Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome, everybody, to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast, episode number 240. My name is Brian Anderson, founder and creator of AnnuityStraightTalk.com answering all of your retirement questions by popular demand. After far too much time, we have what everybody has asked for. We've got our in house. Not really in house, but favorite marketing guy down in California.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Brian. It's good to see you. Thank you for having me on. I know it's been a while.
We've been busy down here. Between floods and heat waves and market corrections, things couldn't be more exciting.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah, God hates California, does he not?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Knock on wood. All we need is an earthquake right now.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: He's spanking you, so there you go.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: No, it is devastating. My heart goes out to everybody who's affected negatively by that. It's a beautiful area. I've had fun visiting you down there. You know, great restaurants, great scenery. A barbecue in John's backyard is absolutely beautiful. Like the hills above, you can see to the ocean. It's awesome.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Well, we. We do enjoy it, but it was a hot summer, hot September, beginning of hot October. It was really, really humid. Almost like Miami humid. So 104 and just brutal. Very, very unusual for Southern California. So luckily we've had our first taste of fall in the last couple days. We had a rainstorm because of the hurricane over the weekend, which kind of destroyed the coast. Probably a lot of your viewers saw that on the. On the news and.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: But we will move on and sand will come back at some point. So I don't live very close to the beach, but I, you know, I live close enough. It's about 10 minutes.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I've been there. It's not that far. It's a nice little trip. Lagoon and Newport. But you're right in the heart of it, so. Hey, everybody. Glad you guys are back. And I'm. And, John, thank you for being here. This is an episode that I think is very timely. We haven't talked a whole lot, but we caught up last night and you just said, hey, it's time to do this. But the markets are giving us all sorts of signals, so it really helps to have an analyst here. I think things are changing so much that people kind of get. And a lot of advisors may be pushing people toward rash. This is. Oh, my goodness. Like, look at this, look at that.
And, you know, guys like us have been around for 20 some years. 25, 6. I'm going on 24.
But cooler heads prevail. Can we step back a Little bit analyze it and talk about what a good path is. Because the worst thing you can do financially is make a rash decision. Decision, right.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think if you know, you're a long term investor or you're just entering retirement or you're currently in retirement, you obviously want to align your goals of your plan to the, to, to the proper asset allocation or the proper strategy that people like Brian and I can help help people out with.
But it goes to be said that the markets, the markets have been actually, the underlying sentiment of the market is actually pretty scary and it's not showing up on the index level. And I say yet because that could potentially be the case in the next, you know, few weeks before the midterms. We've got a really contentious election cycle coming up and I think things could get rocky, you know, along with rates and oil and wars and things, all that type of stuff affects the market. So if I can answer any questions for you, Brian, I'd be happy to
[00:03:38] Speaker A: do, I mean, do we have, have we seen the October surprise as they say, that always comes up to swing the elections in one way or another.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: You know, what they say is, you know, from a seasonality standpoint, the second term of a presidential cycle and right around the midterms tends to be, you know, one of the bullish, most bullish periods of, of the year. We're also what's in what's called the eating season.
So fourth quarter, you know, you've got Halloween, you've got Thanksgiving and then you've got Christmas. So, you know, a lot of eating going on, a lot of time with family tends to be pretty bullish for the market. But you know, what we haven't had in the past has been, you know, oil at, you know, gosh, above $90 a barrel on a sustained basis with no end of the war in sight. And then we've also had, you know, historically high 25 year spike in yields.
So, you know, your 30 year mortgage I think this morning hit the highest it's been in God knows what. It's you know, close to like 7.5.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: You know, that makes, that makes financial conditions a little iffy. But you know, believe it or not, it's not really showing up in the, the larger cap index is like the s and P500. It is starting to show up in small caps in some sectors. But by and large a lot of the stocks that have been holding up this market continue to do so. But there's always a point in time when those things can really, really roll over. And so that's something that we, I can take you through it if you'd like and we could talk about rates.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: But yeah, I think, I think interest rates are the big story here and a lot of people are looking at the deals I'm talking about and saying, is this good? And, and, and, and it's always going to be. You know, there are people that have followed along for a long time. There's people that remember how low things were 10 years ago, five years ago, the, you know, the spikes and the dips over that time period.
