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By Allen Sama
3.9
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The podcast currently has 184 episodes available.
This is part 2 of my interview with John S Pennington Jr.
Make sure to listen to Part 1 first.
Allen It seems like I mean, because all the stuff you're mentioning, you know, Ray Dalio in his books, he talks about it too, you know, like, how does one Empire take over from another one? And it's because of the the currency, it's because of you know, and he's been talking about it for a while that there's a collision course coming. And everybody's afraid of it. You know, I mean, I'm even afraid of it. Because if we go to war in 10 years from now, you know, I have two boys that are 13 and 11, they're probably going to be drafted because everybody in the United States is overweight, and they can't fight it. So there's got to be some, right? There's gonna be some serious problem with the Army not having enough people. So my kids are gonna be fighting in a war. I don't want them fighting in and like, everybody's freaking out about it. And like you said, you know, China, they brokered the deal. They're making friends in the Middle East. They're making friends in Africa. They're giving loans like you said, US gave loans to everybody. They gave loans in trillions of dollars, not even billions, but I think it was trillions of worth of loans to build infrastructure in Africa that is then maintained owned and run by Chinese. It's not run by the Africans, the Chinese are in charge of it, the Silk Road Project that they built those highways all the way from China all the way to the, you know, the Mediterranean. I mean, yeah, they've been doing it crazy. And so it seems like everything that you're saying it lines up. And it's like, now that we see
John last year in the last year and a half, while the last few months, India has stopped on some level, not all the way stopped buying Russian oil. They just read some reports this last month that they have, they have curbed their Russian oil purchases. Really. Okay. Now, I don't know exactly why. But I do know, there's tons of companies that have moved from China, to South Korea, Thailand, and India. And I believe India is now choosing Wait a minute, we want to be in good graces with the United States because that's where we're going to suck up all those jobs on China. They're going to come to India. Right. And I think India's Modi, President Modi over there is making a strategic move to go with you know, the US dollar and to do that he's got to appease the the United States by saying you know what, Russia, we even though your oil is cheaper, doesn't matter. We're gonna go with US dollar purchases for oil. That
Allen could be because China is also having territorial disputes now with India over certain areas. It's funny because we have a an oil Options program where we train, we do coaching on oil options, and we you could see it in the news play out when Russia was putting all their tanks on the border of Ukraine, you know, everybody knew it, they're coming in, they're going to invade and everybody was like, when is it gonna happen? When is it gonna happen? I told her, I'll tell all my traders it's like, you know, just wait. It's not going to happen until the Olympics are open. Olympics are over because the Olympics are in China is like they have the closing ceremonies, like four hours later, boom, there's an invasion. It's like, okay, now we can play it now. It's, you know, it's, yeah, he was insane. So now you said, now I'm trying to figure out like, okay, alright, how can I make money off of this? Right. So it's like you said that Russia and China are still buying gold. So is that? Is that an investment that's going to continue to ramp up because I think gold is at all time highs right now?
John Yeah, it's all time high. Silver is kind of trying to get up there. But Silver's having a tough time. So let's go to Okay, let's go to the summer of 2020. All right, summer 2020. The SEC, which is part of the team, you have the team, you know, US dollar, the SEC sues JP Morgan. What are they suing him for? They're suing him for manipulating the precious metals market for nine years. Silver gold, okay. And they lose, JPMorgan loses and they're fined almost a billion dollars a billion dollar fine for nine years and mutilation the SEC. Okay. The point is, JP Morgan figured out how to manipulate and control a market that's 30 times bigger than Bitcoin. Gold and silver and gold for nine years. And they finally SEC found out about it pseudonym wins, finds you billion dollars, but guess what, no one that I know of went to jail.
Allen I mean, it wasn't that big in the news, they get headlines,
John kind of kept quiet, right. So millions of people that buy and sell silver and gold were fleeced out of how know how many much money but no one goes to jail. But you just find they probably made 20 billion but they're only find a billion it was it was 930 million, but I rounded a billion because we talked about a billion seconds earlier. Right? Okay, so nine 30 million, but close to a billion dollars. All right. So my theory in my book that I explain is you have precious metals market that have been manipulated through using futures and all kinds of different manipulations. And a year from there, now you're in summer of 2021. Bitcoin is trading around $31,000. This is July. Okay. So August, September, October, November, four months later, Bitcoin hits all time high $69,000. My theory is that the Federal Reserve, US government viewed Bitcoin as a competitor possible to the US dollar. And so they took the playbook that they learned from JP Morgan, and I think they had JP Morgan personnel help them do it right. Clandestine to control try to control Bitcoin. And that's why it went from 31,000 to 16,000 in a four, three and a half month period of time. So November it hits $69,000. And so how are the way that you control Bitcoin? Well, one JP Morgan used a futures market. Okay, now what I'm about to tell you all these things that I'm gonna tell you happen in November 2021. Okay, one bitcoin hits all time high. Number two, the SEC approves a Bitcoin ETF not I first bought only four futures right and they denied grayscale the spot one Why would you approve one for futures and not one for spot doesn't make any sense. So that happened November also, also November and
Allen hold that for people who are listening to spot means the current price futures means prices in advance. So the actual the actual Bitcoin
John not a Hypothecation the actual non derivative, the actual Bitcoin, right? So the SEC says no you can't you can't operate, we're not gonna allow you to operate a ETF that actually buys Bitcoin, we're only going to allow this other company, an ETF that actually buys futures on contracts, right just contracts, which is the what the way JP Morgan was one of the ways they were able to manipulate the silver and gold market for nine years. Okay, that's the third thing that happened in November, the SEC extends their lawsuit against a ripple XRP coin. Why XRP from the nanosecond XRP was invented. Its one goal was what to do to circumvent the SWIFT system, which would decrease the demand for US dollars. So the SEC extends the EC the lawsuit for no apparent reason. And they just kind of lost it. They lost the SEC last last summer, and then they appealed. So they're this lawsuit still going on against XRP? Okay, a former thing that happened in this month, in November, Hillary Clinton came out and said, Bitcoin could damage the US dollars, reserve world currency. Now, again, back to probabilities and predictions, you can say she just went to a microphone and just talking. That's you can believe that, or what's the is that a probability high probability? Or is the probability that she had been privy to previous meetings months earlier, that the Federal Reserve was going to try to pinch Bitcoin control, they don't want to kill it, they just want to control it. And so she got in front of microphone, which she loves to do to tell all her memes. Hey, listen to me, I always know the truth. I always give you the truth. Guess what the Bitcoin could take over the US currency, which is our number one product and why so he's she's sending a coded message, maybe? Maybe not. But the probability, I think the probability is high that she had some information that the government was using a clandestine approach to try to control Bitcoin,
Allen because she was a congresswoman and she was sitting on committees and all that, yes, yes.
John One other way you can control a traded commodity or traded stock or whatever or bitcoin is if you can get 45 to 60 days of trading volume, meaning if if bitcoin trades 100 coins a day, you would need 4500 coins. If it trades 1000 coins a day, you would need 45,000 coins are 60,000 coins. This is what how you do it. So let's just say hypothetically, that from July 2021 to November 2021, the Federal Reserve had to obtain 45 days of trading bonds 66 days trading bond that means they have to buy bitcoin. They're buying Bitcoin buying Bitcoin buying Bitcoin buying Bitcoin buying Bitcoin, that means the price is going up, up, up, up up. Once they have 45 or six days of trading volume, they take their 45 Day Trading bond, and they stick it at six $9,000. And they put it there for sale, all this at a limit price 60,000 or so we start buying you buy I buy we're buying. And then we keep hitting 69 69,006 96 Night Out signal, there's a ceiling, there's a price ceiling, the ceiling, and we can see it and we go Wait, there's a big seller at 16,000 or so mean, you start selling. So we start selling everyone starts selling and it goes down to 68,000. Guess who's buying at 60,000 The Federal Reserve, they're replenishing their 60 day supply or 45 day supply of trading volume. So that mean you go Wait, there's a buyer at 68,000 and we start buying again. And it goes to 68,000. They don't let it go to 69 because that would be a bullish chart, right? They can have a they can have a higher high. They can have a lower high and they put their 45 day trading volume boom right there as 68,800 and they start selling and same thing happens. We sell and it goes down. That's one way you can control a market right now. So lately as we know, Bitcoin has hit a new all time high. Yeah. And so maybe maybe what happened was, this is there's another hypothesis. Maybe they realized they alone couldn't do it. Okay. So last summer, the SEC basically told 11 companies Listen, we're going to approve 11 companies all at the same time to try A Bitcoin spot and ETF spot so they approved 11 ETFs to trade Bitcoin spot. Now, what I think happened in October, Bitcoin was trading 31,000 27,000 31,000 31,000 27,000 27,000 If Gessner of the head of the SEC told them Hey, guess what we're going to do? In a few months we're going to let you guys start trading Bitcoin what you guys should do is buy a Bitcoin to control the market. So Bitcoin went from 27,000 to sweat 72,000 Something like that. Right? Yeah, today, but I'm saying I'm saying on January I think was January 11. Okay, all the Bitcoin went up 11 Bitcoin went alive, right? Okay. Now think about what just happened on January 11. There are record number of buying a Bitcoin record number. And in 11, or 12 days, it goes from, from where it's at down to $39,000. Why there's a record number of buyers, it should go up. But wait, if all the ETFs bought at 31,000, knee ETFs, bought at 32,000 35,000 42,000 If they were buying it, so that when the ETFs went live, they could sell it to you. That's why the price went down. There's no other there's no other explanation. Because if they had bought zero, when a record numbers came in to buy bitcoin, they would have to take your US dollars and go buy Bitcoin that would go up, the way it goes down. It went down like 18% in 11 days with record inflows, that means that I believe BlackRock and all the other 1011 ETFs are in on the game of manipulation of Bitcoin, right? And so this is back to my theory that no matter what it is, if it's the yuan, or if it's gold, if it's Bitcoin, and it and it has the potential of damaging the number one product of all time, the Federal Reserve, the US Navy, the president, the SEC, the IRS, even the CIA, that's their number one job. Now, a lot of times Congress forgets their number one job.
