Ted Oakley: A Bad Market Correction = Tremendous Opportunity For Smart Investors

**Ted Oakley** (0:00)
Every ten years or so, you have, I'd say, eight to ten, you're going to have a serious setback in the market. And I'm not talking about 20 percent, but more like 40, 50 It creates some of the best opportunity though. I mean, if you've got, if you manage your money right, it creates opportunity where you really buy things on sale. And people, investors are interesting, like everybody says, they want to buy everything else on sale, but not stocks. But they should get excited when things get really cheap.

**Adam Taggart** (0:38)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. There's a lot of debate right now whether the US is indeed at risk at entering a recession this year. And at the same time, the stock market's become a lot more volatile, swinging between risk on and risk off as Wall Street sentiment becomes increasingly more bipolar. So who's more likely to be proven right this year, the optimists or the pessimists? For answers, we turn to the experience and wisdom of financial advisor Ted Oakley, managing partner and founder of Oxbow Advisors. Ted's got over 40 years experience helping clients, mostly high net worth families, protect and build wealth through good times and bad. We'll find out how he's currently positioning his clients' assets for the road ahead. Ted, it's wonderful to see you again. Thanks so much for joining us.

**Ted Oakley** (1:25)
Thanks. Good to see you too, Adam.

**Adam Taggart** (1:27)
Thank you, Ted. Well, look, always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today. Why don't we just dive right in? I got a lot of specific questions, but if we can, let's just kick it off with a more general one. What's your current assessment of the global economy and financial markets?

**Ted Oakley** (1:44)
Well, I think really this year, where we're starting to see now is really a true weakening of things. You're really, you're seeing it in housing, residential. It's just those companies are not doing well at all. Now you're starting to see it in the consumer. You look at high-end luxury breaking down. There's so many things now where people, and it all goes back to uncertainty. You're looking at small company uncertainty. It's just off the map. And so I think everybody with uncertainty just saying, you know, I think I'll pull in, I'll wait. And when you, when you do that, you cause a hiccup. And I think that's where we are in the marketplace right now. It's just people don't know what the future is. And I think it has them confused.

**Adam Taggart** (2:26)
All right. And it's funny because we had, I hope, a big surge in sentiment. I think kind of across the board, consumers, businesses, etc., after the election was over. And one reason is, is obviously markets like clarity. So they got the clarity they were looking for. And I think a number of, a number of parties, especially businesses, were excited about the Trump administration's pro-business agenda. But of course, now that the new administration is in place, there's been a lot of disruption, a lot of intentional disruption that has increased, it has added a lot of increased, at least short-term uncertainty to the picture, especially around things like tariffs and whatnot. Why don't we just go straight to that? What's your assessment of the Trump second administration?
Your assessment of their economic policies is as best we know them so far.

**Ted Oakley** (3:29)
Well, I think anybody would like to see all of the fat out of the government. I think everybody knows that we spent too much money, we're too far in debt, and you're going to have to do some things to get that back in gear, if they in fact can do it. But I think what's happened is people realize that they didn't realize just how much the government is, it's a quarter of GDP.
So when you start cutting and all of a sudden some of the small businesses, some of the companies that do business with other businesses are saying, well, that's going to affect me now. And so they didn't think that in the past, but they're starting to see that now. And I think, again, I think as you can see, a lot of things, we spent a lot of money the wrong way in this country, and I think people appreciate that. I don't think they realize, though, how deep that government spending is, and they keep going back to Reagan, but under Reagan, nobody owned any stocks. You know, it's totally different. We only had 10%, people owned 10% stocks. That was nothing. But now it's a very high percentage, so if all of a sudden it starts affecting companies, then it's that deal where it affects me. And I think they're starting to feel that a bit.