What’s the Best Case Trade War Scenario?

Summary

Ask The Compound – Episode Summary

Episode Title: What’s the Best Case Trade War Scenario?
Date: April 23, 2025
Hosts: Ben Carlson (A), Duncan Hill (B)
Guest: Barry Ritholtz (C)

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Ben, Duncan, and guest Barry Ritholtz tackle listeners’ burning questions surrounding market pessimism, the trade war’s best (and worst) outcomes, big-money financial planning, bond market behavior, and practical steps for recession prep. With plenty of real-world anecdotes, academic references, and lighthearted moments—including a tongue-in-cheek look at “investing” in canned food—the trio emphasizes level-headed, probability-based thinking amidst volatile times.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Balancing Bearish Feelings vs. Long-Term Investing

[02:19-09:54]

• Question: How to balance bearish conversations with advice on staying invested?
• Ben’s take:
  • Emotions are human and shouldn’t be ignored, but actions shouldn’t be driven by short-term sentiment.

    "Emotions themselves aren't good or bad, they just are. It's what makes you human. ...the question is again, should you act on those feelings?" — Ben ([03:21])

  • Stories about automation beating discretionary investing:
    • Automated, emotionless investing outperforms hands-on approaches.

      “The people who kept their feelings out of it did better.” — Ben ([04:18])

    • Recounts an anecdote in which a "set-it-and-forget-it" investor achieved the best long-term results.
  • Adjust investment plans for personal circumstances (age, risk tolerance, life stage).

    "Bullish or bearish is for traders and hedge fund managers. Risk and reward is for investors." — Ben ([08:08])

• Duncan: Acknowledges emotional reactions, but reinforces sticking with long-term principles.
• Tax loss harvesting:
  • Now a common strategy, softening blows during downturns, but not a game-changer ([08:21]).

2. The Best-Case Scenario for the Trade War

[10:12-18:18]

• Question: With endless talk of tariffs and recession, what’s the optimistic outlook?
• Barry’s framework:
  • World events aren’t binary—think probabilities, not predictions.

    "The world isn't binary. It's much more complex. There are shades of gray." — Barry ([11:25])

  • Best-case: The trade war is used as a negotiating tactic, not as an endgame.
    • Political bluster is often walked back to avoid truly disastrous consequences.

    "The best case scenario is the White House cries uncle and things get better." — Barry ([13:06])

  • Market pressure serves as a safeguard:

    "The markets are not going to allow the worst case to happen. The markets are pushing them to not let the worst case get here." — Ben ([15:11])

  • Clarity—not certainty—is key for businesses and investors.

    "There's never certainty and there's always some degree of uncertainty." — Barry ([13:29])

  • Global supply chains can often work around tariffs (e.g., shifting manufacturing to Vietnam).

    "That's kind of what happened with the big move to Vietnam...there are all sorts of workarounds." — Barry ([17:03])

• Ben: The real need is for policy clarity—“just let us know what the rules are going to be so we can deal with them.” ([13:06])
• On global tariffs: Other countries’ protectionism has generally harmed their economies, not helped. ([18:21])
• Barry gives context: Tariffs would not mean a blue-collar job boom, but more automation; U.S. should focus on high-value sectors like technology and intellectual property, not commodity manufacturing. ([19:57])

---

3. Financial Case Study: The $4 Million Question

[20:26-24:40]

• Listener “David”: 56 years old, $4 million net worth, heavily skewed towards real estate and fixed income, very little in equities.
• Ben: Commends savings but questions extreme cash allocation:

  "My really only question here is why so much cash?...What are you going to do if they [T-bill yields] go to 2% in a recession?" ([21:07])

• Barry: Blunt about risk:

  "They have another 30 years. They ain't leaving their kids anything. They're going to burn through all that money. You must have an equity exposure in your 50s. You just can't be 4% equities." ([22:00])

• Key Points:
  • With a long time horizon, inflation and high drawdowns can erode savings quickly.
  • Conservative investing is understandable, but a (more) balanced allocation is smarter—especially with multi-generational goals.

---

4. Where to Park Cash While House-Hunting?

[24:49-27:42]

• Listener “Alex”: Has a short time horizon (9–12 months), wants to know if tariffs / bond volatility mean he should avoid short-term Treasuries.
• Ben: For short-term, match duration with liability—stick to T-bills, money markets, or high-yield savings.

  "For buying a house, you don't want to mess with that money, don't...take whatever you're getting in short term, which is still like 4%." ([25:15])

• Barry supports: "Anytime you have a chance to pick up 4.8%, pretty much risk free...I left it in a money market account because I didn't know [about timing]." ([26:16])
• On logistics: Money-market funds vs. high-yield savings accounts: similar, but minor differences in limits and transfer speed.

