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Sup guys, it’s Harry here and welcome to the After Hours podcast, a trading podcast where we discuss the latest updates and insights about the market. In this episode, we cover key topics such as SPY, the overall market inflation and trading market conditions, offering you valuable insights to help you become a better trader. Plus, we also have a referral link below that can help you save $500 off a membership. So tune in and join the conversation with James and I on the after hours podcast.

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James 0:28
What is going on guys, we’re back with another episode of the after hours podcast, we took off a week or so let some news build up. And so now we have plenty to talk about. So I think the first thing I wanted to dive into really is this new market bounce that we’ve had, I mean, the spy has been pushing pretty hard. I think that we’ve we’ve changed sentiment a little bit potentially. Harry, what are you thinking right now about the overall like markets, buy balance and all that,

Harry 0:57
um, I, then this is just my personal opinion, I think that we still have a little bit lower to go. Just because like, the thing is, is that what I’ve noticed every time like just like trading throughout this past, like, let’s say the last year is that every time we are in that kind of bounce phase, small caps are really hot. The overall market is really hot. Like trading is really hot in general, everyone’s banking, everyone’s having a good time, you’re seeing shit like BBBY go to from like, $2 to seven, like we’re getting all these insane market moves. And what happens is that all of a sudden, you get the week where the range just dries up again. And every time that has happened so far, just over the past year, we’ve always gone lower. So like, it seems to me like, like, for me at least for longing. When we’re in that bounce stage. Like it’s great, everything’s hot. It’s like we’re back to COVID again, everyone was lightening up on Twitter posting gains big games on the short side, posting big gains on long side, posting everything talking about oh, how they’re doing so great. And then this week, I found definitely like, a shift again, where we didn’t have that many runners. The range was pretty shit. And like we talked about that kind of before the podcast where like, the range was pretty shit. And to me, it was just like, are we back to the slow kind of market as the spy goes down lower. So that’s something that I think is just for me, like pattern wise, like, I always try and like pick up on patterns and stuff like that. And I’ve noticed that when we start to get a little bit slower. Usually the markets taking kind of like a tank, you know?

Will we go lower on the SPY?

James 2:45
Yeah. So do you think what you your opinion is that we’re gonna go lower on like, general, like the indices, like do you think like, things? Yeah, really? So SPY all that stuff?

Harry 2:56
Yeah, I think we’re gonna go lower. I think we’re gonna be down trending again. And I mean, you can timestamp me on it. Maybe we’re just taking a pause before we start to go higher. But in my opinion, I don’t know, I just feel like I don’t know, I just feel so like fishy and skeptical about these bounces. Like every time we’ve gotten to kind of like, like the 400 range, that 410 range on SPY, like that kind of bounce on the indices. Everyone’s just switched to bullish, and then something comes out where it just get fucking clobbered. Again, you know, and I was talking to some other traders this weekend about that. And, you know, maybe it’s one of those things where like, Everyone feels the same way. So the opposite happens. But when I talked to a lot of traders, like everyone’s thinking way lower on the SPY, everyone’s thinking that we’re down for like a bearish kind of, you know, turnaround. So I mean, we’ll have to see, but in my opinion, my view, you can timestamp me on this. I think we’re going lower.

James 3:55
We are at Sunday, February 12. And Superbowl day, so I actually, I liked it. That’s your opinion, because I’m actually the complete opposite. So this is kind of cool. So I’m personally of the of the camp of, you know, when we were trading at the lows for SPY, we were making new lows. I mean, I’ve never seen sentiment as bearish, like on Twitter. Overall, people just talking to people who aren’t really market participants, you know, maybe just the 401k or like people like that. Everyone was so negative to the point where I was getting sick of hearing it. Now at that point, like, you know, sentiment hadn’t really changed. And as we saw last week, we had the biggest inflow of short participants, hedge funds and institutions exit their positions. Basically, they just got squeezed out. Right. That was just last week. I think that the jobs report that we had a few weeks ago we added a half a million jobs took a lot of people by surprise, because you can’t really have a recession when you’re adding a half a million jobs whether that number is like kind of fake, you know, the creation of jobs like that. I think we’ve talked in the past about how it’s so easy to make jobs. But you know that those are things that the numbers See, we also see that CPI and inflation is coming down. So I don’t know, I almost, and I feel at the same time that there were so many, you know, institutions who are not positioned to get involved on the long side. So not only do we have the shorts get squeezed out on Mega positions, now we have institutions saying shit, do I need to get a little bullish and position myself to get along? Now? I sat with myself for a while. And I was thinking a lot about that, like, Is this one of those scenarios where the market kind of said, fu to the over bearish and squeezed them out? So we can make a new leg lower, which is like how technically how stocks kind of can move, right? Just like in small caps, if we need to squeeze out, you know, bust everybody’s balls, and then you can head lower? Or is this a transitional shift? And I, for some reason, that just in my head, I think this is a shift in sentiment. I think that again, when you talk to the traditional normal person, like most people don’t even think we’re in a recession, or we’re experiencing recession, because day to day life doesn’t feel it, right. And I just I wonder if as a country we are, we spend too much money, no matter how much little people have in savings, I still see bars, often I see their their full restaurants are still booked, you know, the stores are still packed. So I don’t know.

