All right. I'd like to start with this table that's on your handout and then get into what I do with forecasting. But this table, this is a very useful table. One of the first things I did when I got hired into Solomon Brothers in 1986 into the marketing analysis department and I worked in market analysis equity research for a while. Proprietary trading, I ended up with the last several years I was there. We were prop trading, directional trading, international markets on the equity side. So that's what I did. In the process of being there and previously I developed a unique form of forecasting. It's a form of time series analysis. It's different than what I learned at the Berkeley Business School. I spent a lot of time there in the stat department, Berkeley Business School, Janet Yellen's home base. Anyways, I cut my teeth on Box Jenkins, Arima models, and Fourier and things like that, multi regression models. In the process of my career I found that they were not very useful for forecasting. They gave you a slight advantage, sort of like a crooked coin to us. But I developed something that's based on rates of change and I discovered basically a non-random component of rates of change and I came up with a complex algorithm. Unfortunately I can't demonstrate it here because it's going to be on YouTube today. What I do when I go around in, I don't want the Chinese to re-engineer, reverse engineer what I'm doing. All you're going to get is my conclusions of what I do. There's a little explanation of it there. Basically the model is looking for inflection points. Most of the time it's looking to buy things that are down, buy low and sell high. I'm going to present you with some, what I think are some opportunities in the buy low, sell high department. Let's start with this table. This table is not really the model but it's the business cycle overlaid with the Dow Jones. A lot of data here, let's not get lost in the numbers at the top. Can you see where the cursor is? Is it showing up? Yes. Okay. Okay, so let's look at the bottom line because we don't have all the time in the world. The average recession from 1902 to the present is 15 months. The average expansion is 45 months. Pre-1990 the average expansion was 37 months. An expansion only lasts three or four years on average. Three years before Greenspan. Greenspan kind of a lengthen thing. What the Federal Reserve does is try to eliminate the oscillations in the business cycle. This cycle is now 54 months old, which is more than the average. It's not as long as the last three. The previous one was 73 months long. The expansion 120 months and 92 months before that. The Fed believes very strongly that they can control what they call the cyclical component of the economy, which is the recession. They think that they have banned recessions. That's the Fed's viewpoint. They believe that with absolute certainty that there will not be any more recessions that they control it. They're stochastic model. If you talk to Fed officials, this is what they say. Well, they certainly lengthened it. Just a side note on that. I think what they've done is just increase layers of debt. Basically they've just kept leverage up the system, leveraging it up, leveraging it up. Now we have a very leveraged up system. Let's not spend a lot of time on that. The point of this table is the Dow Jones has declined in every recession. That's the next to last column here where the cursor is. These are the percentage declines that have ranged from 6% to 89%. 89% of course in the 29-33 period, 6% following World War II. The pattern is, if you focus on this last line, the bottom down here, it peaks two and a half months before the recession starts. It's a good thing to know. Of course, you don't know when the recession starts. They don't tell you until much later. The National Bureau of Economic Research does the cycle dates. Basically, the stock market is a leading economic indicator. It starts going down for no reason while the news is still good. Then at bottoms, the average, by the way, the Dow Jones has declined, if you measure it this way that I do, in every recession, no exceptions. The average decline is about 31%. It bottoms four months before the next expansion starts. That's the idea.  Nobody will ever get it to the right day or anything. That's when stocks are cheap. They go down. Stocks go down because earnings go down. Here are the earnings declines in S&P 500 earnings, four quarter trailing sum and reported earnings over the last three recessions. In the 1991 recession, earnings declined 37%. This is on the back of that page. 54% in the 2002 recession and 92% because of a lot of write-offs in 2009. Earnings go down, recessions, stocks go down. If you think there's a recession and the likelihood going back to that table as one happens every four or five years after the expansion lasts for four or five years, then there's a recession. It's sort of like clockwork. My forecast is that we're going to have a decline in earnings. A good fit for where earnings go is a 100-month average. I have a monthly-ized number. That's down about, earnings could, it's an interpolated number. Of course, earnings are not monthly, but anyways, about half. Earnings look like, my economic forecast is we're probably turning down, it's about time for it. A lot of the economic series that I forecast such as auto sales, consumer sentiment, industrial production, things like that, which we don't really have time to get into unfortunately, should be turning down soon. They're not turning down yet, but we're probably on the verge of it. Then looking at the index, of course, the index has declined 50% in the last two recessions. Pretty much in touch with earnings. S&P from the 2000 peak to the 2002 October bottom down 49%. October 2007 peak to the March 2009 low minus 57%. I don't know how much, down 50%. The 200-month average is down 33% in the index. Anyway, some kind of downside risk. That's the overall view. That comes out of the model forecast. I'm not just picking that out of the air. Again, unfortunately, I can't demonstrate it.  Next time I come through Zurich, I can show you what I do do is do the presentation to clients and prospective clients from the laptop, but for obvious reasons I can't do that here. Now, here's how that looks with the recession bands overlaid with the S&P. This is not on your chart. This is just on my screen. Now, this is the 2000 advance. They have the National Bureau of Economic Research has the recession starting in April 2001 and declining and ending in November 2001. It looks like the S&P bottomed after the recession, which contradicts what I just told you. However, S&P earnings kept going down. The low in S&P earnings was in the fourth quarter of 2002, which is down here. The market actually bottomed in October. If you go by earnings, I would argue with this date that they have here, that we didn't have a recovery following that November 2001 date. That looks like a contradiction. Let's focus on the last one here. The last recession, market peaked in October 2007. They have the recession band starting in December. Declined, you know, 50%. They have the bottomed in March. They have the expansion starting, ending in June, starting in July. Now we're 54 months along. That's the basic idea. I don't want to spend too much time on this because we don't have a lot of time. If there's one thing I can leave with you, it's investing over the business cycle. They didn't teach me anything about this in business school, finance, textbooks, anything. I think it's one of the most fundamental things about being a portfolio manager and running investments is understanding the business cycle and being long and short at the right times or being long and out, adapting your asset allocation to economic conditions. It's a simple story. Let me speak for a second about what the model does. I have a form of time series analysis similar to Box Jenkins, modeling autoregressive integrated moving average. Different concept. I'm using rates of change. I give the forecast for Box Jenkins, if you've ever used an ARIMA model, it looks basically like this. They have these bands that go like a megaphone, so you're 100% sure it's either going to go up or down, which is not very useful. Mine is pretty black and white. It gives you direction, up or down, or uncertain. It's black or white. It's going to go up or go down.  This is a stronger week signal. It's a 12-period forecast, so with monthly data, which I call long-term, one year, weekly data, one quarter, 12 weeks, three months, one quarter. The model likes to buy low and sell high. It's looking for inflection points. I'll be flipping over some of those real quickly in a second here. At the buy low sentiment points, everybody hates it. The news is bad. British petroleum after the oil spill, solar stocks 18 months ago, things like that. Nobody wants to touch them with a 10-foot pole. I like that. I like bad sentiment for buying opportunities. It has to fit with the model forecast, of course, but sell high. Everybody loves them. High sentiment. Everybody's invested. They're already situated. Portfolio managers are already committed. A lot of what happens is the portfolio flows. If you think of people on one side of a boat, they run to the other side of the boat. I've seen this over and over. Wherever people are positioned at inflection points, then it's them reallocating and going in the other direction that makes these things happen. I really think there are some real opportunities now, just besides for market direction within sectors. I'll show you. I think there's some really excellent opportunities in sector allocation at the moment. Of course, the ones that I like, everybody hates. The ones that I hate, everybody likes. The model's best at emerging markets. Over time, it's been caught the cycles really well in emerging markets. Major market inflection points like 2000 top, 2002 bottom, 2007 top, 2009 bottom. I'm not a perimeter. I like models at major inflection points. It's been very positive. We have that in our intro file. I can show you the reports I wrote. Anyways, sectors really, really good. People really rely, even if they disagree with my market view, a lot of people, professional money managers, look at my sector. In the report that I do, there's a breakout of sectors, industry groups, and individual stocks in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Not individual stocks in Japan, just sectors, groups, and then economic data. That's what the model is good at. I do everything foreign exchange commodities. It's not quite as good at the other things. That's what it's best at. What's the story? My major call this year has been emerging markets, short emerging markets. Here's how it's worked out. It's actually kind of strange. This is from this week's report. I think it's on the last page of your thing, but you can just look on the screen. The emerging market index relative to the S&P is underperformed by 33%. That comes from the index being down 6% and the S&P up 26%. Now, beneath that index only being down 6%, a lot of countries have really cracked enormously. Peru is down 35% year-to-date in dollars. Indonesia down 21%, Brazil 13%, and 11%. There are other ones that are down 20%, 30%. That isn't all of them. That's just some primary ones. Let's look at that. Indonesia. This is Indonesia going back. The left side, this doesn't have a time scale on the bottom. These are months, and this is 1990. Left end is 1990, beginning January. This is the 1997 Asia crisis. Remember that one? That's the Asia markets collapse. This is 2008, and this is now. Now, I'm presenting you the markets in my highest confidence level. This one is a favorite short of mine, and it has been for a while. It's down 30 something percent from the peak. It's down 20 something percent on the year. Peaked in mid-year, spring, April, May, I believe. Let's notice one thing here. The 200-month average, I'm going to be flipping across a lot of charts here in a minute. The 200-month average, the model doesn't give you a level. It's not like a regression model where it predicts