But we're getting into something with, as far as interest, interest rates go that I've never seen in my career and seeing how products react and then what decisions you make based on those changes in the market. And a lot of people don't really understand, you know, from a trading standpoint what moves you should, you should make just because, you know, the interest rates adjust so much. We're looking at more Fed hikes and all that stuff. And it's not just, you know, locking into long term stuff. It's a matter of just making or positioning yourself in the right way so that you can capitalize on it. Because every time there's calamity, there's an opportunity for like great profits, right?
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I would think so. I mean we're, we haven't seen rates on the 10 year or, or even on the 30 year mortgage rate or 30 year bond rate. We haven't seen rates this high since June of 2007.
So 20, what, what do we call it? You know, 20 year high.
And when I look at rates, it doesn't look like it's bearish. So what does that mean? You know, financial conditions, are they going to ease and rates are going to fall down?
I don't know. Could we see a 6 on the 10 year note? I think so. Could we see a 7?
That would be pretty disastrous. But it's not, you know, that was, that was what, we were at six and a half in 2001 when that market crashed down 50%. We could, we could see it get up to six and a half, 7% and hopefully I'm wrong but you know, anything is possible.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Right? And it's like, am I like, am I the Pollyanna for saying I hope rates just stay at like 4%? 10 year treasury is good and everyone, you get good deals and I know mortgage rates are high, but retirees are looking at some pretty good opportunities on savings rates. But you got to be careful because, because the flashy Stuff doesn't necessarily translate to a good bottom line.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I believe so. So, yeah, in, in the particular business that you're in with the annuities, you know, you're getting higher payouts, you're getting higher, you're getting higher cap rates, you're getting higher, you know, higher across the board with, with interest rates being higher because the underlying insurance companies are yielding significantly, much more on their, on their general portfolio with high quality fixed income. So, you know, it's, it's better for the consumer with higher rates. I, I, I'd hate to see rates back down at a zero interest rate unless I was buying some real estate.
But you know, it's, I think we're going to be higher for longer and, and I don't see any rate relief, you know, in the near future unless, unless something really, really happens, like a collapse in the market, you know, a significant drawdown of, you know, 10, 15, 20% going into the end of the year. Not saying that's going to happen, but you know, today was pretty shaky with a lot of, with a lot of these big neocloud hyperscaler type of AI related plays. The, mostly the AI infrastructure.
A lot of those companies got really, really hit hard today and their, it was not only their equity side of their business got hit hard in terms of their stock price, but it was, it was the yield that they're having to pay out on their bonds. So, so a lot of their bonds are trading at, you know, 60 cents on the dollar, which, it's a big, big concern.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Right. And that's one thing that shows up and people say, oh, the yields are so high on the bonds, but they don't realize that they lost, you know, 30, 40% of value in the last, you know, probably last quarter.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Right?
Yeah. I mean, I could show you the TLT, which is the, the 20 year bond rate. It's the 20 year treasury bond rate.
Since 2020, when we had almost near zero interest rates, that fund has returned negative 54%. So bonds typically aren't supposed to lose you money.
You're collecting a, you know, a 4.26% yield. And that the only reason why is because bond keeps losing money. So, you know, interest rates up, bonds lose money, interest rates down, bonds make money in terms of appreciation. But 54% on the 20 year, you know, if you bought that back and, you know, you figured 2020, you were spooked by Covid. You know, what's the most natural thing to do? You've been making money on bonds for 25 years we're just going to buy a bunch of bonds and you lose 50% of that money. It just.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Well, and that's, and I look back at 2020 and 2021.
Right. And some of the, you know, the annuities I sold then, which I wasn't selling that many because it was only kind of in an absolutely necessary scenario. Right.
And a lot of people are coming to you. It's like, well, this didn't make a whole lot of money. But it's like the other side of that is if you would have kept your money, because I was always, replace the bonds. Replace the bonds. Right. When rates were low, replace those bonds. Get something that's not going to take a hit if rates rise, because everybody expected to or thought that, I mean, rates could go nowhere but up.
And so they'll look at something that maybe isn't yielding a whole lot.
But the alternative to that was keep it in a bond or a bond fund that would have lost 40% of its value.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And in some cases 50 and 60, you know, long. Only bond managers always want to tell you to own bonds, you know, because obviously these guys make their money off of, you know, pretty rich fees and bonuses at the end of the quarter, you know, these big money managers that, that guys like me put clients into.
So, you know, we gotta be cognizant and a fiduciary to our clients to make sure that if, if they're going to be in a bond fund, it's the right type of bond fund given the, the environment that we're in. And so that environment continually is evolving. And so a good advisor will continually evolve that strategy to fit the client's needs. You know, the client never doesn't need income, so you have to provide, you know, know, a reasonable rate of return with a relative amount of safety. And you know, I think the great thing about the annuity strategy is, you know, back then, yes, rates were low, but you were transferring a ton of risk to the insurance company and taking a lot off of you. I mean, think about if you bought a, a two year guaranteed annuity back in 2020 at let's say 2%, you didn't lose any principal versus, you know, you go out two years, you lost almost 25% on that bond that you bought because interest rates went right.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: And that's again, and a lot of people, not about what it's doing or what it can do, but what it would have done if you hadn't done it. And I don't know it's really, it's really interesting. And there's also a, there's a case to be made for honestly, if rates do tank, then the bonds are going to look really good. But what do you, I mean, I don't think rates are going down anywhere even if the market does. Correct. But, but I, you know, I'm not an economist. I just kind of, I keep an eye on these things. What do you think? I mean, are we seeing rates go higher because we've heard that, or do, does the market take a dive and rates drop to the bottom?
[00:12:50] Speaker B: You know, I mean, we have to look at what caused rates to go up from near zero.
You know, first of all, why were rates near zero? During COVID we had a huge, you know, existential crisis. We pumped a ton of money into the economy and what happened is that we had inflation. And so, you know, higher rates will, you know, eventually curb inflation. So you know, we had started to get a hold of the inflationary thing. Fed's target level was 2%.
We've never actually reached that 2% level.
And the reason why is because the, you know, the inflation rate just kept going up and you know, you can't raise rates, you know, 10 to 10%. That'll destroy, you know, equities. So, so there's a kind of a fine balance, you know, that goes on there when, when you're, you're looking at interest rates.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, well what, and what do you see like based on that again? I mean those two are interrelated, are they not? And yeah, they are.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: And so, you know, we're starting to see now, you know, rates, the pressure on rates keep going up because the market's perceiving that inflation is going to come roaring back. And the price and the reason why is, you know, here in California I pay 615 for a gallon of 87 gasoline. I'm seeing diesel at 8, 850 to $9 a gallon. So you know, diesel drives the economy as, you know, it drives farming equipment, trucks, trains, jet fuel, you know, is a component of that whole oil structure, you know, inflation. And today we had a hot CPI print which is kind of one of the catalysts that kicked off the sell off in the market.
So I think, you know, rates are going to be higher for longer to try to curb that inflation, if not higher. The, a lot of the Fed presidents have signaled you know, potential rate hikes over the course of the next year, which, which will help curb inflation. The only thing is that, you know, we need employment to ease in order for us to stop hiking rates.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Right. And I just, I mean I, you know the truck I drive, right?
I mean when I pulled that bear out of Alaska last year, you were the one that took my truck out of the airport and came and picked me up later, right?
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Big truck. And you know, I pull a horse trailer with it, I use it for what it's intended purpose. But that thing's over 300 bucks to fill it up right now.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: And we're in Montana. Like we're, we're paying 630 maybe for premium because I put good diesel in mine and all that stuff. But like, it's incredible and I think like, and I'm grateful to all of you guys and John who's helped me with my business and all this stuff. It's like I can afford to do that, but I, I feel bad when it, like it puts a squeeze on people.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And, and that's the one thing that's gonna, that will eventually potentially bring down, you know, the, the great market that we've had in the last four years is you've got record high interest rates, the highest in 25 years. You've got the highest gas prices that you've had in, you know, 25 years.
You've got, you've got a lot of the bigger technology companies that were had, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in positive free cash flow now generating negative free cash flow because their capital expenditures or Capex, you know, is into the hundred billion dollar mark. So if you just take the top 10 companies alone, I think their commitments are over like $4 trillion.
