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Good morning everyone. There are several important topics to discuss regarding the economy this week. We're going to talk about what Nick T just said about the Bitcoin strategic reserve. Let's also talk a little about the lockouts at Volkswagen. We will also discuss Bank of America's predictions for which assets will perform best in 2025.
They think we're in for a boom, but what exactly it is might surprise you. We will also talk about Black Friday sales figures: how retail sales went in companies, what the flow of customers was like, and how things are with online sales. Spoiler alert: online sales, at least for the Tramponomics course , were simply incredible.
I still need to change the price because we need to raise it before Cyber Monday and then raise it significantly after. This is on the website meetkevin.com. You already know about the Tramponomics course. Everything about real estate, stocks, investments, trusts, and tax breaks under Trump now and with new laws coming into effect in 2025 — at meetkevin.com.
But, in any case , I'm on my way now. I'm wearing my house hack belt. Oh, no, I do n't have a "house hack" belt on. Hell, there's one company that makes belts. This company is really cool. They add a little American flag or a "house hack" logo, which looks really cool. So I like this belt when I'm wearing jeans.
But in any case, let's get to the topic. So, let's start with Nick T. Yesterday he posted a comment on X. He quoted Trump's tweet about BRICS , which we talked about yesterday. BRICS could face a 100% tariff if they try to replace the dollar, which I think is a very strong move before the negotiations.
Frankly, a great move by Donald Trump to preserve the integrity of the dollar, which is very important for financing our deficit. I'm not saying I agree with this. I'm just saying that it's very important, and since I'm from America, I think it's great . Foreigners will disagree, and they have the right to.
But Nick T is discussing the idea of creating a Bitcoin Federal Reserve or questioning it if Donald Trump wants to support the US dollar. And I think what Nick T misses is that Donald Trump has already given an answer to this. Donald Trump did not say that the United States was going to buy Bitcoin.
Instead, he said any Bitcoin or digital assets, any digital assets, it could be ADA, you know, or Ethereum. It could be Dogecoin. Any digital assets that are withdrawn will not be sold, and so you will actually create in the US—I can't do this sitting down. You would be creating a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency.
Some suggest that the United States should simply buy Bitcoin, since we, of course, call it digital gold. Some see this as a way to compete with China. And using stablecoins could level out access to currency, especially as...Oh, that's too short. This is true. I'm still wearing a jacket . Especially against the backdrop of growing skepticism about fiat money.
Dude, I've never tied a tie sitting down before. This is actually a bad idea. But let it be. Oh, that's terrible. I will redo it. So, you know, obviously there's a balance here, because blockchain transactions are sanctions-resistant, but not monitoring-resistant. And one of the great advantages of the banking sector is that the CIA has complete control over these transactions, and you can actually use the banking system to track terrorism.
So there's a balance here, and I think Nick T. really misses the point: Trump wants to just keep the seized currency, not buy it, and at the same time have a strong dollar. Again , there are arguments for the US Treasury to buy cryptocurrency or Bitcoin, similar to our gold reserve, only in digital format, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon .
Although this is the argument of Bitcoin maximalists. In fact, most Bitcoin maximalists say to forget about Bitcoin as a means of transaction. Maybe not to forget, but they say, "This is digital gold, man." " Limited offer, bro." OK. So, that's all about Nick Thiem and Bitcoin. Next, JP Morgan announced that they are withdrawing from transition financing, which effectively means that they are not going to participate in decarbonization.
This is essentially the next step after abandoning the ESG mandates that existed previously. So they are not going to participate in this. When it comes to Black Friday data, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bath & Body Works, and Ulta get about a third of their annual revenue during this short holiday season—a five-week period at the end of the year, which is crazy.
A third of sales in 10 % of the year, you know. Madness. But in any case, at Ulta and Best Buy, attendance was stable or slightly better than expected. Each of these networks has been promoting like crazy, according to Bloomberg. Attendance at Dick's was solid, but not extraordinary. They hope they can maintain their margins.
And many more affluent consumers or customers of brands like William Sonoma may have simply been shopping online in the weeks leading up to and during Black Friday. We've seen a lot of sales move, you know, for example, Amazon Prime Day was in October. Demand at Best Buy was largely driven by small appliances, large televisions and laptops.
By the way, every time I go to Best Buy, all people want are air fryers and vacuum cleaners. I don't quite understand how often an air fryer or vacuum cleaner might be needed, but apparently a lot of people buy them. I have n't bought a vacuum cleaner in 17 years. Well, to be fair , that's because I don't vacuum.
Anyway, okay, retail sales excluding autos were up 3.4% on Black Friday, according to MasterCard. This is without taking inflation into account. So, taking into account inflation, you know, about 3%, maybe we'll give it 2.5%. You barely increased overall sales. Which is not great because most sales still happen in stores, and store sales grew by only 0.7% excluding inflation, while e- commerce grew by 14.6 %, which is great, but not enough to make up for the weak store sales performance.
We're still breaking records now, right? Because usually we are still moving upwards. We had $10.8 billion in sales on Black Friday according to Adobe . Sensormatic, another analytics firm, believes that in- store sales actually potentially fell by 0.2%. You see a lot of discounts at Home Depot, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, but they still show good sales volumes.
So, the discounts are working at this point . The consumer is still strong at this point . About 700 million came from sales through Affirm and Klarna through the BNPL system, for example. This is about 6.4%, which is still relatively low. In my opinion, this does not indicate any signs of real problems.
Overall, these numbers are pretty good. Now we have a few important catalysts this week, and I want to move on to Bank of America's goals. But the big catalyst this week will obviously be Friday's report. We will get ADP data on Wednesday, but Friday will be more significant. We expect job growth to return to 200,000.
The unemployment rate should remain stable at 4.1%. The gradual reduction in the number of vacancies and limited salary growth are making people wonder: could mass layoffs begin? You know what's happening at GM or other automakers , but this industry is really suffering. The automotive industry is having a very difficult time right now.
Tesla, for example, sends out a message: "We have cars in stock for immediate delivery at great prices." My Cybertruck was delivered in about 29 days. I saw someone else on X get their Cybertruck in about 7 days. I don't know, maybe they're closer to Austin, Texas. I have no idea . Who knows? But anyway, you know, people are trying to sell off the remaining inventory at the end of the year.
So there is great hope that November will be better than October. But with a certain caveat. Remember October, we had a loss of 27,000 jobs. The report was generally positive—14,000, which is quite dismal, and only thanks to government jobs, which were very plentiful in September, just before the election.
That's 785,000 non- teaching positions, that's just crazy. And we had downward revisions to the indicators for September and October. So this employment report should provide some clarity on what the trend is. The expected figure is 200, although in my opinion this is a bit high. But look, it could turn out to be a breakout, and they'll come up with some crazy number, like 300 or 400 thousand again, and then the returns will just skyrocket.
I just don't know how to trust the data on a monthly basis anymore. It looks like this: give me the long-term average, then we'll wait for the views, and then we'll know the truth. Powell and Chris Waller are expected to perform on Monday, but I didn't see where exactly. Bloomberg writes about extreme optimism right now: 57% of investors believe the market will grow next year, which is the highest level since 1987 and serves as a kind of contrarian indicator.
And Bank of America suggests that retail investors are simply taking on more risk, increasing margin debt and more. By the way, I'm going to look at FINRA's margin trading statistics. You can simply type these words into Google and you will get general FINRA data. We are now at 815 billion. We have also been to higher levels.
Previously, we were between 900 billion and a trillion, but for almost the entire year there has been a clear upward trend. There was a certain decrease in margins in July and August due to sales, which is logical . Uh, the Volkswagen strikes start on Monday in Germany. They failed to reach an agreement on cost reductions.
