One place is I going away that I mean, it's it's worked into the
mandate of the Fed. They want at least you know, they have a
target of two percent per year, which means they want things to get chea
percent more expensive every single year. Yeah. So that so like it is
like built into our system, to our Fiat system, that like there will
there is inherently ask to be inflation because that that's gonna help ask prices rise.
That's gonna help Lordal, the state rise, It's going to help you
know, stocks rise, It's gonna help all those things rise. You're listening
to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't
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free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival Network now more than ever. And welcome
you are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,
Gary Lentz. Just got back from a long weekend at Freedom Fest in Vegas.
Saw a bunch of you out there. It was really a blast.
And I'll do more on another segment about it right now, we got our
good friend Eddie Gifford is with us. Eddie, it's great to have you
back. As always, so soft blanding CPI coming in, you know,
defies experts. The core PPIZ point four compared to point two. The PPI
was point two compared to point one. I don't know where they get these
numbers from. Obviously they haven't visited the Las Vegas strip where I had the
privilege of paying six dollars and twenty five cents for a small coffee at Dunkin
Donuts. Not even not even the inflation cafe can beat that. No,
you're right. It's interesting because you get these two prints at CPI one day
where we have like the first declinents twenty twenty, and then you've got PPI
the next data surprises to the upside. And the thing about it is PPI
is the crux of everything from the standpoint that we live in a world that
the United States of Erica runs on small business, and so the price of
things and what gets passed on the consumer matters. And so when we see
PPI go up like this, even though CPI went down, and it's primarily
you know, primarily has to deal with like tradely related matters, like the
cost of labors higher. The cost of things is higher, the cost to
do things is higher. So even if the cost of goods is lower on
paper, as you just alluded to, I actually live in Las Vegas,
so I've seen that compounding effect, and I'm paying at least thirty to forty
percent more than I was at the grocery store three years ago. So that
inflation stacks. It's been slowing, it hasn't been going down. Let's keep
that in mind. Everyone keeps saying inflation is going down. No it's not.
It's slowing. It's still stacking on top of last year. And so
we still have this compound interest of costs and it's showing up while in the
everyday Americans bake account like, we've got massive amounts of debt, consumer debt,
credit card debt, our loan debt. We're starting to seeing more and
more for our closures. And because of that, you know, we're seeing
kind of a destruction of demand, which you know, in a way it's
by design. That's what the FED wanted to do, was to to basically
get rid of demand. And if they could do that then they could start
cutting. But the problem is, like always, you go through the fastest
rate hike in history, and then you wait too long, and by the
time that you decide to do something, and you're doing it because you have
to, not because you want to. And if you're doing it because you
have to, that mean something broke. And let's not even get into the
fact that we're in a crazy political landscape right now where volatility is just ready
to run. We've got some global issues with the Japanese Harry S. Trey,
We've got issues in China and and and then we've got the you know,
the everyday American at home, like struggling and ad to to figure out
do I buy milk or do I buy gas? Like it's you're in that
spot right now for a lot of people, you know, the people that
got screwed out of all this stimulus and everything that's happened in the last four
years has been the middle class. And the numbers are starting to show it.
Of course, that's why we call them lags. I think that we
all saw this. I think Kerry, you and I talked about this six
months ago. Well, you know we saw it, right, But because
of the lag effect of interest rates and the lag effect of inflation in general.
Now it's showing up in the numbers, and by the time it starts
showing up in the numbers usually it's like slow than all at once. And
so my fear is that, you know, the election happens, and on
the back end of it, something really bad happens, whether it's a political
event or or it's just a breakdown. Because you know, you can only
pop up things so long before the dawn breaks. So the sneak hey,
you know, like it's the Great Gatsby, How did you go broke the
you know, slowly at first and then quickly right, yeah, totally.
