The John-Henry Westen Show - What the Major Upset in the Markets Means for You and Your Family

00:00:00.000 So heaven is clearly going to extreme measures to try and get our attention to the church has 0.50

00:00:06.220 ring-fenced this to prevent it from being called evil or fake at all moments and we should be

00:00:13.500 digging into it we should be paying attention.

00:00:21.960 Hello my friends and welcome to the John Henry Weston show. There have been crazy things going

00:00:26.780 on in the economic markets of late and that's why we wanted to bring you our financial expert

00:00:33.160 Drew Mason who partners with us at St. Joseph's Partners. You're going to want to stay tuned for

00:00:39.100 this episode and find out what's going on. Mighty nations stumble, world war threatens.

00:00:46.620 There's destruction on the battlefield and also in the womb and all this is happening because

00:00:52.060 man has forgotten God. Pope Pius XI said men must look for the peace of Christ in the kingdom of

00:00:59.620 Christ and he urged that the faithful give public honor to Christ the king so that individuals and

00:01:05.280 states would submit once more to the rule of their savior and that is why LifeSite News is raising up

00:01:11.700 the image of Christ the king across the United States. Our billboards have already proclaimed

00:01:17.080 the rule of our divine savior to tens of thousands of Americans and you can help us reach millions

00:01:23.480 more. Only when Christ the king reigns over our hearts and our minds will there be peace among

00:01:29.040 nations and peace in our homes. Please pledge your support today for these billboards at

00:01:35.060 lifefunder.com slash Christ is King.

00:01:38.040 Drew welcome to the program. Praise be Jesus. Thank you for having me John Henry. Great to be here

00:01:44.860 especially on this auspicious day as we're filming August the 5th. The day we now know is our lady's

00:01:50.620 real birthday. Wishing her all the best and our thanks for all that she's done for so many of us

00:01:57.400 throughout the years. So good to be with you indeed. Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the

00:02:01.340 cross. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:02:09.060 So Drew there's been a lot happening in the financial market and it's been crazy. Since we

00:02:12.980 last recorded which I think was in April there's been tons of volatility in the markets. Can you

00:02:19.580 summarize for us what's going on? John Henry the markets have been very complacent. Investors have

00:02:24.540 been very complacent for months now. Bad news from the market was not being punished. It was being

00:02:29.880 seemingly rewarded. And as a result we have seen investors allocate incremental dollars to leverage

00:02:35.680 products which is very risky proposition for them. And they're doing this at a time when professional

00:02:41.500 investors, some of the most successful of our generation, are giving siren call warnings that

00:02:47.680 these markets are very dangerous. They're richly if not grossly overvalued. This is a time where

00:02:54.960 families should be peeling back from financial assets rather than being so aggressively exposed

00:03:00.780 to them. I've also seen John Henry what's termed the market breadth, which means if you hear about the

00:03:07.060 index, the stock S&P 500, it's supposed to be reflective of 500 stocks and how the whole market performs

00:03:13.620 around those 500 stocks. When the market is healthy, you see the vast majority of those stocks

00:03:19.140 appreciating in value. When the market is unhealthy, you may see a few who are the so-called leaders

00:03:26.080 of it. And these months it has been the magnificent seven, the biggest tech behemoths who have been just

00:03:32.700 soaring to the moon, while the broader market has been showing signs of record weakness. Here's a chart,

00:03:40.000 John Henry, that shows we have been weaker in terms of breadth than we were leading up to the

00:03:46.520 dot-com implosion and leading up to the great financial crisis in 2008. So something was going

00:03:53.140 to give. Last week, John Henry, the CPI news came out talking about inflation and talking about

00:03:58.940 employment as well. And what we have seen happen is that the markets are now not rewarding bad news

00:04:07.300 as if it's good. And what we are understanding is that the economy is much weaker than Wall Street

00:04:12.860 thought. We have seen a dramatic revision and expectations of investors who were only a week