Rates Are Slow to Change

James 6:23
I mean, it’s, it’s kind of cool that we have the opposite take. And again, I think it’s anyone’s game at this point. I mean, just like anyone, nobody really truly knows where we’re headed.

Harry 6:33
I think in terms of rates, this is kind of how I look at it, right. So like rates I feel are like, kind of delayed. Like it takes a little bit to get the effect of the rate in you know, it’s it’s definitely easy to look at, like the here and now and have that type of opinion. I agree 100% on that, you know, at least where I am not much change yet. But I feel like rates are very sluggish with how they work, you know, like, it just in my opinion, it’s just, it’s very, very slow, it’s very, very sluggish. And as people start kind of getting, like, it’s like, if you have savings belt, you know, a solid, like savings emergency fund, whatever your rates go up, for the first couple of months, you’re like, Okay, we’re fine, this is doable, but then it keeps climbing a little bit, and it keeps climbing a little bit. And then you’re like, holy shit, we’re out of savings, like, we have to kind of, you either go into debt, or you’re like, fuck, we can’t pay this, you know, then we have to cut back on other things. So I think personally, it’s going to take a little bit of these prices to kind of like start chipping away slowly at that at the little like, it’s like we have an ice sculpture and like we’re just slowly chipping away, all the way around until the ice sculpture fucking collapses, you know. So I think that like, it takes a while for these rates to come into play. It takes a while for what’s kind of been happening to come into play to really start eating up people till they’re like holy shit, like, we can’t afford this anymore. We have a highest mortgage payment, we have a highest car payment, we have a highest this we have a highest that. And people overpaid so much for shit. And people are still overpaying so much for shit. That I think like we’re going to hit this kind of like tipping point where it’s just too much. And then

James 8:31
I think, again, I kind of want to like reiterate a little bit like I don’t necessarily think it’s time to, like get bullish on stocks and start like buying, especially like things like realist, I don’t think that’s that I just, I feel like we’re gonna enter a period of extreme CHOP for a long time. And honestly, that shop could last like a decade, you know, because that’s kind of what happened after the inflationary period, you know, in the early 70s, and then, you know, just you can go back in history and look at times of economic crisis and see what the market went after. And it was just chopped. Does that mean that we’re making all time highs? Sure, I think some equities might make some new highs, but I also think, but some could also make lows, I just don’t think that in the in, like star spy and all that that’s my opinion is we’re kind of we’ve put our bottoms in for now. Where I think that things are gonna, like lag like, is where I really agree with what you’re saying is, like, I’ve noticed in real estate, you know, with interest, interest rates are probably optimistically going to settle around 5%, you know, barring any sort of unexpected news, like outcome with CPI and, and all that stuff. So I think rates are going to, you know, adjust eventually to 5%. But at 5% rates, that’s still a lot of that’s still very expensive to buy a home in this country. It’s still very expensive to reflect to finance a car, you know, so I think that at that point, you’re gonna see that’s where the economy in the recession will kind of be felt with like normal Americans or just normal people around here. But at the same time, like again, I think that just because we’re in like a recession or that people Struggling with savings doesn’t mean that the stock market’s gonna collapse. You know, a lot of times, the markets do tend to bottom, you know, during a recession, and then you know, we kind of have to live through it. I think people here unfortunately will spend no matter what it’s like I see it day to day. It’s crazy, right? Like, I see people who are struggling to pay their bills, but somehow they always have the new iPhone, somehow they always had, they’re always they have all the streaming services, the Netflix is the Hulu is all that stuff. We’re spenders, you know, and I, but I, it almost feels like it’s needed some sort of some economic reset. And again, I think what’s tough with the stock market is that when you really look at it, average, people aren’t really participating, you know, you’ll have the retirement accounts that usually are run by someone else. You don’t have many people, I don’t know, many people who control their own retirement account owner, or, you know, even actively participate in buying stocks. You know, I have a conversation over the last week that I thought Google was a good buy, coming up, because they just got hammered the other day, I think they lost like 6% in a day. And that was all because of a failed AI. Like news report. Basically, they had a sock a demo software, and it failed. It got a very basic question wrong. And in off of that Microsoft popped and, and Google and downtown and I’m, and I tell people that and they’re like, Oh, well, you know, they have no idea what’s even in their retirement. So that’s why sometimes I feel like the market is just going to be really choppy for a while and, and that’s one of that.

