 What's up guys, it's Terry here and welcome to the After Hours podcast, a trading podcast where we discuss the latest updates and insights about the market. In this episode, we covered key topics such as SPI, the overall market, inflation and trading market conditions, offering you valuable insights to help you become a better trader. Plus, we also have a referral link below that can help you save $500 off a membership. So tune in and join the conversation with James and I on the After Hours podcast. What's going on guys? We're back with another episode of the After Hours podcast. We took off a week or so, let some news build up. And so now we have plenty to talk about. So I think the first thing I wanted to dive into really is this new market bounce that we've had. I mean, the SPI has been pushing pretty hard. I think that we've we've changed sentiment a little bit, potentially. Harry, what are you thinking right now about the overall market and SPI bounce and all that? And this is just my personal opinion. I think that we still have a little bit lower to go just because like the thing is, is that what I've noticed every time, like just like trading throughout this past, like, let's say the last year is that every time we are in that kind of bounce phase, small caps are really hot, the overall market is really hot, the like trading is really hot in general, everyone's banking, everyone's having a good time. You're seeing shit like BBB UI go to from like $2 to seven. Like we're getting all these insane market moves. And what happens is that all of a sudden you get a week where the range just dries up again. And every time that has happened so far, just over the past year, we've always gone lower. So like it seems to me like, like for me, at least for longing, when we're in that bounce stage, like it's great, everything's hot. It's like we're back to COVID again. Everyone is lighting up on Twitter, posting big games on the short side, posting big games on the long side, posting everything, talking about, oh, how they're doing so great. And then this week, I found definitely like a shift again, where we didn't have that many runners. The range was pretty shit. And like we had talked about that kind of before the podcast where like the range was pretty shit. And to me, it was just like, are we back to the slow kind of market as the spot goes down lower? So that's something that I think is just for me, like pattern wise, like I always try and like pick up on patterns and stuff like that. And I've noticed that when we start to get a little bit slower, usually the market's taken kind of like a thank, you know. Yeah. So do you think your opinion is that we're going to go lower on like general like the indices? Like do you think like things like that? Yeah, really? So spy all that stuff? Yeah, I think we're going to go lower. I think we're going to be downtrending again. And I mean, you can timestamp me on it. Maybe we're just taking a pause before we start to go higher. But in my opinion, I don't know. I just feel like, I don't know. I just feel so like fishy and skeptical about these bounces. Like every time we've gotten to kind of like, like the 400 range, that 410 range on the spy, like that kind of bounce on the indices. Everyone's just switched to bullish and then something comes out where we just get fucking clobbered again, you know. And I was talking to some other traders this weekend about that. And, you know, maybe it's one of those things where like everyone feels the same way. So the opposite happens. But when I talk to a lot of traders, like everyone's thinking way lower on the spy, everyone's thinking that we're down for like a bearish kind of, you know, turnaround. So, I mean, we'll have to see. But in my opinion, my view, you can timestamp me on this. I think we're going lower. So we are at Sunday, February 12th. It's Super Bowl Day. So actually, I like that that's your opinion because I'm actually the complete opposite. So this is kind of cool. So I'm personally of the camp of, you know, when we were trading at the Lowe's for spy, we were making new Lowe's. I mean, I've never seen sentiment as bearish. Like on Twitter, overall people just talking to people who aren't really market participants, you know, maybe just the 401k or something, people like that. Everyone was so negative to the point where I was getting sick of hearing it now at that point. Like, you know, sentiment hadn't really changed. And as we saw last week, we had the biggest inflow of short participants, hedge funds and institutions, exit their positions. Basically, they just got squeezed out, right? That was this last week. I think that the jobs report that we had a few weeks ago, we added half a million jobs, took a lot of people by surprise because you can't really have a recession when you're adding a half a million jobs. Whether that number is like kind of fake, you know, with the creation of jobs. Like I think we've talked in the past about how it's so easy to make jobs. But, you know, those are things that the numbers see. We also see that CPI and inflation is coming down. So I don't know. I almost, and I feel at the same time that there were so many, you know, institutions who were not positioned to get involved on the long side. So not only did we have the shorts get squeezed out on mega positions, now we have institutions saying, shit, do I need to get a little bullish and position myself to get along? Now, I sat with myself for a while and I was thinking a lot about that. Like, is this