Inflation, Bonds, & Bitcoin with Kenny Polcari, Ep #36

Hey, what's up! It's episode 36 of Payne Points of Wealth. We've got a special guest for you today, Kenny Polcari. He's Managing Partner at Kace Capital Advisors, Chief Market Strategist at Slatestone Wealth, and Managing Director at Campfire Capital. Most importantly, he was one of the most famous stock exchange traders going back to the ‘80s and no one gives you a better tour of the New York Stock Exchange than Kenny! We're going to talk with him about what's going on with inflation, the economy, and investing. On the tipping point, we're going to talk about bonds. Bonds are going down. Do you own bond funds? We're going to let some sunlight in and tell you exactly what you should be doing with bonds.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

• Is there more inflation coming than our Federal Reserve Chief is telling us? [1:40]
• Housing prices & interest rates [3:41]
• Ken’s thoughts on crypto [7:23]
• Why would we listen to a strategist? [12:26]
• The Tipping Point [15:32]
• How bonds work [17:18]
• The difference between an individual bond and a bond fund [18:19]
• Hidden Facts of Finance [22:16]

Kenny Polcari’s thoughts on inflation

Kenny and Ryan seem to agree that there's a lot more inflation coming our way than our Federal Reserve Chief is telling us. 

Here are Kenny's thoughts on inflation right now "I've been saying it for a while and I've been writing about it my note and we've been talking about it on television, but you can feel it, right? If you live in this world, if you go out shopping, out to the stores, you can feel the price increases. You can see it. And so therefore I don't need the CPI or some government report telling me that there's no inflation when I go out there and I feel that there's plenty of inflation all around, right? I mean, everybody sees it. Everybody's talking about it but the government doesn't want to admit that we've got it. And so my sense is that it's building and it's building. And it's going to rear its ugly head. It's not going to be temporary and transitory the way that the fed keeps telling us it's going to be. I think we're going to see this spike in the next month or the month after. But then it's going to remain and that's going to change the whole story, the whole fed story, the CPI story, the inflation story, how hot is hot? Define hot? You and I can define it one way. The fed is going to define it a different way to fit their story, to fit their narrative. And that's going to be the part where I think the market's going to have a difficult time and investors are going to have to figure out what's the definition of hot to them. And then what's that mean to valuations?"

This week on the tipping point: Bond Funds

When you own bonds outright it's simple, you know who you're lending to, you know what they're going to pay you in interest to borrow your money, and you know the set date in the future that they're going to return your money. But when Wall Street packages these bonds into a bond fund it takes away the permanence and definition and that's the big problem with owning a bond fund. Not only does the permanency and definition go away but there's also the question of quality. A prime example is back in 2015, there were a lot of municipal bond funds that were being AAA-rated, meaning they're the highest possible credit rating, that still held Puerto Rican bonds and Puerto Rico defaulted on their debt, which means that the holders of those bonds lost their money. Bonds are good, bond funds...not so much.

This week’s hidden facts of finance

Exchange-traded funds took in a record $502 billion in investor cash last year. Traditional mutual funds on the other hand said goodbye to a record $289 billion. Exchange-traded funds are typically less expensive and more tax-efficient and as we say here at Payne Capital Management, any money saved in taxes and fees is just as green as money made in the market. Exchange-traded funds are new school and mutual funds are old school, you heard it here first. 

Resources & People Mentioned

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Kenny Polcari

Financial Services Executive | Business Commentator | Speaker | Industry Advocate

As the founder and Managing Partner at Kace Capital Advisors and a CNBC Market Analyst - I have dedicated my career to helping my clients and their families achieve their financial goals in life. As Chief Market Strategist at Slatestone Wealth I have a range of investment strategy responsibilities including U.S. market and economic analysis and client engagement. I am also a contributor to TDAmeritrade Internal Network and a keynote speaker at many industry and retail events.

A 38 year member of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) I bring over 30 years of executive management experience in institutional equities and wealth management, and twenty-five years of stewardship in industry advocacy.

I am on the board of the National Organization of Investment Professionals (NOIP), and the Headstrong Project, a nonprofit providing free treatment to 9/11 combat veterans suffering from PTS.

Regularly quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Kiplingers, MarketWatch, Thompson Reuters, TheStreet.com and others.

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