Wonderful to have you in the family.
SPEAKER_07And you've been very you, a couple, you and Jay, a couple of guys are very cordial and kind, and thank you for your support. It means a lot. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Great people uh like yourself. Welcome to the family. But when I talk about the other side, I'm not gonna push back that Bloomberg is probably you know cooked because they because they charge three grand a month. Somebody who charges $75 a month is a different example of why I think and why we just bought last month we bought Oracle ServiceNow and Salesforce. And I know there's some profit taking today, but we bought those three names.
SPEAKER_01If you look at, let's look at the IGV or pick a I think Jeff, real quick, when you buy these names, what's your time horizon as well?
SPEAKER_03It all depends. So we actually run a quant mental model, so that screening process kind of helped us, but we're pretty active in that to save the point. Could be a couple weeks, could be a couple months. But when we bought that, we looked at those three specific AI or those software names where AI is actually gonna fortify them after the washout. And no doubt about it, Oracle went up and we saw it come down 60% off its time. So we decided it was time to buy. Because if you think of it, look at the three stocks I talked about. It's a three-layer cake where we see Oracle down.
SPEAKER_07Wait, wait, three-layer cake? What are the layers? Chocolate, vanilla, chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate, triple chocolate.
SPEAKER_03But Oracle's on the bottom, right? We talk about in the middle, the service now, and then the sales force is the forward-facing layer where or the top layer. But at the end of the day, those have performed well. Where I see AI fortifying those three companies, they have to get better, otherwise, you're gonna lose customers. Where there is some replacement, that's why we're being very selective. We're not just you know buying IGV straight out. And if you look at the dispersion between semiconductors and software, it's been obliterated. What's the delta? It's like an 80% difference just year to date. So that's where we're We've been considerate and we did look for that drawdown, which was historic in nature to see.
SPEAKER_01So is it almost binary then the way you describe it? Like either you're a winner or you're a loser. And if you're losing you're a loser, you're down, you're gone.
SPEAKER_03I think that's a pretty fair point, and you're gonna see some tombstones when we get out of this soft software apocalypse.
SPEAKER_07So I'm looking out into the sea of people here and give yourselves a hand again for being here in Chicago. Thank you. So Sona and I have the honor to work on, I think, I'm biased, the best advanced research team out there. Barry Gilbert, come on up here. I bet you get Barry a hand. Yeah, Barry. Barry's on our team. I thought your exact title, so tell us. But Barry is he's our boss. He's our boss. That's true. I report to Barry, so I gotta kiss his ass a little bit up here. Um is 6040 dead, Barry?
SPEAKER_04It's uh I see Jim nodding his head, but uh is it 6040 dead? It needs to change. I mean, I've I've seen things out there that say it needs to radically change, needs to go upside down, backwards, it's gonna be completely different. You don't need bonds anymore at uh at all. I I gotta talk until don't don't get a tall one. I don't think I can talk that long. Uh and so it's changed. I don't think it's dead. I don't think the idea behind it is is dead on being able to target a certain amount of risk. I think the uh the period where bonds provided negative correlations where they were good, where uh you had bonds for a while that people were treating like uh stocks. People were buying bonds for price appreciation and they were buying stocks for for yields. That's dead. Um, I don't think it means the 6040 is dead. I think it means, like everything else, that it needs to evolve.
SPEAKER_01Actually, Jim, you know, you're I I don't know if it's safe to call you a bond guy, but no, I'm a bond guy. You're a bond guy, right? Is that still a role for bonds in a portfolio?