I mean, you know when you when you get those those numbers, and
and it's I definitely don't envi the faeda, right, I mean, the
Powell has been so strong in his stance against inflation, and now we're in
this spot where the numbers are doing what they want them to do, except
for the job markets breaking down at the same time. And now all of
a sudden, it's like, oh, actually, yeah, these have only
been part time jobs, not full time jobs that have been being added,
and they're starting to fess up to that and and so we're just seeing like
this shift, if you will, and and that shift looks like it could
become like a true stagflationary environment. And that's where we got inflation, but
we got another growth. And you know, I think that we were talking
to me about McDonald's comercial not too long ago where the dad said, hey,
you know, the kid asks like, what sinflation? And the dad
says, that's when the cost goes up or my salary doesn't. And that
is actually a real world, this scenario that we are about to base,
I think. And if that happens, that just means that, like we're
due for something bad in the stock work, get you, and typically we
got those minus forty to fifty percents once every en. It'sh years, spend
fifteen. We've had zero or six for a long time. I hope it
doesn't happen, but if it does, it's going to be bad. It's
going to be bloody, and everyone's going to be like, oh it was
you could tell. It was so easy to tell. Yeah, but everyone
was also saying, wow, it was happening. It's different this time,
right, It's always different this time Eddie, that's yeah, that's Those are
the words that make you realize it's not different and you need to head for
the exits. But things are different in certain respects, but they haven't repealed
the business cycle, and you know, the economy is the economy, right,
I mean, there's only you know, it's it's kind of absurd to
think that things are really different, right, Yeah, you can't really think
that they're different. I mean, the thing is that behaviors, behavior and
human beings are imperfect, and they're always going to act and react emotionally like
there's no such thing as they truly one hundred percent objective human being, and
so as things happen, they react. And we've seen it in behavioral finance,
to the study of it over and over and over again, where we
get these you know, manic crazy surges blow off tops, if you will,
followed by castrophes on the back end. So there's no reason to think
that it's different this time. That doesn't mean that you run for the hills
either, though, because it can't not be invested as the market continues to
go high. We had a crazy weekend and the market's up, you know,
significantly in the last quarter. But I mean it's up today. You
wouldn't have expected that. And you know, you look at like cryptocurrencies and
they're just on it there. Yeah, what can that be? What's what's
with the crypto here? Huh? Well, I think you know, part
of it is that, you know, on the back end of the survival
by Trump, like he's seen as a pro cryptocurrency candidate, and so with
the odds being kind of more in his favor, now you're seeing money Russian.
The other thing is just a cycle in general. If you look at
cryptocurrencies, bitcoin specifically post aving, you usually have some type of consolidation period
followed by this significant urgent and this could be the beginning of that, or
maybe this is just an emotional It's like we would want to see it continue,
not just go for four days. But those are all reasons that they
couldn't be taking off. Eved I hadn't looked at the price of a bitcoin
yet. After I woke up this morning, it was around sick. Now
it's a sixty three and a half thousand. I'd buy some. It's just
like what you should what you might want to think about doing with gold.
This works for me and silver, buy a little bit every week buy a
couple hundred bucks worth of crypto. I mean, I am, like,
I wouldn't say it's the best performing asset in my portfolio because gold and silver
really have outperformed it this year so far. But A keeps me interested in
cryptos and B that uh, you know, it's up. It's up about
thirty percent since I started. I was swing trading it for a while.
Then with a move came, I stopped swing trading and I just bought and
held. And you know, you definitely can swing trade uh crypto profitably,
but it's not necessarily the thing you want to do because it's so volatile.
You you got to remember carry that's called work. And when you're in nesting
obviously, like it's uh for some it's enjoyable, you know, your investment.
For some people it's it's you know, kind of stressful. And so
if you're trading, it becomes more it becomes more stressful. Now, obviously,
when we're doing it, we've got rules and we follow those rules and
the rules that has worked. So but I couldn't agree with you more.
