In this explosive interview, Gerald Celente, publisher of the Trends Journal and one of the most outspoken trend forecasters out there, explains why today’s economic boom is built on shaky foundations. He connects the dots between AI speculation, government manipulation, geopolitical power shifts, and historic financial crises to reveal where we’re truly headed.
Celente, warns of:
- An AI bubble set to burst like the dot-com crash
- The decline of the U.S. dollar as BRICS nations challenge its dominance
- A looming commercial real estate crisis triggering bank failures
- A global recession after years of artificial stimulus
- Why gold & silver remain the ultimate safe havens
- The rise of digital money: Bitcoin, stablecoins & CBDCs
- Tariffs & trade wars reshaping the global economy
- Risk of social unrest & war as history repeats itself
- And why America needs a renaissance to reverse its decline
But is it really that dire? After Celente’s fiery outlook, Brett Rentmeester, Founder of WindRock Wealth Management, joins Maggie Lake to share his reaction, explaining how investors should navigate stretched equity valuations, and where opportunities still exist.
Get a one-on-one free portfolio review with Brett Rentmeester at: https://bit.ly/40t4swi
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Gerald Celente 0:00
Where the market’s going, there’s going to be a.com bust. And the reason being is that that trend, the AI trend, was only born three years ago. 2022 it’s still an infant. You don’t invest all your money in the in the first development.
Maggie Lake 0:21
Hello and welcome to wealthion. I’m Maggie Lake, and today I’m joined by Gerald Celente, founder of trends Research Institute and publisher of the weekly trends Journal Magazine. Gerald, welcome. It’s great to have you on. Well,
Gerald Celente 0:33
thanks so much, Maggie for having me on.
Maggie Lake 0:35
So you have been tracking markets and trends for 40 years and identify yourself as an independent thinker. So I’m really curious, what’s your sense of the US economy right now?
Gerald Celente 0:47
You know, it’s it. I’ve been at this actually, 45 years, and every year we have our top trends. In 45 years, we never had one trend that was called a wild card. And this year we have the wild card, and there’s also the trump card, and the trump card keeps playing the wild card. You know, some people say, you know, we predict the future. I said nobody could predict the future. There. There are too many wild cards, whether they made by humans or by nature, and we’re trend forecasters. We look at the current events forming future trends, and we make connections between different fields. One of our sayings is that opportunity misses those who view the world through the eyes of their profession. So you take the economics, you know people in the economic world, you know, they know all about it, but what’s going on geopolitically, socioeconomic well, we don’t care about that, you know? We only care about it when it hits the news, going back to where it’s going. It’s a guessing game right now. And hey, when I get into office, I’m going to put 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, right? I’m in office now. I’m gonna wait till February 1. Okay, February 1, we’ll have it. February 3, I’m taking it. I’m gonna give them another, another 60 days. I’ll make up anything I want. April 2, Liberation Day. What happened a couple of days later when the markets are crashing? Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna wait till July 9 to put those tariffs back on. What happened on July 8? Well, we’re gonna wait till August 1. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up, so you don’t know where it’s going. And then you’re looking at the inflation numbers, and what’s coming out now is they’re lower than what they expected. So here’s the deal, and we’re seeing it all the time. Trump is going to do everything he can to lower interest rates, and if anybody thinks that, he can’t do it again, we only go by the facts. Let’s go back to December 2018 it was the worst Dow since the Great Depression. 1931, what happened? Trump forced Powell to lower interest rates. Powell lowered them in January 2019 the markets went up 22% that year. Trump is only interested in the equity markets and his reputation. He’ll do everything to keep pumping it up. But then there’s the realities going on and and they’re not discussed, you know? Oh, Nvidia stock is skyrocketing. Oh, now they’re selling the chips back to China. What happened in January? Oh, a company called Deep seek that nobody ever heard of. We don’t need $100 million to make this AI. We could do it 6 million. And we don’t need those big chips and write it now, deep seek is the most used AI in the world. So we’re looking at trends again. Trends are born, they grow, they mature, reach old age and die. Where the market’s going, there’s going to be a.com bust. And the reason being is that that trend, the AI trend, was only born three years ago, 2022, it’s still an infant. You don’t invest all your money in the in the first development. And that’s what happened back when we again. It’s in your magazine, the trends journal, back in 2018 2019 excuse me, 1999, we said there would be a.com bust by the second quarter. 2000 the AI, the Internet revolution was just born several years earlier, and people were investing in all these new things that made no sense,
Maggie Lake 4:37
a rush of speculation. Let’s pull a couple of those apart, because it sounds like first of all, that you see a disconnect between what’s happening in markets and what’s happening in the real economy. Absolutely.
