The "T-Bill & Chill" Era Is Ending. What Should Investors Do Next? | Michael Lebowitz

**Michael Lebowitz** (0:00)
The Fed always cuts more than the market thinks. That's really important to understand, both going up and going down. They cut or raise more than the market is predicting. So the market is predicting 4 by the end of the year? Maybe, what if they cut by 6? What if we're talking about Fed funds with a two-handle? Then that would be by December, January. Not expected, but if the economy really slows down, that's probably where they're going to be.
And at that point, the two-year bill will be all the way down there with it. So start diversifying, moving out the curve a little bit. That's kind of, you know, the message. You don't have to do everything at once. And if you wait, you're never going to top tick the market. And if you wait too long, it's too late.

**Adam Taggart** (0:52)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and host Adam Taggart. I welcome you all here at the start of the week. We're very fortunate to be joined by Co-Portfolio Manager at Real Investment Advice, Mike Lebowitz. Mike, how you doing?

**Michael Lebowitz** (1:06)
Doing great. Thanks for having me on.

**Adam Taggart** (1:08)
Well, thanks so much for coming on, and I wanna give you props for pinch hitting today, Mike. We were supposed to be interviewing Judy Shelton today, and she had an unavoidable conflict come up at the last moment, and you were kind enough to step in. And I'm very glad that you did because there's some work that you've been doing of late that picks up on a theme that your colleague, Roberts and I have been talking about, which I described a few weeks ago as echoes of 1999, where Lance is saying that he is seeing degrees of speculation in the market that remind him very much of what we saw during the dot-com bubble. You've actually done some analysis to show that that's not just an opinion. We're actually seeing in the data a lot of similar trends in terms of where capital has been flowing in the markets that again, provides echoes of what we saw during the dot-com boom and then bust. So I want to dig into that with you real quickly. First, I just want to apologize to folks. If I sound a little congested, it's because I am. I'm still getting over the flu that I got coming back from my trip to Ireland. I'm going to do my best to soldier through this conversation with Michael, but I'm going to let him do the majority of the talking, which I'm sure folks are happy to hear about. All right, Michael. So I do want to also talk with you about bonds. It's been a while since we've done a bond update on this channel, and folks are always asking me, hey, can you get Mike Lebowitz on to give us an update? So if you don't mind, let's leave a couple of minutes at the end for that.
But why don't you walk us through what you're seeing in the markets right now? And I believe it all sort of starts with the action that you're seeing in high beta, low profitability stocks, correct?

**Michael Lebowitz** (2:55)
Right. So the market fell about 15% in April, and we hit a low, and the market bounced right back up your typical V-shaped recovery that has become commonplace recently. And I was kind of, you know, watching that, and you noticed that the rally back didn't feel quite the same as the rally in 2023 and 2024 And by that, I mean, it wasn't the MAG7 leading the way. It was other stocks, high beta, more speculative, a lot of companies not making money, but with promises of fortunes. And that as April kept going, and that became more and more thematic. So I was like, maybe it's just me, and I'm just noticing some of these companies up 20, 30% a day, and some of these meme stocks, and so I decided to kind of actually do the math.

**Adam Taggart** (3:54)
And- Sorry, Mike, but this is like meme stocks and like kind of the Kathy Wood type of tech stocks?

**Michael Lebowitz** (4:00)
Kathy Wood stocks have been doing really well. Meme stocks are doing well. Anything related to crypto, Robinhood, for instance, Coinbase, a lot of companies that have put AI into their names, and despite not being the NVIDIAs and the Microsofts of the world, but if you're AI-oriented, the stock goes up. Again, similar themes as what we saw in the dot-com era. If you had Internet in your name, or if you could somehow get dot-com into your corporate name, that was worth 40%, 60%.