The Worst Economic Warning since 2008 JUST Hit.

2026 is already starting with a bang.

The New York Times is talking about a

collapse in condo prices. The retailer

Saxs of Fifth Avenue is expected to file

bankruptcy as they just missed payments

on $100 million of bonds. Tesla Miss

Deliveries loses the lead to BYD.

Meanwhile, every institution on Wall

Street is really bullish with the most

bearish institution on Wall Street right

now neutral on stocks. Yes, the most

bearish Wall Street institution going

into 2026 is just neutral. [laughter]

That's the most bearish read. It's

crazy. So, let's break down what the

heck is going on here. Starting with

probably my most favorite of all time

leading indicator and then we'll get

into the details of what's going on with

condos and real estate and sachs and

Tesla and AI and there's a whole lot

going on. So, let's break it down.

First, we've got to look at the 102

yield curve. This is probably um I hate

to say it, but my the thing that makes

me the most concerned uh just because

it's historically been a harbinger of

recession. Uh and you know, we've heard

this story before, but today is special

because we're starting the year with it

rising again. So, you should really

understand this chart and then I'll also

show you where buy time is. So the

orange line is the zero line here, which

basically means that the yield curve,

the spread between the 2-year and the

10ear has gone negative. You don't

really have to know what that means. You

just have to know that historically

every time it goes negative and then

goes positive, we tend to have a

recession, including the one I didn't

chart over here in 82. Okay? Or or even

over here 80. You actually had a double

recession right here that I didn't

chart. And it just reiterates this

curve. But the point is the point the

the moment we actually went into a

realized recession in 1991 in 2008

over here uh or or you know um the dot

bubble over here in 2000 uh the COVID

recession obviously which came very very

quickly every single time we ended up

being in a realized recession the spread

between the twos and the 10ens crossed

1.25

after being under zero. And as you could

see, this is now rising consistently. We

have consistently been rising in 2025,

and we are starting out 2026 at the

highest level we have seen since the

last recession, which is a little odd.

We're at 78 to 71 this morning. And

every single time we cross cost crossed

125, we've been in a recession. Now

maybe this time will be different, but

there is a way to sort of track uh when

the buying opportunity is. Uh and what

you could do is you could take the

difference between treasury bonds and

high yield. Uh now this is a ratio. So

it's a little bit more complicated. You

could jump to Trading View and just do

II divided by HY. So basically,

treasuries are safe divided by high

yield. And when the lower end loses

value, the line goes up. And so it's a

way of examining shock. And as we could

see, we clearly had shock in November of

2008, your first spike. February of

2009, that's when the market really

bottomed out and the Fed bailed

everything out. And then you had another

spike over here in March of 2020. And it

seems like the D by the dip line is over

1.65.

So once we panic and you know crap

basically breaks the the glass floor

breaks and shock actually happens the

buy the dip line is about 165 or above

that you tend to be in buy the dip

territory. Right now things are very

calm but that's really because the labor

market hasn't rolled over yet. Now the

problem with this is we have a new sort

of leading tell that came out this

morning uh and it's the S&P global

manufacturing PMI and this was a little

problematic because what we actually see

right here is the S SNP is saying that

we are experiencing a wy coyote scenario

that has developed whereby the cartoon

character continues to run despite

chasing the roadrunner off a cliff. In

other words, they say that factories

right now are continuing to produce

goods even though new orders have been

plummeting. In fact, the gap between the

growth of production and the drop in

orders is in the is the widest gap that

we have seen since the height of the

global financial crisis back in 2008.

Payroll numbers will be adversely

affected if production continues to get

scaled back. Now, this morning in our

alpha report, we did a deep dive on

paychecks and paychecks indicates that

so far they're still not seeing

recession indicators and that the labor

market has been relatively stable

through 2025. You know, we do deep dive

fundamental analysis every day in the

alpha report and the course member live

streams and then, you know, we put it

all together. Anyway, the point of this

is uh they're not seeing that spike in

layoffs yet. This makes sense. Which

actually suggests the 55,000 jobs that

we're forecasting for the labor report

that comes out next Friday. You know,

the next week we have a lot of catalyst.

