My buy and sell alerts like when i short treasuries or go. Long treasuries. Or or short. The dollar lectures on building.

Your wealth. Q. A with kevin lifetime access the programs and early access to the series am launching next month folks take advantage of that expiring coupon code july 28th once that coupon code goes away there's gonna be a big break between folks your next opportunity to get in and even in the future. The price will always be higher than what you would have paid today so get in early bundle up.

If you have any questions about bundling up send me an email personally at kevin meetkevincom. It was all one big lie folks in five years. We are going to look back and go. This was the stupidest dumbest excuse for a recession.

We have ever freaking had because here's the thing traditionally we're told oh well we go into a recessionary inflation. Who are the people that are supposed to get screwed in an inflationary recession well. It's supposed to be the poor people. That's what the textbooks say because the basic costs of living go up like gas and food and that makes poor people struggle.

Yet. What income group has had the largest increase of pay since 2019. You can't even compare folks you can't even compare percentage. Wise based on the income increase.

We have seen for one group because i remember working at jamba juice and making eight dollars an hour. Now you with no skills can go work at amazon. Pushing a button and make 20 bucks. Okay.

It is insane poorer demographics. The lower demographics have seen the largest pay increase since 2000. 2019 and here's the thing. We keep hearing.

Oh. No we have to spend more money right. And that well. What about wealthy people.

I mean they see their stock balances go down. Because well. The stock market uh. You know it's gotten hit and and you know that's what we continue to hear so we hear this idea that well poor people should be able to spend less money because uh minimum wage folks you know have a higher percentage of their money go to things like rent food and gas.

All of which have been skyrocketing. But we forget the idea that oh wait a second they're also the ones who've gotten a substantial bump in pay and this is not to poop on folks. Saying. It's not hard to have a higher gas tank bill and stuff like that but when you consider this and then you consider oh.

But okay so poor are supposed to spend less. So. The consumers should be weaker on the poor side right and then you compare this to household net worth for people who own stocks. And you're like oh well wait a minute wait a minute.

Yeah maybe maybe just maybe. We did have a little bit of a tick down. There for household net worth. But god damn.

I'd still rather be in 2020 than in 2019. Okay like people's net worths are up people's pay is up so on one hand. We keep getting told about how the consumer is screwed that's it it's over the consumer is wrecked. They've got absolutely no money they got supported by the stemi checks.

Now the stemi checks are gone and they're broke and therefore the consumer's gonna suck and all consumer related stocks are screwed maybe consumer staples will do better. But even those have started sucking as inventories have built up it's like what what is actually happening. Well let's look at the reality of what's actually happening. Two four two two important things here.

Number one media. Checking account balances. Four week rolling average every freaking income group. Every single one is seeing their checking balances go up not down in the second in the second quarter of 2022.

Everybody is going up every single income group. I don't care if you're the bottom 20 percent bottom 25 or the top 25 percent. Everybody is making money and so i've been very confused because we keep getting told that this recession is going to be so devastating to people that people got no more money. But then when you actually look at some of the nuanced credit card data which growth is declining in right like compared to last year the growth curve in spending looks like this.

But we have to remember that this right here could be 20 percent growth above and beyond 2021. It's still growth it's still actually phenomenal growth. So yeah we have disc growth that's probably not really a word. But but growth that's declining or growing at a slower rate.

But look at this which we just got from visa. We just got this from visa. This is insane okay so yeah they talk about how last year stimulus clearly drove ticket sizes particularly in consumer discretionary categories. But look at this folks.

This is where i say that's it it's official. We are in the absolute richest recession that we will probably have ever seen according to the history books and what we will probably ever see in our lifetimes. So folks buckle up because you're about to go through the richest recession not the poverty recession. No the richest recession.

We have ever seen and it's quite ridiculous because everybody keeps talking about all this freaking doom and gloom and the more and more i look at the nuance. The more i'm like wait a minute. It's a lie because look at this this is visa vice chairman and chief financial officer. Yeah i mean going back to your question on whether or not we're seeing any slowdown in spending by lower income consumers.

No we're not we keep looking for it because we've heard some people say it and we are not seeing any evidence of that your second question. I presume was the wealth effect on affluent customers. Remember both sides of the dichotomy and they couldn't mean a little left side high tide top bottom right okay. What's happening in the stock market and things like that i mean we're not seeing that if anything affluent spending has been on the rise and is one of the reasons.

Why we have seen some robust growth. We saw in the quarter. Remember we're lapping a very significant growth quarter last year driven by stimulus. That included sizable stimulus payments and despite that we've had very good growth.

This quarter driven by affluent customers and discretionary spending. Coming back and no evidence of the wealth effect or that people are holding back so wait a minute wait a minute. This is the same thing that we're seeing at even though you got ceo of jpmorgan chase. Jamie dimon saying oh we got a hurricane coming.

It's going to be bad some storm clouds over there are building even though we got that kind of garbage. Which is all starting to sound. Like a big fabricated lie. Jp.

Morgan. Checking account balances are up jp. Morgan's spending. Up loan balances are up.

We got visa up amx. Was like well. We have a significant platform of wealthy people blah blah blah blah. Spending up it doesn't matter folks you can't even get visa to admit that inflation is hurting their numbers.

I kid you not they literally say right here that the headline cpi numbers don't apply to visa. Because our basket of goods isn't the same consumers don't buy houses or used cars with visa for example in other words sure used cars may be blowing up and rents may be going up. But hey people ain't pulling back on spending. What about that low income demographic take a look at this budget and mid priced hotels saw modest improvements.

We have seen no evidence of a consumer pullback yet now there are either two things going on here. Okay. There's either one or two things going on either number one. The consumer is absolutely blind to the fact that we're either in a recession.

Or going into recession. And they're about to get massively rug pulled when jerome powell is like i don't care about the pow curve. He's going into a recession and consumers are going to get absolutely reamed or the consumers are actually acting. Very rationally and they're very smart and they're actually looking at this and saying hey wait a minute wait a minute.

We have more wealth than we did in 2019. We're getting paid way more per hour than we were in 2019 well the second time is sitting at home still from 2020. Let's go out there and spend and folks. The consumer might actually be the leading indicator that we don't give a crap about this recession.

And so. Even though you got all these talking heads on cnbc and bloomberg going oh no go to your recession. Prepare and all this fear is leading people to build up their their cash balances and sell stocks or whatever maybe. There's a reason.

We're not actually seeing retail capitulation. We're not seeing retail capitulation and we're not seeing consumer individual fear and people are still spending money because this recession is a joke or a lie even though we're in it. It's not one we should be afraid of and we should be looking at stock market prices right now going well damn thank you because this is the weirdest recession ever not only do you have the lowest rates of unemployment jobs. Keep going up job openings are still up sure we hear some murmurings of layoffs and.

Stuff but the jolts number is still sitting at a level of 19 job openings per unemployed person visa mastercard city jp morgan wells fargo bank of america all of them are talking about how strong the consumer is yet. It's the talking heads telling us and like the ceos of these companies go oh. But the hurricane winds are coming. I don't know it all just seems like one big freaking lie because every single report.

I read talks about how great and strong the consumer is sure you've got advertisers that are starting to freak out a little bit you know ads are going down like what google reported via youtube. You know some advertisers are pulling back. But don't worry we're working on monetizing shorts. Whatever whatever for some reason.

There's something weird going on here. And it might be that this recession. Whether it happens or not is total bs and if you haven't actually looked around and seen that the consumer is still going nuts spending money. I've been traveling more than i've ever traveled before this year.

Because it's like and i'm seeing other people do the same thing and all sorts of income demographics uh. I i don't actually see people in a recession. So even though we technically might be i think that's the talking heads creating fear so they can go by cheaply and honestly i think uh in the hashtag not financial advice. I'm not your prime financial advisor.

I can't give you any advice. But i think the best thing for you to do is get serious about looking at this market for good bargain opportunities and go shopping. Because all this big recession talk to me whether it happens or not the actual fear of it being like an 08 again or a dot com. Bubble.

Or whatever is just one big freaking why.