Warren buffett's right-hand man, charlie monger, is well known as one of the legends of investing through the daily journal portfolio. He outperformed the market by almost 2 000 since 1986.. Manga recently spoke at the daily journal's annual conference about the serious issues in the economy in the financial markets. This video will explain how munger is preparing his portfolio to drastically outperform the market in the coming years.

In order to understand how monger plans to make large sums of money from the economy, we have to analyze the macroeconomic environment due to covet 19, the federal government had to step in to provide support, as consumer spending came to an abrupt halt. There are two different types of unemployment: u3 unemployment tracks, all unemployed people who are looking for a job u6. Unemployment is a broader measurement that also includes discouraged workers and part-time workers. In april 2020, u3 unemployment exceeded 14 and u6 unemployment exceeded 22 percent.

That is a substantial amount, as almost one out of every four people were unemployed or underemployed. As a result, congress sent stimulus, checks to people and provided various lending facilities and grants to state and local governments. These checks also provided covert relief funds that helped businesses. On the monetary side, the federal reserve lowered interest rates, which made it cheaper to borrow the target interest rate, ran from roughly 1.5 percent at the end of february 2020 to about 0.06 in april 2020..

Today, that rate is 0.08 but is expected by everyone to increase as we'll cover soon. These policies are setting the stage for a terrifying economic crisis. While the federal reserve lowered rates it ramped up treasury bond purchases in the marketplace or quantitative easing during the pandemic, the federal reserve purchased in excess of 4 trillion dollars of debt, which had the effect of pushing money out into the economy. M2 is the measurement of money in the economy which measures cash on hand, savings accounts, money, market and certificate of deposits under 100 000.

The law of supply and demand eventually found its way into inflation. More money available to everyone led to an increase in the demand for goods, but that alone did not drive the inflation we are seeing today. Monger is keenly aware of the increase in m2 money inflation and the implications in asset bubble. The problems tied to the supply chain has also continued to exacerbate the situation.

You have probably noticed the shortage of items in the stores and the price increases of various items, such as consumer electronics. Most of this is due to the inability to get products off the boats into the marketplace. The basics of the issue started prior to covet, but were pushed forward by the pandemic. The underlying issues are vast.

First of all, there is a limited capacity to offload ships in a lack of chassis to expand that capacity. The limited number of truckers that are authorized to work at the ports has declined due to a lack of wage increases. The u.s warehouse technology, which is behind in technology compared to japan, korea and china also exacerbated the issue. Similarly, warehouse worker pay has not necessarily kept up and attracting good warehouse workers is harder.

The shortage of warehouse workers has also further constrained supply chains. Ryan johnson, an experienced truck driver wrote a post that went viral explaining some of the issues. From his point of view, he likens the current supply issues to a store like costco or walmart, having one cashier for hundreds of customers. Truckers like him have to go through three separate lines for multiple hours on end to then pick up a container to transport it across the country.

Goldman sachs, along with a few other investment firms, tracked the supply chain, goldman recently lowered the stress to a 9 out of 10, with 10 being the highest stress according to the marine exchange of southern california and goldman sachs, the number of vessels at the la port Waiting to unload goods has declined to 89 from a high of over 100. That is a significant amount when you consider that 20 months ago there were zero vessels that might sound horrifying, but there may be light at the end of the tunnel. The expectation for when this economic problem will be resolved varies but seems to be closer to the end of 2022 to mid-2023. The key here is that, essentially, all this pressure results in a lack of supply of goods.

This pressure, in conjunction with the increase in the money supply, has pushed consumer prices to new highs. The consumer price index recently accelerated to an annual increase of 7.5 percent. An important relationship to understand here is that inflation and interest rates are linked in the 1980s. Inflation soared to unprecedented heights, fed chairman paul volcker, raised rates numerous times to get ahead of inflation, while the result was a win for the economy in general, increasing rates is usually not a politically favored action.

Charlie munger stated the likelihood of having someone such as paul volcker, being able to raise rates in today's political environments as unlikely, even though the fed is supposed to be outside the reach of politicians. He also said this could lead to new troubles and could be worse than those we saw in the late 70s and 80s. The late 70s and 80s were terrible times to invest in the market from 1965 to 1980. The market returned zero percent when adjusted for inflation.