00:04:19.000 ago thinking that there was basically little chance of the Fed cutting rates because the economy is so

00:04:24.220 good. They have now essentially done a 180 on that, and they are looking for the Fed to get aggressive

00:04:29.880 in cutting rates with the hope that it will sustain the economy. But that is easier said than done,

00:04:35.480 John Henry. There's a lag. And we have seen in the past, in 2008, the great crisis,

00:04:40.400 the great financial crisis, cutting rates was not sufficient, did not work. And what we have seen,

00:04:45.920 just a few data points, the NASDAQ, again, the tech leaders of the market, which have been the

00:04:51.600 darlings, that index fell through its weekly support level for the first time in years. And that

00:04:58.140 historically will trigger incremental selling, incremental pressure and bearishness. We saw Warren

00:05:04.720 Buffett and Berkshire announced that they have sold half of their Apple stock that had been their

00:05:10.980 poster child investment. They were so proud of it. And they talked about, as you know,

00:05:15.240 as most investors know, they talk about holding things for the long haul, holding through the

00:05:19.600 cycle, just buy and hold. Don't worry about selling. Well, that's not what they're doing.

00:05:23.240 They vote with their wallets, and they have aggressively called a top in the tech market here.

00:05:27.980 And I suspect the next time the data comes out, we're going to see they have sold probably the

00:05:31.260 majority of their remaining shares as well. We saw another great investor, Elliot, talking about

00:05:37.160 how NVIDIA, the number one darling in the markets, is simply a bubble. And we're getting more conviction

00:05:43.640 from investors that the AI hype that has fueled this market is really unrealistic, that the

00:05:49.700 expectations are not going to play out as investors are hoping, and that is unwinding the tech sector.

00:05:55.400 We saw John Henry Intel, the bellwether semiconductor company in the United States.

00:06:00.440 It lost over 25% of its value in one day. Now, realize this is a gargantuan company,

00:06:07.740 multi-billion dollar market cap, and advisors have been telling families, you want to own blue chip

00:06:12.300 stocks. They're safe. They pay a dividend. You don't have to worry. Well, 25% in one day is just

00:06:19.120 unheard of, John Henry. And it speaks to how brittle the market is, how fragile it is. And they

00:06:25.600 actually cut their dividends, saying the outlook was so troublesome that they didn't have the confidence

00:06:31.940 that they could use the cash and still not need it. We saw the entire nation of Japan, their market

00:06:38.100 traded down nearly 20% in just a few sessions, John Henry. Again, unheard of volatility that has

00:06:45.900 come. In the backdrop, as all this was going on, on Friday, gold hit an all-time high. It touched

00:06:52.500 $2,500 per ounce for the first time in history. And while it has sold off and will likely continue

00:06:59.960 to see pullbacks, we think that it is the antidote to debt and to market stress, John Henry, because

00:07:08.240 that's what history has showed us, this inverse correlation. And if we look at past trends of

00:07:13.940 gold in times of stress, for example, in the Great Depression, John Henry, investors have to

00:07:19.020 understand this because we feel this could be the most important segment that we've done with your

00:07:25.380 viewers, John Henry. We have seen in the Great Depression, the stock market fell 80% from peak

00:07:33.260 to trough. In the same time, gold rose 70%. That is a very attractive, uncorrelated return,

00:07:41.580 which is what you want when building a portfolio. In the dot-com crisis, we saw the NASDAQ fall 40%.

00:07:49.000 Tech leaders fell sometimes double that number. Gold also was down during that crisis, but it was

00:07:55.100 down less than 5%. It's not perfect, but that is, again, the inverse correlation that you want to see

00:08:01.500 where it performs so much better than stocks in the market broadly. John Henry in 08, we saw,

00:08:08.740 if you look at it from the peak of the market to when the Lehman collapse took place, the equity markets

00:08:13.420 fell approximately 35%. Gold was up 17%. So there's another big question that people are

00:08:19.760 having, and that's because of, obviously, in this time, people are starting to really focus on the

00:08:25.440 election. How do you think that's going to play out for gold? What are your thoughts there?

