Latest / Winning With Winans! / Jeff Zylestra e28-Wall Street's Next Big Crypto Move Could Change Everything

Transcript

Jeff Zylestra e28-Wall Street's Next Big Crypto Move Could Change Everything · Winning With Winans!

• speaker-0: Well I guess is another time for an episode of Winning with Winens. Let's go. And welcome to Winning with Wine is Las Vegas newest and coolest financial show. I am your host, Ken Winens. And for those of you who still don't know me yet, I am a financial commentator on radio and Forge magazine for the last 25 years. I am most importantly, I do walk the talk. I founded a very successful investment management firm in 1992. Today, Winens Investments is the only Morningstar topped rank money manager based in Las Vegas. And as we just discovered, Morningstar AI did a full analysis on their entire database, and Wynan's investments is top ranked pretty much in the entire world. So I'm very proud of that. We'll talk more about that later. But hey, yeah, it's a competitive world. It's always good to point out where our you have successes. But look, over the next hour, I want to we're going to be covering very important current events and things that are going on in the world. And what is important to realize, there is a lot of news going on. There's also a lot of BS that I want to try to cover. I do cover nine different periodicals every week. I try to stay on top of the news. And the big reason I do it, I'm trying to get different perspectives on these same stories, especially with it being an election year or election midterms. We have a lot going on there. So we're gonna cover stocks, bonds, real estate commodities. And later in the show, we're gonna have an extensive talk about cryptocurrency with one of our regular guests who happens to be based in Melbourne, Australia. So we have a lot to talk about geopolitically. But winning with wine is is really different, folks. We try to make it about not day-to-day happenings, but try to look at the overall trends that are happening, i.e., connecting all those dots. So let's get started. So, first off, here we are. We're it's hard to believe that we're almost halfway through October. Now, look, I know October always has this horrible, you know, illusions about what happened, as I remember very well. nineteen eighty seven or people who study history, the crash in nineteen twenty nine. But the reality of it is, and and I've been been saying this quite a bit, it's a good time to get your stock buying list together and get ready because from October, November, December, January, there's some of the best months to be an investment. And like many of you, it it it's actually a little distorted a little distortive right now because many people are just looking at the Nasdaq and saying, hey, We didn't have a summer correction. Well, that might be true in tech, but it's not true in everything else, folks. Look at the Dow, look at the SP four hundred medcap, Russell two thousand. and quite frankly, if we want to look at old S P five hundred before they turn it into a revolving door of all what's new and hot, the market did have a pullback from oct from August, really through most of September. You can find a lot of good stocks that are in buy position right now. But as I said, It's time to get those lists together, get ready about things. Okay, midterm election focus. Number one thing I've been hearing from clients, and it literally it I have to be honest, in my entire career, I don't remember politics playing that much of discussion. It it did play some discussion. I mean, I do remember some clients when Bill Clinton was elected president, they thought the world was going to come to an end. And at the same time, When Donald Trump was elected the first time, I had the other end of the spectrum, thinking the world was going to come to the end. But the point is this: the pendulum is getting more extreme, and people are really allowing it to affect their decision making on their money. So this midterm focus, I'm hearing the same issues over and over again. Both sides are gonna destroy each other, all this other stuff. But what I would say is this: on the last episode, I talked a lot about how much, and I and by the way, I think even As we're seeing what's happening in France, as socialism in Europe is really beginning to have problems, we need to really ask ourselves the question on both sides: how much government do you want involved in your life? And I know that look, we we all see what the prices are at the gas pump. We especially for anybody who buys anything, remember in the case of diesel fuel, every truck, every ship, every railroad train, even to some degree around the airports. operates on diesel. It's having a big effect on things. I am of the opinion that going into next year, the refining the refineries of the United States and really pretty much all around the world, they're readjusting the demand. And I think that we will see these kind of price issues come down. That's my opinion. And also I think as we get earnings reports over the next couple of weeks, there's going to be a slate of earnings. And when the big oil companies come out, watch what they say about what they're doing with refining. Look and see what the big refiners and the pipeline companies are saying about what they're doing there. I think we're gonna find there's gonna be a big push to basically add more supply to the system. Also our strategic reserves. We've been draining them down. We now need to bring them back. So demand for oil is gonna pick up. And I think that again, with what we've done in increasing our capacity for oil in this country through fracking, certainly offshore. we're gonna find that it's gonna probably work out pretty well. Other quick thing I'd bring up, I know that we're all this focused on gasoline and diesel. Natural gas has barely moved, folks. It hasn't moved. So it's not like the 1970s. I keep bringing this up over and over again. This is a different animal. It's not all just tied to what's going on in the Middle East. Do not forget, like I talked about last episode, Venezuela. We have a new ally in oil. And I think that we're going to find that that will also help us in the Western hemisphere. So I think we always want to be aware of those things and just, you know, also the other thing I think that is is in the news, AI. you know, the extremes of thought on it are amazing. Everything from