I was wrong in this video. I'm going to explain what I think is really happening in the economy and what I got wrong. We'll start with some of the things that went right. But most importantly I think the lesson for all of us is what went wrong.

So let's get started. Hey, everyone meet Kevin here What happened is I believe neither what I expected nor what most of us expected and I don't know if this analysis is 100 correct, but I think it is in January of 2022 I Warned of an impending recession and an elongated fight between the FED to fight inflation. After all, we were just walking into some of the highest inflation that we had seen in 40 years in every single company. In every single earnings call was screaming at us.

The leading indicator that we are raising prices and we're raising prices for the rest of the year. If you were unconvinced that inflation was going to happen, all you had to do was read any earnings call Any single earnings calling you would have known as a result I encourage investing in cash and hedging and I met with JPM Bankers JPMorgan and Chase Bankers who used to work for the Fed and I'm like what do you manually have a 15 chance of a recession? It's gonna be way higher than that they thought I was out of my mind. So I encourage investing in cash I sold my rental properties I invested in cash I sold my stocks I sold my crypto I sold everything people thought I was insane for recommending cash. Why would you want cash? After all, we were about to go into inflation and inflation is going to make your cash worth less, right? Well, not really.

see inflation makes your cash worth less if you're buying things that go up in value. like for example, if you're buying a lot of coffee see here's a rust mug with coffee. Let's say this coffee is worth three dollars and it goes to five dollars. Well then the cash I had buys me less coffee.

but if I had a thousand dollars of cash and I was going to buy Amazon at 200, let's say I'd get five shares of Amazon but if Amazon goes down to a hundred dollars, then I get 10 shares of Amazon right? So I win depending on what you're doing with the cash. So my thesis was that poor individuals people buying things like food and coffee and groceries uh, and lower income individuals. We're really going to get crushed by this recession because that inflation was going to affect them the most, whereas people with excess cash usually your middle to higher income tiers, they would have had excess cash to buy assets that had gone down in value. That was the thesis, but some mistakes were made along the way.

We're gonna talk about that because the thesis also ended up being wrong. I Realized this a couple days ago as I was leaving Teeterboro on Route over to Chicago I Just interviewed Kevin O'leary in New York City and I was on my way to Chicago I Had a message from my mom that here's this amazing meal she was having in: Cabo San Lucas and I'm like, how does my mom afford Cabo San Lucas when I know with certainty she generally Works paycheck to paycheck and she does her job well. but she likes to spend her money when she has extra money. she doesn't care about investing, she doesn't want to own rental property, she doesn't want to own stock.

she wants to live and I thought to myself, well when I was a child I remember we had no money I remember losing my childhood home to near foreclosure. my friends in school were all torn away from me and I remember this ever optimism of my mom even after my parents divorce in that nah, that's okay. as long as we're still alive. uh, we'll make it work and and we'll get some money together.

And so on one hand, you know my father who's running a business and and trying to do things you know in the way of running the business and building the business and owning real estate. You know we're out of twenty dollar bills to buy a Bionicle because there's no money left to pay the bills and we have serious problems. My mom who never wanted to invest a dime in real estate or stocks or otherwise like ah, I'll save a little extra from from working you know, minimum wage or whatever and we'll get that. Bionicle We'll make it happen.

You know, maybe not today, but in a couple days we'll we'll scrape it together. It's just like that. It was a weird, like ever optimism despite poverty and it made me think wow, you know, as long as you're not homeless or disabled or Afflicted with substances Americans my mom being sort of transplant from Germany still mostly German but also now mostly in American Usually maybe just people in general have a way to manage and they enjoy the experiences and value experiences of being able to either buy their children something or go on a vacation even if you're living paycheck to paycheck. Uh, even if that meant you had to go on a shoestring budget, you were going to save up to have money for that flight money for the state and you were going to go be there and have a good time.

even if it meant you were taking the city bus to get around, you were going to have a good time. It was gonna be like a high-end ritzy vacation, but you were going to survive and you were gonna live and you didn't die And that really made me think, wow, how does that compare to our consumption in the economy today And how does any of this compare to the whole concept of being wrong? Well, it actually does substantially consider this: 70 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and consumption makes up about 72 percent of our GDP Which is really interesting because if you multiply those two together, it means that slightly more than half of the economy is driven by these spending habits of people who are living paycheck to paycheck. That was mind-blowing to me because I'm thinking of myself like, whoa, wait a minute. If you're paycheck to paycheck, That means you have no money to spend anything wrong.

It just means the money you do have, you are spending. That's all it means. So that kind of blew my mind when I made this connection to my childhood and put myself in those shoes because I realized, wait a second. My thesis that this would be a poor person's recession was wrong and and sorry to be insensitive for the word poor.

but let's just keep it since simple here. Okay, we'll get into semantics here: I've been poor and it's okay to say that, but the idea was that if your energy costs are going up, your food costs are going up. your rent is going up. Poor people are screwed because they won't be able to invest people with white collar jobs.

Pilots CPAs Real Estate Agents lenders. They'd survive because they'd be able to make more money. Not Only would they survive, but they'd be able to continue to buy luxury goods like solar panels for their homes for Teslas or computers or business equipment because they'd have more money to invest in those things. Well, what ended up happening? Well, stocks plummeted in 2022., and wages skyrocketed specifically for the lower income individuals in 2022..

So what did that end up doing to wealthier people and businesses? Which most businesses over 70 Percent of businesses. Small businesses are owned by people over 35.. So what happened with the older folks? People over 35? Well, people, over 35. They're small businesses.

And the Boomer Generations What do they do? They ended up spending less money. They felt crushed. Whether it was their Investments that lost value, they felt less Rich They ended up spending less money for one reason or another because of stocks or tumult in real estate. You know, real estate has come back somewhat.

Okay, we could talk about that separately, and we probably will towards the end of the video. But think about this: The older folks are the ones that took this. Why do we know this? Well, we know that 80 percent of stocks are owned by people who are not Millennials or gen Z In other words, the older Generations eighty percent are owned by people older and so guess what? According to American Express, it's those people who actually have negative year-over-year real spending. It's the Gen Z's and the millennials who own barely any of the stocks, who maybe had some stocks or crypto lost some money, and they're like whatever who are now actually making more money.

potentially a lot more money, who are spending more money. They don't give a sh9t about stocks or real estate. in large part. Now all of a sudden, you're making 18 bucks an hour instead of 12 bucks an hour.

You're getting paid 50 more. So you're getting paid 50 more. and you don't give a flying Hoot about real estate or stocks not being perfectly precise here, but the implication is what matters. Higher wages for the paycheck to paycheck cohort means higher spending on travel entertainment restaurants Chipotle Ulta normal people stuff McDonald's Costco whatever I'm not at all trying to Discount that inflation is hurting this cohort.

Yes, food costs have gone up, but guess what? we're still buying. And yes, we have to survive I Get that. But people are also making more money. So yes, the costs are up.

but we're also making more money, especially at the lower income tiers. whereas potentially the higher income tiers, those white-collar jobs. They're not actually making more money. Real estate agents are selling less homes, lenders are doing less deals, investment bankers are doing less uh, mergers, and Acquisitions companies are buying less computers.

Uh, a corporate spend is, is, you know. American Express Corporate Spend for larger businesses is up, but for smaller businesses, it's way down. Uh, in real terms. year over year.

And so yeah, the larger businesses maybe have some extra money, but that's probably because they're laying off people and they're able to spend more money on stuff to make investments on more server equipment or whatever, right? But that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to trim during a recession and spend more money, so that not is not necessarily relevant to our human equation. The human equation says that people with higher wages are actually feeling this recession more, whereas potentially lower income individuals are not. And again, I'm not trying to be insensitive to inflation.

I Get it. Coffee is more expensive, Food is more expensive I Go to Cheesecake Factory I'm like, what the hell you know I Go to Chipotle I'm dude. 17 bucks for a burrito with guacamole? This is insane. But what do we still do? We still do it.

Especially paycheck to Paycheck because making more money so people want to live. And that goes back to my childhood story, right? You want to live. So even though you're living paycheck and yes, you have higher expenses, you're able to spend more money so you're able to pay that higher pricing at Chipotle at the hotels on your vacations for your airfare. And so people aren't cutting back on that.

Especially the ones who haven't been reamed in the stock market or in real estate and real estate. Again, not so much. Yes, okay. real estate has started recovering in Q1 Florida is doing just fine California is not doing as well.

Uh, and and none of that really matters. I didn't want to sell my real estate to perfectly try to time the market I think I sold at a fantastic time. My reason for personally getting out of real estate: because I really think most people should never sell real estate. just Diamond Hand through My reason for selling my real estate is unique to me because I'm throwing my money into a real estate startup.

Uh, and I don't want people who are investing in my startup to think that I'm competing with them for rental properties, so that's more of just a personal commitment to my startup. Uh, I think the timing of what I'm sold was good, but I'm not trying to re-time the buy and I you know, handle the tax implications to where I'm not like the tax implications have no effect. Again, I'm in a unique situation because of that. So let me carve that out and just say that's a unique situation.

But let's understand what this means for an individual because you might be thinking to yourself. but Kevin like poor people, have to pay higher interest now. Well, let's actually analyze that for a moment. Consider this: If you have a thousand dollars outstanding on a credit card and your interest rate was 20 before rates went up, you're paying 200 bucks a year in interest.

That's not that much money. you're making way more than 200 a year anyway. Like marginally more Because if you're making 50 more. Maybe instead of making 15 grand a year, you're making 25 Grand a year.

That's a really good change, right? Who cares about your credit card interest rate at 200 bucks a year or whatever. But wait a minute. What if the interest rate now goes up five percent? Okay, so you're You know 20 interest goes to 25? That sounds like a lot. But for credit card debt per thousand bucks, that's an extra 50 bucks per 10 grand.

A credit card debt that's an extra 500 bucks. It's not going to kill you, especially when you're making 50 more money. Who cares? So it's one less meal out or a few less meals out on a yearly basis, right? But your wages are up 50. so maybe you're actually up meals and travel rather than down? Go to the business owner now instead and compare somebody who gets a 50 million dollar line of credit for working capital like a trucking business or a distributor.

And they pay. You know, Two percent on their 50 million dollar line of credit. And all of a sudden, now they're paying Seven percent because rates are up five percent. Well, that means they're having to pay 2.5 million dollars more per year for that line of credit? That's 200 000 more per month.

Who really gets screwed? Now, the worker making 50 more money paying five percent more on their credit card? No. Or the business owner paying an extra salary per month for that line of credit. Obviously, the small business owner small business owner gets screwed. The big businesses, the massive corporations.

They have a low-cost Capital Apple can borrow for basically rates near treasuries not that big of a deal and they have a ton of cash. And I mean you have to borrow that much So you know. What really sucks is when you look at the last GDP report, you know what's happening. Inventories are compressing at businesses.

Why did what did End Face say in their earnings call inventory sell through is slow end phase is the manufacturer wholesalers sell and face products. Well if wholesalers say hey, I got enough batteries in solar panel or solar inverters this quarter I Don't need to order from Unfaz and Face suffers. So if the working costs of capital go up for that business, they order less inventory. The same is true for many small businesses throughout America and really, the globe.

The reality is that most of the businesses installing solar relatively smaller businesses. So if smaller businesses are feeling the crimp and face feels the crimp. Interesting. Now, what else did GDP say? Oh, services and consumption up? Well, Maybe that's not stagflation, right? Because what? What anchored GDP down was inventories that came in way below expectations.

But services and consumption came in above expectations. So maybe this is not a stagflationary economy. Maybe we just got the whole picture wrong. So the whole argument here is, wait a minute.

Maybe this is not a recession of poor individuals. This is actually a recession of small businesses. White Collar Professionals, middle and upper income individuals. They are the ones getting burned because of the stock market and business revenue is falling again.

I'm not saying poor individuals aren't selling, but this is not the poor person's recession that I thought it would be. This is actually the middle and upper class recession. And that's really fascinating because that means I basically positioned wrong because my thinking was if this was going to be a poor person's recession that you would want to get away from. Basically ultimately things that everybody is buying like Staples are going to see a lot of a downtrend.

but Staples have been some of the best performing stocks over the last year now. Part of that could be because everybody rushes into those thinking if we're going to a recession where Staples do best but those are the best performing stocks right now. And there's this thesis that oh, the Federal Reserve is going to be able to raise rates and crimp spending of everyone. But the reality is like the credit card example I gave.

That's not true. the FED could raise rates, but it doesn't even affect poor individuals because they're making more money. They don't care. who cares, the business owner, the middle to Upper income individuals.

those are the people who care about higher interest rates. For individuals who are living paycheck to paycheck, it's like pushing out a string when you raise rates. Who cares? Which means potentially we could have a higher for longer scenario where you have to buckle up and you have to deal with the FED being higher for longer. So again, it's not a poor person's recession.

It's a middle and upper class recession. So what does that mean? Well, again, it means stocks like Tesla and end phase are under stress Longer, potentially a lot longer. Whereas stocks like McDonald's Walmart Chipotle Ulta they're doing just fine and they might do fine for a wee bit longer. now.

Does that mean it's time to flip-flop Well, my opinion, the answer to that is no. Like, how do you go bearish right now on stocks that have already gotten hammered as much as some of these higher income stocks? like you've already gotten whacked on some of these. But to go from those bearish positions over to Staples now in my opinion, would be moving from underpriced stocks to overpriced stocks that are doing well in the short term. So I Think that would be a big mistake I Think repositioning now to the expensive stuff would be like a sheep following the herd of.

All right, we're going to reposition. Well, that did well the last year. Let's double down on that. I Think that's a mistake.

So the bottom line out of all of this is if you're invested in growth, you probably have to buckle up for some more pain for longer because the Fed's interest rate increases aren't really affecting that Services segment where people are spending their money which they have more of on the paycheck to paycheck side and in some cases we're still trying to get back to trend and it all makes sense. Comparing back to my childhood all makes sense. You're gonna, you're gonna make more and you're gonna spend more. But in the meantime, the people who have invested in stocks did hurt.

But now I think the biggest danger would be moving from stocks that have gotten hammered to stocks that have performed well. now. Would I short the stocks that I've performed well? No, because we don't know how much longer this is going to go. Is it time to go all in on margin on on the growth stocks? No, of course not.

I Still believe we are going to be in a volatile Nike Swoosh recovery. Now we know we have. You know the Federal Reserve and oh, but what are they gonna do? And are they? what? Are they gonna pause and all this kind of nonsense? Look, the Nike Swoosh takes time I Really believe that if we look out on the week chart for uh, what's been going on with the NASDAQ we'll go to uh I Haven't turned on night mode on this computer but we'll go to this Um, we'll go to this input right here. Uh, there we go.

So here's the NASDAQ Here's your down. That's the tip of your Nike Swoosh This is the volatile upswing. now. We've had quite a few red days in a row here, which you'll actually only see if you go to the data.

Ah, here's your red. red, red red. Uh. and then we're seeing some green over here.

I Guess we're somewhat flat. Uh, these are the average candlesticks. So if I go to the normal candlesticks. Yeah, all right.

so we'll see, we'll see where we are. Nasdaq's doing pretty decently. But anyway, you go back to these average candlesticks over here and you go out to the weak chart. Look at what you have, you still have the Nike Swoosh This is the beginning of it.

This is the elongated recovery part of it. I Really believe this. This phase from here to here will come in a very Lumpy multi-year period, multi-year period. So that's my thought.

Uh, I Do think the positioning was wrong. Uh, initially. but I Do not think that at this point it makes sense to repair that positioning. But I think it's very useful to acknowledge that mistake and learn from it and recognize where we are now and recognize why we have this continued inflation.

Uh, and this is why the Federal Reserve says until we have more job loss, we might not see control of that service as inflation. I Hope that's not the case because that means we're gonna have to keep hiking higher for longer. Or at least stay higher for longer so we'll see anyway. Thanks for watching.

Good luck out there. We'll see in the next one.