00:08:28.920 The question is timely. We are getting lots of calls from families saying they want to know what

00:08:33.620 the impact will be if Trump wins versus the Democrats win. And the reality is, contrary to what these

00:08:41.840 investors are being told, it really doesn't matter. Because even if Trump wins, and even if he had

00:08:48.880 dictatorial powers to do whatever he wanted, the math is simply done. The mold is set. America gets about

00:08:56.580 $3 to $4 trillion in revenues from taxes. We're losing over a trillion dollars a year. That is

00:09:03.600 accelerating. Our debts are $35 trillion. Just think about it. Even if we cut our expenses really

00:09:09.200 basically to zero, it's going to take over a decade to pay off our debts. That's just simply unrealistic.

00:09:15.300 This isn't Armageddon. America's had multiple currencies already. But what this is saying is that

00:09:22.000 the currency of the United States, the dollar, is hopelessly flawed at this point, given our debts.

00:09:29.020 And Trump's recent comments talking about crypto, what we think is a key takeaway for investors to

00:09:36.020 consider is that they should not save in dollars. He's telling investors, don't save in dollars.

00:09:42.120 Whether it's a savings account, a checking account, bonds, T-bills, life insurance denominated in

00:09:48.180 dollars, the risk is rising that the purchasing power of those dollars is going to compress

00:09:53.100 so much because of our debts. You'll get all those dollars back, but it's not going to preserve your

00:09:58.900 wealth. Why do we have conviction that that's going to happen? Because we have hundreds of case studies

00:10:04.300 from history, and that's what's happened every time so far. When you can't pay back your debts,

00:10:09.760 the value of that currency compresses. The other critical point that this underscores for families

00:10:16.440 is that the core financial models that are being used by investment advisors and guiding families

00:10:23.800 is broken. It is broken. Advisors are not saying this. I don't think a lot of advisors even realize

00:10:31.040 it. Their whole model is built on the idea that the dollar is the risk-free return. A short-term

00:10:38.120 T-bill is the risk-free asset. Yet, because our debts are so big, we can't pay them back.

00:10:46.060 To believe that that is true today is just absurd. What we see internationally, we see

00:10:53.140 the Central Bank of China selling billions of dollars of U.S. currency. Over recent years,

00:11:00.980 they have tripled their gold reserve. They're moving away from it. We're seeing central banks

00:11:05.040 who control these currencies, who understand the issues these debts are bringing up, are moving

00:11:10.000 towards 20 percent, sometimes 25 percent allocations, which is what we are suggesting families want to

00:11:16.580 have as well. So, in this model, this new paradigm where the dollar isn't the risk-free asset anymore,

00:11:24.940 while people certainly want to have some cash, they want to have plenty for their expenses coming

00:11:30.080 at them. We submit, you want to have this gold allocation because that is what has provided

00:11:36.380 wealth protection and value in times of currency crises throughout history.

00:11:41.540 So, also another big trend is gold and Bitcoin have been in the news. And if you look at things,

00:11:47.660 we had that major cyber shutdown. People are wondering, should I go for gold? Should I go for

00:11:52.720 Bitcoin? What do you think about the whole issue of Bitcoin versus gold and what people should do with

00:11:57.260 their investments right now, especially given this volatility in the election coming up?

00:12:01.640 Gold and Bitcoin are totally different assets. And whoever frames the comment to families,

00:12:08.940 do you want to have gold or Bitcoin, shows either a complete misunderstanding of these assets,

00:12:14.440 or they are knowing that if investors and individuals are given two choices, they're going to pick one.

00:12:21.240 Gold is history's safest asset. It carries no guarantees. It may lose money.

00:12:27.260 But if you go back millennia, centuries, decades, it has preserved purchasing power.

