War, $200 oil, and the market’s reckoning

30:25equity market. And it has usually almost always also led to a major business cycle recession. I don't see any reason why that would be different this time. In other words, if we get an oil shock and if the oil shock is prolonged, I think that we can expect both a decline of more than 20 % or more in the S &P 500 and we can probably expect to get some sort of a recession in the United States, the severity of which will simply depend on the magnitude of the oil shock, the duration of that oil shock. In terms of magnitude, I wrote an article a couple of years ago explaining that if we got an oil shock that was of the magnitude that we had during 1973, during the Arab oil embargo, that would be equivalent to something like a$300 oil price today.

31:22Now, what's interesting is, and I pointed it out in this article, is that the actual disruption in the flow of oil from the Middle East that we got during the 73 crisis was actually of a significantly lower magnitude than the disruption that we're potentially dealing with here if the Strait of Hormuz is closed. And certainly if we start getting oil production and facilities disrupted in the Middle East, we're talking about this conflict is putting into play about 20 percent of global oil supply. During the Arab oil embargo, roughly that disruption was roughly about four percent. At its peak, it was about six percent.

32:09But, you know, basically a four to six percent disruption. And it didn't even last two months. The world is different, and there are some things today that are different than they were then in terms of there are strategic petroleum reserves that didn't exist during 1973 and do exist now. There's some other things that make a difference. But there's no doubt, I think, in the minds of serious oil analysts that if we get a disruption that lasts for more than a month, and a serious disruption of the oil flows coming out of the Strait of Hormuz and coming out of the various facilities in the Middle East, that we're going to have oil prices certainly well over$100.

32:50And if this disruption were to last, let's say, for more than two or three months, we would start seeing prices up in the$200 range. Now, of course, prices can get ahead. Prices sort of anticipate. So right now, if you think about it, the market, what it's saying is that, well, we don't expect these disruptions to last very long. That's why oil prices are, you know, only a little above$70 right now. But if the marginal participant in the market starts to become convinced that this is going to become a two-month disruption, then that'll get priced in. And as I said, a two-month disruption would probably be worth$200 oil price.

33:32so that's sort of quantifying for you a little bit the timing in other words if this conflict drags on or it looks like it's going to be dragging on for over a month without any end in sight we should expect probably oil prices of over$100 if the markets start pricing in a conflict that's going to last for more than two months then we start talking about the possibility of$200 oil I think that So anything in terms of oil prices where we start going well over$100, we're talking about a recession being triggered in the United States and globally. Again, it might be if the oil shock only lasts a month, it'll be enough to hit the economy, but not enough to cause, let's say, a two-quarter long recession potentially or not a major one.

34:29But if we start getting a disruption that starts lasting two, three, four months, then we really are talking about the type of economic disruption that could cause a recession that lasts for two quarters or more, you know, more than six months. And again, in terms of the magnitude, we're talking about fairly severe recession if what we're talking about is, say, oil prices that are$150,$200, somewhere along those lines. Now, to kind of compound matters, something that's really not in the headlines very much, but I bet it's something that you already probably talked about in your podcast with some of your guests, is that there is right now in the United States a little bit of a worrisome problem with private credit markets.

35:16and a recession would be hitting those markets at exactly the wrong time. So we have a very toxic combination here of a prospect that the U.S. could be falling into a recession when private credit markets happen to be very vulnerable right now with rising default rates and extreme illiquidity because there's a lot of redemptions happening in funds that handle private credit. And all of these are the type of ingredients that kind of make for a financial panic and crash and a sort of major economic shock. So, again, I'm not predicting that that'll happen because in order for that to happen, we need to actually get an oil shock that gets oil prices well over$100 and it needs to last for a significant period.

36:00And I'm not in a position right now where I can actually predict the length of this conflict. All I can say is that the chances of such a prolonged conflict are a lot larger than what the market is currently allowing for. And again, this is because the objectives, the strategic objectives that the Israelis and the Americans have set are such that those objectives cannot be accomplished in a short period of time. It's going to take at least that four to six weeks that Trump and Hexeth are talking about, and it could take a lot longer. and if it does take a lot longer and if the Iranians are able to continue, you know, as long as they have the capability, as long as they have some missiles that they can shoot out at ships that are in the Strait of Hormuz and that they can shoot at oil facilities in the Gulf, that's going to get those oil prices into that kind of crisis range that I'm pointing out that would trigger a recession and that could potentially trigger a much more serious problem if we get kind of a prolonged procession in the midst of this private credit crisis that seems to be brewing right now.

