MeetKevin: It’s Over: We’re in Recession [Do this NOW]

As you know, when we talk Finance and Stock Market, I love to see what my good friend MeetKevin (Kevin Paffrath) is saying.

Kevin is perhaps the top Financial YouTuber and a guy who makes things REALLY easy to understand.

He’s also wildly successful, bootstrapping himself from working at Jamba Juice in high school to suddenly running many multi-million dollar companies and having his own private plane.

Those are the kind of people I like to listen to.

Not people in Congress who’ve never made a single dollar their whole life that wasn’t GIVEN to them by the Government, but people who are actually out there DOING things and doing them well.  Having success.

So I tend to listen to what he says, and the bad news is he’s EXTREMELY bearish on the stock market right now.

And this is not a guy who typically is bearish.

By his own admission, he finds going against “Trade America” to be very difficult.

In other words, most of the time he’s bullish on the future of America.

But right now?

Not at all.

Just last week he published this video:

That video has proven to be very prescient already.

On Friday, Gold surged to a new All Time High, as the stock market wiped out BILLIONS of dollars in one extremely bloody, red day.

Gold Hits New ALL TIME HIGH — Here’s Why

Is that just the start?

Kevin thinks yes.

That's why he just released this update video where he confirms how bad things are about to get.  Be sure to notice what he says about Gold and Silver:

FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE:

Well, folks, bad news. We might officially be in a recession. We need to talk about why in this video. We need to talk about when markets bottom because there's a lot of information out there, and you kind of have to pick which side to follow on this one. We're also going to talk about how to prepare yourself for all this.

First things first, you probably already heard about the job numbers this morning. I don't want to reiterate the nonsense. What matters most is that this jobs report was 2.6 standard deviations off expectation, which has now triggered the S rule. The S rule being triggered is a recessionary indicator. The St. Louis Federal Reserve literally calls it the Realtime Som Rule Recession Indicator. Once it crosses over 0.5, boom, you might already be in a recession.

In fact, when you go back and look, 1960s, boom, you're in a recession when it crossed 0.5. Over here, boom, 70s, you're in a recession when it crossed 0.5. Over here, didn't cross 0.5, no recession. Over here, crossed 0.5, recession. Over here, hit 0.5, didn't exceed 0.5, no recession. Over here, you pass 0.5, recession. Pass 0.5, recession. What do you have over here? 33, no recession. No recession, 0.5, recession. Get where I'm going with this, right? Every time it goes over 0.5, recession. Look at where it is right now.

Now, it's not a hard and fast rule, it does not mean with certainty that we are in a recession, but it is quite likely that we have just entered a recession. Some people are going to say, "Oh, but Kevin, it was the hurricane. It's the hurricane. That's why the job numbers came in low." Okay, then what's important to know now is that if we are in a recession, when does the market bottom? That's the big question.

According to Bloomberg, if you average all of these prior recession indicators, the market bottoms when the S rule triggers. Oh my gosh, that means right now, buy the dip! Hold on, not so fast. I like to look at 2000 and 2008. I take out COVID, and I wanted to see what happened when the S rule was triggered at these levels because, in my opinion, they much more associate with not a run-of-the-mill recession, but rather an insane bubble of some form. The dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, and now the AI bubble.

Okay, I'm gonna say it. Do I think there's an AI bubble? Yes. I've been complaining about this for a very long time now, and what I found when the S rule was triggered here was very different from what Bloomberg said. And that's my goal on this channel, to always provide you with perspectives that at least challenge some of the mainstream perspectives out there. So you get different perspectives, so you can ask yourself, "Do I agree with Kevin, or do I agree with Bloomberg?" I'm going to give you both sides, and then you can decide. You don't have to pick my side.

Now, we did very well in the last, I mean, frankly, today. Today did very well. Yesterday, I was dumb. I had some AMD calls, I got burned on that. We already talked about getting burned yesterday, but I made more than that burnage back today because my shorts made some really nice dollar hollas. I threw in an IBKR order, the IBKR order doubled my account on IBKR. I rarely trade on there. My Robinhood account, I doubled this week because I threw puts in there as well. I rarely trade in there as well. And then my P&L for today is glorious, 203%. So, I mean, you could see this. This is, you know, $400, $450,000 in tendies just in the last 24 hours because I have been bearish since July 11th. I didn't play it perfectly over the last three weeks, but if you want all my buy-sell alerts just to get my perspective and my discussions in the course member live streams, remember we did extend the coupon code to the end of the day today. We wanted to get through the jobs catalyst. Some people were asking about getting through the jobs catalyst. Here it is. So, meetkevin.com to join. You pay once, you're in forever. Price guaranteed to be the lowest you can ever get, otherwise your money back.