00:12:33.100 Bitcoin could do well. If your conviction is so high that it's going to be great, then go ahead,

00:12:38.740 invest in Bitcoin. However, what we would encourage families to really think about is that

00:12:44.520 Bitcoin is a risk asset. It has no long-term track record of preserving wealth. It is not a real

00:12:53.600 asset. It's purely digital. You can never hold it. And in all likelihood, you're going to continue to

00:12:59.220 need access to the internet, which may become problematic at times, to be able to authenticate

00:13:04.960 Bitcoin, get it on and off the blockchain. Whereas gold is this physical, real asset that when you have

00:13:11.320 it, you have wealth outside of the financial system and free of any counterparty risk. Today,

00:13:17.140 Americans have almost all their wealth, either in their homes or some investment real estate

00:13:22.480 and in financial products. They have massive risk to counterparties struggling, whether those are

00:13:28.700 exchanges, financial parties, or who they may be. So this also underscores what you're talking about,

00:13:35.780 John Henry, the cyber attacks or the cyber breakdown that we had. It really underscored how vulnerable we are

00:13:42.960 on numerous levels, from a security perspective, from an information perspective. And again, if all of

00:13:48.960 your wealth is tied up on assets you can see on your phone, on these exchanges, then that is potentially

00:13:55.600 problematic for you down the road. And we want to encourage people, there is great value in getting

00:14:02.480 wealth into your own hands where you have this diversification of counterparties. Going back again

00:14:09.460 to Trump and what he is saying about the risks of saving in dollar-denominated assets. A T-bill today

00:14:15.300 carries a 5% yield. But there is a time in history when overly indebted currencies show that becomes a

00:14:21.700 honeypot. It's a trap. Yes, you're getting the yield, but it's losing purchasing power at a rate that exceeds

00:14:27.980 the yield. We're really already there. If you look at the erosion of the dollar, where inflation, real product

00:14:34.880 inflation is today. In contrast, gold, again, carries no guarantees, but it has been appreciating at a rate that

00:14:41.780 exceeds the T-bill rate for years. So to diversify some of your safe money from yielding assets that you consider

00:14:52.260 safe and adding gold in there is prudent and is, again, what history has said families want to be doing at this

00:14:59.200 moment in this cycle. Well, one of the other things we didn't talk about yet has been silver. A lot of

00:15:03.680 people are in situations where the gold price now is sort of out of reach, but silver's not. And you had

00:15:09.040 some comments before about silver. What's your take on silver right now? John Henry, if we go back the

00:15:14.000 last couple of years since we've been interviewing with you, we have really focused on gold. And since

00:15:19.060 that time, gold has moved from an unwanted asset again to even in the face of last week's stress

00:15:23.860 sitting at all-time high at 2,500. We're seeing not only Asian true investors, but their youth, the

00:15:30.160 central banks. And now we're even seeing Western young adults stepping up and buying gold because

00:15:36.440 they see the risk that these financial assets carry. However, we think, John Henry, we are close to the

00:15:46.560 threshold of where we're going to see silver now also begin to outperform handsomely. Silver

00:15:53.520 is the only real physical asset we're aware of that is still trading below its 1980 inflationary

00:16:01.820 peak. That's an amazing statement. Again, no matter what asset you're talking about, cotton, soybeans,

00:16:08.680 silver is the only asset trading below that peak. And it is now almost 50% below peak levels. And when

00:16:16.020 you think about that, silver has extraordinary end markets in technology, cell phones, in healthcare,

00:16:22.220 in hybrid car batteries, in green energy. And silver, we think, will ultimately show that its

00:16:30.640 killer app is, again, money. If you look at the United States, our founders, when they set up this

00:16:36.340 brilliant system, they put into the Constitution, the only legal money in this country would be gold

00:16:40.700 and silver. The gold for large ticket items, but silver, they were protecting the working class. 0.99

00:16:45.980 As long as they were paid in silver, their wealth wouldn't be eviscerated like has happened

00:16:49.860 whenever the working class has been paid in paper currencies like today's dollar.