37:10James Kostohryz:And if you added precious metals to that prognostication, if you added perhaps bonds or currencies or global equities or energy, what would you say about those sectors and sections of the market? Okay, great question. So let's start with gold. Gold has been pricing in the risk of a crisis like this for quite a long time. I think that it was one of the only markets that seemed to be anticipating the possibility of a very serious crisis associated with this conflict. Because essentially, during the Torbay War, oil prices got up to about You know, they got up briefly above that, but basically we're at sort of$3 ,500 and they've kind of run up in anticipation of that.

38:06But what's interesting is that even after that conflict subsided, and it seemed to kind of go into the background as far as news and everybody forgot about it, oil prices continued to rise, despite the fact that we had falling inflation in the United States and no real sort of major inflationary threat. I think that a lot of that run-up in the price of gold can be attributed to players in the market that were anticipating the possibility of a major shock to global markets that would happen as a result of an oil shock due to war in the Middle East and so forth. So I think that the gold market, interestingly, was already pricing in quite a lot of risk.

38:53One of the things that I've talked about in my articles is that if you look at the price of gold right now in real terms, in terms of its purchasing power, but what I mean by that is how much stuff can you buy with an ounce of gold? Like how much oil can you buy with an ounce of gold? How much of the CPI basket can you buy with an ounce of gold? How many hamburgers can you buy? How much can you buy in terms of wages with an ounce of gold? and those real terms in purchasing power, gold right now, is higher than it has been at any time in the last 400 years. And it's about as high as it's been in recorded history going back several thousand years.

39:33So this gives you an indication of the fact that gold is pricing in some sort of major long-term inflationary scenario, because otherwise it wouldn't be here, Gold prices in, the gold price incorporates a kind of a forecast of long-term inflation. And what gold is sort of forecasting right now is some sort of long-term inflationary event. And that event, in essence, would be triggered by this Iran war just the way that the inflation in 1973 in the 70s was triggered by the 73 crisis. And then the inflationary crisis that we got in the early 80s was actually triggered by the crisis in Iran that started in 1979.

40:17So those were two times when gold really shot up. And gold is shooting up now, essentially in anticipation of this crisis. But I think that what I find problematic about gold here is that it's already priced in a heck of a lot. And I am not necessarily of the view that this crisis, despite the fact that I've been more bearish than most people, and I've been pointing out this risk that we'd have this crisis, and I am fully aware that if we have an oil shock, we're going to get an inflation shock as well. We're going to get some high inflation. But I don't think that this is the end of the dollar and I don't think it's the end of the international, you know, currency, you know, fiat currency regimes around the world.

41:04I don't believe in these kind of more doomsday scenarios that are in some senses being priced into the gold price. So I think there's already so much doom and gloom already priced into gold here that I don't necessarily really like it as an asset class. do I think that gold can make another run here if the crisis intensifies? Sure, we can get another run in gold, maybe 6 ,000 or a little above. But I already see some signs that gold is overbought and vulnerable to a decline. And actually, today is a great example of that, because despite the fact that the S &P is down fairly substantially today, Right now, as we speak, it's down about 1.20%.

41:50It was down almost 3 % earlier today. Gold is actually down. In other words, you would expect with this type of risk scenario that gold would be rising today. for example, with crude oil prices earlier today up about 8%. Right now they're up only about 5.5%. But you'd expect gold to be rising on a day like this, and it wasn't. Gold is down by 3.86%, almost 4%. It was down 5 % earlier today. And silver is down by over 6%. What this tells me is that when you have gold falling on a day where it should be rising, that's really bad news for gold investors. I've been out of gold for a while now because I think that it's pricing in too much doom and gloom.

42:36So my personal perspective on gold is that even though I believe that there's a lot more risk to be priced in yet into financial markets, I think the crisis is probably going to be worse or people are going to start fearing it's going to be worse than they have until now. I don't actually think that gold is necessarily a good place to be investing right now. You mentioned some other asset classes, of course, oil. Oil, the commodity, is the place where I have the largest positioning right now. Because as I said, I do think that there's a significant threat that we could start seeing oil prices well over$100, maybe even as high as$200.

43:18Brent right now, Brent crude is at$82. and WTI crude, West Texas Intermediate, is about$75 right now. That means, as I mentioned before, that if we start pricing in a crisis that is as long as the one that Donald Trump is hoping for, which is only four to six weeks, we could easily start seeing oil prices in the$100 range fairly soon. And we've been positioned, ever since oil was down in the$50 range, We've been buying crude oil ETNs in our portfolio on successful portfolio strategy. We just recently made a very important adjustment in our portfolios where we moved to an ETN that holds Brent rather than WTI.