So what happens if something goes bad? I remember during the GFC, the 2008 crisis, the, the banking crisis where the Fed came in and rescued those that TARP program, the Toxic Asset Relief program, they bought 800 billion, $900 billion in bonds.
If the federal government were to come in and save the market if something went, you know, south, you're talking not $800 billion, you're talking $10 trillion. That's a lot of money. We're already at $40 trillion in debt.
Yeah, that's just a recipe for something bad to happen.
And you know, you're starting to see a lot of, you're starting to see a lot of the credit default swaps on some of the largest, most profitable companies in this country in the world. Nvidia, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.
You're starting to see the credit default, the, the, the insurance contracts that will ensure those companies debt Go through the roof.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: And that's. Yeah, so. And I mean everybody, we're not trying to scare anyone. Just pay attention and don't jump to make decisions based on something that's happening today.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: It's just.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Because if you have a plan in place, the, if you have the right plan in place, then you're insulated, insulated from these, from these scenarios to begin with.
So then you can like wade through it and walk. You know, you make little moves and you take advantage of what you can. But like, don't make rash decisions based on like some of these things happening. Because if you didn't see it happening now, then you don't have a good advisor that told you to expect it. Because, John, you and I have been com. Totally consistent. Right? We've contacted and that's why we did the podcast today.
We haven't talked a whole lot, but we caught up yesterday and I just said there's a lot of wild stuff going on. Do you want to do this? And said, yeah, so you, you sent me the calendar invite, let's do a podcast. But the point is to have like this kind of analysis in your plan so that you're set up to wade through all the things that everybody else is going to freak out about.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And I mean, you know, today was probably one of the, I don't know, more volatile days in the market. Most everything was down.
There's a lot of underlying damage below the surface that's not showing up in the major indexes yet.
And so, you know, I could take you through a couple of those scenarios and show you just so people can some get some context around what I'm talking about.
But you know, we're only down off the all time high on the S and P, only 1.6%. And you couldn't believe the amount of calls that I received this morning about everyone losing their mind. So, you know, when things are down 20 and 30% is, you know, is a, that's when things get really, really ugly. And I don't think the next time that the market does a correction that we're going to have a V shaped recovery. It might be a very long and slow recovery to break even.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Right. Well, it's not your money until you sell it. Right?
[00:19:45] Speaker B: So yeah, that's right. So, you know, I, I just try to encourage you. We've, we've been on a four year, you know, a bull run. People have had some great returns. So speaking of bonds, you know, you've got to be in the right type of bonds, if you're going to be in bond funds or individual bonds, you've got to be able to buy them at the right price and at the right time with the right duration. Not all bond funds are the same.
And so you have to be thoughtful in, in how you construct that portfolio. You, you can get some pretty attractive yields, but you can also get some really attractive yields and shift the risk that bonds ultimately can hold to the annuity side of the equation. Or maybe you have a great balance of both. You know, I'm not here to advocate one over the other, but I do like, if I can shift risk off of my portfolio onto something else, you know, I'll do that all day long.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I got it.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Depends, depends upon your needs. But you know, right now the, the s and P500, you know, down what, 1.6% from an all time high. NASDAQ is a little bit more, but you're, you are starting to see a little bit of rollover in, you know, financials in utilities and a lot of rate sensitive stocks. And so that's a concern because, you know, markets can't continue to go up unless financials are going up and financials right now are going the opposite direction.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we'll wait and see. Right. I'd love to have you back and we can do a little bit deeper analysis and maybe in a few weeks we'll do this again, if you're okay with that.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. You want me to just show you a couple charts just to see.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Yeah, give you. How about, how about you take like a quick 60 seconds or two minutes maybe and see, see what you can do. Right?
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do that. Give me a second here. So right now kind of looking at the s and P500 so you can, you can see it's probably a little small here.
We're, we are 1.6% off the all time high.
I'll show that to you here.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Which is nothing considering how much it's grown in the past.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Really is nothing. But you want to be, be cognizant. The, the S and P likes to go to its 200 day moving average, which is this red line all the way down here.
That's about seven and a half percent away.
That's enough to get a lot of people's attention.
But then you've also, you have a lot of individual sectors. So The S&P 500 is comprised of, you know, 1112 sectors, financials being one of them. That's the XLF that's a good representation of, of financials. You can see that that financials have significantly rolled over to their 200 day.
So you're seeing a lot of damage. I mean look at bank of America. Bad earnings today. Stock was down significantly. JP Morgan stock has started to roll over. Wells Fargo started to roll over.
If you switch to utilities, what are utilities known for? Great, great dividends, great rates.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Well let's say solid, right?
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Steady, solid. Well when rates on, on, on guaranteed government Treasuries are in the fives, utilities as companies become a lot less attractive at a 3 and 4% dividend rate because of the equity risk that they have. And so if you just look at the xlu, this thing has just gotten just pummeled now. It is, has tried to make a comeback but it's well below the 200 day moving average here. And you know it's entirely off.
You know let's just say that it's all time high was up here.
You know you're down on utilities 11.
Earlier this month you were down almost 17.
You know you can take a look at consumer staples. I think that's xl.
Xlp.
Let's see. Consumer staples, I don't know what it is but I mean consumer staples, it's just gotten hammered. We could look at small caps, very interest rate sensitive.
Small caps just broke the 200 day moving average.
You know, small caps, you're down over 10%, you're down 11%.
If it does not hold this 200 day or get back above it, you've got some issues. You know, you could get, you could get lower and that's where things start to, to really deteriorate. On the other hand, XL C I think XLV is healthcare.
Look at that.
Healthcare didn't do well at all earlier this year. And you know it's defensive, it's a defensive sector.
Xli.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah, because when the market takes, it takes a dump then everybody has a heart attack, right?
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, so you know, healthcare, which has kind of underperformed over the last several years, you know it's, it just, it hasn't performed as well as the other indexes. You know it started off the year going way, way down and has really, really recovered and it's, it's showing signs of relative strength versus a lot of other sectors. So healthcare is something to watch.
Typically in big recessionary environments. Healthcare is typically the best performing system sector because people got to continue to go to the Dr.
Industrials.
Look at that. I mean you know you talk about picks and shovels of the AI trade. You're talking about Caterpillar. You're talking about, you know, all sorts of things.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: John Deere farming equipment, all that stuff.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Airlines, you know, this trade is really rolled over, down 11.6% yet on the spy or the S&P 500, we're only down 1.6%.
So, you know, and we all, and
[00:25:54] Speaker A: we, we all know why that is, right?
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Well, it's because of, it's, it's because of technology.
You know, if we just look at the North American Technology index, this is it. But it rolled over it, you know, all time high. It's had a really big red candle today.
If I just zoom in on this for you, you know, here, here's where we were.
We had that sell off in April right here.
We went way, way up here. You know, I mean, unprecedented rally and then we literally have just gone sideways for the rest of the year. I mean, we're, we're at the same spot we were back in May.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: So, you know, people, most of people's return from this year has come here. And then we've just had a lot of chop.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: So if this trade decides to fall over and go back down to the 200 or God forbid, go negative, you know, let's hope that doesn't happen. But remember, technology is almost 40% of the S&P 500.
The top 20 stocks really hold like almost 60% of the S&P 500 in.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: That's wild. This chart right here is what kind of what, like, you know, that, what's, that's what the year has felt like to me.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it has, because we've just chopped sideways. I mean, literally, we've just, it's in, in trader talk, we really, we call it chop. We've just, we're in a sideways market. If I just, you know, if I get rid of all these drawings here, uh, let's just put this in a box.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: And I, I, I'm gonna say that my box is, is down here. My box is here.
If I get my drawing tool to work. Here's my, here's my consolidation box here. So that's just a consolidation. It's not the market going up, it's not the market going down.
But if we were to get to the bottom of the box, you can really see, you know, let's just, let's just go to the bottom of the box. Bottom of the range.
Yeah, it's pretty far down there. But where does it coincide with exactly the 200 day moving average.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: So, so if we do get a sell off, if we don't rally, you probably come down to the 200 day average.
And then, you know, you gotta look at, you know, where's, where's your support here? And I'll just go out like a year.
Okay, Your support's way down here.