Short Squeezes and Short Squeezes

Harry 11:28
I also think that like, in gern, COVID. It was like an environment where people were getting short, and they were getting squeezed out. And they were like re adding, you know, how many times in the uptrend and COVID Did you hear people who were fighting the market saying, Okay, I think it’s time to get bullish, you know, no one said that everyone was like, It’s not time to get bullish, they just kept reacting to their shorts. You know, how many short squeezes did we hear of people and big firms blowing up during COVID, like blow up after blow up after blow up after blow up of people getting short? Notice management reacting, getting short notice management reacting, you know, and now we’re in a situation where we’re hearing people, I’m, I’m sure, I’m getting squeezed, okay, maybe it’s time to go long. You know, I just feel like, like, could you imagine you’re in the small cap, and you’re buggin trading this thing, it’s, it’s under V whap. It’s four bucks. And the ship goes over high data five, holds up to five, and you’re like, I’m gonna get, I’m gonna get out of my short and I’m gonna get long. How many times have we seen those members in the discipline workshop who want to like switch biases all the time? And they go from short, and then they go too long? And then they get stopped out on Long and then they’re like, Oh, I’m gonna go short again. And then they you know what I mean? Like, how many times have we seen people like that? And we’re like, okay, stick with one bias, you know, do whatever. So I feel like, people are just fucking confused. And the market is just fucking with them. And if we go lower, I think now, like, people don’t really know, like, like, we’re spies lower. Everyone’s like, Whoa, we’re bearish. We’re bearish. We got one fucking bear market bounce. We’re bullish, we’re bullish, everyone flips along, we go back down. They’re like, Okay, we’re back. You know, like, we’re in a situation where people just don’t really know we don’t really have that confirmation. And I think that if these rates start slowly eating away at people, you know, time after time after time, then we could definitely see it go lower. And wouldn’t it be funny if all these institutions got squeezed out right here at the top and then we go way lower, and then they get short again? Squeeze them out again? You know, it’s just like one big like liquidity fuck so to me I’m just like I could see us going way lower I think that we are going to go lower.

How do you manage your portfolio?

Harry 13:52
That’s just my personal opinion.

James 13:54
It could it could easily happen I think that as far as like portfolio management like now it’s like you just have to be you know, comfortable buying companies that you know have these like moats and they’re very like protected and cashflow positive and and I think that there’s a there’s a huge push out of out of growth stocks and like we’re gonna push towards value you know that whole classic you know, Ben Graham mindset of you know, you’re buying companies with good P E ratios and you’re buying companies with strong balance sheets and in companies that have protected assets and stuff and I think that that’s gonna be it because again, if we’re even having this conversation, we’re talking about Lena spies he’s not even that far off the all time highs versus the lows of what we put in the last like two years and like realistically none of us know this thing could cook book and greater and an Oregon rip to new highs on positive news that we that we never know obviously, I don’t think the war in Ukraine is going to end anytime soon. But God forbid, you know, who knows? You know, tomorrow it’s we can wake up to news that there’s a ceasefire and it’s over and we ripped in you know, we don’t know and that’s why I feel like shops gonna happen because like in barring any news, I mean, we’re no Nobody seems to have a clue. You know, I listen to all these very good financial podcasts and, and I hear people making strong bull cases and then making strong bear cases. And it’s like these are very intelligent, like, some of the best of the best minds in the industry. And just seeing people really just clamor at ideas. It’s pretty wild. Because you think you’d be able to, at this point, say, all right, like, you know, we have the ingredients here, we know exactly what’s coming. But like, I don’t think anybody does. I mean, I really don’t and like I mean, for God’s sakes, look at Tessa, Tessa got slapped down to $100 a share $109 And then a double it when it went to 200 bucks a share. And like, how do you trade that, you know,

Harry 15:42
in these strong market bounces, it is the most irrational fucking price action you’ll ever see. Once we talk out, we start to go red, we start to get choppy, there’s like less manipulation. Like what was the only small cap stock that really got manipulated? Hard? It was KPR X? Yes, you could say like, yeah, manipulation, whatever. But the only one that I really saw was that like cel Zed or whatever that we were talking about that day, where we went from, like, close to $1, up to $1.40. That was really the only like, rigged manipulated ticker I saw. Other than that, it was pretty fun and tame. And when you go from a week, of having multiple tickers being like, rigged and manipulated all the time, to only like one or two or three, that tells me that okay, something’s fucking wrong here, something’s off here. Because in these bounces, I trade at my best I trade at my peak, it’s amazing to long we have range, like, we are both talking to each other texting each other, you’re short, you’re like, I’m trading at my peak, I’m trading Well, you know, and then all of a sudden, we get this week where it’s like, everything’s like shut off, like small caps are just shut off, you know. And every single time that thought can happens, bro, I go into like, a depression for like two months, because I’m like, shit, bro, there’s nothing to trade. I’ve made all this money. And now it’s just turned off again. So for me, that tells me that I need to either modify my strategy in the markets to like, add like a swing element or add a different type of element or add like a short element or something like that for the choppiness. And, you know, try and avoid that kind of slow period and that slow time because I think that during the slow times, like, you know, I’m testing out something like bro feels like I’m an idiot, it feels like I’m stupid, then all of a sudden market gets flipped on. I feel like I’m a genius. You know, anything. You can long anything. It’s back to the COVID market. It’s back despise bouncing, you know, and like, I look and I went back, and I’m like, when was last time I felt like this one was last period, I felt like this. It was July. It was summer, summer, we were getting that big bounce and towards like August, whatever. Everyone was crazy. Everyone was like, euphoric, people were investing. It was crazy. And then we got that bounce again, and November, was a little bit slower. October was a little bit slower. December was, you know, starting to pick up again. And then January, February. Were going crazy again. So to me, it’s just like when the markets euphoric, I feel like small caps are euphoric. It’s crazy. Everyone’s happy. You know, and COVID We got that. You know, from you know, when the market was just bull case bookcase bull case. We were getting hot, you know, like hot chicks every day. We were getting manipulated stocks every day. It was crazy every day. And now it feels like at the tops of these bear bounces. It’s like a switch foot and we’re back to low range slow market.

Should I even trade in the current market?

Harry 18:46
Choppiness waking up in the morning saying like, should I even really trade? You know, so I think really, for the most part, you No, I’m always taking that into account for sure. Yeah,

James 18:58
I think what worries me a little bit about especially small and mid cap stuff is that we I think we’re we had a really big January effect this year. I think a lot of people and market participants obviously took advantage of tax loss harvesting in December and then there was that big push back on the market. Like I was just reading this thing like if you got long, like US equities like a like a substantial healthy portfolio of US equities on January 1, I think you already would have made like a 9% return right which is like most of them the s&p like a 10% a year is ridiculous you know so like the reality is like maybe that was just that big push like everyone got caught off guard for a minute all this money came in and it made small and mid caps light up and it made everything light up and now that we’ve kind of hit this like this peak like I don’t know that that does worry me again go up Do I think that means we get we crater again? No, I think that we’re just gonna shop and it’s gonna be rough and I think especially if you’re a trader day to day it’s, you’re gonna have to be super selective and I think that the ranges just might get sucked up again. And I, what I hate is that I log on to Twitter, which I actually deleted again this week finally. But I when you log on to Twitter, like you see everyone is that euphoric? Like you said that feeling of like the COVID markets where things are ripping, that it’s plays every day sports are making money logs are making money. And I don’t feel like that’s gonna really last and I don’t know why I could not give you a reason why I just that that’s, that’s the sentiment shift. And it’s, it’s crazy, because we came off a year of shit. And I think that to think that things are going to change this last month. I don’t know. I don’t think that I don’t I don’t see it. I hope it does. Obviously, for our sake, you know, it’s our that’s our cash flow. But the same time it’s, I don’t know, it’s gonna be really interesting to see. Because I still see a lot of traders struggling day to day and I don’t know, I’m not too sure how to how to analyze this. And you know,

Harry 20:53
I’d say like, I would pose you the question, you’re James Freelander. Okay? You you bought fucking stocks on January 1, you’re up 9%. If that 9% goes red, do you panic? No, probably not. Would you panic if that if that 9% got taken away?

James 21:11
No. If I was running a portfolio now because especially like for me, like the stocks that I bought, you know, early January, December, were companies that I would intend to hold for a long time.

Harry 21:23
Let’s just say you bought SPY, you bought SPY, you’re up whatever percent you’re up. And that that position goes red. At what point do you panic?

James 21:36
I think if I put in a new low, I think it spiral. That’s where you start to fucking panic. And that’s because the recipe I it’s got. It’s like I said, Man, it’s gonna be absolutely wild to watch. And I think that in the worst, I think the worst part about this market is it could be a day, you could have one day where we just implode or we rip higher. I mean, it’s it’s trading like I was the other day I was shorting BBBY, the day after the filing for bankruptcy. And, you know, I’m sending it along. I was messaging with Alex, we’re watching SPY and we’re and it’s like, it’s like almost like when SPY wants to have a bid. It’s unlimited. Like this stock was so red and then all of a sudden it finds a bid and it’s just pushing up and up and up. Of course today I’m getting Short Bed Bath and Beyond and, and but then the days that you needed to have a fucking read data. I mean, you want it to go up. It’s just like unlimited down. Yeah, that’s why I feel like nobody has any clue. Like, for example, the AI sector I thought it was going to light up I thought the AI sector was going to become this like multi week if not month sector of strength. And it died. It completely died as I SPY was making you it doesn’t even make a SPY push. It doesn’t really make sense to me.