Take a look at this, folks. June 2001, the S rule triggers. Write that down. June 2001, 0.53. That's where we sit today. Now write this down. April 2008 to May 2008, Som rule triggers. Write that down. Why does that matter? Because it took a little bit longer for the market to actually bottom out in those cycles. It took 15 to 20 months to bottom out after the S rule triggered in 2001, another asset bubble. It took 9 to 10 months to bottom out after the 2008 trigger, another asset bubble. In other words, we could be at the beginning of this sell-off. Now, does that mean the market's going to go straight down? Absolutely not. The market will, in my opinion, absolutely not go straight down. In fact, it will just slowly bleed every day.

You're going to get those people who post, "Oh look, Kevin, today the stock is up, see you were wrong." I literally had a financial guy, a financial money manager, when I said, "Why would you go long small caps right now? That is the worst thing to own in a recession." I literally had a financial adviser, and I won't put him on blast. And I'll tell you why, two reasons. I won't put him on blast, but on X, @realmeetkevin, he replies to me, goes, "Oh, okay, Kevin, I think you're going to be wrong." The very next day, IWM's like up 1.5%, small caps. He's like, "See, Kevin was wrong, Tom Lee is right again. Tom Lee is always right." Now look, I'm not here to declare victory right now, but if you look right now, to me it looks like investing in IWM was a bad idea. That's what it looks like right now, and I think frankly it's just getting started. Because if we are triggering a recession warning, the stupidest thing to own are small caps because they're the ones that are going to go bankrupt. You would be better off buying the dip on Nvidia, which I think is a bubble risk. You'd be better off buying the dip on Amazon as the next Walmart than you would be buying the dip on the Russell, where you're going to have a bunch of bankruptcies weighing this sucker down. No way, Jose.

Anyway, as a result of this sort of tiff, the reason I don't want to put that person on blast for critiquing me that very next day is because he ended up deleting his post, so I couldn't find it again. And I didn't even say anything. I'm not like prancing around trying to declare victory today. I didn't even say anything, but all of a sudden I'm like, "I wonder what Tom Lee's saying today." I wasn't even going to say anything. I was not even going to say anything, and this is what I get. I got a thank you card in the mail from Tom Lee. There it is on the screen right there.

Anyway, listen, the Greed and Fear Index is something that we need to pay very close attention to, folks. Yesterday we were at 40, 39. Today we're at 26. This is probably going to keep going. Why? Because market momentum probably has to go below the 125-day moving average, and stock price strength needs to move out of extreme greed. You need all of this to be fear, fear, fear. We're not there yet. The VIX skyrocketed. Safe haven demand skyrocketed. Junk bond yields have skyrocketed. We're about to re-invert on the yield curve. Now, understand what that usually signals. When the difference between the 2-year and the 10-year goes positive again after having been inverted, it usually means you have begun a recession. We are currently 9.9 basis points inverted. We are 9 basis points spread away from once again triggering a recession with now a second indicator. Not there yet. So far, it's just the S rule. This is not good.

Now, I also want you to remember, there's a very, very key signal that we saw this morning. This morning, Jim Cramer was asked, "Are we going into a recession?" And Jim Cramer said, "No, of course not." I'm very nervous. JP Morgan and Citigroup are all increasing their odds of a Federal Reserve rate cut. Nick T, also famously considered Nicky Leaks, believes that a lot of institutions are now ramping up their interest rate cut projections, and I'd like to tell you something. I think they're all wrong. These numbers are all going to end up being too low over time. Now, do I think there's a likelihood of us getting a 50 BP in September? Folks, if the market continues to correct the way it is correcting now, we are going to get a lot more than a 50 basis point cut. The Federal Reserve will declare victory on inflation, and in order to preserve the jobs market, the Federal Reserve will cut rates back first to 2% and then to 0%. They will do so rapidly. They won't do so based on just today's jobs report. In fact, they're going to try to exercise restraint, and they will wait. They will wait, wait, wait, wait until unfortunately it's too late, and they'll have no choice but to cut rates back to zero.