Gerald Celente 4:50
Again, look at the numbers housing. The cost of a house has gone up. Are 50 over 50% since they launched the COVID war in 2020, once upon a time, first time homebuyers, 40% first time homebuyers. 40% were first time homebuyers. Now it’s down to 28%
Gerald Celente 5:18
rents are going up. They can’t afford. They can’t afford to buy a house, but going back to the.com bust, they’ve over invested in it. China is going to lead the world in AI, again, we’re political atheists. It’s not what you like, what you want, what you wish for, it’s what is you just look at things the way they are here, going back to putting the trends together before Bill Clinton brought China into the World Trade Organization, which they officially came in two weeks after 911, in 2,010% of Chinese 18 year olds went to college today, almost 70% young people are all high tech AI addicted. So what we’re saying is there’s going to be a.com bust. The markets are overvalued. Look what’s going on now. The banks and and the hedge funds, they’re not we saw Blackrock numbers that just came out. They’re not doing what they thought they were going to do, and it’s going to come down. It’s artificially propped up. There’s no relationship to Wall Street, to Main Street does not exist.
Maggie Lake 6:24
If you have any questions about how to navigate the current environment, wealthion can help connect you with a vetted advisor to get a free portfolio review, just click the link in the description below or head to wealthion.com/free there’s no obligation, and it will just take a few minutes of your time. Again, that’s wealthion.com/free thanks so much for joining us. So if the the trend for you think the trend for the stock market is is lower because it there’s too just too much speculative sort of, I guess, fast money in it, chasing some AI outcome that we may be losing the edge on why is why does it seem like it’s going to be a bubble bursting in a crash, rather than just a correction?
Gerald Celente 7:10
Because of all the trillions of dollars that have been invested in these make believe AI companies, one after another, that Chinese are going to lead the charge in it, and they’re doing it on a lot cheaper level. They’re way overvalued. It’s like investing in an automobile and in 19, excuse me, 18, let’s say 86 or something. You put all your money in the first automobile company, and again, China’s gonna America. We got 340 what? Depending on whose numbers you look at, 300 about 45 million people. China has 1.4 billion, and their education system is becoming more advanced, way more advanced than ours. So again, the young people are totally addicted to this stuff, and they’re going to lead the charge you so we see a.com bust another thing that no one’s talking about. Let’s go back again. Remember when the COVID was going on? Don’t come to work. Stay home your office occupants orcas. Office vacancy rate in the 10 largest cities in America is around 20% before COVID was around 11% there’s going to be failures on defaults on loans in office buildings. They’re not talking about this. The leases are now coming up. That was five years ago. Leases are five and 10 years, you know. So a lot of these leases are coming up and they can’t pay the rent, the the loans. You’re going to start seeing gold. Let’s go back to 2023. Three banks went bust. Signature Silicon Valley and first republic. Look what happened to the markets. Three banks. Markets go down. Gold goes way up, you’re going to see more than three banks fail, and nobody’s talking about this.