ADP on Wednesday. I think Thursday we

get challenger job cuts. Then we get the

jobs report on Friday. Next Friday, the

week after that we get CPI. We have a

lot of catalysts coming up which

obviously could be problematic and could

be why we're seeing this bleed in the

cues. could also be a little bit uh

indicative that you know when we zoom in

to this wedge pattern that we're forming

on the cues over here it probably kind

of begets on a technical basis that we

could fall as as you know low as 577

pretty quickly on the cues that's not

ideal but it's just sort of a basic

technical analysis here's that wedge

pattern zoomed in and we could see that

this wedge could be get a 577 return on

the NASDAQ back 100 uh especially in the

face of of this data potentially coming

in worse than expected. But so far,

paychecks doesn't say that's happening

yet. And the US manufacturing survey

says it's not happening yet either. In

fact, they say that employment growth

was actually sustained into the end of

2025. So, it's bullish jobs, but we're

seeing a renewed contraction in the

order book. And this is that gap, that

widely coyote moment. In other words,

things are still going like everything's

booming, but the foundations are really

starting to crack. Like the economy is

sick. It's just a matter of time for us

to see how sick the economy will

actually be. And so, we can make this

conclusion here. We can deduce that if

new orders stay weak, then obviously

hiring is going to fall. It's just a

matter of time for hiring to fall. And

this is a problem for markets. This

isn't good. We don't we don't like this

at all. So, we can actually now combine

this with what we've got going on in

other sectors uh like what's going on in

the condo market or what's going on with

Sax Fifth or even just luxury goods. Uh

luxury goods are suffering in the luxury

market. Uh we are seeing discounts at

luxury the level I mean to the likes of

which we haven't seen in in quite a

while. uh luxury the stat is luxury

sales are at 15-year lows in terms of

margins uh which obviously not good.

Bankruptcies are rising in addition to

uh sachs of fifth being rumored to now

go bankrupt. You've got spirit claire's

uh Delonte foods on the s hospitality

bankruptcy. None of that is great. Uh on

top of that, uh we're seeing more

bankruptcies year-to date through

November. That's when they cut off these

numbers. It should go, you know, the

year's over. We should see it all, but

we don't right now. So, year to date

through November, we see the largest

bankruptcies that we've seen since 2010.

So, worst levels of bankruptcy since

2010. 717 through November of 2025.

That's up from 687 in 2024. Uh

industrials consumer discretionary is

most affected. Uh chapter 5 small

business bankruptcies are up 10% despite

the ability to qualify for a chapter 5

bankruptcy being down 40%. And

individual bankruptcies are also up 8%.

On top of that, we're seeing sort of

sort of like capping out on a lot of

retail stocks which suggests some retail

or or like exhaustion in in people's

ability to buy stocks. I mean look at

Netflix. Netflix is a cash cow machine.

On a valuation basis, they are 53%

undervalued, but the technicals are

horrible. The downtrend has been known

for weeks, but we actually just broke

the downtrend to the downside. So, like

the downtrend is worsening on something

that is often seen as a safe haven play.

Now on top of that you're obviously also

seeing uh you know softness and some

other retail names whether it's hood or

sofi popular with retail retailers right

now chasing things like silver which has

topped out and currently memories like

SanDisk and Micron but you know you got

to know that if you're chasing SanDisk

and Micron you're chasing the last leg

of the cycle like Micron and SanDisk

statistically do well and historically

do well when you're at that end phase of

euphoria. Now, of course, Wall Street

doesn't care. Wall Street is just

rerationalizing

how they're calling, you know, what

they're calling what's going on in the

market. Now, I always think of this as

as a problem. Uh so, you know, back in

the day, we actually called what was

happening in the market in the dotcom

bubble irrational exuberance. But now,

you literally have Wall Street analysts

saying, "We're not seeing irrational

exuberance. We're seeing rational

exuberance is what they're calling it.

It's actually DWS who said that. The

problem with this though is when you

start redefining what was the red flag,

the last crash cycle as actually a good

thing, you're basically arguing that, oh

well, this time's just different. But

maybe it's not because even in the

collapse of 2008,

condos fell substantially faster than

home prices. This is why at House

Hacking, I'm a big fan of just single

families, as much single family as we

can get our hands on. But uh the New

York Times is now suggesting that condo

prices are falling faster due to HOA

dues rising inflation costs,

insuranceances, as as well as lower

desiraability for second homes. But if

you go to the front page of the New York

Times right now, they're talking about

this this sort of condo collapse

uh and how condos are actually doing a

lot worse right now in valuations uh

than uh than what we're seeing. Hold on,

let's get it here. New York Times condo

collapse prices falling faster than

single family. They're actually showing

that single family uh is up. uh or it

might be the Wall Street Journal. Uh

that that might be why I couldn't find

it on the times. It was the Wall Street

Journal that had it. But condo owners

are struggling while single family homes

are still rising in prices, albeit at a

slower pace. Single families rising uh

you know at at a pace that's still

positive. You've got 4.5% of single

family homes estimated to be worth less

than their last sales price. Whereas, if

you look at condos, 25% of condos in

nine metros are worth less than their

last sales price. That's kind of scary.