That's when you're going to get a lot of folks who argue, "Oh my gosh, this is going to set off a second wave of inflation." No, it's not, because everybody's going to be jobless. You're going to have manufacturing supply chains that are so freaking loose that you can't have inflation because nobody can raise prices, even in an environment of low interest rates, because nobody will be able to finance anything because a) they'll either have lost their jobs, or their hours will have gotten cut, or their salary will have gotten sliced.

I talked about this today in my course member live stream. Listen, I'm not always right in my trades. I always make that clear. I'm not always right in my trades. I do not guarantee that you are going to make money. But what I do every single day is I show up, I try my best, and I give you perspective. And I'm going to give you a little spoiler alert of what I talked about to course members today. I said, "Listen, if we don't go into recession, fantastic. But if you ask yourself right now, is now the time to buy the Cybertruck? Is now the time to YOLO all your money on new clothing, an expensive vacation, a home addition? Is now the time to put your family's future at risk, or is now the time to be cautious?" My belief is the time is to be cautious. My belief is you should cut your expenses. My belief is you should pretend. You should go through an exercise with your family right now. "What are we going to do if one of us loses our jobs? What are we going to do if my salary gets cut in half? What are we going to do if we both lose our jobs? What skill set do we have to get another job?" What are we going to do?

Those are the exercises to start thinking about now. Worst case scenario, you don't lose your job. No recession. Everything goes back to normal. Fine. Big deal. You cut expenses. You were safe. But what happens if you don't pre-plan for that and then you get rugged? Your boss calls you up and says, "Hey, you were making $150K, $100K a year, $80K a year. Now you're making $100K or $50K. Don't like it? Bye. I got 20 other people willing to do the same work for that paycheck." This is a time to cut expenses. It is very, very, very scary. And look, there are going to be green days. This market will not fall off a cliff. I think, frankly, you could go into a 10-month bear market. Yikes.

So, you know, now people are speculating on, "Okay, well, what's going to do well in a bear market?" Well, potentially nothing. But if I had to guess, probably gold. If we do go into a recession, I hate saying it, but probably gold. McDonald's, I actually think Amazon will be a form of McDonald's. Like, I'd way rather be in Amazon than Nvidia. I'll take the AI play on Amazon, and I'll take that people are going to try to get the cheapest product possible on Amazon. They will be the dollar store you want to invest in because if you invest in the dollar stores, they could go bankrupt. I'm telling you, you come here for the perspective that you didn't even consider.

JPow will probably commit to rate cuts at JHole. He kind of already did, but he'll probably recommit to cuts, maybe even 50 at JHole. So, maybe markets will bounce there. They will not go down in a straight line. So, I think you take your tendies when you can, and you reopen positions as you'd like. But what I'm looking at is when I look at a company like Amazon, I think they are going to be a company that will be the dollar store of the future. You go take them right now at $166. That's actually a fib retracement level. $166 divided by $557, they're trading for 29.8 times earnings. Now, you look at their forward growth, which could get skewed, obviously, these growth estimates could get skewed, especially if you're in a recession, but you're looking at growth of 19% + 18% + 26%, 78% + 13%, 39%. You're looking at growth of 77.9% over the next four years. I actually think it'll be greater than that. You're sitting at roughly a 1.5 PEG for a company that gives you AI exposure but is not purely part of the AI bubble. It didn't run up like all the other AI plays and could be the dollar store of the future. And Walmart is sitting at crazy excessive valuations. I don't know, I prefer Amazon, ironically, on the dip, and McDonald's on the dip.

Remember my 2x2 foundation model? It's inspired by Rust. The 2x2 says you want to buy companies that do not have a bankruptcy risk. To me, that kills a lot of dollar stores already. A lot of them don't have the strongest balance sheets. You want Amazon and McDonald's. They're not going to go bankrupt in the cycle. I want valuation. McDonald's and Amazon mostly have that right now. Amazon certainly does. McDonald's is a little bit richer, but I'm okay with it. Sentiment and momentum. The sentiment on both of these is trash. I like buying when sentiment is trash on those companies. And pricing power. Both of these companies, both of these brands, have absolute pricing power. There is not a doubt in my mind about both of those companies.

