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Speaker 3I think it becomes more of a risk when, the prior discussion we had, starts to happen, which is that the AI trade gets long in the tooth. I think that at that point you risk having a perfect storm, where if you look at global market capitalization, it is unusually shifted to the US right now. But when some of those fundamentals do start to dry up, and a lot of the kind of the growth starts to slow down, because, you know, we kind of build out what we need to. At the same time, when you have, you know, potential Asian, obviously, currency mini crises, and kind of more of an interest rate, and repatriation, that becomes a one-two punch. So am I worried about it in 2027? Not necessarily. But yeah, the longer you go out, the more concerned I would be.
Speaker 4Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Taggart. And we have the great good fortune of talking today with investment strategist, Lynn Alden, who also happens to be a prodigious author. You may know her for her book, Broken Money, Why Our Financial System Is Failing Us, and How We Can Make It Better, but also for her science fiction. Lynn, how are you doing? - Good, how are you? - Good, good. Real quick, how have the book sales been going, especially in the fiction world? -
Speaker 3It's going well. It's certainly, it's a different market. You know, not a ton of audience overlap, but it's certainly been a fun ride this year. And I already have a second sci-fi, sci-fi book in, currently in revision, so. - And it works, oh wow. - It's been a fun side quest. -
Speaker 4Wow, well, you're making a lot of people really excited with that news. I gotta tell you, Lynn, you are so prodigious in terms of the, you know, analysis that you create, but also you are just in such high demand. How do you have excess cycles to write these side quest fiction books? -
Speaker 3So it comes in waves, basically. There are certain things that I, in my professional life, finance-wise, that I have to do on a recurring basis. And the fiction is more in terms of big waves. So there'll be times where I'm doing zero work on it. And then times that I'm kind of working evenings on it because I got like a wave of kind of creativity. And so it comes in bursts and otherwise isn't really a burden. And if anything, I just think, I mean, people obviously have to have hobbies. You know, we can't live in spreadsheets 24/7. - Right. - And so if anything, I find it recharges my batteries for the financial work to kind of get some creativity out of my head. -
Speaker 4Exactly. Spend some time on the creative side of the brain. I totally get it. I'm just assuming that those evening writing sessions go late into the evening because you're so busy with the rest of your life there. But anyways, we're all more fortunate for it. So thank you. Look, lots to talk about with you here. I got a bunch of questions for you ranging from inflation to the elections. To bonds, to bonds, to Japan. But if we can, we're recording this on Monday, November 9th, which is just a couple of days after the previous Thursday where the markets had their biggest one day down day since the liberation day plunge back in what April of 2025. And that was a standout day compared to years before that. So it was a pretty big bloodshed day in the markets. What's your general assessment of that? Do you think, was that just sort of a one day purge sort of like a rogue wave? Or do you see it as a harbinger of greater market volatility
Speaker 3to come? Good question. I guess I would lean toward a one day purge. I think risk got over at skis for a period of time. And some of those shocks are necessary. I think on average, it obviously depends on the country in question. I think on average, politics are often overstated in terms of their impact on markets. And so I think while there is obviously new information from the midterms, for example, I'm not shuffling around my portfolio based on midterm results. Things that I was bullish on, I'm still bullish on. Things that I was bearish on, I'm still bearish on. I think in the next two years, we probably do have somewhat more volatility ahead. In general, I think the AI trade is, while I don't think it's over, I think it's getting longer in the tooth. And that the explosive growth rates will be slower even without increased opposition from politicians. Actually, one of the points I made in my recent research is these hyperscalers in their recent quarter or two are already getting pushback from investors about how much they're spending on CapEx, on AI related CapEx. And so the fact that there's potentially more politicians in power with anti or just more conservative, concerned around data centers, anti data center positions, they could almost use that as an excuse. Instead of saying, hey, maybe we overcommitted, some of them can say, hey, we're bullish on this industry, but we have to go a little slower because there's more regulatory pressure out there. So I think the interesting thing was this was already an issue from the private sector and the midterms kind of, if anything, potentially slightly solidify it.
Speaker 4All right. And so a couple of questions around that. Does that mean that you think Thursday's plunge was due to post-midterm concerns about AI, meaning we got a bunch of new politicians, particularly governors who have more control over this, that are going to slow the AI CapEx rollout? Or was it just coincidental in terms of timing?
Speaker 3I do think it was related. I mean, especially because when you look at the market, the different sectors performance, I mean, the AI trade, the NASDAQ sold off a lot more in the broader market. I even joked on the day that it's one of those days where value investors were down less than the growth investors. And it's kind of like a value investor win in kind of a joking sense. But the point is that the concentration of the bloodbath was really in those tech names. Whereas if it was unrelated to that industry, we would see a broader sell-off. And so that's why I view it.
Speaker 4Can I just mention, so I was looking on that day to see, is this just a tech wreck? And it really wasn't. I mean, if you look at the S&P, I think it closed the day down like around 4%, a little over 4%. But I think the equal weight S&P closed at like 3 something, down 3. So it wasn't like it was all just in tech. It did seem to pull the value. There weren't many places to hide that day besides precious metals. And I think oil did pretty well. And of course, oil was, I think, just related to what was going on in the Gulf. It wasn't just tech only. Now, value was hurt less on a relative basis. I guess you could call that a win. But it wasn't like they emerged unscathed.
Speaker 3Yeah, no, I agree. So the concentration was in tech. But the broader markets also sold off. I think when an industry is that dominant-- so tech is obviously a very dominant part of US markets-- when it sells off that sharply, it's almost always going to pull down the broader space with it, just because so much capital is already there. So any funds that are in trouble are selling whatever they have to at that point. On leverage, obviously, they're down. If the NASDAQ is down 6%, if someone's levered long in certain names, they could be down way more that day. And they can be selling things that they don't want to be selling that are unrelated. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4Sort of the margin call effect. Even if you're not yet getting the margin call, you're just freaked out. And you're kind of liquidating everything. Yeah, exactly. OK. So much revolves around AI. And to my knowledge-- correct me if this is wrong-- even though we got this downdraft on Thursday-- and the markets have been up a little bit since, so it's starting to recover, it looks like-- earnings estimates have not, I don't think, materially come down at all yet in this space. And I think that's the real danger, if you will. And I'm not trying to sell trouble here. But when so much of the market cap of the major indices is made up of this space, and so much of GDP growth is made up of the AI CapEx spending that's going on, if there's a material reduction in that CapEx spending, the downward repricing is going to have to be pretty prodigious, I would imagine. And so I'm not sure we've seen a true kind of clearing out based on some sort of acceptance from, well, from Wall Street that, "All right, AX capex spending looks like it's going to be 20% less than we thought it was going to be for the next two years. So we've got to ratchet down for that yet. So is that still a shoe to drop in your opinion here if earnings estimates haven't come down yet?
Speaker 3Good question. My base case would be not this year or not the next 12 months. I do think that we will have that cycle. I mean, we haven't like eliminated cycles. AI doesn't grow to the moon in a straight line. I think there will be a big clearing event at some point. I think it's probably not 2027. But when you started getting a little further out than that, I think is where that risk starts to materialize. What's interesting is that to some extent, the market is already pricing in the possibility of that. So for example, Nvidia trades at a lower earnings multiple than Coca-Cola. And so Wall Street has this set of next two, three year earnings estimates penciled in. And if anything, retail investors are saying, are you sure though? Are you positive? And so there's not really an over bidding for the current earnings already penciled in. There's already actually some wiggle room. Same thing for Micron. So the classic way that RAM stocks trade, they trade like commodity producers, where when RAM prices are high, it's treated as kind of a copper miner. So investors are saying, okay, we're going to pay very low multiple because we're near peak margins. And people are saying, oh, we're going to pay very low multiple. And people are saying, oh, we're going to have to price in the upcoming trowel that we all expect to happen. And what's interesting is if you look historically with Micron, I mean, the stock sells off months ahead of their revenue selling off or going down, I should say. Whereas at the current time, there's already been a pretty sharp sell off. And yet their revenue is kind of penciled in for 2027, like their backlog is already mostly sold. And so if anything, if the peak is going to be low, then it's going to be low. And so if the peak's already in, it would likely be a far earlier peak than a typical cycle. Now, obviously this is not a typical cycle in many ways because it's a far larger cycle. There's a structurally higher floor for chips in general, probably indefinitely, but there's still cyclicality in the market. So whether you look at NVIDIA investors or Micron investors or across the board, there's actually not a ton of enthusiasm despite really big market caps compared to the actual revenue and free cash flow that they've had. There is, I think there actually ironically is some jitteriness in the market that is not fully on board with the Wall Street earnings estimates.
Speaker 4Okay. So a couple of questions on that then. Does that mean that you are currently seeing kind of good value in some of the AI stocks right now?
Speaker 3So I've generally been avoiding the hyperscalers because except for Microsoft, they've all gone free cash flow negative. And generally speaking in public markets, I want profitability. If I'm going to invest in non-profitability, that's what I have the venture fund for that I engage in. So in public markets, I almost always want profitability. And that's why I used to be bullish alphabet after nearly a triple, when they started hitting $300 a share and they were also ramping up CapEx, I was like, okay, I'm kind of, you know, this might be a selling opportunity. The semiconductor space is where I'm still fairly constructive. That's where profitable growth has been. That's where all these dollars will ultimately end up. And as I've been saying that, you know, they're not, their valuations are not that problematic. So I would describe myself as still a cautious bull in the semiconductor space, which is that when there are sell-offs, I'm still, I have a probably a bullish perspective from those trowel levels with say a 12 month view. But I also tend to feel like I'm not going to be a bull in the semiconductor space. I'm going to be a bull in fade when they've had, say, a month of just going straight up, right? I get nervous when that happens, but I do get re-bowled up a little bit when they do have a correction.
Speaker 4Okay. And I assume that's because you think the mega trend is in place and likely to remain in place for at least the next 12 months. So presumably if there was something that challenged that outlook for you, you'd maybe change your opinion. But right now your default assumption is the juggernaut's going to continue at least for the next 12.
Speaker 3Yeah. If I started to see material evidence that instead of the cycle peaking in 2028 or 2029, if it was actually going to peak in 2027, I'd be more cautious around the whole space.
Speaker 4Okay. I'm going to ask just a couple other AI threats, but before I do, I just want to be balanced here and remind the audience that we've had people on the channel recently who have asked the question, does it look like the AI megatrend's in danger of getting derailed? And their honest assessment is no, looking at different data sets. So one, Jan Van Eck, he has basically looked at demand for compute and it's still far outstrips supply. And so for him to start to get bearish that there's going to be some headwinds in this megatrend, he would want to see some slowing down of demand for compute first. And he's just saying, I'm just not seeing it, at least not yet.
Speaker 3Yeah. That's why I view it as well.
Speaker 4Similarly, Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightwaves, part of the economy, the economy of real things. He looks at the shipments of all the physical CapEx that's going out there to build these data centers. And it's a similar story to Jan. He says, that's just not slowing down right now. And we would expect to see some sort of slow down on that. And to a certain extent, it might be a harbinger, like an early detection system, right? If you're going to start pulling in your CapEx spending, the first thing you'll do is just place lower orders and there will be less stuff being shipped. But he says, right now, we're not seeing any of that. So I totally see your side of the coin, Lynn, which is until we see signs of weakness like that in the underlying data, the megatrend is still likely to continue. That being said, a couple of concerns that have been in the headlines of late. One is, you mentioned that NVIDIA's PE ratio is lower than Coke's right now. There are a lot of questions about the quality of your products. There are a lot of questions about these earnings estimates. One is just the quality of earnings. It's still an ongoing debate, but how circular the financing is in this space. Are these true earnings or is it just cash being recycled around the ecosystem, masquerading as earnings? Secondly, the business models of the AI, certainly the frontier companies, but I think other parts of the AI ecosystem as well, they're still being determined in real time. Secondly, the business models of the AI, certainly the frontier companies, but I think other parts of the AI ecosystem are still being determined in real time. It seems that they are trending downwards. For example, cost to compute is going down on average, one probably just because of some efficiencies, but more importantly, a lot of companies are switching based upon what tasks they're running. The 85% of routine tasks, yeah, let's use the open source models that are practically free, and we'll only reserve our purchase of frontier model compute for the stuff that's really important, right? And of course, that places downward pressure on the frontier models pricing. So, how concerned are you, if at all, that the E in the PE ratios for these companies needs to have a big asterisk next to it?
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Speaker 3So I would segment that by the part of the industry. So for example, in semiconductors, I would say the earnings are quite good. Meaning that if you look at just raw free cash flow, they really are raking in the numbers pretty much that they say they are. And there obviously are risks with vendor financing, basically chip makers funding some of their own customers. Still, while it is a reasonable concern, it's still a fairly small percentage of their balance sheet overall. And so I think that is something to be concerned about. Again, when the mega cycle kind of comes to a trowel in the years ahead. But I'm not that worried yet around the semiconductor companies. To your point around frontier models, I am quite concerned around frontier models. I wouldn't pay a trillion dollar valuation for the top end frontier model companies. I think there's very little economic moat there. Basically, their moat is basically saying that we're six months ahead of our open way competition. And is that worth a trillion dollars? Especially as they are also inherently money losers. I'm not bullish. And I do think there's a risk longer term there. And I mean, a lot of data centers, for example, when someone's willing to put all this hardware in place and all this money, hard money, they want these long term commitments from companies. And they generally don't want to sign directly with the frontier models. They want to sign with the hyperscalers because they were confident that, you know, Microsoft can be around 10 years from now, um, that they're, they're, you know, they're more, they're more certain around that, uh, you know, despite their current wave of free cash flow negative, they think, you know, despite that risk, I mean, I'd rather have Microsoft as a counterparty. And I think that's a reasonable outlook. So again, it's a space where there are a lot of sober minds, um, playing this pretty cautiously, despite the fact that, you know, obviously parts of the parts of the market are bubblicious. Um, anytime you have a big boom like this, you're going to get over your skis. Um, but there are, whether it's, we talked about like retail investors already kind of discounting some of the wall street earnings estimates to, you know, people doing these deals, making, trying to make sure that their counterparties are serious, uh, and trying to go up the counterparty stack. I think that those are good signs. Uh, another kind of longer term issue around the hyperscalers is they have, you know, the obviously they're, they're, they're becoming free cash flow negative. Uh, they're, they're, you know, they're, they're fortress balance sheets are now a little bit more stressed as some of them are issuing debt, uh, rather than just, you know, kind of, uh, funding from earnings. Uh, but then they're also getting into these lease obligations, uh, which, which doesn't show up in, in debt quite the same way. Sometimes, uh, it doesn't show up in, for example, in bonds, but it's still a liability that they've committed to. Um, and, and so, you know, there, there is some, certainly some, uh, book shuffling going on. Um, and it's, it's so far, it's not really that much in the semiconductor space. It's elsewhere. Okay.
Speaker 4Um, I guess my question on that though, is just how worried, if at all, are you that the chickens will come home to roost from the, for that at some point?
Speaker 3Um, after a handful of years, probably. Uh, but also again, it depends where, so for example, semiconductors, I think will have a downturn. I mean, semiconductors are, are cyclical industry, uh, especially, especially memory, but it does more broadly. They are, I think they were absolutely have a downturn. Um, I think their balance sheets will be intact when it happens. Um, I think hyperscalers will probably have a, a, a period of stagnation, uh, and where I'd be most concerned is the models themselves, because again, you have, you have trillion dollar valuations, uh, built on very flimsy moats, uh, that are also currently unprofitable with no, no, uh, line of sight to profitability. So it's hard to justify what's being paid for there almost at all at the end of the
Speaker 4day. Okay. Um, and I'm curious, do you, do you feel it inevitable? There's a number of people I've talked to. I just think it's inevitable that we're going to have this period of, I'll call it dark compute, which is just every technology transition that we've gone through. We don't know how much too much is until we've passed it and we just say, okay, we overbuilt capacity. Yeah. Right. Um, do you think that's more or less inevitable in this one as well?
Speaker 3I think so. And again, I mean, we already have lessons from the, the memory space, uh, where they get constrained for a period of time, uh, their, their margins of profitability go up. And then of course they bring on more supply. They eventually contribute to oversupply, uh, and then you have a pretty brutal bear cycle for, for two or three years. Uh, and I think, I mean, that, I think it's going to happen again, just from a, you know, a higher high and a higher low, uh, it's obviously a bigger part of the market now. So for example, when, when micron was worth, you know, tens of billions, uh, and it's going through its, its crazy cycle that it does, it doesn't really impact the S and P 500, but when it's a trillion dollar company going through those gyrations, it starts to impact. Yeah. Yeah. It starts to impact things, especially when you combine that with, you know, tens of tens of trillions of other semiconductor, uh, uh, company. So I do think that we'll, we'll have an overhang. Uh, I think any big build out like this is it's, there's no way that you just build the exact amount you need. You're right. You're always, you're behind until you're ahead. And then when you're ahead, it causes its own problem and you have the hangover.
Speaker 4All right. So when we have the hangover and we don't know where, when that's going to be, you're, you're, you're placing your bets that it's after 2027, um, from what you can see so far. Given how large a percentage of the major indices, um, this whole complex represents now, does that lead you to believe that we'll probably have kind of like a traditional prolonged bear market that, that would be like multi-year, um, because it's hard to imagine the rest of the companies in these indices, even if they did well, like really driving the indices to new, or to, to, to good positive years. If the whole tech sector is going through this hangover period that you talked about.
Speaker 3I think so. Again, I think it's, it's potentially a little bit early for that, but I do think that, um, we are certainly at risk of a, of a multi-year, at least a sideways market. I mean, you don't have to like, you know, obviously people are always concerned around big drawdowns and those are always a possibility. Um, but the other possibility is just going sideways in a choppy, you know, plus 20%, minus 20% range for years. Uh, and that's where I think diversification is helpful. That's where I want to be. I want to be involved. I want to be invested in, in say, non-cap weighted indices, or I want to be invested in some international markets that are maybe cheaper, or I want to be invested in precious metals or, or, or Bitcoin or other, other, you know, other assets. Like I mentioned, I'm, I'm, I'm involved in the private, um, you know, venture and private equity space as well. Uh, and that's where I want to have some degree of diversification, uh, compared to just the headline market cap weighted indices, uh, when this eventually does, uh, kind of run its course. Yeah.
Speaker 4And I don't want to imply that. In that environment, you can't make a positive gain as an investor, but it's going to have to be a much more, probably diversified, but much more active approach. Um, if you're just a passive index buyer, that that's kind of a time of winter for you,
Speaker 3correct? Yeah, exactly. I mean, people can obviously, if you're involved in more value spaces, you can still make money from dividends and more gradual growth. Um, uh, you can, there's potentially options selling strategies where you just benefit from volatility. Right. So you're, you're harvesting income. Um, but yeah, in general sideways market, uh, is, is, it's not good for, for passive investors, especially if they're just a hundred percent equity weighted.
Speaker 4Right. Right. Okay. Um, all right. Well, look, we're not there at this winter time yet. This hangover time yet, uh, sounds like the party, you know, you think odds are still going to rage at least for the next 12 months, um, unless something, you know, orthogonal comes along and knocks it off. So let me ask you about one black Swan that's been in the headlines since yesterday. Yeah. Um, which is, um, uh, Jensen Yang, the, um, uh, head of, uh, Nvidia CEO of Nvidia, uh, just revealed that he's been in this, uh, adulterous affair with potentially a Chinese spy. Um, and you know, one, what does that mean for him? Is he going to get booted from the company or not? Uh, and two, um, uh, well, I guess what does that mean for Nvidia? Does that, does that make people peel back the covers on Nvidia to see if they've done anything untoward regarding China? But also there's this risk, apparently that if he gets divorced, his wife walks away with something like, I don't know, 50 billion, 80 billion and Nvidia stock be the most expensive divorce in history. But to the extent that any of that gets liquidated, that, that could potentially be a real weight on the stock itself. Is this just drama, Lynn, or is there anything here that actually could have a sort of black Swan style surprise to both Nvidia and Nvidia is such a key player in the AI ecosystem. Got compromised. That would presumably have knock-on effects.
Speaker 3Yeah. Good question. I mean, it's certainly a political drama playing out. I mean, it's not nothing burger, uh, to have the, the, you know, the, the CEO of the world's largest market cap company, uh, you know, potentially having troubles over his job and potentially having this geopolitical concern with a potential spy. Um, and so that, that, that it is certainly an issue and it is, I mean, the company is down today. The stock is down today, not, not catastrophically, uh, but it is down, I think it's rational to be down. On this news. I mean, even late last week, these headlines were already circling. So just the fact that he confirmed it, uh, is kind of the new information. Um, uh, a point that I made online, uh, is that, uh, you know, a multi-trillion dollar company shouldn't be tied to one person. Uh, you know, that's part of why investors willing to pay trillions of dollars for companies because there's actually a wide economic moat there. Uh, and there's, you know, there's a, there's an organizational structure. There's a ton of proprietary tech. Uh, and so I do, it shouldn't have a Supreme.
Speaker 4Key man, risk at that valuation.
Speaker 3Exactly. Right. So if you're, if you're in private markets, I mean, if you're a startup or, you know, you're a smaller company, uh, you certainly do have key man, risk, uh, the bigger you get and the more kind of mature the company is, the less key key man, risky should have. Uh, and so I, I view Nvidia as having not a ton of key man risk. I mean, I think it's been well managed. Uh, it's not to say that he, he doesn't contribute to the company, but it's to say that I, you know, again, in V is trading at lower earnings multiples than Coca-Cola. Uh, and so I think. I mean, investors are already pricing in risk in various forms, whether it's earnings downturns, um, whether it's things like this, uh, and I think that's part of what softened the blow today compared to how, how far it could have been down. I mean, if, if, if Nvidia was trading at 80 times earnings or something, you can imagine that the downdraft it would have compared to if it's trading a lower earnings multiple than, than Coca-Cola stock is already. So, uh, it is certainly a headline to watch. It's certainly, uh, entertaining in a dark way. Um, but it, I wouldn't. I wouldn't necessarily base my Nvidia thesis off of this, uh, and especially the broad, I wouldn't, I wouldn't base, uh, my views on an almost $80 trillion equity market off of this. Um, even though it, I obviously it's, it's more impactful to, uh, the company. And then when you, when you broaden out from there, I think the impact radius, uh, gets, you know, more diluted.
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Speaker 4Hiring now? Okay, all right. So right now it doesn't sound like it's something that's keeping you up too much at night. All right, last question on AI. So we mentioned a bit that, you know, there's been growing public pushback on data centers. And presumably, if that, you know, really multiplied from here, that really could have an impact on slowing down the AI CapEx spending. And we've had now a bunch of new elected officials kind of get elected on a, hey, I'm going to rein in the data centers platform. We'll see how successful they are. I'm just kind of thinking, if that really starts to gain steam, I wonder if this wouldn't be an instance where the federal government comes in and says, tough. These are going to happen because of national security. You know, almost like on a war footing basis, like we were during World War II, where the federal government just said, you know what, cars are important, but tanks and planes are more important. We're just, we're literally just making this happen. We're forcing it to happen, you know, because the government just may see this as an existential arms race that it has to win versus China. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3I mean, I think it's a reasonable comparison. The contrast I would point out is that in World War II, the country was, rather centralized, meaning it wasn't polarized. It had a very, I mean, at one point, you know, Roosevelt had a super majority, right? And that, you know, that shifted over time. But the point is, things went very firmly in one direction. So they're able to just kind of unilaterally do that. Whereas now we're in a more polarized climate, just numbers wise. You know, and this is also a defense for data centers, which is to say that, you know, just because politicians were elected doesn't mean that policies change overnight. Because there's still a mixed mandate out there, I would say. So first there's, you know, politicians have campaign rhetoric and then they have kind of rubber meets the road, you know, deal making reality. And so I think that that will somewhat probably soften. But then even to the extent that it doesn't soften at the federal level, I mean, we already, we have, you know, some obviously some senators and congresspeople that are interested in proposing moratoriums legislation. But that has to get through, generally speaking, has to get through a presidential veto. And so that more polarized issue makes it so that just because politicians are saying something doesn't mean it's going to happen per se. But I also think that means that the federal government is not really a savior here because, again, the government itself is mixed now. So obviously the president has executive actions that he can do, but those are constrained by the courts and those are constrained by, you know, Congress's legislation, as we saw with tariffs. And so, you know, I think probably for the next two years, the situation is mixed and kind of muddles on. And, you know, obviously at that point, we have another election. We'll see what happens. You know, the presidential veto could shift. And by that point, we could already be having discussion around private sector demand for data centers drying up. So it's potential that the politicians won't even be a bottleneck at that point per se, that the market forces will already be slowing things down. Like I mentioned, the hyperscalers, investors will be slowing things down. We're already kind of looking at, you know, say Alphabet's quarterly earnings and saying, you're spending how much on this? Like, so I think that the market's already kind of pointing in that direction and we'll see how regulation follows.
Speaker 4All right. I keep trying to get to these other topics, but you keep giving me gold to dig here on this. I'll try to wrap this up as quickly as possible, but I've got an Alphabet or Google question for you in just a second. So I'm going to ask you an unfair question, Lynn, because regardless of your answer, you're going to alienate me from the question. You're going to alienate half the audience here. What do you think we should be doing with the AI build out? In other words, you know, should we be thinking about ratcheting it back and, you know, addressing the issues that data centers are having on municipalities and making sure that the, you know, the code isn't going to evolve to kill us and all that stuff? Or is this, you know, an existential race where if we let China take the baton from us, we'll never catch up. We'll always be in a permanent secondary position. And, you know, we'll have basically handed the baton to a new country to be the world's dominant superpower.
Speaker 3So my view is largely to let the private sector and local communities handle the build out. I think a private sector is, you know, already a good allocator of capital here. I do think that the U.S. wants to have favorable regulations for building out its electrical grid. And being conducive to being, you know, kind of pro-business, pro-data center, pro-AI. You know, I think that the idea that you can restrict AI is like an illusion because it'll just go elsewhere. It'll go to China. So I do think that to the extent this is going to happen, we do want it here. I do think it's reasonable for local politicians. I mean, you know, they're governing a specific area to say, hey, I mean, if a data center is going to come in, it's got to comply with noise regulations. It's got to comply. It's got to comply with local environmental impacts, you know, impacts on water supply, making sure that they're paying their way on electricity, right? So they're not like a drag. And so that's largely a local concern that I would defer to local politicians for. And I think the federal government, you know, obviously you want to stay on top of it from a cybersecurity standpoint. I mean, that's been a big risk lately. And I think it's going to continue to be a big risk until things are kind of solidified. But I think just like, you know, most other technologies, I think it's already going the way it's going. If I was a politician at the federal level, I would neither stand in the way of it, nor would I say that, you know, we have to artificially gun it even faster. I would just say that, you know, we want the leading, we want capital and talent and tech and, you know, business to be here, which I think we're already doing. And we just don't want to get in the way of it.
Speaker 4All right. So I think that's a great answer. I'm going to push on it just a little bit more. And the reason why I'm doing this is because there are issues out there where there is no necessarily like clean answer to it. And this may be one of them. So let's say following that approach, we start falling behind, right? In your mind, you know, how existential is winning the AIRICE for us? Is it one where we would have to, the government would then have to step in and say, look, I know it's a big deal, it's imperfect, but we got to win this because the alternative is too unacceptable. Or would you say, well, we're going to try to do it right. And if China beats us, China beats us.
Speaker 3I don't view it as existential in the Boolean sense, meaning that the binary sense where if we're not number one, we're last. I think that obviously China's massive advantage here is they have this massive electrical power. Right. And they also produce, you know, a lot of their own electronics, not necessarily the high-end chips though. And so I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say, you know, if we're behind on China on raw compute, is that an existential problem for America? I would say no. I think, I mean, we have multiple other industries that I think are relevant. And AI being impactful is helpful because, you know, for example, medicine can get better. I mean, if you have just AI just, you know, folding proteins, you know, a hundred times faster than human scientists and so forth, you're more likely to make breakthroughs. So I think it's important to not end up like, you know, in Europe where you don't really have AI companies and you're power constrained.
Speaker 4I a thousand percent agree on that. I think, you know, they're almost going to be a vassal, and I hate to say this, it sounds offensive, but a vassal continent because you're going to basically need to beg your compute from everybody else.
Speaker 3Yeah. So that's where I view it as existential, which is you don't want zero or you don't want to be so far behind that it's like, you know, obviously a problem. But I think, you know, right now China and the US are in the top two slots. I think it's probably, it's probably going to continue. And I think that's, I mean, that's either way, that's a good place to be. And I wouldn't artificially try to say, hey, we have to just artificially compete with China to make sure we're somehow number one on arbitrary metrics. I think instead we just want, we want to have our own compute. We want to make sure our supply chains are resilient. We want to make sure that capital can go where capital wants to go because it's generally going there for a reason. And I think that's largely already in place. -
Speaker 4Okay. All right. I still have more questions about that, but I'll, I'll, I'll beg off, but I appreciate you going through that exploration with me because this is a, - Sure. - It's, it's, it's probably, you know, one of the biggest issues that's going to drive world events internationally and domestically for at least the first couple of years. Just a quick question on Google. This one really surprised me. So, you know, Google disappointed Wall Street with its last earnings report. And it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, for one of the reasons why was because it showed that AI was stealing from its search revenue margins, right? That when you old-fashioned way served up a bunch of sponsored blue links, people would click on them while they were looking for answers and you would make money. Now the AI search just gives you the answer right up front and most people just take that answer and move on, right? And to me, this was just a blatantly obvious risk, you know, a year or two ago when they started implementing Gemini on Google search results. But for some reason, nobody seemed to really care about it until right now. How much of an issue do you think this is for Google of this sort of cannibalism of its core business model?
Speaker 2Hiring now? Longer term,
Speaker 3I think it's an issue. So a couple of years ago, I was on the other side, the more bull side, that I was not that worried within, say, a three-year time frame on major cannibalizations, especially given the valuations that Google was trading. At the time, Alphabet. So given a couple of years ago when they were trading something like $120 a share, and then eventually they were higher than that, but still kind of conservative. They had a fortress balance sheet. They had multiple business lines. And my view was AI is absolutely cannibalizing search results, but it starts with the non-profitable search results. So for example, if you say, what is Napoleon Bonaparte's wife's name? Google doesn't make money from that. No one's monetizing that. So it doesn't matter if you ask Google or AI.
Speaker 4Except josephine.com, they're probably spending a couple of pennies on it.
Speaker 3Yeah, I'm sure. But yeah, it's not a money term. Whereas if you say plumber near me, right, that's where the money's at, right? So when you're searching for something more monetizable, and AI wasn't really taking from that. And so my view was over time, they certainly could, but that wasn't really on the intermediate, call it two to three-year term which was the correct take. I mean, their search numbers kept doing well. Like I said, once Alphabet hit like 300 a share and everything was great, that's when I got more concerned, mostly because of the CapEx. But then a smaller concern, I think, is once you're at a higher valuation, manageable risks become more real, right? So if back when they were trading at like 20s earnings multiple with a great balance sheet and a strong set of businesses, if they have slightly slower growth than expected, it's not the end of the world. But if they're already priced for perfection, then suddenly that becomes a really big deal. They've also, I mean, another part of my bold thesis from a couple of years ago was that YouTube is still growing. They own YouTube. And if anything, AI is going to proliferate video content because obviously, you know, AI chatbots, you know, obviously were an early thing. And then, image creation. And now we're getting into the part where, you know, it's not bad at making videos. So you can extrapolate a couple of years ahead and assume it's only going to get better. I'm seeing a lot of AI
Speaker 4like short films now on YouTube.
Speaker 3Exactly. And so, I mean, you probably do want to own the biggest video platform out there. That's still a growing part of their business that offsets some of their search risk. But I do think that, you know, especially at current valuations, risks do start to pile up for the company.
Speaker 4So one other question around this. So Google had, it has diversified its business over time, which is great. And, you know, a lot of smart people at Google, absolutely no doubt. But their core business model, the thing, the whole thing was built around was search. And they had a monopoly on search. I don't care, you know, how people want to debate the actual definition of monopoly, but they basically had 93 to 97% of their business. percent market share in search for the past, what, 15, 20 years, they are highly likely not going to have that percent market share in AI, right? They are fighting in a fight with a lot of other big companies that are capable of producing AI that is as good, and in some cases better, depending upon the day, who's winning the latest tests. How big of a threat, if at all, to Google do you think that is? Which is they're moving from an environment where they were the market to now having to probably at best only own a slice of the AI market going forward.
Speaker 3I think it's large. Again, I would segment by business. So I think their YouTube business does fine from it. I think their search business becomes more of that value stagnant type of business where you hit a peak level and eventually just kind of it gets over. The cash cow phase, yeah. Yeah, cash cow phase. And you don't, you invest in it aggressively and makes sure you're shifting, which is what they're doing toward their cloud business. So they, in addition to running their own AI, they host compute in general. So just cloud revenue.
Speaker 4But again, they're, and it all depends on how much they're making, but they're not a 97% market share anymore. There are other big players in that space, right? Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3And that's why I'm not currently bullish on hyperscalers because unlike the 2010s, where they all had kind of, their own network effects, they, you know, had very kind of minimal reinvestment as a percentage of revenue. So they had fortress balance sheets. They were able to just throw money at buybacks. Now they have to invest aggressively to keep up with each other, which from an investor standpoint is not exactly where I want to be. So, I mean, that's why I'm with you there on not being bullish on, you know, most of these hyperscalers at current prices, Alphabet included.
Speaker 4Okay. All right. I hate to say this, Lynn. We're going to have to, we're getting in a more sort of lightning round with these other topics. I didn't expect AI to take as much as it did. I could easily have talked to you for an hour about some of these following topics too, but we'll, we'll make as much hay as we can. All right. Let's go to bonds first. So you've been, you know, publicly mentioning recently that I don't, I don't know if I'm a bond bull per se, but I'm not a bond bearer the way that I used to be. What is the significance of that? I don't mean for Lynn Alden personally, but I mean for the fact that we, you know, so much of the past 15 years was the, there is no alternative market where you had to go out on the risk curve to get a good return. Now there is an alternative, right? And so just naturally on the margin, more capital than in the past is going to shift to bonds versus equities. What do you see as the ramifications of that?
Speaker 3I mean, I think that that can contribute to the risk of a flattish market that we discussed earlier. I mean, I think, you know, if you're talking about, you know, a multi-year period of, of say major indices, uh, not necessarily climbing at the rate that they have been, uh, because, you know, like to your point, I mean, in the 2010s, when, when yields were super low, you know, money supply is growing at 7% and you're getting paid two and a half percent on a 10 year. Um, it's like, it was just an awful trade and it was even challenging to recommend it to seniors and other just pools of capital that want that lower volatility that should be bond buyers. It was hard to say, Hey, you actually should own bonds because just the, the, the return profile, was so weak.
Speaker 4Um, right. And just to note, we, that's why we now have the highest percent equity exposure in seniors portfolios that we've ever had.
Speaker 3Yeah. And I think, I mean, sadly, that was a kind of a rational move in that environment. Uh, but once you, once you're looking at 5% yields, um, uh, it's, you know, there is a, obviously an argument for especially lower volatility investors to seek out those yields. Uh, and even if they're concerned about inflation, they can, they can do tips yields at, and lock in, you know, somewhat reasonable, uh, rates there. Um, and, and so I do think that that, you know, especially if they ratchet up a little higher, that, that does start sucking out of the equity market, uh, which I think is not the end of the world, but I think that, that, that does put some downward pressure, uh, on equities, um, all of us being equal. Um, so I, yeah, it's, it's, uh, you know, I, I don't like being a bond bull. I mean, I, I, I've been, I'm a structural bond bear, uh, rightly so.
Speaker 4Um, And is that, and that's because the train that's not stopping, um, is, is basically bonds are always fighting, uh, uh, the pernicious infl, effects of inflation.
Speaker 3Yeah, they're, they're going up against $2 trillion deficits. Uh, they're going up against, um, you know, if you just run the math, uh, dilution rate. So, you know, money supply is growing by call it 6% currently a year. Uh, historical average in the US is 7%. So if you're getting paid a 5% yield, uh, you're, you're still actually getting mildly diluted as like your share of dollars. And then, uh, depending on if you, if you don't have them in a retirement account, you're then getting taxed. On, on your, you know, on your, on your attempt to keep up with the dilution. So you're, you're, you're just treading water at a loss, uh, over the longer term. now obviously if you're in capital preservation mode that can make sense for a portion of a portfolio because you're not always guaranteed capital preservation elsewhere and you know you can walk through the math a little bit like if you if you look at gold gold obviously pays you if you just own it outright it pays you zero yield the supply growth rate of a fine gold if you look at say the world gold council estimates and things like that you'll get something like one and a half percent a year so it's obviously a much slower growing supply than dollars so your your kind of dilution rate as a gold investor is something like negative 1.5 percent you can you can get into the details of your if you you know pay a custodian for security and all that because that's part of the cost but you're looking at like a mildly negative dilution rate uh which is historically worked out well because productivity growth is a bigger number than that meaning that we get we get more than one and a half percent better at making stuff and that's why you can get into the details of your your gold coin despite being gradually diluted relative to all gold still buys you know as much or more than it did you know decades ago um and when bonds were trading at 2.5 percent with seven percent money supply growth it means your your dilution rate was negative four and a half percent which is which is pretty catastrophic over over you know five five ten years uh whereas when you're getting a five percent yield especially in a retirement account let's say this does take out taxes for a second if you're getting a five percent yield and you're actually in gold territory in terms of your dilution rate um uh which is why uh it goes from being an absolute no-brainer to sell bonds and buy gold to uh you know more of a mixed outcome saying hey you know gold gold obviously is volatile volatile um you know there will be times in the future where bonds are a really bad buy again um but at the current time uh you know bonds do kind of compete with gold in terms of you know call it five to ten year expected dilution rates um which is why i think that they they gather some capital and uh you know why despite all the reasons to own gold it the reason it's i think it's taking a breather here is because there actually are some alternatives on the market
Speaker 4now okay and then speaking of the market um you know will this happen no guarantees we don't know exactly when but if we do end up having this sort of bear market that you and i are talking about whether it's a sideways one or a more volatile one all of a sudden the five percent nominal return starts looking great to an equity market that is down for the year right
Speaker 3exactly yeah and and so i mean and that was hard to make the case at lower yields uh and and you know kind of um the other other things going on but yeah going forward i think that you know there will there will be years where bonds outperform stocks um uh which is you know i think a non-zero reason to own them
Speaker 4okay all right i gotta hop off bonds um i want to get one more topic in and then we'll get to kind of your thoughts just sort of on given the current market landscape you know what assets do you favor and which ones would you stay away from um you've been writing recently about um uh cash levels uh amongst japanese households and you've been calling this sort of a godzilla um potential um trade or potential situation i'd love to have you expound on that and i just want to note i've been talking with david hay on this channel for a number of months about um a thesis he has about japan assets that i labeled the godzilla trade and i'm curious how similar our trades are so let's have you sort of expound on what you're what's got your attention right now
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Speaker 3interesting obviously there are a lot of concerns around what happens if japan repatriates some of its capital um uh and i mean there's there's been focuses on you know the the average japanese householder is very conservative with her investment approach they have a large cash basis which has punished them over the past decade or more um and you know so some of that you know if if if local equities get more interesting to them and it's actually been one of the better performing equity markets the question is where does that capital come from does it come out of their foreign holdings or does it come out of their their cash holdings uh because it's it's a cash rich society uh so i'm you know kind of the observation there is a lot of it is still um bullish uh and you know potentially one of the the the other side of the coin is you know they're big like uh pension funds uh if you look at you know a decade ago they were more domestic focused uh whereas uh they they've they've gone external for better returns uh and you know if they have true like currency crises or bond crises they have the ability to repatriate some of that capital and just to shift some of that more locally uh which is why on average i keep fading the japanese doom uh scenario uh you know generally the the the the area that always spooks me is europe not japan uh so uh it's always kind of interesting to approach that from different angles but i i keep uh analyzing japan for risks and coming away thinking that i'm fairly comfortable to risk uh in japan and and it's and japanese impact on global uh assets okay so um
Speaker 4you and i do we have named the same trade the the godzilla trade and um what i've mentioned a number of times is uh you know mike green and his um capital flows framework that he uses um and they have been given the the market basically a persistent upwards bid um just because of math the way that capital flows work and um in many ways has said, I don't love it. I don't love that it's going on, but it's sort of like a juggernaut that you can't ignore. And his analysis has suggested that it's responsible maybe for the predominance of why the markets have continued to just power higher over the past bunch of years. And he calls those passive flows the giant mindless robot, right? And so whenever I talk to him, I always sort of explore with him what could compromise the giant mindless robot. And there are certain things like a really bad recession that there are tons of layoffs, and then those retirement capital flows start going down. When David Hay started talking about what you're talking about, which is the repatriation of Japanese assets, but really Asian assets. I mean, this happens elsewhere in Asia, Korea being another good example of it. But Japan, just people forget how phenomenally wealthy Japan got in the 80s. And a lot of that wealth was then parked in US assets. I mean, not just in the capital markets, but also in real estate and all sorts of other things. And a lot of it is still here. So to your point, if the Japanese start repatriating their assets at a big enough scale, that's a big deal. And it starts compromising capital flows here. And so whenever I would talk to David, I would put up this image and say, who's going to win out, Godzilla or the giant mindless robot? Godzilla trade could be big enough at some level of scale. To actually defeat the giant mindless robot here. Is it going to? Who knows? But there are both incentives underway. One of the reasons why Jan Benek and David and a few others at my recent conference really laid this out. When you look at how a number of countries now are buying less US treasuries than they were, it's not necessarily because they've lost faith in the dollar and they're dumping treasuries. It's just that they're getting a higher yield, and they were in their domestic bond markets. And so all of a sudden, it makes more sense for a lot of these people to just buy domestic bonds versus buying treasuries. So if that continues to happen, that could suck in US capital into their markets. And some of those markets like Korea have actually provided additional incentives where they've said, look, if you take international assets, particularly US assets and bring them back home, we won't charge you any capital gains tax on it. Right. So if you start to see more of that, this thing really could snowball into sort of a Godzilla-sized problem for the US. I'm just curious, what kind of odds do you put on that right now? Is this just an intellectual thought exercise on your part? Or is this something that you're a little bit concerned about in a way that could impact your future forecasts for the S&P?
Speaker 3So I think it becomes more of a risk when the prior discussion we had starts to happen, which is that the AI trade gets long in the tooth. I think at that point, you risk having a perfect storm where if you look at global market capitalization, it is unusually shifted to the US right now. So in Japan's bubble, it was very shifted toward Japan. Currently, it's very shifted toward the US. We have a disproportionate percentage of global equity market cap. At the same time, you U.S. households are more weighted toward equities than they usually are compared to other things that, you know, like real estate or compared to bonds, compared to other other assets. So so both domestic and international is is shoved into U.S. markets largely for good reason, because, I mean, it has been a very strong performing market, both in terms of price action and actual fundamentals. But with some of those fundamentals do start to dry up and a lot of the kind of the growth starts to slow down because, you know, we kind of build out what we need to. But at the same time, when you have, you know, potential Asian, obviously, currency mini crises and kind of more of an interest in repatriation, that becomes a one to punch. So am I worried about it in twenty seven? Not necessarily. But, yeah, the longer you go out, the more concerned I would be, which is part of why I have an international portfolio that I do think you want to have. You want to have a kind of a line of sight on that, because at some point I do think that. That the world and Americans themselves get over indexed on U.S. equities and probably enter a more of a stagnation phase.
Speaker 4OK, well, who knows, but we will keep tracking of this, folks. And obviously, if things start to build momentum here, we'll pull in back in to call some audibles for us. All right, Lynn, in wrapping up here right now, given the current market environment post election. Post, maybe, you know. Letting the froth out with the big drop that we had last Thursday, as you look forward to, you know, say the next quarter or two, what kind of assets have your favor right
Speaker 3now? So I'm, you know, I think bonds a little bit. Well, I'm still a fairly young investor, so bonds don't thrill me in the way that they would if I was, you know, 30 years older. Which is, by the way.
Speaker 4That is the average age of folks watching this here. Yeah, more like me and fifty five.
Speaker 3Yeah. And so I would be increasingly interested in bonds at that at that target range, whereas in the current kind of life cycle, I'm not obviously bulled up on bonds, but from from a strategic perspective, they are less they used to be just clearly a bad trade, like they just were offering nothing compared to either equities or gold. Right. So if you were, you know, you're you're bull, you go equities, if you're bearish, you go gold. So bonds just had no no hand at the table there. But at five percent yields, you know, they they start kind of inching their way into deserving a slice in a in a conservative portfolio, I would say. I, you know, I think international still deserves a slice. You know, there are kind of reasonable valuations out there. And then I've been involved in the private equity space. So, I mean, where I'm putting my my own kind of time and capital, you know, we found that a company called Orange Juice. So Orange Juice dot com even got the domain where we're going out and we're buying private businesses, kind of low, multiple cash flowing businesses into a permanent capital structure or company. And I think that demographically speaking, there's a market for that because just like you have, you know, baby boomers obviously entering their retirement years, you have baby boomers that own businesses and some of them are looking for exits in a way that private equity is not always suitable to do. For a variety of reasons. So that's where I've been putting some of my time and attention.
Speaker 4There is a guy I've interviewed called Graham Weaver, which when we hop off here, I'll tell you more about him. But it sounds like you're and your team at Orange Juice might benefit from talking to him and his experience, because that's kind of been his model for the past 30 years since he graduated business school with me. But I'm amazed you got Orange Juice dot com that wasn't locked up by the big orange industry. You would think it would be, but, you know, we managed to get it. Wow, congrats. That's so cool. All right. You didn't really mention much there in terms of equities. Is that because in general, you think equities are somewhat richly valued here? Are there any sectors here that you think are worth looking at?
Speaker 3So I'm still broadly bullish on U.S. and global equities. You know, obviously, if we revisit in 12 months, that might change. I, for example, we talked about how I think semiconductors are still reasonable. I actually I think U.S. financials are currently still reasonable. Right. So like, you know, it's A variety of kind of like regional bank stocks, not not the most interesting trade overall, but a pretty enticing earnings yield and kind of I think, you know, their balance sheets are in decent shape. So I'm still I'm for the most part, a growth at a reasonable price investor. So somewhere between value and growth when it comes to public equities and whether you look in the U.S., whether you look in Latin America, whether you look in Japan, there are still, I think, plenty of equities. So somewhere between value and growth when it comes to public equities and whether you look in the U.S., whether you look in the U.S., whether you look in the U.S., whether you look in the U.S. unless or until they hit kind of extremes, which I don't think we're at yet.
Speaker 2You're ready to level up your business. But the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Hiring now? Okay.
Speaker 4All right. And then we haven't really talked about Bitcoin. Certainly at all. And gold that much. What's your general take on those two?
Speaker 3So I think gold, I'm watching the 4,000 level to see if it can keep holding it. It briefly lost that pre-election. It's currently regained it. I think with gold, what you want to see is you wanted to see it kind of hold a 4,000 line, build a new base there. And that starts to become bullish. So I'm kind of in wait and see mode for gold. I think it got over at skis at 5,000. Not in terms of being overvalued. But in terms of just being tactically overbought. So I think the correction is healthy. And I think you want to see it build a new foundation here, much like it did back at 2,000 for whatever the next leg higher is. For Bitcoin, I think the fast money is already out. It's already in the AI trade now. And I think the fundamentals are still kind of interesting for a positive cycle of the next two to three years.
Speaker 4Okay. So fundamentals still interesting. Great. Because a lot of people are just asking. Look, it's been languishing for super long. This past week, it's gotten knocked back down to the mid-70s. It doesn't sound like you're, it's not changing in any way your material, materially, your outlook for it.
Speaker 3Yeah. If you look at the long-term logarithmic chart of just what the asset's done since inception, I mean, this is just part of a normal kind of down cycle. I think if anything, the challenge was that the last two bull cycles have been kind of weak. And so I'm not worried about the bear cycle. I'm just more worried about just overall stagnation in the space. But I think that, you know, again, once the AI trade is just no longer giving the crazy returns that it was in terms of memory stocks, you know, over the past 12 months or in terms of just other things, I think when capital goes out looking for things that are still valuable, I think Bitcoin with the fast money already out is a pretty attractive space for the next cycle.
Speaker 4Okay. All right. Well, we've got to leave it there. Lynn, thank you so much. It's always such a joy, a pleasure, and an educational experience getting to interview you. For folks that would like to follow you when you work in between now and your next appearance on this channel, where should they go?
Speaker 3They can go to lynnaldin.com and see the research I do there. Or like I said, orangejuice.com is a fun project that we're working on and that, you know, investors might find interesting.
Speaker 4Great. And to be an investor in Orange Juice, are there any requirements? Do you have to be an accredited investor? Is it open to anybody?
Speaker 3That's for accredited investors. And currently, we're not raising capital at the moment, but we are, you know, taking interest for when we might in the future do that. So there's obviously various regulations around capital raising, but people can check out the website and materials.
Speaker 4All right. Well, count me interested. All right, folks. Well, please join me in thanking Lynn for giving so much of her time and expertise here today. Do that by hitting the like button and then clicking on the subscribe button below. As well as that little bell icon right next to it. And obviously, if you would like to take action based on any of the insights that Lynn shared today, I recommend that most people watching this do that under the guidance and with the partnership of a good professional financial advisor. If you don't have a good one or you'd like to get a second opinion from one that Thoughtful Money thinks is good, feel free to consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the financial advisors that Thoughtful Money endorses to do that. Just fill out. A very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form. These consultations are totally free. There's no commitments involved. This is just a service. These firms offer to be as helpful. to as many regular investors like you as possible. Lynn, I can't thank you enough. Hey, when is your next book coming out?
Speaker 3No set date. It's probably next year in 2027 is what we're aiming for.
Speaker 4Okay. Well, when that comes out, we'll have you back on and you can let folks know how to get that. All right, Lynn. Thanks so much. Hope to see you again soon. Thank you. Everybody else, thanks so much for watching.
Speaker 5We'll see you next time.
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