one of those scenarios where the market kind of set FU to the over bearish and squeeze them out so we can make a new leg lower, which is like how technically how stocks kind of can move, right? Just like in small caps, like we need to squeeze out, you know, bust everybody's balls and then you can head lower. Or is this a transitional shift? And I, for some reason, just in my head, I think this is a shift in sentiment. I think that again, when you talk to the traditional normal person, like most people don't even think we're in a recession or we're experiencing a recession because day-to-day life doesn't feel it, right? And I just, I wonder if as a country, we spend too much money no matter how much little people have in savings. I still see bars poppin'. I see they're full. Restaurants are still booked. You know, the Apple stores are still packed. So I don't know. I mean, it's kind of cool that we have the opposite take. And again, I think it's anyone's game at this point. I mean, just like anyone, nobody really truly knows where we're headed. I think in terms of rates, this is kind of how I look at it, right? So like rates, I feel are like kind of delayed. Like it takes a little bit to get the effect of the rate in. It's definitely easy to look at like the here and now and have that type of opinion. I agree 100% on that, at least where I am, not much change yet. But I feel like rates are very sluggish with how they work, you know? Like it just, in my opinion, it's just, it's very, very slow. It's very, very sluggish. And as people start kind of getting, like it's like if you have savings built, you know, a solid like savings, emergency fund, whatever, your rates go up for the first couple of months. You're like, okay, we're fine. This is doable. But then it keeps climbing a little bit and it keeps climbing a little bit. And then you're like, holy shit, we're out of savings. Like we have to kind of, you either go into debt or you're like, fuck, we can't pay this, you know? And we have to cut back on other things. So I think personally, it's gonna take a little bit of these prices to kind of like start chipping away slowly at the little, like it's like we have an ice sculpture and like we're just slowly chipping away all the way around until the ice sculpture fucking collapses, you know? So I think that like it takes a while for these rates to come into play. It takes a while for what's kind of been happening to come into play to really start eating at people so they're like, holy shit, like we can't afford this anymore. We have a high-ass mortgage payment. We have a high-ass car payment. We have a high-ass this, we have a high-ass that. And people overpaid so much for shit and people are still overpaying so much for shit that I think like we're going to hit this kind of like tipping point where it's just too much. And then I think, and again, I kind of want to like reiterate a little bit, like I don't necessarily think it's time to like get bullish on stocks and start like buying, especially like things like real, I don't think that's that. I just, I feel like we're going to enter a period of extreme chop for a long time. And honestly, that shop could last like a decade, you know? Cause that's kind of what happened after the inflationary period, you know, in the early 70s and then, you know, just you can go back in history and look at times of economic crisis and see where the market went after. And it was just chop. Does that mean that we're making all-time highs? Sure, I think some equities might make some new highs, but I also think, but some could also make lows. I just don't think that in the, like start a spy and all that, that's my opinion is we're kind of, we put our bottoms in for now, where I think that things are going to like lag. Like I just, where I really agree with what you're saying is like I've noticed in real estate, you know, with interest rates are probably optimistically going to settle around 5%, you know, barring any sort of unexpected news, like outcome with CPI and all that stuff. So I think rates are going to, you know, adjust eventually to the 5%, but at 5% rates, that's still a lot of, that's still very expensive to buy a home, you know, in this country. It's still very expensive to refinance a car, you know? So I think that at that point, you're going to see that's where the economy and the recession will kind of be felt with like normal Americans or just normal people around here. But at the same time, like again, I think that just because we're in like a recession or that people are struggling with savings, doesn't mean necessarily the stock market's going to collapse. You know, a lot of times the markets do tend to bottom, you know, during a recession, and then, you know, we kind of have to live through it. I think people here unfortunately will spend no matter what, it's like, I see it day to day. It's crazy, right? Like I see people who are struggling to pay their bills, but somehow they always have the new iPhone. Somehow they always had, they're always, they have all the streaming services, the Netflixes, the Hulu's, all that stuff. We're spenders, you know? But it almost feels like it's needed some sort of some economic reset. And again, I think what's tough with the stock market is that when you really look at it, average people aren't really participating. You know, you'll have the retirement accounts that usually are run by someone else. You don't have many people, I don't know many people who control their own retirement account