---

5. Recession Readiness—Do’s and Don’ts

[28:46-31:55]

• Listener “Jim”: How concretely should investors act to prepare for a coming recession?
• Ben:
  • Trying to time recessions rarely works; focus instead on your specific vulnerabilities (job risk, spending, borrowing, liquidity needs).
  • Can't live perpetually in fear—don’t always invest defensively, but build in a safety net.

    "A recession is something that does happen, but you can't just constantly prepare for investing in the fetal position." ([30:05])

• Barry:
  • Provides historical recession frequency—one every four years since 1950.
  • Recession predictions are, currently, very fluid and often dictated by political developments, e.g., tariffs.

    "We're going to get a recession unless things get better. But if things get worse, we got..." ([31:21])

  • Predicting recessions: Making calls at 40% is the perfect hedge for pundits. ([31:28])

    "If you go 60, it's too much. 50 makes you look like a wimp. 40, it's a coin flip." — Ben ([31:36])

---

6. Notable Lighthearted Moment: The Canned Foods “Investment”

[32:25-34:02]

• Refers to a famous investor’s tongue-in-cheek advice to "invest" in canned food ahead of bad times.
• Duncan mock-analyzes the “returns” on canned baked beans and tuna since 2022; the joke being that most prices didn’t even beat inflation.

  "If you have to live the rest of your days on canned tuna and beans, just kill me now." — Barry ([34:02])

• Ben is surprised food prices haven’t soared more given inflation.

---

7. Wrap-up and Closing Notes

[34:17-35:09]

• Barry shares book tour updates, reflecting on how each podcast audience focuses on different parts of his material.
• Open call for listener questions at askthecompoundshowmail.com.

---

Selected Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• On Emotional Investing:

  “Bullish or bearish is for traders and hedge fund managers. Risk and reward is for investors. That’s the way I feel.” — Ben Carlson ([08:08])

• On Probabilities & Predictions:

  “The world isn't binary. It's much more complex. There are shades of gray.” — Barry Ritholtz ([11:25])

• On Markets Enforcing Discipline:

  “The markets are not going to allow the worst case to happen. The markets are pushing them to not let the worst case get here.” — Ben Carlson ([15:11])

• On Asset Allocation in Later Life:

  “You must have an equity exposure in your 50s. You just can't be 4% equities." — Barry Ritholtz ([22:00])

• On Recession Preparation:

  “A recession is something that does happen, but you can’t just constantly prepare for investing in the fetal position.” — Ben Carlson ([30:05])

• On the Perils of Stockpiling Food:

  “If you have to live the rest of your days on canned tuna and beans, just kill me now.” — Barry Ritholtz ([34:02])

---

Important Timestamps

• Bearish investment feelings & automation anecdote: [02:19–09:54]
• Best case trade war scenario: [10:12–18:18]
• Big financial plan ($4M case): [20:26–24:40]
• Bond market & holding cash for home purchase: [24:49–27:42]
• Recession readiness: [28:46–31:55]
• Canned food “investment” humor: [32:25–34:02]

---

Tone & Style

The episode maintains a candid, slightly irreverent but informed tone. The hosts blend personal anecdotes, actionable advice, and humor, aiming to soothe investor nerves without sugarcoating risks.

---

For Listeners

If you haven’t tuned in, this episode delivers a practical, reassuring perspective on volatile markets and tumultuous policy headlines, while making you feel like part of the conversation at a very sharp and relatable financial roundtable.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to Ask the Compound. I'm your host, Ben Carlson. A lot of doom and gloom in the world these days, especially in the markets. Let's look on the bright side of things, shall we? What's the best case scenario for the trade war? We answer that question and more on today's show. Stick around, dunk and hit the music. Welcome back. Our email here is ask the compound showemail.com the mood in the email was better. I think we talked some people off the ledge last week. Things are going better. Everyone in the chat is happy.

[B]

It's over. We're in the queer now, right?

[A]

Yeah. When the stock market goes up, trade war over. Stock market down, trade war back on. It's pretty simple. On today's show, we're gonna answer questions on what to do with your portfolio when you're feeling bearish closer. Look at the best case scenarios for the trade war. Maybe some worst case, too. Some thoughts for a guy with a $4 million financial plan. What's going on in the bond market? How should that impact your purchases of a house and what it means to actually prepare for a recession? On today's show is sponsored by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. You know what I love about Rocket Money? It's a proactive system. So not only do I get alerts and email updates about spending, but they also check on you when your bills increase. So just this week, I received an email from Rocket Money saying, hey, remember that lower phone bill we negotiated for you? It's rising again, but we're going to preemptively try to negotiate it back down for you. So Rocket Money is working on behalf of me, right? Like on retainer.

[B]

It's like a personal assistant.