terminators are gonna be, you know, becoming soldiers and we're gonna be, you know, playing like in a movie. To, hey, it's gonna be everything's gonna be okay. I've been around long enough to know, and I'm talking about from a financial standpoint. the number of times that I have been told that my job is gonna be replaced by a computer, I was hearing this back in 1985. Okay. I heard this in the 1987 when then we had the 87 stock market crash, which was computer driven selling with computer driven exchanges. We all I remember many of you don't know, but the market just suddenly went out of it fell out of bed twenty eight percent in about thirty seconds. I remember the flash crashes of two thousand ten and eleven, right in the middle of a geopolitical mess in Europe with Greece defaulting on its debt, problems in Spain. And we had there was a I remember the exact movement, but Proctor and Gamble, which this company's been around for 130 years, the stock suddenly was worth zero for about four seconds. So technology is not perfect. AI is not going to be perfect. what I would tell you is that I think at the end of the day, it's gonna have a different effect on different parts of American society and the economy. If I had to lay bets right now, I was literally just telling as we're in an election cycle right now. I think the biggest impact we're gonna see with AI is gonna be on the public sector. I think when you think about government bureaucracies, whether it's at the federal, state, or local level. we can cut expenses and probably increase efficiency and effectiveness with AI in a lot of these just more routine things. I know that people who work for government don't want to hear that, but you know, it is gonna have an effect on anything that is a mundane job. But again, the AI conversation and the investment we're making in it, it has now surpassed pretty much any other major push we've had. That includes the build-out on World War II, World War One, the railroads in the eighteen hundreds. We're really laying our chips down on AI. And I think we have to because there it is a global race with China, Russia, other countries in the world. It's something we don't want to get behind on. Okay. I'm going to talk in the later part of the show about this absolute mess that's happened in the bond world. And I'm going to lay out a very strong tr critique about what's going on. But let me also say something I'm very proud of. I know in our case with one is investments, we build a lot of bond portfolios. And if you followed proper discipline, it hasn't been a great year for income investors. But at the only end of the day, the people who've really gotten hit are the people who have bought bonds that were coming due in 20, 30 years out. You know, you were taking some very bad advice. And I think again, instead of just blaming interest rates themselves going up, you have to look at the broader thing, which is your investment strategy was probably off. So I think again, we're going to find very, very different results. Within ETFs and mutual funds when it comes to fixed income investing. And you just need to think that one through long and hard. Okay, real estate. I think it's gonna be very interesting when we get the numbers going into the fall on everything that's happening with with mortgages and all the rest of it. But I'm just gonna throw this out very quickly. What we all seem to be forgetting is that there are still three big deductions that alternative minimum tax does not hit. Mortgages under a million bucks are one of them. So again, you have to remember that yes, it sounds bad, a 7% mortgage, which I'm old enough to remember that was considered normal. But by the time you deduct it on your taxes, you now have a mortgage that realistically is back in the high fives. Talk to your accountant about it. They'll correct, they'll confirm that I'm correct. But listen, we're gonna take a very quick break before we get into our next guess. I love talking with this guy. It's always good to hear what's going on with cryptocurrencies around the world. And I do think we talk about AI being a big deal. AI and crypto are hand in hand. I really believe that. So this is Ken Winins with Winning with Winins. We're going to take a quick break and come back with our guest. And welcome back to Winning with Wine is Las Vegas newest and coolest financial show. I'm your host, Ken Winens. And you know what? I always like to have regular guests, especially people that we can honestly say it's international. So we have Jeff Alestra from Up Trade Crypto Brokerage. There he is, he's waving. He didn't he didn't bring his cowboy hat this time, though. That's okay. We'll overlook it. Jeff, how are you doing, my friend? speaker-1: Another day in paradise. Everything's rosy on my end, no complaints. speaker-0: I love it. Rosie Onura. I thought I thought it was an American term and now we know it's a an Aussie term. But listen, you know, from the last time you and I talked, talk about big happenings in crypto. you know, we know it's all geopolitical, they're all interconnected, but I mean, look at what's going on with Bitcoin breaking out, everybody's paying attention to it. One of the big worries I had is there was gonna be a US tax loss selling. That's clearly not gonna happen. It has been on a tear, but hey, fill me in. Tell me, what's your thoughts on everything? speaker-1: Yeah, well look, I'll give you a quick recap. It's been up until recently, doom and gloom in the crypto market since probably a good 12 months, right? It's been yeah, pretty, pretty brutal drawdown across a lot of assets. and to be honest, the attention just hasn't been on crypto. They the attention has been on AI, it's been on stocks, it's been on commodities. there's so many other places, there were so many other places to make money, right? And we were sort of We actually called the local sort of bottom on Bitcoin back at the end of June there. And we were waiting to see Bitcoin get above eighty-two before we can confirm anything. So we kind of moved from from bearish to neutral and then bullish after 82. And a lot of positive things have happened in the in the literally just the last couple of weeks. And that and that's how crypto and Bitcoin works. It can switch on a dime. It can literally just turn turn it on so quickly. And yeah, it was a little bit of Interesting volatility there with the Clarity Act just stalling, you