Allen I was gonna ask you about that, too. I was like Congress get the memo. Because yeah,
John they don't get it. But but but people criticize. Powell had the federal they criticized him all the time. I don't. I think he's doing a great job. Listen, if we went back in time, okay, we'll go back in time, Alan, we're going back to 30 years, okay. 30 years ago, I said, you're going to be the head of the Federal Reserve. Okay. And I'm going to be Congress, right? Your job is to protect and promote the US dollar. And all I do that Congress, I spend trillion, I spend a trillion, I spend a trillion, I spend a trillion, I spend a trillion. And I say to you, hey, figure out how to pay for it. Right? So you can criticize Powell all you want. But man, he's still we still are 58% of the world reserve currency. And the Congress doesn't stop spending. It's like a couple. You have a couple one spouse spends tons of money on credit cards, and they turn the other spouse pay for it. Right. And Powell must be just for it. If I was I'd be screwed top my lungs, would you guys stop spending? All you got to stop because I'm doing my best to keep this number one product afloat around the world. I'm doing my best. Right. And so I don't criticize Powell. I've actually under the circumstances, I think he's doing a fantastic job, even though people call him stupid. People don't like what he says. But I don't listen to what he says. I just listen when he does. And I and I realize he has a partner called the US Congress. Who is there just out of control spending? Yep. And he's done it. He's doing a great job by keeping our agreements accepted around the world. Yeah,
Allen I agree with you. I mean, you know, after COVID, and all that money that was spent on everything, you know, to maintain it to not even go into recession to have Yeah, inflation was a it could have been a lot worse than who it was. Without all that spending all that money that's just unaccounted for. So
John I think right now, the Congress is spending about $1 trillion every four or five months, six months. That's, that's, that's what's going on right now. That's just amazing. So back to your question. As you can tell, I have long answers. Gold, silver, Bitcoin real estate, okay. If you keep spending a trillion dollars every six months, additionally, items are going to go up in price. Gold, silver, Bitcoin, eventually, it's just going to bubble up you. It's kind of you almost can't stop it. Right. wheat, wheat soybeans, I mean, real estate farmland, if you just give a trillion dollars every six months, and how long can the us do this? I bet they can. You know, look, look the US Dollar might be the greatest Ponzi scheme ever invented a headline, it might it might be, but this is the thing. There is no mathematical way to taper a large Ponzi scheme, it can't be done. So therefore, the only way to play it all out is to play it all the way through. Okay, just to play it out, right? Let's don't get mad at me. I didn't create this. I was born into this system. Right? I am pro US dollar. Why? Because I'm in the Ponzi scheme, because all of our money is in US dollars. I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning and have the US dollar at zero because I will be broke. My parents will be living in my basement. My kids who live in my basement way my my house would be for sale because I'd be broke because everything I have almost is in US dollars. Right? Bait US dollar based, right? I have some bitcoin I have some gold. I have some real estate, right. But it's US dollar base. You too. We're we're in the Ponzi scheme. Okay. So therefore I think with the US think about the US Navy, think about the powers think about everything they could they could for what proliferate this for another 20 3050 years. They are very powerful. The Federal Reserve is the most powerful entity, along with the US Navy, along with the IRS along with the SEC along with the President. They are incredible team. And look, look, you know, China, only having 2.7% 2.7% of the world reserve currency, and we have 58% and the Euros 20%. And they got it they got a big mountain to climb, right, and they can climb it, but it's gonna take a long time. But the problem is this. Again, China is now printing more money than we're printing. Because they're in a they're in a 1929 depression right now. It's bad over there. Unemployment is youth unemployment, ages 18 to 30. is so bad China stopped reporting it. That's how bad it is. They don't report it anymore. Yeah, the estimates they have, if you are a college aged kid in China, college, graduated kid in China, and you're in a big city. This is 18 to 30 years old, okay? You graduate in college, and you have a job. Your average salary is $700 to $950 a month. Wow. That's the average salary right now in a big city. In China. They're in a 1929 depression. So they're not going to fix this in one to six months. It's going to be years to fix this in China. And the US is, I believe, putting pencils on them trying to even control them because they're sending a message to Saudi Arabia. Anyway, so this is people go man, John, you really got a lot of information, like you just said, you have all this information. And you put together like a puzzle, right? And it's conspiracy theory. And I go, it might be I might be totally wrong. But it just keeps fitting together. The more I put more puzzle pieces together, they keep fitting. Yeah. So
Allen I have another question. And this is about a different commodity. Now, we talked a little bit of we talked about how the Fed control the prices of Bitcoin, how the Fed is controlled, trying to try and try to trying to or and how it's handling other issues. What do you think? Do you or do you think that they're doing something similar to oil prices? Because it's not oil? Yeah. It's not directly tied to the dollar, but it is tied to the economy. And yeah,
John yeah. So I remember when President Biden took office is first thing he did was he turned off the Keystone pipeline to Canada. And I was like, why?
Allen environmental reasons, right? Why
John would you do that? And I put the US dollar in, wait a minute, we have to buy some oil from Saudi Arabia. So we, as a gesture to Saudi Arabia, to keep oil prices up, we turn off the Keystone pipeline to reduce oil here in North America, so that Saudi Arabia can have a better something like that. And they you know, there is some type of manipulation a little bit around the world, but oil is huge, right? Everyone's got a little bit oil and some kinds of we have a lot of oil for some reason. Saudi Arabia has a lot. Russia has a lot. And so but I would say to you that oil is a commodity base is every once in a while manipulated, but you know, turning off spigots reduces supply, which increases so but what's happened is for the oil trader, your old traders the next 510 years, maybe five years, everyone has gone green, and they're making solar panels and windmills in Germany, right. And they've been the last, you know, since that big huge problem that we had in that tidal wave in Japan. With that nuclear reactor over there, that nuclear power plant, everyone went away from nuclear. So we went through this last winter I believe there were power outages or power Our reductions in Germany, Canada, there are places that just had was worried about their power being right. And so what happens is, so many people have swung over to the green agenda, which is a good thing. They've left the agenda in buying Chevron and Exxon Mobil, and they've left they've left, and so at Chevron, Exxon Mobil have stopped or reduced their exploration because they don't have as much money. Right? Okay. And therefore, that's going to keep oil prices higher. So what the green initiative has done is encouraged oil prices to be higher, because they've reduced the amount of money that can explore and extract more oil. So they've reduced it, therefore there's less of it, therefore, oil will be higher in the future. And I know, Saudis have turned down their spigot lately, you know, for the oil. And so I know that's happening. But oil is a long term play, mostly for me. It's a long term play, but I just kind of try to find the trend. And it seems like, to me the trend is up in general, because of what I just explained. Makes
Allen sense. Yeah. I mean, I tell people that you know, back in the day, the rich man used to have an engine, like a car with an engine and everybody else was on horses, right? Yeah. And then it became commonplace. And then it became the rich man had the electric vehicle, because he had to be rich to have a and then now it's gonna flip and it's gonna be like, Okay, now the rich guy has the combustible engine, and everybody else is driving the electric vehicles. And the really
John rich man has a horse. He hasn't a stable. You guys once a month. You know what I mean? Exactly. Back to the horse. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Allen Cool. All right. So I do want to wrap it up with going into the future now, because we you know, you mentioned conspiracy theory. And now this one is, I see it coming. But the US digital dollar. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So let's do I want to hear on stage.
