Market Correction "Near Guaranteed" Given Insanely High Earnings Expectations | Lance Roberts

**Lance Roberts** (0:00)
The earnings estimates are so far out of touch with what the economy can generate. It is almost a guaranteed setup for a mean reverting event at some point within the next two years.

**Adam Taggart** (0:16)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart, welcoming you back here at the end of another week. For another weekly market recap, featuring my good friend, the flash frozen portfolio manager, Lance Roberts. Lance, how you doing?

**Lance Roberts** (0:31)
That's right, I just wanted to say that Bob the armadillo lied. We were not supposed to have any more winter, and it's 34 degrees this morning. So yeah, I'm a little upset with our armadillo.

**Adam Taggart** (0:40)
All right, 34 degrees in Houston has got to be, I don't know, like negative 600 degrees for most other parts of the US, I think, to be a relative equality. So real quick, armadillo, so is that your guys' version of the groundhog?

**Lance Roberts** (0:58)
Yes, exactly. So whenever they get the Texas honey fill out to see a shadow, we pull out Bob the armadillo to do the same thing. He said no shadow this year, so he said no more winter. And of course, this was after we had snow. We had a lot of snow in Houston this year, which is about a once-in-a-decade event. So we just got through this big snow blast that we had, and it warmed up a little bit, and then now we're back into subfreezing last night, and 34 degrees today. It'll be over by Sunday. This is the great thing about Texas, right? So if you don't like the weather in Texas, just wait a minute, because it changes. So we'll be back in the 60s next week. It'll be fine.

**Adam Taggart** (1:38)
All right. You know, I've visited Texas. I've visited Houston. I would say if you don't like the weather, normally, if you don't like the weather in Texas, leave because it's just going to stay really hot for much of the year.

**Lance Roberts** (1:53)
Look, there's no doubt that we basically have two seasons in Texas. So we have fall and then just hot as hell, which is kind of June, July, August. It's reaching 100 degrees here, but the winters aren't bad. So for me, I don't really like snow and shoveling my driveway and getting ice off the car and all that. That's not really my thing. So I'll tolerate the heat to have very mild winters.

**Adam Taggart** (2:23)
All right. Well, yeah. I mean, I fortunately have mild winters out here, but I pay the California tax literally for that benefit. So it's a trade-off.

**Lance Roberts** (2:31)
There's a give and a take. No matter where you live, it's no free lunch anywhere you go. You're going to pay a tax somewhere.

**Adam Taggart** (2:37)
Yeah. All right. Well, real quick, Bob the armadillo. So two questions. One, is February 2nd Armadillo Day there, the way that February 2nd is Groundhog Day for the rest of the country?

**Lance Roberts** (2:49)
Sort of. Yeah. It's not real well-populized. All right.

**Adam Taggart** (2:53)
But it's not like a different day of the year. You're doing it the same day.

**Lance Roberts** (2:55)
It's the same day, yeah.

**Adam Taggart** (2:57)
Okay. And is Bob going to end up on a barbecue this year, given his wrong prediction?

**Lance Roberts** (3:03)
It could very well be the case. We'll see.

**Adam Taggart** (3:06)
All right. Well, look, there's a lot going on right now. We've got a regular list here. We'll probably only get through half of it like normal, but let's dive in. Very quickly before we do, I just want to remind folks, the day this video is launching, if you're watching it the day it launches, then you have officially a week left before the early bird discount price to Thoughtful Money's upcoming spring conference on Saturday, March 15th expires. So if you're interested in going to the conference, run. Do not walk now. Buy your tickets over at thoughtfulmoney.com/conference to lock in that lowest early bird price among as many people as possible to get the lowest price. And a reminder that if you are a premium subscriber to our sub stack, if you use the code that I've emailed you, you'll get an additional $50 off of that lowest price.
A reminder for folks, if you can't watch the event live on Saturday, March 15th, don't worry. Replay videos of the entire event will be sent to everybody who registered. And last announcement around the event, we've been adding faculty members every week, as most of you know. This week, we are announcing the last edition to the schedule, and that is Michael Green. He's been able to arrange his calendar so that he can make the event. There's going to be lots to talk about with him, but obviously, we're going to have him dive really deeply on what's happening right now with passive capital flows, which you and I, Lance, have oftentimes said is sort of the whole enchilada here. So anyways, folks, again, don't forget to go buy your tickets now. All right. Let's see here, Lance. I was going to introduce you as the exuberant, Lance Roberts, until you started griping about the cold there. Reason why I would use the term exuberant is you just recently wrote a piece about something that we've been talking a bit about. Your piece was titled Retail Exuberance Sets the Market Up for a Correction. I don't necessarily think that piece is a call saying, hey, everybody, the market is going to correct immediately, assume the crash position. But it's just saying, given where retail valuations are right now, you really got to be careful at this point in the market.