of a level of something based on other variables. It's a different technique completely. Go away. Sorry. Just what I need in the middle of this presentation. My forecast is direction down, intensity strong, position about one-third of the way. The point about these 200-period averages, you tend to get there. This is where it got there. It's basically equilibrium level that things return to. As we start flipping over markets, you'll see that example over and over in weekly and monthly data. There's nothing magical about it. It's just markets are, in my theory of the universe, markets are a process that goes out of equilibrium. You can think of that as a bull market when they're going up and back was a correction, so that would be mean reversion or something. The model catches both of those pretty accurately away from mean and then back to mean. We're going back down here in this direction and that level is down 43%. Indonesia, down. Very quickly a couple others. Here's Thailand. Thailand, that's the 2000, it's 1997 Asia crisis. This hasn't broken as much as Indonesia. I have an early forecast down, no bottom in sight. It's down 50%. I'm calling Thailand 50%. Philippines, looks like Thailand. Just breaking 200 month averages down here. I have direction down, intensity strong position early minus 49%. Just a couple quick other ones. Mexico, hasn't really broken yet. You notice that these all topped out months ago. This is the strange thing that the major markets are at new highs and emerging markets are rolling over. The 200 month average is down 47%. In Turkey, these are the strongest ones. They're all over the map. They're not just Asia, but they're basically Asia, Tiger, Latin America. Here's one that in the middle of Asia and Europe, Turkey. Not as much downside in Turkey. Let's talk about emerging markets for a second. When the good times roll, the money goes, think about the investment philosophy of the last three or four years, the last cycle, the emerging market boom. Remember that one? China, we're going to export materials to China for the Chinese and the growth in the middle class. It's all one ball of wax. We're going to invest in cyclical stocks in the West that export to the new emerging middle class in China. That was the story. That was the investment thesis. It's all going wrong. On the way up, the money goes into emerging markets, the capital inflows from investments. Their currency strengthens. Their interest rates go down. The central bank absorbs. They don't like the capital inflows, so they buy the dollars and euros. That means they're putting out their domestic currency, so their money supply is expanding. It's very stimulative. When it goes into reverse, I don't know if any of you are from the U.S., this is a product called Roche Motel. Have you ever heard of that? It's for cockroaches. It's like a little mousetrap. It's a box with a flap.  The sales pitch is Roche Motel, you can check in, but you can't check out. That's how emerging markets are. That's the joke where you can get in, but the liquidity disappears when they go into liquidation. Deleveraging cycle. We're in a deleveraging cycle in emerging markets. What happens? The money goes out. The currency weakens. The interest rates go up. The central bank defends the currency. By raising interest rates, we're seeing that in India and Brazil. It's not fun. The inflation rate goes up. The economy goes down. You don't get out of it until the deleveraging cycle is over. I would argue that is the transmission mechanism back into major markets on the part of the whole, member of the whole investment thesis about investing in emerging markets. What was it? Industrial companies, German exporters, gas turbines, locomotives, and you name it, machinery, equipment, caterpillar tractors, all that kind of stuff. The marginal, I think this is going to impact the exporters. Of course, even consumer product companies, Unilevers, has been saying things like that. I don't think this is a theme that's going to disappear. I think it's going to be the theme going forward for the night the next year or so at least. I think that's something to put into your radar screen of continued decline in emerging markets impacting Western multinationals that have businesses that have expanded into emerging markets. Where does that leave? Let's go to very quickly on the sector. I have not sectors, major markets. This is a synthetic composite index of global stock indexes monthly. Isn't it interesting how in this imaginary thing that I developed, it's just an equi-weighted average of the S&P, Hang-Sang DAX, bunch of European indexes. It's a synthetic, just a good way of saying what is the world equity index is doing. It's got a heavy European weight. That's why it's not at a new high. It's got Italy and Spain in it, some depressed markets. But anyways, the 200-month average has worked pretty well. It gets down there. I'm showing this thing running out of steam pretty soon, should begin to roll over maybe not this afternoon or this tomorrow or next week. But in the important investment timeframe for portfolio managers, this is supposed to be an inflection point on the order of 2007 or 2000. We're supposed to have significant downside risk.  What I would like to point out are the opportunities. How do you arrive at your confidence? Yeah, it's a strong or weak signal. Unfortunately, I can't demonstrate it here because I don't want it to be on YouTube. So it's a No, I'd rather not. Just so it's very clear. Basically, what the model gives you is a probability distribution and it's the strength of the probability distribution. So it's basically, I am predicting the model predicts a probability distribution of something going up or down 12 periods ahead. And it's the confidence level you can see in the way that I've developed it of the probability distribution if it's a stronger weak signal. I'm sorry, I can't give a better answer than that. But anyways, let's look at where the opportunities lie. Okay, now here's something I love to buy. This is something that's despised. It's a sector divided by the index. So this is relative. This is stocks Eurozone 600. Anybody get take a guess at what we're looking at or what index what sector relative to the index? Utilities. This is utilities divided by your stocks monthly. The ratio has gone from 1.8 to the current point eight. So it's down more than 50%. And I have direction up intensely strong positions just starting. So 12 month view. Utilities are supposed to outperform. And nobody likes them. I know there's a lot of bad news. But remember, that's bad news by low. That's what the bad news is always bad by low. So I'm not saying this is off to the races and you get huge absolute gains. I'm just this is relative, right? They're supposed to outperform the index. So I also do have I think they could go up. But let's just think about where there's 200 week averages. Notice the 200 month, I'm sorry, notice the 200 month has become into play here, gets there, takes off, comes back, bounces, we're down below. So I think we've headed for an intersection somewhere up here somewhere, which is up significantly. I think there's 30 40% upside out potential in this sector. Now here's another one, telecom. Here's telecom divided by Euro stocks. It doesn't look as depressed, but it is simply because this one, this was the TMT peak when telecom was was it was very popular. In that rally phase, telecom outperformed. In the recent rally phase, it's underperformed massively, for obvious reasons, you know, the revenues are falling, and you have to invest in every new network. And it's a huge invest, you know, for I don't need to tell you about all the problems with telecom companies. But remember, news by low news is bad. So it turns out the 200 month average is on this ratio is up 64%. So and I think we are headed up in this direction. So those are the two 12 months. So long term, which I call what long term one year forecast by utilities and telecom. If you're a hedge fund and short the index against it. It's also, of course, if you're a long only portfolio manager, it's also an overweight position. So instead of being overweight, something else, you know, whatever, luxury goods companies or, or so 12 month view, that's my best outperform ideas. And it really, I think it's an arbitrage opportunity really. And here's the other side of the arbitrage. Industrial goods and services relative to the index. It's the mirror image right. And think about what my scenario is emerging markets and exporting and all these companies. So this is what people and back to here sell high popular optimistic sentiment. So what are where are people situated? I think they're situated overweight. This stuff, the there and it's a stale theme left over from the previous boom. So one thing. So this is supposed this is direction down intensity medium strong position just starting. And since we don't have an all day, unfortunately, I do drill down on to individual names. And in the report, I do names relative to the index. And I'm coming up with names like Valerec, like a lot of these companies, they're they are already going down, even though this hasn't looked like it's broken yet. So that's one thing I am seeing in the market at the moment where individual stocks are acting a lot weaker than the indexes and the groups themselves, which is basically a sign of distribution. So you may have noticed that if you're running a long portfolio, you, you, you notice the in the DAX just hit a new recent hire, the S&P or something about what my stock is not added. You know, my stocks are not doing that. They're not there's only 100, a couple hundred stocks hitting new highs with the indexes in the US. So anyways, you put those two together. Here's the old Solomon Brothers synthetic position. Tele here's telecom divided by industrial goods and services. So this has gone from 1.5 to to blow 0.5 currently, and it's right at the lows. So here you could be market neutral for a hedge fund. If anybody's hedge funds in here, totally don't care what the market does, all you care about is the difference between the telecom sector and the industrial sector. And I think one thing about sector spread trades, if you've never done them, they're really low volatility. They're not like the market or they're not like you don't have the volatility of an individual stock where it's going up and down 5, 10% a day sometimes. These are really like sleep, you know, really slow, really low volatility. It's kind of capital intensive because if you have to short something, you your prime, you have to work it out with your prime broker, the kind of so if you have like, say $100 million and you want $100 million of exposure, you're going to have to be leveraged because you're going to have to have 100 million long and 100 million short. So depending on your prime broker, the kind of leverage they will give you, they might, some prime brokers might consider that just 100 million position because it's market neutral, others would charge you, you know. So that's a whole other complex issue. Anyways, but if you're, I imagine most people, that's not their primary, they're not, you know, we're not gunslingers, probably most of us in this room. But in from a more portfolio management perspective, this is the difference of performance you could have by overweighting and underweighting something. Like you have a potential, the 200 week average on this position is up 150%. So where this might not be the whole portfolio position that you have, if at the margin, I would, I would encourage you to lighten up on industrial stocks, industrial sector ETF and ease into utilities and telecom 12 month view. Okay. Next, let's move to the intermediate term forecast. Now I have 12. So remember monthly data, one year, that's what we've been looking at 12 period forward forecast. And then weekly data, 12 weeks, three months, one quarter, next quarter. So it looks a little bit different in that timeframe. The utilities and telecom are still there, but they're not the highest priority ones. Here are the highest priority ones. Food and beverage, relative