00:16:54.320 If you consider that, silver also is ideal for smaller day-to-day items, small ticket transactions,

00:17:01.080 groceries, things like that. So we encourage investors to have silver as well as gold in their portfolio.

00:17:08.760 Call our team. We're happy to talk you through the nuances of the different asset classes and to

00:17:15.160 guide you based on your input of what's important to you, your risk tolerances, how to appropriately mix that.

00:17:21.420 But we expect silver is about to perform extraordinarily well. This will be the fifth consecutive year

00:17:26.880 we have consumed more silver than we have mined out of the ground. History tells us that can't go on forever

00:17:33.380 and that bodes very well for the price of silver.

00:17:35.760 And Drew, I think many of the people who know you and have worked with you at LifeSite know that in addition

00:17:41.780 to talking about financial markets and protecting your investments in gold and silver, you also speak

00:17:48.900 to us about fasting very often. In fact, last time we were together in April, you were going on to a

00:17:54.200 program where you were going to fast six days a week in the month of May. How did that go? And what are

00:18:01.120 your thoughts currently about fasting? What's actually going on spiritually in the world today?

00:18:06.240 When we last shared with you, we said that we believe war had been declared on the church and

00:18:13.240 on America, and that was in April. And we said that we were setting out in the month of May to fast

00:18:19.840 six days a week. Seemingly a crazy, crazy idea. But we're in this period where, think about in past

00:18:29.560 wars, all that our ancestors have sacrificed. Think about what the boys went through in those boats

00:18:35.160 storming Normandy. How great of a sacrifice was that? If that is what our ancestors were willing

00:18:42.760 to do so that we could live in freedom, how can we not step up and sacrifice more at this urgent hour

00:18:49.480 for our church and for our country? So the way we're fasting is two days a week on Wednesdays and

00:18:56.260 Fridays, 24 hours, as we've talked about with your audience before, on bread and water. Get 100%

00:19:01.500 whole grain bread, have some butter, have some olive oil with it. It's relatively easy. We don't want you

00:19:07.180 to be hungry. Satan suggests, oh, for a fast to do any good, you have to be in such pain. Our Lady has

00:19:13.520 shown us it's not like that. God sets the bar so low. He just wants to see us making some effort,

00:19:19.200 trying to come to Him, trying to make up for our sins and for what the world's,

00:19:24.040 the ingratitude the world shows to Him. We're complementing that on the other four days in the

00:19:31.040 week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, by fasting on bread and water for two meals

00:19:36.780 and having one full meal. So again, it's even easier, but it's every day we're coming to the

00:19:42.860 Lord and we're saying, Lord, really in the model of St. Therese, the little flower, the little way,

00:19:49.160 saying, Lord, my sacrifice is so small. It's nothing, Lord, especially compared to your

00:19:54.580 incredible sacrifice for us when you died for us. But Lord, we gladly make this little sacrifice

00:20:00.020 with joy to you and atonement for our sins and atonement for the offenses that you are facing

00:20:06.420 throughout the world today with our disregard for your commandments. And Lord, we pray that you'll

00:20:11.540 pour out your Holy Spirit upon our church, upon our country, open our eyes to see what you see,

00:20:17.620 to want what you want, and let extraordinary conversion and extraordinary renewal take

00:20:23.080 place. So that's what we're doing. Since we recorded, we had some really interesting developments,

00:20:29.120 John Henry, in June in Medjugorje. And again, I want to say to all Catholics, the church has

00:20:36.060 investigated Medjugorje. It has approved the first week's apparitions. That is an unprecedented

00:20:40.960 event in 2,000 years of church history. So heaven is clearly going to extreme measures to try and get

00:20:48.740 our attention to Medjugorje. The church has ring-fenced this to prevent it from being called evil or fake

00:20:56.400 at all moments. And we should be digging into it. We should be paying attention. And I want to say to

00:21:02.220 all our Protestant brothers, you too want to dig into Medjugorje because nothing in our lifetimes has

00:21:07.620 created the conversions that Medjugorje has. This impossible scenario, destined to failure,

00:21:14.100 six kids behind the Iron Curtain, a net worth of a dollar, no ability to speak foreign languages,

00:21:19.760 no one knew about them. How are you possibly going to change the world? 50 million conversions later.