Harry 22:53
But that’s I mean, I feel like the switch this week got clipped off. If this was back in a big bounce. Like, you know, I really do think that that that sector AI could have fucking got blown out of the water that could have went to like crazy prices. But we just this week, this switch just got flipped, I feel. And maybe we’re gonna show up on Monday, you know, right now it’s like Sunday afternoon right before the Superbowl, you know, maybe we show up on Monday and everything’s slicked back on again. But I just feel like when we get to the tops of these goddamn bounces, bro.

We’re Back to a Bear Market

Harry 23:32
It’s just small caps are dry, everything’s slow. Everyone’s back to complaining, we’re back to a bear market. And I think that, like for me, I really do think that we’re in for a little bit lower, just because that’s just been the pattern, you know?

James 23:48
So so well then I’ll ask you, so what would change for you to then switch your mindset and say shit, like, it’s on the buy stocks.

Harry 23:56
If we get like two, like, if we get back to those like kind of highs or we get like at least like kind of close. You know, that would be something that I’d be like, okay, that you know, that’s obviously substantial. Like you have to be really proven wrong I think like not not you know, you need some some strength and you have to really be kind of proven that okay, this is not about we are definitely out of this. You know, I think you have to just, you know, number one, we would have to be super hard on small caps again, I think because like that would tell me okay, we’re hot and small caps again, obviously they flip the switch back on obviously we’re gonna I think also you need to get past the, the stage where we’re like, this isn’t about anymore. You know? How do we get past that stage where, like me and you can sit here and agree. Okay, this is not about anymore, right? I think that is the key thing where we can sit and both say, all right, Harry, you are wrong. It did not go lower. There is definitely We kind of like, it’s definitely not a bounce anymore. I think that is where we both say, you know, we’re back in bull market, I would love to see it. You know, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see it. I’d love to bet against myself. You know, I just feel like right now. It’s just like, you know, I don’t know, bro I just feel like we’re in for

James 25:22
I mean, I understand your mindset but I guess at what point is it that these companies like took their medicine enough? Right because like I’ve been doing a lot of like earnings call listening and like, you’re starting to see companies smarter, not bracing meta, you see Disney, you see Apple, you see all these major companies saying that saying the right stuff, layoffs are happening. They’re trying to tighten up the mothership there. And you know, at what point you see a company like Mehta that just got that got clobbered. And now they’re finally kind of bouncing all because they said the right stuff. You know, I was just listening to another podcast or talking about Disney. It’s the same idea. Bob Iger came back, he’s cutting people, he’s reacting dividends. I mean, he’s doing everything you would want to see a CEO do. That’s where it’s tough. And like, at what point is it that and I asked him just thinking a lot at what point is it that stocks kind of kind of take away and are different and not really engaged anymore with like sentiment and like, and like just the overall market? Again, it’s so tough, right? Because we live in a world where we just see so much spending, we see excess spending, we see people who just again, for God’s sakes, I mean, I went to this weekend, I went out to dinner, and it’s just crazy watching the world, like it almost feels like nothing has changed.

Current State of the Markets

James 26:37
Since pre COVID. It feels like the markets are like everything’s just back. You know, and and I often wonder that times like, I’ve had a theory that that the average person is getting so disengaged with the market and the getting further and further from like being involved. I think our generation, you know, we’re only a few years apart, but I think our generation has like the least active portfolios, like the least active participants in the market. And it’s like, we’ve kind of hit that point, you know, but I don’t know, it’s gonna be interesting. Like I said, What is it? It’s February 12, Super Bowl Sunday? And I’m very interested to see, I mean, we could we can do this podcast next week, and one of us could have could have been completely right or wrong. We are we do nothing and the market doesn’t change. You know, I, I think that we’re gonna bounce around until 2024. I think the election is what’s going to choose our path for a long time. Yeah. Oh, and I mean, we kind of transitions that something I want to talk about was the State of the Union. You know, we’re obviously accelerating into into a time where elections are going to be kind of the topic again, you know, Donald Trump is coming out, you know, basically saying he’s going to be he wants to be a candidate DeSantis is going to be a candidate. And then we have Biden and possibly Gavin Newsom. So, you know, we had the State of the Union, we’re obviously in complete disarray as a country, we it was almost embarrassing to watch. Right. We’re seeing Republicans screaming at that Biden, you know, calling them a liar during the State of the Union, which to be honest, as as someone who’s more moderate myself, I hated say, I hate seeing it, because that’s at the one time when Republicans could just sit there and not then it almost let Biden do damage to himself. They did get loud when they shouldn’t. And same thing with you know, it’s We’re the party itself is so divided. We have McCarthy telling Marjorie Taylor Greene turn like she, you know, all that stuff. And then like Mitt Romney was yelling at that gentleman, I think from New York, the guy who got caught lying about himself, and it’s like, it’s embarrassing, right? So it’s like, it’s like, where? I don’t even know where we head from here. And I think that’s kind of what everyone’s gonna wait for.