John You've heard me on stage on stage, I show a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder. And I show when he's an actor, and I show him as a governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger reinvented himself three times. The US dollar has to reinvent itself. It was gold in 1933. It was the Bretton Woods, you know, we will back the the French franc in 1944. In 1971, it turned into the Fiat dollar of the petro dollar. And now it's going to go into the digital age. And it's coming, I just don't know how long it's going to take for them to manufacture a crisis, that we will accept the US digital dollar, they have to have a crisis versus except for right now. No one wants to accept it. Because once you accept it, everyone knows what you spent your money on. Right? Because right
Allen now, I mean, you have credit cards, and you have wire transfers. And so like, what's the point? Why do we need that right? Well,
John but I can pay cash for something, and you don't know what I bought. Right? Right. And so but but once the digital dollar hits, and it's mandatory, everything, you know, there won't be there won't be I can imagine there won't be a tax return anymore. If you buy something at Walmart, the nanosecond, you buy it, a few pennies will go to Washington DC, every single day. And if you're buying Chinese goods, there's 17 pennies that go to Washington DC. If you're buying US goods, there's four pennies go into wash DC every time you buy something. So if you if you transfer money from your phone to your kids, so they can buy lunch at school today, every time you transfer money, there's two pennies going to go. So there's no tax returns. Everyone knows or not everyone, the federal government would know everything you spend your money on, where you spend your money. And they might say Well, that would reduce drug trafficking, that will reduce illegal activities that reduce a lot of things because everything is tracked, there is no gold, there is no silver, there is no Bitcoin, we have to outlaw it. And it might be and I hypothecate In my book, let's go to May 2033. That's the 100th anniversary of the gold confiscation that people said no, that can never happen America Well, in 1933. In May, they confiscated all our gold. And in May 19 In May 2033, it might come to the point where for the good of the country, the country is in so big of debt. If we could just collect all of our taxes from our citizens, we could pay our bills, but we can't because too many people are using gold. Too many people are using Bitcoin too many people are using cash and we can't track that and and that's how people cheat on their taxes. But if we switched to the US digital dollar, no one can cheat on their taxes. When they buy a boat we know it when they pay for lunch, we know it right and we collect our taxes, therefore as to be patriotic. Everyone must have if you own a business you no longer accept cash You know, alongside Bitcoin, you know, because we have to sugar up the US economy, and it's patriotic. And this is this hypothetical, but may 9, may 2033, just 100 year anniversary, it could happen if they can create, and I'm saying create a crisis in the American mind, where we're gonna go bankrupt United States unless we switch the US digital dollar. And that's the savior now. So something like that that's a hypothetical. You might it might be, it might be a cyber attack. You know, I don't know if you remember this, this, I think 2012 Maybe you remember a little country called Cyprus.
Allen I know of a
John little country called Cyprus, right. on a Monday morning, everyone woke up went to their bank. And the rich people who had I don't know the number, but it was over 100,000 are over 500,000 in their bank, half of their money was gone. The country confiscated half of the savings accounts of our all the rich people, because the country tried to go to the EU over the weekend, because they were bankrupt. and the EU turned them down. They said, Look, we'll give us a loan. They said no. So the EU turned them down. So the only thing that country could do was over the weekend, confiscate half of the money in all the bank and this is digital, this digital dollars, your digital, you can do this. They confiscated half of the money. And they said basically to the people, aren't you glad we did that? Because we wouldn't have done that. Your your your country, you'd have been worth zero. All your money would have been the zero we confiscated half of it, to pay for the government to keep us alive and open so that you could have half your money. This happened in Cyprus. Wow. So, you know, we when you say when you use the word, US government cannot. That's the wrong word. No, there's no Federal Reserve cannot that no, you should use shouldn't, wouldn't. But couldn't isn't a right word. Because in a digital age, everything is possible. They can change laws they can it's when people are desperate. And Money makes people desperate. Or lack of money makes people desperate. Things just happen that you thought could never happen. And I'm sure those people in Cyprus thought it could never happen. But on a Monday morning, it happened. Oh, yeah. She's,
Allen I mean, like you mentioned in the book, you talked about the Commerce Clause, right? And yeah, and I remember after 911, the government passed the Patriot Act, you know, it's a great, great name for a bill or a Patriot Act. Yeah. What does it mean? It means basically, if you look at it, they can take anybody off the street, pick you up, throw you in a hole, you have no representation. No, you can't talk to anybody for as long as they want as long as you are under suspicion. And it doesn't matter if you're a citizen or not. And it's like, okay, what happened to our liberties? What happened to the Constitution? Oh, it's not there anymore. Sorry. You know, so yeah, you're right. They can do basically anything.
John The word the word cannot, should not be in your sentence with the US government shouldn't wouldn't Yes, but cannot or couldn't. Don't don't say those words together with the US government. As
Allen you remember, when Modi took over in India, they had supposedly they had problems with, you know, the mafia and illegal gambling and illegal monies and all that. So he made everybody turn in their higher dollar notes. Yes, exactly. It's like everybody to come into cash and other notes and the people that bring it in, we'll baskets and stuff. So it
John he actually it was pretty thought out because he said the poor people need a $1 $5 bill or $10. Bill, the rich people, you don't need hundreds and $500 bills, you can all you do that electronically. You want to transfer large amounts of money, it's electronic. You want to transfer for tips, or you want to pay your guy to shine your shoes or mow your lawn. You still have small bills, because look, it's really hard to transfer $1,000,000,001 bills, because it would take up a whole truckload right? So, so that was Modi's compromise to keep the poor having money in their pocket, and to hinder the rich, or the drug dealers or whoever, for moving large amounts of money. It all has to be electronically because electronically, we can track it.
Allen Yeah, so I mean, that could be something that they do here. You know, let's take away the $100. Bill. We used to have $1,000 bills, right, I think yeah, back in the day. Yeah. A
John long time ago. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen So okay, so you're saying that in nine years is 2023 or 33 2033. And you also say in your book that every 10 years, there is some kind of financial catastrophe or collapse or
John if you think about it since 1971, okay, we won the fiat currency system. Okay. Okay, and this is roughly nine or 10 years, okay? The economy goes, boom, right? And there's opportunity. So 1971 Give me a few years for the fiat currency to get going. Okay, the petro dollar. In 1988, there was a stock market crash. And soon after that, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crushed. And I took advantage of that I started selling us Levi's, the Eastern Bloc country, okay. 1999 comes around the.com bubble, right. And I missed it. There was a huge opportunity in internet. I knew it was going on, I just couldn't figure out how to make money at it. And it went, boom, and I missed that opportunity. Okay, 99 2000. Then in 2008, nine ish, there was a great recession. And I took great advantage of I started a huge fund that eventually was managing a family of funds, the lost family funds, 2008, that eventually, in 2021, was managing $28 billion assets under management. And today manages like 47 billion. Okay. And then 2020, there was the pandemic, right. And then we launched other funds called, they were called opportunities on funds that had huge tax advantages that we launched funds in that. So about every 10 years or so, since the fiat currency of 1971, the petro dollar, every 10 years, you know, it goes, the economy just goes boom, and boom means there's opportunity. And so a lot of the funds that started in real estate funds that started 289, and 10 made a ton of money, you can still make a lot of money, real estate, but we made a ton of money, because the economy was just blanketed low and we could buy things so cheap in 2009 and 10. It was it was crazy. So
Allen I don't know. I mean, we might be close to that timeline, you know, but 10 years and 33. It's somewhere in there. Well,
John are 2029, you know, 29? Right in there, right in there. 20 930-228-2930. Right there. That's about 10 more years. That's the tenure since the last one ish, right? Yeah.
Allen Do you have anything on your antenna that you're noticing now that would go boom?