00:21:27.040 The signs have been off the charts. Remember, Jesus told us, you'll know the Spirit by the fruits.

00:21:31.640 And he told the Pharisees and others, if you don't believe my words, believe the signs. It's indicative

00:21:37.540 of when heaven is involved. And whether you talk about the words that have been written in flaming

00:21:45.160 letters in the sky over that town, almost akin to the Old Testament passage where believers and

00:21:51.460 their captors saw the handwriting literally on the wall. Whether you talk about the miracles in the sun

00:21:57.700 in the sky that are just at least unprecedented and are unexplainable, that have been seen by

00:22:04.160 thousands and thousands of people. And of course, if you talk about, again, the conversions to Christ,

00:22:09.880 this warrants watching. And in June, Our Lady said that the world was in great danger of losing peace.

00:22:20.320 And she asked that we make incremental sacrifices for the nine days leading up to her great feast

00:22:27.620 in June. And the world responded. John Henry, I was traveling and I would meet people I didn't even

00:22:33.160 think that were connected with Medjugorje had ever been there. And they were making their novenas,

00:22:37.680 rosaries, making atonement morning and night, just like Our Lady was asking. And at 1130 p.m. June 24th,

00:22:44.880 she came on this special feast, dressed in gold, as she usually does on her big feast days. And she

00:22:51.800 said, thank you. She was radiant. The sacrifices of the church, praying in earnest, had done what we

00:22:57.960 saw in the Acts, right? In the Acts of the Apostles. Peter was incarcerated. He was slated. It was going to

00:23:03.900 be executed. But the scriptures tell us the church prayed earnestly and God responded. The angels went

00:23:11.960 into the jail freed him in an extraordinary moment in Christianity. The same wonderful event has 0.93

00:23:19.660 transpired because of the response of believers stepping up at this hour. And so that is great

00:23:26.900 news, John Henry. Remember again, Our Lady said this is a time of grace and that grace is spreading

00:23:33.420 throughout the world. You see the headlines and it plays right to Satan's game. He wants to discourage

00:23:39.120 you. He wants you to think that nothing good can possibly come from your efforts. And heaven is

00:23:44.760 telling us just the opposite. Although God hides the good, you do from your eyes. Just like when Jesus

00:23:50.540 was on the cross, it didn't look like that was the greatest moment of all history, but it was. That was

00:23:54.900 the turning point. You step up with fasting, with your prayers, with your reparation, and you are changing

00:24:00.900 history. And when we die, our efforts will be, our sacrifice will be a badge of honor. And we will help

00:24:07.760 trigger so many conversions that you don't want to miss this opportunity to pray and to fast in this

00:24:14.060 way. And it's an easy thing to do. You don't have to witness to people. If you're in a hostile

00:24:20.420 environment, whether you're in a different country, wherever you are, you can just fast and call out

00:24:24.840 to the Lord, show me truth. And I'm making the sacrifice to bring you and all of your great blessings

00:24:31.200 to this country, to this world. So, John Henry, we would just say to viewers, don't be discouraged.

00:24:39.480 Great things are happening. Praise be Jesus. Thank you for having us.

00:24:45.880 Drew, my friend, thank you so very much for being with us. Always good to be with you. God bless you,

00:24:50.500 my friend. Thank you, John Henry. And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.

00:25:01.200 Thank you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - August 08, 2024

What the Major Upset in the Markets Means for You and Your Family

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript