Has The Market Moved Too Far Too Fast? | Michael Lebowitz

**Adam Taggart** (0:00)
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**Adam Taggart** (0:07)
Or let's do a little research.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:11)
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**Michael Lebowitz** (0:45)
What I'm showing you here is on August 1st, we introduced a series of new portfolios that investors can invest in. And they're thematic versus our core portfolios, which are variations of percentages of stocks and bonds. So you can see we have an AI, a growth and infrastructure, small cap, high dividend. And what we can do is use these portfolio. You can invest in these portfolios, but you can also just use the portfolios as a gauge of what the market is doing. And if you look at the top there, look at the gains, the P&L since inception. That's since August 1st. That's two months, two months in a week. And crypto is up 26, AI is up 17, small mid cap are up 17
It's truly stunning.

**Adam Taggart** (1:54)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart, welcoming you here at the end of the week for another weekly market recap with my good friend, the portfolio manager, Michael Lebowitz. Mike, how are you doing?

**Michael Lebowitz** (2:08)
I'm doing great, Adam. Great to be here.

**Adam Taggart** (2:10)
Thanks. Folks, Mike is standing in for Lance. As you know, Lance has a lot going on right now. So Michael very kindly is stepping in in his stead and maybe doing so a little bit more frequently going forward, but that's okay because who needs that Lance guys anyway, right, Mike?

**Michael Lebowitz** (2:26)
Yeah, different change of pace too. Maybe we'll get into some things Lance wouldn't get into. Yeah.

**Adam Taggart** (2:33)
Well, anyways, Michael, when you're on, you definitely have a big following here of folks saying, hey, you need to have Michael on more often. So hopefully we're pleasing them today. And talking about pleasing things, the world got potentially some of the best news ever last night with the announcement that apparently Hamas just agreed to the proposed peace plan that the administration has been trying to broker with many other world governments between Israel and Hamas. Israel had already signed on to it. So presumably, unless there's a real curveball here, we might be seeing the start of a new peace in that part of the Middle East.
I personally don't give it 100% probability. I'd like to give it as much as possible. I want to be really hopeful here, so I'm going to be. But in the interim, like I said, until somebody potentially throws a wrench in the spanner here, this is pretty fantastic news.

**Michael Lebowitz** (3:35)
Yeah, it's certainly hopeful. Unfortunately, we've seen this on and off for the last, what's it been, 75 years since they founded Israel. So we'll see. I mean, but they are dealing with Hamas, hopefully with Iran, who's behind Hamas, and hopefully they can get to real peace in the area. That would be a boon for the whole world, not just that area.

**Adam Taggart** (4:01)
Yeah. So let me ask you this, Michael.
I've asked Lance periodically about some of the big conflicts in the world. Okay, what would happen if we woke up tomorrow and the newspaper said, a Ukraine war over? Lance had said, because you guys do a lot of historical analysis, he says markets aren't really moved much by that stuff. Hey, sure, maybe there would be a pop in the market if peace were announced, but it wouldn't be something that he would expect to really add a material new premium, sustained premium onto the markets. Curious to know if you feel the same. Interestingly, at least this morning we're talking here, after the news of the deal, markets are down.

**Michael Lebowitz** (4:50)
On a one-off basis, I agree 100% with Lance. If you could tell me that the world will be at peace for the next 50 years, and that China, Russia, the US., Iran, whoever else will all get along, everything will be great, that deserves more of a premium. But no one's going to tell us, no one can tell us with any certainty that's going to happen. So yes, you get resolution to some problems, and then other problems pop up. The market's been rallying ever since the Ukraine-Russian war started. The markets don't seem to care too much about it. Obviously, the US government and other governments have been funding Ukraine. That's money that has been borrowed, that's had an effect on the fixed-income markets to some degree. It's a very unproductive use of money that has an impact on economic growth in the longer run. So there are some impacts. But day-to-day, week-to-week, even month-to-month, I think those impacts are very minor, unless you can tell me again that we're going to have peace for the next 50 years, which point the market, I think, would really change the longer-term trajectory of the markets.