The Fourth Turning Is Here & Stocks Are About To Get Clobbered | Gordon Long

**Gordon Long** (0:00)
So sometime between now and the spring, and I would say between now and March or April, this is liable to really crack. But don't ever underestimate what the government, the Federal Reserve will do with yields and rates and et cetera, and change that curve. So you've got to kind of watch it. But it's saying, it's signaling very strongly that all of this game is about to halt potentially quite abruptly.

**Adam Taggart** (0:38)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. If you're familiar with the concept of the fourth turning, it's hard to deny that we're in one now. A fourth turning is a societal cycle, and with a power structure and institutions that long existed beforehand, are disrupted and dismantled, and eventually replaced by a new order. Daily now, we're seeing an accelerated dismantling of the status quo. So whether you deem that good or bad, it raises an existential question for investors. How do we navigate a fourth turning with our wealth intact? To discuss, we're fortunate to speak today with market analyst Gordon Long of Matasi, Macro Analytics and Technical Analysis Strategic Investment Insight. Gordon, thanks so much for joining us today.

**Gordon Long** (1:24)
Thank you for having me, Adam. I always enjoy our discussions.

**Adam Taggart** (1:27)
Oh, gosh. Me as well, Gordon. You look great. Happy New Year. Lots and lots to talk about. We're kind of mashing together two things the audience has been really looking forward to. Folks have been asking me, hey, when's Gordon coming back on? But also a lot of folks have been saying, hey, get somebody to come on to talk about the fourth turning. Folks, I will be getting Neil Howe back on the program at some point. He's the demographer who came up with the term the fourth turning. But in the interim here, we're going to talk about how the fourth turning relates to investing and can't think of a better person to talk about that with than Gordon. So Gordon, you've been kind enough to prepare some slides for us on this topic, which we'll get to in just a second. Before we get to the slides, though, if I can just kick this discussion off with my normal starting question, what's your current assessment of the global economy and financial markets?

**Gordon Long** (2:18)
A big question, and we're going to get into a fair bit of that in the slides. But I think we have some... I've been pretty negative here quite a few years now. And it's because I see a debt crisis coming. I see the direction that we've been going is fundamentally flawed, and not just the United States globally. Having said that, in the last three or four months, I've become much more optimistic than I've been in a long time of what I see ahead and at least pointing ourselves in the right direction. The headwinds and the challenges that are in front of us are serious.
But at least I think we're beginning to come to grips with it on a broad base. There has always been people that have been talking about it, but I think more and more people are realizing the seriousness of our problems economically, financially. It gets into all the elements of a forth turning through culture and social. But at least we're beginning to be aware of them, and with that can come change. So I am quite optimistic. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't have some real problems over the next 6 to 18 months. And I'll point some of those out as we go.

**Adam Taggart** (3:35)
OK.

**Gordon Long** (3:36)
Which is opportunity, by the way.

**Adam Taggart** (3:39)
Right, right. Well, so let me ask this then. So your concerns that you're talking about were macro concerns, things like a debt crisis, stuff like that. But on the market side of things, when you talk about a rough 6 to 18 months from now, are you talking economically, or are you talking financial market-wise in terms of asset prices, or are you talking both?

**Gordon Long** (4:04)
I'm actually talking both. Because for example, right now, and markets are, I don't spend a lot of time right now, for example, in the equity market, sir. There is money to be made in precious metals, for example, but commodities, currencies, and more so in the bond market, in the credit market. So there's a lot of markets, and they're all work, working with kind of different cycles, and though they're obviously tied together. So we could talk about each of the markets. But right now, the equity market looks like it could be a pretty good year for us. And we think there's still a bit of a run to go here with high risk, that is.