44:02USO, which is the U.S. Oil Fund, is sort of the main instrument that a lot of investors use to get crude oil exposure. we're a little bit concerned that Trump is going to implement some sort of price control measures in the United States and potentially a reintroduction of something that's called the export ban the oil export ban which is something that I can describe to you in more detail if you'd like but basically what it is is that it says that the United States is not and it is not allowed to export oil anywhere in the world. And so it keeps all that oil in the United States, and it basically isolates the United States from global oil prices.

44:43And as long as the United States has enough oil to meet its own demand, then the United States can actually keep its own oil prices down. Even if oil prices in Europe might be above$200, they could actually stay well below$100 in the United States. So in order to avoid that specific type of risk, I've gotten out of the exposure to WTI, which is an American benchmark. It moved into the Brent benchmark. And that brings us to the other issue, which is exposure to the energy sector, particularly oil and gas producers.

45:17James Kostohryz:I just want to interrupt you, James. Is that the ETF for the Brent? Is that BNO? Yes, that's correct. Yep. In addition to making this adjustment to moving to BNO from USO, We actually previously owned SCO, which is a two-time leveraged play on WTI, but we got out of it the other day precisely because we're a little bit concerned. In fact, we just got out of it yesterday because we were concerned about the possibility that measures could be introduced that would sort of dampen WTI relative to Brent. So that's why we made the switch there. Now, the oil and gas sector for quite a while now has been the most undervalued sector in the U.S.

46:03market. Every single sector in the U.S. market was pretty much at historically high levels of valuation, at historic levels of valuation, at levels of valuation that were above the 90th percentile, many at the 98th or 99th percentile. Now, energy was exactly the opposite. Basically, energy has never been cheaper on a relative basis than it has been in the last few months. It's been cheaper in absolute terms, but in relative terms, it's never been as cheap as it's been. And even now with this run up that we've had in the energy sector, you know, oil and gas producing equities, it's still trading at levels that on a relative basis are, you know, very near all time lows.

46:51We do see that there's some good fundamental value there, particularly if you think that oil prices are going to stay high for a prolonged period. But here's where I think people need to really have some caution and we're kind of positioning in this way in our portfolios, which is that we're more exposed to the commodity right now than we are to the producers. Because at some point, the value of an oil and gas producing company has very little to do with, let's say, the near-term oil price. It has a lot more to do with the longer term oil prices, because if you think how a discounted cash flow valuation works, the price of oil during this next year, if it goes up, sure, it's going to be great for the profits, but that's only one year of profits.

47:37Most of the value in a company is in its second, third, fourth, fifth, you know, through 20th year of cash flows. And so unless you're projecting oil prices to be above$100 after two, three, four, five years, these oil producing equities really shouldn't go up too much. In other words, if we start getting a real crazy rally, which we don't have anything crazy yet, but the way these things work, usually we get into some sort of a crazy rally because as soon as people start seeing$100 oil prices, they're going to be saying, oh my gosh, we need to buy oil producers. And they start buying that stuff hand over fist, essentially projecting$100 oil prices into the long-term future.

48:24But that's not the case. So, for example, if you have oil producing equity and you start getting earnings estimates, forward earnings estimates based on$100 oil, they might be trading at a P of, you know, seven or eight times, even five times earnings. People say, my gosh, that's cheap. That's crazy. Let's buy that. The problem is that if oil prices come back to$70 within a year or two or three or four, then the earnings, the PE that looks like a 7 PE when oil is at$100 and you're looking 12 months ahead, the PE looking, let's say, three years out might be 25. And so that's where people need to be careful.

49:09And, you know, we're going to be very careful about ourselves in terms of how we're going to be managing our exposure. The only thing that we're doing to manage our exposure in the energy space has to do with the location. uh we want to be a little bit uh away from certainly want to be away from companies that own a lot of uh or a lot of their production or a significant amount of their production is in the middle east particularly in the war-torn areas so so we're staying away from stocks they have a lot of properties and exposure in the middle east but we also want to lean away a little bit from the u.s because we're afraid again of this oil export ban that trump could reintroduce which is something that the United States had as part of its law for many, many years and was only basically repealed a few years ago, Trump could probably bring this back with an executive order and it could also be approved by Congress again.