John Well, again, it might be the US digital dollar that goes into it might be an opportunity there. Because, you know, maybe this is this, this is way out there. But maybe Congress is spending and spending and spending and spending and spending for a lot of reasons. But one reason is to cause a crisis. Well, so that we could be forced to go to the digital dollar. Oh, my right. Yeah, that's just a crazy i That's i That's not my blood, because that's just a crazy theory. But because I can't think I cannot figure out why. What's the purpose of this? Like, I can't figure out why President Biden lets all these illegals coming off our southern border. Yeah, I don't I don't get I know there's a reason. But I don't really understand the reason I'm trying to figure it out. And I haven't figured that one out yet. And yet, I can't figure out why the US Congress can't just stop spending some money. It might just be there's no conspiracy, they just spin spin spin. But it might just there might be another underlying reason. They're trying to force it because they look to get us to go the US digital dollar, there has to be a cyber attack, there has to be some big crisis, something like in Cyprus, that would cause us to go, okay. I'm okay with that. Like right now, we have five and a quarter percentage rates, you know why we're okay with that, because we had 9% inflation. But if we had 1%, inflation, we would never accept a five and a quarter percentage rate. So there has to be some type of crisis to get people to do things they don't want to do. And we no one wants to go to the Digital's digital dollar. But you would in a situation, there's scenarios that you would you would switch Yeah.
Allen And at this point, there's no alternative. And the Fed, like you said, is making it that way. And that's their job to make sure there's no alternative. Oh my Well, John, I really appreciate your time we've gone over thank you so much for it. And again really fun, everybody it's dollars gold and Bitcoin available at Amazon, get your copy. And we've touched everything in here. There's more in here that that is also
John on audible.com If you'd like my voice, you can listen to me for six hours and because I recorded the whole thing and all the time so if you don't read books, you listen to books, you can continue to listen to Mike scratchy voice for six more hours.
Allen Thank you so much. I appreciate you and everything that you've shared with us.
John Thank you very much for having me.
Allen Welcome passive traders. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. Today, I am here with someone that's going to blow your mind. I'll give you his name, you probably haven't heard from him. But what he says is going to make a big difference for you. So John S. Pennington Jr. in 2008, co founded a family of private investment funds that by 2021 had over $28 billion of assets under management and completed a successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. John then retired that same year but remains a significant stakeholder and is now partner Emeritus at the company. He has been married 38 years with three sons, five grandchildren, and he recently wrote a book which we're going to be talking about called Dollars, Gold, and Bitcoin. It's right here, I could not put it down, you can find it on Amazon and Audible. You guys need to get a copy of this book, because we are not going to be able to talk about everything in this book on this interview. John, thank you so much for being here.
John Allen, so good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Allen So now I have done. I have heard you speak in the past. And so a few podcasts, I don't should have looked at the episode, but it's one of the past episodes called billionaire lessons. I have talked a little bit and gone over some of the things that you presented on which were covered in your book as well. So it was one of our most popular episodes, really happy that you're here. I just want to get into it. So the book is titled dollars gold and Bitcoin. Now I've already you know, talked about your successful guy you're doing well. Why did you write this book?
John When I retired, some people asked me to speak on stage. And I, you know, I didn't charge them. And I just went to these masterminds and I thought, What do I want to talk about? And, you know, I just I looked at what everyone else talks about. And I thought, well, I got to talk about something different. So I started talking about economics and the Federal Reserve and the strength of the dollar and how, you know, the dollar is just a fantastic product worldwide. And I actually, you know, followed the Federal Reserve and how they promoted the US dollar over the years, and how they nudged people to make their product more acceptable around the world. And I kind of used that formula. In my company, or me and my partner's company, as we grew, we kind of use the same type of tactics that the Federal Reserve and the US government has used over the years to promote their number one product, which is the US dollar.
And so so it's kind of a, it's kind of reflection of my business history. But it's also a reflection of how I studied and watched the the greatest product ever become the greatest product ever. How did it get there, and then I just kind of wanted to learn from the best. So I just kind of use those tactics with me and my partners to kind of push our business kind of the same way. So that's why I kind of wrote it.
Allen Cool. Now, you know, the first time I heard you speak, I've heard you speak twice. And the first time and second time, I'm listening to you, and you are taking these what seemed to be very random events around the world. Yes. It's like, Oh, this guy said this, made this comment. And then this person visited this country, and then nothing happened. And then that happened. And then you took all of these to me, they were just random, you know, like watching the news. You story after story. But you took them and you whoa, this intricate, detailed story that linked them all together. And I'm like, Whoa, how does this guy think like this?
how do you how do you come up with this? ,
John I don't I don't know. I just I just I think as an entrepreneur my whole life, I started my, well, my career, but when I was a young man, I just was really slow reader. I wasn't a good, I wasn't a good student. And I knew that I could not survive in corporate America. I just knew it would eat me alive. It didn't I just wouldn't fit there. And so I knew I had to be my own boss. And that means I probably need to just start my own companies. And so I remember looking in the mirror and this is I think I was 17 or 18. And I said to myself, these words and and I I've repeated this in the mirror, every year, 10 times a year, whatever, I don't know how many for 30 something 40 years, but I said this to myself in the mirror of John, you're not afraid of being poor. And John, you're not afraid of being old, you're just afraid of being old and poor at the same time. And that is stuck with me to push myself in the areas of, I have to start my own business, I have to save money to take risk, right. And so I started 14 businesses in my lifetime ish. And three, I've made a lot of money on obviously, the one I did with the funds and still in it made a lot of money, I three I've lost money on and the rest of them in the middle, you know, I made some money on them, they were pretty good for a while. But you know, so over those periods of time, when you'd make good money on one, you have to save the money and live beneath your means. So that when the next opportunity comes up, you have a war chest to go and try again. Because if you try a business, and it doesn't work, you lose the time and money. And sometimes I might, I've had a couple of businesses in a row not work. So you spend 910 months getting a business launched, and then you wait six, seven months, it doesn't work, and you go on men 18 months later, and now you're kind of out of money if you didn't save, and then you have another idea come up, and then you try that idea. And that's going to take a year, year and a half to figure out and spend all the money. So you always I always live below my means way below my means so that I would always have a war chest to take risk until I really, really, really made it. And when I first started my first fund in 2004, and then my second fund in 2007. And my third fund in 2008. You know, I didn't really know if it was going to work, work, work work work until about 2013. And up until that time, I was driving a car with 200,000 miles on it, you know, so but once I got there, then I got a Mercedes, you know, a small number, say a used Mercedes kind of thing. And so, but I was always I always lived beneath my means because I just knew I had to be a entrepreneur. So what I'm getting at was my business antennas, my business antennas my whole life since I was 17. I had been up trying to read listen to receive things, right? And when I graduated college in 8898, with an economics degree which if you have an economics degree, there's not a lot of really, you're not trying to do much right unless you go on to get a masters or PhD trained. Well, what do you I'm saying, right? I didn't matter I had a degree in and I wanted to start my business. My first business that I started right at night, not my first business but but my first successful business right out of college is in 1989 Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, they took down the wall in Germany, there used to be a wall right down the middle of Berlin, a physical wall, and they took it down. And before that time, kids in Eastern Europe could not get American products. They can watch American TV or watch American movies, but they couldn't get made in USA products. And when that wall came down, there was a flood demand because the US was like this golden child. And everyone loved the US for about 99 About 95 They just love love, love anything made the USA was the best. And they wanted American huge Levi's. Or they want American Levi's jeans because Mr. Levi Strauss in San Francisco was the first guy to ever make denim jeans. And he did him with a button flying and the original was the button fly 501. Well, all over the all over the world. These were being sold for hundreds of dollars. They were a fashion gene but in the Western United States, we'd had them for 100 years they were worth jeans. We grew up with them in high school, right but so anyway, two of my partner's eventually moved to Southern Germany and I stayed in in Utah, and I collected us Levi fiber ones all over the United States, mainly the Western United States, cleaned them up, sewed them had seamstresses, scrubbing them, cleaning them up taking the stains off of them sewing, and it shipped to my partners in Germany, and they sell them to Prague and all over the western eastern states. So I could buy new fiber ones on sale for 1499 in Utah, and they would go for 100 $120 in profit. So I had my antennas up. And so when I found out early on in Ada or early on at nine that we had a friend over there in Europe saying that people were at you know, walking up to him on the street trying to buy his jeans on down for $100 100 US dollars. And we could buy them used at a thrift store over here for $6. What's the probability I can make a business so we I ran this business for nine years From 89 to about 1988 1998. We ran this was my first real big, huge business. And it was booming. I mean, we were doing a lot of jeans. I think our best year total sales was $8.5 million. US Levi's, I think that was 9094, maybe 95. Somewhere in there. But it was the fast business. And I had, you know, seems so what I'm trying to say is, you asked me the question, how do I think this way, right? If you have your business antenna up, always trying to receive some information, and someone tells you, hey, people in Austria are paying $100 For usually buy 501 jeans, and you live in a place where you can buy them for $10. You have to think of how do I make that into a business? What's the probability? Not the prediction? What's the probability I can make that into a business? And that was my first real run into business employees in Germany employees here. It was really a fantastic, great, like classic arbitrage. Yep. Just yeah, that's right. We were value adding we were cleaning them up, right. We were selling them. We were repairing them. But yeah, it was it was a kind of arbitrage. Take a product. That's a in Nevada, or California or Utah. Move it to a place where it's a fashion gene and charge what the going rate is. Yeah.
Allen Cool. Awesome. All right. So let's get into the book. Now. I think that correct me if I'm wrong, but the big topic or the big overwhelming subject matter of the book is how the Fed operates and how they boxed in Bitcoin,
John or the US dollar no sorry, or gold or US dollar or the Chinese yuan. The basic point of the book is, I use the example of trying to box Bitcoin in because it appears to be an a competitor to the US dollar. Right. Gold. One point is your was a part of the US dollar and competitive US dollar. And I go in the book, I dip into the Chinese yuan that has become trying to become a competitive US dollar and the Fed, Federal Reserve's number, the US government's number one product, it sells better than hotcakes, people say it's selling like hotcakes. Well, they should start saying it's selling like the US dollar. So Allen, if I gave you $1 a second, right, like 123456. And I never stopped, never slept Neverland the restroom, it would take me 31.7 years to give you $1 billion. In other words, if you wanted to count to 1 billion, you would still be on the Zoom call this podcast 31 years from now. Right? So I tell them that on stage a lot because a lot of people misrepresent the word 1 billion they misinterpret it. They'll say John, I was just outside. And I saw this huge flock of birds, there must have been a billion birds. And I was gonna know there wasn't, you know how I know. I did the math. You know why I did the math. When my fund hit $1 billion. We started with managing $1 billion. It was like, holy cow, how much is a billion I started calculating it. 31.7 years of seconds. So when we talk about big numbers, I always do that on stage. So people really getting getting their head, how big $1 billion is and how erroneous that a lot of people use the term billion over time. So let me just do a little history for you. Okay. So, in 1914-ish, the Federal Reserve was created because there was a stock market crash in 1907, not not 2007 1907, the stock market crash.
So they created the Federal Reserve. And then in 1929, we know there was a huge stock market crash again. So 1929, the country's really, really, really hurting. And then in 1933, two things happen. The SEC was created so that we would never have a crash again, okay. And in May 1933, now get this in May 1933, the president, FDR, he signed an executive order that made it illegal for your grandfather and my grandfather to own gold. So you had to sell all of your gold to the Federal Reserve. Or if you had a gold note, because it used to be that dollars were backed by gold, you had to sell your gold note your gold coin or your gold bars to the Federal Reserve. And they would give you a paper dollar for it. And then they would take that gold and put it in Fort Knox, and that gold would backup the US dollar and help us get out of the recession or the depression. And so if your grandfather, my grandfather was caught with five gold coins in their pocket, they could go to jail. This is United States of America. Okay, but it was patriotic, I think I think if you go back it was kind of patriotic. Like, we're all doing this together. We're all in together. We all have To support our number one product, the US dollar. Okay, so, so in that that was 1933. Okay. And so how long did that last year? 41? Obviously, so 1971 ish. Oh, wow. I'll get there in just a second. Okay. Yeah. So in 1944, we knew we were going to win the war. Why? Well, we were making 96,000 planes a year, and Germany was making 38,000 planes a year. We were making, I don't know if the numbers were making 21,000 tanks, they were making 4000 tanks. We just knew by math, we were gonna win the war. So 1944 44 countries sent 1000 people to a little place called Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. And they went there to reset the dollar. So the dollar was reset by the Federal Reserve in 2019 14. Then it was reset again in 1933, by the gold confiscation, and then in 1944, it was reset again. So what happened was at 1944, everyone agreed all the countries Listen, the French franc is no longer going to be backed by gold. The French franc is going to be backed by the US dollar. And the US dollar is going to be backed by gold. Why? Because this is a crazy Alan, this is a craziest This is in 1944, the United States had 66% of all gold bullion in the world. We had it here. And there are a couple of reasons. In the first part of World War Two, we didn't get involved. We were just selling our tanks, our steel, we're selling steel to Russia, they're paying us in gold. We're selling whatever to France, they're paying a single in a world war, one synth kind of same thing happened, you know, so, and we had a gold confiscation in 1933. It was illegal for a US citizen to own gold, but it wasn't in 1944. Say 1946. Okay, my granddad had a $100 bill. He couldn't turn that in for gold. But if you were a US, if you were a French citizen, and you had a $100 bill, you could turn it in for gold. Okay, so we have like we always do, we abused this thing called the world reserve currency. Okay, we abused it. And by 1971, President de Gaulle of France knew we had been printing too many paper dollars, okay. Too many paper dollars. So he sent two ships across the Atlantic with all of their US dollars. Okay. So he sends the two ships over, and he demands here's my US dollars, give me my goal. And on. It was a Sunday night, August 15 1971, President Nixon came on live TV and announced to the world. He said basically, this, market manipulators around the world are trying to hurt our US dollar. And so he said temporarily, we're going to stop having the dollar backed by gold right now. Right? So he just told to tape your show. You're not getting your gold, right. And that was a temporary fiat currency. And that has lasted till today. So it's 5354 years old ish, right? Our dollars 5354 years old. Okay. So, and it was
Allen supposed to be temporary? It was that it was supposed to be temporary?
John That's what he said. He said, This is a temporary pause,
Allen just like like income tax?
John Yes, exactly.
So, but in 1990, am I gonna get my dates wrong? I was gonna do a cheat sheet because I don't want to mess my dates up. The 1960. The world reserve currency, the dollar was about 45% of all world reserve currency. Okay. In 2001, it was about 70 plus percent, maybe 78% of all world reserve currency is US dollars. And 19. In 2023. Just last year, my last statistics were 58%. Okay, so in 2023, US dollar is 58% of all the world reserve currency. The euro is 20%. Okay, the Chinese yuan is 2.7% of world reserve currency. Right? So we have a huge huge Headstart and a dominance with with our number one product across the world. And so we we mean you and everyone listening to this in the United States that use US dollars, we have an advantage where we we can go anywhere in the world and just throw our US dollars around and people will love them. Yeah, that's not true for other countries, right? You have to live in other countries. You just can't walk around and use your your fiat currency and just pay for things. And so we have a huge advantage. And so my question in my book is, how did that happen? How did we are the beneficiaries how do we become the beneficiaries of having most of the world use US dollars and In one way, in 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement. No, it doesn't doesn't say this, okay. But this is kind of what happened. After World War One. Everyone's Navy is gone. China's Navy's gone. Japan's Navy's gone. Germany's Navy's gone, Italy's need is gone, France Navy's gone, everyone rushes Navy's got everyone's Navy is gone, the US has their navy intact, and Britain had some Navy still intact. Okay. And so basically what happened was we basically said, listen, navies are one of the most expensive things for a country to have. And if you just kind of agree to buy and sell your oil in US dollars, you don't even need anymore, we the United States will protect your shipping lanes. And so a little country anywhere in the world, if they buy and sell in oil in US dollars, then you don't need a navy anymore. And that allows us little countries sell their goods all over the world and take take their citizens from poverty levels up to you know, middle class. And so this is a phenomenon that's happened since 1944. Now, in 1971, when President Nixon did this, that's when our dollar became what's called the petro dollar. And that's when it really kind of heated up. And, you know, Saudi Arabia. So let's, let's just go to 1974. Okay, you live in Germany, and you want to buy a container of oil for Germany? You can't, you know, wire your Deutsche Marks from Germany down to Saudi Arabia. No, no, no, no, you have to wire your Deutsche Marks, using the SWIFT system, which will get back into the SWIFT system to the New York Fed, the New York Fed will then change your Deutsche Mark into US dollars, then you can wire US dollars to Saudi Arabia, then Saudi Arabia will send you oil, this creates insatiable demand for US dollars, right. And so to have a the number one product on the planet, by definition, you have to have insatiable demand, right? That's by definition, you have to have huge demand, right? So and the reason I know this, because we will make off the assembly line, we'll make a trillion dollars of our product, we'll make a trillion of them. And you and I will work 80 hours a week to get them more. The other people will lie, cheat and steal to get them right. They'll risk their lives on, you know, some crab ship in north north Pacific, you know, trying to get crabs and almost die trying to get more of these dollars. And then they'll will make another trillion and you Emil work 80 hours a week. Other people lie, cheat and steal. It's an insatiable demand for this product. And how did it get that way? And so to have insatiable demand, there's, I've outlined four ways in my book, one way is you tax your citizens in US dollars. So this year, I have to get us dollars to pay my taxes, I can't pay in cows, I can't pay in gold, I can't pay in Bitcoin. So that creates insatiable demand. Secondly, most countries around the world have to get us dollars to buy oil, because Saudi Arabia is the kingpin. Okay? That's it. That's the second way. A third way that you can attack a great is you create a worldwide Swift, bank to bank transfer system worldwide, where you transfer money back and forth. And it's a huge system, it's guaranteed, you know, bank to bank, and it's $1 based system. So if you want to transfer big large money from bank to bank worldwide, you have to have US dollars. And the fourth way to create insatiable demand is you can flood the world with low interest rate US dollar loans, that everyone has to pay you back for 30 years. So for 30 If you take one of these loans, for 30 years, you're gonna have to find us dollars to pay this loan back. Does that make sense? Now I'm going to stop there for questions. I got a few more things to say on that. But But do you want to any questions there
Allen that yeah, no, I'm totally with you. I mean, the SWIFT system is it's like basically, you know, you're forcing everybody to use your product, because you don't have a choice. I'm giving you money, and you have to use my system. And that's why, you know, when when they put all the sanctions on Russia a couple years ago, it was you know, supposedly, okay, we're gonna take you off the SWIFT system. Yeah. That was a mistake, big mistake. But it's like, oh, that was supposed to be the end of Russia as we know it.