know, not enough people have their pockets lined to make sure that thing can go through. But look, the C SEC and CFTC certainly came out and and went and pushed it ahead anyway. And yeah, no, there's a lot of you know, the regulation essentially allows, you know, companies to participate, more money to come in, more innovation to happen. So I think we're in a yeah, a whole new paradigm at the moment. speaker-0: Well, and in you know, there was a big article last week in in the American press. I guess it was Citicorp is now teaming up with Coinbase for their own tokenization. You know, we talked about that on the last interview that we did. You know, everybody forgets the US banks are already in this. Whether the government does anything or not, they all have their own blockchain technologies. They're gonna be using it. It it's here to stay. It's not going anywhere. speaker-1: Yeah, exactly correct. And what we're starting to see is the the the battle lines are essentially starting to be drawn. You know, BlackRock is aligning with Ondo. You have, you know, all these different projects coming out and aligning with crypto companies or all these companies lining up with crypto companies to be able to offer their their own tokenized versions of different assets and real world assets, gold stocks, the the works, and you know, having the the SEC have the the tokenized equity exemption for licensed companies is massive. It literally just brings down the drawbridge and allows more participation, which leads to more innovation. So it's honestly that that's probably the biggest news for me since the Bitcoin ETF. This is huge. speaker-0: that's great. And you know, not to get political, but it is an election cycle. I mean, we have a president who is very pro crypto and AI in the United States. And I think that that's not a bad thing. I mean, I know people are now talking there, and I I'm I'm sure you have to deal with this a lot. Everybody melds crypto and AI kind of in one single sentence. And they are interconnected in a lot of ways. I mean, they're part of the new economy, and certainly the economy going forward. But I think you have to you do have to separate. There, those are two different elements of a lot of things. the you know, Jeff, I'll just bring this up right quick. And I know we get a lot of topics covered here. The number one thing I keep hearing about from clients, fellow money managers, I'm sure you're hearing it in your neck of the woods, is 24-7 trading. And I know that a lot of people are concerned that in the lack of any meaningful type of circuit breaker. You know, how are people humans gonna be on top of twenty four seven and a lot of people in in the financial service industry in the US don't wanna have to live that way. What do you tell people when this comes up in a conversation? speaker-1: Look, there are many positives to this type of you know, to this type of change to not having circuit breakers. once but it does take out a lot of manipulation, you know, a lot of insider trading can go away because then anyone can trade it 247, 365 from around the globe. So I think there's there's more benefits than people think, but people are, you know, obviously what we haven't seen before can can be scary. You know, but at the end of the day, circuit breakers are just in to stop things from happening either up or down, but markets should play out naturally. And that's why crypto is so volatile because we are seeing that play out in real time. the benefits I believe far outweigh the the negatives. So yes, it will be volatile. But but that's the nature of Beast, right? it will allow people from globally from Southeast Asia and Australia to trade European stocks, equities in Canada and the US without needing a brokerage account and vice versa. And you can trade it on the weekends live when as geopolitical things are you know unfolding live. You don't need to wait until Monday. So it's it's a bit of a an updated system to put it simply. So it definitely needs an update, and we're here for it. speaker-0: No, hey, what are you gonna do when you go on a vacation though, Jeff? I'm just I'm teasing you know I'm teasing you, mate. You know I'm teasing you, mate. I'm just teasing you. speaker-1: well I I already work in a twenty four seven market, so it's yeah, we got people for that. So speaker-0: You know what's funny? I I tell I mean, I've been in the game a very long time. Yes, you can talk about there being a vacation. Your eyes are always on it's a fun game. The working in this industry is a privilege. And you're always paying attention. I mean, people saying, I'm turning it off. You're really not. I mean, I'm looking at stuff on the weekend. I know you are. Everybody around the world is. But you know, this now again, this is something that we're hearing here. you know, and and actually, you know what? One of the best things about our in our last interview you brought up, and I loved it because I've been thinking a lot about that, even if, okay, let's say everybody did want to have circuit breakers, are you gonna be able to get a universal circuit breaker? That would be awfully hard to pass. I don't think it I mean, imagine how hard that would be. It's the same with AI regulation. You're not gonna get global consensus on this. So I think it in a weird way, some of those are the same. But let's you talk speaker-1: I I certainly sorry, I'll just chime in there real quick. I certainly believe in in guardrails to protect for consumer protection, to to protect investors, to make sure people aren't being defrauded, to make sure markets aren't collapsing unnecessarily due to technical failure or fault. like there's definitely reasons for having a circuit breaker, but it if it's to limit or manipulate a market, then that is I'm fully against that. And that that's we've seen a lot of that in the past, and that needs to go away. speaker-0: Yeah, I I totally agree with that. Hey, I want to go back real quick. You started talking about BlackRock and Ondo. Let's talk about these three new token investment portfolios. What are they tokenizing? Because I I totally miss this. speaker-1: Yeah, so umdo essentially is the leader for for real world assets. So for those I think quite a few people may have heard about real world assets but for those hearing it for the first time, it's essentially the tokenization of things in the real world. So it can be you have a business, you