or even actively participate in buying stocks. You know, I had a great conversation over the last week that I thought Google was a good buy coming up because they just got hammered the other day. I think they lost like 6% a day. And that was all because of a failed AI, like news basically, they had a demo software and it failed. It got a very basic question wrong. And off of that Microsoft popped and Google went down and I tell people that and they're like, well, you know, they have no idea what's even in their retirement. So that's why sometimes I feel like the market is just going to be really choppy for a while and that's kind of that. I also think that like during COVID, it was like an environment where people were getting short and they were getting squeezed out and they were like re-adding. You know, like how many times in the uptrending COVID did you hear people who were fighting the market say, okay, I think it's time to get bullish? You know, no one said that. Everyone was like, it's not time to get bullish. They just kept re-adding to their shorts, you know? How many short squeezes did we hear of people and big firms blowing up during COVID, like blow up after blow up after blow up after blow up of people getting short, no risk management, re-adding. Getting short, no risk management, re-adding, you know? And now we're in a situation where we're hearing people, I'm short, I'm getting squeezed. Okay, maybe it's time to go long, you know? I just feel like, like could you imagine you're in the small cap and you're fucking trading this thing. It's under VWAP, it's at four bucks and the shit goes over high at eight to five, halts up to five and you're like, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get out of my short and I'm gonna get long. How many times have we seen those members in the discipline workshop who wanna like switch biases all the time and they go from short and then they go to long and then they get stopped down on long and then they're like, oh, I'm gonna go short again. And then they, you know what I mean? Like how many times have we seen people like that and we're like, okay, stick with one bias, you know, do whatever. So I feel like people are just fucking confused and the market is just fucking with them. And if we go lower, I think now like people don't really know like, like where the spy's lower. Everyone's like, oh, we're bearish, we're bearish. We get one fucking bear market bounce. We're bullish, we're bullish. Everyone flips long, we go back down. They're like, okay, we're bearish. You know, like we're in this situation where people just don't really know, we don't really have that confirmation. And I think that if these rates start slowly eating away at people, you know, time after time after time, then we could definitely see it go lower. And wouldn't it be funny if all these institutions got squeezed out right here at the top and then we go way lower and then they get short again, squeeze them out again. You know, it's just like one big like liquidity fuck. So to me, I'm just like, I could see us going way lower. I think that we are going to go lower. That's just my personal thing. Yeah, it could easily happen. I think that as far as like portfolio management, like now it's like, you just have to be, you know, comfortable buying companies that, you know, have these like moats and they're very like protected and cash flow positive. And I think that there's a huge push out of growth stocks and like we're going to push towards value, you know, that whole classic, you know, Ben Graham mindset of, you know, you're buying companies with good PE ratios and you're buying companies with strong balance sheets and companies that have protected assets and stuff. And I think that that's going to be it because again, if we're even having this conversation, we're talking about Lena Spies is not even that far off the all-time highs versus the low lows of what we put in the last like two years and like realistically, none of us know this thing could cook fucking greater and it or it could rip to new highs on positive news. Like, dude, we never know. Obviously I don't think the war in Ukraine is going to end anytime soon, but God for it, you know, who knows, you know, tomorrow we can wake up to news that there's a ceasefire and it's over and we rip to new, you know, we don't know. And that's why I feel like shops are going to happen because like in barring any news, I mean, nobody seems to have a clue. You know, I listen to all these very good financial podcasts and I hear people making strong bull cases and then making strong bear cases. And it's like, these are very intelligent and like some of the best of the best minds in the industry and just seeing people really just clamor at ideas is pretty wild because, you know, you'd think you'd be able to at this point say, all right, like, you know, we have the ingredients here. We know exactly what's coming, but like, I don't think anybody does. I mean, I really don't. And like, I mean, for God's sake, look at Tesla. Tesla got slapped down to $100 a share, $109. And then it doubled. It went to 200 bucks a share. And like, how do you trade that? You know, I mean- That's what I mean. In these strong market bounces, it is the most irrational fucking price action you'll ever see. Once we top out, we start to go red. We start to get choppy. There's like less manipulation. Like what was the only small cap stock that really got manipulated hard? It was KPRX. Yes, you could say like, yeah, manipulation, whatever. But