Harry 28:45
Yeah. And it will, it’s the same thing. Like if you look at the State of the Union, like the one where Trump was Pelosi ripped up the speech, you know, it’s all it’s all theater. And it’s all just a distraction, right. Like, the Democrats are badly behaved. The Republicans are badly behaved. And I’m sure you had a lot of Republicans who saw that. And we’re like, Yeah, that’s right. He’s liar. You know, it just, they’re all just doing it to appease their base. And you really see that like, the Democrats really go after the rich, they really go after the rich. I mean, how many times was he like, we’re gonna take those wealthy corporations, or we’re gonna tax those billionaires. And I feel like each party right now is trying to appease different different, like, different types of people. Right? If you’re the Democrats, you have to do this balancing act between having poor people on your side and moderately wealthy people on your side and billionaires on your side. And if you’re the Republicans, you’re trying to do the exact same thing, you know, so Biden probably feels, you know what, rich people, they’re probably going to still vote for me anyway because they don’t want to see Trump in or whatever, you know, they’re Democrats or whatever. He’s gonna keep relying on that. And I think You have Republicans saying, Oh, well, we’re gonna try and, you know, they’re all trying to appease two different types of people in different groups and people. And he might see in the pool polls that he’s, you know, favored among rich people. So let’s try and bring the middle class and the whatever people up. And I just feel like the whole politics now it’s, I don’t know, like, I hate. I feel like it’s so much worse in Canada, like when I just look at if you take the United States versus Canada, because in the United States, I feel like, at least when you talk to people or talk to MIT members, a lot of people are really informed. But in Canada, we don’t have that. In Canada, a lot of people are uninformed. Like we have so many things coming to Canada, like for example, in our our health care system shit right now. So Trudeau came out and said, Okay, well we’re going to we’re going to fund health care and when you look at the disclaimers for the health care funding, it’s these like 15 minutes cities that they want to do where people can’t leave their district or you get a fine and it comes out of your fucking taxes.

Scary Shit That People Have No Idea About

Harry 31:02
That is scary shit that people just have no idea about here. Another thing digital ID so there’s just going to be one ID that they can you know track you all the way around, have access to all your healthcare information, have access to all your shit, nowhere you’ve gone nowhere you’ve been your debit card, your digital ID are the same thing. That is fucking scary. But people here have no idea because it’s just not reported. Right. And so at least in the States, you you guys kind of have like Fox News, you have CNN each right opposite ends of the spectrum. Here, we only have 111 News, CBC, we have like a couple others, like you know, CTV or whatever, but they’re all cut from the same cloth. Right? So would you want to live in a country where your news is just straightforward, all its reminds me of like China right now where we are at, you know, it’s absolutely crazy. And people are gonna say, Oh, Harry, you’re being too extreme. You’re being too this. You’ve been to that. But when you actually research the little bottom disclaimers of these, these bills and what they want to do and it like they tried to take away all the guns, every all the hunting guns, everything and they ended up getting, they ended up saying, Well, no, we’re not going to do that anymore. Because there was so much uproar, because, you know, they were just trying to get it out there in the news and on social media, because it’s not really getting reported in the actual news, what people are actually doing. So it is kind of scary. And we had that China balloon that was in Canada, right? They just shot it down over UConn yesterday, I believe. And I was saying to my girlfriend last weekend, like I’m seeing on Twitter that there’s another like balloon or like spacecraft in Canada right now, you flick on the news, that’s not even there. Right? That’s not even there. All you would see on the news is that they shot one down in the US it’s no problem, you turn on the Canadian television channels, that’s not there. That’s literally not there. And now what they want to do is with this bill see 11 or whatever, they want to actually be able to censor what you see on the internet. So if James Freelander writes a negative tweet about Trudeau, I won’t see it, it will be completely blocked. It’ll say this tweet is unavailable, which is absolutely crazy. So we’re getting into this kind of crazy situation. And Trudeau still has like three years left anyway. So it’s like, you know, he’s not till 25. So I guess it’s like two, but it’s absolutely crazy when you look at all this shit. And you know, the people here have no idea. So at least in the States, you have some of the population who has some have a clue. But in Canada, bro, it’s crazy here is wild.