can you can privatize it, tokenize it. If you have a house, you can do the same, a boat, a car, a you know, a a bar of gold, you can tokenize it into a million pieces. so they're working on essentially digitizing a lot of different things. And and the beauty of it is is it it lowers the barrier to entry for investors. Now I know that for example in Australia the median house price is you know up to maybe one to one point five million dollars, and you need a 20% deposit to get started with a tokenized real estate purchase. I could buy, you know, one token, a hundred different homes if I wanted to. So there's a vast advantages to it, and I think that BlackRock Franklin Templeton and they see that. So they they've essentially picked the blue chip runner, which is essentially ondo, and they are gonna be the eye and needle for everything that is gonna be tokenized, I believe. So speaker-0: Wow. That well now hey, let me go back real quick on the real estate tokenization. Is it gonna include US properties or strictly properties in other parts of the world? speaker-1: Look, I think it's I envision it to be everywhere, you know, like buildings in Manhattan, apartments, you know, even even big builds, you know, it can be across the world. I I don't think there is a limit to obviously it'd have to be in a in a reasonably regulated and trusted, high trust market. You know, so I would imagine places like, you know, London. you know the UK for example, US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, places where there's high regulation and already have quite mature real estate markets, I imagine that would be that that would be a good starting place. speaker-0: Okay. Yeah, because one thing in the U.S. markets, I mean, it it's it might sound strange. We really don't have a f a federal real estate division at the federal level. Every state has their own real estate commissioners and their own licensing requirements for brokers. So I mean it might it might be a little bit of a of a slug through the U.S. markets, but as you said, you can certainly pick some of the bigger and bigger ones that they they're having trouble coming with the money for a house. But no, I I love it, Jeff. I gotta tell you, I've talking Talking forever, when everybody starts talking about crypto, I'm I there was the one area in the United States you you think about here we are in the 21st century. And if you're gonna go through and try to buy a house in the United States, you you have an escrow that goes on for 30 to 45 days. And I used to ask people all the time, why do we still have to have title insurance? This is not the old West anymore. Okay, you pretty much know everything. If there's one place for tokenization, it it's real estate. And the and I I've thought I felt that way for a long time. All right, but let's jump into but we'll go ahead, I'm sorry. speaker-1: Yeah, just to tie off what you said really nicely, well, you know, the SEC coming out with a tokenized equity exemption, they could very well do the same thing with real estate. You know, we like we that that came out of left field. We like that was very unlikely to happen. and it it look it would be great if it could happen in real estate as well. Just really break down those barriers of innovation and get things moving quickly. speaker-0: Love it. Hey, the I'll throw another one your way. If you and I want to work together on this real or insurance products, insurance products in the United States are still dreadfully overpriced. I'm talking about annuities, policies. There's another area that really needs modernization in a lot of ways. So I love it, Jeff. This is so cool. Okay, let's let's switch gears here. The clearinghouse, owned by the 25 biggest US banks. is s basically selecting quant. Look fill me in on this. What's going on there? speaker-1: Yeah, so and yeah, it's pretty pretty pretty clear. So yeah, the clearing house owned by 25 of the biggest US banks selected quant. they're a blockchain to power its on-chain money initiative. So essentially it is backed by the banks, and the banks have picked a crypto project slash blockchain to to use as a conduit to invest all their money. So that's that's huge news. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Everyone would have thought it would maybe been Ethereum or Solana. And yeah, the gains on that token were th phenomenal. It literally went past its 2021 high in something like three days. So it was an insane, insane move for that token. speaker-0: I'm looking all right, let me correct let me am I looking at this right? It moved up five hundred percent from its lows. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, five hundred percent. speaker-0: Hey man, forget AI stocks. Here's where the money is. speaker-1: Yeah, well, Robinhood just launched their own blockchain as well, and their first runner did something like 30 30x returned in 12 days. speaker-0: Wow. speaker-1: So, like like the the attention is back on crypto. We're we're at the start of a new cycle. and look, there's more money involved, there's more companies involved, there's more regulation involved, we have Trump involved. we have more things going for crypto than we ever have. so yeah, I think people are starting to see that and the attention has certainly come back. And yeah, it's it's gonna be really interesting to see how the next one or two years plays out, that's for sure. speaker-0: Well, I certainly without a doubt. My friend, we got to take a really quick break for a radio break, and then we'll be right back to to talk about all the other great things going on in the land of crypto and tokenization. This is Ken Winins, winning with Winins. We'll be right back. And welcome back to Winning with One is Las Vegas' newest and coolest financial show with my friend across the the Pacific Pond, Jeff Electra from Up Trade Crypto Brokerage in Melbourne, Australia. He's you know, he's having his morning, we're having our evening. But we spent the first half talking about all these amazing things that are happening in crypto. And I, as I commented to Jeff during the break, Folks, we I haven't heard this on any other platform, at least in the in the what we would call the conventional financial news pipe. So, Jeff, let's jump ahead here. where we left off, we were talking about what was going on with you know, the the big banks are now getting involved. Let's talk about the other exchanges. Okay, now