And some of that is because of

demographic changes, people trying to

move out of urban areas, you know, work

from home postco, but a lot of it is

also just the impact of inflation and

it's harder to get FHA approvals for

first-time home buyers and condos. You

know, condos are usually much more

sensitive to the economic cycle than

single families are. Now, what's

interesting is you've got uh Fidelity

saying that, you know, right now the

defining theme is still AI, but they

also mention that there are global

fragilities. And I think the fragilities

are really what we're seeing in things

like the repo market. You know, the repo

market, the Fed is trying to brand this

as, oh, don't worry, these spikes keep

getting larger even though we've turned

off the vacuum cleaner of money. Uh,

don't worry. This is all normal. I mean,

they panicked over here when repo

started to get it used, the repo

operation started to get used, they

panicked. They're like, you know what?

We're going to turn off the vacuum

cleaner. Well, even after turning off

the money vacuum cleaner, the repo

market is spiking higher than it ever

has before. Now, maybe this is all

because of, you know, money leaving

banks and going to the Treasury General

account because people are paying their

taxes and that's why the repo facility

is getting used. But you know, it's

either that that's a fair explanation or

liquidity is truly drying up. Problem

is, as liquidity dries up, you tend to

see less money to chase names like

Netflix or Tesla or whatever. You know,

one of my calls recently in the alpha

report uh when Tesla hit 500 was that we

would be heading back to $433.

And a lot of people are like, "Oh,

Kevin, you're just being a Tesla bear.

Why do you keep saying it's going to go

back to $433?" And I'm like, this has

nothing to do with me being a bear or

bull for Tesla. It has to do with basic

technical analysis. This sucker is going

to go back to $433. And since I've made

the call, we have gone basically

straight down to $437.

And I I think we're going to hit

$433.99. That's a very natural next

phase line, especially on those Tesla

delivery numbers that we just got, which

we can talk more about in just a moment.

But, you know, I think it's worth also

remembering that at the same time we're

getting some of this these liquidity

constraints. Maybe retail is fully

allocated, which you know, some

institutions are starting to recognize

as well. Maybe people went into the year

fully allocated. The yield curve is, you

know, basically uh skyrocketing, which

is not good. Uh but, you know, when you

put all of this together, it kind of

makes sense why you're also seeing Sachs

of Fifth miss their bond payments, which

is somewhat scary. We don't like to see

companies go bankrupt. I mean, in every

cycle, companies are eventually going to

go bankrupt. This is normal. Uh and and

it's kind of healthy for companies to go

bankrupt, but it's also a red flag. So,

you know, all of a sudden, the CEO of

Sachs just stepped down. Pretty sure

that's front page of the Wall Street

Journal as well as well. Yeah, there it

is. SACEO steps down ahead of expected

bankruptcy filing because the company

just missed payments on a hundred

million dollars of loans that are due to

bond holders and payments were due on

Tuesday. they miss their payments. And

people are saying that there's a doom

loop that's basically happening here

where when they stop paying their

vendors on time, their vendors don't

give them supplies, their revenues go

down, then they have even less money to

pay their bonds or their vendors, which

then leads to even less inventory on the

shelves. You basically have no choice

but to get squeezed into bankruptcy.

Now, at the same time as all of this,

you know, Donald Trump is cheering that

everything is fine, but

the problem with that is everything's

not fine. And the editorial board, uh,

you know, made a pretty pretty solid

slam, I would say, there on Donald Trump

because they're like, "Hey, uh, you

know, Donald Trump is retreating yet

again on tariffs." One of the striking

contradictions of President Trump's

tariffs is the way his chorus claims

their rousing success, even though he

carves out hundreds of exceptions.

Rarely has a president worked so hard to

cover the damage from his policies

without admitting it. So, Restoration

Hardware is up like 9% today because

Trump finally decided to U-turn on 30 to

50% tariffs on vanities, kitchen

cabinets, and upholstered furniture,

leading the editorial board to say, "I

guess killer love seats aren't as

dangerous as advertised or vanities or

whatever." And so, you know, the

editorial board is like, at what point

are we just going to keep causing more

problems because you're like literally

trying to fix these problems of your

tariffs by carving out smartphones,

electronics, farm products, and the way

you're doing it is by offering 12

billion bailouts for farmers, stimulus

checks for certain people. Uh, you know,

you're you're expecting to offer

potentially more stimulus checks in

2026. you know, people in the comment

section are sort of roasting him for uh

uh for making it very difficult for

businesses to operate in this sort of

uncertain environment. Uh and you know,

here's a classic comment though, very

disturbing. Our national security is now

under grave threat from sinister

imported bathroom vanities. How could

Trump back off this important measure

endangering us all? Endangering us all.