James 33:39
I mean, I think the thing is that I try to I try to reiterate this to a lot of people, because a lot of my friends getting political fights all the time. And, and I try to say like, you don’t understand me one. One thing that’s really nice about being involved in like financial markets, like we’ve met people all around the world, or we have friends in Europe, you know, Prague, you know, turn you everywhere, right? And when you really do a deep dive, and you think about it, like living in the US, is still in my opinion, we are still living in the pinnacle, Best Country, because of everything that we have. As far as information, like you said, there’s information out there, our freedoms are still very much there. As much as people like to think aren’t we’re very much can even when there’s such controversy about the COVID vaccines, you know, other countries were way more strict than we were ever were, you know, at least here we had Conte we had states that were different and all that and us we were unique that way. But I do feel like here people are losing sight of that. And like they don’t understand that how lucky we really are, you know, and they get caught up so much in the small like news headlines now. And it’s going to be figuring out, you know, especially this, in my opinion, this 2024 election will be the most important election that we’ve had in our history because I think it’s going to determine the course of where we’re headed for the next 10 years. You know, because obviously, I think if we if we have a change and a Republican gets becomes president, I think there’s gonna be a it’s just going to be a bull I’d back all around. And it’s just gonna be a lot of fighting and everything. And, you know, I think I think Biden, as far as politically is made intelligent move by starting to target and talk about how he’s now saying that Republicans are coming after Social Security and Medicaid and all that stuff, you know, and now I hear people saying that they’re like, Oh, we can never vote Republican. And because of this, and I’m, and I sit there and I say, how can you focus on news headlines day to day like that from Republicans or Democrats, when our country is spending trillions and trillions of dollars, on wars, on, you know, medical vaccines on all this stuff? We that that’s where we need to focus, we need to focus on who’s going to control the spending over the next four years, who’s going to control I mean, our debt is out of control. I mean, there Trump right now is a big argument about raising the debt ceiling versus not, you know, those are where I’m going to be focused as a voter, I will not pick a party, I will pick whoever is going to propose the right ideas to get our country back on track fiscally, and you know, security, wise, everything. It really is crazy. And like, that’s why like we can revert all the way back to our conversation with the markets. Like, I don’t think anybody has any fucking idea anymore. No idea, because we don’t know where we’re headed. So how can we both of us, like I can’t say we’re going to new highs, and I can’t say we’re going to look, because I just don’t I don’t think we have any clue. You know, and it’s going to be interesting for the next year until elections come in. And who knows, you know, I guess we’re, we’re both kind of sitting here wondering for a while. Yeah.

The Distractions of the News Headlines

Harry 36:29
Well, 100%. And also, I think that there’s a lot of distractions right now. You know, like, if you take a look like on a grand scale of things, right, we had that China balloon command, right? That was like that dominated the news headlines. I was obsessed with it, too. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good. I love a good distraction. I love a good time. But there were a lot of other things happening during that time. Right? Like in Ohio, for instance, you know, you’re getting these. What did the government do there? They, they burned some crazy toxic chemical right in Ohio. And that was just like, not really reported. Did you see that?

James 37:08
They were telling people they should leave because it’s unsafe to stay there.

Harry 37:12
Yeah. Like that should be on the news. Like the government should not be doing that. You know, there’s a lot of things going on. That could be in the headlines, but instead, it’s just like, Oh, my God, there’s trying to learn like, China has been spying on us forever. Right. US has been spying. And it poses the question. Would you rather China have your tick tock data? Or will have your other data or Apple have your other data or whatever? Like, do you care more about your own country spy on you? Or do you care about more of a foreign country spying on you? Right? You know, like, to me, it’s just like, what’s the difference? And China’s same fucking shit.