I know there was some bad news. It had to do with hackers. And then on top of it, you know, I just came back from Washington, DC a couple weeks ago. we have a big Vegas, DC flying, which by the way, if you can ever swing it, I'd love to take you to it because you're getting 300 of the most prominent people in Nevada going back to DC, meeting with all the big wigs. And since it's a U.S. swing state in elections, everybody shows up. But what everybody was talking about, I was really surprised by this, was talking about how is Iran able to finance itself. When there's a complete embargo and a immediately crypto was was the the guilty co agent in this. What's your thoughts on what's going on? And let's talk about the big hack that happened at at the Bitget Exchange. speaker-1: Yeah, sure, sure. I'll I'll start off with the the the move the illegal movement of of assets, I guess, between Iran and other countries. look, the the thing is with with crypto being a bit of a free market, you know, you don't need an intermediary or a bank to to approve the transaction. unfortunately there is still a lot of illicit movements in crypto, right? That being used by by sanctioned governments, Russia is heavily using it. I know that North Korea, they they're some of the biggest crypto hackers in the world. The Lazarus group, they're they're behind most large hacks. I'm pretty sure they're behind the recent Bitget hack as well. so look, you know, you you give a bad man a a gun, a bad man will do bad things, right? So but that's just that's how it's gonna go. So but look, I think that crypto is more regulated and a lot of the stable coin issuers and a lot of the companies that are You know, that these criminals are using their assets to move, like there is a lot more power from law enforcement to be able to freeze these assets and to be able to make it extremely hard to offboard the the assets themselves. Yes, you can move them on chain, but who's gonna sell them to cash for you? That's the biggest problem that you know that there is. And you know, in relation to to Bitget, you know, very, very bad news. Last week they got compromised for around 350 million US dollars, so Look, it's not a it's not a new thing. I think probably every month a major exchange does get hacked. it's usually through social engineering, you know, somebody clicks a link that they shouldn't have clicked, their device gets compromised unknowingly, and then they get access to things they shouldn't. So, you know, obviously Trezor as well, massive wallet, one of the biggest wallet providers in the world, 80,000 customer names, addresses and phone numbers leaked. So that's really that's really scary stuff, you know. If you've got 100 Bitcoin and you've got 10, 20, 30 mil in crypto, and now your address and phone number is leaked, that's that's a that's a real safety issue there. And unfortunately, Cold Card, one of the oldest crypto wallets, heralded as the best crypto wallet by some of the oldest Bitcoin OGs in the space, got dragged for over 150 million bitcoin. So look, it just goes to Nothing is completely foolproof, nothing is completely safe. Never keep your assets in one place. Have multiple venues, have multiple layers of security. because it just takes one mistake to to blow it all up. So speaker-0: Hey Jeff, real quick on that. No, it was cold storage. How do you hack cold storage? I yeah, well the any idea on that one? speaker-1: Yeah, so with Trezor, their their actual company got hacked and they were able to get the customer data. So it would be it would have been CRM data, customer relationship management software that was compromised, possibly a third party. Cold Card, however, they they they built essentially unknowingly, they built a backdoor. So they were the hackers were able to reverse engineer the the the barcode essentially. The so when you get the product, it's brand new, it's got its own license codes and barcodes on the back. The hackers were able to reverse engineer that and realize that all the private keys, all the secret passphrases were actually contained within those numbers. So we were able to reverse engineer it and then unlock the passwords and hack all the accounts simultaneously. So yeah, that was so I I'd say that that is a design flaw rather than a hack. speaker-0: Yeah. No, that well and speaker-1: Yeah, I think we sorry, go on. speaker-0: I was gonna say because w the war the one thing we do not people need to know if you generally speaking, if you use cold storage and it's really true cold storage where it's just tied off, you're you're you're fine. Your biggest worry is you you lose your password or you lose your storage device. That to me is a far bigger concern. But that is that I mean that was a shocker to a lot of people when they hear that phrase. But Jeff, what else is but that is catching your eyes right now on crypto? Anything else that's really Yeah, newsworthy that so to speak. speaker-1: Yeah, well, I'm not sure if we mentioned it last time or touched on it, but Robin Hood has entered the crypto space. For those who are not familiar with Robinhood, I need a reminder, they were part of the the meme stocks stocks meme stocks pump several years ago back in 2021 during COVID, famously pumping companies like Blockbuster and and things like that. So they have essentially planned for many years to enter the crypto space with their own blockchain, they have successfully launched. as of I think possibly the last eight weeks or so. And they've had they've had a huge success even competing with with Solana there as well. so the the CEO is is firmly backing it and he's very public about it. And I think we're gonna see a a lot of moves from some of these major players, traditional finance players, moving into crypto to get part of the frenzy. Yeah, so that that's a big thing for now. and I'd say that the big the big focus in crypto right now is revenue fi. So it's essentially, you know. crypto projects that actually make revenue. I know it sounds pretty simple and that's an expectation of most companies, but it's long known that a lot of crypto does nothing or it sells vaporware or it's a meme and it's a joke. But the big focus now about since traditional finance has been stepping in is all right, what are the fundamentals here? What is driving this token? Now does this token provide any value to the end user? You know, and just really looking for that flywheel and revenue. So that is a dominant theme this cycle which is refreshing to see. So yeah, so people are moving to value plays, infrastructure plays over pure speculative plays. And that's what the space really needs to mature. speaker-0: Well, you know, it it all has one word that's that's back in all these things. Liquidity. People are trying to figure out how to gain liquidity out of illiquid areas of the financial world. So you think about what we talked about in the first segment with real estate, that's certainly a big one. A lot of insurance products. And now, you know, I have to say, private cap and private debt, or or PE is certainly having the same issue. people want to be able to monetize their investments. And it seems to me that Crypto can come to the rescue for those people who in fact want that. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's good to see that the the market, the the the narrative is has essentially shifted. Because crypto for a very long time was down with the banks, down with the governments, down with the institutions. But you can only push that so far because be able to get mass adoption and real innovation, you're kind of going to work hand in hand. You know, throw down the swords and start shaking hands and say, hey, how do we make the financial system better? How do we make it more effective and efficient? You know, how do we give more opportunity to invest? How do we lower the barrier to entry for everybody around the world? So yeah, we're we're I think we're in this whole new paradigm shift now. And we're seeing things that haven't been seen before in terms of traditional finance, working with crypto companies and regulators and governments even taking away red tax So this is a world first. speaker-0: Hey, and we have a president who likes who likes crypto. So you've got to love that one. So, you know, he's a rather controversial president. We know he is globally, but this is one area that anybody in finance, hey, yay, we have somebody who actually wants to get into this. Jeff, if anybody wants to work with you, open an account, because I love the fact you are a traditional brokerage house. You provide research. You're it's an old model in a very new area. How do they get a hold of you? Because I know you do work with U.S. clients. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So it's pretty pretty straightforward. You just jump onto our website. It's uptrade.co and schedule an appointment with a complimentary appointment with one of our professional crypto brokers. you know, we typically work with you know high net worth, we we work with business owners, yeah, we work with a multitude of different people, people that want to invest their 401k. It's about 10,000 to get started and you have a step-by-step handheld process from start to finish. You're assigned a broker, you have access to a research team. So yeah, for for too long we've realized that. You know, too many people are losing money in crypto. There's too many bad stories out there. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And the difference between the people that that do well and make money and the people that don't is knowledge and experience. So we believe we bring that to the table for our clients so they can actually have a safe avenue to invest securely, invest smarter, not harder, and be able to accumulate real wealth over the long term and you know during this digital gold rush. So yeah. speaker-0: Well, and then you're gonna be in the Vegas area sometime next year. And it'd be fun to actually have you in the studio where we can actually talk more about this and maybe even get to you know get together with some face-to-face people on stuff. Jeff, I can't thank you enough for your time. and look we'll it look I wanna do this every quarter, okay? We're gonna have a quarter recap on crypto and as you say, or when things happen. But my friend, go enjoy your beautiful morning or morning in Melbourne, Australia. And we'll talk again soon. speaker-1: Thanks once again, Ken, for having me on the show. Thanks for the team as well. You've got a great team out there. And yeah, bye for now. speaker-0: All right, bye for now. Take care, my friend. Bye-bye. And welcome back to Winning with Wine as Las Vegas' newest and coolest financial show. But you know what? I probably have to start saying no longer just Las Vegas, because our last guest was from Melbourne, Australia. It just goes to show the marvels of the way the world works today. And I just think that we need to think in broader terms about crypto, AI, and the changes in the world. By my nature, I'm an optimist. Although I don't think things are perfect. I'm also a realist. But I do think we have to really take a good long look. about everything that's going on. Okay, I want to talk about the the probably the biggest thing that's going on in the world because although we're all just giddy with excitement about the Nasdaq hitting a new high or the SP five hundred. And you know, the only thing I'm going to bring up on that, beware of rebalancing of indices. I have had extensive training and statistics, and it is my opinion that when you're constantly changing the mix and makeup of what's actually in your Nasdaq 100, Or your S P 500, when those are it's almost like if for those of you remember when we had when Coca-Cola tried to play with its formula, it went from old Coke to new Coke, it went back to old Coke. You have to ask yourself a question: what is the market? And realistically, I think you got to look at the whole picture. But it is a very volatile year. I think many people will realize it has not gone straight up if you're realistic. But let me talk about where the world is really interesting right now. And let me lay a backdrop here. You know, for those of us who remember the Great Recession of 2008, 2009. And by the way, there's a little bit of a history lesson here, so I want everybody to listen. it was catastrophic. I mean, you had r real estate falling out of bed, stock market lost 50% of its value. it and largely was caused because people operated on the assumption that real estate would never go down in value. So people kept buying houses. I mean, look at what happened in Las Vegas. It was literally ground zero. For the housing debacle back then. I and the reason I bring it up because I mean, if for those who remember, Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve, actually thought we should just that we should destroy new houses to try to drop the excess supply. Well, anyway, this was a mortgage driven crisis, and people were over indebted in debt. Okay, moving forward. The government's suggestion was that we bring rates down to zero, which is exactly what we did. For those of us that used to joke about money market rates at.002%, it was basically free money. So it did help stem that tragedy from turning into a much worse economic scenario. Although I think the government did it l less than we think it did to help correct the problem. It was just good old fashioned economics. But the reality of it is we then went to the housing market recovering, record low mortgages, record low student loan rates. Record low auto loans, same problem. The mistake was the government kept rates too low for too long. There's and by the way, all parties are to blame, all administrations are to blame. No one had the courage to gradually bring rates up over several years until and of course COVID exasperated it. And then finally in 2022, when inflation was really picking up to the point where none of us want it to be at, the Fed finally had to bite the bullet and bring up rates. So, whoa, folks, in my way of looking at it as a historian, rates are where they normally should be. Go to your local bank. CDs now are paying three to four percent. That's what a CD should pay, in my opinion. There's a lot of people who should not have to invest who don't feel comfortable in doing it. Okay, let's move it a little bit forward. The other big thing that Wall Street's been, and I love how Wall Street loves to repackage everything. The game is still the same. You either own or you loan. It's the same game. But then I I've come from several conferences over the last couple of years. The big push was on what they call alts, alternative investments. And the big one that everybody's been pushing has been private equity, private debt. Well, guess what happened? Now with what's going on with interest rates, private debt has gotten into trouble. In fact One of the biggest backers of private equity type deals, their private equity executives all quit because it's not going well. I we're now seeing again the issue about student loans are coming up. We're talking about the 40 trillion that the federal government owns. And then the other big one, and I'm talking about it more in a market, is I've been saying for a while, it's the whole mess with municipal bond debt throughout the country. But I want to go back and I just want to remind everybody I said earlier in the show. If you followed common sense, if you really listen to a time-tested strategy, if you had bonds in your portfolio, it's not been a great year. But you know what? You're not in the red. A lot and people are going to be shocked when they get their statements from their mutual fund companies and ETFs. They're going to see things they thought were safe, the key word safe, and we're going to define that in a moment, are suddenly down six and seven percent in price. And they're they this this was supposed to be the conservative part of their portfolio. and then it's it's a boomerang. Okay. So let's talk about again, reiterating what is default mean. Okay. Treasury bonds. Okay, for people who were running out, you know, when rates were near zero, they didn't want to buy a five-year treasury note, they wanted to buy a 10, 20, and 30-year note because the rates were higher. The mistake made then. Was that there was an assumption that rates were not going to go up anytime soon. It was similar to the assumption made back in 2008, 2009 that real estate never loses value. It was a foolish assumption. And if your advisor talks you into them, you need to have a talk with them about that. That is not historically possible. So now, bonds that are longer term, although the government is not going to default any certainly not in my lifetime, but it does not mean that, although you're not going to lose money on a default. Bonds do swing in price. So again, you have a problem here where your bonds are down because longer mature bonds, when rates go up, they lose more value than shorter-term bonds. Or in the case of money market, it hasn't lost anything. So there lies the problem. Now let's talk about other big areas that Wall Street has been big to tell you all you need to go into. Let's talk about the other big one: foreign bonds. I have heard so many times about. you have to own foreign bonds. The yields are better than American bonds. America's going to go off a cliff. You need to have money in other parts of the world. you know what? I will gladly have anybody come on the show. I've been managing money a very long time. I believe you can trade other markets in foreign parts of the world. But as far as an American who lives in dollars, we're still the biggest part of the world economy. For you to think you have to go chase a few percent and yield somewhere else to take all the risk in that. Well, guess what? That parrot has come home to roost too, or it called France. Fr yes, I said it, France. France is having a bond crisis. There was a report that came out this morning that according to Market Watch, it's the worst crisis that France has had in debt since the reign of Napoleon back in the early 1800s. Folks, there is no free lunch, and people who bought these horn bonds. are probably paying a dear price for it. I'm personally of the opinion the reason the dollar is so strong right now, even with all the debt we have been printing, even with the war, even with the tariffs, even with people's polarization in this country politically, the dollar is trading in the same rates it's been for the last ten years. I think it's because it's still a safe bet when you think about what's going on around the world. So there you go again. Another big fad of Wall Street foreign debt, that's just gotten creamed. So if Private equity debt creamed, foreign debt creamed. All right, let's jump into the other one. Been one of my Baili Wicks for a long time. Municipal bonds. I and look, I have a lot of clients who all live in blue states, California, Illinois, New York. I know you're getting blasted in taxes. I I wish I could do something about it. It's certainly a reason I moved to Nevada. Okay, but here's the problem. The number of people who I've actually heard, I I I know for a fact, people that I've actually seen. sell a company