John But yeah, so I'm gonna get back to that in a minute. But that was definitely a mistake of the United States of America, because that hurt the glorification of their number one product, the US dollar, so let's go back to loans. Okay. Okay. All right. So the date is December 2018. Okay. The Federal Reserve says the economy is doing fantastic. Unemployment rate is low. You know, we're going to do next year in 2019. We're going to increase interest rates three times. Okay, great. Then less than 45 days later in December 2019, this is 45 days, they say, Oops, we made a mistake. We're not going to raise interest rates three times next year. We're going to lower interest rates three times next year. And I went, what just happened? I have an economics degree, right? Something huge just happened. I didn't know what it was. But I knew something big just happened. So I'm reading I got my antennas up trying to read everything I can. So March, a few months later, I read this report that says in Europe, there are $3 trillion $3 trillion of sovereign bonds, trading at negative interest rates. I have an economics degree. I've never read a book. I've never read a paragraph. I don't even know what a negative interest rate is. It's a bond that if you buy it, you're guaranteed mathematically to lose money. Why does that? Why would that even exist? Not in a couple billion, but 3 trillion? Why? That doesn't make any sense. Okay. And then a few months later in July, this is the summer 219, I read a new report. It's no, it's no, it's no longer 3 trillion, it's 14 trillion. What? There's $14 trillion. Okay, so then I think, okay, now I kind of know why the Federal Reserve lowered their interest rates almost to zero really fast. Because they're like, Listen, if you're going to borrow money around the world, you can borrow in Germany at zero. Or you can borrow US dollars at just a little above zero. So we're going to lower interest rates to compete, because we're trying to create insatiable demand for our number and product. And for the next three or four years, if you're just borrowing borrowing German and Spain dollars, right? That means you're not borrowing US dollars, right? And that's, that's not creating in the future. So what did the Federal Reserve they lower interest rates, but that doesn't just do it, you have to actually go into the market. So think about what I'm about to say here. They lowered interest rates, plus the Federal Reserve went out, and they purchased bonds, $120 billion per month for over 30 months. Because when you buy bonds, buy bonds, buy bonds, buy bonds, buy bonds, the price of bonds goes up. And that means the yields go down. Right. So if every month I'm purchasing 100 billion $120 billion for the bonds, I'm keeping interest rates low, plus the Federal Reserve as interest rates low. So they keep it low for years and years and years, a few years.
So that when you borrow money, you're least not borrowing someone else's money, you're borrowing our number one product, and that creates insatiable demand for their number one product. Does that make sense? Any questions? Yep. Yep. So my antennas again, back to your original question my antennas, how do I like this? My antennas are always looking for things that don't make sense. And then I try to read, how does it make sense? And when I keep putting the US dollar in the middle of things that don't make sense? It kind of makes sense. So I tell people, my book, I said, my book look, guys, ladies, I don't know if I'm right. I just I don't really run my life trying to predict the future because I don't think anyone can predict the future, right? I run my life on probabilities. And so I'm just saying the probability of me being right about the US dollar and being the number one product, Federal Reserve, and either US government and the Navy and whatever, I have a high probability of being correct, but I'm not I'm don't think I'm right. I might have a 20% probability I'm wrong. 80% that I'm right. If you don't agree with me that i Okay, fine. I agree. I might be 20% wrong, but just probability, right. So that's, that's where the essence of the book comes from.
Allen Right. Okay. Now, since you brought up the Fed, that was one of my other questions. It was in the book, you mentioned that, you know, the Fed is been out there talking a lot lately about oh, we want you know, our inflation rate to be 2%. We want unemployment to be a certain number, blah, blah, blah. But you're you've basically said that, that's what they're saying. But what they're doing is something opposite, and they actually wanted it to be much higher.
John Yeah, so this is what happened a few years ago after the financial crisis. 2008 9, 10, 11 Okay. The world realize that the world is a lot more fragile than you think it is. So Germany, not in Germany, sorry, Russia and China started buying gold. And every year they bought more gold and we're going to 1013 they bought more gold 2014 They kept buying gold. And I was watching this going okay. You know it listen, if I if I ran China, I was president of China. I would not like the fact that I have to get us dollars to buy Oil, that. And so I'm not blaming China, I'm not blaming Russia, I'm just saying, I'm on this side of the negotiating table there on that side, I'm just explaining their side. So they might have got together and said, Listen, in the future, we think the US dollar is going to have some cracks in it. And if it ever has a big crack, we can introduce the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan as alternative currencies. And therefore, then we can start buying oil in our own currency that they're planning in the future. I see US presidents are kind of like temporary employees. They're 40 years, Putin has been president for what 27-28 years, they'll probably be president for another 20 years. We don't know. Xi Jinping is usually I've said his name, right. He changed the Constitution, and allows him the option to be president for Life for life. Yeah, yeah. So these guys are long term strategist, our president has to get reelected. He's a temporary employee, so they have an advantage over us. Okay.
So anyway, so then a few years back, China and Russia, say, you know, we should do let's start $1 called the BRICS dollar, we'll call it Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And these countries will come together and have their own dollar called the BRICS dollar that is going to be backed by commodities. So if you have a barrel of oil, you get so many bricks dollars, if you have a bushel of wheat, you get so many bricks, if you have gold, you get so many bricks dollars, and they've been trying to launch this for years. Okay, so, so obviously, the Fed seeing this, and that's a competitor to the US dollar, and it's going to be a competitor to US dollar. So the Fed is strategically trying to move around to to make sure that doesn't happen. And that might explain why, you know, Putin, one of the reasons Putin took over Ukraine, Ukraine has a lot of oil and a lot of wheat. And he's like, the BRICS dollars going to be real in a couple of years. If I have all this, we know I get more brickstone That might be one of the reasons, okay. So. So the Fed trying to in this last year and a half just or two years, raising interest rates, the Fed to protect their number one product, and this is this theory. And again, I know your some of your listeners are gonna say, John, you're just you're being way too conspiracy. But when there's a lot of money on the table, a lot of crazy things happen because people coordinate a lot of things. Anyway, I think it's coordinate because the US dollar is the waterline in the table. So a few years back, China started to try to buy oil from Saudi Arabia using the yuan, because China is a big oil importer. Okay. And so far, I think we so far, I don't think Saudi Arabia has done it yet. But and not just to convince Saudi Arabia not to do it. The Fed i Okay, let's, let's just hypothecate the Fed wants to hurt China wants to lower their acceptance of the yuan around the world, and you want only accepted by 2.7% of world currency. So it's not that big a threat yet, but it could be in the future. Okay. So China does it to themselves. They have a big huge that in the last two years, they have a big, huge real estate collapse. They have a big huge employment collapse. Hundreds of companies have moved out of China to Germany have hundreds of companies from Germany, Japan and the United States have moved out of China. They've gone to India, they've gone to Thailand, they've gone to South Korea, all countries that purchase their oil in US dollars. China has been trying to purchase oil, not using US dollars. So we got to hurt that we have to hurt that country, because Okay, so how can I hurt that country? Well, one, China has said they're going to de dollarized the world. China said we're going to start selling our US Treasuries. Okay. Okay. So what we can do so let's just say, the Federal Reserve to make sure every time China sells US Treasuries, they lose a lot of money, because they bought US Treasuries back when bond prices were low. So let's just say if the Fed wanted to get interest rates to five and a half 6%. Okay, I thought it was gonna go six and a half, but it went to five and a quarter, five and a half. Okay. They can't tell you and me, Alan, hey, you a US citizens. We're just gonna raise interest rates to 2% because inflation is 2%. And we'd go Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. But if inflation is 2%, they could never convince us that they can raise to five and a half percent. That'd be egregious, right? But wait, if inflation is 9%, then you and I would accept 5% interest rates. Right, right. We don't like it, but we realize everyone has. Okay, so how do I get it? How do I get inflation to 9% when it's been almost zero for years and years and years and years and years? You print a lot of money. You see inflation come along, and it goes from zero to 2%. And you tell everyone with your mouth, on a microphone, it's transitory. It's just transfer Everyone calm down. Then a few months later, it goes to 3% inflation. Now, we're not going to move rates, we're going to keep rates low, at a quarter percent, we're not going to raise them because transitory it goes to 4%. And they let it run, it goes to five, it goes to six. And then they say, Well, maybe it's not transitory, maybe we need to raise interest rates, then it goes to seven, they started raising interest rates, and it goes to nine, and they're able to raise interest rates to five and a quarter percent, the fastest rate in history. And they lit they stopped, they stopped them there. Why? Because if they every time, they have interest rates sitting at five and five and a quarter percent, every time China goes to sell their US Treasuries, they get killed financially, it kills them. So my conspiracy theory is, hey, if the number one job of the Federal Reserve is to protect and promote the US dollar, they have ancillary jobs, low unemployment, high GDP, I get it, but their number one job, their baseline job is to predict or promote the US dollar, then, if they have a competitor to the US dollar, China coming around, we need to crush China's dollar. And right now, China prints more money than we do. Because they're huge depression right now, because of all the things that happened to him. And so they're selling all this, you know, US Treasuries, because they have to, because they don't want to because they're losing money on it. Why? Because they're trying to keep their economy afloat. Now, the Fed is sending a message to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, aren't you so glad? That a few years back, you didn't start selling your oil in yuan? Because you would have billions of you want in your bank right now? And the yuan is tanking. Right. So people say now, five or six years ago, if you told me, I agreed China was going to take over the world, China was going to be a superpower with us now. I don't believe that anymore. Clearly. Okay. China has had 40 years of the fastest economy growth ever, right? No society has ever grown faster than China has last 40 years. And they're only 2.7% of the world reserve currency. So are you telling me if they have the same growth for next 40 years? They would be 7%? No, I'm saying.
Allen I have to interrupt this message. Because I am super excited. I haven't been this excited about something in trading since I first discovered trading options. Okay, it is that important. Now, look, this is a new strategy that I've discovered recently, that is just out there, kicking butt and taking names. I can't give you all the details here. But if you go to market power method.com and get all the information again, that's market power. method.com. Trust me, you want to know what this is. Now back to the show.
John And so when someone says we're going to replace the US dollar, I give them this example. And I love people in Arizona. I love Arizona, but I'm just gonna give this example. Okay, it's not it's just a hypothetical. Let's just say you and me agree that all the water in Arizona is bad. Okay, we both agree. What do you want to do? Well, we want to, we want to, we want to replace it with Gatorade, okay, so we searched the whole world for all the Gatorade in the world, and we bring it back. And it's not even a drop. We can't even, we can't even begin. So if you want to replace the US dollar, you have to replace it with something, you just can't not have it anymore. You have to replace the water with something. And there's not enough of anything that none of you want in the world, none of euros. There's nothing in the world big enough to replace the US dollar for years and decades to come. So the US dollar in the dominance is going to be around for a long time. Now the BRICS dollar, they're going to chip away at it right. So China, you know, is a net importer of oil, and they're a net importer of food. The United States is a net exporter of oil and an exporter of food. We have a geographic advantage over most countries on the planet. We can have a bad precedent, bad precedent, bad precedent, bad precedent, bad precedent. And we still kind of survived because we have things that other people don't have. The Mississippi Valley is two thirds of the country. Although arbitrary rivers, you can it's a slow moving river, you can put grain on that barge and floated anywhere. A lot of countries don't have that. And we produce a lot of oil and a lot of everything. And we just have a kind of an advantage over most countries. So China has got to, you know, build pipelines as quick as possible to Russia. They have to solve their oil problem, because without solving their oil problem, supply they You can't attack Taiwan. Because our aircraft carriers, our Navy could cut off most of their oil within 120 days. It all comes mostly over the water until China gets that pipeline. Right. And they know it. They know that they are. They're not ready. They have an Achilles heel. So let me give you a crazy thing that happened in in the news just last year. I'm reading the report watching the news. China brokered a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Why? Doesn't even make any sense. But if you put the US dollar in there, it makes sense. So China is trying to de dollarized the world. They go to Iran, they say Iran, listen, who do you hate more? United States or Saudi Arabia? Oh, we hate the United States. Okay, fine. Okay, listen, if you want to really, really hurt United States, we have to de dollarized the world. Okay, how we're gonna do that? Well, one way is you can stop attacking Saudi Arabia, because the United States has an aircraft carrier off the side of Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi Arabia against you. And Saudi Arabia needs the aircraft carrier, and the F 30. Fives on their bases and 5000 troops in Saudi Arabia, they need all that. That's why they can't sell oil from Saudi Arabia to China and the yuan, because they have to keep being in good graces with the United States. Because Saudi needs that military protection. But Iran if you stop attacking Saudi Arabia, maybe this year, next year, Saudi Arabia goes You don't want we don't need military protection anymore. So we're going to start selling our oil to shock to China in the yuan. And then the the domino effect, the US dollar comes crumbling down over years, and the United States power around the world gets demolished. So again, back to my probabilities. The Alan, I don't know if I'm wrong. It just seems when I put the US dollar in crazy situations. It makes total sense. Now, a few months later, President Biden realized he was losing the battle in the the, you know, the whatever battle you want to call it in the Middle East. What does he do? He takes his number one product, the US dollar, and he sends I think about $6 billion to Iran in humanitarian aid. That's his number. I'm proud to say I ran I ran And we're still your friends. If you're gonna trade around the world, here's some US dollars to trade in. Right,
Allen right. Yeah, that came out of nowhere. It was like, what, what's going on?
John Why, why? Why? Why do you do that? Because a few months earlier, there was a peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Why? Because they want to de dollarized. They want to convince Saudi Arabia. They don't need us, Doc, but but the Fed is now still sending. There's two messages, right. And so about a year ago, year and a half ago, President Biden flew to Saudi Arabia. The thing about this, President states flies to see the prince. The prince didn't come to see him. He went to see the prince. Now we don't know what he said.
Allen And everybody made fun of him. Everybody, ever they funded media was all I got. I
John gotta give President Biden kudos. Right? Because I think I know what he was doing. I think he was over there convincing the Saudi prince not to sell oil in anything but US dollars. He creates because
Allen they had made an announcement. Before that happened. They had made an announcement that we're going to we're going to switch and we're going to do both or something that I remember something's right. Yeah.