Maggie Lake 9:05
What do you think a lot of people have been concerned about, the extend and pretend on commercial real estate, about housing, about some of the weaknesses that you’re talking about, and yet the recession people have called for has hasn’t shown up. I mean, three years now, they’ve been looking for it. We have had a lot of government spending to help prop things up. What is the catalyst now that you think is going to finally create a situation where the economy really starts to buckle? It sounds like you think a recession is coming.
Gerald Celente 9:39
Is that right? Absolutely. Yeah, and it’s global. I mean, it’s not they take a look at, take a look at Germany, the third largest economy in the world. They’ve been in recession for for two years, going on to their third, oh, now they’re borrowing a trillion dollars to build up their military and and the infrastructure. All right? It. One country after another. It was artificially propped up with trillions of dollars to fight the COVID War. I thought everything would crash when they locked down everything. I didn’t know they they pump in trillions of dollars bring interest rates down to zero. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. I thought things would crash again in 2012 I took out the domain name the panic of oh eight in 2007 I called the 819 87 stock market crash. I was totally wrong. In 2012 they didn’t teach me about a thing called quantitative easing. Yeah, in economics, when I want to graduate school, they’re going to make up anything they can to prop this up.
Maggie Lake 10:41
So doesn’t that argue that you may, that they’ll take these extraordinary measures and you won’t get the crash again? That it that they will pull out something new out of their financial toolbox to prevent that from happening? That
Gerald Celente 10:58
may well happen. It don’t make up anything. Look what’s going on with the digital world now, with which, with stable coins, and on and on and on. And let’s go back to Trump again, in the magazine, only the facts. Only the facts. We quote him going back from 2019 up to 2021 how he hated Bitcoin, how he hated cryptocurrencies. Where the fraud It was when he got over $100 million from the crypto club, when he ran for president, 10s of millions of dollars from the crypto club went for his inauguration, his sons, his family, his his team, all in the cryptos. And what did we say when that happened? We said bitcoin is going to explode. And as we’re talking now, it’s right, almost $120,000 for a coin that’s invented on absolutely nothing. So they’re going to do anything they can. And they may say things like, Oh, we’re going we’re going digital now, and we and this digital net we have is worth so much money we just got rid of our debt, they’ll make up anything. Will it work? Let’s go back to the Great Depression, 1933 Franklin Roosevelt. Everybody turn in all your gold. If you don’t turn in your gold, you go to jail. What happened? The people turned in their gold. They gave him $20.67 an ounce. 1934 passed the Federal Reserve, the Gold Reserve Act. They increased the price of gold after they stole it from the people. 70% brought it up to $35 an ounce. They’ll do anything they can. People call it a government. I call it a crime syndicate, and again, only by the facts. What is JP Morgan Chase, how many felonies they’ve been convicted of only five? Or what happened during when the when the the panic of oh eight or the Federal Reserve only dumped in $29 trillion to bail out the banksters that caused the crash with their derivatives. And hey, you don’t have a job, you’re deep in debt. Don’t worry about it. We got a subprime mortgage sign over here. Well, that’s not my number, by the way. That’s in the levy Institute of Bard College. We only put the facts in there. It’s a crime syndicate.
Maggie Lake 13:21
Do you you mentioned at the beginning that usually you can, you know, sort of follow the trends, but this time, there’s a wild card. Is that wild card solely the Trump administration, or are there other factors that changing on the sort of macro, global landscape that make this period particularly uncertain.
Gerald Celente 13:48
Yeah, there are a lot of number of things. Let’s look at the BRICS and how much of the world has had enough of the United States, economic and geopolitical hegemony, there’s going to be a death of $1 and again, going back to the wild card, the lower interest rates go, the deeper the dollar falls. And look at the again, only by the facts, the dollar this year is down, what, 10.7% since the beginning of the year, the worst decline since 1973 1973 the worst decline. What happened in 1973 Oh, there was a Yom Kippur War, and the Arab nations cut off the remember, they had the oil embargo, the price of a barrel of Brent crude quadrupled. Oh, and that was the year when they took us off the gold standard. The dollar is going down. The lower interest rates go, the deeper the dollar. Dollar falls. We’re looking at the beginning of the end of the dollars being the world currency. That’s another one of the wild cards is being played. And again, we firmly believe that Trump is going to force Powell to lower interest rates. They’re going back to the housing market
Maggie Lake 15:16
so the Fed can lower have an impact on the short end, but the long end, the market has to go along with that. They can’t completely control the long end, do you think that we will see rates across the curve fall in the US? Or could we have a situation where the Fed is no longer able to through monetary policy alone, get the lower rates that Trump wants?