and stick everything into municipal bonds. They believe, hey, you know what? California can't go out of business. Illinois can't go out of business. New York can't. Well guess what's happening? Same deal. Hey, yep, two things on that by the way, then before I jump into this, I just I was on an ABC radio interview earlier this week. And you know, I love it when people love to bring up that California is the sixth or seventh biggest economy in the world or whatever it is. And I like to bring up, you know what? In in economic output, first off, I I do question those statistics, but California is not a country. It cannot produce a currency. All it can print is debt. It has to live in dollars. And so many people are going on this assumption that California will never default on its debt. I agree with you on big general obligation bonds, but I do think we're gonna find revenue bonds, school district bonds, county bonds. I think A lot of these blue states that are having trouble getting people to buy more of their debt are gonna find again the rooster is coming home to roost, folks. You can't s you can't indebt yourself indefinitely and not have there be repercussions. I think ratings are gonna start to drop. I I mean there there was an article that I guess LA County tried to float a bond issue last week and there were literally no takers. Now I know that somebody in LA is gonna say, Mr. Wynins, you have that wrong. The simple fact of the matter is fact. LA County's people had to pull that bond from the market. Now we can argue why they did and how they did, but they did. So this is my point. People need to use some common sense. My clients at Wynans, we buy corporate bonds. We rarely go out past 10 years of maturity and we buy and hold them. We don't trade them. That's the other big problem I have: bonds versus bond mutual funds. Bond mutual funds are going to trade the paper. If you buy and hold the bond and you hold it to term. You know exactly when it's coming due and you know exactly how much income you get per year. Trading it, if you want to trade, go trade stocks, hold your bonds. you know, Wall Street has that completely backwards, in my opinion. So it is a good time not to panic for you to go talk to your advisors and rethink the those safe parts of your portfolio and rethink that entire equation. Folks, financial boomerangs are the things you least expect. And this is something that came out of nowhere. And I mean, like I said, when I saw the article that France hasn't been in this much turmoil since Emperor Napoleon, that says volumes. Okay, listen, we're almost out of time. I just want to bring up, I do write for Forbes. I wrote a very interesting article that I think, you know what? People think it's crazy, but go read my article. I talk about moving the US men out of San Francisco to Nevada. They can't afford to print any more current or coins in California because of labor costs. So go take a look at that. I think you'll find it interesting. but go check out my Forbes articles, go to Forbes.com, enter my name. by the way, if you're interested in being on this show or being a sponsor, please go to our website, get more information. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please communicate with us on social media. I I I don't care if you agree with me or not. I love to hear the input in either direction. But let us know and please share this podcast with. Your your friends and family and other people you might be connected with is social media. We don't want to spend a bunch of money in advertising to get the word out. So help us get the word out. This is the same way that all the other major podcasts of the world have learned. Okay. a couple other quick things. You want to see any of the other episodes, please go to winningwithwin.com. You can see more that certainly the other shows that we've done. And we do have, and true to the course, it is an election year. I know you're all getting tired of hearing from the politicians, but you know what? Come and listen to them on our podcast and not at a speech and hear what they really say when they can sit and relax. Also, my books. I've written several financial history books. Please go. I, you know, you can download them off of Amazon, either E or physical book. It's a good time to study history. Listen, I have a favor to ask. after this episode, we have basically an infomercial about Wynan's investments. I'd love for you to hear about it. I am very, very proud. Our firm. Morningstar AI did a full analysis on us versus the 17,000 other money managers that have track records around the world. And we came in in the upper one percentile. So please read how we did it. And I'm proud to say we are Las Vegas only five star ranked money manager. Anyway, thanks again for listening to the show. Look forward to talking to you next week. Good luck with your investments. This is Ken Winance. Take Hey everybody, this is Ken Winin's host of Winning with Winens Podcast. And before I founded the Morningstar five-star ranked investment management firm, Winance Investments, which by the way is the only five-star ranked manager in Las Vegas, I actually worked on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading commodities with our traders. Yes, I actually know all those crazy hand signs you see in the movies. You know, if you haven't heard about it, commodities have had these eye-popping returns, not just gold. We're talking about cattle. Copper, soybeans, all these kinds of things. Don't be surprised. Many of the financial advisors who work for the big investment firms, they don't even bring it up with their clients. But if you're interested in learning more about this very unique area, which has been around a very long time, give Winin's Commodities a call. Founded in 2021 with an experienced team, 100% independent and veteran-owned. And you know what? Find out more about commodities and maybe it will fit in your portfolio. Give Wine's Commodities a try. Win with Winens. Boy, that time went fast. I hope you had as much fun as I did during this segment of Winning with Wineins. Make sure and tune in next week for another round of guest and interesting topics. And if you missed this, make sure and check us out on Spotify, YouTube, or go to our website, winningwithwines.com, where there's a lot more information for you to follow. So good luck this next week. Look forward to seeing you then. Take care.