Episodes

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome their colleague Alan Gula back to the show. Alan is an editor and member of the Investment Committee for The Total Portfolio and Stansberry's Forever Portfolio, as well as a senior analyst for flagship newsletter Stansberry's Investment Advisory.

Alan kicks off the show by analyzing a chart of the S&P 500 Index since 1957. He notes that the index is running 35% above its long-term trend, which is high but not a historic extreme. Focusing on just the past 15 years, Alan discusses the current secular bull market and whether artificial intelligence ("AI") could usher in a dot-com-style boom. He also goes in depth on The Total Portfolio's investment philosophy, what kinds of assets are in the portfolio, how the portfolio has outperformed this year, and the difficulty with being truly diversified...

A lot of times, you're going to have these periods where you just hold stuff that is so out of favor. I know international stocks now are starting to catch fire this year, but man... those have just been dead weight... So you sort of have to live through the periods of underperformance in some of these individual categories.

Next, Alan talks about managed futures and why their negative correlation with the S&P 500 makes them "the ultimate portfolio diversifier." As he explains, almost all investment advisers simply follow trends nowadays, so The Total Portfolio is one of the only places you can find truly diversified recommendations that'll protect you in any outcome. He then shares why he believes the traditional 40% allocation to bonds is dead, recommends two better ways to invest in this space, and explores where we are in the current bull market...

Maybe we're in the seventh inning... Expected returns are lower [moving forward]. But yeah... you can't get too defensive or too bearish. You just have to sort of play the market that's in front of you. And, again, that speaks to the balanced approach that we have.

Finally, Alan advises bearish listeners to keep looking for opportunities. He says you can't predict the future, but you can set up win-win scenarios. This leads to a conversation about real estate investment trusts, sector correlations, strategies for picking stocks, and both the pros and cons of AI replacing human jobs. As Alan brings up...

It's going to be interesting to see how young kids coming out of college are able to enter the workforce. Because I feel like a lot of companies are going to say, "Well, why would we hire these entry-level people?" Because they [can] just have AI do it. But then you run into the problem where your junior-level employees eventually gain experience and become senior level. So then you don't have that pipeline. That could be a problem.