[A]

Yeah, it's kind of nice. See all your subscriptions in one place. If you don't want them anymore, Rocket Money can help them Cancel for you. 5 million users on Rocket Money has saved a total of $500 million in cancel subs, saving members up to $740 a year when they use all the app's premium features. Cancel zone audit subscriptions. Reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Download the Rocket Money app and enter my show name. Ask the compound in a survey so that I sent you. Don't wait. Download that Rocket Money app today. It's very easy, very easy to use. Check it out. Just search Rocket Money on your on your phone. All right.

[B]

Nailed it.

[A]

Let's do it. Hello everyone in the chat. As always, thank you. For people watching live on Twitter, good questions today. Let's dive into it.

[B]

All right, up first day we got an anonymous question. The sentiment is quite bearish and for good reason. How do you balance discussing a bearish outlook with the tenants of staying invested for the long term? How do you respond to clients who, after hearing these discussions, feel compelled to sell parts of their portfolio to wait and see, or try to buy at lower levels?

[A]

Great question. Perfectly reasonable in the volatile environment. The way that I look at it, I think Jason Zweig explained this in a piece one time. He said, you know, emotions themselves aren't good or bad, they just are. It's what makes you human. And I think sometimes you have to look through the difference between the emotions that you feel and how you act on those emotions. One of my favorite books about human behavior and psychology is influenced by Robert Cialdini, the Psychology of Persuasion, one of the early ones I read. It's a great book and there's a story in there that has always stuck with me. So there was a soldier who came home from World War II to the Balkans, and after he got home, he stopped speaking. And they couldn't find any physical problems with him. There was no brain damage, there was no wounds, there was no vocal impairment. He could read and write and he could understand conversations. He could follow orders, but for anyone. He wouldn't talk. He wouldn't talk to the doctors, he wouldn't talk to his family, he wouldn't talk to his friends. Nothing. So the doctors moved him into a veterans hospital. And then he was there for 30 years. He'd sit in a chair, wouldn't talk. Just never broke his self imposed silence for whatever reason, the word PTSD or whatever. Then one day they turned on a soccer match and it was his hometown soccer team versus the Arrival. And the referee made a foul call against a player from his team and the man jumped out of his seat and he said, you dumbass, you're trying to give them the match. Then he sat back down. He never spoke again. I don't know if this is a true story. I want it to be true.

[B]

Yeah, I hope so.

[A]

Well, maybe not so maybe it's anecdotal, I don't know. But I think sometimes you can't help how you feel, right? And those emotions just come out. The question is again, should you act on those feelings? There's another book called the Little Book that Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt with His magic formula. Did you read that one, Duncan?

[B]

No, I haven't, but I actually haven't read it.

[A]

It's actually a very good introduction to the stock market and explanation. And it was a simple. He did a stock picking thing where it was just companies with high return on capital combined with low valuations. And he had some formulas he did. And he even set up this website where you could punch it in and you say, give me the top 50 stocks that have these features. I don't know how it had an amazing back test, but this is in 2009 or something, so I don't know how it's done since then. Probably just okay. But Greenblatt's firm also offered the opportunity for people to just invest. They wanted them to invest on their behalf. They said, great, you did this formula for us, but we want you to just do it for us because we don't want to have to pick the stocks. So they had this experiment where they showed people, clients who just said, here, automate it all for me and you do it right, don't think, just automate it by the top 50 names or whatever it is versus the other people. They said, we're going to give you a list of these stocks and you pick. And that they discovered that the automated strategies a few years later had crushed the discretionary strategies. Right. Because a lot of times the stocks that people avoided were the best performers because they looked terrible. But so they found automated strategies did much better than discretionary. So the people who kept their feelings out of it did better. But I think the most ironic tidbit was they found there was one strategy that did the best out of all of them. And there was one person who the first day put their money in, bought the 50 stocks or how many ever it was, and never made another trade again, didn't automatically rebalance, didn't discretionary rebalance and guess what? They were the best performance, which I thought was kind of funny. So. So I think anytime you can take the emotions out of your decision making process, that is almost always the right move. And I also think bullish or bearish is subjective based on where you are in your investing life cycle. Right. A stock market crash would be very detrimental to a retiree's portfolio. That's why you should be more diversified and maybe have some safer assets when you're retired because you don't have as much time to wait out a stock market crash. But for younger people or middle aged people who are going to be net savers in the years ahead, a Stock market crash is not a bad thing because you can pick up stocks on the cheap, buy them on sale. Right. Listen, there have been plenty of times in the last 20 years where I've felt bullish or bearish. Sometimes those feelings were right. More often than not. I'm sure if I looked back reasonably, objectively, I would say I was totally wrong on this. Right. My feelings at the time were wrong. John, throw up this thing. I wrote this in October of 2022 and I basically just said, listen, my general investment philosophy is that the more bearish things feel in the short run, the more bullish I should be in the long run. And I said things were feeling very bearish. The S and p was down 25%. The Nasdaq was down 30%. The Russell 2000 was down 30%, inflation was 9%. The Fed was actively trying to slow the economy by raising rates. And they said that they wanted to put people out of jobs. Of course they failed. So you can take that off. And I think that's the point, that sometimes your feelings should, it's the George Costanza, you should do the opposite. So it's not always that those feelings are right. They could be misplaced. And I think when it comes to client conversations, there are certainly going to be people who have similar feelings to you. Right. We've talked to clients in the last few weeks that are definitely worried and nervous and what's this going to mean? And I think that the questions you ask them are not necessarily market related. It's have your circumstances changed financially? Have your spending patterns changed? Have your financial goals changed? Because these are the kind of things that should be built into any financial plan, regardless of the reason. You're going to have a downturn, you're going to have maybe a slowing economy. I think those things typically matter more than feeling bullish or bearish. So, you know, I think just it's important to place constraints on your emotions. But you do it ahead of time, you do it before you begin to feel those emotions. So I've always been in the camp that you should think about your portfolio changes more in terms of risk and reward, not bullish or bearish. Bullish or bearish is for traders and hedge fund managers. Risk and reward is for investors. That's the way I feel. I don't care. My feelings about certain things are not going to infiltrate my portfolio.