SPEAKER_09Well, it yes, it there is a role for bonds in a portfolio, but you got to start with a basic question. What do you think the expected return is of the market? Now, if you're like the average retail investor I see, it's um, you know, the base, the base case, the risk-free rate of return in the stock market is 20%. And then after that, we kind of layer on top of it, you're gonna have a hard time to make the case for bonds. But if you take a more rational view, you said that earnings was about 8%, isn't that been about also about the stock market's return? And with valuations being high, that you're looking at a longer-term view of around 7% over the next several years return in the stock market. I know that's disappointing. Uh yeah, I didn't say a month, I've said a year and stuff. Then if you look at a risk-free low volatility option of five in that perspective, it definitely does have a role to be played there. Typically, over a long period of time, bonds will return you whatever the yield is, maybe a little bit more if you do well with active management. Um and a quick word about bonds the majority of active managers in fixed income can beat the index, where the majority where the vast majority cannot in equities. And that's also that's about the construction of the bond indexes versus the construction of the stock index. So if bonds can return you five and a half percent and you have a 7%-ish, 8% target for the stock market, yeah, there's a roll for bonds. If you think I'm owed 20 every year, then yeah, you're gonna say there's no role for bonds.
SPEAKER_07Jeff, you chime in. Corey, come on up, we're gonna get Corey's opinion too.
SPEAKER_03So on Corey, real quickly, I started my career at the Chicago Board of Option Exchange and a Mike Crown Pitt, believe it or not. But I walked across the street to the Chicago Board of Trade, became a member in 1998. So I traded bonds for over a dozen years, had a floor operation there. And I think Jim is right. I think Barry's absolutely right. The bond, the way bonds were reflected in the portfolio, that diversification they brought, that has changed. Look in 2022, when the SP was down 20%, you saw EGG down as well. So that offsetting, that reverse correlation doesn't work. So I'm a big believer that you need to be diversified, but the diversification, because it's probably bringing another subject here, but it's not just the Mag 7. There's $14 trillion companies probably knocking on 15 any second. So I think 6040, to Barry's point, has to be augmented for sure.
SPEAKER_07Well, Corey, I'm not even sure what the question is. Diversification portfolio. Sono probably asking. Sono asking the perspective in that beer. Look at that hair. Who the heck you are? Look at that hair.
SPEAKER_01As Corey comes on, I mean, one thing we've been preaching for years now in our outlets is diversify diversifiers. I'm pretty sure I stole that from Corey.
SPEAKER_06So I stole it from Cliff Ask this. I've been my whole career has just been plagiarizing Cliff. So that's what that's where I go. What is the question? I was in the back ordering a beer when I got called up here.
SPEAKER_01Talk about diversifying diversifiers, and you know, within the context of bonds, like the obviously we believe there's a role for bonds to play in a portfolio. Don't throw out bonds. But what else should be in there? How should we think about you know the 6040 equivalent or instead of 6040, what's next? Yeah, I'll start by saying, and I think, Jim, this is what you were saying.
SPEAKER_07Your name, title, where you are.
SPEAKER_06That's a that's a good start.
SPEAKER_07To Mike right up there.
SPEAKER_06And Mike right up here. It's like I've never podcasted before. Corey Hofstein. You can talk about your podcast. Yeah, Cory Hofstein. I am uh one of the co-founders and portfolio managers at Return Stack DTFs. Grateful to be here. Thank you for having me. So, Jim, if I heard you correctly, I was in the back ordering a beer, so maybe I didn't hear you correctly. But you were talking about, right, the return of bonds is the yield. And that's true for when you buy an individual bond. It's true when you buy a bond fund. And I think what's really important here that gets missed when people talk about bonds being diversifiers is over the right horizon, bonds are a liability matcher. I think people got so focused on the 60-40 they forgot that that that 40 is really about matching the liabilities and needs of investors. And so people, I talk to advisors all the time who say, Oh, I don't want duration, I don't want duration. And I say, You're telling me you don't want to buy intermediate-term bonds right now and lock in that nominal return for the bigger. Say if you're sending a kid to college in seven years, yeah. Absolutely. And you and with core bonds right now, you can lock in a 5% return in the next 10 years. And no, that's pretty much statistically guaranteed. And when you put it that way, a lot of people go, okay, over that right intermediate horizon bucket, it actually does start to look appealing. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't also think about adding other things to the portfolio, right? Uh at return stacked ETFs, our whole purpose for being is to find ways, better ways for investors to add alternatives to the portfolio. So things like gold, which I know you guys incorporate as a potential inflation hedge or debasement hedge. Or it's simply because my name means gold. There you go. That's a good enough reason. Uh manage futures as well. And and what we believe is all these things are great in a portfolio, but instead of trying to make room by selling stocks and bonds, it's a little bit better if you stack them on top, hence the name return stacking. So, yeah, we're a large proponent of keeping the base that everyone's familiar with, and stocks and bonds have a very good use case, but you can you can layer other things on top to make the whole portfolio more resilient.