50:01And that would severely limit the profitability of U.S. and North American producers like Canadian producers as well. So I would rather, to the extent that I can find and look for oil producers outside the United States that are leveraged to the price of oil in Europe, in Latin America, in Asia, in Australia, in Africa. These are some of the things that we're looking at. And of course, these are going to be lesser known E &P companies. I have an advantage there because I've been basically an energy investor for well over 20 years. Most American investors are familiar with the U.S. oil majors. And even if they're E &P investors, they're focused on the E &P companies that operate in the United States and to some extent Canada.

50:56But there are some interesting stocks. And I won't really get into like names too much here because I don't think we're going to have time for that. But in Latin America, in Africa, Asia, Australia and so forth. And so we're actually kind of right now rotating some of our positioning out of our exposure, which was, you know, quite large, I would say very large in U.S. producers, kind of moving our production exposure into some of these other areas, which are more undervalued anyway. But I do want to emphasize is that in either case, we're actually more bullish on the commodity right now than we are on the producers.

51:36We're bullish on the producers, but the commodity, let's say, has more upside. So that's kind of how we're looking at that particular sector. In terms of other sectors in the market, I think it's time to start taking a look at some of the defensive sectors. One of the things that happened in the market, the market had this huge rotation from growth to value. But by moving from growth to value, it's become more cyclical. In other words, a lot of the value names are essentially cyclicals. And cyclicals get hit really, really hard if you get a recession. So I think that we could see if we start, if the market starts anticipating the possibility of a recession, a lot of these stocks that have gone up by a heck of a lot in the last few months in this rotation from tech into more value-oriented sectors, we could get a huge reversal of that move and get a lot of these more cyclically oriented sectors having some major downside within the market.

52:34And of course, I think that the tech sector is not going to be immune to this. But I think on a relative basis, this outperformance that we've seen from cyclicals and value might just be over. And again, it'll be over if this conflict becomes prolonged and actually starts causing people to price in a recession. We don't need to have a recession. We just need the marginal investor to start pricing in a high risk of a recession. As long as the marginal investor starts pricing in a high risk of a recession, we're going to have big declines. And again, probably more than 20 percent in the market overall and probably underperformance of cyclically oriented sectors that have recently really shot up and could actually crash back down as a result of increased cyclical risk.

53:22James Kostohryz:James, as you mentioned, we are getting into a lengthy conversation already, and I know that it could be much lengthier and still be very valuable. But I guess as we close out this conversation, and you're welcome back anytime, what else would you share with investors these days? Is it worthy to get into bonds and the Fed and perhaps an interest rate conversation? Where do you think would be of most valuable for investors? So let's talk about U.S. Treasury bonds for a moment. There's two key variables in the pricing of long-term Treasury securities. The first is anticipated inflation. And the second is the real rate of return.

54:05In other words, this is the return above and beyond whatever the anticipated inflation is. This is the real inflation-adjusted return. Those are the two components that basically make up the return that you get on a U.S. Treasury bond. And if you buy a corporate bond, you have an additional element there, which is sort of a risk premium that you get for investing in a company that has a risk of default that's higher than you have on a U.S. Treasury security, generally referred to as spread. it. Now, in terms of corporate securities, I think that we can safely assume that if we start pricing in a recession, we're going to get spreads.

54:47Corporate bond spreads are going to widen significantly. They've recently been near record lows and for quite a while. So the combination of increased credit risk combined with worsening liquidity conditions means that those spreads are probably going to wipe. So corporate bonds is probably not a place where you're going to want to be and certainly wouldn't be something that would be defensive. Now, if we're talking about treasury bonds, you have less risk when you have low duration. So in other words, short-term treasuries and T-bills, they have, let's say, relatively less risk because they don't price in a lot of longer-term inflation.

55:30And they also don't necessarily, they have a real rate of interest, but that real rate of interest has very low duration on it. So it doesn't have a big impact on the price. Where you get a big impact on the price is when you have long-term treasuries that say 10, 10 year, seven to 10 to up to 30 year treasury securities. That's where you can get big declines. For example, if the market starts pricing in a significant long-term inflation as a result of this situation. In other words, if people start pricing in a scenario like we got in the early 70s after the Arab oil embargo, or if they start pricing in an inflation crisis like we got in the early 80s after the 79 fiasco in Iran, we could start getting long-term inflation forecasts, which right now are only a little above 2%.

56:23In other words, the long-term treasury bonds are only forecasting inflation of a little over 2 % over the next 30 years, over the next 10 to 30 years. But if people start anticipating higher levels of long-term inflation, let's say like three, four, five, or even greater percent, that would actually crash the long-term treasury bond market and the long-term bond market more generally. So again, that's not going to be a safe haven in this scenario where we have rising potential inflationary risks being priced in. An asset that I've really come to understand deeply and I've invested in it in my service and I talk about it and I have some expertise in it is TIPS.

57:13TIPS is Treasury Inflation Protected Securities. and what this is is that it's a type of U.S. Treasury bond that guarantees you a real rate of return plus whatever inflation there happens to be during the term of the bond. So for example, even if inflation goes from 2 % and change the way it is now and it goes all the way up to 10%, the U.S. Treasury guarantees you that it's going to return that 10 % inflation plus whatever the real rate of return on the bond is. So clearly that's a much safer investment if you happen to be the type of person that's worried about long-term inflation. And for example, you're like me and think that gold is already too high and don't want to continue to get too exposed to gold.

58:04With tips, you get long-term inflation protection without the risks that you have with gold. It's the most direct play on, let's say, long-term inflation if that's what you're worried about. Now, tips do have a risk and they have duration risk. There's long-term tips that have duration risks tied to what's called the real interest rate. This is a little more complicated and I don't want to get into it here because, again, we're going to get a little too technical and probably go over. But the real rate of interest that you have on tips, even if it moves a little bit, the price of tips will move a heck of a lot in relation to that real rate of interest that's priced into the tips market.

58:49So it is a risky asset, particularly if you buy long-term tips. And here's the thing to think about. If you think that in the long-term, U.S. inflation isn't going to get out of control, and therefore the U.S. isn't going to need really much higher real interest rates, as opposed to nominal interest rates, that real interest rates will continue to be roughly what they've been. But you think that there's a chance of a big growth scare or even a recession in the United States, during a recession, real interest rates always come down, almost pretty much always come down. And they're actually right now relatively like high-ish levels historically, close to 2%.

59:30During a recession, they generally go down to 1 % or less, maybe half a percent. So you have some upside, significant upside potential in tips in terms of price appreciation, we're talking about price appreciation of 10, 20, 30 percent if we get a decline in real interest rates, not nominal interest rates, mind you. In other words, the nominal interest rate, for example, the yield on U.S. Treasuries might go from where it is right now from 4 to 5 percent or higher if more inflation starts getting priced in. But simultaneously, you could actually get a situation where the real interest rates comes down because of anticipated recession.

1:00:15and that would actually cause the price of tips to go higher. So investing in tips is something that you need to understand what they are. It's more complicated than investing in treasury bonds, but we do that in our service and we've used it to good effect. And we do now have a pretty significant position in long-term tips in our portfolio. Not a huge position, but a fairly significant position in our portfolio in long-term too. So that's an asset to also look at as a potential sort of asset class for people that are concerned with the situation and thinking about how to kind of position their portfolios.

1:00:56I don't know if there's any other asset classes that maybe you'd like me to cover, Rina, for your listeners.

1:01:01James Kostohryz:If you think it's worthy to spend a minute or two on any other asset classes. Happy for you to share that. And perfect segue to remind listeners that, again, you run an investing group on Seeking Alpha called Successful Portfolio Strategy. So perfect for you to share that with listeners. Sure. Well, let's talk a little bit about another asset that has been very popular lately, which is silver. Silver is down by almost 6 % today. Again, this is something to be very concerned about if you're an investor in silver. On a day like this where you get risk rising and potential inflation risk rising, you would want to see gold and silver rising.

1:01:45They're falling. That's a horrible technical signal. But more generally, silver investors need to worry about the fact that this crisis poses a severe cyclical risk to the global economy. And silver is more of an industrial metal than it is a precious metal that's used for purposes of investment. If we get a recession globally that brings down growth, it's going to significantly impact the demand for the industrial uses of silver. Because again, silver is more of an industrial metal. And I would also point out that these private credit risks that we talked about earlier in the program, this plays into the CapEx boom that's kind of fueling industrial demand for silver and other metals.

1:02:34So I think that silver is a particularly risky metal right now. And I would be wary of it. We don't own any of it. And we haven't owned it. And I certainly wouldn't be dipping my toes into it right now. A very bullish long-term bond copper. But again, in the short term, we just sold some of our positions that we had very recently. we sold significant positions that we had in copper miners in my service because I'm afraid of the cyclical impact of this crisis. In other words, when global growth goes down, demand for copper goes down. And when demand for copper goes down, prices of copper comes down, obviously the profitability of the copper miners.

1:03:17There's been a lot of bullishness around copper and some of the copper miners in recent, I'd say months, even years due to the projected increased demand in copper that's going to be required for a lot of the circuitry and other industrial uses that are arising as a result of the AI CapEx boom. I'm very much a believer in this long term, but I think short term, the run up in copper and especially the run up in copper equities has been pretty speculative. And these stocks may get hit pretty hard if the market starts pricing in, let's say, a significant risk of recession. So those are some assets that I would be looking at closely and somewhat warily.

1:04:04In general, I think that people should be thinking defense right now rather than offense. Generally, that also means people should probably have higher cash exposures and also investments in, you know, say short-term bonds. In other words, You don't necessarily have to own cash per se. You can always have it in money market funds that invest in short-term securities, or you can invest in self-in short-term bonds, which have relatively little risk. So those are some of the things that I'd be, but as a general, let's say, I don't want to call it advice, but as a general philosophical stance right now, I think that with this S &P still within 5 % of its all-time highs, there's a heck of a lot of risk out there.

1:04:51And I think that it really behooves people to be a lot more defensive right now than they've been in a long time. Because we're facing the possibility of the type of crisis that we haven't had in a long time. And I'd say that that's the last thing that I kind of want to leave you with, Rena, which is that this issue of complacency. The biggest bear markets, the biggest declines in markets happen when people are the most complacent. And I haven't seen people this complacent in my entire career. I have never seen so much risk being blown off by the market because people think that, hey, this particular crisis that people are worrying about isn't going to happen just like the other ones haven't happened in the last 30 years.

1:05:37But hey, you know what? There have been some other big crises that really did materialize in the past. The 73 crisis, crisis in the early 80s. Um, obviously the, uh, the, the, the crisis that we got, uh, in the global financial crisis in 2007 through 2009, we had the bursting of the tech bubble. I mean, these things are real. They only happen once every maybe decade or two, but people have sort of forgotten that actual bad, bad things can't really can't happen to the economy and to their portfolios. And when I say bad things, we're talking about declines of 20 % or more, sometimes as much as 40%.

1:06:20And we have so much complacency built in. We have, in fact, an entire generation of investors that have never actually lived through a crisis. I would say, I don't know what the percentage is, but some very large percentage of market participants today, probably more than half, have never really lived through a long-term sort of wealth-destroying crisis in the market. And I would really caution young people that never lived through one into thinking that, you know, crises can never happen. And I would also caution, of course, anybody that's not young to say, you know, you've been made used to things kind of going away in the last few years.

1:07:07Real crises have happened in the past. They will happen in the future. And while there's no guarantee that we're going to get a major crisis from the current war in the Middle East, it certainly has the potential to generate a major crisis. And that was, of course, the focus, the earlier part of our conversation today. This crisis could get oil prices well above$100, even above the$200 range. And if that happens, we're going to get a business cycle recession. we're going to get declines of over 20 % in equities, and it could potentially get a lot worse if all of this exacerbates the developing crisis that we have in private credit markets.

1:07:45James Kostohryz:Thank you, James. Really appreciate this conversation. Thanks for being so generous with your time and your thoughts. Again, James Castori's on Seeking Alpha. You run Successful Portfolio Strategy. Is that the best place for listeners to get in touch with you? Absolutely. Yeah, that's the best place for people to get in touch with me. Subscribe to Successful Portfolio Strategy. I mean, it's really a bargain. It's really one of the cheapest services that you're going to find. And I really think that my strength is in portfolio strategy and looking at things from a strategic perspective. We also do, we've had a great track record in terms of stock picking, you know, individual stocks like stock to, you know, are off the radar people that, you know, especially internationally stuff that people haven't even heard of.

1:08:37And so I think that the type of situation that we're, that's happening in the world right now is really right up my alley. And I do expect, you know, that my performance during this period is going to be pretty exceptional. It already has been. I mean, we're up big time this year where most people are either flat or down for the year. We are up in a big way this year as a result of having anticipated this crisis. And since I anticipate that this crisis is probably going to go further than people think, I think that there's still a lot more upside to be gained from the type of positions that we have in our portfolio.

1:09:13James Kostohryz:You also have a 14-day free trial for successful portfolio strategies. So really nothing to lose there. James, thanks again. Really appreciate the conversation. You're welcome back anytime. Just a reminder, anything you hear on this podcast should not be considered investment advice. This is for entertainment purposes only, and you should seek advice from a licensed professional before investing. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a rating or review on your favorite podcasting app, and we'll see you soon with a new episode.

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