[B]

Do you think has the prevalence of tax loss harvesting changed the attitudes that a lot of high net worth people have during downturns? Because now it's part of a strategy. Right. I mean, you're literally. In the past, I could see the argument if you were fully allocated to stocks and the market went down and you're an older, high net worth person, it'd probably feel horrible. But now with tax loss harvesting strategies, it seems like you could see that as a silver lining almost.

[A]

It's at least something. It could be a little bit of relief. Obviously in the grand scheme of things it's a small percentage, like you're making gains on the edges, but it's still, it's doing something as opposed to doing nothing. Right. So yeah, that's not a terrible thing. But yeah, I just, I just don't like the idea of making decisions because you feel bullish or bearish at a time. You be right and occasionally based on those feelings. Sure. But more often than not, I think you're going to be wrong and I don't think you can consistently make changes that are going to help. And so that's, that's the idea. It, it's more about like, like your circumstances and where you are making those course corrections versus saying, I'm so bearish, I'm going to get out and let's wait and see that. That doesn't work.

[B]

Makes sense.

[A]

Are you bullish or bearish right now?

[B]

I mean, I'm, I feel like I'm always bullish, but. But yeah, because long term, right? I mean, yeah, obviously.

[A]

Right. I'm a long term bull too.

[B]

Yeah. I'm always looking long term.

[A]

The other thing about it is, again, any sort of investment plan should bake into the pie that these kind of volatile periods and downturns can and will happen. That's why if you're one of those people who is always bullish or always bearish, sometimes you're going to be right and sometimes wrong, but you can't make that your whole ethos.

[B]

Also, you and Michael told me not to hold leveraged ETFs long term, so I listened and now I've been trading them. So, you know.

[A]

All right, perfect. We're going to have to pick you up from the casino at some point or the sports book. All right, Steve, an intervention.

[B]

Up next, we got a question from Kevin. I've heard a lot of worst case scenarios around the tariffs, recession, supply chain disruptions, a bear market, even the decline of American exceptionalism. Fun stuff. Can you help balance that out a bit? What's the best case scenario or at least a few better case ones? And I have to take some blame here. I ruined. We had a similar question last week and I ruined it by pointing out that it seemed like it would just raise the cost on the average American. And all of a sudden you were giving some. Some bright side. So I'm not going to do that this week. So I'm going to let you give your.

[A]

You. And Barry, we have the perfect person to answer that. And I think the one last week was more about like, what are some benefits of tariffs. This is more about what's the best case scenario for the current environment or this policy. So Mr. Barry Ritholtz just wrote a piece on this exact topic. He's an Ask the Compound fan favorite. Bring him on in.

[C]

Hey, guys.

[B]

Hey, Barry.

[A]

Barry, you just wrote a piece on this at the Big Picture about. And I like the way that you always try to look at these outcomes through the lens of probabilities. Right. You're trying to place probabilities even if those probabilities aren't perfect. You're trying to say, like, what's the base case, the best case, the worst case? So walk us through some probabilities where you say, here's the best case scenario for this world trade war.