Gerald Celente 15:37
I think they’re going to just lower them and, it’s going to also, again, the rates going down doesn’t affect the mortgage rates, which is still 6.8 and you got to bring the treasuries down, you know? So that’s had been done, yeah, because you got all that debt level. And so that’s not going to bring them down. So there’s going to be it’s already the numbers are there. The again, the housing market’s still overall, of course, much of the country it’s still pretty strong. It’s going down in the south and in other areas California, but up here in the northeast, it’s still going pretty strong. And yeah, the prices aren’t going up as much as they were. They’re going up at very small numbers, but they’re still very high. So we don’t see the prices going down unless there’s a real crash, and even then, it will only be a temporary hit. So the housing, but again, going back to the commercial real estate, that’s the one to look to here. There’s an article in in this week’s trends journal about the least I could find. It right here quickly, about the most US warehouse space now vacant, now more vacant since 2014 so they overbuilt in the warehouse sector. It’s one after another where they’ve overbuilt. So we’re looking at, again, look what’s going on with OPEC. They’re lowering they’re putting out more. To show you how bad the economy is, they’re producing more oil OPEC plus, as demand is down, because these countries need the money, they should be holding back on supply instead of expanding it, there’s a global slowdown. It was artificially propped up when they printed all this money back by nothing and printed on nothing to fight the COVID War. Hey, stay home. Don’t worry about it. Here’s some money. Hey, I’m a big I’m a big airline. Here’s several billion dollars. All right. I mean, they did
Maggie Lake 17:52
it right in front of our eyes. So what is the, what is the you paint, a fairly grim outlook, at least short term for the US economy, if you think the dollar sort of is, is, is on the decline in a more permanent basis, moving away from being a reserve currency, that the stock market is a bubble that’s going to burst. The economy is got some serious problems underneath the hood, even though it’s been chugging along thanks to spending that looks vulnerable, the US is about to lose its leadership in technology. Who is there an upside somewhere? What is the implication for that? It sounds very negative for the US. It
Gerald Celente 18:38
is negative. Again. It breaks my heart to see what’s happening. You know, again,
Maggie Lake 18:43
beneficiary is it the US is lost at someone else’s gain.
Gerald Celente 18:47
It’s, it’s everybody will lose. You know? It’s, it’s a downtime. We’re the largest economy in the world, and only 340, something million people here. Again, when I say nobody can predict the future, we used to say that the 20th century was the American century, but the 21st Century would be the Chinese century. You know why? Because the business of America is war and the business of China is business. That changed. Go back to January 2020. China launches the COVID war on their Chinese Lunar New Year, the year they’re at they locked down the country for three years with zero COVID policy. And this is a real I mean, this is they knew everything that you were doing every place, everywhere, they locked it down. Let’s again, you have to put the trends together. I mentioned before they got into the World Trade Organization. You look at China’s GDP, it was like this. They get into the World Trade Organization. Skyrockets when the companies from the west went over there and started manufacturing. Right, and gave them all the manufacturing and high tech and heavy industry. They never had boom. They have a skyrocketing real estate boom. With every boom, there’s a bust. 30% of China’s GDP was real estate related from the boom. They made a bad situation worse by locking down the place. So now China’s economy isn’t doing what it was going to do. And so I’m trying to say is that you it’s it’s global, and they’re doing everything they can. Again, we put the numbers out. I mean, you look at him, we have a whole section in this journal here spotlight. China’s up and down. China’s factory prices fall again as trade war drags on one after another. But also the exports are going back up again a little bit. You know why? Because they’re going into all the other countries. And now we just look what just happened with Trump. He’s going to put, what, 100% tariffs on Russia, for the people that buy the stuff from Russia, the oil. He’s putting on a 50% tariff on Brazil. Oh, that’s going to bring up the coffee prices, beef prices, orange juice. Again, it’s wild, and you don’t know where it’s going to go.
Maggie Lake 21:26
Do you think that the tariff policy is a necessary rebalancing of world trade, or do you see it as a policy error?
Gerald Celente 21:37
Actually, I believe in the tariffs. And again, it’s not again we it’s not what I like, what I want, what I wish I don’t support. Having voted for President since Ron Paul, just to make it clear, can’t stand any of the guys in there with their war mongering, I launched a movement called Occupy peace. I hate what they’re doing. So going back, I’m sorry, the question
Maggie Lake 22:00
you asked me, Did you see it as a rebalancing? I’m up I’m
Gerald Celente 22:04
up here in Kingston, New York. This is the third Dutch settlement, more pre revolutionary warstone buildings than anywhere else. Gant fact, shirt factories used to be here, factories, factories, factories, factories, factories. There was a middle class. I believe in tariffs. And again, you only look at the facts. Look what happened when, when Bill Clinton brought China into the World Trade Organization, the NAFTA. Look at all the jobs that left. Hey, go down in Mexico. You’re going to get cheap labor down there. You make a lot more money. All right, go down there and he gets paid off. He gets $300,000 an hour from Goldman Sachs to BS, on and on and on. They’re multi, multi millionaires, little clown boy from Arkansas. And now look at the dough they have, again, the money that they get for doing what they’ve done brought China into the World Trade Organization. China’s was crap. Look at China now, oh, the world leader in electric cars when all the Western companies went over there and gave them all the high tech and heavy industry they never had before. Yeah, I believe in the tariffs. I truly do. And again, look at the jobs. Look at you want a job at Walmart now, maybe you get a job at Target. I think I’ll work at Home Depot. Now, what? Oh, remember, I think we’re old enough to remember when there were things called hardware stores, stationary stores, drug stores. Now they’re all chains. Now the bigs have taken over
Maggie Lake 23:33
everything. Yeah, massive, you know, implications from globalization. And a lot of people believe we’re on the on a sort of pendulum swing away from that to something that’s, you know, multi polar and reassuring, to some extent, supply chains. What? What do you in this environment? Do you think that investors should have no exposure to equities, especially if you have a longer term view? Or how are you thinking about what this means for people’s retirements and and for their portfolios?
Gerald Celente 24:08
There are good things to invest in, and other ones that not we just put the facts out. These are the where we see it growing. Here’s where we see it declining. And again, we’re very bullish on gold. One of our top trends of 2024 was a golden year for gold. Gold prices went up nearly 30% and they’re still going up. And by the way, if there were no cryptocurrencies, the price of gold would be probably a couple of $1,000 higher. Do
Maggie Lake 24:34
you think there is a risk of social unrest in developed countries? Because we know that there’s a lot of anger, I think a lot of people, your frustration with government, I think is shared by a lot of people, and not just in the United States. We’ve seen that in recent elections. Do you think that the frustration and maybe the disconnect from the real economy will actually cause social unrest? Western countries,
Gerald Celente 25:00
absolutely. But one of my lines is, when all else fails, they take you to war. And again we only go by the facts. You know. Again you take the Israel war. People forget there were 3939 weeks of protests going on before Hamas attacked, 39 weeks of protests going on in Israel because Netanyahu judicial reform act, which basically said, we’re doing away with the courts, the politicians will be in charge this way, enough to go to court, not my language, the language of Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, going back then we’re in a civil war. Hamas attacks. Book all forgotten only the facts. Google it up. Franklin Roosevelt seizes Japanese assets. Google it up. History today, mainstream so w fit, July 26 1941 Franklin Roosevelt seizes all Japanese assets in America. You know why those dirty Japanese invaded French Indochina? Wait a minute, French Indochina, where the French doing? French Indochina? You mean Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam? Oh yeah. They’re stealing their rubber, their tent, rate, pillaging the United States, the Dutch and the English cut off three quarters of Japanese trade and 88% of their imported oil. Can’t understand why they bought Pearl harbors. Several months later, again, the war else fails. They take you to war. That was the Great Depression. What happened be when George, little George Bush was president? Oh, remember the.com bust? Oh, the NASDAQ was down? What only, uh, 80% and what happened 911 but all forgotten. So again, when all else fails, they take you to war again. We only write the facts France, one country after another, Germany, I mentioned, they’re all building up their military, and that’s her greatest concern.
Maggie Lake 27:08
Yeah. So it does feel like the global landscape is shifting. I just want to pivot back a little bit to the investment side of things. We were talking before about Bitcoin. Do you see the momentum in did in the digital asset space, be it Bitcoin stable coins, there’s a lot of momentum coming out of Washington, as you mentioned. Do you see that continuing, or is this something that is very much tied to Trump in the interests of his family that can reverse like, are you long term? Do you think long term, this is an innovative wave that’s going to continue? Or would you be wary about putting too much, you know, putting too much stock in, in what’s happening on that, in that front
Gerald Celente 27:55
again, as they keep making money on it, they’re going to stay in it. And then if something happens that changes it. Then, you know, you have a different viewpoint of it. But right now, you know, yeah, just a couple articles here in this week’s magazine. Here we go, yeah, Trump goes from crypto skeptic to its savior in one campaign. We have one article after another about, you know, the world going crypto, and again, it’s, it’s the digital world. Going back to AI, go to China. Nobody uses credit cards or cash anymore. Just put your palm out. You get your money. Everything’s there’s going to be central bank digital currencies. And again, they may invent something. Like we said, we’re going with a digital coin now, and this coin is worth so much money, we just wiped out our $37 trillion worth of debt as we see it right now. Again, things could change, but as we see it now, we’ve been positive on Bitcoin, by the way, for nearly a decade. And again, don’t like it, not what I like, but we look at it for what it is, and it
Maggie Lake 29:01
sounds like the only thing that you you really feel very comfortable with is gold, yes, as the one safe haven again.
Gerald Celente 29:09
And silver, silver is a good bet too. And again, we don’t give financial advice. That’s the way we see it. And real estate, you know, at certain times I and I, I put three buildings up here in Kingston, on the most historic four corners in America, the only place with pre Revolutionary War stone buildings. I bought him in 2012 one was vacant for five years. Another one I bought in foreclosure. This one was 1774 1763 and 1750 i The was, like, the mortgage rate was like, by 2.8% crazy. So there’s a time to buy, and it’s not now, but we’re very real estate is the long term investment as we see it.
Maggie Lake 29:58
What would cause you. To become more constructive, to change your mind about the serious crashes and downturns that you are worried about for the US,
Gerald Celente 30:14
it’s again I mentioned I launched a movement over a decade ago called occupied peace, peace rallies every year where we’re spending a trillion dollars, plus for the when you put in the CIA and NSA and all that a year for the military. Yeah, not my language guy was, was his name quote over here. I know the quote, but just want to get it perfectly, right? Oh, by the way, here was the trends journal.com this when we said there would be a.com bust, the quote is basically every you know that the military industrial complex is robbing the nation of the genius of the scientists, whether the labors in the future of the children, Dwight, the Eisenhower, five star, President, Supreme Commander, the allied forces. The country’s rotting in front of our eyes. Take a take, go, take, take, go on a subway in New York, it’s like a night in Calcutta. It the roads, potholes everywhere. Look at the country going down, homeless people all over the streets. We got to rebuild the country, and they’re not doing it. The only, and by the way, the only way I see things changing. Once upon a time, there was a thing called the was it the black plague, and 60% of Europe was wiped out. What followed it the Renaissance. They used to say, in Italy, at the height of the Renaissance, a La Romana and Alan Tegan the manner of the Romans and the ancients to describe the quality of their work. And we need a renaissance. We need to bring back the spirit of what this country used to be, and it’s all gone now, and it breaks my heart and you, but you can’t do it without the money the medic cheese made it happen the last time. But we’re, we’re the billionaires doing anything for this, not a penny for peace, not a penny to bring the spirit of people up. And we need to bring the country back to what it the spirit of our founding fathers and and again. Remember one time my parents generation, everybody in the world, wanted to come to America, not anymore. They’re leaving, and they don’t want to come here anymore from other countries unless, of course, you’re in a country where you know you have, you know, poverty and government, corruption, crime and violence. So that’s, to me, was what happened. We have to, we need, we need people that are concerned about, we the people and not themselves.
Maggie Lake 32:53
Well, I think that’s a wonderful call to action to leave people with Gerald. And I detect some hope in there among all the concern. So I think that’s fantastic, and we’ll leave it on that positive note. But thank you very much for being with us. We appreciate
Gerald Celente 33:10
it. Thank you so much for having me just one final word. It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men. Said, Samuel Adams,
Maggie Lake 33:26
there you go. Perfectly. Said, Thank you, Gerald. Thank you. Hello and welcome to wealthion. I’m Maggie lake here with Brett rentmeester, Founder and Managing Director at wind rock wealth management. Brett, it’s great to see you. Nice to see you, Maggie. So we just heard from Gerard solente, who was very concerned about the outlook, especially when it came to the valuations around equities. And I think there are little people who’ve seen us sitting up at these record high levels, and maybe for different reasons, but are kind of concerned about whether the best news is priced in, what is your reaction to, you know, some of what he said, and also what maybe you’re hearing from clients around these lofty equity valuations.
Brett Rentmeester 34:13
Yeah, well, I mean, the reality is, Gerald’s bringing up something that’s been with us, really, since the tech bubble in 2000 which is this era of printing money when anything goes wrong in the world. And the printing of money over time has been magnified, right? It was bigger during oh eight than it was during the tech bubble in 2000 It was bigger during COVID than it was during oh eight. And so with that money printing, you know what he says that resonates, is it does create kind of this false pillar of support that we think is there on valuations. But if not for the money printing, we might feel very differently. So the challenge looking ahead is, as he was saying, Yeah, fundamentally, if you take the money printing out and you just look at things, there’s reason for great concern valuations are stretched, et cetera. Etc. But, you know, he also did acknowledge Trump is going to do everything in his power to keep things elevated. So, you know, it’s kind of this tug and pull between fundamentals on their own, versus a world where there’s the fundamentals and then there’s governments on top trying to support everything. And I think that’s, that’s the big unknown,
Maggie Lake 35:19
yeah, and we’re kind of addicted to that, that money flow, right, that that government printing, and so I think people are kind of worried, you know, can we go cold turkey? Or, how have we hit the end of what’s possible? Um, one of the things he mentioned, which we, I sort of laughed about, he was very colorful describing it, was the uncertainty, you know, that’s come with, with the Trump administration, trying to figure out, especially around tariffs, um, is, has it been hard to navigate that? And are you hearing from clients who are, you know, trying to figure out what it means, trying to make investment decisions. And it seems like the future is so uncertain now, yeah,
Brett Rentmeester 35:55
yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’re all kind of trying to figure it out to some degree. But again, I think there’s a bigger theme underway looking at this century so far, and that is, I mean, I like the work of Neil Howe the fourth turning. It’s all about generational cycles. And kind of about every 100 years there’s a big change. The old system stopped working. You need to rethink everything. And by his math, we’re right there. And I think we’re seeing that. So it’s not just Trump and new policies and uncertainty. It’s the culmination of, I had a client say, Hey, I was growing up in the 60s, and we knew Social Security wasn’t sustainable back then. And here we are in 2025 so there’s nothing new here, except that we just kick the can, kick the can, kick the can, and nobody knows when the music ends and you can’t kick the can anymore. But, you know, I think we’re into a big period of change and a rethinking of systems, and to be seen on on the tariffs. I mean, if, if you could truly get rid of income tax and end up with tariffs and another system, maybe that is a solution. But if you end up with tariffs plus income tax as we know it, and everything else, then to me, it seems like one more layer of complexity and tax on the system.
Maggie Lake 37:06
Yeah, and it does. I think a lot of people are increasingly concerned about really trying to plan for the future, because maybe that Social Security won’t be there. It won’t be there for the next generation, and you’ve really got to try to build your wealth wisely while you can two, two areas that he brought up that he feels like is a safe haven or a safe place to be amidst all this uncertainty, gold and real estate. I know those are two areas you watch as well. Yeah.
Brett Rentmeester 37:36
I mean, we’ve been long term precious metals fans for the simple reason that they go up when everybody’s printing money and devaluing their currency, and with the debt levels in the world, it seems like that’s a trend that’s going to continue. So so we like that, that sector real estate, is much more nuanced. You know, we’ve had a lot of success in rental real estate, the so called Build to rent communities, some niche hotels, things like that. But you know, I think to his point, there was a lot of you made that point, extend and pretend you’ve got big cities, still not out of the woods yet, especially with office space and the overhang of debt as it relates to those properties. So I don’t think you can just say all real estate. I think you have to get into the niches and find new trends. And I think this build to rent real estate is one of them where people want to live in something that feels more like a single family home community, but they want to rent. They don’t want the mortgage, they don’t want the uncertainties. So I think there are always going to be sectors like that in real estate that are attractive, but you’ve got to, you know, pick your battles.
Maggie Lake 38:43
Yeah, yeah, especially when it’s harder for younger people to jump right into home ownership. And there’s an argument for labor mobility that, you know, maybe you do want to rent for a little while. So I could see why there would be a sort of consistent appetite for that build to rent type of, type of market. The last thing let’s finish up on and return to, is equities. Because, listen, so many people have that’s a big part of their portfolio. You know? That’s just kind of where those 401, flows have been, even if you’re nervous and you have a short term horizon and you need that money and you’re worried about a pullback, is it wise to have no exposure to equities, or is this another situation where you have to be smart, you have to be nuanced and own quality, but you’re playing around the edges in terms of how much of an allocation you have, or is having zero exposure an actual option?
Brett Rentmeester 39:32
No, I mean, I don’t think going to zero is a good idea, just simply, because even if the market’s overvalued, there are always pockets of value out there, and we’ve found a lot of them over the years, plus, for the average investor, they’re still living in a stock bond paradigm. So then it means you put all your money in bonds. Bonds might be the epicenter of the next crisis, and you’re capped on what you can earn. So we like to think outside of stocks and bonds. As you know, Maggie. And we like to include hard assets, we like to include private investments, we like to include AI related things. But again, yeah, there’s a danger. If you’re just chasing the AI mega caps that are running. I mean, there, you know, there could be a significant pullback at some point. So I don’t think you go to zero, but I do think the average American, especially someone close to retirement, and retired probably has way too much emphasis on the US stock market at this point,
Maggie Lake 40:26
something that’s really important and maybe a good thing for all of us to go take a really close look at Brett. Appreciate your thoughts. Thank you. If you have any questions about how to navigate the current environment, wealthion can help connect you with a vetted advisor to get a free portfolio review, just click the link in the description below or head to wealthion.com/free there’s no obligation, and it will just take a few minutes of your time again. That’s wealthion.com/free thanks so much for joining us. We’ll see you again next time.
