Inflation, Interest Rates, And Contrarian Economics With Hunter Thompson

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All right.

Welcome back to the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. I am your co-host Ben Fraser, joined by co-host Bob Fraser. And guys, we are really excited about today's guest. It's Hunter Thompson. And if you have not heard of Hunter Thompson, number one, I'm very surprised. And number two, you need to get involved in everything he's doing because he's got amazing resources for investors. And just a little quick background on Hunter. He's a full-time real estate investor and founder of Asim Capital, which is a private equity firm in Los Angeles. He's personally raised more than $50 million in private capital, and he's been featured in Forbes, Globe Street, Inside Self Storage, and a variety of other media outlets. He is a guest speaker and has shared the stage with names such as Peter Schiff, Doug Casey, Gene Epstein, and many others. And he is the host of the very popular podcast Cash Flow Connections, real estate podcast. You definitely need to check it out. And he helps investors learn the intricacies of commercial real estate and has had some very impressive guests on his show. So we're very excited to have you, Hunter. Thanks for joining today.

I really appreciate it. And congratulations again on the launch of this program. I really— an honor to be on. I know you've had some excellent guests so far too, so really happy to be included.

Awesome. Well, today we're going to kind of do a unique topic. So it's— there's a lot of things we could do in talking with you, Hunter. Um, you have a really huge, broad, um, uh, kind of opinion and, and skill set on things, but we want to kind of go deep into economics today. And I heard you on a debate, I think it was the Best Ever Conference earlier this year, talking about interest rates and where you see interest rates going. And it was a really, really great setup. We had different individuals from different sides debating and supporting both sides of it. And, you know, we haven't talked a lot about economics on this podcast yet. So we love to kind of dive into these, these topics and how it really impacts investors, right? Again, the, the core of our listeners are passive investors, either newer to real estate or kind of getting into real estate syndications. And, you know, inflation, interest rates, these kind of big picture economic drivers are very important to where do we invest our money and how does that impact investment? And so, I love your thoughts on this. I'm really excited to dive into these topics.

And maybe kind of an alternative opinion, right? Or alternative case here. So, you know, you carry more of the deflationary or non-inflationary position, which is actually a position that I've argued for quite a bit. And there's a lot of voices. I mean, just listening to what Ben was saying about the stages. You've shared, uh, those names of the people you shared, there's a, you know, that hard money crowd is a, is a hyperinflation crowd. And really it's a lot of fear about, about inflation. And, and I think a lot of that is overblown. So this is, this could be real interesting kind of conversation, uh, to kind of blow up some of the, some of the, uh, thinking there.

Yeah. So, so Hunter, maybe, um, I've talked way too long, but how about you get a little bit into your background and how you've got into the space, you know, briefly, but then also just kind of your, um, just development of economic thoughts. I know you kind of grew up in the Austrian school of economics and kind of the hard money, and, you know, where have you kind of landed? And obviously you haven't landed necessarily, but where are you at right now? And let's dive in there.

Yeah, well, I mean, gosh, it's a really good point. As you're kind of reading that bio, for whatever reason, really stuck out to me. Like, this is— anybody that's kind of tapped into that world knows this is a very specific type of speakers that I'm— but, um, What you mentioned though is kind of an interesting segue. So my background is a really important data point when it comes to my view of a lot of these things. I graduated college around 2009 in the heart of the Great Recession. My investment thesis, of course, it's going to be formed by those moments because I wasn't really negatively impacted by the Great Recession personally. I was in college. It was like, "Okay, could afford 2 ramen noodles a week and now it's 1 ramen." It didn't matter to me. It didn't change my life. Because I wasn't participating in the space of finance. But I did get to see two things happen. Number one, I got to see incredible price deflation take place and an incredible opportunity to invest in real estate. And number two, a lot of conversation around money printing and what was going to happen in the wake of that. And it was interesting because obviously, as someone who just understands just generally sentiment of investors and such, just from an intuitive standpoint, I recognize that was going to be one of the most favorable times to invest in real estate in the history of the United States. And it ended up being the case. But at the time, you know, when we look at the chart now, history and our vision of history smooths things out. If you look at the chart and you cover up everything after 2010, which is what I was doing at the time, I couldn't see into the future, it's a very different picture. You know, if you go back and look at those news articles, the tailspin of foreclosures that was never-ending, what was going on in Vegas? What was going on in California? What was going on in Arizona? These markets where 50% of all the foreclosures took place in just 5 states. It was a nightmare. By the way, not to mention, everybody you have a lot of respect for, and maybe some people you don't have a lot of respect for, telling you, you're going to start a real estate company right now? Like, do anything besides that. You know what I mean? And that's the reality of the situation. There's a social dynamic there that is not, can't be overstated. Where if you're a relatively young kid trying to figure out where you want to go in your career and everyone is telling you, don't do this thing, if you've got the personality to say, well, the one thing I'm going to try— sometimes you can be—

you had a contrarian view, which is actually proven to be very successful, right? It's the best way to— you know, I actually was a very successful stock investor for many years, and my best indicator, bless her heart, was my mom. You know, the best timing indicator when she would say, back up the truck, it's time to put everything you got into the market. That literally was the sign to the top, and I sold everything and did well. And then when she said, "It's time to get all in cash. We got to cover our fannies here," you know, well, that was the time I backed up the truck. And I did super well with that, the mom contrarian strategy. And literally, she was my number one indicator. And, you know, so it really— that is really a way to make money. And I remember those days in 2009. I was there. I was actually a professional trader at that point. In the stock market. And remember when there was a day, and I think it was January or February 2009, when they announced the big bailout programs. And I'm thinking, if they didn't do this— I remember it was on a Monday— that we were going into a great— there was going to be a Great Depression here. I mean, it was— we were in a spiral. But I called the bottom of the stock market in 2013, shortly thereafter. And that was— it turned out to be the exact bottom. But it's— to fight against fear is actually the way you make the most money, right? When everybody else is afraid, you want to be— you want to not be afraid, right?

It's a great point. And I also think from a personality standpoint, like, if you're listening to this at home, it's really important to be really in tune with where you are in that spectrum of kind of how comfortable you are making those contrarian moves. And even to go a level deeper, I myself tend to be far more bullish when people are really scared, but I actually I tend to want to sell earlier given when market dynamics turn around. So in that example that you mentioned, for example, where everyone's saying, "Now's the perfect time to buy," way before that, I start to get really, really skeptical. And that's cost me a lot of money when it comes to things like public markets and stuff. But I'm aware of that. I try to be a better investor every single year. But to go circling back to that bio, I tend to be a contrarian of a contrarian. The levels of contrarianism, which is why, by the way, I've got so much respect respect for guys like Peter Schiff, Doug Casey, Gene Epstein, I don't have a problem being contrarian to them as well and making up my own quasi school of thought when it comes to the topic we're going to talk about today with interest rates and inflation stuff. But it's formed because of what happened in 2008. Going back to that, all of that money printing was obviously is exactly what was going to happen. Hyperinflation, interest rates are going to skyrocket. That whole team of people that I have a lot of respect for was doing that dance for the last 10 years or more. And here's the thing, especially around the time you start having conversations about having kids and stuff, you start to realize, do you want to be cool? You want to be right? Or you want to make money? And I ended up on the make money side of it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's where we are today. Those interest rates didn't rise. In fact, if you invested based on that thesis, you made a lot of mistakes and left millions of dollars for investors' money on the table. And I don't want to do that again. So, I mean, that's a quick summary. I'm happy to get into the data, but that's kind of my perspective and how it was formed.

You know, I'm just going to jump in on this because it's so interesting, our journeys, because I was actually a professional trader during that, during that period and following the Austrian School of Economics, which is the hard money, you know, you want, you know, very bullish on gold, very bullish on hard money investments and asset-based investing and all this. And, and, and literally believed that, that we were going to have hyperinflation. And, and I was kind of held that view throughout until about 2012 when I completely reevaluated everything and realized that it didn't happen. In fact, the Fed monetized $3.7 trillion worth of bonds where they literally bought the bonds from the Treasury and then printed money to buy them. And I'm thinking, "Well, this is Weimar Republic. This is 1922 Germany," and was investing on that and it was completely wrong. And so today, I've really become more of an MMT person with limitations. And modern monetary theory, which is basically, given that we have seigniorage and the right to print money and our debt is in a currency that we print, that you can actually avoid a lot of these— a lot of the challenges of the hard money crowd. And so I completely shifted, very similar to you. And so today, I do an economic forecast quarterly. And I think you've seen those, but I'm basically very bullish on assets. Asset price inflation, but not very bullish on consumer price inflation, meaning I think we're not going to have high consumer price inflation. Very different from what a lot of people were predicting, but I made a complete shift just like you did, I guess.

Yeah, that's interesting. I actually quite like that. There is such a difference between different levels of inflation, like you mentioned, consumer price index versus assets, for example. There is a big difference there. In the financial markets, for example, those are usually the faster to respond, especially the public markets. Like you have a background in, where the moment that money is printed, those assets tend to inflate very, very quickly. It takes quite a bit of time to work itself down to consumer prices if it's going to happen. But at the consumer price level, there's quite a bit of downward pressure coming from things like globalization, where you're not talking about offsetting a 6% or 8% inflationary pressure. You're talking about someone going from making, let's say, $100 an hour in the United States to making $8 an hour in the Philippines, where that's continuing to happen more and more, that can offset a lot of that consumer price type of inflation. But I want to clarify my thoughts on this. It sounds like regardless of what I'm a proponent of, the MMTers are in charge. It's just levels of MMTers. So that's the world that we're currently living in. What that means is that the Pandora's box has been opened. I think that we're likely headed the direction more similar to Japan than let's say Zimbabwe, meaning that I anticipate that over the next several decades, we're going to be chugging along closer and closer to 300% debt-to-GDP ratio, and we have not seen hyperinflation in Japan. We've seen a basically low growth, low inflation, negative interest rate type of environment. From my perspective, if you're a fan of MMT, People use that argument, and Japan is an example of what we should be like. Now, if the United States had the type of growth that Japan had, trust me, it is not going to be pretty. But I think there's only one direction this goes, which is the route of Japan. There's a lot of differences between us and Japan. There's a lot of similarities. But from my perspective, from a broad stroke, that's my view of how this will likely play out. I don't know if you agree with that, but I'm interested to get your thoughts as well.

And that's a great point. What happened to Japan during the '80s? You hadn't cut your economic teeth in the '80s, but in the '80s, we were terrified of Japan. Japan was the China. It was going to eat our lunch. It was the powerhouse that was dominating the car market and the chip market and the memory market, the screen market, everything. They were going to eat our lunch and we're terrified of Japan. And now, who's terrified of Japan economically speaking? I mean, they're a large economy. I think they're what, number 4 or 5 as I recall. But definitely what happened, and I don't think we're— I think Japan is a good case in point for us, but I don't think we're following exactly in their path. They have the gray factor, the gray tsunami is far worse there, and they have negative population growth and certainly negative growth of the working population. The working age population is severely dropping. We do not have that in the United States. And we do have actually population growth, positive population growth here. It's small. But it is happening. And we have a lot of influx. A lot of our population increase is actually from people coming to America. And so it's non-organic, but it's from people coming in who basically contribute to our GDP growth. So Japan is— I mean, Japan has— I don't have the stats in front of me, but something like in the next 10, 20 years, I believe almost 60% of their economy is going to be retirees, you know, and we're just not even close to there, you know. And, and I've actually made, made the point that the next Japan is China. So, so China, through their one-child policies, they do know their, their young population has been decimated. And those are the, those are the workers, those are the GDP contributors of tomorrow. They don't exist anymore. They, they don't exist. They They were aborted. And so China is definitely on a Japan trajectory. And they have a gray tsunami coming that is going to dwarf anything we've ever seen. And I think we should be positioning for that. There's going to be massive deflation happening out of China. That's a long wave, right?

That's—

I'm talking the next 20, 30, 40 years. But it's definitely a trend. But I would agree that Japan is— that we're closer to Japan than we are to Zimbabwe. As far as inflationary trends.

So Hunter, right now, and this is kind of the end of the summer 2021, early fall here, and we're seeing some kind of short-term inflation, right? It's showing up in cars we're buying and in housing especially and in other things, right? And so the concerns, the headlines love to take that to an extreme and say inflation is here, see, you're feeling it. And the hard money folks, I'm sure, love this because as it's, you know, supporting their thesis. And so the idea is, right, all this money printing is now flowing through and it's driving demand up. And obviously you have some supply issues. And as we have higher inflation, then that's going to make the Fed pull back on interest rates and, um, you know, kind of get back into, you know, the '80s or some kind of high inflationary environment. But talk about why you maybe see that not being the case.

Well, I'll talk about inflation, but I mean, just to add some context, if you're just asking the question of how long can rates remain low, for example, it's really important to put in historical context. How long have you been asking that question? If you look at the 100-year interest rate chart, I mean, because timing is important, Do you think that we'd be sitting here having this conversation if I was just a couple years older and moved to California trying to get into real estate in 2004? I probably lost my shirt. If I had just started building my network, thinking the market dynamics were great, everyone's making money hand over fist. And I got to be humble about that for the rest of my career. And part of that though, that humbleness or whatever, was that I started going to networking events and I know what it looks like when a market dynamic turns around. Because the first networking events I went to were people that had lost their shirt. I mean, in a major, major way. But looking at the last, let's say, 100 years of interest rates, what you see is a long trajectory down into the right. In the middle, in the '70s or so, you've got this massive spike and then a long multi-decade recovery. If you look at the last 40 years, for example, I haven't been in the industry 40 years, but you can talk to someone who has, and the entirety of that 40-year period, people are always asking when that was going to happen again. Over and over and over. As the interest rates just went down to the right, down into the right, makes all the sense in the world when you look at the way the political incentives are set up. If you look at it on the chart and you see zero as the bottom, then how much lower can they go? Possibly how long until they go back to 6% or 7% or 8%? The argument I tried to make in that debate is that you're asking all the wrong questions. It's really about when are they going to go negative? That sounds silly, and I understand why, but if you look at the reality that the United States is basically the only industrialized country with positive interest rates, and everybody's doing the same thing. When the United States prints money, trillions of dollars into the market, it's a big signal. But similarly, when the rest of the world is doing the same thing, if you're a bond trader and you got this amazing idea of getting a -0.3% interest rate in a Japanese bond versus a positive 0.4% or 4%, interest rate in the United States bond, depending on the bond, you're going to invest in the United States bond, at least enough demand. What's going to happen with demand and bond prices are obviously inversely correlated, or interest rates and bond prices are inversely correlated. The more demand there is for the price and the bond, the lower the interest rates go, down and down and down, which is why, holy cow, investing in real estate in the United States in particular is just so, so lucrative. I think it's going to be for decades to come.

Pause there for a minute because— The whole negative interest rates thing, it might frap some people's brains. It still fraps my brain, right? I've read a lot on it. But explain what that means in real terms. Obviously, we've been seeing that in Europe especially, and then in real interest rates like in Japan and other places. But what does that mean for someone who's maybe more Economics 101?

Well, let me say it in a simple way, and then I'd like to toss it back to you to get your thoughts on it. It's a perceived risk that the likelihood of losing money is so large if you keep money in other assets, that you will accept a low-risk, small loss. That's the easiest way to say it. The market dynamics are such that that's the case in Japan, but I should correct myself. To say market dynamics in bond prices is just silly in today's environment where half of the bonds that are being purchased are governments themselves shaking their own hand saying, "Hey, give you a kick to the Can down the road just a little bit more. So it's not really a market kind of transaction, but it is a transaction nonetheless. It's created the situation where if you park money into bonds in most of the industrialized countries in the world, you're only going to lose a percent or 2 or 3 over a certain period of time. But love to get your thoughts as well. Yeah.

I mean, I think, what's your perspective on negative interest rates?

Yeah, I mean, I'd probably largely agree with kind of the implications of what it means from an expectation down the road of low growth. To your point earlier on, we live in a global environment where investors are not just comparing what's the bonds, 2-year versus 10-year in my country, but it's across all countries. And so it's creating this massive shift from a supply-demand standpoint across country lines. And that's to your point, a massive pressure against interest rates increasing is all the demand from other countries trying to search for yield, right? There's a huge yield problem in the world right now because there's been so much money printing, and it's driving that, driving that down. So, Hunter, talk about how does— how do you think about this? If this is kind of the framework, right, and it's, it's again somewhat contrarian, and you've thought about it a lot, um, and, you know, no one really has a crystal ball, but if, if what you're saying is true, how does this impact the way that you invest?

What's—

how does this impact your investment thesis? And when you're looking for an opportunity, and Obviously, you're in a great position in the industry because you are really a capital allocator and you're working with a lot of different asset classes and different investment sponsors and trying to find the asymmetric returns. That's the whole part of what you do at Acim Capital and finding the unique opportunities. And so how does this play into your investment thesis?

Well, it's a really important question because Because like I mentioned before, I do like to kind of sound intelligent, and we all like to do that. We all like to sound smart, but I gave up that being as a top priority a long time ago. I want to invest based on what is going to get me results in our current environment, not what should have gotten me results if everybody listened to me and we were all libertarians and all these things. That's not the reality of the situation. But I want to just kind of circle back if I can, because you asked me a question about inflation. It's a really good tie-in to this. If you anticipated, and you were making the claim that, "Oh, lumber is up 80% over the last month. Clearly, this is an example of inflation or hyperinflation, or exactly what I've been talking about for the last several decades, whatever." Did you then circle back when lumber prices went back down 80% and say, "Perhaps I was wrong." No. That's the reason I have a gripe with the libertarians, because I myself am a political— I'm not a political, but a philosophical and economic libertarian. I hold myself and my compatriots to a similar standard of objective reality, meaning that if you go out and make a claim like that, you've got to at least publicly acknowledge that that was not in fact an example of long-term inflation, that it was just a short blip, like everyone who is not on your team knew, by the way. I'm going hard today. There's no need for me to get like this. But that's the reality of the situation. By the way, the Fed understands that as well. So the Fed is not going to make changes based on commodities that are known to be very volatile, and they shouldn't. They're driving, though I shouldn't think they would be driving, but they are driving a massive barge, 300-something million people, the United States economy, and the rate at which borrowed money is charged is at their hands. So they've actually made public statements saying that they're going to let inflation run up to rates that— they didn't previously make claims like that. So I'm a big proponent of thinking that interest rates are going to continue to decrease. Now, To answer your question about investment strategies, if you thought for the last 10 years that interest rates were going to pop up to 4% or 6% or 8%, let's say in multifamily, you should be sitting on the sidelines waiting for that to happen. That would create something to the tune of a 40% correction depending on what metrics you're looking at. So if you're anticipating a 40% correction, you shouldn't be listening to podcasts about my favorite multifamily operators. You should just be sitting and waiting.

Right.

And as an entrepreneur, if you sit and wait for 3 years and do nothing while I double the size of my business twice, we are going to be in a different position if you're just wrong by a couple of years.

Yeah.

So that's my whole pitch.

I think it's challenging for a lot of investors, right? Because we're sitting at this point in time with cap rates that are, you know, near all-time lows, if not all-time lows in the majority of asset classes. And obviously interest rates are very impact cap rates very heavily. And so there's a concern there. And then it's, it's also the concern of, wow, is the market getting really frothy? So, you know, maybe it's time to pull out now because, you know, it's about to turn. But then you also don't want to sit on the sidelines because what if it's another 10 years, right? And to your point, it's, you know, you, you've got to understand the bigger trends at play here. And so, you know, as it kind of pertains to pricing of assets, um, You know, if interest rates hold or even go lower, that's probably a boon to prices, right? To continued strength in prices in many asset classes.

How can it not be? But at the same time, like everyone that's listening to us right now, you are an entrepreneur of some kind. We weren't all born real estate syndicators. We had to figure this out to a large degree on our own fruition. Even if we're associated with people that like came up in the real estate space, every different market dynamic is different, meaning we are all self-directed, freedom-minded investors. This is not the mainstream way to invest, and that's really awesome. So that entrepreneurial spirit doesn't need to be altered by market changes. If you think that inflation is coming, then Aspen Funds is a great vehicle for that. If you're confident that there's going to be some major problems with inflation, then debt markets are just really, really favorable. Excuse me, on the other side of that, deflationary. The assets that you own that are denominated in debt, that can be a really advantageous play as well. The reason I'm getting confused there is that, look, no matter what the market dynamics are, you can make an investment thesis compelling based on that. Now, I don't have a crystal ball, and I come on shows and I try to be super confident because it makes it interesting to listen to and stuff, but the reality is I'm super diversified across all these strategies. So I don't do only fixed rate or floating rate debt because I actually don't really know what's going to happen, but I'm happy to have exposure to both. So that's my perspective. I'm in a unique position because Asim Capital is the name of my private equity company. We act as a capital placement agent for other operators, and it allows us to have a very broad view of the investment space. I have 20% of my investments in the debt space or so, 40% of my investments in multifamily self-storage mobile home park, other alternative investments that are not really correlated with valuations such as ATMs, for example, where you don't really going to sell the ATM at the end of the term. These are all things that we can do and participate, but it took me quite a bit of research to get into all that. We should constantly be evaluating opportunities through that lens.

Yeah, you know, just back on the inflation, uh, interest rate debate, I think people need to be 100% clear that the Fed is absolutely 100% in charge of interest rates. I mean, they go into the market and they— if they buy bonds, they, they can buy trillions in bonds tomorrow and drive rates to negative or anything they want. It's the Fed's game. Yeah, inflation is a different animal. So, so we have— and we have had what's called negative real interest rates for for some period right now where the yield on government bonds is below inflation. So if you buy a bond, we have negative real rates, and that's continuing, and it's likely to continue. So interest rates and inflation, while they're correlated, I think we need to be super clear that they're related, but inflation doesn't absolutely control interest rates, and the Fed does. So I am personally concerned about, you know, they just— they're looking at this trillion-dollar infrastructure program, you know, that right now if they actually try and hire— right now the wage, the job market is slammed, right? It's, it's at max capacity. And when you have inflation is when you spend money— Fed printing money into a market, or you're buying something that is already at capacity— that's when you create inflation. And I am concerned that we are, that that's exactly what they're doing. You know, we needed— I was very pro-stimulus because we needed— there was slack capacity everywhere in our market. And so for the Fed to step up and create demand was real important. Right now, we don't need extra demand. Okay? So I'm a little concerned they're going to— you're going to have inflation, but I'm not concerned that we're going to actually create, you know, that's going to result in higher interest rates.

Right. Hunter, last question. What's kind of of one of your favorite asset classes that you're looking at right now, kind of from your perspective.

And I know we're out of time, but, but really, ASIM Capital too. So, you know, so this, this show is really about educating people about how to get into alternative investments, which you're doing. I mean, you're doing an ATM deal, senior living deal, a lot of real estate syndications, other things. The biggest concern is our— if we've done our research for what keeps people in the public markets and not in alternatives, it's How do I find the deals and how do I vet the deal? How do I know if it's a good deal? Of course, in the public markets you don't know either, but, but you think you do. So talk about your role in ACIMM and what you do regarding those things.

Okay. So I'm going to kind of reveal kind of what's behind the curtain because you actually just touched on it, right? It's not— and this is no disrespect for anyone that's 100% in the public markets, but it just isn't the case. And this is myself included at the time. It isn't the case that I decided to invest in the public markets after doing research and I figured it all out and did the research and figured out the balance sheets and did it. That's also the case of most investors. The reality is the difference between us and them is one thing, marketing budget. They have been able to control the narrative because they have a better say of the narrative. They have the media. They have CNBC all day, every day. So part of my role in this world is to get the message out that the world of private securities is extremely compelling on a risk-adjusted basis, especially if you view it with a holistic view. And by the way, it's allowed me to meet some incredible people across multiple verticals, across multiple risk profiles, multiple geographic locations, because that's how I want to participate as an investor. And then I built Acim Capital to model my personal investment strategy. That's of course what led me to you guys. If you're listening to this, by the way, I have a ton of respect for Aspen. I don't say this lightly because this is what I do professionally and like to get paid, and I'm not getting paid for this, but I will say Aspen, you guys are just so buttoned up. The view of economics, the way that ties into your investment strategy and the value add that is just really powerful. It's a really good opportunity to meet groups like yours and build investment relationship with and of make money when we all make money, which is another huge difference between us and the stock market guys, where the incentives are incredibly aligned in the world of private securities because the market demands it to be so. So didn't mean for that to be a pitch, but just being transparent about my—

we appreciate it, you know, and, you know, back at you. But so, so ASIM, so if I'm just— I'm a high net worth and, you know, how do I enter— how do I interact with ASIM?

So number one, One, you can never miss the opportunity in real estate. And as much as I like to say, go out there and start doing deals, the deals that I saw in 2015 were better than deals I saw in 2011, despite the fact that market prices had changed so significantly because my knowledge and my network and my confidence grew faster than the market prices. That is a really powerful concept coming from someone that back then, everyone's saying, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, and they were right. But I was able to beat the market just from research and networking. So if you're interested in learning about my investment strategy, my view on the investment space in general, you can go to asyamcapital.com, and we have probably 4 or 5 investment opportunities a year in different verticals and different niches.

So people can participate?

That's exactly right. Accredited investors, and we have a lot of information that's available to anyone.

So ASYM actually means something to you. Explain where you get that name.

Sure. So it's ASYM, and it's short for asymmetric returns. And basically, obviously, advanced investors understand we want to view the space on a risk-adjusted basis, and the term refers to disproportionate outcomes based on the proportionate risk. And so that's the name.

That is so good. And that's something that very few investors pay enough attention to, and that is the truth is, is that there is very high returns available in the market at very low risk. And they're harder to find, but they definitely exist.

Yes, totally. Awesome. Hunter, thank you so much for joining. It's been a pleasure, and I hope to have you on again down the road. And, um, thanks again.

And thanks so much, really appreciate it.

Appreciate it. Love your, love your, uh, your, your, in your take on all these different economic deals. And thanks so much for Talk to you guys soon. Bye.