[C]

Sure. And you know, this relates directly back to the previous question, are you bullish or bearish? Hey, the world isn't binary. It's much more complex. There are shades of gray. So anytime anyone ever asks that question, it's really the wrong question. Best case scenario, worst case scenario, middle scenario. And you could continue to chop that off. Medium rare, medium well. Like, you can have as many versions as you want. But, you know, we're kind of seeing a version of the best case scenario today, which is we told you early on to take Trump seriously, but not literally. This is a negotiating tactic. Of course. We're not going to put American exceptionalism at risk or the dollar as the reserve currency. And keep in mind all the foreigners that are funding U.S. deficits and buying our debt or who would be so reckless as to put that at risk to negotiate a better trade deal with China. So the best case scenario is these are all tactics. We walk this back from the precipice. We've already seen Besant come out and talk about not wanting to cause a global recession. Trump already said, of course I'm not going to fire Jerome Powell. I don't have the. He didn't say this. I don't have the constitutional authority. I can nominate the next Federal Reserve, but I have no. It's supposed to be an independent Fed. So the worst things that made the market really upset you Know, I don't know how else to say this. The best case scenario is the White House cries uncle and things get better.

[A]

I also think that the other best case is just that we can have some clarity and move forward. Listen, here's what they're going to be and they're not going to change. So whatever it is, give us, give us something that is more concrete and not have to worry about making flipping and flopping and changes. And I think that's the best case scenario too, of just let us know what the rules are going to be so we can deal with them whatever they are.

[C]

Right. There's a tendency, first, I love that you use the word clarity because there's never certainty and there's always some degree of uncertainty. Just all these black swans that come out of nowhere. No one had a global pandemic closing, you know, the December year ahead looks in 2019, nobody said global pandemic closing, the world economy and by the way, the stock market's going to do great. Nobody had that. Nobody had Russian, other than a few military analysis blogs. Nobody had Russia invading Ukraine when and how they did the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israel strike back and the ongoing war which we're coming up on. Has it been. It feels like it's been years, but it's, it's been a long time. Nobody had that in their, you know, look ahead. So there's never certainty there. There's always some degree of uncertainty. But that lack of clarity as to where do I hire people, do I build a factory here, do I set up a new office? When, when everything is up in the air and subject to one person's, you know, normal. You could look at sentiment and say the crowd is lean too far this way. And you know, this is as bad as it gets. When it really is dependent on one person's desires and wishes. It's really hard to predict. As an attorney, it's hard to predict what the old expression is, hey, what did the judge have for breakfast that day? Cuz you have no idea how they're gonna rule. And in this case, when does the White House walk this back and say, we're gonna throttle it back?

[A]

I think we've learned too that the markets are not going to allow the worst case to happen. The markets are pushing them to not let the worst case get here. So I think that the market is still the ultimate arbiter of this saying, like, no, we're gonna freak out a little bit if you keep pushing forward with this. And that's gonna make them back off.

[C]

Stop and think about what happened after April 2. The market said we were expecting economic activity to be up here and profits to be over here. But all these tariffs and all these, this trade war, we're going to lower our revenue to here. We're going to lower our profits to here. That means we're priced 10, 15% too high because this is new news. Even though Trump has talked about tariffs his entire adult life. The most beautiful word in the dictionary, call me tariff, man. Nobody thought it was going to be Russian roulette, where he's going to put one bullet in the chamber and spin that. That seems like a very asymmetrical game to play. In order to make China, who is admittedly a bad actor on the global trade stage. They, they don't allow other people to sell into their market. They steal intellectual property, they hack their competitors. They do a lot of bad stuff. It just seems like in order to get China to behave better, we're going to cause a global recession. That doesn't make any sense. So. So I agree with you, Ben, that we used to call them bond vigilantes. Now they're stock vigilantes.

[A]

Yeah, true. So I don't know if that really cheered anyone up, but I think it at least, you know, more clarity is that's the best case. It's just we know what's, what's happening and move on to other topics. Hopefully, that's the hope. Right.

[C]

If we can. Go ahead, Duncan.

[B]

I was just going to say this might be a dumb question, but is there any, anything stopping China from just moving a manufacturing facility to another country and shipping things to the US that way to get around tariffs? It just seems like there are always workarounds. Right.

[C]

That's kind of what happened with the big move to Vietnam and, you know, the way the global trade supply chains work. Are you shipping finished goods? Are you shipping components? Are you shipping pieces of components? Like, all right, we won't put the screws in to put this together. We'll just send you the parts IKEA style, and you do it. And it's a different tariff rate. There are all sorts of workarounds. Look, the bottom line is the Post World War II era, the Pax Americana era, has been great for global trade. And while there are all sorts of problems in the United States with wealth inequality and income inequality, no country has been a greater beneficiary of this era than the United States. At least up until April 1, our economy was the envy of the world.

[A]

Listen, we buy a Lot of shoes in my house because I have three kids who all play like four different sports and I have a little bit of a shoe thing myself. So if this messes up my shoe game, I'm not going to be happy. So we got to figure this out.

[C]

The tariffs on the Italian Ferragamos, they're going up.

[B]

And I know you're probably tired of this question Ben, but just I feel like we have to address it. Someone in the comments every week says other countries put tariffs on us. Can they really be that bad? What is like the cliffnotes response to that?