Now, would I hedge by being, you know, maybe short the Qs or short some AI? Of course. And again, we will bounce. We had a little bit of a bounce this morning. We'll probably bounce again next week. But the next four months, three months, going into the election, I don't want to be uber bull. I don't want to be an uber bull in this environment. Get me through the election, and I'll consider it. I'll consider it at that point, but not any earlier than that.

So, I really want folks to think about this not from the perspective of fear-mongering. We could bounce. We could rally again. That's okay. I'm all right, you know, sitting on the sidelines and enjoying. But what I want to know, you know, sort of just watching, cash, raise cash, you know, short to hedge your longs. That's the point, really hedging, right? But what I want to know is when's the market really going to bottom. I think the market bottoms either when we confirm a soft landing, which would be a very soft bottom. It would be a very blurry bottom, a very volatile bottom. Or when the Federal Reserve freaks out in full-on bailouts.

There were two cases that have happened previously in the past. One is when they joined the course member live streams themselves and said, "We're going to the moon." Okay, that never happened. That was really just a sly pitch, probably relatively weak for me to remind you about the expiring coupon code today. One was actually February 10th of 2009 when the Federal Reserve released the following statement: "The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday announced it is prepared to undertake a substantial expansion of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. The expansion could increase the size of the TALF to as much as $1 trillion and could broaden eligible collateral to encompass other types of newly issued AAA-rated asset-backed securities such as commercial mortgage-backed securities, private label residential mortgage-backed securities, or other asset-backed securities." In other words, the massive QE1 that was actually authorized in November of 2008 under the Section 133 emergency lending program. This was announced in November of 2008. This wasn't enough. It took the Fed really panicking and going for a level of bailout they've never done before, and that's what you got in February of 2009. Look at when the stock market bottomed. February of 2009. How about March, when the Federal Reserve or February to March of 2009, or 2003 when you had your second double dip and the Federal Reserve basically gave the monetary policy and economic outlook commitment to Congress that they will stop at nothing to protect this economy and the market bottomed? That's the kind of Fed you need. They weren't yapping about a dual mandate of inflation. They talked about one mandate: we'll do whatever we need to bail this crap out. It's like when the Fed came out in March of 2020 and said, "We will buy everything. Infinite bailout. We'll even buy stocks." That, my friends, is when the market bottoms. That is when you go shopping.

I'm just going to keep doing my best. I'll be here every day. You know, I know people make fun of me. They call me a flip-flopper or whatever. In volatile times, it is challenging to be perfect. In fact, in any time, it's challenging to be perfect. And I don't confess to being perfect at all. I don't even confess to being good. I confess to being some dude on the internet who does his best and will share his perspective with you. And if you want that perspective in the form of course member live streams, meetkevin.com. If you want it in the form of these free videos, here you go. If you want it in the form of trade alerts, no guarantees we can make money. Obviously, today we had a phenomenal day. You know, up over $450K. It was a phenomenal day and made up for a stupid decision on AMD. You know, then you can get those.

So anyway, we'll see you there. Thank you so very much for being here. By the way, if you are a course member and you want to get free access to the market live chat so you can chat for free and you don't have to be a green chatter, you can get a wrench when you join. Just leave a comment on today's course member live stream and say, "Please wrench me, bro." I will always wrench you. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks, folks. Bye.

Good luck. These things that you told us here, I feel like nobody else knows about this. We'll try a little advertising and see how it goes. Congratulations, man. You have done so much. People love you. People look up to you.

Kevin P., financial analyst and YouTuber, Meet Kevin. Always great to get your take.

Even though I'm a licensed financial adviser, licensed real estate broker, and becoming a stockbroker, this video is not personalized advice for you. It is not tax, legal, or otherwise personalized advice tailored to you. This video provides generalized perspective, information, and commentary. Any third-party content I show shall not be deemed endorsed by me. This video is not and shall never be deemed reasonably sufficient information for the purposes of evaluating a security or investment decision. Any links or promoted products are either paid affiliations or products or services we may benefit from. I also personally operate an actively managed ETF. I may personally hold or otherwise hold long or short positions in various securities, potentially including those mentioned in this video. However, I have no relationship to any issuer other than House Hack, nor am I presently acting as a market maker. Make sure if you're considering investing in House Hack to always read the PPM at househack.com.

There's a reason why I keep telling you this:

GET YOUR MONEY OUT OF THE BANKS!

But I am a reporter and what I see happening with the banking system scares me a lot.

