Everyone kevin here: let's talk about what the heck is going on in the ukraine and towards the end of the video. I will give you an idea in terms of what i'm thinking about portfolio allocations or what i might be doing. If my, if i was in different shoes regarding this ukrainian situation, so we'll talk about that towards the end, but first let me give you a quick summary. The associated press just reported that the united states is sending 3 000 troops to poland amid warnings that russia is potentially imminently ready to invade the ukraine.

Now, in addition to just removing folks from the american embassy in kiev, americans have now received notice that if they are an american in the ukraine, they should leave immediately. In any case, they should leave within the next 24 to 48 hours. They say that they cannot guarantee that there will be another opportunity to leave that there could be aerial bombings and missile attacks, followed by a ground invasion. That could essentially make it impossible to leave through ground air, rail or whatever, and that there will not be a u.s evacuation, so the president will not send the military to rescue anyone out of ukraine.

If you had the opportunity to leave now, which now they're saying here's your opportunity to leave, so obviously there are questions about. Is this entire press conference from the national security adviser and jan saki? Is this really just saber rattling to get uh russia not to invade by essentially saying hey, we think they are going to invade. We think they're going to invade under a false pretense and we're going to beat the crap out of them, but at the same time, they're using a lot of and creating potentially a lot of fear to get folks to leave ukraine to maybe send the signal to Russia that hey, we think you're gon na, do it we're serious about telling people to leave, and we are serious about what we're going to do to you and we'll talk about exactly what the us response might be in just a moment, but some more things that Were mentioned were one of the reasons the white house thinks that there's, maybe an elevated risk of an immediate or near-term invasion is because of forces in the north area, northern border or along the northern border, in belarus of the ukraine and on the eastern front. Moving into a position where they would be able to quote mount a major military action within days, they also dispel the rumor that maybe an attack wouldn't happen during the olympics, but they dispelled that and said no like the olympics are not going to stop the potential For a war here they say there are clear indicators that this could happen on swift action and there are actual now quote credible prospects that will happen before the end of the olympics.

They believe that one potential start to the invasion could be a rapid assault on kiev, but they could also attack elsewhere. They do believe that russia will use some form of a false flag trigger attack. There have already been some attacks along some of our borders and near airports and in a region known as piske. There have been these small arm fires and there was even talk about potentially a grenade being dropped from a smaller drone uh, and so there have been minor attacks on on multiple days here in february, almost more days than than not uh, and so it's possible that One of these uh could could boil over or not just boil over, but be used, as maybe uh rationalization for just sending everything in by by russia, so we're already starting to see a little bit of this sort of prodding at the borders.

This is definitely not a peaceful uh border, especially here near episkey and uh. Essentially, the forces are in place and the in the intelligence indicates that uh this attack is entirely likely. Now, uh secretary of state argues that this conflict could begin at any time, and how is this different uh? We still don't have any indication that russia has verified, that they will definitely invade there's no confirmation of any communication that russia is definitely going to invade uh, and that's why some folks are looking at this going wait seriously. The stock market is falling on this, like what's really changed.

We've really known that russia could invade at any point like, what's really changed, all of a sudden to have the u.s freak out and say: okay, all americans leave personally, and this is what i think uh. I i think there there are two scenarios here, one. They know a lot more than they're telling us, which is possible. The cia could be like yeah.

No, we have communications and they're i'm gon na invade in on monday or on valentine's day. I don't know whatever they could have that or the other thing is they ain't got nothing more than what they're telling us and uh they're really using this as an opportunity to talk up what they're going to do if russia invades, and so let's talk about that, This morning, first thing is: biden has already mentioned that they would kill uh the nordstream 2 pipeline, which the pipeline has already been laid, but it's not operational yet still waiting to get approval from uh, especially germany and and the rest of the eu uh, and this Is a pipeline that uh that would double the capacity of another natural gas pipeline, the north stream, one uh europe does import almost all of its natural gas and 40 of it comes from russia. So this is actually a relatively important and strategic pipeline that would lead to profits for russia and obviously potentially lower gas prices for europeans, but uh nato. The european union and joe biden indicating that they might kill this entire pipeline and essentially cut relations with china.