[A]

Oh yeah. So we cover this a little bit on animal spirits. Alison Schrager had a good piece for Bloomberg this week about it. Basically saying, sure, those other countries have tariffs and it's hurt them. That's the problem. Like European Union has had it. India a little bit has been protectionist and, and they have that to their own detriment. That's the problem is that those tariffs have not helped them, it's hurt them. So that's, yes, you could say let's do a tit for tat and maybe this whole trade war will get some of those off. That'd be great for me. If we all said listen, let's take them off across the board, that would be a great outcome. I don't think that's happening. But if a lot of these countries, that's not helped them at all, it's hurt them. That's the issue.

[C]

To throw some numbers on that. There are 100 million people that live in Vietnam and the average income is $8,000 annually. And in order to get rid of our trade deficit with them, every man, woman and child in Vietnam has to buy three new Ford F150 trucks. How's that going to happen on $8,000 a year? The trade has allowed us to buy inexpensive goods manufactured abroad. And by the way, if we bring factories back to the US I got bad news for you. They're not going to be big job creators. They're going to be heavily automated, roboticized. Why are we so focused on a 19th century technology when we are one of the global leaders in intellectual property and software and AI and that's where we should be focused on. China just rolled out a new EV that takes five minutes to get a 300 mile charge.

[A]

Duncan would be buying a BYD if he could.

[B]

Yeah, they are pretty nice looking.

[C]

We need to focus on the high value products. Does it really matter if we're not making underwear or furniture in the United States? I don't really care now. Chips and protective equipment as we saw during the pandemic. Sure, there are national security reasons to build some of that stuff here, but come on.

[A]

Yeah, the technology stuff makes the most sense to me. If we're going to, if we're going to impose some stuff on China where there's competition, that's fine with me. All right, next question.

[B]

All right, up next, we've got one from David. This is a good not to brag, so get ready.

[A]

First one in a while, we have.

[B]

$1.3 million in real estate, 2.6 million in fixed income CDs and short term T bills, 75,000 in an S&P 500 index fund, 60,000 in individual stocks and zero debt. We're approaching a $4 million net worth at age 56. We live in a high cost of living city with high property taxes and earn 200 to $225,000 a year from salaries and interest income. I'd love to hear how the compound team would advise someone in our situation. Our goals are to live well, eat well, travel often and leave our kids a meaningful inheritance.

[A]

First of all, well done. They've obviously done all right for themselves. We get a lot of questions from this, from people who send us their numbers, which we always appreciate and say, how am I doing? Obviously David and his family are doing very well. I think they're probably in the top 3% as far as net worth goes. And out of American households, I'm sure globally they're well in the top 1%. My really only question here is why so much cash that like that's the big question is what's holding you back? Why do you have so much Money sitting in CDs and T bills now? Maybe you're just, you don't have a lot that you need to live on and you don't need to grow that much. But I'm sure those 4% yields are feeling pretty good right now. What are you going to do if they go to 2% in a recession? So that that's my biggest worry is do you need to actually talk to an advisor to real to make you realize that you probably need to invest some of this cash in some way.

[C]

Ben, you're being gentle. Duncan, throw that slide up again. I want to take a look at that the way I'm doing this on the back of an envelope. What do they have? 4% equity, 75 and 60. 135 out of 4 million. And how old are they? They're in their mid-50s. So they have another 30 years. They ain't leaving their kids anything. They're going to burn through all that money. You must have an equity exposure in your 50s. You just can't be 4% equities.

[A]

So you not only have your, your time horizon in retirement, which could be another 20, 30, 40 years, you, you have your kids time horizon to think about.

[C]

So that's right.

[A]

Time Horizon could be 50 years here or something, depending how old your kids are.

[C]

Right. The estimates are typically about 4% a year in drawdowns. That's $160,000. That sounds like a lot. But they said they're in a high cost of living state. That's not a lot. They're going to go through 2, 300,000 a year if they're in California or New York or Massachusetts or someplace like that. And you piss through $4 million pretty quickly that way.

[A]

Well, and the real estate could be primary residence too. So if we're talking just liquid assets, we're sitting on, I don't know, 80%, 90% in cash. You're right. It's just, it's inflation is going to eat that away.

[B]

Do you see people who feel like they've already kind of won and so they, they get really conservative? Is that, is that a trend?

[A]

Certainly, yeah, we know certain people who do that. But that for a lot of people that's like putting it in treasury bonds or something. There are certainly people who have that risk profile, something. But you can have a more balanced portfolio that is conservative while still having some sort of growth component. Just the tiny, tiny amount in equities is. I'd love to know why that happens. If you, if you're building up in cash the whole time or you actually sold out of everything, that'd be the question I have. Like, why are you, why is this like this?

[C]

A good advisor will work out a long term set of goals with them. How much you want to spend a year, how much you want to leave your kids, what else you want the money going to. And once you have that set of goals, you can match this to an appropriate level of risk. This looks like a highly risk averse portfolio, which since April 2 looks smart. But you know, you could say the same thing in any other year. Markets turn around and take off faster than you imagine. So if you want to stay ahead of inflation and you want to compound over time, I think 96% cash and equivalents and 4% equity is kind of unbalanced.

[A]

Yeah, inflation is your big risk here.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

All right, let's do another one.

[C]

Inflation and drawdowns and, you know, taking cash out to live on.

[A]

Right.

[B]

All right, up next, we got one from Alex. What's happening in the US Bond market as a result of the tariffs. I'm trying to figure out where to park a large lump sum for the next nine to 12 months while I wait to buy a house. I plan to keep it in short term US Treasuries ETFs due to its high tax, effective yield and low fees. Now I'm considering a money market fund with higher fees or a California Muni fund, among other options.

[A]

Yeah, you probably don't need to worry about the bond fund or the bond market itself. The 10 year actually started the year at 4.6%, so people are worried about rates rising, but it's now back at like 4.3. So I know people are freaking out about yields rising, but it's, you know, it's just some volatility. John, do the chart on for me. I just wanted to show the longer term bonds. So like 20 to 30 year bonds, 7 to 10, 3 to 7, 1 to 3 and then 1 to 3 T bills. You can see the T bills don't move very much. But John, go to the next one. You can see over the shorter term this decade, the T bill line, that straight line essentially takes a lot of the interest rate and volatility risk out. So you want to match your, your liability with your assets here. And if your time horizon is 9 to 12 months. Yeah, money market fund or T bills or you know, high yield savings account, that's where you want to keep it. You don't want to mess around with the bond market. You just take whatever you're getting in short term, which is still like 4%. But for buying a house, you don't want to mess with that money, don't. You don't want to take risk for that short of a time period.

[C]

Could not agree more. I'm pulling up my Schwab money market as we speak, looking at the present yield and you know, anytime you have a chance to pick up 4.8%, pretty much risk free. I mess around with bonds. I just bought a vacation property and I was just accumulating money for the past few years and I left it in a money market account because I didn't know it's super competitive. You never know. You know, it's not an easy market. Cash deals are do better than deals with mortgages and pretty close to full asking prices. What we've been seeing in, in this area. So I didn't want to take a risk that you put money into bonds and, or a bond fund and suddenly there's just a short Turndown.

[A]

Great.

[C]

I'm $100,000 upside down. That sucks. That that's what can happen in a bond fund. The. It doesn't matter. Schwab Fidelity, wherever your custodian, you should be getting in the mid to upper fours, almost 5% here. And. And hopefully that money doesn't stay that high yield for, for a long time because that's a little sign of some fear. Hopefully we see those yields come back down, which would be better for the equity portion of your portfolio.

[A]

Yeah. Even if they do come down, like, you still want to keep it safe. That's an easy one, right? That's right.

[B]

Is there any reason you'd pick a money market fund over a high yield savings account? If the yields are similar, Are there tax differences or anything?

[C]

Ceilings, number one, the limits.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, it's kind of ease of access, too.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I like the high yield because, yeah, it depends like where you have the money, in which account. Because in a brokerage, the money market's easier if you have it coming out of your checking and back and forth and the high yield saving. But it's pretty, pretty, pretty similar. The fees are. You have some fees for a money market fund, but the rate's probably going to wash out pretty close.

[C]

That questionnaire person asking that question who wants to save money for a house. It's very easy from Schwab of Fidelity to send the money directly to the seller's attorney's escrow account. It takes a moment and it's done. When it goes from your savings account, then you have to move it to your checking account. You don't want to add more interference. Although all that stuff has been coming more and more to T +1. Soon it'll be T +0, but we're not quite there yet.

[A]

All right, one more question.

[B]

All right, last but not least, we.

[A]

Got one from Jim ending on a high note here.

[B]

Yeah, everyone is talking about a recession. Torsten Slack says there's a 90% chance. Ben has been talking about the possibility to. Short of selling all my stocks to buy canned food and ammo, what concrete steps would you. Would you even take to prepare for a recession? Or do I just keep my head down and stay the course?

[A]

It's funny because we've gotten dozens and dozens of questions over the years about how to prepare for recession. We've never actually got a recession. Now, maybe this Will be the time. It's certainly a possibility. I do like the idea of performing like a pre mortem on your biggest areas of vulnerability. But I agree, like trying to time the market. A recession is really, really hard because the stock market is going to move way before the economy does, way before it perks up. And so I think you have to think about where are you most at risk? Is it your job? Is it your spending, your portfolio? Maybe your ability to borrow your emergency fund? So I think I would think through that kind of stuff, I would try to understand where the recession would hit you the worst. But I also think you can't live your whole life preparing for a downturn and being in the fetal position and with your arms up ready to go at all times because, I don't know, a recession is something that does happen, but you can't just constantly prepare for investing in the fetal position.

[C]

So two interesting data points. First, our colleague Callie Cox has this great chart where she shows. And I'm doing this off the top of my head, so I apologize if I get the numbers wrong. But since 1950, there have been something like 17 or 23 recessions. Well, whatever the number is, they average out 17 one every four or so years. And we've. Other than a brief moment during the pandemic, we've gone 15 years. So we're certainly due. I am a big Torsten Slot fan. I just had him on the podcast a few weeks ago. But when I did my quarterly call for clients, I mentioned that in January, Torsten Slok said 0% chance of recession in 2025. If you read the Daily Spark, which is his research piece that Apollo puts out each day, he said 95% chance of recession if the administration doesn't walk back the tariffs to bring it full circle to question number two. So he's saying if we keep these tariffs in place, all but guaranteed a recession. If they walk them back, we reduce the possibility.

[A]

Recession predictions are fluid at the moment. Right? That's right.

[C]

That's right. We're going to get a recession unless things get better. But if things get worse, we got.

[B]

To look at the day when cashy markets.

[C]

You know, there was a great Wall Street Journal article about the magic of predictions that are 40%. Did you see that, Ben?

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's a perfect hedge, right? If you go 60, it's too much. 50 makes you look like a wimp. 40, it's a coin flip.

[C]

Right. And if you're wrong, hey, I told you it was a less than 50% chance. So I'm right. And if it happens, hey, I told you there was a really high possibility it could happen. It's a very funny article.

[A]

Yeah. So I think you got to think about the ways that you're impacted personally, but then you go on and live your life. Someone in the chat, Broseph wants to know which great handle. Where do we send questions to? That's easy. Ask the compound showmail.com if you want to leave a question in the live chat, you can do that too. I think people were more arguing about trade wars in the comments today than asking questions. That's okay.

[B]

Maybe there's a bit of everything. Before we go though, I do have some surprise charts I wanted to get you guys opinions on.

[A]

All right, long term oli chart.

[B]

So this last question from Jim, they're referencing a famous financial person's suggestion that you buy canned food, baked beans and Tuna, back in 2022. And so I just, I asked ChatGPT to put together what baked beans have done since, since 2022. John, could you throw that chart on? So, so right here it looks like a can of baked beans. 15 ounces is the exact same price at Walmart, but It was in 2022. And Bush's though, you got a little bit of a game there. So if you had invested in baked beans, you know, not bad, I guess. Tuna, can you hit the tuna one? So I'll get tuna. So this one, actually, the, the prices are down. Except if you invested in white albacore tuna. If you invested in that, you got a pretty nice return. I don't know where you sell this. I don't know if pawn shops or. I don't know where you actually redeem your, your canned foods, but yeah, I just thought this was interesting.

[A]

Do you think a bunker actually helps with the resale value for a home or. No, because that could be part of it too. Real estate could be the play here.

[B]

It's true. It probably would help.

[C]

My wife has made me throw out so much food we bought during the pandemic, like cans of stuff when we all thought we were going to be living off of meals ready to eat and bottled water. That stuff is not designed to last forever. So I don't think that's a good long term investment. Even food you put in the freezer at a certain point you have to get rid of.

[A]

I'm surprised, Duncan, that the food, that those food prices are down. That's surprising given all the inflation we've got.

[B]

I was surprised too. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I figured at least.

[C]

But yeah, if you have to live the rest of your days on canned tuna and beans, just kill me now.

[A]

I got. I can't do that one.

[B]

And this person was saying to invest in these things or put your money in them instead of the market. That was right.

[A]

Good.

[C]

Good call. What are we up, like 200, 300%?

[B]

Why? Albacore. I guess you did okay. Yeah.

[A]

All right. Barry's been on the book tour for the past month or so. Six weeks. Are you done, Barry?

[C]

No, I still have stuff teed up. I'm doing more podcasts, more interviews. Like we're spreading it out. I'm taking a page from the Nick Magi School of Book promotion, which is do every single podcast in the world. And he took it his from Sahil Bloom. It's they're all different audiences and it's fun having different conversations with people. Everybody seems to focus on a different part of the book. So it's they've been fun discussions.

[A]

Perfect. Pick up a copy wherever you find your books. Remember, ask the compoundshowmail.com thanks to everyone in the live chat. As always. Thanks for everyone watching live on Twitter. Thanks to our YouTube audience podcast, everyone. See you next week. Thanks everyone.

[B]

See everyone.

[D]

Thanks for listening to Ask the Compound. All opinions expressed by Ben Carlson, Duncan Hill, and any of their guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.