the only one that I really saw was that like CELZ or whatever that we were talking about that day where we went from like close to a dollar up to $1.40. That was really the only like rigged manipulated ticker I saw. Other than that, it was pretty fucking tame. And when you go from a week of having multiple tickers being like rigged and manipulated all the time to only like one or two or three, that tells me that, okay, something's fucking wrong here. Something's off here. Because in these bounces, I trade at my best. I trade at my peak. It's amazing to long. We have range. Like we are both talking to each other, texting each other. You're short. You're like, I'm trading at my peak. I'm trading well. And then all of a sudden we get this week where it's like everything's like shut off. Like small caps are just shut off. And every single time that fucking happens, bro, I go into like a depression for like two months because I'm like, shit, bro, there's nothing to trade. I've made all this money and now it's just turned off again. So for me, that tells me that I need to either modify my strategy in the markets to like add like a swing element or add a different type of element or add like a short element or something like that for the choppiness and, you know, try and avoid that kind of slow period and that slow time because I think that during the slow times, like, you know, texting Alex, I'm like, bro, it feels like I'm an idiot. It feels like I'm stupid. Then all of a sudden market gets flipped on. I feel like I'm a genius, you know? Anything, you can log anything. It's back to the COVID market. It's back, it's spice bouncing, you know? And like, I look and I went back and I'm like, when was last time I felt like this? When was last period I felt like this? It was July. It was summer. Summer, we were getting that big bounce into towards like August, whatever. Everyone was crazy. Everyone was like euphoric. People were investing. It was crazy. And then we got that bounce again in November was a little bit slower. October was a little bit slower. December was, you know, starting to pick up again. And then January, February, we're going crazy again. So to me, it's just like, when the market's euphoric, I feel like small caps are euphoric. It's crazy. Everyone's happy, you know? And COVID, we got that, you know, from, you know, when the market was just bull case, bull case, bull case, we were getting hot, you know, like hot chicks every day. We were getting manipulated stocks every day. It was crazy every day. And now it feels like at the tops of these bear bounces, it's like a switch flex and we're back to low range, slow market, choppiness, waking up in the morning, saying like, should I even really trade? You know, so I think really for the most part, you know, I'm always taking that into account for sure. Yeah. I think what worries me a little bit about, especially small and mid cap stuff is that we, I think we had a really big January effect this year. I think a lot of people and market participants obviously took advantage of tax loss harvest thing in December. And then there was that big pushback on the market. Like I was just reading this thing. Like if you got long like U.S. equities, like a substantial like healthy portfolio of U.S. equities on January 1st, I think you already would have made like a 9% return, right? Which is like, most times the S&P like a 10% a year is ridiculous, you know? So like the reality is like, maybe that was just that big push. Like everyone got caught off guard for a minute. All this money came in and it made small and mid caps light up and it made everything light up. And now that we've kind of hit this like this peak, like I don't know that does worry me. Again, do I think that means we get, we crater again? No, I think that we're just gonna chop and it's gonna be rough. And I think especially if you're a trader day to day, it's you're gonna have to be super selective. And I think that the range is just, might get sucked up again. And what I hate is that when I log on to Twitter, which I actually deleted again this week, finally, but when you log on to Twitter, like you see everyone is that euphoric. Like you said, that feeling of like the COVID markets where things are ripping, there was plays every day, forts are making money, longs are making money. And I don't feel like that's gonna really last. And I don't know why I could not give you a reason why I just said that's the sentiment shift. And it's crazy cause we came off a year of shit. And I think that to think that things are gonna change in this last month, I don't know. I don't think that, I don't see it. I hope it does obviously for our sake. You know, that's our cash flow, but at the same time, it's, I don't know, it's gonna be really interesting to see. I still see a lot of traders struggling day to day. And I don't know, I'm not too sure how to analyze this. And, you know. I would say like, I would pose you the question. You're James Freelander. You bought fucking stocks on January 1st. You're up 9%. If that 9% goes red, do you panic? No, probably not. Would you panic if that 9% got taken away? No, as a portfolio, if I was running a portfolio, no. Because especially like for me, like the stocks that I bought, you know, early January, December were companies that I would intend to hold for a long time. Let's just say you bought spy. You bought spy. You're up whatever percent you're up. And that position goes red. At what point do you panic? I think if spy puts in