I think that gold and silver and cryptocurrency is anything that is basically a owner
to the fiat system in general is something that is worth having a place in
your portfolio. You know. The only thing that I was kind of looking
back and trying to figure out. Okay, Like obviously, like you look
at it from a volatility standpoint, you say, oh, my goodness,
like this is a speculative investment when you're looking at cryptocurrency and bitcoin. But
then when you dig a little bit deeper and you kind of understand what it
is and what it does and how it does it, it's like, well,
you know, it's just young. You know, it was a very
very young asset, but there's a number and it will continue to be a
counter action to the fiat system. And with everybody mistrusting government in general,
it's hard to think that stuff like the precious metals gold and silver or something
like bitcoin isn't going to do really well in that situation. The difference is
is that you know, with bitcoin there's actually a real live ability to transact
right now, and so that's basically a huge opportunity. I think, like
in general, people are coming around to it, but for it not to
be in your portfolio. Said this about other financial advisors, said this about
people in general. If it's not in your portfolio and you're making mistake,
or it should at least have a slot. Now if you would to trade
it because it's too volatile, that's fine, but it still should be dedicated
as slots because what you don't want to do is like, oh, I
got that bicycle, but I really don't want to steal my apple stock now,
right, And so then you're defeating the purpose. So like you got
to have like maybe that that depending on your risk callor as that five to
fifteen percent slot of like this is where the cryptocurrency is going, and whether
it's being trader or being held. I don't think that matters, but it
has to be there. It just has to. No, I totally agree
with you. I've known about it virtually from the beginning. I missed out
on the major advances. I always know when it peaks. It's really easy
to know when when bitcoin peaks. I mean I called it in what was
it two thousand, when it hit nineteen thousand again that yes, twenty twenty,
and I knew it when it hit sixty seven seven last year. I
think it was that. You know it's it's not peaking now that I am
pretty confident of you know. On the other hand, it is the governments
really wanted to shut it down. It could be shut down virtually instantaneously.
Even though people tell me I'm crazy, they couldn't be done. I know
it can be done. And the hey, you just have to look and
look at what's around and you know you should be seeking some alternatives. And
I still like real estate because Eddie, when's inflation going to go? Bye
bye? Well, inflation is like going away that I mean, it's it's
worked into the mandate of the Fed. They want at least you know,
they have a target of two percent per year, which means they want things
to get cheap percent more expensive every single year. Yeah. So that so
like it is like built into our system, to our Fiat system, that
like there will there is inherently asked to be inflation because that that's going to
help ask prices rise. That's going to help lordal, the state rise,
It's going to help you know, stocks rise, It's going to help all
those things rise, just you know, having the understanding of when the moves
sapping more rapidly or the smart places to be. And it's interesting because uh,
you know, everyone has alreadys had this like flight to safety mentality rush
to treasure when rates go down. But what we've been seeing more recently,
like gold does the same thing. Gold and silver does the same thing.
It usually sniffed it out a little bit earlier, but when you're looking at
it from another perspective, like look at treasuries and look at the bitcoin.
Like if you look at you go back to last year twenty twenty three when
the banks went down, right, and we had like this that you know
that there was a surgeon raids which should beat up treasuries and cryptocurrencies, and
then they searched together except for cryptocurrencies, like a ten x version of treasure
of us. And we saw it again at the most recent of me when
we when the data came out and it appeared that, oh yeah, we're
going to actually cunt again. We've seen this run now today is interesting because
the that the treasuries are down and bitcoin is way out. But that's also
because bitcoin is a like a fear trade from the standpoint of distrust and mistrust,
much like golden zilver arm so it kind of gives you it appears to
be developing into this like one two unched, which you know, could be
just a really, really good fit for anybody's portfolio. Generally speaking. Hey,
you know, I've believed in keeping five percent and fifteen percent precious metals.