Bloomberg also believes that the market as a whole had such good returns in '24 that comparisons to '25 will be difficult, except for restaurants. Restaurants had such a terrible '24 that they could do better in '25, unless there's a recession, of course, but that applies to everything. Israel continues to strike Hezbollah, complaining that it has violated the ceasefire agreement and is apparently smuggling weapons between Lebanon and Syria.
Who knows what's going on there, but it's not very good for a truce, although we'll see if it's a limited one-time occurrence, like, "Are you going to hit us or hit us once?" "Are you going to hit us again?" Uh, Bank of America analytics. Okay, this is an interesting point. Ready? This is the big boom he's talking about.
Mm. Okay, the big boom he's talking about is the boom in the price of Meet Kevin's Trumponomics course . Oh, I had to put that in as a joke. Okay, no, actually he's talking about seeing four themes in 2024 that he thinks will unfold. We had this huge movement of populism, uh, in 2020 , or rather anti-populism, a movement towards the right, towards more conservatism in 2024 around the world.
And, uh , he didn't say it, but I think he's hinting at a warning about possible factionalism. Factionalism is essentially a way of saying, "Hey, Republicans better do what they can in 2025, because 2026 is an election year, and the Republican Party only has one year to do anything." They currently have about 220 seats, we expect a majority of 218.
This is a minimal advantage. You can't lose many places. So if factionalism arises in the House of Representatives factions, they could block Trump's big initiatives until they get their way: spending limits, fiscal conservatism, and so on. Let's see what happens and how these efforts can be combined with the DOGE initiative to potentially really achieve something.
Eh, we'll see. Another point: 2024, he said, was “ everything but bonds .” And now he says, " Hey, if bond yields get close to 5% —buy it full." " I don't really think we're going to get back to 5 %, but if Friday's jobs report is crazy high, maybe we will. I think we've bottomed out and bonds are trending up, but we 'll see.
The data will tell us. I'm a big believer in bonds outperforming pretty much everything else in 2025, but that's not news anymore. It's both a recession hedge and a rate cut hedge. It's the best of both worlds. I just don't see any signs of another inflationary uptick. That's my opinion, and I'm backing it with my own money.
I've been that way for years. But anyway, he goes on to say that in 2024, the AI monopoly was dominated, mostly by the G7. He thinks that will pass. Maybe the G7 will be more stable, so it's worth looking elsewhere. Pay attention to Symbiotic. Okay, I just got some equity in Symbiotic. I made a whole video about it.
You can just type Meet Kevin Symbiotic s y m b o t i c, symbiotic. Not about Symbiotic, but in 2024 he says he was invested in everything except China, and now he thinks China is a good bet. I think... excuse me, he thinks all four of those things are going to reverse, and that's the way to play it .
In the first quarter, you play for the U.S. to go up and the world to go down . So, a global recession in the first quarter, prices are down in the first quarter, but higher... lower overseas, higher in the U.S. in the first quarter. Then, this is his crystal ball, okay? He says, after the first quarter dips, buy international assets in the second.
And now he thinks maybe that's when you should get out of the G7. Then buy Treasuries if they hit 5%, and he really says that buying Chinese stocks is a potential hedge. I have a hard time agreeing with that because I think their consumer is "burned out " there. There's going to be a kind of "Japanization" or something.
Consumers won't trust China anymore. Uh , and he also says that cryptocurrency could be a hedge. I'm not sure about that because crypto is generally considered a risk asset, but maybe someone will leave a comment and give me some insight because I don't see it as a hedge, although maybe it is. You know, maybe it's a hedge against the dollar, right?
As Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy says. That's it. Go to meetkevin.com to learn more about "Trumpanomics." I have to go to work, so thank you. We're doing a serious review for robohack.ai. Watch for a video on that tomorrow if you've signed the papers and are an accredited investor. Also, go to meetkevin.com for a course on Trumponomics, and we're getting close to the deadline for house hacks, so visit househack.com to learn more about investing in house hacks .
Thank you so much for being with us. See you in the next video. Bye and good luck.
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