Obviously, there's a lot of uh

facitiousness in this. You know, they're

not meant to be taken literally here. Uh

but but yeah, I mean it sort of plays to

the joke of like, hey, like at a time

where individual bankruptcies are up 8%.

Uh small business bankruptcies are up

10% despite the ability to qualify for

those being reduced 40%. Which is a bad

sign. People kind of running out of

money being fully allocated to the stock

market. It's not a great time to dink

with the economy even more with the all

the tariff drama. Although we continue

to get more exceptions and we probably

won't hear from the Supreme Court until

February to like May on tariffs, but I

think what would be great for the

economy would be getting rid of tariffs.

Anyway, that said, people are running

tight on money and Tesla is no exception

to this. Uh the information is now

predicting that uh Tesla should actually

acquire XAI or that they might end up

acquiring X AI. Now, I personally think

that would be a terrible idea, and I've

maintained this. In fact, I encourage

people not to vote for Tesla to buy

shares of XAI because I think Elon Musk

is kind of running out of money at XAI

despite, you know, him being desperate

to build uh or despite him being

desperate to beat Sam Oldman and having

a high net worth, most of his net worth

is in illquid valuations at SpaceX and

Tesla. Now, if we actually look at the

financials for Tesla, the financials at

Tesla on the cash flow statement,

they're very good. I mean, Tesla has $18

billion of free cash. You know, $40

billion of cash minus bills they have to

pay. So, they've got $18 billion, $18.7

billion of free cash. They uh have

generated in the last 9 months about

$1.3 billion of free cash flow per

quarter, which works out to about

300400ish million per quarter. Uh sorry,

per month. The problem with this is XAI

is expected to be burning $1 billion per

month. That's not great because that

means XAI is burning three times as much

money as Tesla generates in free cash

flow. And I actually think Tesla's free

cash flow will decline. We just had, you

know, 418,000 deliveries, which is not

great, not terrible. We don't know how

many of those went to SpaceX. But, you

know, like cash is a problem. Tesla has

$18 billion of free cash, but if XAI

comes in, they're going to burn this.

And what I think Tesla should be doing

is they should be installing more

superchargers, better superchargers.

They should be doing more mega packs,

more mega pack production, more battery

storage production. They've got high

margin and 29% gross uh uh uh you know

uh revenue growth over there. I think

it's fantastic. They're doing 29% more

gawatt hour deliveries than they did

last year. This is a great growth

vertical at high margins. Uh even though

they're just repackaging Chinese

batteries, it's a great business model.

Uh and they should be focusing on new

vehicle models. Damn it. I don't think

that they should acquire XAI, which is a

cash burning business to compete with

some egocentric bull crap competition

between Elon Musk and Sam Alman because

they hate each other. And I also don't

think Space X is going to end up

screwing up their IPO by buying XAI. So

maybe the information is right, but I

hope not. I actually think it would be a

really bad catalyst for Tesla to blow up

all their free cash flow and destroy the

core of what makes Tesla Tesla. You

know, Tesla just burned me on $4,000 of

credits. I looked on New Year's Eve. I

wrote a little note down. I'm like,

"Check my Tesla credits to make sure

they don't expire." I opened up my Tesla

credits. I already saw like a,000 of

them expired, but whatever. I had $3,900

left. And uh then it said, "Your next

expiration of $750 of expiring credits

expires January 18th or something like

that." And I'm like, "Cool. I got two

and a half weeks to go spend some

money." So I was going to buy like the

Under Arour thing for the Tesla Cybert

truck. Well, no. On on January 1st, I

look at it, all my credits are gone.

They rug pulled all of my credits. They

just made them disappear. So then I

asked the little AI chatbot that they

have in the Tesla app. I'm like, "Hey,

give me my credits back." And it's like,

"Oh, email customer support." So, I

email customer support or service or

whatever it is at tesla.com. And then I

get an automatic email. This email is

not monitored. So, I go back to the

chatbot. I go, "You gave me an email

that doesn't work." Meanwhile, when I

click on the email, their app crashes,

so I had to manually type it in.

Whatever. Small issues. Uh, and then the

AI chatbot is like, "Oh, I'm sorry.

Here, call the customer service number."

Like, come on, Tesla. Like why don't you

guys focus on actually like taking care

of the people who like have shield your

business for years and then why don't

you do what has made you guys good make

good cars and and not you know chase

this fad of AI uh it drives me nuts

because I don't think Tesla like the the

fad of AI when I mean when I say that

like large language learning models I

think that is a fad that is a massive

fad right now and you don't want to

throw money on

at that in my opinion like functional

AI. I'm a big fan of functional AI like

full self-driving or like house hack AI.