In the event that there is this invasion in ukraine uh, in addition to that, they are expecting to impose severe economic sanctions in coordination with canada, the united kingdom, the eu and, of course, the united states, as well as potentially create some structural changes for nato. That would hopefully minimize russia's aggression, that's the hope, but let's be real in the past. We never really see sanctions. Do too much.

In fact, in during russia's invasion of georgia, we had a 12-day invasion. That's all it took to invade georgia. Georgia lost control of certain areas, you might remember south ossetia and uh russia set up military bases. Then, of course we had the annexation of crimea.

Georgia was in august of 2008. By the way, then we had the annexation of crimea, which was also done via invasion. In 2014, this military action took one month and six days, ukraine, by the way, was also in crimea, defending crimea, but basically the russian military kicked the crap out of the ukrainians, who were in crimea and sent them back to the ukraine. Russia, of course, got sanctioned and kicked down to the g8 for a period of time.

But, honestly, this this stuff doesn't stop russia, so now bottom lines like what? What does all this potentially mean? Well, any kind of action that is taken is is likely to create. First of all, a substantial set of fear in the short term - and it's probably not going to last entirely long now we don't want to see an invasion uh, and so i want to be very sensitive to the fact that look like nobody wants war. People don't want to die, families don't want to get missiles shot at their homes. You know this is ridiculous as a fearful time.

I'd be fearful if i went to ukraine and - and i would express complete sympathy for for anybody who's in the ukraine right now uh. But the problem is that uh we we expect this to be relatively short-lived, that it probably won't rattle financial markets as terribly much for as long as we actually expect it might so. I i personally believe that likely in in the short term we're going to have a market. That's like oh, my gosh.

We got the federal reserve that hates us. We got war in the ukraine. Potentially we got oil prices. If we had an invasion, oil prices, we'll probably go from the 94, where they are now they're, already up substantially, probably to 110 120 dollars, which any time it's gone over a hundred dollars.

We've always had a recession. Once oil hits 100, it's like we always go into a recession. Consumer sentiment data came in low today and we kind of expect that when consumer sentiment, data starts falling we're kind of like on our way to a recession, which is the same thing that the yield curve says so no real surprise here. But i believe that this any kind of conflict in the ukraine would probably last less than three months, and it wouldn't really uh be a long-term issue of a fear for markets.

However, what it will likely do is increase energy prices in the short term, which is just going to add to the longer term macro problems that we're facing aka, more inflation. And that's the last thing we want, because the big thing here is inflation, and so this, in my opinion, is what you do in terms of your portfolio. You look at your portfolio, you say: okay, where am i am i in the camp that says we're very likely heading into a recession. I'm raising cash, i'm starting to sell out of some of my high flyers, and i don't want to be too long.

This market right now i'm going to be patient in 2022 and we're going to let things play out as they may, if you're in this camp, then this this really, if anything, it just adds a little bit of fuel to the inflationary fire suggesting that inflation and Supply chains and issues are just going to continue to have issues longer term if you're in the other camp, which trust me like my goal is to provide perspectives right. I cannot give you financial advice, because i don't know what your situation is like, but we talk about this in the course member live streams as well, which remember. We have a v-day coupon code linked down below that you could use to join the courses and get access to our market open, live streams. Where i answer your questions directly and of course we talk about news and happenings as the bell happens, but what's most important here is, if you're in the other camp, that's like yeah, you know what i i don't really think this uh.

This is such a big uh. You know this inflation issue is a big deal. I think inflation's going to go down it'll eventually end up being transitory and the fed's going to be able to navigate us to a soft landing they're not going to want to crash the economy in an election year, blah blah blah blah. If you're on that side.

That's fine, then, then, quite frankly, in my opinion, any any sort of action, not that we're wishing for it, because this means people would die any sort of action in the ukraine that creates attention in the market or the market to follow is really a buying opportunity. So really, in my opinion, you have you again, you have these two choices, if you're playing the macro cycle - and you want to potentially go from the top of the cycle because you think we're at the top of the cycle to the bottom of the cycle - maybe Stay strong, you know, who knows you you could have. You could have half of your portfolio, that's long and half of it's that cash. You know right now, i'm about five.

No, i'm sorry! I'm two and a half percent long on the market with shares. I'm uh. Five percent in gold and the rest is cash right. So so i'm obviously i'm on that camp, but that doesn't mean that any of us is a hundred percent right or wrong right.

The truth tends to be sort of a blend of these two but uh. If you are a deputy dip buyer, then ukraine is probably by the dip opportunity for you. The more tensions arise because you don't believe that longer transition is an issue. So that's, okay.

It really doesn't matter what camp you're in and what matters is you looking at your portfolio and deciding okay? How do i want to play this? Do i want to buy where there's fear and quite frankly, there is vray now what's also interesting, is this fear led to a rally in a treasury bonds, because any time you get this sort of fear of war people quickly run over to treasuries? As a is a way to park cash right, they get out of risk assets and they move over to cash. I mean just look at what what happened just here towards the end of the day in the market, we had big old moves in risk assets uh. I mean let's uh, let's just sort here by some of the losers. So, on the day here we had a firm down twenty percent cloud flare down nine point: five percent amd down over ten percent rivian down nine tesla was down somewhere around five percent microvision down trade desk down.

Seven percent sun run hud eight, you name it nordstrom. Here i mean these are large, drops 5.8 percent on end phase, quite large drops and the things that did well were zillow, which popped on a lot of momentum and earnings. You had uh some of course, like bp and chevron, and that they did decently gold moved up a little bit and again we saw that little peak there, uh in in treasury. It's leading yields to fall, which makes sense.

You know people moving on on fear. Essentially, now when it comes to crypto, which remember when it comes to crypto ta, one of my favorite ways to conduct crypto ta is jumping on over to ftx us check them out via the description and down below. But i i just want to show you where we sit right now, so we got rejected around that 45 7 level on btc, and this is of course a leader here for a lot of price action, uh for other cryptos as well, and the alts we got Rejected at about that 45, 7 level, and i'm concerned that when we lose this diagonal support, this is not the best sort of horizontal support here. But if we extend this, we're touching that right now, if we start breaking down this diagonal support - which right now probably would be around 42 000, we start breaking that 42 number.

We might potentially drop back to that 37 level that we've been bobbing around for quite a while uh. Of course, we also have a shelf a little bit lower over here, and this isn't at 34 6 level, where we previously spent quite a bit of time bobbing between so uh. If, obviously, an invasion in the ukraine is likely to send risk assets down tech stocks, qqq kryptos very, very likely to come down and you're likely to see a flight to bonds temporarily, which is crazy because again yield's going down which then it skews what the federal Reserve might have to think about doing right because the federal reserve is thinking. Okay, let's communicate to markets to get yields to go up.

So we start pricing in the fact that we're going to raise rates, but if, at the same time, people are fleeing to bonds for safety, it skews a little bit of how much of the fed actually thinks. The market is pricing in rates going up, and if the market doesn't price in the right amount of rates, then the fed becomes even more of a catalyst, because now the fed has to be more aggressive to make it clear. No, no we're going up. Remember the next meeting is going to be a big one march 16th, because we're also going to get another summary of economic projections and we'll be able to see how high they actually think inflation's going to be at the end of this year and how high rates Are going to be at the end of this year? Last uh last time we had a sun scp was in december and they indicated that they thought rates would go up to 0.9 by the end of the year.

Let's be real they're going to be way higher than 0.9 by the end of the year, they're - probably going to be closer to 1.5 or even 2 percent, so we'll see tbd. But these are my thoughts on the ukrainian situation check out the programs link down below ftx. Thank you so much for watching this video and folks we'll see the next one.