SPEAKER_01And shout out to Wisdom Tree and our friend Jeremy Schwartz as well. We're big users of their similar concept, efficient core funds, which you've used for several years in our portfolios, and we're big believers in return stacking as well. So thank you, Corey.
SPEAKER_09Thank you, Corey. Give me a hand. Hey, Corey, we all make very good careers stealing from cliff assness, too.
SPEAKER_07So I was gonna use the I've said this many times, but the world of finance is the only place where if you take it from one person, it's called stealing. But if you take it from everyone, it's called research. So I've made a career for 26 years doing that. Uh, you were nodding your head a couple times on like bonds, diversification. Chime in whatever you want to chime in on, Jeff.
SPEAKER_03I think it's just the conversation of diversification and how it's changed so much, you know. Oh, going back and dating myself to before the great financial crisis, to COVID, to interest rates popping, all of a sudden, you know, the acute volatilities and tariffs as well. I think diversification, understanding, I think that's where I know advisors are having conversations. Their clients are just looking at you know the the emotion, the feeling. See what I did there, Sonu? The feeling in the tape.
SPEAKER_07Nice, nice t-shirt, by the way. How about that? Back versus feeling.
SPEAKER_03A little snug, double X. We gotta push ourselves back from the plate a little bit. But nonetheless, I think that's a diversification, and I think that's just uh really applicable. What's important now? Conversation, what actually is a diversification you're obtaining in your bond and equity exposure.
SPEAKER_07So let's do something, let's take take a turn for a second. Both of you guys run your own companies, right? How do you help financial advisors? And then one more time, maybe tell us how financial advisors can leverage the cool stuff you do. We can start, Jim, maybe work our way back.
SPEAKER_09All right. So I actually have two businesses. The first business is a research business, Bianco Research. So we write research, macro research with a fixed income bent. Um, and we provide it as a service to institutional investors and have now uh for 28 years. Uh three years ago, I started a second business. I manage an ETF index, and there's a tracker ET. I'm sorry, I manage a fixed income index. It is a total return fixed income index because of what I said earlier. I do believe that active management can outperform an index. Uh, and with my partners at Wisdom Tree, that's how I wound up being here, we have a uh an ETF that tracks it. Uh Wisdom Tree WTBN is uh what tracks it. But that's kind of the two um you know buckets that I will work. We we do a lot of research, we do a lot of um um macro research, we do a lot of fixed income research, and then we do provide a product uh on the other side. How are we doing time-wise?
SPEAKER_07What what what how long have we been going? We've been going three plans. We got time. We got the fifth, we'll do 15 more minutes or so. Um tell us about your stuff. What do you do? How do you help advisors to from that point on?