Great functional AI but not LLMs. Man,

don't chase that. Don't blow your money

on that. That's crazy. But whatever. So,

uh that's just my little Tesla rant. Uh

but again, their numbers, not great, not

terrible. So, what else do we know?

418,227

deliveries, year-over-year sales down

86%.

BYD is eating their lunch. BYD is up

7.7% in year-over-year sales, 4.6

million deliveries, 2.26 million pure

battery electric vehicles, meaning BYD

has just surpassed Tesla as the largest,

you know, EV manufacturer.

Now, moving away from Tesla for a

moment, it's worth considering what the

economist just told us. So, the

economist just told us, jump into the

economist over here, the truth about

affordability. So, are you Hi, hi live

stream chat. Um but yeah, the truth

about affordability, the economist makes

a really good point. They say that

politicians will naturally do what the

elect the polls tell them to do. And the

problem is that you end up introducing

more harmful policies than you fix. See,

my opinion is that you should get the

government out of a lot of things. Like

you want to fix Minnesota child care

fraud, stop having the government

allocate money to the child care. Let

the free market run the child carees.

When the free market runs the childare,

they don't turn away customers. Wow.

Imagine that. But anyway, so um you know

if you look over here, the economist

argues that if you want deflation, what

you end up causing is a sovereign debt

crisis like what you saw in Greece, and

you suffer a depression and deflation.

So, you know, even though the wealth gap

is is rising today, people's wages are

rising more than inflation is rising

right now. And the best thing to keep

this economy going is not to tax it uh

or to create more government programs or

to send stimulus checks. The best way to

keep the economy going is to keep the

government out of the free market and

not make the mistakes of the 1970s.

That's at least the take of the

economist, which I'm actually inclined

to believe. Now, at the same time,

you've got the Washington Post dumping

on Trump because Trump is saying that,

"Oh, we're creating more jobs for

US-born workers, gaining a million jobs

as uh uh gaining more than 2.5 million

jobs as US born workers gained more jobs

in 2025 as a million immigrants left the

workforce. But we know the unemployment

rate has been rising and unemployment

data has been getting worse, not

better." Washington Post and economists

are pointing that out as well. I mean,

this isn't a surprise. So, this all gets

to the bottom line out of all of this.

The bottom line out of all of this, uh,

which I'm going to show in just a

moment, uh, comes right after I show you

a big thank you. Uh, this is what, uh, I

saw this morning. A bunch of money

flowing into House Hack. So, it seems

like people have money because, you

know, just the first banking day of the

year, we're already over 500 like

$40,000 into the account today. uh for

people, you know, people's investments

finalizing for House Act since we closed

the fund raise, which kind of cool.

Thank you. I just want to give a big

thank you to everybody on that. And

people are loving the real estate AI,

which is also very cool because we had a

a really nice comment this morning. Uh

somebody left, uh boom, two deals found,

two deals under contract. I've been

using the AI the last 3 days, liking it

a lot, looking forward to the updates.

Yeah, we got a lot of updates coming,

which we're really excited about. But I

think the bottom line out of all of this

is actually this warning that one of

these economists gives uh and and what

they say is right over here. Market

participants aren't necessarily

cautious. However, they may be fully

invested going into the new year. And

that's a little bit of a problem because

if everybody is fully invested and

margin debts are at the highest level

that we've ever seen before, it makes me

wonder, hey, like how sustainable

uh is growth for the economy if it's

predicated on the market holding it up.

