Stocks Are "As Expensive As I've Ever Seen Them" | Ted Oakley

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**Ted Oakley** (1:01)
Things are really, really expensive. Now, can they get more expensive? Yeah, but they're about as expensive as I've ever seen them. I've never seen, for example, a CAPE ratio at 40 and current earnings at 24.5. I mean, everything is really off the charts, so could it get higher? Yeah, it could and might. But I think you have to think about this as saying that, you know, I'm at least in the eighth or ninth inning. And when you think about it like that, maybe it makes you stop and think a little bit.

**Adam Taggart** (1:39)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. Short of a dramatic surprise in the next few weeks, the markets should end 2025 with another big double-digit positive return for the third year in a row. A string of three-peets like this is quite rare in the markets, which raises the question, can the momentum last in 2026? Or will the market's return start to mean revert? To discuss, we've got the good fortune of welcoming back to the program High Net Worth Financial Advisor, Ted Oakley, managing partner and founder of Oxbow Advisors. Ted, thanks so much for joining us today.

**Ted Oakley** (2:16)
Good to see you, Adam.

**Adam Taggart** (2:18)
Ted, it's always such a pleasure to have you on here. I'm very much looking forward to this discussion. It's been too long since we've had you on last. A couple quick housekeeping things before we get to the meat of the discussion here. One, this is the first interview that I've recorded since I broke a tooth this past weekend and had to have an emergency tooth extraction, which was not fun. I'm doing fine now, but I will admit, I'm very self-conscious about this gap that has been left, and I'm going to get a replacement tooth for it, but it's going to take like over half a year. It's crazy how long apparently this takes. So anyways, I am more than a bit self-conscious about this. Hopefully folks won't see it while we're talking here, although eagle-eyed people might be able to find out exactly which tooth is missing, but I'm not going to share which one. But anyways, if I seem a little out of sorts, it's because I'm trying to figure out how to talk without showing the gap.

**Ted Oakley** (3:19)
Well, I haven't noticed anything. If you hadn't said anything, I would never know.

**Adam Taggart** (3:23)
Okay. Well, that's good to know. Just to make it clear for folks, it wasn't like tooth decay or anything like that. I literally just broke the tooth.
They said, look, your teeth were really healthy, which was what made the extraction so hard, because the rest just didn't want to come out. But anyways, thank you for that. Also, we'll talk more about this at the end of today's discussion, Ted, but you and the Oxbow team will be doing a free webinar for the Thoughtful Money audience next week on succession. Basically, if you are the one who is managing all the finances and the investing for your family, that's fantastic. But what happens if you can't be there anymore? Either you get incapacitated, you pass away, whatever, you decide just to give up the reins. It's something that a lot of this channel's viewers who are DIY investors wrestle with. They don't necessarily have a family member that they can hand that responsibility to. The question is, okay, well, what do you do in those cases? This is a topic of which you are very well experienced at Oxbow. I believe we're going to be doing this webinar, I believe it's this coming Monday. That's December 15th and we're doing it at 7 PM Eastern, correct?