SPEAKER_03So after nearly 15 years of having a floor operation, uh Chicago Board Trade, which went public in 2002, then got gobbled up by the Chicago Merc Talk Exchange. Luckily, I was a uh member, I had a seat. But in 2012, I formed KKM Financial, Kilberg Capital Management, misspelled by design. Uh we KCM does a roll off the tongue like KKM does, but we're a boutique asset management firm. So three verticals. We take in our option overlay business. We work with a lot of family offices. One of the family offices we can talk about is the Magnus family office out of Dender. If you remember Gary Magnus' dad and John Malone did that Liberty Media ATT deal. Uh secondly, we do dynamic stock selection. We have two ETFs, the Ascension Ford ETF, which is a large cap value. Thank you. No, no, thank you. Uh ticker ESA. And then we we did a 321 conversion. If you're not familiar with 3v1 conversion, that's been a really utilized tool by a lot of family offices, which allows for diversification. That's what I will say. It allows for diversification. So one of our large family offices is seated that in December, trading at the NASDAQ ticker symbol Gary. So that's been great. And then lastly, um, you know, we've been a portfolio consultant to NCapital, which is Tom Rickett's shop here, who owns the Cubs. We've also been a portfolio consultant on a UIT to port uh to New Vene investments before TIA craft bought them and stopped working with third-party managers. But we're a boutique asset manager firm, about a billion dollars under management, and I love working at advisors as well as some of the family offices.
SPEAKER_07So one more, one more here. Um, we do a lot of media, right? I know the three of us do, and some of you does too. Um, I want a funny media story. I'll tell mine first, but I'm sure you have one. Uh Brian Sullivan to me is hilarious. So I was doing a live thing with Soli probably in 2024. I'd always worked with him in my basement before doing it. I was in New York City. And I don't know why I said it, but I did. Live on air, Sully and he's like, Ryan Dietrich, it's great that you're here in person. I look right at him and I said, Sully, this is probably the first time I've talked to you in three years with pants on. I don't know. I said it. We both laughed the next five minutes on air. We couldn't even talk. Do you have any funny, like, you know, kind of live media just stuff happens?
SPEAKER_03I do, and and uh I've been a contributor uh hard to believe for about 18 years. Wow, that's impressive. You were one of the first ones. When did they even start that stuff?
SPEAKER_07I mean good question.
SPEAKER_03But I know my wife wasn't impressed because we had two kids, we had two boys that were four and two years old, and then the CNBC had me out in studio for one full week a month. And I used to do Power Lunch with Tyler Matheson and Sue Herrera, who are just awesome, awesome humans. And I'd do like three segments during that show. And Tyler Matheson, who is human gold, Sony really means gold.
SPEAKER_01There you go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I love that. I didn't know that until today. But Tyler Matheson, as soon as we were about to go to camera, he'd ask me, So killer, what do you think that gold's doing? I say, Oh, you know, it looks like the next target technically is as soon as we go off camera, he'd look at me in the eye and say, Well, fool them again. Great job. And that was his like close out, like we fooled him again. And it was so close to like being on air, I was like, Holy crap, that's close. But that was a fun story that I can tell. Is this are we being recorded right now? I'm not sure. Yes, so are we?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think so. Four percent standards. Jim, do you have any funny media, live media experiences? With the Rickster all the time. There's gotta be something.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, the one I'm thinking of though is early 2000s. George Bush is the president, and I'm on one of the afternoon shows on CNBC, and I'm in Chicago, and I'm at their Chicago bureau, and I sit down, and I sit down and they wire me up, and just seconds before we're gonna go on, they said, We're gonna take the president live. He's gonna start talking. And then the producer comes into my ear and says, Okay, can you sit tight for a few minutes while we take the president? And I said, Sure, no problem. So I turned to the cameraman in Chicago, I said, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. And he said, Fine, go to the bathroom. So I go to the bathroom, I come back, I come back. In other words, I left for for like three minutes. I come back, and then I hear the cameraman go, he's back. And I go, What do you mean he's back? He goes, They were waiting for you to come back to dump out of the president. And I was like, So the president's filler for me is basically what you just said. That's my that's my story.
SPEAKER_07Ryan, you've been bumped for the president a few times. Bumped by the past four presidents. I said, Oh, there's my claim to fame, bumped by the past four. So if I got 10 minutes, what else we want to hit on here?
SPEAKER_01Actually, maybe to connect to that bond story, one thing that kills bonds or kills bond returns, inflation volatility. Yes, and so let's talk about obviously the Strait of Hormuz. Why isn't oil at $150 a barrel? Yet. Yeah. Oh yet, okay. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_09Uh the answer I would give you is there is a perception in the market right now that this Strait of Hormuz will be closed for a period of several days to a couple more weeks. The president said it maybe Labor Day. Labor Day today, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, he actually if you parse it.
SPEAKER_09If you if you if you saw the context, he really meant memorial. He really meant Independence Day, but he said Labor Day. He was he's getting old. All right, let's just put it that way.
SPEAKER_07But since March Again, that's not Carson's opinion. Yes, yeah, that he's getting old.
SPEAKER_09That's my opinion. If you can't call an 80-year-old guy old, who can you call old at this point? Um so since March, everybody's thought several days to a couple weeks, the strait will open. So we are now down about 10 to 12 million barrels a day of oil that's not going through the strait. We've made up that gap, that shortfall, by running inventories down aggressively.
SPEAKER_01And this is through the in the US, the SPR, the strategic petroleum.
SPEAKER_09But commercial inventories are going down, Japan is running down their SPR, China is uh is imports are much lower, so they're running down their inventories. So we've made up that gap by running down inventories. Why are we doing that? Because at a level, you can argue that's reckless. What happens when we run out of inventories? We're gonna be we're gonna be screwed. There's a technical word for you, because nobody believes it's gonna be long. Sure, right. They think it's going to end soon. It's transitory. So we need to get through this period over a short period of time. Now, if the strait does open and the oil flow starts to move, then it's okay. Otherwise, I'll give you a sobering statistic. Last year we consumed, we being the planet, about 105 million barrels a day. 20-ish or so was the US, 17 was China, and then everybody else after that. Right now we're running at 95. World GDP in 2025 was 111 million barrels, 111 trillion dollars. When was 90 95 million barrels is what we were doing in 2014. We had 80 trillion in world GDP. We have an extra 31 trillion dollars in GDP because of higher energy. If we're going to have this low a level of production, it is going to eventually have a big problem for the world economy. Now I'm using the word world because it's going to show up worst in Asia, it's then going to show up second worst, probably it's the it's the it's Asia too, but India, then Europe. What least hit will be the US, but we'll all suffer from higher prices.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we still have what 425 nationwide average for gasoline before the says before the war it was 280.
SPEAKER_09Right, right, right. Yeah, you know, the thing that the US is is the good news is you might under the dire scenario, you might see gasoline prices in a national average of well above 5% under the dire scenario. But the good news in the US is none of your gas stations are gonna have a sign that says out of gas. In Europe, they're gonna have the same prices, and the signs are gonna say, and we have no gas. Try this guy down the street. And that's so that's gonna be the difference between US and everybody else, at least initially.
SPEAKER_07So Swift Tavern, how are we doing? I was there our friends of our friends of Wisdom Tree pre prepaid for drinks. So everybody get another drink because this is like we've been buying up. Get on up there while we're doing it.
SPEAKER_09Can I throw a question at you three guys? Let's do it. Okay, yep. All right. And I and to our hosts first and then to Jeff. 49% of the stock market is is AI related, and that is the most concentrated it has been. Arguably, I mean, if you go with Michael Hartnick of B of A, he's putting out statistics that the last time the stock market's been this concentrated on a single theme was the railroads in the late 19th century. Is that a source of concern or is that a source of strength? How should you how do you view that statistic?
SPEAKER_01I think we came into this. Yeah, look, we've been bullish for three years. Three years ago when everyone is calling for a recession. We were, I quote, safe to say, pedal to the metal, bullish equities, and we were very concentrated in the US, which means you're very concentrated in tech, just by the nature of it. Last year, maybe a year and a half, year and 15 months ago, we started diversifying. And when we wrote our outlook for the full year outlook for 2026, we said, to your point about the bubble, you know, I'm not saying it's a bubble, mostly because I don't know how to define it. I don't have a good definition of it. But if this can continue for one year, two years, three years. Wow, there's Chicago for you right there.