I think you can up that a little bit now and not feel too
worried about it. Obviously, everybody's situation's different. But you know, just
like I've got probably about twenty flashlights in my house and in the batteries sitting
in the closet. You don't have too many because they do go bad over
time, you know, just like you would keep a flash light in your
house in case the lights go out. I really believe that you need to
be looking at other assets in the same light. Yeah, and I think
that the hard thing is that you looked at portfolio for so long, and
it's always been stocks, bond stocks, bond stocks, bonds, and generally
speaking, like I can understand the base case behind that, which is that
they've they've operated with different correlations, like almost inverse correlations at times. What's
still what the ability to go up over time. The problem is is that
that doesn't happen when you're inning by in a bond bear market. Bonds tend
to correlate a lot more socially cheat equities, and so we always we've all
been programmed to believe stocks and bonds, but really what we should be programmed
to believe is when matters. And what I mean by that is that we
want multiple investments to all have the ability to go up over the next five
to ten years, but we want them to go up at different times.
We don't want them to have a one to one correlation. We don't want
them to be inversely correlated, because of are invorsely correlated. They're just balancing
each other out. And so we want things that go up different times.
One because it gives us an opportunity to rebalance and buy stuff on sale right.
And two because like the concept of when things happen basically just like produces
so much additional return in your portfolio. You can really run a portfolio yourself
and just pretend that you get a static or a turn of eight percent.
But every third year one asset goes down by ten and the other fourth year,
the other asset goes down by ten. And guess what, by having
those two assets better to just having one, you boosh your return significantly.
So you've got to make sure that what you have in the portfolio is not
correlated. We like and we like non correlated, but we also want editors
return. And unfortunately, when you look at big sed incoming, you look
at over the last five years, it's like big bat zero. So alternatives
I, you don't think they'll have a much better place in the portfolio,
whether it's the precious metals, the cryptocurrencies, or you know, some type
of systematic managed future strategy that's leaning into commodities and currencies and all of that
type of stuff. But like that needs to be your offset because bonds just
aren't it right now, and maybe they'll be cooking again. But like you
don't want to have a static This is my defense because what happens when that
doesn't work, like in twenty twenty two and and and that's the conversation that
you're talking about right now. Keary, short term treasuries, keep your cash
there. We're not talking we're talking like, you know, longer duration treasuries.
So don't maybe twice of course, yeah, the long duration stuff,
like you know that that's traditionally been like the flight to safety, that's been
the portfolio that saved us, right the bonds saved us during COVID when we
had that flight to safety and so, but that I stopped working in twenty
twenty two. I'm not saying that relationship will come back. But to be
all in and be stocks and bonds, you know, to intermediate to long
durational the ones, you know, and then as far as like treasuries in
general. Yeah, like I like short term treasuries for the next one to
two years, but for two to three years, you need to own any
of you know. Yeah, well it's it's not really a flight to safety.
It's a flight it's safe er, right, yeah, exactly exactly.
And you look out throughout history, Yes, when equities go down, typically
treasuries go down. Words. I'm like trying to find stuff that might actually
go up in that situation. Yeah, And there's nothing wrong with that either,
right right, right. I never had a person complain that their portfolio
was up when the market was down, but I haven't complained all the time
if the market's up, then their portfolio down. So yeah, well they're
always going to find something to complain about, you know, because that's just
human nature, right Yeah. Well, yeah, realistically, you know,
you have to you know, you have to look at this from the standpoint
of historical returns and the uncertainty of the future. You know, like gold
is always a safe event, except when it's not. Like the past twelve
years. You know, a lot of the time it hasn't been perceived as
such, even though you and I perceive it as a as such, right,
But yeah, tho's it. Two percent interest rates, you know,
schematic that we had for a long time really changed the games when it came
to gold, and like small cap stops and like a lot of the stuff
that you typically look for for additional upside of the cunial or original protection and
just kind of like stopped working for a little bit. But remember, like,
yeah, we need to look back one hundred years, not ten and
then and kind and seeing because things will normalize. They've begun to normalize.