to stocks, model fresh signal, upward direction up intensity strong positions just starting. Notice we're right at the 200 week average. And if you think about, now here we're looking at back to 2003 is the beginning of this chart. So that's 2003 over here. Food, the, the two classic defensive sectors in this cycle have been not utilities and telecom yet they've underperformed. They've been food and beverage and healthcare. So food, so people have kind of flocked into these for a while. And while the market was at European markets were acting sloppy, and then they flocked out while the year, while the indexes have been stronger. These have underperformed to buy a lot. The ratio has gone from 1.8 to 0.4. So down 0.4, you know, four on 18. So, you know, it's about 20%, almost a 20% move, 20% underperformance of food and beverage. But anyways, so fresh signal for me last few weeks outperform. Food and beverage should be heading back up. We are in the kind of equilibrium zone where it's, it's also, it's had the correction, you know, it's kind of thing where you, where it was like down here. Okay. The other one is healthcare. Similar picture. Healthcare has been outperforming for about six weeks now. Above the 200 week average. Again, outperformed while the market was sloppy over here, underperformed recently by a lot. The ratio has gone from 2.5 to 2. So down five on 25 is 20%. The ratio, so underperformed by 20%. And it's supposed to go back up, direction up, intensity strong, three month view, food and beverage and healthcare. And when we look at my report, so here's the report. I have, if you guys, if anybody wants to get a sample of this, you can leave a business card. I could put you on the list for a while or something, if it's something, something you're interested in. I have a, I have a, I have the outperform and underperform ideas in the US. Here's outperform stocks, the group and the stocks, the stocks relative to the group. And here are the underperform. And since we're just looking at Europe, let's look at the Europe page. Here's the European page. So remember I said healthcare. So here's the top picks, outperform, healthcare, food and beverage, real estate, utilities and telecom. Didn't mention real estate, but that has an intermediate term forecast. And the underperform ideas are banks, industrials, construction and materials, luxury, financial services, technology, retail, travel and leisure. I had ACOR. I guess ACOR just missed or something. Then they, they had some disappointment yesterday or something I saw overnight. Then they, something, ACC or our French company hotels, they had some, some, some news I saw. Anyways, that was on my cell list. So this is what I do with this report. I'll just spend a second on it. So my, you know, sophisticated institutional investors take a look at this and they print out this page and they're looking for long and short ideas and they, they print out this page and I encourage them to take a red pen and circle this for long ideas and circle this for short ideas. So maybe we can just take a quick look at a couple of those. So Santa Fe Aventus relative to health care equally weighted average. So here's, remember the health care looks positive relative to the index stocks. Here's Santa Fe relative to the group and equally weighted group and it's a by low situation. Looks like that. Absolute. Looks like that. So it's up. It's not, you know, unfortunately this is how this market is so picked over that to try to find us something that isn't up a lot. This is kind of the best I can come up with. It's already, it is kind of up, but that's the best of, the best of the, that I can come up with. Okay, so that's an idea. Let's look at some of the stuff that doesn't look so great. So we end up with things like this. Here's Unicredit. So banks relative to stocks three month view looks like this. Direction down, intensity strong, position just starting. So I have banks as my number one underperform group in Europe at the moment. Fresh signal. This is, it's kind of hard to see on this, this chart should be more short term, but it's not. Sorry. Anyways, they've been underperforming for about five or six weeks. The forecast is down. And so, and I have things like here's Unicredit relative to the equally weighted bank group turning down absolute, turning down. It's, I'm sorry this is not a very good, let me get a shorter view. You can't see anything on that. Even that. I don't know. Anyways, some of these, so the names that I have are Royal Bank of Scotland, Unicredit, Intessa, Lloyds, UBS Barclays, Spanish banks, and a couple of Swiss banks. Sorry. Industrial goods and services, Valerex, Schneider, BAE Systems, Vestas, which has had a huge run, Atlantia, Volvo, Scania, things like that. So those, these are the names that I'm telling people to lighten up on or for hedge funds to short. Short, these are my short ideas. Construction materials, Spanish construction companies, luxury companies, I think they're vulnerable to the emerging market thing. And I think their people are over-positioned in those. And they've worked, but they've kind of underperformed actually for a little while. But I wouldn't put them as my number one short idea, but I think that they, they're, let's just say they're over-owned and that they're vulnerable to the kind of economic environment that I see. And then technology, there's a lot of technology stocks that don't look so great. And I'd like to spend a minute on the U.S. I feel like I'm in a rock concert. So the U.S. here's the idea. Consumer staples. This is weekly. Consumer staples relative to the S&P. The left side of this chart is beginning of 2003. Has underperformed in the rally. The defensive stuff underperforms when the market goes up usually. Which, by the way, even though I'm fighting the tape at the moment on thinking that the stock market's going to go down where they keep going up, what I'm seeing, this is what I'm seeing beneath the surface where the defensive stuff has actually been outperforming for about four or five weeks. Here, not at a new low. Consumer staples. So this is supposed to go up, outperform. And what is supposed to go down is similar to Europe. Here's industrial. So I have a fresh, this is industrial sector divided by the S&P. So the ratio of the industrials to the S&P index should be peaking and should be heading down. Notice it's had a bit of a move. And materials, same thing, direction down, intensity strong position, just starting three month view. And these have really been bad performer. So this has had a bounce and a downtrend as far as I'm concerned. And we're headed lower. So materials companies. So that same kind of idea, cyclical underperform, tech as another one, tech. And then I just like to very quickly cover a couple things and then finish up here. So tech has underperformed by a lot in the US. That has a lot to do with Apple, of course. Apple is a big way in this cap weighted thing. But I have a lot, a real lot of tech stocks breaking down beneath the surface of this market. Let me give you an example. On my selling short list, I have all these stocks. By the way, Tesla has been my number one short name for about six weeks or so. It's been working like a charm. But I have NCR. These stocks are breaking down, not Apple yet. Apple has hit a new high this week. Sienna, I had Cisco on the sell list before that announced that order to decline in emerging markets. Erickson, Alcatel, a lot of semiconductor companies apply materials, AMD, semiconductor makers, internet companies, a lot of these Chinese internet companies that are listed in the US. Also Facebook. Facebook is, I think, is kind of finished its deal. A lot of cyclical companies. Cummins, Caterpillar, Mining, Joy Global is a mining manufacturing equipment. Okay, so that's the idea. Sell these, buy those. And one other idea for a buy is this. Here's gold stocks. I know you guys in Switzerland are attuned more to the issue of gold and gold equities than people in some other places. This is the XAU Gold Stock Index monthly going back to 1984 July. So go back, this is as far as data goes back that I have. And here we are in the 80s, low 80s, which is where it was in 1984. So no progress in the large cap gold stock universe and it's down approximately 70%. What is the benchmark or the relative comparison? Yeah, okay. XAU relative to S&P. Looks like that. That's the relative. And I have it almost. It's not quite there. There could be, I'm expecting maybe a little more pain for a few weeks or months in gold, but I would be, since I don't come through Switzerland very often, and in the terms of things that are buy low, bad sentiment unwanted, I would recommend gold stocks. And when I look at, just a quick aside on that, when I look at the individual names, I am getting a buy signal and they're down a lot more. Like here's one, BVN, Buena Ventura. It's a Peruvian miner. It's down, like some of these are down 80, 90%. At the bottom there's usually some volatility goes back and forth, but I would be accumulating, I would look to accumulate gold stocks. And if you think about it, the gold stocks have resumed negative correlation to the market.  This is something you can buy. If you're worried about market risk, gold stocks are probably going to go up when the market goes down. And that's my forecast. Not quite yet. I think maybe a little more sloppiness for a few weeks or months, but well worth being on your radar screen. So that's pretty much the story. Let me just review, let me just repeat the conclusions. And oh, dollar. Hang on a second. So dollar, dollar up. I have a fresh intermediate term, three month forecast for the dollar. This one I don't really have, I don't know what this means. I don't have a good explanation for how it fits into everything. Could be maybe tapering, who knows. So dollar up versus euro. We're right around the 200 week average. By the way, you notice the 200 week average has been worked pretty well in terms of inflection points in the currencies. But the currencies have been a hard, rough trade this year. You know, it hasn't been a lot of follow-through. There's been, if you're a currency trader, maybe the short-term traders have done okay, but it hasn't been easy. There's been a lot of whipsaws in that. Okay, so the idea is, back to the original thesis, we're 54 months into something that usually lasts 45 months. QE, which I didn't have a lot of time to spend on. I used to work for a government securities dealer and I've observed the process firsthand of the central bank monetizing debt by buying it from the government securities dealer with new money, which is basically counterfeiting, but they're allowed to do it. So the QE, just one quick aside on that. So the Fed's balance sheet is, you know, they're buying $85 billion a month and it looks like that. That's a weekly Fed balance sheet, total Fed credit. And the Fed is now 69 times leveraged. They have $55 billion in equity and they pay all their dividends from this huge pile of treasuries and mortgages that they own. They pay all the dividends to the treasury, so their capital stays the same. So every time they do add $85 billion, they're expanding leverage. So their leverage has gone up from 50 to 69 times and they're oblivious. They couldn't care less, nobody really... So not that they're going to go bankrupt or anything, but it's kind of an example of the craziness. But my thesis is, yeah, it's worked so far.  They have forced investors into risky securities, junk bonds, high yield debt, and equities. And there are actually speeches by Fed officials saying this was their objective a year ago. They call it the portfolio balance channel. We want to shift, we will force investors into doing it. So you're basically being manipulated by the Fed, and with so far it's worked. However, I think that they do not control the economic cycle, and the transmission mechanism is through the emerging markets, which they have lost control of, you know, it's not working anymore. That feeds back into a decline in earnings and a just a typical business cycle contraction. Not the end of the world, but earnings go down, stocks go down. You want to be in outperforming, if you have to have long exposure, be defensive. And there's a huge opportunity, 12-month view in utilities and telecom over here. And in the U.S., also for three-month view, it's the typical stuff, consumer staples, you know, personal products, things like that, house food and beverage. And you might get blown up individual names like we saw, you know, is it Quantro? You know, these companies are not immune to this process, because anybody that has emerging market exposure can get hit, and that could be a food and beverage company, too. So I think you're better off having actually ETF or sector exposure than individual company exposure, that you might have more risk from that. And so that's it. With that Rosy Villalos scenario, look out for downside risk and be defensive. That's the end of my... What's your take on Japan? I think it's the one market that is... I don't have a short position on. I think it could rally, but, you know, I'm very cognizant of the risk over there right now. There might be a military confrontation any day, so that's something, you know, with China, they've got the aircraft carriers, and they're all lining up. The model doesn't know anything about that, all that kind of stuff. But it does seem to be, just looking at the model forecast, I expect the yen to weaken. And so I think the idea of just monetization and getting away with it, I think without a military confrontation, yes, I think that that's actually the one place in the world. Oh, there's two other markets that I like, Ukraine and Bangladesh. But they look, you know, there are ones that are way down in the gutter. Bad news. I have one for you.  Do you treat it, do you see it as just a cyclical downturn as well, a financial crisis like that, or is there a qualitative difference? Back then, you mean 2009? Well, it felt like the end of the world, didn't it? I mean with Lehman Brothers and everything. But my work turned bullish in April and I was bullish on financials. If you go back, I have that in the intro report. So the model actually said buy financials. Remember, buy low with bad sentiment. So sometimes the worst sentiment, it always looks the most bleak. And so actually that was an extreme buying opportunity in financials at that point. It's not at the moment. So I've studied financial crises in business and cycle depressions and they're not the end of the world. Somebody goes bankrupt. It's not like the system ends or something. We are not going back to living in caves and bartering. I think the market forces can sort things out. I'm not a big fan of government intervention. Maybe it had to happen then or something. If it was up to me, I would have let the market sort things out itself. But anyways, no, I don't think that that was just kind of an extreme example of a buying opportunity really in financials. Other questions? Do you have any personal opinion model based on gold? Yeah, same thing as like I showed you, XAU. Okay, so same thing like gold stocks. Right. Yeah. It's kind of a bottom. Right. Some kind of bottom for me. I'm nervous. The maybe the next few weeks or months, there might be some more sloppiness. It's not quite off to the races confirmed yet. But it's out there. And I'm actually speaking at a conference next week in London about gold mining stocks that kind of set like opportunities that exist in the gold mining stocks which are sort of like the banks were in 2009. Basically, that's the that's if there's anything like that now, that's really what else is down a lot, you know, the utilities and telecom and gold stocks basically haven't haven't gone out. There's not a lot of other things that aren't already, you know, haven't already been inflated. If there's no more questions, I'm sure that you can ask Michael about the more technical details of this all in the lunch. Yeah, yes. Opportunity. Let's give him a hand. Right. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you.


You're putting me on the spot here. You're putting me on the spot. How's it feel to be grilled on the other end of it, Lisa? I know, I know. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to a very special episode of Fun Rose Food. Today, we are in West Side LA in a little town called Santa Monica. I am super excited because today we are going to be sitting down with world-renowned journalists. TV show hosts. All-American hero. And teller of untold stories. Lisa Ling. Lisa Ling. How you guys doing? Doing good. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a fan of yours. And it makes me so proud to see you all out there. I guess what are you most excited to eat? What John does here at Kato is he does generally like a prefix. So every time you come here, there's something a little bit different. I heard a rumor that he's making new romaine, which is very, very exciting.  So I am half Chinese and half Taiwanese. And it's funny when you ask me what kind of Asian I am. Because for much of my young life, I was kind of in denial about being Asian, period, because I grew up in a community outside of Sacramento, California, that was not diverse at all. And I hated being Asian because I looked different. I was teased pretty relentlessly. Like what would they say? Like, I mean, is it stereotypical stuff or is it? I had a lot of friends, and I was a fairly popular kid. But not a day would go by when someone didn't come up to me and go, oh, Lisa Ling. Or like, Ling Ling, you forgot your bling bling.  Weren't you raised in a restaurant family? My grandfather and grandmother, they emigrated here to the US. And they were very highly educated. He couldn't get a job in business. And so they opened one of the first Chinese restaurants in Carmichael, California, called Sun-R. And then went on to open the first Chinese restaurant in Folsom, California, called Hop-Sing Eat Shop. And I didn't even like having people come over, because our house, and I smelled like Chinese food all the time. I smelled like lo mein. No, I didn't, I did. Was it good, though? It was good. It was good to eat. But yeah, yeah, I mean, when you're the only Asian kid in your school and you reek fried rice, it's not cool. In our high school of about 2,000 kids, there were probably five Asian kids, two of whom had the same last name, mine. So there was a boy named Danny Huang, who was my sister's math tutor. I mean, he was really, really good at math. Danny Huang actually asked me to prom. And I said no, because I didn't want to be teased more. For being with the other Asian. For being with the other Asian. Like, how is that? Like, that, that, it still kills me to this day that that happened, because he was the nicest guy in the world. Danny Huang, Lisa Ling, feels bad. Totally is sorry for it. I was so conflicted about my identity. I didn't feel totally American, because I was teased so much. And I didn't know the first thing about being Asian, because there were no other Asians around. That obviously shaped who you are today. Absolutely, absolutely. Experiencing that kind of adversity actually drove me to want to do something important, you know, to kind of prove people wrong. You know, my parents didn't have a lot of money. They got divorced when I was really young. They worked all the time. And the TV was always on in my house, you know? I can consider the TV kind of like another babysitter for me. And I thought to myself, well, if I can somehow work on TV, maybe things can change. Maybe I could have a better life. But there was no one on television at the time that looked anything like me, except for Connie Chung. Ah, Connie. I started in TV when I was 16 years old. And I showed up at a mall, because there was an audition for this teen magazine show called Scratch. Like, worst name ever. I got hired as one of the four hosts of the show. But the executive producer of that show was a Chinese man. And it was imperative for him to have Asian representation on that show. So I will always be grateful to him for hiring me. But that was kind of my first foray into TV. Did he get, was he like, you're gonna be the next Connie Chung? Did he say ever say that? He never did. He was actually pretty hard on me. He sort of treated me like his daughter. He was more strict with me and pushed me. And at the time I was resentful of it, but now I really appreciate it. And then after I did Scratch, I got hired to work for this show that was seen in middle schools and high schools called Channel One News. Anderson Cooper, who everyone knows from CNN, was one of my colleagues. No, that was your guys' Disney club. It kinda was. It was. Like your hub, Britney and Christina King. I mean, we were in our early 20s being sent all over the world. And it was that show that really propelled me to want to tell stories and not just be on TV, but to try and communicate what I was experiencing in the world. And so I covered the Civil War in Afghanistan when I was 21 years old, covered drug wars throughout South America, covered stories about globalization and China and India, and like really incredible things that I would have never in my wildest dreams been able to experience. When you do this kind of work, you get immersed in people's lives. You're not just going and seeing like tourist destinations, there's nothing wrong with that, but to really kind of embed is something so fulfilling and eye-opening. All right, everybody, we have food coming in. By the way, this is John, who is a phenom, so talented, and he could be my child, because he's only 27 years old. So this is our version of Lurofan. It's like a pork belly gravy. It's like a Taiwanese dish. And where did you learn how to cook all this? This one, I saw my mom cook as a child. And my mom would never tell me how to make it, and I just kept watching her, so. I gotta break this egg open, too. Yeah, the egg, I was like, mm. So this is another thing off our lunch menu. This is our version of a chicken sandwich. The middle is kind of like a popcorn chicken-ish, and then it has a herb salad and some honey mayo. Mm, got a little spice on there. The sand on there, semming, jeez. That is seriously so good, it's hot. I love how the chicken was intact. It wasn't like patty-ized.  It's weird, because from the previous generation in Asia, it was like so patriarchal. It seems like on the West now, that Asian women have all the cards, because they have a certain fluidity with other races that Asian men don't have. What do you think of that? Do you agree or disagree with my premise? All cultures don't value women as much as they should. Things are starting to change, but even in this era when women are, I think, more empowered than they ever have felt, there still are expectations. And some of these expectations women put on themselves to not only be able to feel compelled to provide, but also to maintain the family stuff going on. It's just kind of in our nature as women to want to take care of everything. And that doesn't just mean take care financially, but literally take care of everything else. And I think that that has been the case for generations. For your vision for women, is it like them just adopting traits that typically are deemed outside of that, like what is accepted for them? Or you're like, no, it's like an expanse. It's not that simple to say. I mean, I just think women should feel comfortable being women, but at the same time, not feel inhibited. It's in business I've found. I recently met a woman who is in charge of a $90 billion pension fund in the state of Oregon. I mean, this is huge. She's this brilliant, beautiful African-American woman. And she's been in the job now for a couple of years. And I said to her, did you seek this job out? Or did someone come to you and suggest you for the job? And she said, someone suggested me for the job. And I said, would you have sought this out? Because she said that the position became available a couple of years ago. And she said, I don't know if I would have gone out for it myself. Because there's something about, I think, what we've been indoctrinated as women to believing that there are certain things that we are not able to do, or that the finance world is a man's world.  The ability to dream, right? Kind of, yeah. They're like your spectrum of what you believe is possible. It limits us. You're taught not to go into engineering or finance. And I also think recognizing that there's a ceiling is sometimes disempowering because you sometimes don't even think that you can penetrate it. And so that desire to even do it seems impossible. And that's something that I would like to see changed. I mean, I know for myself. I've always just been so grateful for any opportunity that I've ever had. In fact, I have male agents who tell me, Lisa, don't talk about money with them. Let us do that. Because we know that you'll just do it for free because you love doing it so much. So, and I acquiesce that to them because for me, it's true. I never thought I'd have these opportunities. And I am so passionate about what I do that I can't even negotiate for myself. That's something that also needs to change. Like I need to feel like I deserve what I've gotten and what I've been able to achieve. So this is our version of a Taiwanese beef noodle soup. We use wagyu cocktail for it. We use like a thicker noodle and we do like a bone broth that's like six, seven, eight hours. We have to just stop the camera. We were in a very deep conversation here, but let's talk about the soup. You know what you can even, like you can taste it without even trying? You see how red this is? Let's just marvel at the soup real quick. Really trying to take in that broth and it's crazy because I haven't really, David, of all the beef noodle soups we have, I never had one that was more like oxtail-based. No, you're right, you're right. This is like very, it's packed with flavor. Super like thick from the oxtail, all the tendon was melted, it's kind of gelatinous. I'm so happy right now. But you know what's surreal about this moment is as a kid growing up in Carmichael, like I would have never thought that I would be, you know, interviewed by two incredibly intelligent, handsome Asian men talking about Asian culture and promoting it. Like it's a really, it's a really, it's a really cool completion of the circle. You know, everybody's seen your work, but what you're known for is telling the untold story. And I feel like actually tell a lot of stories of like people who are like within the system that they inhabit low level. Yeah, people who do not have the upper hand marginalized, why is that important? Or like what motivated you to do that? Because not everybody wants to do that, right? Yeah, I guess for me it started with working at channel one and traveling into the world and interacting with people whose lives were so different from mine. Like it was sort of like I realized what my calling was as strange and cliche as that sounded, as that sounds. And so after doing channel one and traveling the world for seven years, I got a job as one of the co-hosts of The View. And it's funny when they let me know that I got the job at The View, I was in a refugee camp in Kosovo. Oh wow. And they called me and said, oh, you were the one chosen as the young co-host on The View. And I'm looking around like, whoa. It was such a surreal experience because I'm sort of thrust onto this national show. Invited every party in New York. I'm like. It's kind of the glamorous side of things. A couple of years into it, September 11th happened. And I said something on the air.  But I wonder if we should ask ourselves who might have wanted to perpetrate this kind of attack and why. We were inundated with email and letters saying, yeah, we should be asking those questions. But a lot of emails said things like, go back to China. You don't know what you're talking about. So after that incident happened at The View, not long after I decided to leave because my heart was in the field. And as I had a great time on The View, what I realized, like, I'm not interested in interviewing celebrities about their, like, movies. What, is The View basic? What? Is The View basic? It's not that it's basic. I just, now, you know, I have the show on CNN called This Is Life, which is an exploration of American subcultures. And before that, I had a show on Oprah's network called Our America. And to have felt so conflicted about my identity, my whole, like, teenage life. And now to be hosting and executive producing these shows that are about the, like, the American experience at its most fundamental level is just, it's incredible. It's so incredible, and I'm so proud to be able to do it. But it's still so surreal. Being Asian and making it in media, period, is hard. But I guess, did it benefit your particular type of journalism to be Asian? Because Asians are not really part of the, Western narrative. The Western narrative, the long lasting black and white fight that's going on. So it's like, when you're going in and you meet with a lot of different minorities, that they don't have necessarily any feelings towards you. You're a neutral, like, agent that's just like, hey, I'm here to ask questions and figure stuff out. I do think that if I were a white man, I might not get the same kind of reaction. Or people may not be as willing to divulge as much to me. Again, I hadn't thought about that, but perhaps that's why. If you're a blonde woman, I definitely think it's harder for certain people to open up to them and obviously to get into places and be more low-key. But as an Asian, it's a negative thing to be low-key and sometimes invisible, but in your certain job, in a way, it's somewhat beneficial. Well, and I'm actually really, really low-key. When I'm in the field, I barely wear any makeup. I don't know, people say, and I don't know if this is true, that I'm exactly the same in person that I am on television. And that is a huge compliment to me because I really try hard not to put any artifice on. Like, that's something that's really important. I feel like I'm on the view right now. This is... Let's face it, our culture is not a communicative one. We don't talk about feelings a lot and I think for me, getting introduced to this kind of work early on and really loving to feel has propelled me to continue doing this kind of work.  Like, our lives can start to get really rote. And at a certain point, I said to myself, like, I would like to try and remember every day by doing things that are different, by being out of your comfort zone, sometimes even feeling uncomfortable. Like, I feel so alive and that's exciting for me. How do you, where you're at, because we all started this like Asian core and you've like diverged so much from like, you're like such an outlier kind of amongst the Asian American population. When you go back and you view where the Asian American population is at now, not you, are you kind of like, dang, y'all ain't even alive? Or like, no, no, no, I'm not saying that. But you know what, I mean, like, but that's how I would feel looking at like, people who are just living that fortune 100, fortune 500 accounting, sheltered lifestyle. But I do think things are changing.  I do think that it's changing. And I do think that our, your generation is really kind of at the forefront of that.  And I, to me, I just, I feel like there is so much more to experience and emotionally too. Like I think that there's so much, so far to go in, in trying to get connected to our emotions. Like my husband, again, he's Korean. His parents never even told him they loved him until he was in his 40s. I mean, that's, what kind of impact could that have on a person? My hope for Asians is to really get more, I think connected spiritually and emotionally. And I don't even mean like dogmatic religion. They, cause they do say Asians even have trouble emoting literally in their voice. Well, yeah, because I had a lot of, had a lot of stuff going on in my head. Again, I told you my parents were divorced when I was young and I, and I had a hard time having relationships and feeling vulnerable with people. And so I, you know, at a certain point, like I had a therapist on the east coast and the west coast, cause I was traveling back and forth when I was doing the view. And I really wanted to get in touch with who I was at the core. And that's one of the reasons why I took my mom back to Taiwan because one of the first things that happens in therapy is they start asking you about your relationship with your mom and what your mom's background was like. And I didn't know. Like I had no idea what my mom went through when she was my age. And that was hugely transformative for me because when I took her back to Taiwan, I could see where she grew up. I could hear from her about the things she dealt with. It changed me and it, I think it made me want to, want other people to be able to have those like cathartic kinds of feelings. Like all Asians should have therapy. Okay, I totally know about it.  Yes, yes. Listen, therapy is so much more valuable than an Hermaz bag any day of the week. Seriously, because what's it all for, right? This is my therapy. This is gonna be our version of Dan Danuels. It's our vegetarian version. The same kind of chili oil, sesame, black vinegar. Thank you. I have had this and it's delicious. It seems like the guys from the East have a way harder time getting that best of both worlds mix than women from the East generally do coming too. It's an Asian masculinity talk. It's an Asian American male masculinity question where it's like the dudes are feeling like they couldn't be like Alisa Lee. They're like, oh, as an Asian dude that wouldn't be possible for me. Maybe an Asian female, the Western world likes Asian female, but they don't like Asian men in a social way. I definitely do think that Asian men have really gotten the short end of the stick for sure. Absolutely. And I have a lot of sympathy for Asian men.  And yeah, yeah, people who look like us. And so I do think that there is this sort of, this ingrained fear of Asian men in this country. It's not overt, but it's something that's just been kind of ingrained in our culture. And I think that's really, I think that's a hard thing to overcome for sure. I mean, and I wish I knew the answer to that.  Allie Wallin said dolphin. That's a good. Smart too. Maybe that's what she was thinking. Smart. The one thing that I'm saying, we're like in languages. I just made a dolphin noise. Yeah, and it wasn't very good, but I was like, what is that noise? She's been around in the trenches all that. That's true. Mom, I didn't mean to offend. The one thing that I would like to see is again, like Asian men getting more connected with their emotions, you know, cause I think that that, I don't want to generalize, but having dated a few Asian men, I think that their parents not being communicative with them about affection and emotions has had an impact on Asian men, on a lot of Asian men.  I know it's affected my husband. When Harvard said, admitted that Asians rank low on their personality test, were you shocked? And you were like, that is not true. Asians got just as much personality, or you were like, it's not personality, it's like culture, that it's just a difference in culture that they're not understanding. You're putting me on the spot here, you're putting me on the spot. How's it feel to be grilled on the other end of it, Lisa? I know, I know. I definitely think it's culture. It's like, I don't want to call it personality cause I, and I'm not saying Harvard's not a little bit stereotyped for sure they are, but like, we've come from a much different culture, so I'm not shocked that some of us act different. Yeah. Right? We're fun. We can be, no, I think we can be fun when let loose and given. Unlocked. Unlocked and given the space to do it. Well, I think it's why Karaoke is so popular throughout Asia.  