Fed Announcement Live

announcement happening actually right now. We're a minute late. I'm gonna hop over there. I'm gonna screen share. Drop a hello, say a comment, say what's up in this video. Here we are. Let's make sure we're live. The Federal Reserve— Okay. It's not ready yet. They are still doing their thing. So let's give them a few minutes. So today, if you guys haven't noticed, uh, the markets over the last week, if you've been living under a rock, uh, this is what's been going on. We have had, um, let me just, I'm going to share my screen here. Here we are. And boom, the, the markets have been crazy last few weeks. We had the NASDAQ, uh, close high. It dropped, uh, 5% and then closed positive the same day. Same thing happened for S&P, for the Dow. This hasn't happened for over 20 years. That much volatility in a day. You have crypto markets down, I believe today down to 30 $37,000. They dropped all the way to $34,000 a few days ago. Huge volatility with trading on trying to price in the Fed doing multiple— let's see, we'll wait a few minutes for the Fed announcement. Looks like they're a little delayed on, on their timing. So, um, we'll, we'll wait a few minutes before they come on live.

The—

let me pull this back up.

Here we are live.

Let me go full screen here. Cool. So this is all trading on A paper and minutes that were released of a private meeting the Fed had on that they were planning to do more interest rate hikes than previously disclosed on their last meeting. Now, that was meeting notes. This is the first time we're going to hear from Jerome Powell publicly as a statement from the Fed since then. So anyways, that's where we're at. And a lot of the markets have seen this volatility based on the fact that they believe the Fed is going to raise rates 4 times this year. Um, looks like they're still just running, uh, propaganda for the Federal Reserve on, uh, online here. We'll make sure, uh, we'll make sure we're looking good here. Pull over. Yeah, they're run— they're just still running all their ads. So, all right, whatever, we'll let them run for a minute. So that's what we're happening right now. Today is the first announcement. We're going to stream it live here in a few minutes when they launch. Let's let me pull it up, and I thought it was they're either late or I'm late. I don't think I'm late. Yeah, they should be having their meeting right now. So they are. Yeah, they're just they're just delaying with these ads for a few minutes. So we'll let them we'll let them delay on. Yeah, this is what I'm seeing right now over here. So you guys can watch with me. Yeah, they're just putting these ads on. So my predictions now, market this morning tried to price in what's going to happen on this meeting. You saw markets do very— actually, I'll pull it up right now. Let's just pull up my phone. Actually, we can just look up here. Um, we'll just head over. We'll do something simple. We'll check Yahoo Finance real quick. Nothing too crazy. A lot of gains in the markets, a lot of recovery happening across the board based on this Fed announcements. Since March, they're going to— anyways, yeah, we're all seeing it here. So let's look here. They are still just here. So we'll— anyways, we'll see if they come on live in just a few minutes.

Um, 2%.

They're gonna keep rates below zero, um, is what he puts here on his article. Are we late? Did they already announce it? Soon be I thought we were at 2 PM. Let me make sure we're at the right time here. Let's refresh this. We're on the Fed website. Watch live January 26th at 2:30 PM ET. Oh, okay. That means we got— oh, we got 25 minutes. They changed the time on me, pushed it back half hour. All right, maybe we'll have to hop on in a few minutes to be live again. All right, that's what we'll do. We'll hop on in about 25 minutes. Um, it looks like we're gonna have to wait a few minutes here.

Huh.

Yeah, I thought it was. Anyway, I saw two o'clock this morning when I looked it up. Two o'clock Eastern, and they're just gonna run ads for a little bit for their thing. All right. Well, I'm not gonna make you guys sit around here. We'll wait for a second. Twenty minutes. All right. We'll come back in twenty minutes. See you then, guys. Peace out. Yeah, I think they changed it. I'll stand for a second. I'll answer. You guys got questions? I'll stand for a second. What do you guys got? Propaganda. Hey, what's up? Good to see you guys. Tell us about how daddy made you.

Okay.

It's a personal question. Actually, on that note, a lot of people have been— if you guys don't know my story, you can guys go see our other videos. But still, I have still never got my dad to invest in anything I've ever done. Still. Like I told that story like a year ago on our channel or whatever. As some of you guys know, in college, I launched my first fund. I went and pitched my dad. You know, he's ran multiple funds before. I went and pitched him. I didn't know he had all this money. And my dad said, no. He said, you got to go figure this out on your own. So I went. I was 22 years old. I went and found all this money from investors. Raised my first fund when I was 22 years old. And we launched it. We got going. Our first group of investors got an awesome return. And then anyways, my dad never invested. We launched our second fund. That one did really well. I actually sold that fund in March of this last year. And now I do a lot of syndications. I have real estate projects we're doing. We're launching a new fund right now. Still have never got my dad to invest. Literally yesterday, 2 days ago, I got pitched this new venture idea. I'm looking to invest some of my money into it. I'm like, Dad, you want to get into this?

Just part.

I'm not even. It's not even my deal. Just co-invest. Like, do you want to get in? Nah, he's good. So anyway, it's pretty funny. Meanwhile, can you explain how the Fed affects markets for beginners? Yes, actually, it's a great topic. We have other another video on this. But hey, we'll just stay on. We'll just stay on live because we got a few minutes here. It looks like for people that are hopping on, we got a few minutes till the Fed. They changed. They changed the time. Can somebody confirm for me? They totally changed the time. Anyways, so the Fed, what is this? Why does this mean so much? In the past, in my opinion, in the past, it hasn't been such a— yes, it's a big deal what they do and move, but it's not as like— it feels like it's become more and more crucial what Jerome Powell, Supreme Leader Jerome Powell says. The guy freaking runs the world. And I just feel like it wasn't like this. Back in the '80s or '70s or '60s or whatever. Now, so let me take you a little history lesson. In the '70s, we had big inflation. So 1970, is it '73? 1973, Nixon takes us off the gold standard. I believe it was '73. Anyways, you guys correct me. I'm not going to— don't quote me on that. '72 or '73? Anyways, takes us off the gold standard. We experienced in the United States, Very big period of inflation for the next eight to nine years, through all the all the end of the 1970s to the early 80s, where we had a big recession in the early 80s. Through this inflationary period, it's crazy. There's actually a there's a full website called WTF Happened in 1970. Oh, it's 1971. Okay, okay. There we go. This is the freaking cool. Like you guys ready? Here you go. What WTF happened in 1971? This website is actually very fun to look through. It's huge. Okay? So you can go right here, 1971, '72. This is when Nixon takes off. The gold standard, you have hyperinflation. You can see growth in productivity and hourly compensation. They just have graphs.

Okay?

Real GDP wages. Look at how correlated they are and how they split all at 1971. Income gains. I mean, you can just look over and they have so many graphs, right? Look at these. This huge peak that happened, it's gone all the way down for— this is shares of Gross domestic income, income conception at the top has risen sharply since 1970s. Income share of top 1% relative to the bottom 90%. Fast progress average black income as percentage of average white income grew a lot and then has slow or no progress. Anyways, this whole website just posts charts. Kind of a fun website. WTF happened in 1971? So the Fed though, back to the the topic. Where are we at here? We're still waiting. We're still waiting for their thing. All right. We'll come back here. So the Fed has a few levers it can pull to help regulate. And the 2 big things, they want to regulate the US dollar, and they're in charge of regulating the US dollar. Number 2, they want a strong labor market. So one of the biggest things with COVID that's been interesting is people don't want to work. I mean, obviously, because they've been incentivized not to work. They get a paycheck if they are not working. And so anyways, that's one of the biggest things they— one of the biggest measures they track. And then secondly, they can do what's called quantitative easing where they, in this last 18 months, and they've done this before, where the Fed will— yes, they can do stimulus. That's one thing they can do. They also can do a number of other things. One of those things is buying treasuries. So they actually can buy treasuries, which they take the treasuries in and they inject cash in the markets. Additionally, they can buy— I didn't— 50 years ago, 70 years, the Fed was not doing this. The Fed right now owns something like 20,000 equities. The Fed has been buying equities. And if you don't know, that's stocks. They're buying Apple. They're buying Google. They're buying Amazon. They are buying and injecting cash into these markets. It's crazy that the Fed has over 20,000 equities. equities. I believe the Fed's balance sheet is all the way up to $8 billion, or excuse me, $8 trillion, which is just crazy, right? After 2007, 2008 market crash, they injected a lot of money, a lot of stimulus, and the Fed balance sheet, I believe, went up to, it was $3 trillion. And they kind of said, hey, this is the top. We're going to taper back. We're going to pull back on this. We've got a large balance sheet. We want to Well, today we're at like $8 trillion balance sheet. I mean, it's just crazy what they have done. And I mean, they came out last Fed meeting, the Fed came out and said, hey, we are going to now taper back. So what that means is they're going to do a few things. Right now, interest rates are pretty much at zero. You can borrow from the Fed for pretty much zero money, for free money. Now, who borrows from the Fed? It's only the top biggest banks. Baddest institutions on the planet can borrow from the actual Fed. They have a Fed funds rate that they track. That goes to a bank and then banks will then lend that out to a mortgage company. And then they, mortgage company, will then give you a mortgage loan of 2.5% or 3% or 3.5%, whatever it is. That's what affects your— that's how it affects you. Okay? The interest rate on your home. Let's just, let's talk about real estate for a second. It's very, this is an obvious example. So the Fed puts rates lower. You guys saw your rates for homes went lower. Most people buy homes not based on the price, but based on their monthly payment. I can, you know, whatever my mortgage payment is, whatever I can afford, which I think is a terrible way to buy a home or buy real estate, but a lot of Americans do this, buy it off of a monthly payment. What can I afford per monthly payment per my paycheck? Which I just, I think is a terrible way to You know, your personal finance. Anyways, they have rates at lower. If they raise rates, all adjustable rate mortgages then get raised. And that directly affects the price of real estate markets because the people on the margin, if the rates go from 3% to 3.5%, all of a sudden, their mortgage payment was going to be $3,000 a month and now it's $3,800, whatever the math is. Let's call it $3,800 a month or whatever it is. They go, well, I don't know if I can afford that anymore. I don't want to buy anymore. And then if they raise it even more, it hits the people on the margin and less people can price in what they're going to buy. And so that's how, that's a direct example. And that's how the real estate market would then slow down. You have buyers and sellers, supply and demand curves. You have a real estate that starts to have less demand for, hence prices will come down. Now, and by the way, for people that are hopping on, they have moved the time. It was going to be— it's now at 2:30. Let me just share my screen again. This is the Fed page here, 2:30 PM. So we have about 15 minutes till they come on live, but we're going to talk for a few minutes, answer questions. So anyways, they can do a few different levers. They've signaled last time they are going to stop buying as many treasuries. They're going to slow it way down. It's one of their levers. They're going to slow down buying treasuries, injecting cash in the markets. That was one of their big levers. And then they also talked about they were going to raise rates multiple times this year. And their last thing, they signaled that they would raise them 4 times. I believe they would raise them maybe a quarter, so 0.25% potentially each time. I just— you've seen the volatility in markets. Anyways, I'm not going to speculate on what they're— we're going to hear in 15 minutes what they're going to do. So I'm not going to tell you my predictions. I just think the Fed has their hands a little tied right now. You have a weak workforce. You have retail spending dropping pretty low right now. And you have economic output. That's what I'm trying to get to. Economic output is slowing and very down right now. It's not a good time to raise rates unless they want to put us into— anyways, into a tailspin. All right. Okay. Other questions? Can investment fund be used for any business? Most, actually most businesses can use a fund. It's kind of a unique way to use funds. So, and by the way, people listening, we're waiting just a few minutes. They're coming on live in 15 minutes. So we're answering questions. Drop your questions in the chat if you have them. So let me give you a few examples. Now, typically investment funds are used to go buy, like we have a fund that goes and buys real estate. We have a fund that goes and buys stocks or does options, a hedge fund. We have a private equity fund that goes and buys and sells businesses. Let me give you a few examples of kind of alternative funds. We have a guy in our group who runs one of the largest hydrogen facilities on planet Earth and one of the largest, and actually I think the largest in the United States. He wanted to raise capital to open up new plants. Instead of doing the Shark Tank model where you say, okay, we're going to raise $40 million. We're going to give away 20% of our company at this evaluation. It's a typical way most people raise money.

Yeah.

What he did and what we advised him to do was set up a sidecar fund. He set up a fund separate to his business. That fund would do it, could do a number of things. That fund could give them a line of credit or a loan to his business to grow. It could actually buy and take shares of his company with an exit clause so that they can be taken out later. You can refinance your investors out of your business and give them still a handsome return. And I think that's what he ended up doing. We have another group, investment fund. They're a— I won't tell you the name of the brand of the business. Just keep it confidential. But they have a store, a location. They do very well around the United States. They want to buy up their competitors. They launched a fund separate of their business to go and buy up all the other brands of their competitors. Pretty cool. And those investors get paid directly on the performance of those brands. The original founder gets to keep all the equity of his company. He's not giving up 30% of a company, but he just set up a new entity that raises money as a fund with investors. They go buy those companies. So yes, you can do it. And that's actually a pretty cool way to scale your business. All right. Any good suggestions on getting good internships? Yeah. Good questions from— as well. So Questions for internships. Now I actually had a kid in my office yesterday, awesome guy, asking about college and how to grow his career and all that kind of stuff. My biggest suggestion to him was get high-quality experience/internships. So I'll give you my college route. I took on purpose less credits in college. So I was in college. Most kids were taking 14 to 15 credits at my university. I I took 11 or 12 credits. I took 1 or 2 less classes so that I had time to start businesses. I started 6 businesses my first 2 years of college. And they were all sorts of businesses. I did whatever was, you know, and we can talk more about that. I did Chinese tutoring. We had a Chinese tutoring company. I wholesaled 2 houses. I built websites for people. We did a Forex thing. Anyways, we had all sorts of stuff. And one of my favorite things though is, it's the best thing ever. Everyone loves to help college students. Everybody, even myself included. If you're in college and you reach out to me and you're like, yo, I'm in college. And this is back to the question. How do you get good internships or get those connections? Be someone, this is networking 101, be someone that people want to connect with. Be someone that people want to meet. So in college, my strategy was, because I knew I was at a university, I said, you know what? There's probably going to be in my class a couple guys or gals that are going to end up being billionaires or running huge companies or, you know, having spinoff things out of this school. If there's one nearby, I want them to think about, hey, we should invite Bridger to be on our team or board or partner with us. I wanted to be the type of person that people wanted to invite to be part of their company or business. So for me, the easiest way to do that was number one, get really good grades, be really smart. But there's a lot of kids that get good grades. So number 2, I had to be a mover and shaker. I had to go start businesses and show I'm not just a wantrepreneur. I just don't want to start businesses. I actually go out and do start businesses. Does that make sense? I'm a mover and shaker. And people love to help people already moving. The young, promising entrepreneur, everyone loves to help that person or partner with that person or whatever. And it gives you a little star over your head. So I would then, so anyways, that was kind of my thought process. I then took that to going and getting jobs, internships, job shadows all in college. It was so valuable for me. And I got a bunch of amazing internships. And I would reach out because I stood out as an applicant. Yeah, these internships, let's just use that as an example. They get tons of applicants from Harvard and Wharton and whoever. They have good grades. They They're good pencil. You know, they check the boxes. They very rarely get an application that, yeah, I've got good grades, but also, hey, this kid started 3 businesses. He's made over $50,000 his first year in college. Do you want to interview that kid? And they're like, yeah, let's bring him in. And I would walk in and be like, yo, what's up? Yeah, I'm smart. I'm not as smart as the Harvard guys, but you know, I'm pretty decently smart. But also, I freaking get stuff done. There's a, you know, Ivy League grads are a dime a dozen. What you need is someone that can move and shake your business. Anyways, that's how I got good internships. And I reached out to people on— anyways, there's a whole strategy. We can talk for an hour about it, but there you go. People that are just hopping on, they are coming live in just a few minutes. Let me just show you again. They are here. This is the website right now going live at 2:30 PM Eastern. We got about 9 more minutes till they're live. So we'll just— this is running right now live. Once it comes on live, I'll actually bring it on live. You guys can see it all. Okay, sounds good. I'm gonna answer questions for a few more minutes. All markets right now are trying to price in everything that's going on right now. So the statement from the— yeah, so the statement from the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee will be released at 2:00 PM Eastern following Chairman Powell's press conference at 2:30. So anyways, that's what's going on, at least from a comment from Merrick. Okay, other questions. Let's see. I'm live from India. Shark Tank is not the model. It's a TV game show. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry, it's over. Hey, what's your best investment advice you've received until now? Good question. As far as investment, and again, this is not investment advice for you guys. I love for my personal portfolio, for personal, I love following the 40/40/20 model. 40% of my money is in a very safe, all-weather portfolio, which actually this week has performed very well. It's designed to perform very well. I have 40% in a very safe, all-weather. This is like my long-term. This is my, if the world collapses, this should still be good.

Okay?

40% there, 40% in mid-tier. So I like, I put my real estate in there, some stocks, some speculative things in my 40% tier. And that's again, 40% risk, but 40% reward as well, hopefully in that tier. And then 20% is my shot at glory. 20% of my investments are my moonshots. I'm going, I'm doing, I do angel investing. I have some crazy crypto plays, NFT, whatever it is, I'm going to put in that 20%. It's my shot at glory. I got this from Dan Fleischman. I think it's a great thing. I'm going to give him a shout-out. He did a great job And I actually really like that. I was already kind of doing something like that, and I kind of just solidified it for me in my brain. It's really great. That is why you don't see me freaking out during all this market volatility. People are texting me, Bridger, oh my gosh, what should I do? My portfolio's down, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, dude, we're chill. We're fine. And at least I feel fine because I have strategically diversified my buckets, and I'm not all in on one thing. That's the fastest way to lose your money. Even if you're the smartest person on the planet, if you go all in on one thing, there's a chance you might lose. And as a long-term personal investor, market volatility doesn't do much to me. Whenever I buy an asset, I believe in that asset for at least 5 to 10 years. I don't sell anything. I buy something, I'm like, yo, I'm in for 5 to 10 years. Ups, downs, in-betweens, unless there's like fraud or something. I had one case where I sold because of fraud. I've sold a few things. There was like stuff that I didn't know about. Truly, I invested in a company that was fraudulent. So I pulled my money, right? Besides that, I am a long-term buyer. I rarely sell, rarely sell. And then I just, and I, by the way, I'm a buyer of Bitcoin this week. I've been buying Bitcoin since 2017, 2016. I still buy Bitcoin. And Bridger, where's the bottom? I don't know. I buy on the way down. I buy on the way up. I love to dollar cost average. I think it's the best way to go about it for a person that's not going to watch the markets every single day. Now for my fund, different. My fund has its own strategy, own niches. We trade all the time. For my personal investing, I like that 40/40/20 rule. What are your thoughts on internship versus working in your desired industry? Maybe not specific field. I like, now it depends where you're at. I like internships because everyone wants to help the intern. You get access to exclusive things from being an intern. You get, and when I would, as an intern, I would show up to a place and I was like, yo, I'm here to learn. I want to learn a lot of different things. Anyways, they usually do special things for interns versus just working somewhere. I like that model. And also it gives you the chance to date and shop around. I was dating industries and careers for 2 years, 2 or 3 years in college. I would date, you know, I would, I literally like going on a date, I'd date a company or an industry. And as an intern, you get way different things versus like, hey, I'm going to get a job in this industry for 3 years. It's a slower way to process and date through a lot of these different things you want to try out. So there you go. So anyways, that's my thoughts on internship. Everyone else? And by the way, my thought whenever I was an intern, I would hop into that business and I'd go, I'd walk in day 1. I was like, all right, I'm going to own a company just like this one day with thousands of employees. So what do I need to learn right now as an intern that will make me a better manager or company owner of a company like this one day? That was my mindset. Most kids go to an internship like, oh man, I hope they give me the job. I hope I learn something. It's like, no. I walked in there like, yo, all right, I need to learn a lot of things right now because I'm going to be running a company like this one day. It's a different mindset. And I would go in there and I'd sit down and I had a schedule of people I wanted to meet. So I would set up every, I had a goal. Every lunch, I was going to take someone new to lunch every day. So I would walk in and again, everyone wants to help the intern. So I'd ask, hey, managing director or whatever partner, You wanna go to lunch on Thursday? I'm an intern. I'd love to interview you and hear about your career. And people love to brag to the intern. People love to like, you know, it's like I said, great, let's hop, let's do a lunch. And I would meet, I went to lunch with more people than anybody. I used that totally as networking. And I really asked them high-level questions of, you know, 'cause in the back of my brain, I'm like, I'm gonna run a company like this one day. I need to know how they're thinking about things and what they're running and all that kind of stuff. I'm a big believer in that. I think it's a good way to go about it. And I stood out like crazy. I was offered the job over— I was actually, I was an intern with another Harvard guy and another, I can't remember the other guy, what school they were from. Smart dudes. And I'm from, I went to BYU, which is kind of a mid-tier school. I was offered the job over them because I stood out like crazy because I was an entrepreneur. I had started multiple businesses. And when I showed up to the job, I was very intentional about everything I was doing and learning. And I asked a lot of informed questions. And I tried to, and I would walk in and I would talk. Anyways, there you go. I won't go on about this. You guys have been asking too much, but that's my thought there.

Okay.

Other questions. So you're a chef with a catering restaurant. How would you have used IFS? So you were a chef with a catering or a restaurant? Yeah. So we have a restaurant chain right now in our group that they buy up their competitors. Yeah, there you go. Dan is the man. People saying they're going to raise taxes and interest rates. Yeah, stock market, everyone's trying to price in what they think is going to happen, what's going to happen here. Let me, uh, let me pull my screen here. We are a few minutes away here. Let me just refresh, make sure we're good. We'll hit play on here. Yeah, they're just playing a little music. We can read their statement though here, but they're gonna do, um, so they just released— oh, here it is. They just released a few minutes ago, then they're— oh, he's gonna come live. Okay, there we go. He's gonna come live in a few minutes. Um, indicators of economic activity have continued to strengthen sectors. Anyways, I love all the language they have in here. Continues to depend on our course of the virus, progress on vaccinations. Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment inflation of at least 2%. They've been, by the way, I want to say something real quick. The Fed tells you exactly what they're doing. It's not like it's this big mystery. It's not like they, like, they don't just, they're not like, oh, we're going to do, like, sometimes they've had a course of a change of action. This has happened in 2018 going into 2019. They said they were going to raise rates 3 times. They ended up lowering rates. So most of the time, but they've been telling us what they want to do. They want to have inflation. Around 2% over the long run. Okay, so we're gonna, and they said the committee decided to keep the target rate for federal funds at 0 to a 4th percent with inflation well above 2% and a strong labor market. The committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target rate for the federal funds. The committee decided to continue to reduce the monthly pace of net asset purchases, bringing them to the end in early March. So early March. They're going to reduce the monthly pace of net asset purchases. So like I said before, they're going to stop purchasing net asset purchases. So anyways, this could be treasuries, this could be their equities, all that kind of stuff. Beginning in February, the committee will increase its holdings of treasury securities by at least $20 billion per month. Okay, we're going to increase treasury securities by $20 billion per month and agency and mortgage-backed securities by at least $10 billion per month. The Federal Reserve's ongoing purchase and holdings of securities will continue to foster. Huh, interesting. So they have really backed down from last meeting. They were they were pretty strong at they were going to raise rates. It sounds right now we are going to keep target rate for federal funds at zero to fourth percent. So they are backing down for last thing, and let's just see markets pumping like let's see see people are messaging me they're pumping like crazy. Oh, it looks like we're live. Let me go back. Let's watch. Here we are.

This is on the schedule we announced in December, bringing them to an end in early March. As I will explain, against a backdrop of elevated inflation and a strong labor market, our policy has been adapting to the evolving economic environment. And it will continue to do so. Economic activity expanded at a robust pace last year, reflecting progress on vaccinations and the reopening of the economy.

Such a handsome dude.

Tell you what, monetary policy support and the healthy financial positions of households and businesses. Indeed, the economy has shown great strength and resilience in the face of the ongoing pandemic. The recent sharp rise in COVID cases associated with the Omicron variant Will surely weigh on economic growth this quarter. High-frequency indicators point to reduced spending in COVID-sensitive sectors such as travel and restaurants, and activity more broadly may also be affected as many workers are unable to report for work because of illness, quarantines, or caregiving needs.

Fortunately, yeah, that's true. Everyone's sick that I know.

Variant has not been as virulent. as previous strains of the virus, and they expect that cases will drop off rapidly. If the wave passes quickly, the economic effects should as well, and we would see a return to strong growth. That said, the implications for the economy remain uncertain, and we have not lost sight of the fact that for many afflicted individuals and families, and for the healthcare workers on the front lines, the virus continues to cause great hardship. The labor market has made remarkable progress and by many measures is very strong. Job gains have been solid in recent months, averaging 365,000 per month over the past 3 months. Over the past year, payroll employment has risen by 6.4 million jobs. The unemployment rate has declined sharply, falling 2 percentage points over the past 6 months.

Wow, that's good.

To reach 3.9% in December. The improvements in labor market conditions have been widespread, including for workers at the lower end of the wage distribution, as well as for African Americans and Hispanics. Labor demand remains historically strong, with constraints.

Yeah, dude, everybody's hiring, dude.

Having difficulties filling job openings.

Exactly.

And wages are rising at their fastest pace in many years. Well, labor force participation has edged up. It remains subdued, in part reflecting the aging of the population and retirements. In addition, some who would otherwise would be seeking work report that they are out of the labor force because of factors related to the pandemic, including caregiving needs and ongoing concerns about the virus. The current wave of the virus may well prolong these effects. Over time, there are good reasons to expect some further improvements in participation and employment. Inflation remains well above our longer-run goal of 2%.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy have continued to contribute to elevated levels of inflation. In particular, bottlenecks and supply constraints are limiting how quickly production can respond to higher demand in the near term. These problems have been larger and longer lasting than anticipated. exacerbated by waves of the virus. While the drivers of higher inflation have been predominantly connected to the dislocations caused by the pandemic, price increases have now spread to a broader range of goods and services. Wages have also risen briskly, and we are attentive to the risks that persistent real wage growth in excess of productivity could put upward pressure on inflation. Like most forecasters, we continue to expect inflation to decline over the course of the year. We understand that high inflation imposes significant hardship, especially on those least able to meet the high— higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation. In addition, we believe that the best thing we can do to support continued labor market gains is to promote a long expansion, and that will require price stability. We're committed to our price stability goal. We will use our tools both to support the economy and a strong labor market And to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched. And we'll be watching carefully to see whether the economy is evolving in line with expectations. The Fed's monetary policy actions have been guided by our mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices for the American people. As I noted, the Committee left the target range for the federal funds rate unchanged and reaffirmed our plan announced in December. To end asset purchases in early March.

So no changes to interest rates, just ending purchases.

And inflation that is well above our 2% longer-run goal, the economy no longer needs sustained high levels of monetary policy support. That is why we are phasing out our asset purchases and why we expect it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate. Of course, the economic outlook remains highly uncertain. Making appropriate monetary policy in this environment requires humility, recognizing that the economy evolves in unexpected ways. We'll need to be nimble so that we can respond to the full range of plausible outcomes. With this in mind, we will remain attentive to risks, including the risk that high inflation is more persistent than expected, and are prepared to respond as appropriate to achieve our goals. To provide greater clarity about our approach for reducing the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, today the Committee issued a set of principles that will provide a foundation for our future decisions. These high-level principles clarify that the federal funds rate is our primary means of adjusting monetary policy and that reducing our balance sheet will occur after the process of raising interest rates has begun. Reductions will occur over time in a predictable manner. primarily through adjustments to reinvestments so that securities roll off our balance sheet. Over time, we intend to hold securities in the amounts needed for our ample, ample reserves operating framework. And in the longer run, we envision holding primarily Treasury securities. Our decisions to reduce our balance sheet will be guided by our maximum employment and price stability goals. In that regard, we will be prepared to adjust any of the details of our approach to balance sheet management In light of economic and financial developments, the committee has not made decisions regarding the specific timing, pace, or other details of shrinking the balance sheet. We will discuss these matters in upcoming meetings and provide additional information at the appropriate time.

Good luck shrinking that balance sheet. Oh man!

We understand that our actions affect communities, families, and businesses across the country. Everything we do is in service to our public mission. We at the Federal Reserve will do everything we can to achieve our maximum employment and price stability goals. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

All right. Well, there you go. They're not moving interest rates. They're going to try to shrink the balance sheet. We'll open up some of these questions as well. I suspect the Fed though, I'm going to make a comment before they go on.

They—

I'm going to even pause this for you guys so you have it. The Fed, they cannot move interest rates. I think the last month they were planning on raising rates 3 or 4 times this year, and some big player, whoever it was, didn't want to take a haircut. They don't want to take a haircut, and they saw this volatility this week and said, you know what? The Fed just said, we're backing down. You know what? You guys aren't ready for raise. There's 2 sides of the coin. It's like, you know what? Just let it keep running. We'll just let this run. And that's what they're saying. We're going to slowly taper back our balance sheet and our asset purchases, but we're not moving interest rates because the world just freaked out if we were going to move interest rates and try to reprice that in. But also, there's another group that can't— we need strong monetary policy. We need monetary policy to pull back this rampant inflation before it gets too out of control. And it looks like, I mean, they just told us that they decided to say, you know what? We're not willing to take the risk, the political risk, the whatever risk. We want to just keep things running just nice and smooth, whatever. And we'll go from there. Pretty interesting. Let's hear some of these questions. Let's see what they got. Sorry for the audio, by the way. I forgot to pipe it in. Anyways, we're just using the mic audio.

And these differences are likely to have important implications for the appropriate pace of policy adjustments. Beyond that, we haven't made any decisions.

So, no— yeah, no decision there. Let's see the next question here.

Thank you. Let's go to Victoria Guida at Politico. Hi, Chair Powell. I wanted to ask, you were talking about the health of the labor market, and I'm curious whether you would characterize where we're at right now as maximum employment. And also, along those same lines, obviously, rate hikes on the table this year.

Do you think that the Fed can raise rates, bring inflation under control without hurting jobs and wages?

Sorry, just getting—

Had an important note to put down.

So I would say, and this view is widely held on the Committee, that both sides of the mandate are calling for us to move steadily deadly away from the very highly accommodative policies we put in place during the challenging economic conditions that the economy faced earlier in the pandemic. And I would say that most FOMC participants agree that labor market conditions are consistent with maximum employment in the sense of the highest level of employment that is consistent with price stability. And that is, that is my personal view. Um, and, and again, very broad support on the Committee for the judgment that it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate. The other thing is maximum employment will, will evolve over time and through the course of the business cycle. In the particular situation we're in now, it may well increase— the level of maximum employment that's consistent with stable prices may increase, and we hope that it will, as more people come back into the labor market, as participation gradually rises. And the policy path that we're broadly contemplating would be supportive of that outcome as well. So the thing about the labor market right now is that there are many millions of more job openings than there are unemployed people. So you ask whether we can— whether we can raise rates and move to less accommodative and even tight financial conditions without hurting the labor market. I think there's quite a bit of room to raise interest rates Without threatening the labor market, this is by so many measures a historically tight labor market. Record levels of job openings, of quits. Wages are moving up at the highest pace they have in decades.

Yeah, spot on.

Of workers, they find jobs plentiful. Look at surveys of companies.

Everyone's hiring right now. Everyone's hiring.

Things are at levels really that we. haven't seen in a long time, and in some cases ever. So this is a very, very strong labor market.

I think what's happening, I'm going to make a comment and pause Jerome Powell. We are moving to what I call the gig economy. And people are, they are, it's hard for them to track unemployed people. I think the unemployment is much less than they're reporting. I believe a lot of people are doing Uber, Lyft, they're selling NFT, they're doing something entrepreneurial. And they are counted as unemployed or in that labor statistic. But in reality, they're making money some way, shape, or form. And so I think there's this discrepancy on the reporting versus what's actually going on because there are droves of people quitting their jobs, starting their own thing, and there are so many job openings, it's insane. People are looking for talent everywhere. It's just, anyways, it's crazy.

We do realize that the timing and pace of that are, are highly uncertain and that inflation has persisted longer than we, than we thought. And, of course, we're prepared to use our tools to assure that higher inflation does not become entrenched. Thank you. Let's go to Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal. All right. Wall Street Journal.

See what Nick's got to say. I have a couple of questions on the balance sheet. By the way, these— he's actually okay, but like, dude, these journalists, like half of them, their hair isn't done, they're not wearing something nice, they're in this home crappy looking home office. Like, dude, you're talking to the freaking chair, Jerome Powell, and you're like, you know. Anyways, this happened last time, the last girl was on, like, what was that? I Like get a cam, like you know set up a little bit of lighting. Like come on, like what are we? You know you're asking. You're anyways just funny. Anyways, well listen to this thing.

Discussion as you know at the last meeting, an introductory discussion of the balance sheet and teeing up of the issues. At this meeting, we've gone through and carefully put together a set of principles at a high level, and those are meant to guide the actual decisions we'll make about the pace and about all of the questions that you're. you're asking. And I expect that this process will, will be something that we spend time on in coming meetings. I can't tell you how many. I can't tell you how long it will take. But, and then, you know, at the appropriate time, we'll provide additional information. So I did— the last cycle when we, when we went through balance sheet issues, we did find that over, over the course of 2 or 3 meetings, for example, we did come to interesting and better answers, we thought. So We're just in that process now. And at the next meeting, we'll be turning to, you know, more of the details that you're, that you're asking about. I would say this. The balance sheet is, is much bigger. It has a shorter duration than the last time. And the economy is much stronger and inflation is much higher. So, and I think that leads you to— and I said, I've said this— being willing to move sooner. Sooner than we did in the last time, and also perhaps faster. But beyond that, it's it's really it's really not appropriate for me to speculate exactly what that would be. And but I would point you to principle number one, which is the committee views changes in the target rate for the federal funds rate as its primary means of adjusting the stance of monetary policy. So we do want the federal funds rate. We we we want to operationalize that. And we want the balance sheet to be declining in a predictable manner. And we want it to be declining primarily by adjusting reinvestments.

Yeah. Well, and it's funny, we talked about this earlier, the last big Great Recession in 2008, 2009, they wanted to taper back the balance sheet. They never did. The balance sheet was, I think it was around $3 trillion. They were like, oh yeah, we'll get it back to $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion. They never did, and now it's up to eight. I think it's eight or nine trillion total balance sheet, and he's saying right here, I think we're going to bring it back. I don't. I personally don't think they can. I don't think they. I don't think they will. It takes very strong. He actually, in his own words, Jerome Powell said very strong monetary policy to do so, and I just think markets without collapsing the global financial system, you can't do it. All right, I guess I'm not pausing correctly because it just, it's just live. So anyway, sorry, I won't stop doing that, or we'll just turn it off.

Rate increases affect financial conditions and hence economic conditions. Balance sheet, uh, is, is still a relatively new thing for, uh, for the markets and for us, so we're less certain about that. So again, our— I think our— the pattern we'll follow is to, is to arrive at a, uh, you know, a timing and a pace and composition and all those things, and then announce that with advance notice, and, and, and it will, uh, it will start in the background. We want to have that just running.

So really, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back here for a minute. Really, they got not a lot to say. I mean, like, it's kind of like, hey, uh, you know, we're gonna, um, we're gonna, we're gonna try to move things in the right direction. We're not gonna really say anything definitive right now. We're gonna, you know, we hope that the Fed funds rate is the way that we move things. And, um, you know, that's, that's it. Like, that's what we're saying. There's not a lot going on. Um, like, and he's not giving us very much direction on what they're trying to do, actually. It seems like they've pulled back from last meeting. Last meeting they were very strongly, hey, we're gonna have 3 rate increases next year. It sounds like they've pulled back from that very strong, and they're saying, you know what, we don't really know. Now Now, if I was Jerome Powell, something that I would potentially do is something different than other we've done in the past. They could still secretly be planning to do rate hikes. He kind of signaled, yeah, we want to change that Fed funds rate, but not telling people when it's going to happen. They could, because the markets are so reactive to just the news of a change, that it's like, hey, we don't want the change to happen yet, If we're going to do a change in March or in June, let's just do the change on that day. That would be, I mean, that would be new. That's kind of out of left field. They typically tell you well in advance, but markets are so volatile on the news of the Fed right now that they're saying, you know what? We're going to take that away from people. We're not going to trade the news anymore, and we're just going to do it. That could be something that happens. All right. People ask me, what does this all mean for Dogecoin? What does it mean for Bitcoin? Job losses are the highest percent. Yeah, dude, like, dude, job market is insane. There are so many job openings. There's the gig economy is incredible. Um, it's like, it's insane.

Every—

you can find work. That's not the problem. So I think that he— and he had happy addressed that. He just said, guys, labor is not like— it's not a concern right now, really.

It's, it's—

I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty, uh, it's pretty, you know, standard and good right now. All right, um, okay, crypto people. A lot of people ask me that. Let's look at, let's look at, uh, let's look at Bitcoin right now.

BTC.

Let's just pull it up. Let's see what, let's see what Bitcoin's doing right now. Here we go. Okay, Bitcoin at 37.6. Had a nice little morning. Pretty volatile around the Fed announcement right here. Um, you know, I, I'm not gonna tell you my You know, crypto is is so volatile. It's it's really really fun. I love crypto. I I have quite a few bitcoins, and and we actually are launching a crypto fund here very soon to play in the market. I think it's awesome. The I'm a long-term believer in Bitcoin. I've been buying this week. I bought a ton of Bitcoin this week. I buy buy buy buy buy. I'm buying the way down. I'm buying the way up. Like I'm always buying Bitcoin, especially on sale. I've had so many friends. Bridger, oh man, if only— this is like 2 months ago, 3 months ago. Oh man, if only I could go back and buy Bitcoin at $35,000. That would be amazing. And then this week comes and they're like, oh man, Bitcoin's crashing. I told you so. It's a Ponzi scheme. It's like, dude, what happened to you 3 months ago? You know what I mean? And that's— if you want to be a good investor, take away emotions, find assets that you believe in. I'm talking about individual investments. Again, this is your personal investing. Find assets that you believe in truly from a fundamental level, that company or that— and I personally think blockchain is one of the best technologies we've seen since the internet for the last 20 years. I'm a big believer in blockchain. I think it's inevitable. And so when I do research on an asset, I look at it and I go, you know what? I believe this is going to become a bigger and bigger asset, whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum or Dogecoin, whatever the coin is, or it's DAOs or it's smart contracts or it's Whatever it is, I believe in this thing for long-term. I believe that this isn't going away anytime soon. I'm going to buy. And hey, right now is a decent correction. Yeah, I'll buy that through that correction. People are, oh, should I sell? Should I buy? Guys, historically, this is a decent time to get into Bitcoin if you believe and want to be a long-term holder of Bitcoin. And I like to dollar-cost average things when I move into certain positions. There you go. We use— what broker do I use to buy my crypto? I use a bunch of different wallets and places. Um, I have a Coinbase account. I'm on their beta, like Coinbase One account, so I don't pay any trading fees. It's pretty cool actually. Um, I have Crypto.com account. Can use— you can use them for research. You can use— anyways, there's all— I won't go through the whole thing, but PancakeSwap, um, you can use. Anyways, a lot of different ones you can use, um, as well. Something I just learned though This is, as of last month, one of my partners taught me this, Dan Young. Every time you make a transaction between wallets, you want to sever those connections. With the Squid Games coin, Squid Games coin stole tens of millions of dollars. The way they did it was anyone that bought the Squid Game coin, they could reach in their wallets and wallets attached to that wallet and pull money out of those accounts. It's crazy. And just as a word of advice for security, when you make a transfer from your Coinbase account to your MetaMask or to your whatever account, sever the connections after so that they can't tunnel back through to your nest egg account. Those gig jobs don't support households and families though. Yeah, they do. Charles, bro. Yeah, they do. Depends on the gig. I've got, dude, I've got multiple friends running Turo fleets right now. They have 7, 8, 10 cars of Turo cars. They make $7,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a month. That's net, net to them. They'll definitely support house. If they didn't get, if they weren't supporting a household, then people wouldn't do it. If you weren't making enough money and having enough time on your hands doing whether it's DoorDash or Turo or whatever it is, or you're launching your own business or whatever, if it wasn't enough to support your household or your family, you would stop doing it after so many months. Right? By definition, the reason they're doing it is the— and for most people, right? They are doing it to support their family and household or believe that in a short period of time, it will support their household or family. So no, they don't have assets then. They don't. No. People that— yes, yes, they might have savings that they're living on while they're transitioning, 100%. There's definitely loss in transition. But people that are— if I'm saying, yo, I'm going to quit my job and go do this thing full-time, As a sane, rational person, that thing still needs to support me and my family and my household. And maybe there's a transition time, but, or I'm banking on the next few months it will. Right? Dude, I have a friend. She runs a Facebook group. They have, it's called Mommy Deal Finder. She drops, all she does, drops freaking links of deals on Amazon in that. She gets an affiliate commission on all of them. Makes tons of money doing it. I have a buddy. He makes over $1 million a year running a Facebook group. Anyways, it's crazy. You can, yeah, you can. Oh, 100%, Eric. Yeah. You lease a house and then you Airbnb it. It's a great, I mean there's so many of these little small gig things that people are doing that are these inefficiencies in the market that they're filling. I have guys that buy UPS and Amazon fulfillment routes. You can. Did you know that you can buy fulfillment routes? Yeah, the the labor market is is crazy. Um, what does this mean for Dogecoin? You got Elon Musk pumping Dogecoin this week with McDonald's. Um, Charles, I don't. Yeah, please type your disagreement in the chat. I'd love to see your disagreement. Let's hear it. There you go. Put put your disagreement in the chat. Let's see your argument. I now yes, there are people some people that do lifts. Or Uber, and they make an okay living. Or if they're not making a living in a high— they have to, you know, they're living in downtown LA, maybe they're going to start moving to the suburbs or moving to a low-cost state, which has happened in droves. We have the largest human migration happening in the history of the world. People are moving from urban areas to rural areas like crazy because And they're moving traditionally right now from blue states and high-tax states to low-tax states, which are red states, like crazy. Anyways, it's awesome. And people are doing it because that's how economics works. Economics finds the inefficiency. If you go for a supply and demand curve on anything, right? Whether it's— they will find the inefficiencies. If you are being— as a rational person, you're going to do what's in your best interest for yourself.

Right?

So by definition, if you left your job to join, do something else, you by definition believed that that was in your best interest. So anyways, all right. Anyways, I could, I'm rambling on here. Aman, you want a shout out, bro? You got a shout out. There you go, Aman. But hey, I'm open to disagreements. Just type them in the chat. I'd love to hear your disagreements. All right. Okay. So Fed has backed down a lot. We're seeing all markets pump right now. Let me share my screen here. S&P actually leveled off a little bit. Got the Russell, NASDAQ, Dow's actually down today still. I still wonder, and gold took a dive. Dude, gold is just the worst. Man, gold has not moved. So silver taking a dive. Ten-year Bitcoin's gone up, but you know dollar today or percent today. Anyways, there you go. You guys, you guys have heard it here first. So thank you all so much. By the way, oh shoot! I freaking I gotta get a better setup for that. If you haven't come yet, Fund Launch Live is happening April 28th, 29th, 30th. We're getting fund managers in from all over the world. And we're bringing— we have a 1,000-person event in Las Vegas. We just announced a new fun— a new speaker today. Aaron Wagner runs a $100 million fund, has over 100 restaurants, 1,000 employees. We have another speaker, runs a $60 million crypto fund. This week we're announcing more. We have about 15. I haven't announced them yet. They're— I'm still announcing them. We've got about 15 speakers that are lined up that are incredible. You guys are going to want to come. If you haven't yet, it's fundlaunchlive.com. The link is below. Um, go grab a ticket. Tickets are actually selling out. We are almost sold out of VIP. Then after that, it's only general admission. We will be sold out here in a few weeks. So anyways, if you want a ticket, if you want to come, feel free to come. It's going to be incredible. This is the first fund manager event like this in the world. We've rented a whole place. I've spent a ton of money on this event. It's going to be very fun. I'm kind of an event junkie. I love events. I love the immersion of events. I think I learn so much by going deep. And going all in on a, you know, in a few days versus like trying to do something like, you know, kind of average over like a year. I like to go all in for 3 days and like learn something like crazy. That's the plan for Funnel Launch Live. So April 28th, 29th, 30th in Las Vegas, funnellaunchlive.com. Click the link below. You guys can see the dates and all the stuff on there. Grab a ticket. Um, it's gonna be pretty fun. Um, there you go. Okay. You guys are awesome. Let's see. We got a bunch of questions just flew in. All right. Here we go. I like some of these questions. What's the reason that so little institutional investors are investing in crypto funds in the US? I believe it's only 300 active investors in the US. Are they waiting for some kind of regulation? I believe so. I think they are waiting for regulation. The Bitcoin NFT was big actually for institutions, because a lot of institutions have actual mandates. They have bylaws that say what they can and can't invest into. A lot of those institutions are not allowed by their definition to invest into cryptocurrencies. And so that's why a Bitcoin ETF or other things like that was huge, Because some of these institutions were allowed to buy ETFs, and so that they could start moving into the crypto space. That is also another big reason why crypto has such big potential to blow up. Institutions have— they've all signaled. You have Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, they've all signaled they want to get into crypto, they want to get into the space, they just haven't done it yet. And so I think that's a huge play, a long-term play for crypto in general, is that a lot of institutions— I mean, the value, the entire cryptocurrency market is like, after this crash, like $1.5 trillion. That's half the size of Apple. It's insane. Like, we are so small right now. It's crazy. We are so small. So yeah, we have a lot of space to go.

All right.

Average people are not going to find the inefficiencies that Bridger is speaking of. No, they are. When you move, see, and in general, as a big picture of, you guys need to take Economics 101, people. Freak. When you take a big picture, they find inefficiencies. But person by person, when you say you're working at a job and you say, you know what? I'm not going to wait tables and anymore. I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to start creating NFTs because I can create an NFT and help people there. I'm going to start a Facebook group and drop affiliate links and help people. Here's a great example. My business partner's little brother, he's 17 years old. He runs a Discord channel. It's $50 a month to join. And they find shoes for people that want to buy certain shoes like Nikes and other cool shoes. He makes, at 17 years old, he makes $7,000 a month doing that in high school. Now you might say that's not a big— no, he found an inefficiency in the market. And person by person does this. The same thing is with people moving from high-tax states like California to Texas or Florida. They are literally saying, hey, California is inefficient for me to live. It's high cost of living. It's high taxes. It's better for me personally if I— my camera just died. If I move to, let me put a new battery in. If I move to a more efficient place like Texas or Florida, that's finding inefficiencies in the market. Does that make sense? Economics comes down to day-by-day drivers. It's crazy. Like that's what it comes down to. So I can see my camera can come back. Camera just died. Let's see if it comes. There it is. There we are. This one's got a little juice in it. Anyways, that's what's happening there. The inefficiencies are small. The same thing is true with— let's just talk Uber Eats, right? They are saying by definition, hey, I would rather spend my time and energy doing this job over this one because it's more efficient for my life. It gives me more time with my family and kids. It gives me a more controllable income. I can work when I want. I don't have to work when I don't want to. By definition, they are going to more— a more efficient process. And person by person, it spells out inefficiencies. Like taxicabs have now become inefficient. Because more people are choosing Uber and Lyft because why? I'm a person, I would rather call an Uber than a taxi because it's more efficient for me to do so. It's a little cheaper. I like to, I get to, you know, I get to do it right on my phone. I got to grab them. They can show up. And also, I'm supporting someone that's, you know, helping out in the society. This is Economics 101. This is why companies disrupt other companies and customers vote with their feet. People, the biggest vote you have is not the presidential election. It's how you vote with your dollars. You vote every day with what you spend your money on. Whether you know it or not, you are voting. And you're also voting with your eyeballs. You vote with your attention, what you spend your attention on, because that's the currency nowadays. You vote. We all voted as a society. We voted that Netflix was more efficient than Blockbuster. We voted. You voted. I voted. That's what I'm talking about here. Same thing's happening with gig economy right now. People are voting with their things. All right, here we go. Let's see. All right. Let's see people on here. If Daddy— okay. We got a bunch of people calling me a scam on here. All right. Some scam people. Let's go. You guys obviously haven't heard my story at all. Never taken money from— and actually, I'm very open and transparent about it. The reason we started this program and channel was because I realized the uniqueness of my situation. So you guys, some of you guys know my story. My dad, I didn't know this growing up. We grew up in an average house. My dad was running a deca-billion-dollar fund. I didn't know this. He was with a bunch of partners and everything. $26 billion in real estate. It was crazy. I learned this and my dad sat down and taught me how it works, the whole thing. I was in college, started all these businesses. And I was like, shoot, I'm going to do this. And I pitched my dad for money. My dad says no. To this day, my dad has still never invested in any deal, anything I've ever done. I went and launched my first fund when I was 22, launched another fund when I was 24. We just sold that company last March for a good exit. And then now we're launching another bunch of other things. And so, and then I said, you know what? We got a lot of people asking us. My brother, by the way, is a securities attorney for funds. So between the 3 of us, we have a really unique situation. And I understand that's a unique position. We have my dad, we have my brother and myself. And so I said, you know what? I bet other people want to learn about this. That's why we started this channel. That's why we started all of our stuff. And so because again, there was an inefficiency in the market. No one was talking about funds. So we said, you know what? Let's put this together. And we put together this whole program and course. And we said, you know what? We'll help people do this. People wanted to work with me directly or my brother or my dad, whoever. And we said, you know what? You can come in. We'll help you launch your whole fund. Yeah. And actually, I have 2 more funds we're launching right now. We've raised about $15 million for our crypto fund. We have another real estate fund we're launching as well. So there you go. Still, my dad has still not invested. There you go. And then the proof's in the pudding. So we've done this for 2 years. We have about 4,000 students. We have 2 student funds over $100 million each. We've helped. And then I've consulted on a number of other funds that are over $100 million or near $100 million. We have one student fund that's $2.5 billion. And we have countless testimonials over and over and over again. We have a handful of funds between $10 and $30 million. And I don't know how many funds between $0 and, you know, $1 million. It's crazy. It's really cool to be a part of. And if you guys know, I sell— we have a free course on funds. If you guys want to go check it out, it's 100% free. Go check it out. investmentfundseers.com/freegift. You can go— proof's in the pudding. Go watch it. It's 100% free knowledge to you. We then sell. And the reason we sell courses is because people who pay pay attention. And actually, it kicks out people who are tire kickers. So we have a $2,000 course that we've had. We actually are in the top 1% of all courses ever created. That course, that $2,000, it's called our Mastermind Program. And then we had more people that wanted to learn about and actually work with me directly. So now we have 8 coaches that are all either ran funds or worked in high-level funds that have come and they give some of their time part-time To coach and mentor our groups, we have about 250 people in that. That's our black card program, and we help people all the way up, which is kind of cool. There you go. Proof's in the pudding. There you go. Go read our testimonials. There you go. Yeah, and by the way, we have about 10 fake Instagram accounts. So actually, you might have been hit by a fake Instagram account, by the way. And just so you guys know, if you guys can help me out, we literally have 10. I think it's 10. Fake Instagram accounts. They are copycatting and spamming my people. And if you guys— Instagram doesn't do anything. And so anyways, if you guys can go report them, it'd be awesome. Anyways, that's kind of the story. There you go. Investment Fund Secrets. That was our whole thesis and plan. And it's been really cool. We've helped these incredible entrepreneurs and I couldn't sleep at night if we weren't actually delivering huge value to people. And by the way, that's why I give away free content. We have an event we're doing. It's like, yo, come check us out. We're transparent. Come look. Look under the hood. And most of the people that are like, oh, you can't, you know, you're a scam, usually, actually the people that do it, number one, never have their face as their profile picture. Number one, it's pretty funny. And this is true across the board. Number two, never have ever run a company or anything before. And it's pretty interesting, the type of people. And that's the mentality they have. It's really interesting. Anyways, there you go. It's actually been really cool to be this kind of— we have this little corner of the internet that's been amazing to be a part of with Investment Fund Secrets. I've really loved it. Yeah, it's been really fun. All right. So let's see other questions here. All right. So that's kind of the thing. We've been on live for an hour. That's the Fed announcement. We'll see what happens going forward. There you go. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you at Funnel Launch Live. Click the link below if you guys want to come. It's going to be an in-person event.

It's going to to be amazing.

It's the first fund manager event of this type. We can say it's the number one fund manager event in the world because it's the only fund manager event in the world. There you go. Yeah, it's going to be pretty fun. Okay. Thank you guys so much. Thank you to all the people that are backing me up. I see all these comments are awesome. You're the best, Bridger. I have people arguing in the chat. It's awesome. I love it. Thank you guys. You guys know. It's pretty fun. It's been pretty cool to be a part of. Thank you guys so much, and I'll see y'all later.