SPEAKER_02You said bubble.
SPEAKER_01You said bubble, you said bubble, yeah. I don't know. And the warning signs go off, right? But our instinct there is we need to ride the wave. There is a wave, there's something big happening in the economy, but we need to avoid a wipeout. So, how do you do that? Now, the cliche answer is diversify, but we take that to heart. I do think we need to be tactical as well. Now we tell everyone don't time the market, but we have we're very hubristic here to say we think we can time the market, and that look, that's what we do as portfolio managers, right? Myself, Ryan, Barry, and Grant, we manage our house review portfolios, we have our tactical portfolios. We've had a very good year, we're riding the wave, but we've what we've I don't know, we're riding that wave with momentum with the SP 500 momentum, but on the other hand, we also have low volatility stocks, for example. So we've been barbelling that exposure just as an example. Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03I would just say if you look at a ton of headwinds, a ton of noise, and I think you know you guys are doing a tremendous job at Carson Well on muting the noise. And I kind of jumped on that coattail because you you know you'll you'll crawl into your bomb shelter if you read too much about how bad the world is. But if you look at some of the potential tailwinds out there, I look at interest rates, they're going lower. I don't know when, but right now we're at 450 in the 10 year, it's going lower. We are going to see, well, maybe Jim didn't agree with that statement. We're gonna see crude oil go under $80. That's gonna be the all-clear sign. As you guys know, I write that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I quoted you on that. It said if oil goes down to 80, that's the oil all clear.
SPEAKER_03Every Sunday I crawl in my office and I write the kick ham week ahead. If you guys want to sign up, it's free. Uh, but I I try to really find a couple things that are gonna help us better stand with earnings growth and the AI inertia and the momentum, yes, it's concentrated, but if you talk about some of the valuation in 1995 and the NASDAQ, it still went four years before it ended up imploding.
SPEAKER_09You know that in December of 1996, Greenspan famously said rational exuberance, and the stock market went up another 300% before it peaked. Four years. Yeah, exactly. That's why I said with a bubble, I said it is a bubble, but I'm thinking if it's more like 96, 97, bring it on, man. I'll take those things.
SPEAKER_07I assume George Soros said this because I saw it on social media. Or it was Mark Twain. Everything on social media is true. You know, I see a bubble and I rush in. I mean, so we're not calling this a bubble, but like Soto said, we um we're I mean, Barry, we're slightly overweight large cap tech or large tech, probably slightly. I mean, just a little bit, because we've we've ridden that way, but I'll tell you, I look at financials down 5% this year. And I look at tech, I don't have to today, but tech's up over 30. I think we're gonna see that fish hook get smaller. I think financials, industrial, some of the other cyclical things probably play catch up. I'm not saying tech can't keep going higher, but I think we're still, we don't see a recession. We've laid that out. Uh, economy's still gonna do pretty good. The labor market, we got some labor data, we probably can't talk about it because we run out of time. Labor market looked pretty good still to us, second half of this year. So I think stick with cyclicals, but again, look at maybe other areas and the the high flyers, but it has been incredible. What's your take, Jim? I mean, you asked the question. What do you think here?
SPEAKER_09Um, I think that whenever you see high concentrations in the market, it is a market that is signaling that there's going to be a massive transformation. So the first thing to take away from it is don't just look at it and go, that's wrong. Look at it and say, that means that things are about to change, and probably for a positive, I believe. I know there's a lot of kids at commencement addresses have been booing this stuff, but I think ultimately it's going to be a big positive for those changes. That is going to be a period of um transition that historically, if you look at markets, it brings a thrill ride, but higher prices. You know, so volatility goes up, and then you wind up seeing um, but it's not gonna be easy to just play it along those.
SPEAKER_03I'll be quick, but there's opportunity, right? I think this is historic, and Barry, you would know this better than me, but we've never seen the SP 500 sectors have such dispersion. We saw energy up over 40%, financials down eight percent. Again, not a math major, but that's like 50% dispersion. We've never seen that before. So inside of that dispersion, there's opportunity. So stock picking capabilities and active management. Obviously, I'm talking my own book, but that is where the value add to advisors really coming in because the diversification, the old playbook back in 2010, it doesn't work anymore.
SPEAKER_01Actually, can we can we get Grant here on the topic of active management? Grant, come on up. So Grant's our B co leads our Carson Investment Research team, right? Grant, talk about active management. And we're big, obviously, we have to be big believers in that because we are active managers ourselves. But we believe in active stock selection, active bond selection as well, right? Absolutely. Uh it makes a lot of sense to be active, we think, right?
SPEAKER_04So you're titled first, you name title, just everybody knows.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so in head of investment strategy and research at Carson Investment Team. Um, yeah, active, we think makes a lot of sense. You gotta understand where you're the price you're paying for active. We think active ETFs make a lot of sense as a result of that. Costs, uh tax is part of that cost. Um, but yeah, like within fixed income, there's a lot of off-benchmark bonds that you can uh you can pick um outside of an index, being nimble around the edges, doing a little credit research, and then within stocks. Um, right now we talked about how concentrated the market is, the mag 7, all of these names, as the market potentially continues to maybe um you know increase its breadth, or or you're looking at the winners and losers of AI, I'm not necessarily going to be able to choose that. You want to trust an active manager to uh make those selections along the way.
SPEAKER_07One of the things we've said a lot, Grant, I give you credit, I believe you said it when in doubt, diversify it out. Right? There's a lot of doubt around um you know the bear market we had last spring. Um do you still feel that way? And did you come up with when in doubt, diversify it out, or did you borrow it from somebody else? Not say it, borrow it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I actually that was uh I have very few talents. One is memorizing ETF ticker symbols, um, and the other one is I guess coming up with little quirky sayings in the middle of the night. And so I I didn't make that one up, I think. Um, but yeah, like you know, obviously diversification is one of the main principles in in finance, and a lot of that applies to just owning a basket of stocks, but also applies a variety of asset classes, and the last two years have been excellent examples of that, right? Like if you didn't own commodities coming into this year, and that is the best performing asset class by double digits uh at one point this year, um, you missed out on that. So just staying diversified, staying balanced, rebalancing at appropriate times makes a ton of sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, on that topic of diversification, one way we diversify is also publics. We have public assets, but stocks, bonds, all of that stuff, but also privates, private equity. And this gets to something you mentioned at the top, Jim.
SPEAKER_07That was Grant Engelbart on our team with the grant. Yeah, we're ready to wrap it up in five minutes. Let's make them quick.
SPEAKER_01So, revaluations for these companies, like Amazon, a lot of its earnings is based on anthropics revaluation, right? OpenAI, same thing for Nvidia and Microsoft and all of that. So we're seeing private valuations show up in public company earnings. So it's uh it's not like the private separate now from public.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, no, I mean the the the line has been crossed because what's happened with a lot of big big tech private companies is when they have to raise money, the first place they go to is probably a public company, and they raise a lot of money from the public companies, and then that shows up in the other income line on their on their um on their income statement, and that's why it shows up everywhere else. That's why I said at the top, if we were here eight months ago, we were all, we being the collective of Wall Street, wringing our hands about this cross-ownership thing's gonna end in tears. It's the cross-ownership thing, is why we have 27% earnings. And that's probably why they got it exactly wrong, is what happened.
SPEAKER_03But Google rewrote the script this week. The fact of the matter is that they went from $150 during the trade tariffs to where they are today, and then they just put out $84.5 billion and then it got oversubscribed. That is rewriting the narrative of CapEx specific AI experience.
SPEAKER_09But can I underscore that? That for all of the ink wasted talking about what the SpaceX IPO means, Google just did a bigger offering two days ago than SpaceX is gonna do next week. Great point. You know, so I mean that just shows you the insatiable appetite for people that want to jump into this. So we've got this funny market. Now, one day asked the macro strategist is a similar similar kind of story. I read on the political pages, AI bad. Everybody wants to ban data centers and everything else. I don't read political pages, yeah, but then on the financial pages, they're throwing money at everybody to build more of this stuff, you know, instead of watch what they do, what not what they say is right, right. I was gonna say it's kind of like the economy. Every time I open up the pages, you know, and they ask macro strategists, are we in recession? It's how bad is everything, and then I look at the data, I was like, are they talking about the same economy? Because this data is looking very good right now.
SPEAKER_07Here's the problem we could go three hours, but we have to wrap it up. This is Joe Rogan, right? Yeah, exactly. But not yeah, not yet. There is a game to catch. This was episode 191 of Facts versus Feelings. Uh give us a like, give us a follow. Not a positive or negative review. We can't leave the witness. We take them all. We love comments on YouTube. 30 seconds each to wrap up um episode 191, live from Chicago. What is a bit of advice you've learned in your 30 plus years um that someone needs to know? 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_03Marcus can be very humbling. So if you have conviction, stay true to your conviction, but also be considerate, be mindful, and be agile because you have to be able to pivot despite the fact of your conviction. You don't let your conviction take you to the poorhouse.
SPEAKER_09Understand your risk profile. A lot of people don't. I saw a quick antidote last year. I was watching a personal investing podcast. A woman called Up in Tears. She was 72 years old. She had to take her payout on her 401k because it was required. Uh her 401k got valued, and then her portfolio fell 40% a month, and she got the tax bill on the higher valuation. And it turned out when they talked to her that her portfolio was entirely tech stocks and led by NVIDIA and Apple. If you're 72 years old, you are you are you are at what you're at, you should not be pressing the bet to the wall for another month to see if you can get a little bit more out of your returns. Because she wound up losing 40% of her world wealth because of the tax consequences and the fall in the market. So understand where you are with your risk profile and invest accordingly.
SPEAKER_01If you're looking at your portfolio right now and everything's going in the same direction, and if everything's going up, you're not diversified enough. And now, more than ever, borrowing from Grant, I think it's important to diversify. Right? And I'm not saying there's a bubble that's going to pop anytime soon, but even if you have the lost decade, like 2000-2010 was a lost decade. International is very good, small caps were very good, small value is very good, international developed markets are really good, so there's always opportunity everywhere. Be diversified.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I think mine is we as people make really bad decisions at the worst possible time, whether it be life, whether it be relationships, whether it be our investments. Having a community, working with other people really can help you from that. People like Jim and Jeff, and hopefully Ryan and Sonu and Facts versus Feelings. Um, you can learn a lot by working with other people, listing other people, maybe people you don't even agree with, right? But to see the other side of the argument. So, with all that, this was a lot of fun. Give yourselves a hand again, Swift Tavern. Thank you for being here. Thank you again to our producers, Pod Pony, who flew in special from Omaha to make this a success. Thank you to all of you for being here, all the listeners out there. Episode 191. I don't know. Next week's talk will be nearly as good as this. I don't know what next week is this episode, but I'm the one after this. I wonder after this.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_071920. Episode 192. We'll make it good. Yeah, whatever. All right, listen, that's it. 191 of the books. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you. Information provided on facts versus feelings with Son of Argists and Ryan Dietrich are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. The statements and opinions of show guests may not be reflective of CWM LLC or its affiliates. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested in directly. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. To determine what may be appropriate for you, consult with your attorney, accountant, financial, or tax advisor prior to investing. Guests on facts versus feelings are not affiliated with CWM or LLC.
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