a new low, I think if spy were to put in a new low, that's where you start to fucking panic. Because the recipe, it's like I said man, it's gonna be absolutely wild to watch. And I think that, I think the worst part about this market is it could be a day. You could have one day where we just implode or we rip higher. I mean, it's trading like I was the other day I was shorting BBBY the day after the filing for bankruptcy. And you know, I'm trading it along. I was messaging with Alex, we're watching spy. And it's like, it's like almost like when spy wants to have a bid, it's unlimited. Like this stock was so red and then all of a sudden it finds a bid and it's just pushing up, been up and up. Of course, the day I'm getting short, I bet them beyond and but then the days that you needed to have a fucking red day, I mean, you want it to go up, it's just like unlimited down. That's why I don't know. I feel like nobody has any clue. Like for example, the AI sector, I thought was gonna light up. I thought the AI sector was gonna become this like multi-week, if not month sector of strength. And it died, it completely died as spy was making you, it doesn't even make as spy was pushing, it doesn't really make sense to me. But that's why I mean, I feel like the switch this week got flipped off. If this was back in a big bounce, like I really do think that that sector AI could have fucking got blown out of the water. That could have went to like crazy prices. But we just, this switch just got flipped, I feel. And maybe we're gonna show up on Monday, right now it's like Sunday afternoon right before the Super Bowl. Maybe we show up on Monday and everything's flipped back on again. But I just feel like when we get to the tops of these goddamn bounces, bro, it's just small caps are dry, everything's slow. Everyone's back to complaining. We're back to a bear market. And I think that like for me, I really do think that we're in for a little bit lower just because that's just been the pattern, you know? So all right, so what, then I'll ask you, so what would change for you to then switch your mindset and say, shit, like it's time to buy stocks? If we get like to like, if we get back to those like kind of highs or we get like at least like kind of close, you know, that would be something that I'd be like, okay, that's obviously substantial. Like you have to be really proven wrong, I think. Like not, you know, you need some strength and you have to really be kind of proven that, okay, this is not a bounce. We are definitely out of this, you know? I think you have to just, you know, number one, we would have to be super hot and small caps again, I think, because like that would tell me, okay, we're hot and small caps again, obviously they flipped the switch back on, obviously we're gone. I think also you need to get past the stage where we're like, this isn't a bounce anymore, you know? How do we get past that stage where like me and you can sit here and agree, okay, this is not a bounce anymore, right? I think that is the key thing, where we can sit and both say, all right, here you were wrong, it did not go lower. There is definitely kind of like, it's definitely not a bounce anymore. I think that is where we both say, you know, we're back in bull market, I would love to see it, you know? I don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it. I'd love to bet against myself, you know? I just feel like right now, it's just like, you know, I don't know, bro, I just feel like we're in for a long time. I completely, I mean, I understand your mindset, but I guess at what point is it that these companies like took their medicine enough, right? Because like I've been doing a lot of like earnings call listening and like, you're starting to see companies smart enough, right? You see Metta, you see Disney, you see Apple, you see all these major companies saying the right stuff. Layoffs are happening, they're trying to tighten up the mothership there. And, you know, at what point you see a company like Metta that just got clobbered and now they're finally kind of bouncing all because they said the right stuff. You know, I was just listening to another podcast they're talking about Disney, it's the same idea. Bob Iger came back, he's cutting people, he's re-adding dividends. I mean, he's doing everything you would want to see a CEO do. That's where it's tough in like, at what point is it that I'm not asking, I'm just thinking a lot? At what point is it that stocks kind of take away and are different and not really engaged anymore with like sentiment and like just the overall market? Again, it's so tough, right? Because we live in a world where we just see so much spending, we see excess spending, we see people who just, again, for God's sakes, I mean, I went out this weekend, I went out to dinner and it's just crazy watching the world. Like it almost feels like nothing has changed since pre COVID. It feels like the markets are like everything's just back, and I often wonder at times like, I've had a theory that the average person is getting so disengaged with the market and they're getting further and further from like being involved. I think our generation, we're only a few years apart, but I think our generation has like the least active portfolios, like the least active participants in the market. And it's like, we've kind of hit that point, but I don't know, it's gonna be interesting. Like I said, what is it? It's February 12th, Super Bowl Sunday. And I'm very interested to see, I mean, we could do this podcast next week and one of us could have been completely right or wrong. Yeah, exactly. Or we do nothing and the market doesn't change. I think that we're gonna bounce around until 2024. I think the election is what's gonna choose our path for a long time. Yeah. And I mean, we kind of transitioned to that. Something I wanted to talk about was the state of the union. We're obviously accelerating into a time where elections are gonna be kind of the topic again. Donald Trump is coming out, basically saying he wants to be a candidate. DeSantis is gonna be a candidate and then we have Biden and possibly Gavin Newsom. So we had the state of the union. We're obviously in complete disarray as a country. It was almost embarrassing to watch, right? We're seeing Republicans screaming at Biden, calling him a liar during the state of the union, which to be honest, as someone who's more moderate myself, I hated seeing it, because that's at the one time when Republicans could just sit there and not, and almost let Biden do damage to himself, they get loud when they shouldn't. And same thing with, it's where the party itself is so divided. We have McCarthy telling Marjorie Taylor Green to like, you know, all that stuff. And then like Mitt Romney was yelling at that gentleman, I think from New York, I've got caught lying about himself. And it's like, it's embarrassing, right? So it's like, it's like, I don't even know where we head from here. And I think that's kind of what one's gonna wait for. Yeah. And it, well, it's the same thing. Like if you look at the state of the union, like the one where Trump was, Pelosi ripped up the speech. You know, it's all theater. And it's all just a distraction, right? Like the Democrats are badly behaved, the Republicans are badly behaved. And I'm sure you had a lot of Republicans who saw that and were like, yeah, that's right. He's liar, you know, it just, they're all just doing it to appease their base. And you really see that like, the Democrats really go after the rich. They really go after the rich. I mean, how many times was he like, we're gonna take those wealthy corporations or we're gonna tax those billionaires? And I feel like each party right now is trying to appease different, different like, different types of people, right? If you're the Democrats, you have to do this balancing act between having poor people on your side and moderately wealthy people on your side and billionaires on your side. And if you're the Republicans, you're trying to do the exact same thing, you know? So Biden probably feels, you know what, rich people, they're probably gonna still vote for me anyway, cause they don't wanna see Trump in or whatever or, you know, they're Democrats or whatever. He's gonna keep relying on that. And I think you have Republicans saying, oh, well, we're gonna try and, you know, they're all trying to appease to different types of people and different groups of people. And he must see in the polls that he's, you know, favored among rich people. So let's try and bring the middle class and the whatever people up. And I just feel like the whole politics now, it's, I don't know, like, I hate, I feel like it's so much worse in Canada, like when I just look at, if you take the United States versus Canada, because in the United States, I feel like at least when you talk to people or talk to MIC members, a lot of people are really informed. But in Canada, we don't have that. In Canada, a lot of people are not informed. Like we have so many things coming to Canada, like for example, in our healthcare system shit right now. So Trudeau came out and said, okay, well, we're going to fund healthcare. And when you look at the disclaimers for the healthcare funding, it's these like 15 minute cities that they wanna do where people can't leave their district, or you get a fine and it comes out of your fucking taxes. That is scary shit that people just have no idea about here. Another thing, digital ID. So there's just going to be one ID that they can track you all the way around, have access to all your healthcare information, have access to all your shit, know where you've gone, know where you've been, your debit card, your digital ID are the same thing. That is fucking scary. But people here have no idea because it's just not reported, right? And so at least in the States, you guys kind of have like Fox News, you have CNN, each right opposite ends of the spectrum. Here we only have one, one news, CBC. We have like a couple others, like, you know, CTV or whatever, but they're all cut from the same cloth, right? So would you want to live in a country where your news is just straightforward, all it's reminds me of like China right now where we are at, you know, it's absolutely crazy. And people are going to say, oh, Harry, you're being too extreme, you're being too this, you're being too that. But when you actually researched the little bottom disclaimers of these bills and what they want to do, and like they tried to take away all the guns, all the hunting guns, everything, and they ended up saying, well, no, we're not going to do that anymore because there was so much uproar because, you know, they were just trying to get it out there in the news and on social media because it's not really getting reported in the actual news, what people are actually doing. So it is kind of scary. And we have that China balloon that was in Canada, right? They just shot it down over Yukon yesterday, I believe. And I was saying to my girlfriend last weekend, like I'm seeing on Twitter that there's another like balloon or like spacecraft in Canada right now, you flick on the news, that's not even there, right? That's not even there. All you would see on the news is that, oh, they shot one down in the US, it's no problem. You turn on the Canadian television channels, that's not there, that's literally not there. And now what they want to do is with this Bill C-11 or whatever, they want to actually be able to censor what you see on the internet. So if James Freelander writes a negative tweet about Trudeau, I won't see it, it will be completely blocked. It'll say, this tweet is unavailable, which is absolutely crazy. So we're getting into this kind of crazy situation and Trudeau still has like three years left anyway. So it's like, you know, he's not till 25, so I guess it's like two, but it's absolutely crazy when you look at all the shit and you know, the people here have no idea. So at least in the States, you have some of the population who has some of a clue, but in Canada, bro, it's crazy here, but it's wild. I mean, I think the thing is that, and I try to reiterate this to a lot of people, cause a lot of my friends get in political fights all the time and I try to say like, you don't understand. I mean, one thing that's really nice about being involved in like financial markets, like we've met people all around the world, right? We have friends in Europe, you know, Prague, you know, Turkey everywhere, right? And when you really do a deep dive and you think about it, like living in the US is still in my opinion, we are still living in the pinnacle best country because of everything that we have as far as information. Like you said, there's information out there. Our freedoms are still very much there. As much as people like to think, you know, we're very much, even with, you know, there's such controversy about like COVID vaccines, you know, other countries were way more strict than we were ever were. You know, at least here we had countries, we had states that were different and all that and we were unique that way. But I do feel like here people are losing sight of that and like they don't understand that, how lucky we really are, you know, and they get caught up so much in these small like news headlines now and it's going to be figuring out, you know, especially this, in my opinion, this 2024 election will be the most important election that we've had in our history because I think it's going to determine the course of where we're headed for the next 10 years. You know, because obviously I think if we have a change and a Republican becomes president, I think there's going to be a, it's just going to be a bloodbath all around and it's just going to be a lot of fighting and everything. And you know, I think Biden, as far as politically is made an intelligent move by starting to target and talk about how he's now saying that Republicans are coming after Social Security and Medicaid and all that stuff, you know. And now I hear people saying that they're like, oh, we can never vote Republican because of this and I sit there and I say, how can you focus on news headlines day to day like that from Republicans or Democrats when our country is spending trillions and trillions of dollars on wars, on, you know, medical vaccines, on all this stuff? Like we, that's where we need to focus. We need to focus on who's going to control the spending over the next four years? Who's going to control? I mean, our debt is out of control. I mean, right now is a big argument about raising the debt ceiling versus not. You know, those are where I'm going to be focused as a voter. I will not pick a party. I will pick whoever's going to propose the right ideas to get our country back on track physically. And you know, security-wise everything, it really is crazy. And like, that's why like we can revert all the way back to our conversation with the markets. Like, I don't think anybody has any fucking idea anymore. No idea, because we don't know where we're headed. So how can we, both of us, like I can't say we're going to new highs and I can't say we're going to look because I just don't think we have any clue, you know? And it's going to be interesting for the next year until elections come and who knows, you know? I guess we'll both be kind of sitting here wondering for a while. Yeah, well, 100%. And also I think that there's a lot of distractions right now, you know? Like, if you take a look like on a grand scale of things, right, we had that China balloon come in, right? That was like that dominated the news headlines. I was obsessed with it too. Don't get me wrong. I love a good distraction. I love a good time. But there were a lot of other things happening during that time, right? Like in Ohio, for instance, you know, you're getting these, what did the government do there? They burned some crazy toxic chemical right in Ohio and that was just like not really reported. Did you see that? Yeah, they were telling people they should leave because it's unsafe to stay there. Yeah, like that should be on the news. Like the government should not be doing that. You know, there's a lot of things going on that could be in the headlines, but instead it's just like, oh my God, there's China balloon, like China has been spying on us forever, right? US has been spying and it poses the question, would you rather China have your TikTok data or Google have your other data or Apple have your other data or whatever? Like do you care more about your own country spying on you or do you care about more of a foreign country spying on you, right? You know, like to me it's just like, what's the difference, Canada, China, it's the same fucking shit. It's like, this is what I'm getting at is people obsessively, you know what people message me about this guy, I damn balloon. And like, yes, it's very interesting and like I was interested too, right? But like at the same time, you just said it, right? It's like, these people are scrolling on TikTok getting there, the news about the balloon and I'm like, you care so much right now that like what, this balloon's flying over our heads but you're sitting on TikTok. I mean, as a country too, like we banned companies like Huawei and like these companies that have these massive Chinese like information that they steal info from us, you know, whether it's like facial recognition, you know, body movements, all that stuff. And yet here we are, like it's like the biggest thing I was just at a family party last night, everyone's talking about the fucking balloon, this UFO thing that we just shot down but I'm like, you guys like people, I think citizens of every country right now and this is why like you can go back episodes of why I believe what Elon Musk is doing on Twitter is so important because we have responsibility as citizens of any country that we are a member of to be informed all over and not just trust the source. Like that's why for me, I have five podcasts I listened to, you know, in all five of those, like they all have different people on them with different views. Some were very conservative, some were very liberal, some of it and I listened to everything and I go on Twitter, I get news but then I go do self research myself and I find people that, you know, in my life I have a friend that works in government and I ask him and I get different views because dude, we're just sitting here and this is what I mean, nobody has any clue what's going on, you know, so it's gonna be interesting and I think that we'll record our next episode probably in a week and I'm sure we'll be having a completely different conversation about like the state of things because it seems like it's an ever-changing news source now, I mean, for God's sakes, there was a period, dude, you go back a decade, no one gave a shit what the Fed was doing, no one turned into that shit, I mean, no one gave, no one cared, no one cared about any of this stuff, we've always had levels of inflation, we've always had the prices of things are always going up, people didn't fucking care but now it's every day, it's a news story, after news story, after news story, I'm sure next week there'll be 20 more balloons coming our way, we'll be talking about that. Yeah, exactly, right? And there's bigger, in my opinion, I think there's definitely like bigger stuff, like China's been spying forever, right? Your own government has been spying forever on the fucking citizens, what the hell's the difference? If China has my TikTok data, go ahead, you know? What are you gonna see, some girls fucking dancing or some fucking news stories, like what are you gonna see, bro? What are you gonna see? I'll be fine making that publicly on Twitter. Dude, I've said it for years, right? People could spy on me all the time, you know what they're gonna find? They're gonna find boredom, like it's like, but that's everything, that's how most people feel. That's why I find it funny, people get so obsessed with these headlines and it's like, dude, you care so much now, but like, why? Like there's other things that are more important. And again, it's just a, there's people of certain IQ, I think that they get stuck in these circles of just news headline after news headline, but they don't talk about the things that really matter. These are people who really have no influence or impact or even probably participated market, so it really... Let's talk about how the world economic forum wants to, like they're literally saying, like we're gonna have a major cyber thing happen by 2025. Like that's scary, bro. But instead we're talking about this balloon, this harmless fucking balloon. Dude, I'm telling you, it drives me absolutely insane. But again, you can talk to people and like when people hyper focus on politics and they don't really look at like the big picture of the stuff, like again, there was a period of time where people when they voted, it was about the country. It wasn't just party affiliation. It was like, what is better for the country? And there was a time when each party wasn't so different. Now we're like two conflicted sides, like we really should have a civil war. Like our country is so different. And it's like, people need to wake up and realize like, dude, we still have a common cause. So I don't know, but we can, I'm sure we could ramble about this for hours and hours and we're good, but coming into next week, like I said, we'll have a lot more to talk about, I'm sure. Exactly. And yeah, just going to be a wild fucking ride, bro. It's going to be good. And if I will say this is the last thing I want to say, let's see what the market does after February, right? And you're fair, let's go. We'll get to March and then we're going to place a bet on the direction of the market. That's what I want to do with you at some point, but we'll see what comes in at the end of this month and then we'll make our little wager, but... Yeah, for sure, bro. So there we go. All right, well, thanks for watching everyone and we'll see everyone for the next one. Yeah, see you guys.