Monger is warning of a similar outcome and the market may actually have negative returns over the next decade. There's no we've there's never been anything quite like what we're doing now and we do know from what's happened in other nations. If you, if you try and print too much money, it eventually causes terrible trouble and we're closer to terrible trouble than than we've been in the past, but it may still be a long way off. I certainly hope so.

The first result that we talked about is a decade of high inflation and low inflation adjusted returns for the stock market. There could also be a second outcome that monger is potentially even more frightened about. The fed obviously does not want a repeat of the 1970s to happen again and has already stated that it will be moving the interest rate higher. The world's largest futures exchange.

Cme group recently published a report that reviews the market expectations and how accurately investors tend to forecast rate hikes. Currently, the expectations are for four to six fed rate hikes in 2022 and two to three more in 2023. Normally, these increases occur at 25 basis points. Each one basis point is 0.01 percent, so a 25 basis point increase would be an increase of 0.25 percent.

Thus a 25 basis. Point hike from 2 percent would result in a rate of 2.25 percent. The expectation is for the target interest rate to end up at 1.625 percent versus today's 0.08. In addition to the increase in interest rates, the federal reserve is reducing asset purchases, specifically treasury bonds, also known as treasuries.

Such an action has the effect of lowering the available supply of money. In january 2022, the fed reduced purchases to 60 billion dollars, which was down 30 billion dollars from december and down 60 billion dollars from november. Note that the fed is still purchasing bonds, resulting in increasing the supply of money in the economy and creating an artificial demand for treasuries. There would have to be an equivalent amount of new demand stepping in as the fed reduces its purchases to keep price and yields level.

This new demand would have to balance out the lack of bond purchases from the fed in order to have a net zero effect on the market. The treasuries would have to find outside investors adding 60 to 100 billion dollars a month through their portfolios. That is extremely unlikely. Thus, the tapering will also result in lower bond prices.

Bond yields and bond prices are inversely correlated, so that would equate to higher u.s treasury yields. So while the media focuses on the fed increasing interest rates, the tapering of bonds will also have a substantial impact on bond yields and therefore interest rates as well. Charlie munger is hesitant to state that the low rate acid bubble will be popped as a result of the increase in rates. He believes the lower rates were done as an extreme measure.

During the onset of the coveted pandemic. The u.s is flirting with trouble that will end badly the longer we stay with low rates and high inflation, especially now that we are passed kovit and need to live with it. Conventional economic theory argues that excessive monetary and fiscal stimulus over the last two years has triggered the highest inflation in 40 years. Do you broadly agree with this thesis and, more importantly, do you think there will be a high economic price to pay as the fed attempts to bring inflation back under control? I guess um the reasons for it um.

Well, the first part i agree with that. We've done something for we've done something pretty extreme and we don't know how bad the troubles will be, whether we're going to be like japan or or something a lot worse, and what makes life interesting. Is we don't know how it's going to work out? I think we do know we're flirting with serious trouble. I think we also know that some of our earlier fears were were overblown so now that we know that the economy is in serious trouble.

What should investors do? Monger is bearish on commercial property in offices, but he recommends owning stocks in apartment buildings. The mongers have berkshire stock costco stock, chinese stock, sioux lilu a little bit of daily journal stock and a bunch of apartment houses. Do i think, that's perfect? No. Do i think it's okay? Yes, i think the great lesson from the mongers is you don't need all this? Damn diversification, that's plenty of you're lucky.

If you've got four good assets, i think the finance professors and the sell the idea that perfect diversification is professional investment. If you're trying to do better than average you're lucky, if you have four things to buy and to ask for 20, is really asking for egg in your beer, it's it's very few. People get can have enough brains to get 20 good investments, contrary to most investment. Professional advice and business classes monger argues that diversification beyond around four to six investments is not a good idea.

While he does not give a specific number, he does argue that adding too much diversification has diminishing returns. His argument is well grounded in markowitz's, modern portfolio theory or mmt, in short form. This theory states that adding a stock reduces the swings of the portfolio and, as you add, more stocks, the swings become less and less. However, this trade-off is not historically one-to-one, as each additional investment has a decreasing impact on the portfolio.

Of course, this assumes that each investment is proportionately the same as the others. With 10 stocks, each stock would be 10 of the portfolio with five stocks. Each stock would be 20 and with 100 stocks each stock would be one percent, as you would expect. With 100 stocks, one stock doubling would have minimal impact, but with five stocks one stock doubling would have a much greater impact.

Monger believes that the current market is ripe with gambling and speculation as an example, he talked about the spack space which raises money prior to having investments. Well, certainly, the great short squeeze in gamestop was wretched access. Certainly, the bitcoin thing is wretched access. I would argue that venture capital is throwing too much money too fast in the and there's a considerable wretched access in venture capital and other forms of private equity.

And so we have a stock market which some people use like a gambling parlor and the transactions of the people who love the gambling parlor aspect of the business and those who want to make long-term investments to take care of their old age. And so forth. I mean we model that in one market - and it goes out of control because the stock market becomes an ideal gambling parlor activity, i don't think that ought to have been allowed either. If i were the dictator of the world, i would have some kind of a tax on short-term gains that made the stock market very much less liquid and and drove out this.

This marriage of gambling, parlor and legitimate capital development of the country. It's not a good marriage and i think we need a divorce other signs that monger points to besides the 850 spacks include the great short squeeze and high multiple valuations. The s p 500 is currently trading at a 20 times. Four pde, based on bloomberg, estimates consensus earnings.

While this is down from the recent peak of 27 times in august 2021, such frothiness has not been seen in 20 years. Similarly, the nasdaq has declined to a 28 times bloomberg consensus, ford, pde, also down from its recent december peak of 40 times. These levels have not been seen since 2003 diversification outside the u.s could be a positive thing. Given the current macroeconomic situation, monger has invested in china through stocks such as byd and alibaba.

Byd has been one of munger's, best picks of all time, which has also led to his more recent investment in alibaba. In both this year's and last year's interview, he revealed his reasoning behind investing in china. Despite the major risks, there were many inherent risks to investing in china, which i'm sure many of you are aware of with the news over the past year. However, charlie munger believes that, while these risks exist, including regulatory, economic and delisting concerns, the value is substantially better in china's financial market when compared to the us.

Well, we did a very, very simple reason. We got more strengths per dollar invested in china. The companies we invest in are stronger relative to their competition and priced lower. That's why we're in china monger went on to say that china and the us have bad tensions, and it stated that it continues to occur, because the u.s does not seem to understand that the variations in government are appropriate, while china's system and policies would not have Worked in the u.s, these policies were needed for china.

Well, the chinese government is worrying all the capitalists in the world way more than it used to, and of course we don't like that, and we wish that china and the united states got along better and if you stop to think about it, think of how massively Stupid both china and the united states have been to allow the existing tensions to arise. What bad is ever going to happen to china or the united states? If, if we two are close, if we make good friends out of the chinese and vice versa, who in the hell is ever going to bother us, of course, we should make friends with china and of course we should learn to get along with people who have A different system of government it we like our government because we're used to it and it has advantages of personal freedom. China could never have handled its life with a government like ours, they wouldn't it wouldn't be in the position they've they're in they had to prevent 500 million or 600 million people for me born in china. They just measured the women's menstrual periods when they came to work and aborted those who weren't allowed to have children.

You can't do that in the united states and it really needed doing in china, and so they did what they had to do using their methods. And i don't think we should be criticizing china, which which has terrible problems because they're not just like the united states. They do some things better than we do. They should like us and we should like them.

So i'm i'm totally. I think nothing is crazier than people who foment resentments on either side of that one alongside munger plenty of top investors have continued to invest in china. Some of these include ray dalio venture capital, powerhouse, sequoia capital and monish. Pabrai munger believes that the two countries, the us and china with reasonable honor, will continue to maintain stable relations, which decreases the risk.

Monger's presentation provides us with a backdrop of his thoughts. Higher inflation, fed tightening supply chain issues and stretch, valuations and speculation have placed the markets in a dangerous position. Monger has adjusted his portfolio to survive these macroeconomic trends by allocating his funds to robust companies. His portfolio primarily consists of five companies: bank of america, wells, fargo, alibaba, u.s bank and a south korean company called pasco.

Monger is not a fan of diversification and has chosen these three companies as the stocks that will succeed over the long term. Let me know whether you agree with down below if you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button and subscribe and i'll see you in the next one.