Tesla's going down to 433. But yeah, if

you look at, you know, the cues, we had

a rough morning over here. fell off the

cliff again going down to 607. I

mentioned that if we lost 617 we'd be

going down to 607 on the alpha this

morning and to be cautious uh because

volumes have been so low and liquidity

seems to be very very tight. But the

biggest issue that we face right now is

that the liquidity concerns and private

credit end up moving to the stock

market. Because if the stock market goes

down, that's the only thing that's

holding up capex spending, which is the

only thing holding up hiring or any

semblance of hiring. And then you have

problems. Then you have real big

problems. So I don't want to start the

year off bearish. Uh, but I have to say,

I mean, consolidating all of this

research, I do think I probably have to

lower my bare bull scale. So, my present

uh bare bull scale, let's go ahead and

pop it up. So, my present bear bull

scale, which which we use this tracker

because I think it's it's good for

people to see my bull bear scale has

been relatively consistent. You know,

this is my bull bear scale. It's been

mid mid uh mid uh fives. We jump because

of ADP weeklys. And I mean, you could

read it. You could pause and read it all

here, but we've been relatively

consistent in the mid fives and I think

it's a really good tracker. Uh but uh

but I will actually update this right

now with you here and we're going to say

for the start of January I'm actually

going to go down to a 51. Uh and that's

because I'm seeing uh tight uh liquidity

uh the last week might be more than

seasonal uh slowness if allocations and

debt are maxed. uh the ability uh you

know uh stock stock stock exhaustion

uh will set in uh that will lead to

forced layoffs

uh

as as money becomes even tighter. you

know, Sachs bankruptcy and missing

payments on, you know, a hund00 million

of bonds is just a, you know, another

early warning sign in addition to all of

the other bankruptcies that we've been

seeing. Individual bankruptcies, small

bankruptcies, big bankruptcies are all

rising. Uh the yield curve, the yield

curve steepening

uh is by far the most concerning

evidence. Uh as we break 071 on the 102

and trend towards 125, we are running

towards recession, not away from it. Uh,

and so this does sort of reduce me on

that that bear bull scale, which again

reiterates why I'm cautious. I'm not,

you know, I'm not bearish, sell

everything, short everything, but

cautious, cautious, cautious, uh, is is

the name of the game here for Meet

Kevin. Uh, and and again, I just want to

be so grateful for all of you because by

no means do I want to like come across

as like, oh, hell, look at us. Look at

the money we have or whatever. I just

want to prove to you that I put my money

where my mouth is. And so this is uh

this is our house hack Mercury. I love

the app, by the way. Uh if if you've

never used Mercury for business banking,

I highly encourage it. I'm pretty sure I

have an affiliate link for them. Yeah,

there you go. Banking done right. Go to

metaven.com/bank

and then you get like a $200 bonus. I I

don't know what their affiliate link is.

There's some kind of bonus if you go

there, but this is our Mercury. Uh and

so um you know, so we have uh this is

our cash balance at Mercury. Uh I think

in total we're at about 15.5 in cash

right now and it's mostly money markets

like the house hack treasury uh or the

Mercury Treasury account which gives you

like a 3.7 yield or somewhere between

3.7 and 4% something like that. Um and

uh you know we're we're kind of sitting

on this cash from the fundraising now

and we're like all right this does

position us to be quite defensive uh and

and not only expand our AI uh uh

offering not expecting AGI right just

with the AI that exists today providing

a great quality product and service uh

but you know we're we're AI profitable

and my goal is to keep it that way I

don't want to like turn into a drunk

sailor like X AI I or open AI and spend

blindly going into 2026, we're we're

going to keep the money uh safe and be

very very conservative. And so I think

my bare bull scale for all the reasons

we've just enumerated in this segment uh

really align with that. Now I understand

a lot of people look and they say Kevin,

you know, like isn't there an

opportunity cost to to you know uh being

heavily exposed to cash? Of course. And

don't get me wrong, I mean, we just

bought 11 properties and and you know,

we think we got great deals on those

properties and we think we're really

insulated on those single family

purchases that we just made. We think

all of them were below market value, way

more than than what we spent to fix them

up. Uh, you know, knock on wood as we

finish these out. But, uh, but I'm not

highly tempted to dive into buying. I

usually am not in Q1. Usually Q1, Q2, I

wait, you know, I don't buy. They

usually only buy in the third and fourth

quarter. Uh but uh but raising cash and

diversifying is is I think very very

smart right now. Somebody here in the

chat says, "Kevin, why did the market

tank?" You know, I again I think it's

just there's an exhaustion. Uh somebody

says, "Kevin, you nailed 2022. You

warned everybody on time." Well, thank

you for saying that. Uh so

I know we had a little bit of a talk

about fire sprinklers earlier. We don't

need to go back into that. Uh so that

has a ripple effect. Now the bond

holders at Sachs of Fifth aren't getting

paid. Does that have a downstream

effect? Sure. Well, yeah. Like if bond

holders at Sachs don't get their

distributions, then then you know they

have less money to go buy the stock dip

or whatever, right? I personally think a

red flag is Netflix cuz if you look at

the weak chart on Netflix, when you lose

the downtrend, it really shows that what

what was used to be deemed safe is no

longer safe. And again, I think their

valuation is very low. And I think the

same of meta, but I'm also like

cognizant that we could also just be

going into a bearish a bearish time

of uh uh of uh for the stock market. So

I like when when your most bearish

analyst is neutral on stocks, to me

that's a contrarian sell signal. Uh

which which is not great. So uh I I I do

see that as a uh as a red flag. So we'll

see. We'll see. Now, I know that, you

know, Bitcoin had a nice little jump

over $90,000 today, but you also have to

be very careful using um Bitcoin right

now as a uh as a catalyst, mostly

because

uh Michael Sailor has typically been

associated with buying every single week

and he keeps marking new highs. So, he

tends to buy and then a few hours later,

Bitcoin just retraces

uh and then he's upside down. You know,

he doesn't buy wedge deals. He does the

opposite. He pumps the market when he's

buying and then the market slips out

from under him. So, he's really buying

at a negative every single time he's

buying, which is great. He's he's

actually creating negative wedge deals.

He's giving somebody else exit

liquidity. It's It's really incredible.

Uh here's a question. Wow, $20 donation.

Thank you, Mountain46.

I have a question. So, I open up a hive

and forging. I don't know what any of

that means. I buy SpaceX, OpenAI, and so

on. Do you know if it's legit before I

put funds into it? I don't know anything

about Hive or Forge or accounts or

whatever. Uh I mean, what I've seen a

lot of companies do is they'll have

special purpose vehicles where they'll

get an allocation and then they kind of

put over they lay over their own fees. I

just be cautious about buying at some of

these valuations. Like look, I I I I

hate using this phrase because I just

don't define myself as like a venture

capital guy, but I have a venture

capital fund. You know, we briefly

opened that up to reggga uh regggd

investors. It's not open right now, but

we invested in Apptronic, which I think

is like 4xed uh since our investment, I

don't know, ballpark. I mean, I'm saying

this on a quick live stream here. And uh

we invested in SpaceX, which I think is

also like 3xed or 4xed. I mean, we

invested like a 300 billion dollar

valuation and now they're talking about

$1.5 trillion for an IPO. It's crazy.

That's like a 5x. I don't know. But

anyway, um you know, I I wouldn't pay

those valuations. Uh I think uh I think

those are very scary valuations, but I

can't give you personalized advice. I've

never heard of those companies. Uh just

watch the fees. You know, the fees get

really really disgusting. Uh but uh

yeah, somebody says, "What's a regggd

investor?"

>> Fair. I I will explain an additional

lesson for everybody. So, uh a

regulation D is is it a form of an

offering that is only conducted towards

um uh towards accredited investors. So,

having like a million dollar plus net

worth or I think it's over $200,000 of

income or 250, I can't remember. That's

different from a qualified investor, uh

which would be over $5 million of a net

worth outside of your primary residence.

And then there is a a regulation A

offering. Regulation A's are a little

bit of a pain in the ass. You have to

have a broker dealer involved. That's

what we're doing with Houseack. It's

open to nonacredited investors. Well, we

just closed it on on the 31st, but uh

that requires a broker dealer, a lot

more KYC, a lot more, you know, uh

review uh limitations in terms of how

much of your net worth you can invest.

Uh stricter disclosures and financial

filings. Uh and then of course we are

PCAOB audited as well, which is

extremely rare for a reggga. Um, but

when you hear those phrases, that's what

that is. Uh, those are private offerings

essentially. Um, so, so that's I use

these words because they're they're so

used to like I'm so used to talking in

that lingo, but I have to be careful to

remember that, you know, not everybody

has taken all of their FINRA licensing

tests, right? Uh, so so anyway, thank

you. Thank you for asking. Uh

uh [laughter]

million millions in uh in in Pokemon

trading cards. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you

can calculate your net worth however you

deem fit.

[laughter]

Actually, for a reggg A, you calculate

your own net worth. Ironically, for a

regggd D, we calculate your net worth.

Uh [laughter]

a little different, huh? That seems

backwards. But anyway, uh somebody says

Elon doesn't care about cars anymore.

that's just a side business. That

actually makes me very disappointed

because I I you know I I've of the

mindset that we should have the cyber

cab. We should be focusing on a box van

Tesla. We should be focusing on a

minivan and new models. But if if Tesla

buys XAI, it could unfortunately, and

this is hyperbolic, but it could be the

death of Tesla because uh all of that

cash that they've built that should be

utilized for making the core business

that makes money better, they would end

up throwing into a money losing business

and giving up their moat. Uh I'm I'm I'm

very very very disappointed uh about

that. So uh I find that very um uh very

sad. But uh anyway, yeah, I mean, look,

this is this is my first video of the

year. I do want to reiterate, I

appreciate all of you having watched my

um uh my my last video of last year

video. Uh I am going to maintain the

promise of no sponsors for the

foreseeable future. Uh so the only thing

that you're going to hear from me will

be the occasional like, hey, the coupons

coming out. We don't have a coupon right

now. The only thing you're going to hear

from me is the occasional coupon

expiration, but House Hacks Fundra is

over. No sponsors. I don't really care

about affiliate links, you know? I put

them up mostly because I think sometimes

there's a big benefit to you. Like I

don't get any benefit out of the car the

cash one that I was talking about the

other day, but but but I know that you

do if you use the product. So, I'm like,

I don't care. You know, use anybody's

link you want. I actually think,

ironically, my Tesla affiliate link is

back. I was just looking at that. I went

to uh met kevin.com/tesla

and it looks like they opened it back up

again which is really funny because they

just rugpulled all of my credits and

then they opened up my referral link

again because the referral link was

Kevin's order is maxed out use somebody

else's link and I guess my referral code

is back after they stole all my referral

credits. So I don't know how how to feel

about that but I think there's some

shying going on here. Um,

what are you going to do? Yeah, it's

shady. It's 100% shady. I wish I took a

screenshot of the New Year's Eve, you

know, where it said it's not going to

expire until like January 17th or

whatever. I actually might have an email

of it. Um, but uh but anyway, yeah.

What's up, Kevin? I'm painting at work

and listening, trying to change my

wealth. Let's go. Hey, man. Keep

building the skills, build the business.

Yeah, I was telling somebody the other

day if I if I was 19 years old, let's

say, and I didn't have a family, I would

go to both college to learn machine

learning and I would work the trades,

whether that's being an electrician or a

plumber or whatever, because then I

hedge AI, but I also get the upside

hedge. I upside hedge AI by being into

potentially developer, work from home,

remote work, right? Which I could do

outside of my trade skills. But then if

AI takes over without me, I have my

trade skills. I actually think that's,

you know, that's what I would do if I

were 19. I I think those hard physical

skills are really valuable. You know,

being a pilot, electrician, plumber,

HVAC, framer, you know, whatever. uh but

but also being cognizant and capable in

uh and and versed in in artificial

intelligence uh machine learning

waitings uh neural nets uh waitings for

neural nets I think is is is fantastic.

Uh so um somebody says Elon gutted the

consumer protection agency so he could

do stuff like that. Yeah. Big irony

about that is the consumer financial

protection agency actually just got

ruled by the courts. I can't remember if

it was federal appeals or the Supreme

Court that they need to be funded. So,

the CFPB will be back. Uh, which is uh

which is very interesting. You made a

video like that a year ago saying the

same thing about no ads. Yeah. Well, uh,

actually, if you if you actually listen

very closely, that video was made in

2022

and I said that for the foreseeable

future we won't have ads. And if you

actually look for about 2 years, I took

no sponsors. Yeah. So I made a promise

and I committed to that for 2 years

which is certainly more than foreseeable

future, right? So you know I think I was

incredibly honest about that. Uh and

then there was a period where you know

we had ads again uh over uh I think late

2024 and and 2025.

Uh but uh but for for the foreseeable

future in 2026, we're not going to do

ads. I don't know how long that's going

to be, but for a while you you won't see

sponsors, right? like YouTube's still

going to put in their ads. But uh you

know that unfortunately that's always

the thing that people miss is like I

could say you know a certain time frame

and then I could commit to it for years

but then they only hear what they want

to hear which is I thought you said no

ads forever. It's like I never said

that. Uh but but people forget that. So

you know fixing people's impressions is

uh is is uh always challenging but

that's okay. Somebody says we need a

watchdog agency for exactly your issue.

Yeah, I mean I feel scammed, right?

Somebody says don't sue. Yeah, I'm not

going to sue Elon. Like, I don't care.

But I I do feel scammed. Like, you know,

I have been a Tesla shill since 2017 and

and I feel like I got rugpulled out of,

you know, $4,000 of of of credits. And

uh you know, in fairness, like does it

really change my life? No, of course

not. But uh you know I just think that's

that's like a sign of the business

having like if you need to rug pull your

customers like that's not a good look.

So I'm a little disappointed about that.

But anyway, uh so we'll see what happens

with the cues here. Hopefully we can

stay off of 607 and uh we'll leave it

there. So thank you all so much for

being here and watching and uh we'll see

you in the next one. Goodbye and good

luck.

>> Kevin is very talented but I don't know

it's going to be him but he's a very

talented

>> somebody we consider. Kevin is

fantastic. I think that Kevin's a a

brilliant guy and I think that we'd we'

we'd all be very lucky to have him.

>> You are not prepared.

>> Why not advertise [music] these things

that you told us here? I feel like

nobody else knows about this.

>> We'll we'll try a little advertising and

see how it goes.

>> Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you.

>> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst

and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great

to get your take.