Asian rage, Asian party rage, they, they don't, Asian drinking to Asians is like the furry suits to the furries. No, drinking to Asians. It totally is, it totally is. Drinking to Asians around other Asians. Yeah, it has to be around other Asians. Locked in a concealed soundproof room. In an Asian island claim neighborhood. You want to see Asians crazy, see Asians in an Asian party. As America becomes more diverse, the way the demographics are shifting, combined with the, I guess, lower economics in the blue collar, white areas, where are we headed as America? Cause like Andrew, I'll tell you this, is very pessimistic. That's why he's running on a platform where we need to change it and do the UBI because like this whole thing is turning to the purge. You are getting f***ed. Well, I think that they're, it's undeniable that there is fear that is penetrating all aspects of society right now because the sort of the dominant race feels like, you know, their lives are, you know, their livelihoods in many ways are at risk. Yeah, or at stake. Yeah, yeah. And I just don't understand where that fear comes from. You know, I think it's natural for people who are similar to you to gravitate toward them because you have some shared experiences, but in no way should that be a threat to anyone else. If there's no reason why we can't coexist, you know, there's no reason to fear that. And it's sad and scary and disappointing that there is fear. Do you think if we fix the economics, the fear goes away, or are they just both mutually exclusive? Like you can't, like- No, I don't think so. Unfortunately, I think it's so easy to scapegoat people who are different from us.  Our economy is booming because of the diversity that exists. You know, there's so much prosperity in this country right now. So many people are employed, I think because there is enough for everyone and it's that diversity that is our strength that we should embrace. What are some things outside of being raised in a tough childhood that can make Asians have like more of a proactive attack mode mindset? Because I think that me and Andrew have it because we're kind of raising a similar situation to you, like a Midwestern-esque town near a metropolitan West Coast core. Daring to be a man.  And like, let's say for example, so many kids in SoCal are growing up in these gigantic Asian-owned claves where like they're pretty much like not even thinking about it until they hit college or maybe they're corporations. I mean, I think the first thing that you have to do is get away from the screen.   You know, it's hard and sometimes it's scary and sometimes you're gonna get rejected, but so you get rejected so what?  I love being out of my comfort zone because I feel so alive.   And that's when you, that's when I feel like most alive and I don't think we're doing that enough. And now, you know, now that we're behind our devices, we do it even less. No, you're right. I mean, most kids- Like do something that's different and put yourself out there more. You know, I think that fear of rejection is the biggest inhibitor to like living the best life that you can.   Communicate, like figure out ways to feel, like feel people, feel things.  Like it's so, the first time my husband hugged me, he goes like this, like he pat me on the back. I was like, are you just patting me?  We have a lot of takeaways here. Like go do karaoke without alcohol. Whoa! I know. What have you learned about life or happiness? You've seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. The reason why I love what I do so much is because I can get connected to people in a way that's really visceral, that allows me to feel. Like we all want that kind of connection. Like everybody craves human connection and affection and wants to even, even Chinese people. Human beings like just crave that desire to feel important and just be part of something, you know? And I just think that as a culture, we are not in touch with our emotions as much as I think we could be. And that that is so much more important than any like BMW, you know? It's just, it's so much more important than stuff. All right, everybody, thank you so much for watching that video with Lisa Ling. Thank you so much. It was an honor to sit down with you. We had a very, very long talk. And I appreciate you giving us so much of your time. And thank you for opening up and just having a very candid conversation about a number of topics. We could go down the list of- I guess I'm glad to know that I agree with you on a lot of your opinions, which makes me feel better about myself. Well, what I will say is it's been pleasure to hang out with both of you. We definitely had a kind of conversation unlike one that I think I've ever had, but it was really good and important. And I hope that people will watch this and have some takeaway because I think we talked about some things that I think are sort of fundamental to Asian culture. And I think that we have some suggestions on how to make things feel a little different, but in a positive way. Feel more. Feel more. Literally feel more. All right. All right, you guys, thank you so much for watching that very, very special episode of Fun Rose Food with superstar journalist, Lisa Ling. We're here at Kato on the West Side, Santa Monica. And until next time, we're out. Peace! What's going on, everybody? Thank you so much for watching that video. Basically, we are gonna be releasing a lot more content that we always wanted to give you guys. We never really had a good way of doing it and that's why we wanna tell you guys that we are starting YouTube memberships. So basically, if you subscribe to the membership channel, you are gonna get tons of exclusive content.  We're gonna be doing NBA talks, comments on comments. You're gonna be getting merch discounts. Basically, you can just click the join button right there. It is only 4.99 per month and it's gonna go all on our community tab right here. So it's exclusive content that you're only gonna see if you're a member, but I think you might really like it. Yeah, we're gonna be delving deep into a lot of topics and we got some thoughts, man. Yeah. Deep thoughts. So it's starting on January 30th, so go ahead, please sign up today and check it out. All right, everybody. Thanks for watching that video. Until next time, we out. Peace.  I did. What do you think that means? Cause I talked to some people that think it means a lot. Some people think it's just a rom-com. It doesn't mean anything. Already is giving so many more opportunities to Asians. I mean, it was a really fun movie, irrespective of the fact that it had an all Asian cast and I think that it was the biggest rom-com. Yeah, I mean. Top five of all time. Yeah, I mean, numbers definitely matter and it was a beautiful, emotional and fun movie and I think that it already has had a massive impact and will continue to do so.


One thing I wish I knew before I came to Berkeley was how great our major advising system is. I personally didn't know what major I wanted to pursue between political science and economics. And when I found the political economy major, I went to go see a major advisor, and they really helped me out. It's more to college than just academics. I'd highly suggest exploring the campus, trying new restaurants in the city, and meeting as many people as you can. One thing I wish I knew before coming to Berkeley is how much research it takes to find housing in the area. So research, research, research, and I would recommend looking at all options as soon as possible. You don't actually need all the stuff that you think you might. I'm pretty sure I only used about a quarter of everything I brought in my freshman year.  You'll be just fine keeping it minimal. One thing I wish I knew before coming to Cal is how important it is to put yourself out there and be open to new opportunities. Try to make friends with those around you, your dorms. They're the easiest friends that you could possibly make. They live right next to you and they'll really help you get through the years at Berkeley. One thing I wish I learned before coming to Berkeley is that if you think it's hard waking up before 8 a.m. for high school, it is a hundred times harder waking up for your 8 a.m. in college. One thing I wish I knew before I came to Berkeley was about the math adjunct classes, which are one-unit classes. You take conjunction with your actual math class and they're offered for most lower division math classes and they make it easier to hone in on the key concepts and overall just get a better grade in the class. One thing I wish I knew before coming to Berkeley is taking advantage of office hours. Professors and GSIs just really like to have people to talk to and they'll answer any question you have and it creates a relationship with the professor so you can get a letter of recommendations later on. One thing I wish I knew during my first year at UC Berkeley is how important the clubs are because in the beginning of the year all you see here is the Greek life as your only social option but the clubs just have a later sign-up date. One thing that I wish I knew before going to Berkeley was knowing what Berkeley time was. Every class, meeting, or event will start 10 minutes after the schedule time just to give you time to travel to and from different parts of campus. Berkeley time will save you when you think you're running late. One thing I wish I knew before college is to always make the trip to office hours when I needed help. Walking through Sproul Plaza once it hits noon exactly is really scary. Imposter syndrome.  The professors are people too and you shouldn't be scared of them. Going into office hours may seem daunting but all the professors on campus are super genuine and truly are passionate about their students' success. You can get kind of cold especially during the morning so make sure to pack a heavier jacket. Try everything, explore all the opportunities and possibilities you can and most importantly be yourself. Focus on mental and physical health just as much as academics. Internship recruiting season starts really soon so make sure you hop on that. It's okay to not know what you want. It's okay to be kind of a decided. One thing I wish I knew my freshman year was that Stanford smells bad. You should meet as many people as possible. It is totally okay to change your major and not know exactly what you want to study. Berkeley offers decals which are fun, one-unit courses that current UC Berkeley students teach. It's totally okay if you don't know what you want to major in yet. Get out of that mindset of being shy and be really open to meeting people. You should set up your Berkeley email as soon as you get it. People are always going to be studying.  Create your own schedule and follow it. One thing I wish I knew before I went to UC Berkeley was how to play beer pong properly. There are thousands of clubs to join. Don't limit yourself. Try something that you didn't think you'd want to do. Never underestimate yourself and know that you can accomplish more than you think. One thing I wish I knew before coming to Berkeley would be to how to play my day accordingly in order to feed all my study time, practice time, and get enough rest and study time for every day. Everyone is in the exact same place as you. Don't be scared. Just put yourself out there. Introduce yourself. Say hi to a bunch of new people. You've nothing to lose and everything to gain. Take advantage of all the freshman seminars and decals that are offered. Believe in yourself just because it's like Berkeley. It can be an intimidating environment but just work hard. Believe in yourself and like you should be fine. One thing I wish I knew before coming to college was that it didn't matter what time I scheduled my classes because half the time I was going to stay home and watch the recorded lectures anyways. Be open with every single person you meet. One piece of advice I wish I knew before coming to Cal was to not take yourself too seriously. As much as colleges were studying academics, it's for learning about yourself. And one piece of advice I would give to incoming freshmen would be to take interesting classes outside of your major. One thing I wish I knew before coming to Berkeley was how much you walk. My first semester I walked eight miles a day. It may take some time but eventually you'll find your community. Go to Station Burger. It's south of Clark Hur. It's like the best burger in Berkeley. Not many people know about it.


You know, it's a good thing Riker played at being a tough guy while he was working with the Klingons. You wouldn't want them thinking the Federation was weak-willed. So, we're most the way through February. How's that New Year's resolution coming? If you're like most people, you probably fell off your well-intentioned bandwagon sometime around the second Friday in January, an occasion sometimes celebrated as Quitter's Day. New Year's resolutions are a very visible example of a phenomenon that we experience all the time. We think hard about our values, consider carefully what actions we might take that would be best aligned with those values, commit ourselves to performing those actions, and then we do something else. Even if it's ubiquitous, there's something puzzling about that pattern of behavior if you think about it. I know for a fact that regular exercise will reduce my baseline stress, improve my mood, extend my lifespan, reduce my risk of agonizing diseases. Essentially, it will improve everything about my life in measurable ways. But when the time comes to put on my running shoes, even if all that information and my own determination that I want to go running is at the forefront of my mind, my actions don't always align with my will. How is it possible that I don't do what I want to do, even if nothing is preventing me from doing it? Philosophers describe this misalignment of intention and behavior as acracia, a term that's been in use since ancient Greece. Socrates, or Plato writing as the character Socrates, thought that what we describe as acracia was, by definition, impossible, saying, no one who either knows or believes that there is another possible course of action better than the one he is following will ever continue on his present course. According to Plato, what's actually happening when a person seems to act against their better judgment is that they must not really know or believe that there's a better way forward. When I look at my shoes and decide not to go running, it might look like I am acting contrary to my reasoning, but I'm really reasoning incorrectly. Coming to the conclusion that staying home and replaying Disco Elysium is really the best use of my time. If I claim to know that running is actually the best course of action, I'm either mistaken or lying. If I really knew that, then I would run. Of course, that's not how we usually think about acracia, largely because this dude has had a huge influence on our intellectual tradition. Aristotle's answer to the problem of acracia is fascinatingly nuanced, but the short, short version should be familiar to you. Human reason is locked in a constant, oily, naked wrestling match with our passions, each trying to gain leverage over the other for control over our actions. Although reason might tell us the best course of action in quiet moments of contemplation, when our passions are inflamed, they can weaken and subdue our rational judgment, compelling us to choose something we know in our hearts to be the inferior option. Aristotle's theory of a war in the South between reason and passion plugged very neatly into early Christian theology about sin, a despicable, based body with its wicked craving for vice fighting the innermost spirit in its drive towards godliness. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, so no running today. This has certainly become the most popular interpretation of those conflicts between reasoning, intent, and action. Many studies in modern psychology are implicitly designed with Aristotle's theory in mind, that there's a superior reasoning mind with a deep rational understanding of what's good and what's bad, a mind that has to exert willpower to pummel the appetites of the flesh into submission. It's a good theory. It fits nicely with many observations about acracia and the subjective experience of wanting to do something but opting to do something else. It's certainly more convincing than Plato's version, where I slink guiltily away from my running shoes after somehow reasoning myself into believing that not running is actually better. But there are some problems with Aristotle's explanation. A few irritating details that don't seem to fit with this simple picture of a sweaty brawl between reason and passion. In his Discourse on the Passions, David Hume noted that technically speaking, reason by itself can only really dissect and compare facts. It can never motivate us to act in any particular way without some input from our emotions and desires. When I carefully consider my options and decide that it would be best to go running tomorrow, it's not like I'm calculating the answer to some formula I found written into the fabric of the universe. I'm weighing and evaluating my situation and creating plans of action with certain passions at the forefront of my mind, calmer more distant passions than the ones which urge me to play video games instead, but passions nonetheless. For Hume, acracia is just one set of desires running out over another, neither of which has any special claim to reason. Reason is just a tool, equally useful for whatever set of passions possesses at any given moment. We can see evidence of Hume's model in the remarkable intelligence people can exhibit while sabotaging their own plans. It's hard to argue that a person who figures out how to defeat several layers of self-imposed security to scroll TikTok for a few minutes is not reasoning properly. Motivated reasoning is another great example. If someone's argument really pisses me off, my brain can turn out logical refutations and counter-examples much more readily than when I'm just calmly reading something agreeable. Is that really a case of passion winning out over reason? On the opposite side of the theory, there are plenty of cases where the supposedly sinful cravings of the flesh actually drag me towards better choices. My teeth feel gross in the morning if I don't brush them. My left hand will throw my turn signal on before I change lanes without conscious input. It feels weird not to. Anyone can tell you how much reasoning I'm capable of in the mornings before I've had my coffee. That sure seems like the base impulses of the body giving the much-esteemed reasoning mind a hand. This kind of throws a wrench in the works for these Aristotelian models of cool reason and impulsive passion being diametrically opposed in some way. Barring extreme cases like Alien Hand Syndrome or Roe Hypnol, doesn't it kind of seem like everyone from addicts to stoics is always using reason to satisfy whatever urges seem most pressing in the moment? That certainly seems to fit the evidence better than Aristotle's version, which has this weird built-in assumption about reasoning in his relationship to good behavior. But there's a subjective element to agency and planning for the future that Hume doesn't seem to fully capture in his account. When I decide not to go running, there's a continuity of experience from my original intention to regret on the other side of my chosen action. I wanted to go running. I didn't, and now I feel bad because I didn't go running. That sure seems like someone's desires were thwarted, but Hume has no real answer for why that might be, or how to avoid the situation in the future. Some philosophers and psychologists have developed another interesting approach to the question of acacia by focusing on the apparent paradox of self-control. Unless I'm unconscious or being literally possessed by some outside force that's moving my limbs and forcing me to do stuff, I am ostensibly always in control of myself, right? I might do things accidentally, or unconsciously, or things that I regret after the fact, but it's not like me sitting down on the couch to play some disco is the result of some third party calling shots on my behalf. But embrace yourself because it's going to be weird for a bit. What if the self that wants to go running is a different entity than the self who wants to play video games instead? In the multiple selves model, there's one Josh who exists as a set of fairly constant values and preferences over time. A long-term Josh, who wants to be healthy, who wants to maximize the time he spends happy over the course of his life, who wants to run in the future and have run in the past. But that long-term Josh doesn't get to interact with the world directly. He has to negotiate with a series of short-term Joshes, entities that spring into existence for a little while and vanish after deciding how best to use this body they're in control of. Long-term Josh has a finite amount of energy he can use to influence the goals and motivations of short-term Joshes, but ultimately they call the shots and their own motivations in each moment can vary based on all sorts of things. A short-term Josh who spawns hungry will assign a high value to finding something to eat. A short-term Josh who's developed the habit of clicking his pen will want to keep clicking his pen. A short-term Josh who's dreading the torturous prospect of cardio will want to go play disco instead of putting on the running shoes. All these incidental desires can be influenced by the long-term Josh, at least for a while, so long as there's some energy left in his tank. But there are no guarantees. A short-term Josh who springs into existence hungry next to a delicious burrito is going to take a lot of convincing, and it might not be worth the effort or even possible to convince him to leave it alone. This multiple selves model might seem like Aristotle's temptations of the flesh with extra moving parts, but let's take a moment to look at what's different here. First, there is not a single unified self that is choosing between an angel of reason and the devil of vice. There is a persistent set of long-term values and an iterative set of short-term values, and whatever counts as you is just the output of their negotiations. Second, long-term values are not necessarily good, good for you, or well reasoned. You could have a long-term desire to be a famous movie star that you starve yourself to pursue, or a long-term commitment to an ideology that compels you to do heinous things even if they offend your delicate sensibilities in the moment. Putting the long-term self in charge would be as terrible an idea as silencing them all together, just because values are long-term does not make them superior. So, what do we get for abandoning the idea of a singular self? Well, it gives us a pretty good account of acracia. I might have reasoned myself into an intent to go running, but that's a long-term value. It's hard to make a short-term Josh care about that kind of thing, at least not without giving away a large reserve of long-term bargaining power. There are a number of things that might make that negotiation less antagonistic, creating short-term incentives to make running more attractive, developing a habit of running at a particular time, even just asking one short-term Josh to simply put on the damn shoes and making the next one try to weasel his way out of them without going for a run-first. It also gives us a compelling explanation for why we feel regret when we fall off of our long-term goals.  The multiple selves model also agrees with some otherwise confusing experimental results in psychology. If you ask someone if they want a candy bar now, or two candy bars tomorrow, most people will demand the single snickers right then and there. If you ask if they want a candy bar in a year, or two candy bars in a year and a day, everyone seems to prefer the second option, despite the fact that the trade-offs and the rewards are mathematically identical. Some economists explained this asymmetry by appealing to hyperbolic discounting, a sort of cognitive error that makes immediate gains seem much more attractive than larger gains in the far future. But for the multiple selves model, there's no real mystery. If the short-term self has a chance to get their hands on a candy bar right now, that's attempting offer. If they're not going to be around to see it regardless, minds will let the long-term self have their way. Procrastination also makes a lot of sense in this model.  If the deadline is in a few hours and you're panicking, the long-term self doesn't really have to do anything more to get the work done. Fight or flight is a short-term problem. More practically, the multiple selves model also suggests a much more robust approach to behavioral change and personal goal satisfaction than just try harder. It suggests that we account for the variable nature of our short-term selves in our plans to realistically consider our habits, tendencies, and impulses to know which way our short-term selves are likely to be pulled and how to account for and take advantage of those impulses in a way that satisfies our long-term goals without needing to litigate every step of the way. It's certainly possible to steer a short-term self away from a particularly myopic momentary preference in an emergency, but it's not a good thing to rely on. Rather than trying to counterman every short-term desire, it's clearly more efficient and effective to find ways to synchronize those goals with our long-term goals. Habit formation plays a huge role in this context. If every short-term self has a nearly automatic urge to lace up some running shoes after lunch, it will be considerably easier to convince any one of them to go for a jog. Also, rather than viewing incidental deviations from a long-term project as damning failures of character, we can consider them as stochastic noise, random hiccups caused by selves that came into existence with just a little too much of a craving for cake, and not enough obstacles to eating that cake. That's not a cause for self-loathing or flagellation. The you who decided to raid the fridge isn't even around to be mad at anymore. It's just a good indication that if you don't like your long-term goals being undermined by a momentary desire to eat cake, you probably shouldn't keep it in the house. Of course, this answer to the paradox of self-control comes with its own set of very weird issues. What does it mean exactly if there are literally multiple individuals with their own goals and priorities in one head? So long as someone's long-term goals are blameless, that is, if their heart's in the right place, should we absolve them of responsibility for their trespasses? In the context of stuff like rights and autonomy, which self should we prioritize? Choosing not to keep cake in your own house is one thing, but what about stuff like gambling or addiction or gambling addiction? By allowing people to exercise more long-term control over their environment in moments of calm reflection, binding themselves to some commitment for action when certain passions have priority, are we empowering them? Or will we just be facilitating persistent tyranny of the long-term self over the short term? What's the balance of power between your selves right now and what should it be? These are all fascinating problems raised by the Multiple Solves model, but I find it a compelling way to think about my own behaviors and falling short of my goals. My short-term self yesterday may have been unimpressed by my long-term New Year's resolution, but today we're making him a killer playlist. Let's see if it changes anything. Does multiple selves theory give a compelling solution to the puzzle of Acreja? What sort of things would you do differently if it were true? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. I don't usually mention this, but if you didn't know, I do have a Patreon. If you have a little extra cash laying around that you'd like to send my away, there's a link to it in the description. Don't forget to blow up a subscribe while I share and don't stop thunking.


What's good Josh is what Ross back again with another video. So just finished the live stream reactions with the homie dub for this tough episode of Smackdown tonight, man. WWE did a tribute to Terry Funk and Bray Wyatt. And I'm going to talk about that and talk about some of the things that went down on the show. But yeah, shout out to everyone that was a part of the chat. Someone that asked us in the discord or was suggesting that maybe we don't live stream, you know, for, you know, what recently happened with Bray passing and I had to let that person know like, no, we going live stream. We're going to be in the chat talking about some of Bray Wyatt's best moments, you know, some of Terry Funk's best moments. You know, what was their favorite matches, their experiences with Bray or meeting Bray or Terry Funk and a few of you guys had let us know that y'all met Bray before. He was real cool. Got to take pictures and stuff. Let us know when you saw him live and that's what the stream was for. It was more so about just celebrating his life and what he was able to do for us and entertaining us in that square circle him and Terry Funk. So they start off the show. Everybody's on stage. Everybody on stage and Michael Cole by ringside. And, you know, they're talking about Terry Funk passing away and Bray Wyatt passing away and, you know, pretty much everyone's there. Mostly everyone's there. What not? And they, you know, they rung the bell 10 times, you know, why everybody was silent and what started to give me just a little bit. Well, first, before I get into that scene, everybody had their phones out like the fireflies. That was a beautiful sight to see, but what started to give me was seeing a Zelina in the front. She started tearing up and started seeing other people tear up, start to see Braun Strowman was out there too. It started to give me a bit. I ain't gonna lie to you because it's just all these people came to see him and show their respect and love and they did a very beautiful package tonight. And the whole show throughout the commercial breaks, different vignettes packages of Bray or whatnot and what he's done in his career. I also like that they added QR codes through some of the breaks or before the breaks where you can get some of the merch or whatnot and the proceeds would go to his family as it should. So if you guys were able to purchase some of the merch from the QR codes, that's where the money is supposed to be going to his family or whatnot. It was it was just just a surreal moment to see the love and admiration people had showing people's Twitter's like different wrestlers Twitter's talking about their love and experience and compassion that they have for Bray and their tweets and stuff like that was cool to see. I like the fact that Cody came out there and did a tribute to Terry Funk. They had a video package for him as well. That was beautifully beautiful touch, you know, beautifully beautifully set up or whatnot. How they did that and I got to talk about this. L.A. Knight having his match against Finn Balor. That was that was a nice way. How they ended off the show. Obviously Finn Balor having his his, uh, I guess you can say running with Bray Wyatt when we first got introduced to the Fiend or whatnot. And then L.A. Knight was Bray Wyatt's last opponent ever. Unfortunately last feud or whatnot. So L.A. Knight was actually going to address the Miz and I will say this, even though this was a serious moment, L.A. Knight cooked the Miz in his promo, but I'm not going to really talk about that. I just want to talk about the stuff he said about Bray. And I like what they did there. He didn't go out there and have him be like, oh, Bray was my best friend. You know, he made it clear like we weren't best friends or anything like that, but he showed respect. He showed, um, he showed him gratitude. He said if I can make it through with Bray, I can make it through anybody like Bray has prepared me for any challenge or any obstacle that comes on way. If I can make it through him and him acknowledging the people, the fireflies that were there and him acknowledging the energy that was in the buildings. Like this is all Bray or whatnot. And I like the little callback because like I said, he was cooking the Miz after he initially talked about Bray and everything that's going on there. He decided to preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cook the Miz, Miz has said something on TMZ. So this was his rebuttal and he did a damn good job. And then he brought it back home when he said a wise man once told me got close to the camera and he's addressing the Miz at this point.   You see this fog in the ring and then you see the lantern and then you see Bray Wyatt's picture on the Titan Tron and that's how the show goes off with everybody with their phones as fireflies with the lantern in the ring. Smoke around it. Everyone saying thank you, Bray. And that was it. They did a great tribute show to Terry Funk and Bray. I appreciated it. This was the show I was not going to miss and it even that ended and started to choke me up just a bit because it it started and set in even more that this is this is really a thing and I hopefully they do something for him on Monday Night Raw. I hope they do.  We'll never forget it. The same thing for Terry Funk. Everything he's done for wrestling as a whole. But yeah, this was a very emotional show and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But yeah, that was Friday Night Smackdown and as a whole comment down below. Let me know. Did you guys enjoy the tribute that WWE gave to Bray Wyatt and Terry Funk because I think they did a very good job and hopefully they do some type of tribute to him on Monday Night Raw because, you know, there needs to be a tribute to Terry and Bray there as well. So but I appreciate all the love and support guys have shown on the channel. Roll 250K. I'm still Yannis, beauty, YouTube, wrestling, champion of the world. Appreciate y'all kicking me. See y'all next one.