John So if you ever take a negotiation class, okay. There is there's a lot of different ways to negotiate. But one of the ways one of the tricks in negotiation is you ask a question to your opponent, and then you let them try to answer it. So we I don't know what I don't know what President Biden said. But he could have said this. Okay. Mr. Saudi prince, if you start selling your oil to China in the yuan, all right. How am I as the US President going to convince the US Congress to pay for aircraft carriers off your coast 5000 troops on your soil, sell you f 30 fives, and then also give you satellite information from our secret satellites? How are we going to pay for all that? If you start selling your oil in you want then what you do in negotiation? You zip your lip, you shut up, you say no more and you sit back. And you you allow your opponent to try to very uncomfortably answer your question. And they sit there and go. Well, you can no you could you Oh, you know what? You know what, Mr. President, you can't convince Congress to pay for all that. Exactly. So therefore don't sell your oil to China in year one. And then a few years later, guess what? The Yuan is crashing because they're spending so much money. because we got interest rates up to five, because we want to win because we got the inflation to nine. So we five and now the Chinese economy look China did to themselves, we just poured gas on. Okay, one more example. That is. So we know of two people that sold a lot of oil not using US dollars. And that was Moammar Qaddafi of Libya, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Both of these gentlemen, I don't know how else to say it a few years after they did this large sales of oil without using US dollars. Both of these gentlemen were killed. They left the planet. And I'm not saying the US killed them. What I am saying is the US backed away from them, and let other people get them all the way, you know, take them out, right. So the last person that we know of that is doing oil and gas, not using is Putin. Putin said less Jaffa the war, he says, you know, after we took him off the SWIFT system, which we shouldn't have done, we should have left them on SWIFT system to keep them using US dollars. We took them on SWIFT system, we weaponize the US dollar. And that allowed China and Brazil go wait a minute. If the government the United States can seize my US Dollars anytime they want, then the US dollar really isn't a store of value. It's that yeah, that woke the world up a little bit. And we shouldn't have done it. Right, because our number one product is now damaged a little bit. Okay. But anyway, so Putin says, hey, you know, we're going to do so Putin goes into Ukraine and button think about the rhetoric. Biden says, We think Putin, you're a bad guy you gotta get out of Ukraine. Then Putin says, we're no longer selling our oil and gas, we're only going to take rubles and gold. Then Biden changed his rhetoric. Biden said, we now need a regime change in Russia. That's way different than saying we need you out of Ukraine. When you say I need a regime change, I think about Moammar Qaddafi, and Saddam Hussein. Right. That's a big difference. Okay. So what happened was a few months after that, after Putin says we're not selling, we're not selling oil and gas. With us dollars anymore. There's there's a pipeline, there's two pipelines that go under this was this was hilarious, isn't it? Yeah. There are two pipelines. They go from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, and they sell Germany natural gas. Well, a few months after this happened that Putin said, I'm not going to take us dollars anymore. Someone with a submarine blew up. Nord Stream one and Nord Stream to
Allen someone we don't know who know, they claim responsibility,
John no responsibility. And I'm sure I'm sure that you know, President Biden, when he talks to the Saudi prince goes, Hey, Saudi prince, we're so glad you're still you know, selling all of your oil in US dollars. No one by the way. Did you hear about Nord Stream? One Nord Stream two? Yeah, crazy, right? We live in a crazy, crazy world. It's just I'm sure he reminds everyone this right? That you don't mess with the number one product the United States, you just don't mess with it. Right? So this is all these are all chapters in my book, at least the first half of the book, you know, a lot of economics that I'm trying to about. I'm just trying to get people to think on a different level. And a different thing that kids these days like to play these video games all weekend long, they'll go on three day weekend, you know, never go to sleep. Well, this what I've explained to you is the biggest game ever invented. Yep, there is no bigger game. And when I'm explaining to it's the biggest risk game, the biggest global game. It's the biggest game ever. And I'm studying it and watching it. And it is fascinating to me. And I don't even know if I'm right. But man when I keep doing probabilities, and it just seems I'm right.
Hey there, if you're looking to invest in 2024, you've probably already heard of the AI boom and how those stocks have already taken off and gone into the stratosphere, you've already probably looked at the weight loss drugs like Eli Lilly and how that's already exploded and gone into the stratosphere. And you've probably even looked at, you know, the mega cap tech stocks and how they've already taken off and gone. So far so high? Well, there is one sector, it's an unloved sector, but it is on fire and it is going to do amazing in 2024. That's what I want to talk about today. So what is this sector? Well, it's not really a sector, it's more of a commodity, which commodity? Well, it's not the normal ones you normally think about. It's uranium. So if you look at uranium prices, uranium prices have doubled in the last year, and they're probably going to double even more, I don't know more than double, but they're gonna go up continuously, maybe even doubled this year that those are the expectations. Why? Because uranium is used in nuclear power plants. And more and more countries are getting away from coal power plants are shutting their coal ones down. And they're building nuclear plants. Only problem is there is a shortage of uranium. So uranium only comes in a few places. It doesn't come from everywhere, you can't mine it everywhere. It's only in a few countries and only in a few mines. And creating a new uranium mine takes millions of dollars and years of planning and research and development to actually get the uranium out of the ground. So right now there is a shortage of uranium. But the demand continues to explode.
Pun intended, right. And so that is why your energy prices continue to go higher and higher and higher. Now, if you were companies starting to do a uranium mine, right now to take advantage of these higher prices is going to take you years before you get your money back. And before you even start mining. So the companies that are already there, they already have mines, they are making a killing. And they're making more and more money because their costs are staying relatively the same, but they're making more money when they sell their uranium because the prices continue to go up. Now you can go ahead and check to see a chart of uranium and see how it's going from the bottom left to the top right, and how it continues to grow. Now, if you look at some of the companies themselves, they're doing great as well. There are companies that do mining, they're also ETFs that can only focus on the uranium. Now normally, if you are looking at a miner versus the commodity, you will make more money on the miner than the commodity usually, because there's more Alpha there, there's it can grow faster. But the uranium utility or ETF are also going to be doing very well as well. You might even even get into the futures I haven't even checked to see if there are futures. But that might be an option to play as well. So why is uranium prices going up? Well, one of the reasons is because of the explosion in or not the explosion, but the demand for more nuclear power plants, right? For energy, because the world continues to need more and more energy and wind and solar are not getting the job done in terms of renewables, because of battery power problems. You can't store the energy, so they need a different source. Nuclear is one of the cleanest ones out there. I don't want to get into the politics of it, but it is very clean. And it's a very powerful source of energy. So we have a imbalance in supply and demand. Right.
One of the largest mines of uranium is in the country of Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan puts a limit on how much uranium is allowed to be mined every year. And so, the main mind there, they announced a few months ago that they were only going to be able to produce about 90% of that limit, because of their own little internal problems. Recently, about a week or two ago, they announced that they're only going to be mining 80% of their prediction, and that chant that sent prices up even higher.
And if you look at the price charts of some of these companies, you'll see, there was a big gap on that day. So these are companies and stocks that are not going to go up, you know, 500% in a year, like on the video, right, but they are slow and steady, and the train has not left the station, they've already gone up a lot, they've already more than doubled. But there's a lot more room to go. And that's why I think in 2024, uranium is going to be a very hot ticket. Now there are some ticker symbols that I want to give you. So you can take a look, put them up on your charts, see which ones you like, if you'd like them, great. If you don't, no worries, the first one is CCJ. Okay, this is probably the biggest company out there. It's a Canadian company. And it has mines all over the world. So this one, if you're looking for the biggest one, the more reliable one, I think this is the one that you can look at. Now, disclaimer, okay, I do not own any stock in any of these companies or ETFs. Neither does my hedge fund, okay. But we are trading CCJ, we're trading options on a we're selling naked puts on it as it goes up. So if we own it, we might own it. But I just want to give full disclaimer that yes, we are trading CCJ. Because this is a theme that I think is going to work for all of the whole year. And I'm sharing it with you to help you make some money off of it as well. And so, I think that CCJ is a good one another one is you are n m, okay, you are n m, the next one is DNN. The next one is LEU. The next one is UROY then you have an NXE, you have UEC you have UUUU this for us. And then the last one is URG. Now, do your own research. Look at these companies, see which ones you like if any, if you want, use your own judgment, talk to your financial advisor make an investment if you want. But I think this is a sector or a commodity that is going to do very well. As long as that supply demand balance stays out of balance. It could take two years, three years, four years for more uranium supply to come online. And as long as nothing happens to the demand of uranium, the price is going to continue to go up. So that's how it is. And even if these companies don't mind more, as long as price continues to increase of uranium, the stock price will go up as well. So it's not going to go as fast as you know, Eli Lilly did, but those stocks, the weight loss, the mega cap tech, and the AI boom, right? Those have run up so far so fast. It's kind of like I don't know if I want to get in here because they've gone up so far, there has to be a pullback, eventually there will be who knows when it's going to come. This train has left the station, but it's a slower moving trade, you could still make a lot of money. And it's investable, I believe, like now. So take that with a grain of salt trade with the odds in your favor. We'll see you around.
Are you ready to get started with passive trading, and be a consistent and confident and profitable trader generating cash flow consistently from the stock market? Well, I have some great news for you. For a limited time we are offering my new book passive trading for free. All you got to do is go to passive trading.com/free book. And we will send you the book in the mail for free as long as you cover the postage and handling. So if you didn't cover that, we'll send you the book for free. We've already printed it, we got it for you. We're gonna send it out to you. It's free. All you got to do is just go to passive trading.com/free book and learn the basics of passive trading. Get the behind the scenes, get some examples, learn the strategies, and put this stuff to work in your life right now. Remember, go to passive trading.com/free book and get yours now while this offer is still available.
OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
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OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
https://passivetrading.com
OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
https://passivetrading.com
OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
https://passivetrading.com
OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
https://passivetrading.com
OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
https://passivetrading.com
OptionGenius is turning 15 years old in February!
As part of the celebration, we are releasing the audiobook of Passive Trading for free!
If you would like to get the physical copy, head to
https://passivetrading.com
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