So could you potentially do something like this, fall even further till you get to this, this, you know, prior consolidation zone?
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: That's all I'm saying.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: So you're gonna adjust that line downward is what you're saying, right?
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna bore you with this stuff. It's just what I look at every day, very cognizant of that. I'm starting to talk to people about moving a little bit more into value. Moving into, and clients that have, have mostly value portfolios, they're not as up as much as the market. But on bad days like this, like I had a client, you know them too. Yeah, great guy out of South Florida.
He's positive on the day market was down 2%.
Yeah, so that's what, that's why you
[00:29:15] Speaker A: pay an asset manager. I tell everybody, right.
You could fall off a truck in the last four years and make money in the stock market and charge someone for it.
You either beat the marker or you got a risk manager that can protect you from the wild swings of the market. And you gotta be patient over time.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think it's, I mean, I would never say beat the market. I have, I have a lot of clients that have done well this year and that are, you know, trending above the average of the market, but Those people are 100% equities.
If you have anything that's, that's, that's, you know, different than, than 100% equities. You're not going to outperform the market. I don't care what you're in. So if you have a, a 6040 portfolio or an 8020 portfolio, you're not going to, you know, you're not. But it's, it's the downside risk that you want to be cognizant of when you're in retirement. You know, ex, you know, I, I remember I had a conversation with a client in 2022 where he said, what are we going to do about the quarter million dollars? I'm down if you, you know, and he was only down like 10, you know, so he was beating the market in terms of being down, but he was still down a quarter million dollars to him. That's a lot of money. That is a lot of money. I mean that sometimes people don't save that in a lifetime. And he was only down 10%.
But it was a meaningful amount. Remember, the market was down 23 at, at its lowest point, I believe in 2022.
So risk management is real.
You know, we could talk about like bond funds.
You know, biggest issue I have with bond funds are that unless you buy them properly, you know, there's a lot of new bond funds out there that are called, so called interval funds.
They only offer like quarterly liquidity and God forbid everyone want to get out. They gate you which means you can't get your money out and you're at the mercy of the fund manager.
Those funds are, are like weapons of mass destruction. They're like, they go in the category of, you know, for me, airlines and, and shoe companies and, and, and options and, and levered ETFs. I mean those are kind of like my do not touch interval fund.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Right.
All good stuff. And it's like honestly we should, we could do a follow up on this and we certainly will. Whenever you're ready. John.
Awesome to have you shed some insight on this. It's not meant to scare anybody. It's a, it's just a motivation to plan and be ready because things can change in an instant. I never thought that we'd have, you know, may have five years ago. I'd been like, I was at the end of 10 years of dealing with no rate interest rates and trying to think of different ways for people to do stuff.
And now we got, it's like, you know, we got some guys that you know, know buying mygas or whatever kids in the candy shop. It's like, I can guarantee this, no problem. Right? A plus companies giving you more than 6% guaranteed with no interest rate risk.
Holy cow. It's good. So anyway, John, thanks for, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Thank you Brian. Appreciate it. It's good to, good to catch up with you.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: And if you're, if you're off vacation for a little while, maybe we'll do it again.
I give him a hard time. He takes some cool trips. Cause his wife's got a nice job and you know, corporate travel.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, I'm never, you know, I think this is my, I, I was on a 14 hour plane ride earlier this year. I think that was the longest away. I was away from the market.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: People ask me, I, my doctor asked me what's your hobby. And I said, I don't stock market. You know, it's hard to get away from. You know, I. I have a lot of responsibility. I take my responsibility very seriously with a lot of people's. We, we, my, my firm, we manage, you know, about a half a billion dollars and, you know, it's a big responsibility that we take very seriously. So.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Well, your light went dark right when you said that, so that's a good sign, I guess.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: I know this auto light. I don't know what's going on with it.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's okay. All right, cool. Hey guys every. Thank you everybody for joining us for episode 2 40. Don't bother John. If you want to talk to him, you get a hold of me first. Top right corner of any page on annuitystraight talk.com. this has been episode 240, John. Thank you. And we'll do it again sometime. You guys all have a great. Yeah, Apple. All right, cool. We'll see you guys next week for episode 241. All right, bye.