I mean, five percent rates are actually normal. It's just hard to think
that they're going to stay that high because of the fact that it's an interest
payment that we have to make as a country, and it's a the biggest
line item on our budget. So the crew knows, Carrie, there's so
many things going on right now, it's crazy. But that's why you got
to stay flexible, and you got to have true diversification workflow that actually moves
counters to each other. You do want to have some read on every single
statement. You know, everybody's like, huh, it's like, no,
you have Like if you don't have read some read on every single statement,
you have no protection when the market does something different and in media. So
it's very very important that that's what diversification is. Owning five hundred stocks is
not diversification, especially when thirty five percent of that is made up of ten
stops. Yeah, it's you know, it's like, look at it as
an insurance policy, like, hey, i haven't had a claim in twenty
years on my homeowners I'm just gonna stop paying it because I'm just giving that
money away to the insurance companies. Right, and then the next day,
I mean, I have a disability policy. I've had it since my thirties,
all right. They don't write policies like this any longer. They just
don't, right, And you know, I'm so tempted often to just get
rid of it. It's expensive and I've never needed it, so I'm just
giving that money away. And you know, I feel like that maybe I'm
being superstitious, but the fact that I can't get that insurance ever again,
I'm too old and they don't write those policies anymore. Hey, until my
last breath. I'm going until they kick me off. Because it's some age
that kick you off the policy. I'm not giving it up. Yeah,
And the thing is is that, you know, I just think it's important
that you always have like some type of insurance in your portfolio. But that
doesn't mean that when things are more robust, when the trend is strong,
it doesn't mean that you can't lean into the trend more. I mean,
like there's if you're indexes, you can lean into individual stocks. If you
don't like individual stocks, there's like two X and three X strategies out there
that you can lean in. I mean for the short term as long as
they're trying to strong. As soon as they're trying to slows, just move
back into no leverage and move back into the indexes. Right, so you
can still lean into that, and you know what, you'll feel, you'll
feel better about taking that chance. If you have some insurances in your portfolio
in the first place, you probably won't take that chance. Ever, So
by having the insurance. I always tell people this, whether we're talking about
gold or managed futures or cryptocurrencies or annuities, right when that stuff is in
the portfolio, now, that allows us to be okay with taking more risks
over here on the other side, and and what can do that that that's
what really gives you the ability to win in the long run and no risk,
no reward. I don't mean I've been an athlete my whole life,
and and you know, I know that like if I didn't take the risk,
I wasn't going to win the match in wrestling, And when you're when
you're investing in it's no different. But that you that it doesn't mean you
take a necessary risk. This it doesn't mean that you don't get calculated risks.
Yeah, And that it doesn't mean that you don't maintain like some type
of foundation you know what in sport, it's usually an athletic stance. In
a portfolio, it's that core of like UH of insurance protection and offset,
and then that gives us the ability to take those chances and when they pan
out, all you need is like one out of five and then to pan
out and you're winning. Yeah, No, no, question about I couldn't
agree with him, Moore. Eddie, where do we find you these days?
So? How do we connect with you on the web? Yeah?
Same, But I mean, obviously you can just google Eddie Giffer. That's
Eddie with a y g I f f r D. Go to tactive wealk
dot com, back splash Eddie dash Gifford Again, it's Eddie with a Y
so e d d y dash g I f f or r d on the
site. And yeah, we're here to help. We're here to provide an
additional resource, if you will, of acknowledged and information and perspective and uh,
you know, we're just we just like to see people meet their goals
and if we can be there to help them do that, then that's even
better. All right. Hey, the links are in the show notes to
this interview on Financial Survival Network dot com. Make sure you go there.
Sign up for you free newsletter. Click true you'll get right over to Eddie.
Appreciate you coming on, Eddie. We will talk to you again real
soon. Be well. Awesome, Thanks Kerry, having a good wed Thanks
for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network. Your solution to today's trying times
for the latest go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more
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