James 37:50
It’s like, this is this is what I’m getting at as people obsessively, you know, people messaged me about this this guy, damn balloon, and like, yes, it’s very interesting. And like I was interested to right but like, at the same time, as you just said it right. It’s like, these people are scrolling on Tik Tok getting their the news about the balloon. And I’m like, you care so much right now that like what this balloons flying over our heads but you’re sitting on Tik Tok. I mean, as a country, as a country to like we ban companies like Huawei. And like these companies that have these massive Chinese, like, information that can they steal info from us, you know, whether it’s like facial recognition, you know, body movements and stuff. And in the end, here, we are like, it’s like the biggest thing I was just at a family party last night, everyone’s talking about the buck and balloon, this UFO thing that we just shut down. But I’m like, you guys, like people, I think citizens of every country right now. And this is why like, you can go back episodes Why believe what Elon Musk is doing on Twitter is so important because we have responsibility as citizens of any country that we are a member of, to be informed all over and not just trusted source. Like that’s why for me, I have five podcasts I listen to, you know, in all five of those, like, they all have different people on them with different views. Some were very, very conservative, some are very liberal, some of it and I listened to everything and I go on Twitter, I get news, but then I go do self research myself. And I find people that are in my life. I have a friend that works in government. And I asked him and I get different views, because, dude, we’re just sitting here. This is what I mean. Nobody has any clue what’s going on, you know? So it’s gonna be interesting. And I think that we’ll record our next episode, probably in a week. And I’m sure we’ll be having a completely different conversation about like the state of things because it seems like it’s an ever changing news source. Now we, I mean, God sakes, there was a period do you go back a decade, no one gave a shit. What what the Fed was doing no one went into that shit. I mean, no one gave no one cared. No one cared about any of this stuff. We’ve always had inflation levels of inflation. We’ve always had the prices of things were always going up. People didn’t fucking care. But now it’s every day. It’s a new story, a new story, a new story. I’m sure next week, there’ll be 20 more balloons coming our way. And we’ll be talking Okay, yeah, exactly

Harry 40:00
right. And there’s there’s bigger there’s I my opinion, I think there’s definitely like bigger stuff like, China’s been spying forever right your own government has been spying forever on the fucking citizens. What the What the hell’s the difference? You know China has my Tiktok data. Go ahead, you know? Yeah, what are you gonna see some girls fucking dancing or some fun stories like what are you gonna see bro? What are you gonna say? I’ll be fine making that publicly on Twitter? Yeah,

James 40:30
I’ve said it for years, right people can spy on me all the time you know what they’re gonna find they’re gonna find boredom. Like it’s like, but that’s but that’s everything. That’s how most people feel. That’s why I find it funny people get so obsessed with these headlines. And it’s like, Dude, you care so much now but like, why? Like there’s other things that are more important. And again, it’s just, there’s, there’s people have certain IQ, I think that they get stuck in these, like, these circles of use news headline after news headline, but they don’t talk about the things that really matter. These two people who really have no influence or impact or even probably participate in markets. So it really

Harry 41:04
let’s talk about how the World Economic Forum wants to like, they’re literally saying, like, we’re gonna have a major cyber thing happened by 2025. Like, that’s scary, bro. Thanks, Deb. We’re talking about this balloon, this harmless fucking balloon,

James 41:18
dude, I’m telling you, it drives me It drives me absolutely insane and like, but again, you can talk to people and like, when people will hyper focus on politics, and they don’t really look at like the big picture of the stuff. Like, again, there was a period of time where people when they voted, you know, it was about the country. It wasn’t just party affiliation. It was like, what is better for the country? You know, and there was a time when each party wasn’t so different. Now we’re like, two conflicted sides. Like, we really should have a civil war. Like, our country is so different, you know, and it’s like, people need to wake up and realize, like, yeah, we still have a common cause, you know, so, I don’t know, but we can. I’m sure we could ramble about this for hours and hours, and we’re good, but you know, coming into next week, like I said, we’ll we’ll have a lot more to talk about, I’m sure.

Harry 42:03
Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, just gonna be a wild fucking ride, bro. It’s gonna be

James 42:08
good. If I will say this last thing I want to say. Let’s see what the market does after February. Right? And you’re fair, let’s go. We’ll get to march. And then we’re going to place a bet on the direction of market. That’s my that’s what I want to do with you at some point, but we’ll see what comes up at the end of this month and then we’ll make a we’ll make our little wager but yeah, for sure, bro.

Harry 42:29
Well, thanks for Thanks for watching everyone, and we’ll see everyone for the next one. See you guys.

 

About the Author
117 posts
James F.

James Freedlender is a driven day trader and entrepreneur hailing from Boston. Since embarking on his trading journey in 2018, James has honed his skills and specialized in trading penny stocks, with a focus on longer time frame moves. His dedication and sharp instincts have contributed to his success in the competitive financial world. In addition to his day trading accomplishments, James is a thriving business owner, running a popular barbershop and collaborating with his family in the design and renovation of homes and businesses. His entrepreneurial spirit and keen eye for detail have paved the way for continued success in his various ventures. Outside of his professional pursuits, James is an avid golfer and hiking enthusiast, always eager to explore new trails and perfect his swing. His love for travel has taken him to many corners of the world, enriching his life experiences and providing inspiration for his work. A firm believer in giving back, James is passionate about helping others achieve their financial goals and guiding them on the path to success. His wealth of knowledge, combined with his dedication to uplifting others, makes James Freedlender a respected and admired figure in both his professional and personal life.