The first thing that scares me about keeping dollars in a bank account is how they lose value year over year.

You know that right?

Think you're being smart and "saving up"?

You're literally losing money every year to inflation.

This perfectly sums it up:

This. pic.twitter.com/rvvuoYvE8i

— Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy) July 29, 2024

Yes, if you simply left $1 million in cash in the bank since 1913, do you know what it would be worth?

$40,000.

Your $1 million from 1913 would have the purchasing power in 2024 of $40,000.

Ouch!

But that's not even what scares me the most....

What scares me is another round of bank closures like we had last year.

Here's what's happening in China right now:

BREAKING: 40 Chinese Banks Just Crashed and Vanished — “Worse Than 1980 S&L Crisis!”

Yes, that's real.

And yes, I believe it comes here next.

But even if your bank is open, can you get the money out?

Have you ever tried?

Sure you have to leave some money in there, but you don't want big amounts of money sitting in bank accounts.

Because you might never be able to get it out!

Go ahead, test me out on this...even right now in good times (before a full-blown banking crisis hits America) go to your bank right now and try and withdraw $10,000.  They will look at you with panicked looks on their face.  I guarantee it.  Then they'll go get their supervisor.  The supervisor will come over and tell you they can't do that today.  Come back in 2-3 days.  And then they'll start the interrogation.  "What do you need this money for?"  "Where is this money going?"  Only after you answer all their questions, wait 2-3 days, fill out a bunch of paperwork, only then will you MAYBE be allowed to take YOUR money out of YOUR account.

I guarantee that's how it will go for you....

Test me out!

Go try it and report back below in the comments.

So now the big question: Ok, what can YOU do about it?  

How do you prepare?

How do you make sure you and your family are not at risk when the banking crisis hits America (which I believe it will, very soon).

The answer is you do exactly what I've been preaching about for over a year now....get your money OUT of the banks!  (Not personalized financial advice, just common sense from where I sit).  That's Step #1.

Hold firm, be determined, play their stupid games, and get your money out of the banks!

Because while YOU view it as your money in your bank account, that's not how the bank views it.  The bank views it as their money.  And the dirty little secret is they LENT OUT your money to other people already.  Sometimes 9-10 times over!  It's true, I'll do a separate report soon on that explaining "fractional reserve banking".

But Step #2 is the most critical....you don't want to just get your money out of the banks, you want to get it out of the US Dollar.

The most basic and traditional financial wisdom has always viewed Precious Metals (Gold and Silver) as the safest places to have your money when a crisis hits.

So while I can't give you personalized financial advice, I can tell you a couple things: (1) the Big Central Banks have all been buying Gold and Silver hand over fist for the last couple years.  Gee, I wonder why?  And (2) Gold and Silver have stood the test of time back to the Bible times as being the best store of wealth to weather out a storm in the economy.  Period.

And now Step #3 is where I'm going to make sure I don't leave you hanging.

I have two killer connections for you...

Two companies that I trust for getting the best deals on Gold and Silver.  PHYSICAL Gold and Silver, the real stuff.  Not some phony symbol traded on some stock exchange that may or may not have actual Gold and Silver backing it up.  You want the real stuff.

And because I love the free market and competition, I have two great companies to recommend to you.  You can talk to both, see who you like better, and then take action!

The first is WLT Precious Metals ran by my friend Ira Bershatsky.

I have personally sent family members to Ira for 5-figure purchases of Gold and Silver and he treated them like royalty.  They were very pleased.

That's how much I trust Ira.

I didn't tell him I was sending them over either (and these particular family members have a different last name) so I did it as a bit of a "secret shopper" test and Ira passed with flying colors.

Of course I knew he would.

That's why I work with him and that's why I have confidence telling you about him.

Ira can handle bulk purchases of bullion, coins, whatever you want.

All custom ordered and shipped right to your door.

A lot of people love Bullion because its the cheapest and most economical way to do it, to stretch your dollar into as much gold and silver as possible.

The website is called WLT Precious Metals and when you see my logo in the top left-hand corner, you'll know you're in the right place.

You'll get a personal phone call with Ira Bershatsky (or someone on his team) and they will work with you free of charge for as long as needed to answer any questions you have and get you taken care of.

How about that!

You don't see that much anymore, but Ira and his team pride themselves on good old-fashioned real customers service: