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- [00:02]
A
Get ready to take a flamethrower to the official narrative and learn what the elites don't want you to know. You're listening to the Tom Woods Show.
- [00:19]
B
Hey, everybody, Tom woods here. It's episode 2736 of the Tom Woods Show. We have the great Kevin Duffy back with us once again. Kevin is a principal at Baring Asset Management, which you helped found, I presume, or you did found.
- [00:32]
C
Yes, with Bill Wagner in 2022. 2002.
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B
2002. Yeah. It's been. Been longer than that. And he writes the Coffee can portfolio, which you can read every month.
- [00:44]
C
I think it comes out roughly every two or three months.
- [00:48]
B
Every two or three months. Okay. I was just reading the current issue. There's definitely plenty to talk about in it. Kevin's one of the good guys in terms of, you know, you're going to agree with them on the way the world works, but those people are a dime a dozen. We can find a lot of people who have the. The correct opinions on the world, but we're not going to find quite as many who have their finger on the proper pulse of what's really going on in terms of your money and what you ought to do with it and what's sound and what's unsound and what's a bubble and what's real. And Kevin's really good on that stuff, and heaven knows we have plenty to talk about in that area. But let me start off with this. Even though I want to talk about AI and these various companies and whether this is all viable or not, but I was looking through your newsletter and I was looking through your portfolio, and I wonder what your opinion of bitcoin is and if it deserves a spot in somebody's portfolio.
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C
Wow, you hit me with the tough ones right off the bat.
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B
Right off the bat, because I was looking for it. Maybe it was I going too fast or did I not see it?
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C
One of the things about this business is you try to stick to your circle of competence. And I've always said that I feel like bitcoin is a little bit outside of my circle of competence. I actually wrote about this in August of last year, and I admitted that I, you know, I had missed the boat and the bandwagon and everything else, and. But I look at this as it's just a monetary competition. And so what's happening is, you know, the old monetary regime of fiat currencies is crumbling. And, you know, at the top of that is really the US Dollar and the hegemony of the United States kind of coming to an end and the dollar is a reserve currency and all the rest of it. So, you know, we don't know exactly what this new monetary regime will look like. There's a competition going on. I mean, I happen to be betting on gold. I will admit that I missed bitcoin. And I think kind of as Austrians, we're sort of cheering for, you know, the, Let the competition, let the games begin. And so I really have nothing personally against bitcoin. I did not like all of the speculation that was going on last year. So it goes through these sort of bouts of speculation, we're now starting to see that unravel. My gut instinct is that we have further to run on that unraveling. So. But that's about all I can offer on.
- [03:13]
B
And that's fair enough. I mean, I would want somebody whom I trust to be able to tell me this is where my confidence is and this is where it isn't, and that's perfectly okay. And you even said, you even admitted something. Nobody ever admits anything, Kevin. Nobody ever admits anything. So I respect that too. I just, I couldn't help notice that. But at the same time, I look at the performance of the coffee can portfolio and it looks pretty good. Like you did okay without it. I mean, it looks really, really good since, I guess, what did you start it in 2020?
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C
It will be six years exactly to the day on Wednesday, actually the 18th of February. Yeah.
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B
Okay. So you've got a super outstanding track record. I mean, way, way outpacing most other things. And that reminds me of something. So.
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C
Except gold.
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B
Except gold very slightly, I've not quite
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C
been able to manage that feat.
- [04:06]
B
Right. Gold very slightly outperformed you, but very few people would have predicted that. And that was a, that was, I mean, we predicted in the long run, but you never know when the long run finally materializes. But let me ask you, though, a lot of people, like, oh, just today, just today, my personal trainer said he wants to get a financial advisor. And I understand why somebody wants a financial advisor, but at the same time, I want to know from any particular financial advisor, is there any reason to think that entrusting you with my money is better than throwing darts at a dartboard? I mean, I, I, I think it's a legitimate question, you know, and the question that Gene Epstein used to want to ask is, have you outperformed the S and P? Like, if I just throw my money into SPY or if I give it to you, what's, you know, I want to know what the difference is, is there any reason that I should give it to you now? At the same time, the S and P has been on a crazy upward trajectory that might not last forever. So maybe that's not a fair metric. Is there a fair metric to use when evaluating whether somebody is a worthy financial advisor or not?
- [05:12]
C
Another tough question with not a very easy answer. I mean, it really depends on what are your objectives, what are the risks that you're willing to take. The problem with the s and P500 is that it is not a diversified. Even though there are 500 companies in it, it's not a diversified index. It has a tremendous amount of exposure to large cap technology stocks. And right now I think that exposure is roughly 36. I mean, the top eight companies, 36%. It has a lot of exposure to AI. So it really is kind of a, you know, looking at the past is a backward look in terms of the performance. And you know, you really have to look ahead as far as advisors. You know, I think you just have to ask some questions. You know, you have to imagine what the future might look like and are they prepared for that future. Now I, I happen to believe I wrote an article, actually it was in the Coffee Can Portfolio. It was published on Mises.org today called Survival of the Least Fit. And I happen to believe that the environment is the investing environment and the financial environment is changing radically. And so like for example, I asked Grok, what are the odds of a hyperinflation over the next decade? Well, it told me what the consensus says, about 1%. So this would be one of the questions I think I'd have for a financial advisor. What do you think the odds are of a hyperinflation over the next 10 years? And if they say, you know, no big deal, it's nothing we should worry about and we're going to have inflation of 3 or 4% as far as the eye can see. And you know, if they're sort of driving by looking through the rearview mirror, then I think, you know, those are the types of questions that I would be asking. You know, I think the financial advisors that I want to hire would be somebody who is imagining this new landscape and is not just extrapolating the past.
- [07:13]
B
Yeah, exactly. That may be, as you say in the article, the environment of the past 17 years with zero interest rates and these index funds giving you double digit returns. This might not be the norm. This might actually be coming to an end, in which case I want to have an advisor who's got a Plan other than just to do that, which, as you say, you call him the plain vanilla advisor. As somebody who's got a 60, 40 portfolio, 60% in SPY and then 40% in bonds. But I mean, I don't think I want to be in bonds, that's for sure. I could get by with the S&P 500, but certainly the bond thing is out. For example, I have a friend, maybe, you know, Larry Lippard. Okay, so Larry is very much like the kind of person you're talking about. He's not expecting a carbon copy in the future of what we've seen over the past 10, 20, 30 years. He thinks that the chickens are little by little coming home to roost. And he thinks that what's bound to happen is in the next downturn there's going to be wild, crazy money printing. And so he describes what he's doing as monetary debasement insurance. Do you think of your approach as somewhat similar?
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C
My approach is a really thematic approach. And, you know, one of the things, you know, we talked earlier about how, you know, I've gone through some tough times, basically being a short bias, a hedge fund manager, which was not a good place to be from about 2009 to 2018, 19, and kind of went back to the drawing board. And what I looked at is multiple themes that there are not. I think as Austrians, we tend to focus on the negatives, which is great. You know, we have to be aware of that, but we also have to look at positives and try to have some balance. So I'm always looking at, you know, not only what can go wrong, but what can go right. Where is the growth going to be? It's not all doom and gloom. And so I look at currency debasement as just one theme in the portfolio. Now it happens to be the. The theme that I have the biggest exposure to, but I'm also looking at positive themes. And, you know, one of them is I've been. I'm a contrarian also. Besides being an Austrian, I'm a contrarian. So very intrigued by what's going on in China. And one of the themes that to me is going to play out over the next 10 or 20 years is Chinese innovation. I think we're seeing something that is completely different, that we're, you know, talk about the old environment and people being used to the US technology dominating forever. I think this is going away and we have an opportunity right now, I think, to invest in Chinese innovation at very, very cheap prices.
- [10:10]
B
Folks, we're in big trouble the debt is now insanely out of control and you're naturally wondering if. If they're going to print their way out of it, thereby destroying what you've worked so hard to build. So that's why I want to talk to you about Monetary Metals, a company that's doing something truly revolutionary with gold. We all know gold is a safe haven asset, but let's face it, most gold just sits there in a vault, not doing much. It holds its value over time, but it doesn't grow. I like to earn money doing things I'd already do anyway. I'm already going to own gold, so why not earn income from it? What if I told you there is indeed a way to not only own physical gold, but also earn a yield on it, paid in gold every single month? That's exactly what I do with monetary metals. I lease my gold with them and earn an annual yield around 4% in gold, not in paper currency. I keep my ounces and every month I get more. So think about it, you still benefit from any price appreciation like what we saw in 2025 with gold pushing past all time highs. And you also get paid more ounces of gold along the way. That's what makes this model so exciting. It's a genuine breakthrough. For the first time in decades, gold is functioning as a yield bearing asset. Just like in the classical gold standard days. The Fed can print dollars, they can't print gold. It's time to start growing your wealth in ounces, not just hoping for the best with Fiat. Go to monetary-metals.com woods to learn more and see how you can start earning a gold income too. That's monetary-metals.com woods I would say probably since I. Well, long before I got into the podcasting game, I would hear all different stories about China. You know, I would hear China's the future. I would hear, no, China's actually hobbling itself with its policies. No, its policies are actually gradually becoming more liberalized. They're facing a demographic problem. They're. It's been up and down in term. Not that individual forecasters have gone up and down, but that I have some bulls and some bears in China, like more than I see in bitcoin. And there's a lot of that, there's a lot of bulls and bears in bitcoin, but China's all over the place. And it sounds like every single one of them I listen to makes a plausible argument. Even the ones who contradict the other ones. So what's your opinion?
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C
Well, part of what I'M trying to do is that there's always, there's nuance. You know, it's not a matter of black and white, you know, good versus evil. China's authoritarian, we're capitalistic. You know, the reality is that we have a mixed economy, they have a mixed economy. You know, we can go down the, the list in terms of. And not everything about China is great. Not everything about the United States is great. We can find a lot of fault in the United States. And yet I've invested in US Companies, I'm invested in Chinese companies. So, you know, I just try to stick to one is the consumer in China. And first of all, you know, if we look at China, it's first of all a remarkable achievement in terms of, you know, real incomes in China, I think over the past 30 years have gone up something like 12 times. You know, there's no question, you know, you can't deny the growth that's taken place. You just can't deny that. I think some people do. But China, in 2007, the retail investor was very bullish. There was a lot of speculation. Okay? Right now, the retail investor in China is hiding in a bunker. So as a contrarian, that's one of the things that I like, is that stocks are very much out of favor. They're very cheap. But on the other hand, there's a lot of positive things going in terms of the resilience. It's a super hypercompetitive economy, very entrepreneurial, hardworking. You look at the talent pool that's out there. You look at, let's say, AI, Taiwan Semiconductor, Nvidia. Jason Huang is from, his family is from Taiwan. If you look at ByteDance and Tencent and Alibaba, the founders of those companies, are from provinces that are across the Taiwan Strait. So if you look at the talent pool, it is in Asia and it's especially in China. And you see this in terms of the CEOs of Silicon Valley companies. A lot of them are run by Chinese. So, you know, I think the talent pool is there. I think that over time things will become, as you said, will become more liberal. And, you know, I, I want to. I think we're just getting great bargains right now. And I also think that these US Tech. On the other side of all this is the US Tech companies which have. I don't think people are appreciating some of the risks out there, and one of them being competition from Chinese companies.
- [15:03]
B
That brings me to the AI question, because one of the points you raise in your Current issue of the coffee can portfolio is that a number of the US based companies are not, let's say, operating quite as economically as their Chinese counterparts appear to be. And there is an enormous amount of money at stake here. And the whole system, given the infrastructure demands necessary to keep these various AI platforms running, seem to be just off the charts enormous. And China is somehow, I don't know, I don't know how it's able to be so much more economical and realistic, but somehow it is.
- [15:45]
C
Well, I think that, and this is what is really fascinating about what's going on. Louis Vincent Gov has talked about this quite a bit and his point is that the Chinese used to throw money around, they used to squander capital. And what's happened is because they've had their property bubble bursting, because they've had to deal with the tariffs first from, from Trump in 2018 and then sanctions against Huawei, one of their leading tech companies, they've had to deal with scarcity over there. Money is, is tight and, and that is a good thing. You know, it means that it's not going to be thrown around and they're having to make do with, they don't have access to the high end chips, okay. And so they're having to deal with scarcity and it means that they're making do they have the talent pool, I mean, we know that, but they're having to make do with less. Now over here we have a very different situation. We have these companies that have become, you know, phenomenally successful. The Googles, the Amazons, the Metas that have built these incredible cash flow, free cash flow machines. They're swimming in money and they are afraid of missing the next big thing. So when this comes along, and it's not just, it's not just Google and Meta and Amazon, but it's also Microsoft and it's Oracle, which, you know, when they see a wave come along, it's almost like they don't even question it. They have to get their surfboard out and they have to bet heavily. And the fact is they have the money. And so you have just staggering sums of money. One of the estimates was that from 2025-28, I believe they're going to be throwing something like $2.9 trillion at this. The five hyperscalers, I think last year spent 400 billion. And the numbers are going to, are going up and up and up. So what you have is just a tremendous amount for whatever reason, for, you know, a number of factors have come together that these companies are willing to spend, you know, enormous sums of money. And so, of course, it's being, you know, wasted. They're not. The big concern is what is the return on all this investment going to be?
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B
Well, at the same time, you talk to people who follow these tools very closely and they say, look, if you played around with Chat GPT like, you know, a year ago or something, and you said, well, this isn't that impressive. Well, you haven't used it recently. And they're saying that if you look at the recent, especially the paid versions of all these things, if this is not a lot of people just using them as alternative search engines, but that is not what you can get them to do unbelievable things. At least certain of them. You can get to do amazing things. You can say using particular ones. You can say, I'd like to design an app that does the following thing and it'll go ahead and do that for you. I mean, this is. If that's true, then again, I don't know that that therefore makes the numbers add up and make sense. But it does seem like what people are saying about it is not just hype, it's not just people who are going overboard. I think it's a lot of people using it and imagining what now becomes possible for the average person. If I can just dictate into a thing and then an hour later I get what I want.
- [19:08]
C
No, I think that's true and I think both can be correct. You know, on the one hand, I don't think there's much question that there are going to be tremendous productivity gains that come out of this. And Gary Marcus, actually, it's another interview that I recommend. He did an interview with Steve Eisman of the Big Short fame. And, you know, he Talked about these LLMs, these large language models and how they work. And basically he called it a glorified memorization machine. It's like autocomplete on steroids. He admitted this is, you know, this is great stuff. I mean, when you, when your memory is the entire Internet, this has some, some value. But he said there are, you know, two levels of intelligence. There's System one intelligence and System two intelligence. And the System one is, I have my notes here, fast, automatic, statistical and reflexive. Whereas the system 2 is slower, more deliberative and more about reasoning. It's more abstract. And what he's saying is that essentially there's been this massive bet on this one approach to intelligence. And the assumption is that this is going to lead to artificial general intelligence. And he admitted that if that were accomplished, this would have immense rewards, and the rewards for the companies making these investments would probably pay off. But his concern is that this is only going to go so far in that system, one level, and it's not going to really lead to artificial general intelligence. That is one of the issues. I think another issue is that these companies like OpenAI, it appears that this is a commodity business. Okay? And also OpenAI is just losing. They're losing. I think it's tremendous amount of money, like, you know, billions of dollars a month. Okay. And so the assumption is that the profits will be there at the end of the day. But I think if he's right, that this is only going to go so far. We've got the Chinese in the game as well. They're able to do these things for, you know, far fewer resources, you know, 1/10 the resources or 1/30 the resources. So the question is, who's going to make any money at this? And it seems to me like it's almost a giant donation on the part of these people making these bets is somebody will benefit. I think we'll all benefit from having these productivity tools. But are they going to get a return on that investment? And if they don't, and if, let's say OpenAI, if the next version does not meet expectations of ChatGPT and that the funding round, they're not able to raise money at a higher valuation, then, you know, this thing can. And I think this is already starting to happen.
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B
I don't know how to adjudicate between the different is again, it's like China. I don't know how to adjudicate between all the different things I'm hearing about China, when they all sound plausible, like, the case for this is a potential bubble, and it is possible that all these expenditures could pay off, but it's also possible that they won't. That seems plausible, but at the same time, I would say that the chances that this will cause a significant upheaval in how people make their livings, there's a greater chance of that than there is that climate change is going to ruin all the shoreline real estate. You know, like, I'm not worried about that at all. That's not priced into any coastal real estate that I see. So I don't think the market believes it either. But I think this is more plausible than that. So at the very least, it can make sense nevertheless, as an exercise to think about what would I do in this kind of environment that people are describing, people are saying could occur. Maybe I need to look at what my skill set is and what I do. And if it's the kind of thing that can be easily mechanized, if it's repetitious, if it's formulaic, if it's mechanical, then I might be in some trouble and I need to think about other skills to develop.
- [23:18]
C
I think that's, you know, you have to look at it from, personally from. As having access to these productivity tools, which a great thing. It's a wonderful thing. As opposed to being an investor. I think I'm just not willing to take these risks. And look, you know, we don't know what the future is going to be like. These risks could pay off. It seems to me that it's highly unlikely that they would. And you know, it's kind of like bitcoin. I don't have to do everything. You know, as an investor, I can just sit on the sidelines and watch this and have an opinion because opinions are like noses. Everyone has one. I can have an opinion and, and, But I can move on to do other things. There's plenty of other things that are going on right now that are interesting to me as an investor. So I would rather watch this from the sideline. But frankly, I have enough conviction, enough confidence in this that I. For example, I've recommended Bear actually Barry TFS on some of these high flyers like Micron and Nvidia. So I do have enough conviction that I'm willing to kind of put my money where my reputation is, I suppose.
- [24:29]
B
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- [27:21]
C
Yeah. So you know gdp, the formula is what GDP equals private investment plus private consumption plus government spending plus net exports. So I think you have to really look at these components and, and look at the quality of these things. So let's start with private investment because we were just talking about this, all this money that is pouring into AI. I'm looking at this and I'm kind of scratching my head saying right now it's inflating the GDP numbers because these companies are spending massive amounts of money on investment. It's going up, you can see it at all at Amazon and Oracle. I mean the capex numbers are going to going straight up. But what is the quality of that investment? What is the return on the invested capital? I think what's happening is it's going down. Okay, so the quality of that investment, the quantity is high. Quality is, is not very high. Second is consumption. Okay, what is driving consumption right now? Well, you know, you have this K shaped economy you've got at the high end is being driven by the S and P, up 132% since the end of 2019. That is what is driving consumption. It's all taking place at the high end. If you're at the middle or the lower end, you know, you're really being squeezed by higher costs of everything, by housing, by auto maintenance, you name it. It's, you know, the bottom rungs of the ladder are really getting hit right now. And you're seeing this in confidence levels, consumer confidence levels being low. Okay, so if the consumption, if private consumption is being driven by the wealth effect, and the wealth effect is you've got, you know, 40% of the S and P and large cap tech and you know, you expand that to the AI investment boom. There's a significant amount of exposure there. And the average person who is invested in their 401k has a lot of exposure. If that starts to, you know, if that bubble bursts, then that's going to have an impact. So I think the quality of that consumption at the higher end is very poor. Then you get to government spending and even that. I mean, we have to look at what is the quality, what are we spending money on? You know, are we, and this is one thing where we could do a comparison with China. China does not have to maintain an empire. You know, we're spending money on things like bombs and jet airplanes. They're spending money on infrastructure. So look, as Austrians, we would prefer that the government does none of that. But you know, we're grading on a curve and you know, the Chinese are spending on things bridges that will last for 150 years and, and we're spending on things that are perhaps getting a negative return. So then you have the trade issue. And I think, you know, the trade issue we came in last year at the average weighted tariff rate in the United States was 2 1/2 percent. It's now 15%. And I don't see where, if you look at the stresses, especially with the lower and middle income consumer, adding higher prices through tariffs is not going to help that situation.
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B
Yeah, no kidding. So how would you compare the economy now to, I don't know, economies that we've known in the past in the, let's say the turn of the, into the 21st century or I mean, would you Say that is it in some ways more fragile or less fragile, or is it more promising or is it more potentially perilous, or is it always just a unique thing?
- [31:06]
C
It's countervailing forces. And I, I do not allow myself. I mean, I know this sounds a lot of what I said sounds pretty pessimistic, but, you know, I try to focus on these countervailing forces and, you know, I see, I see a lot of positives taking place. You know, you talked about AI and the productivity. You know, we are going to get productivity gains out of this. And you look at the tariff situation with China, the reality is China is becoming far more productive. You know, you want your neighbors to be productive. You want them to be prosperous. You don't want your neighbors to be bullying your kids, you know, because their kids are abused. You know, you want your neighbors to be successful and prosperous so that they can hire your kids to cut their lawn and what, you know, that sort of thing. So I also, you know, right now it seems to me like we're kind of beyond the worst of the tariff madness. And, you know, you can see some light at the end of the tunnel there. And even, you know, US hegemony and exceptionalism that is coming to an end because we now finally have a country that has been willing to kind of stand up to the bully being China. And, you know, I think that is a positive that the US Empire is kind of coming to an end, because I really do see the empire as kind of the root cause of all the problems that we, we have. It leads to the money printing and, you know, leads to all these other things. And until we get to the root of that, you know, so I, I think if we look beyond all this and the innovation that's taking place, you know, I think that's another thing, you know, for all the things that we can say, negatives about the United States economy, you know, we have a lot of things going for us. We have attracted, we have incredible DNA. You know, we have people that have left difficult situations and come over here, very resilient. We're very entrepreneurial, we're very innovative. Okay? I think those things are great. And especially the innovation to have another country like China in competition. That competition is going to be driving us to greater heights. So, you know, I do think that we're going to get through all this. We may destroy the currency in the process, but, you know, at the end of the day, I see things as just getting more know, we're, it's the hockey, the dominant trend is the hockey stick of human prosperity. And it's not just the west that is driving things now. I think that's the exciting thing, is that it's China, the bricks. You know, everybody is starting to get into the game.
- [33:45]
B
I don't know, Kevin, off the top of my head, what the numbers are. I, I wish I'd looked it up. But in the S and P, there are seven companies who have had a disproportionate effect on, on, let's say, the overall numbers for the S and P, and we call them the magnificent seven, right? And it's that like the profits, you know, like the successful companies or the, I guess I want to say the profits coming through from companies in the S and P are overwhelmingly or disproportionately concentrated in these seven companies, which means that we have a Magnificent 7 and a Mediocre 493. Now, I don't know, as I say, I don't know what the numbers are, but it's vastly disproportionate. These seven companies, out of proportion to their numbers. The number is seven. And some of these companies are involved in this space that is uncertain. Let's say its future is somewhat uncertain. So what does this tell us about, does this tell us anything about the condition of the rest of the economy, that seven companies in the S and P are accounting for some huge percentage of its progress?
- [34:49]
C
I think it does. I think it, it may say a little bit. I think some of that reflects the economy, kind of the haves and the have nots, that there's stresses in the rest of the economy. I had these numbers in my, my latest newsletter, but you're right, it's something like three quarters of the gains in the S&P 500 are coming from seven or eight companies. But the problem here is extrapolating, you know, the past, and I think we have to look back on what created these great seven companies. And it was the Internet. You know, the Internet comes along and it wasn't just the Internet, but the dot com bubble had to burst to clear away the competitive landscape. And then you had these huge winners like Facebook and Google and Amazon came along and were in a perfect position and they had all this clear space, very little competition. The money that they were investing, you know, capital, they got a great return on that investment. And then once they made their investments, they became somewhat capital light companies, which are ideal. They had a great moat, investors. I mean, everything, all the stars had to line up perfectly. And all I'm saying is or suggesting is that if we look forward, they're now having to reinvent themselves. They now see this new wave AI and what they've said is, oh, we're going to invest heavily, massively in this wave. And investors are giving them the benefit of the doubt. They're saying, well, just because they won the last time, it's going to repeat the same way this time. And all I'm suggesting is no, maybe it's not going to repeat quite that way. And also when you look at the gains. So all the attention has gone into these companies and at the same time the other companies, the other 493 or 490 or whatever in the S&P 500 have been somewhat neglected. Now some of that I think is because of the stresses in the typical consumer. But I think also some of it is all the attention that those seven or ten companies have gotten. So you've got this kind of bubble next to an anti bubble. So things have gotten even, you know, they've, they've sold off even more than maybe they even deserve.
- [37:16]
B
Okay, first of all, Coffee Can Portfolio is your newsletter. I want to take a second to tell people how to get that because you are one of the trustworthy ones and people should read you. So let's take a second to. For you to say that, yeah, my
- [37:30]
C
newsletter is just very easy to find. It's the CoffeeCan portfolio dot com.
- [37:36]
B
Okay, the CoffeeCan portfolio dot com. Check that out. You will be very satisfied. It's going to resonate with you, especially if you listen to this show. What Kevin does is going to make sense. It isn't necessarily what you would think of on your own because you don't specialize in this, but you listen to Kevin. It makes sense. I know what kind of advice I would give to somebody. I mean, I'm an amateur, Kevin, but I mean if, if somebody had a half a million or a million dollars to put somewhere, I would have at least suggestions as to what to do with it. But most people are going to have 10 or 20k to put somewhere. And so if you're dealing with people like that, I mean you, yeah, they, sure, they could put it in gold, but then gold could go having a lengthy bear market. So I guess it boils down once again to people's risk tolerance, how long their time horizon is. So how do you even know? I mean, you probably get that question once in a while.
- [38:31]
C
Yeah. And then there's really, there's not much. You know, it's not like I can say well, go invest in, you know, this ETF or go do this or that. I mean, my, my newsletter is very affordable. It's $119. You can go to my website. There's a lot of free stuff on there. Hopefully it can help you. But yeah, there's no easy. This is what you ought to. To do. I mean, the easiest thing to do might be just to have. It's almost what not to do, Tom. I mean, I can my. I can tell you what not to do. Don't invest in bonds. You know, you should really have a view anticipating that one of the surest things is that all paths are kind of leading to monetary debasement. And so it's pretty obvious that you should not own bonds, certainly not own government bonds. I mean, if you're compensated for the risk, maybe a bond might make sense. But you know, I think we can start with maybe what not to do and own some gold. I mean, and even bitcoin, you know, if you want to have a 1% in Bitcoin, you know, I don't really have a problem with that. But just try to be cognizant of the risks out there. Don't just blindly put your money into an S&P 500 index fund and think that things are going to continue like they have or put money in bonds.
- [39:50]
B
All right, fair enough. Well, I do recommend the Coffee can portfolio. It's written somehow you've struck a balance so that somebody who's been in this world for years and years can read it very profitably, but yet it's not written with so much jargon and lingo that a reasonably educated layman can't also read it and benefit from it. So that's a good thing to be able to straddle both worlds. So the CoffeeCan portfolio.com go check that out. You will be glad you did. And Kevin Duffy is going to become one of your Go to people in one of the most important areas of your life. And yet again, yet again, the Tom woods show has helped you. And I'll just say, if I may borrow a phrase from Michael Malice, you're welcome. So Kevin, thanks, thanks for, for coming back on and giving us an update on what's going on out there.
- [40:40]
C
Thank you, Tom. I enjoyed it as always.
- [40:43]
B
And thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
- [40:47]
A
Make yourself and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically. Get more forbidden information@tomsfreebooks.com and be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you listen. See you next time.
- [41:09]
B
Like the sound of The Tom Woods Show. My audio production is provided by Podsworth Media. Check them out@podsworth.com Enter code WOODS50 to get 50% off your first order. If your recording sounds rough, the Podsworth app can make it not only listenable, but professional. Remember, when you use code WOODS50, you get half off your first order and you'll also be supporting this show.
- [41:34]
D
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- [42:11]
E
been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic and it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward.
- [42:28]
B
It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are. You know, I am a believer in America and it's worth fighting for.
- [42:37]
E
Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [42:41]
F
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