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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 U.S. right now. But when some of those fundamentals do start to dry up and a lot of the growth starts to slow down because we kind of build out what we need to. At the same time, when you have potential Asian, obviously, currency mini crises and kind of more of an interest in 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 a 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 a different market, not a ton of audience overlap, but it's certainly been a fun ride. This year, and I already have a second sci-fi book currently in revision. 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 got to tell you, Lynn, you are so prodigious in terms of the 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 will 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. We can't live in spreadsheets 24-7. 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. from inflation to the elections, 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. 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 to come?
Speaker 3Good question. I guess I would lean toward a one-day purge. I think risk got over its keys 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 over. 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, 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 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 could 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. One, does that mean that you think Thursday's plunge was due to post-midterm concerns about AI? Meaning, you know, 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 than 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 a kind of a joking sense. But the point is that the concentration of the bloodbath was really in those tech names. Whereas if we saw, if it was unrelated to that industry, we would see a broader sell-off. And so, that's how I view it. -
Speaker 4Can I just mention? - Yeah. - 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 value stock, sorry, 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 like 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 market. - Yeah. - So, I mean, I don't know. You know, I think there's a lot of value in the market. There's a lot of value in the Gulf. So, 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. And I think, I mean, so the concentration was in tech, but the broader, you know, the broader markets also sold off. I think when an industry is that dominant, right? So, tech is obviously a very dominant part of U.S. 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. Any funds that are in trouble are selling whatever they have to at that point. You know, on leverage, obviously, they're down. You know, 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. - Okay. So, so much revolves around AI. And to my knowledge, correct me if this is wrong, even though we got this, you know, 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, right? And so, I'm not sure we've seen a true kind of clearing out. based on, you know, some sort of acceptance 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 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? Good question.
Speaker 3My 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 it's where that risk starts to materialize. But 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, right? And so Wall Street has this set of, you know, next two, three year earnings estimates penciled in. And if anything, retail investors are saying, are you sure though? Right? Are you positive? And so there's not really an over bidding for the kind of the current earnings already penciled in. There's already actually some wiggle room. Same thing for Micron. I mean, so the classic way that RAM stocks trade, they trade like commodity producers, where, you know, when RAM prices are high, it's treated as like, you know, kind of a copper miner, right? So investors say, okay, right, like, we're going to pay very low multiple, because, you know, we're going to pay very low multiple, because, you know, we're near peak margins, and peak revenue and earnings, you 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, as it's kind of penciled in for 2027, like their backlog is already mostly sold. And so if anything, if this, if the peaks 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 cap. Compared to the actual earnings and 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 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 my 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 my, you know, I used to be, I used to bullish alphabet after nearly a triple, you know, when they started hitting $300 a share, and they were also ramping up CapEx, I was like, okay, I have a I'm kind of, you know, this, this might be a selling opportunity. The semiconductor space is where I'm, I'm still fairly constructive. That's where profitable growth has been that that, you know, that 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, say a 12 month view. But I also tend to fade, you know, when they've had, say, a month of just going straight up, right, I get nervous when that happens. But I get I do get reballed 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 yeah, presumably, if there was something that challenged that, that outlook for you, you'd maybe change your opinion. But right now, your default assumption is, is the juggernaut is going to continue at least for the
Speaker 3next 10 months, right? Yeah. So I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Instead of this, instead of the cycle peaking in 2028, or 2029, if it was actually going to peak in 2027, I'd be I'd be more cautious around the whole space.
Speaker 4Okay, I'm going to ask just a couple other AI threats. But I 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 megatrends in danger of getting derailed? And their their honest assessment is no. Looking at different other different data sets. So one Jan Van Eck, he has, you know, 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 3That's why I view it as well.
Speaker 4Similarly, Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightwaves, sort of the other 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 slowdown in that. And to a certain extent, it might be a harbinger, like an early detection system, right? If you're if you're going to start pulling in your CapEx spending, you know, 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, you know, 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 concerns that have been in the headlines of late. One is, just the, you mentioned that NVIDIA's PE ratio is lower than Coke's right now. There are a lot of questions about the quality of these earnings estimates. One is just the quality of earnings, you know, from the, it's still an ongoing debate, but sort of how circular the financing is in this space, you know, are these true earnings? Or is it just cash kind of being recycled around the ecosystem masquerading as earnings? And then secondly, the business models of, you know, the AI, certainly the frontier companies, but I think other parts of the AI ecosystem as well, there's still being determined in real time. And it seems that they are trending downwards, right? So for example, you know, cost to compute is going down on average, one, probably just because of, you know, some efficiencies, but more importantly, a lot of companies are switching based upon what tasks they're running. You know, 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, you know, the 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? Right now, when you
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Speaker 2Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers not available in all states.
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. Obviously, there are risks with vendor financing. Basically, chip makers funding some of their own customers. That's still, while it is a reasonable concern, it's still a fairly small percentage of their balance sheet overall. And so I think that 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 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-weight 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 they, you know, when someone's, you know, willing to put all this hardware in place, and all this, all this money, like real 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. Yeah, that they're, you know, they're more, they're more certain around that, 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 playing this pretty cautiously, despite the fact that, you know, obviously, parts of the parts of the market are bubblicious. Anytime you have a big boom like this, you're going to get over your skis. 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 counterpart, their parties are serious, and trying to go up the counterparty stack, I think that those are good signs. Another kind of longer term issue around the hyperscalers is they have, you know, obviously, they're, they're, they're becoming free cash flow negative. 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, rather than just, you know, kind of funding from earnings. But then they're also getting into these lease obligations, which which doesn't show up in debt quite the same way, sometimes, it doesn't show up in, for example, in bonds, but it's still a liability that they've committed to. And so, you know, there is some certainly some book shuffling going on. And it's it's so far, it's not really that much in the semiconductor space, it's elsewhere.
Speaker 4Okay. I guess my question on that, though, is just how worried if at all are you that the chickens will come home to roost for that for that at some point?
Speaker 3Um, after a handful of years, probably, but also, again, it depends where so for example, semiconductors, I think will have a downturn. I mean, semiconductors are cyclical industry, especially, especially memory, but it does more broadly, they are, I think they will absolutely have a downturn. I think their balance sheets will be intact when it happens. I think hyperscalers will probably have a period of stagnation. And where I'd be most concerned is the models themselves. Because again, you have your trillion dollar valuations, built on very flimsy, boats, right, that are also currently profitable with no, no 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 day.
Speaker 4Okay. And I'm curious, do you? Do you feel inevitable? There's a number of people I 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. Do you think that's more or less inevitable in this one as well? I think so.
Speaker 3And again, I mean, we already have lessons from the memory space, where they get constrained for a period of time, their their margin of profitability go up. And then of course, they bring on more supply, they eventually contribute to oversupply. And then you have a pretty brutal bear cycle for two or three years. And I think I mean, that I think it's going to happen again, just from a, you know, a higher high. A higher low. It's obviously a bigger part of the market now. So for example, when, when Micron was worth, you know, 10s of billions, and it's going through its its crazy cycle that it does, it doesn't really impact the S&P 500. But when it's a trillion dollar company going through those gyrations, it starts to impact things, especially when you combine that with, you know, 10s of 10s of trillions of other semiconductor companies. So I do think that we'll have an overhang. I think any big build out like this is it's, there's no way that you just build the exact amount you need. Yeah, right. You're always you're behind until you're ahead. And then you bring your head, 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. From what you can see so far, given how large a percentage of the major indices, 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 would be like multi year? 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 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 potentially a little bit early for that. But I do think that we are certainly at risk 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. But the other possibility is just going sideways in a choppy, you know, plus 20%, minus 20% range for years. And that's where I think diversification is helpful. That's where I want to be involved. I want to be invested 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 Bitcoin or other other, you know, other assets, like I mentioned, I'm involved in the private, you know, venture and private equity space as well. And that's where I want to have some degree of diversification, compared to just the headline market cap weighted indices, when this eventually does kind of run its course.
Speaker 4Yeah, and 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, much more active approach. If you're just a passive index buyer, that's kind of a time of winter for you, correct?
Speaker 3Yeah, 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. You can, there's potentially option selling strategies where you just benefit from volatility, right? So you're harvesting income. But yeah, in general, sideways market is is not good for passive investors, especially if they're just 100% equity weighted.
Speaker 4Right, right. Okay. All right. Well, look, we're not there at this winter time yet, this hangover time yet. Sounds like the party, you know, you think odds are still going to rage, at least for the next 12 months, 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, which is Jensen Yang, the head of NVIDIA, CEO of NVIDIA, just revealed that he's been in this adulterous affair with potentially a Chinese spy. And, you know, one, what does that mean for him? Is he going to get booted from the company or not? And two, well, I guess what does that mean for NVIDIA? 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 in 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. It's certainly a political drama playing out. I mean, it's not nothing burger to have the CEO of the world's largest market cap potentially having troubles over his job and potentially having this geopolitical concern with a potential spy. And so that is certainly an issue. And it is I mean, the company is down today. The stock is down today, not not catastrophically, 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 is kind of the new information. A point that I made online is that, you know, a multi trillion dollar company shouldn't be, tied to one person. You know, that's part of why investors want to pay trillion dollars for companies, because there's actually a wide economic moat there. And there's, you know, there's a there's an organizational structure, there's a ton of proprietary tech. And so I do
Speaker 4shouldn't have supreme key 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, you certainly do have key man risk, the bigger you get, and the more kind of mature the company is, the less key key man risk you should have. And so I view Nvidia as having not a ton of key man risk. I mean, I think it's been well managed. It's not to say that he doesn't contribute to the company. But it's to say that I you know, again, Nvidia is trading at lower earnings multiples than Coca Cola. And so I think I mean, investors are already pricing in risk in various forms, whether it's earnings downturns, whether it's things like this. 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 Nvidia was trading at 80 times earnings or something, you can imagine that the downdraft it would have compared to trading a lower earnings multiple than than Coca Cola stock is already. So it is certainly a headline to watch. It's certainly entertaining in a dark way. But I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily base my Nvidia thesis off of this. And especially the broad I wouldn't I wouldn't base my views on an almost $80 trillion equity market off of this. Even though it obviously, it's more impactful to the company, and then when you, when you Raw now, from there, I think the impact radius gets, you know, more diluted.
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Speaker 4All 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. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that's a great question. 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 center's 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 supermajority. Right. And that, you know, that 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, dealmaking reality. And so I think that 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 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 that 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 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 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 be 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 were already kind of looking at, you know, the alphabets 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 a 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 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 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. We'll have 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 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 to 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 with, you know, local environmental impacts, you know, impacts on water supply. Make sure that they're paying their way on electricity. Right. So they're not like a drag. And so that that's largely a local concern that, you know, 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 be a big risk until things are kind of solidified. But I think just like, you know, most other technologies, I think. I think it's already. 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 we don't want to get in the way of that.
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 rice 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 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 there 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, you know, if we're if we're behind on China on raw compute. Is that? Is that an existential problem for America? I would say no. I think I mean, 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 than human scientists and so forth, you're more likely to make breakthroughs. So I think it's important to not end up like Europe where you don't really have AI companies and you're you're you're you're.
Speaker 4Power constraints. So I think that I 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 viewed 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 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 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 it's generally going there for a reason. And I think we're that that's largely already in place.
Speaker 4OK, all right. I still have more questions about that, but I'll. I'll beg off, but I appreciate you going through that with me because this is a, it's probably, you know, one of the biggest issues that's going to drive world events internationally and domestically for at least the foreseeable 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 for, you know, 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, on Google search results. But for some reason, nobody seemed to really care about it until right now. How, how much of an issue do you think this is for Google of this sort of cannibalism of its core business model?
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Speaker 3A longer term, I think it's an issue. So a couple of years ago, I was on the other side, the more bull side, uh, that I was not that worried within say a three-year timeframe on major cannibalizations, especially given the valuations that Google was trading at the time alphabet. Uh, so given the, given a couple of years ago when they, you know, they were trading in something like, you know, $120 a share. Um, and then eventually, you know, they were, they were higher than that, but, but still kind of conservative. They had a fortress balance sheet. They had multiple business lines. And my view was, um, AI is absolutely cannibalizing search results, but it starts with the non-profitable search results. So for example, if you say, you know, what is, what is, uh, Napoleon Bonaparte's wife's name, right? It's Google doesn't make money from that. Nobody's monetizing. No one, no one's monetizing that. So it doesn't, I don't know if you ask Google or AI.
Speaker 4Except josephine.com. They're probably spending a couple of pennies.
Speaker 3Yeah, I'm sure. but yeah, it's not, it's not a money term. Whereas if you say plumber near me, right, that that's, that's where the money's at. Right. So, so, so when you're, when you're searching for something more monetizable and, uh, AI wasn't really taking from that. Um, and so my, my view was over time, they certainly could, but that wasn't really on the, on the, you know, kind of the intermediate, call it two to three year term horizon, which was the correct take. I mean, you know, their search, their search numbers kept doing well. Um, like I said, once, once alphabet hit like 300, uh, a share and, you know, then, and everything was great. Uh, that's when I got more concerned, uh, mostly because of the CapEx. Uh, but then a smaller concern I think is, is, you know, once you're at a higher valuation, manageable risks become more real, right? So if, if, if, you know, back when they were trading at like low twenties earnings multiple, with a great balance sheet and a, you know, 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, then suddenly that becomes a really big deal. Um, 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. Uh, and if anything, AI is going to, uh, proliferate video content because obviously, you know, AI chatbots, you know, obviously we're an early thing and then, you know, image, image creation. Uh, and now we're getting into the part, where, uh, you know, it does, it's not bad at making videos. Uh, so you can, you can extrapolate a couple of years ahead and assume it's, it's only going to get better. I'm seeing a lot of AI,
Speaker 4like short films now on YouTube.
Speaker 3Exactly. Uh, and so, I mean, do you, you probably do want to own the one thing, you know, that the biggest video platform out there, um, that's still a growing part of their business that, that offsets some of their search risk. Uh, but I, I do think that, you know, especially at current valuations risks, do you start to pile up, uh, for the company?
Speaker 4So one other question around this. So Google had, it is diversified. It's, it's business over time, which is great. And, you know, a lot of smart people at Google, absolutely no doubt. Um, 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, I don't care, you know, how people want to debate the actual definition of monopoly, but they basically had 93 to 97% market share, and search for the past, what, 15, 20 years. Um, they are highly likely not going to have that, um, percent market share in AI, right? They, they are fighting in a fight with a lot of other, um, big companies that are capable of producing AI that is as good. And in some cases better depending upon the day who's, who's winning the latest tests. Um, how big of a threat, if at all to Google, do you think that is, which is they're, they're moving from an environment, where they were the market to now having to, you know, probably at best only own a slice of the AI market going forward?
Speaker 3I think it's large. Again, I would, I would segment by business. So I think, I think their YouTube business does fine from it. I think their search business becomes more of that value, stagnant type of business where they, you know, you, you hit a peak level and eventually just kind of a phase. Yeah. Yeah. Cash cow phase. And you don't, you know, aggressive invest in it aggressively and make sure you're shifting, which is, is what they're doing toward their cloud business. So they, in addition to running their own, you know, AI, um, just, you know, they, they host compute in general. So, so, you know, just cloud revenue.
Speaker 4Um, but again, they're in, in, you know, it all depends on how much they're making, but they're, they're not a 97% market share anymore. There are other big players in that space, right? Yeah. I agree.
Speaker 3And that's, and that's why I'm not, I'm not currently bullish on hyperscalers because unlike the 2010s, where they all had kind of their own network effects, uh, 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. Uh, now they have to aggress, uh, invest aggressively to keep up with each other, uh, which from an investor standpoint is not exactly where I want to be. So, I mean, that's why I'm, I'm, I'm with you there on not being bullish on, on, you know, most of these hyperscalers at current prices, alphabet included. Okay.
Speaker 4All right. Um, I hate to say this, Lynn, we're going to have to get into 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. Um, all right. Uh, 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 bear the way that I used to be. Um, 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, you know, kind of a multi-year period of, of say major indices, uh, not necessarily, they're climbing at the rate that they have been, uh, because, you know, like to your point, I mean, 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, we 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, 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 so I, 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've been, I've, I've been, I'm a structural bond bear, uh, rightly so. Um, and is that,
Speaker 4and that's because the train that's not stopping, um, is, is basically bonds are always fighting, uh, the pernicious and 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 money supply is growing by, call it 6% currently a year. Historical average in the US is 7%. So if you're getting paid a 5% yield, you're still actually getting mildly diluted as like your share of dollars. And then depending on if you don't have them in a retirement account, you're then getting taxed on your attempt to keep up with the dilution. So you're just treading water at a loss 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 can walk through the math a little bit. 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 1.5% a year. So it's obviously a much slower growing supply than dollars. So your dilution rate as a gold investor is something like negative 1.5%. You can get into the details if you pay a custodian for security and all that, because that's part of the cost. But you're looking at a mildly negative dilution rate, which has historically worked out well because productivity growth is a bigger number than that, meaning that we get more than 1.5% better at making stuff. And that's why your gold coin, despite being gradually diluted relative to all gold, still buys as much or more than it did decades ago. And when bonds were trading at 2.5% with 7% money supply growth, it means your dilution rate was negative 4.5%, which is pretty catastrophic over 5, 10 years. Whereas when you're getting a 5% yield, especially in a retirement account, let's say let's take out taxes for a second, if you're getting a 5% yield and money supply growth to 6%, you're actually in gold territory, in terms of your dilution rate, which is why it goes from being an absolute no-brainer to sell bonds and buy gold to more of a mixed outcome saying, hey, gold obviously is volatile. There will be times in the future where bonds are a really bad buy again. But at the current time, bonds do kind of compete with gold in terms of, call it five to 10-year expected. dilution rates, which is why I think that they gather some capital. And why, despite all the reasons to own gold, the reason I think it's taking a breather here is because there actually are some alternatives on the market now.
Speaker 4Okay. And then speaking of the market, 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 5% nominal return starts looking great. And we're going to have to see if we're going to be able to take
Speaker 3it down to an equity market that is down for the year, right? Exactly. Yeah. And so, I mean, that was hard to make the case at lower yields and kind of the other things going on. But yeah, going forward, I think that there will be years where bonds outperform stocks, which is, I think, a non-zero
Speaker 4reason to own them. 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, what assets do you favor and which ones would you stay away from? You've been writing recently about cash levels amongst Japanese households, and you've been calling this sort of a Godzilla potential trade or potential situation. I'd love to have you expound on that. And I just want to know, what are some of the things that you've been writing recently about cash levels amongst Japanese households? I've been talking with David Hay on this channel for a number of months about 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's got your attention right now.
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Speaker 2U.S. only. Well, it's been interesting.
Speaker 3Obviously, there are a lot of concerns around what happens if Japan repatriates some of its capital. And, I mean, there's been focuses on, you know, the average Japanese householder is very concerned about what happens if they repatriate some of its capital. And, I mean, there's been focuses on, you know, the average Japanese householder is very concerned conservative with their investment approach. They have a large cash basis, which has punished them over the past decade or more. And, you know, so some of that, you know, 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 cash holdings? Because it's a cash-rich society. So, you know, kind of the observation there is, a lot of it is still bullish. And, you know, potentially one of the other side of the coin is, you know, their big, like, pension funds. If you look at, you know, a decade ago, they were more domestic focused, whereas they've gone external for better returns. 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 shift some of that more locally, which is why, you know, on average, I keep fading the Japanese doom scenario. You know, generally, the area that always spooks me is Europe, not Japan. So, it's always kind of interesting to approach that from different angles. But I keep analyzing Japan for risks and coming away thinking that I'm fairly comfortable with the risk in Japan and Japanese impact on global assets.
Speaker 4Okay. So, you and I do, we have named the same trade, the Godzilla trade. And what I've mentioned a number of times is, you know, Mike Green and his capital flows framework that he uses. And they have been given the market basically a persistent upwards bid, just because of math, the way the capital flows work. And in many ways, Mike has said, I don't love it. I don't love that it's going on. But it's sort of like a juggernaut. It's 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 when David Hays 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 U.S. 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? David Hays: Who knows? But there are both incentives underway. Like 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 U.S. 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 than 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 U.S. 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 U.S. assets, and bring them back home, we won't charge you any capital gains tax on it. So, if you start to see more of that, this thing really could snowball into sort of a Godzilla-sized problem for the U.S. 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 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. 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 kind of global equity market cap. At the same time, US households are more weighted toward equities than they usually are compared to other things like real estate or compared to bonds, compared to other assets. So both domestic and international is shoved into US markets, largely for good reason, because it has been a very strong performing market, both in terms of price action and actual fundamentals. But when some of those fundamentals do start to dry up, 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 in repatriation, that becomes a one-two punch. 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, you know, kind of a line of sight on that. Because at some point, I do think that the world and Americans themselves get over indexed on US equities, and probably enter a more of a stagnation phase.
Speaker 4Okay. 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 situation, we're in a situation where we're in a situation where we're in a 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 now?
Speaker 3So I'm, you know, I think. Sounds like 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.
Speaker 4So, but. Which is, by the way, that is the average age of folks watching this here. Yeah. More like me, 55.
Speaker 3And so I would be increasingly interested in bonds at that target range. Whereas in the current kind of life cycle, I'm not obviously bulled up on bonds. But 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 bull, you go equities. If you're bearish, you go gold. Bonds just had no hand at the table there. But at 5% yields, you know, they start kind of inching their way into deserving a slice 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 own kind of time and capital, you know, we found a company called Orange Juice. So orangejuice.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 a 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 going to be, you know, they're going to be, you know, they're 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 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 orangejuice.com. That is a great way to get into the 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 US and global equities. You know, obviously, if we, you know, revisit in 12 months, that might change. I, for example, we talked about how I think semiconductors are still reasonable. Right. So like, you know, it's a variety of kind of like regional bank stocks, 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, for the most part, a growth at a reasonable price investor. So somewhere between value and growth when it comes to public equities. And I, whether you look in the US, whether you look in Latin America, whether you look in the United States, whether you look in Japan, there are still, I think, plenty of equities out there that are attractive. And the indices, I think, will, you know, I've described that we're in kind of a slightly run-of-the-hot environment with 7% of GDP deficits, which makes it hard to fade equities unless or until they hit kind of extremes, which I don't think we're at yet.
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Speaker 4dance. Okay. All 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 the $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 its skis at $5,000, not in terms of being overvalued, but in terms of being tactically overbought. So I think the correction is healthy. I think it's a good thing. And I think you want to see it build a new foundation here, much like it did back at 2000 for whatever the next leg higher is. For Bitcoin, I think, I mean, 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 it's not changing in any way 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. It's more worried about just overall in the space. But I think that, again, once the AI trade is just no longer giving the crazy returns that it was in terms of memory stocks 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. All right. 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 and your work in between now and your next appearance on this channel, where should they
Speaker 3go? They 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 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 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. All right. Well, count me interested.
Speaker 4All 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 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 the 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 6We'll see you next time.
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