James Altucher gets interviewed by Jason Hartman as the two discuss the economy, stocks, and the stimulus. They talk about the pandemic in New York City and what it is like to live in the city during this challenging time. Altucher also goes into his favorite positions in the market. The two also discuss how the pandemic is accelerating different areas of our life as well as the development of technology. They end with education and college degrees versus certificates.
Announcer 0:01
This show was produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:11
Welcome to the holistic survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The holistic survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. sudden change or worst case scenario. You’ll be ready. Welcome to holistic survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman
Jason Hartman 1:00
Hey, it’s my pleasure to welcome a returning guests back to the show and that is James all teacher when he was on a couple of years ago, we had a great conversation about his book at the time, a concept I very much support, which is choose yourself. And since then he’s developed a huge podcast following the ultimate your show is a former hedge fund manager knows a lot about the economy. And he’s been looking into the epidemiology of the COVID-19 situation. He also lives in New York City. You know, he’s the author of a bunch of books, I won’t even go through all the titles, but there’s, there’s so many he’s prolific. Anyway, it’s great to have James altucher back on the show, James, how you doing,
James Altucher 1:40
Jason? Thanks so much. Thanks for having me back on and I super appreciate it. It’s too bad. It’s It’s such unfortunate circumstances that bring us back together on the show, but it is what it is.
Jason Hartman 1:51
Yeah, it is what it is, that’s for sure. But you know, there’s a lot of opportunities right now to and whenever there’s a crisis, you know, like Chinese say crisis and opportunity are the same thing. Their thing is literally translated crisis is opportunity riding the dangerous wind. It’s kind of interesting. I didn’t know that.
James Altucher 2:10
Yeah. Is that like the same ancient curse? May you live in interesting times? Because it’s,
Jason Hartman 2:14
that’s a little different. But they used to say that a lot during the Great Recession for sure. And so these are interesting times, you know, being in New York City, man you are, you’re just on the forefront of it. So tell us kind of the big picture of what’s going on what you’re thinking what you’re interviewing a lot of people just what’s the site Geist in the in the James altucher world right now?
James Altucher 2:37
Yeah, it’s interesting. You bring up New York City in that between New York City and New Jersey. Those two areas alone are more cases and sadly deaths than the other 48 states combined. So my view when I hear the news, and when I walk out and see what’s happening on the street, I imagine it’s probably very different from the You know, somebody from other parts of the country where maybe the shutdown is not as restrictive or maybe there’s just not as many cases or not as many deaths. Like, you know, you take Georgia, for instance right next to Florida, which is a reopening or reopening a big portion of our economy today. And they’ve had, what 800 deaths out of a population of 10 million. Georgia itself has an economy in the 10s of billions. So, you know, it’s a different perspective. Here everyone is, I just feel this atmosphere of anxiety and fear and stress and nobody wants to everybody’s locked down. And there was all these panicky headlines weeks ago. Oh, the hospitals were about to get overrun. So Trump said the, what is it the USS comfort the Javits Center got turned into a hospital, the I myself visited the 10 hospitals on Central Park just to just to see what was going on. They were empty. All of these places were empty. They never did. overwhelmed the house hospital system.
Jason Hartman 4:00
That’s great. So they flattening the curve in time that we didn’t overwhelm the hospitals. And interestingly, you say that James, because being in New York, certainly you know about the conspiracy theories that are starting to float like crazy. And, you know, one is where they’re getting people to crowdsource video of hospitals in their neighborhoods, right. And you see, like these, you know, barricades set up for people to get in line, and nobody’s there. Now, I don’t know how real or fake this stuff is. I just know it’s interesting.
James Altucher 4:33
Thoughts on Yeah, I mean, before the peak, I went out to do a little bit of that crowdsourcing myself just to see what’s going on. Yeah, there was nobody anywhere. And I spoke to people who were coming in and out of the hospital, I spoke to doctors, I spoke to priests who are coming in and out and like, thank God, I’m not I’m not even saying like, I see you were wrong. It’s nothing like okay, they took a worst case scenario and they wanted to be cautious and Yeah, every precaution and that’s good. But I do think though, this speaks to the larger issue of we made. I say we the government, and the population made a huge, huge trillion dollar multi trillion dollar decisions off of mathematical models, that not once were correct. They weren’t even close to correct, right. Like back in January, early February, there were newspaper articles saying, around the world, 100 40 million people might die. That was the first article I ever saw about this. And then, you know, I get a report out of either Imperial or Harvard or both. That said there would be millions of deaths in the US. And, you know, up to 10 million deaths in the US was the first number I heard. And then it got kept coming down coming down. And every single model was wrong. March 25. i h m II came out with a model that said there would be 60,000 hospitalizations in New York City alone. By April 1, just six days later. Well, six days later, there were 12,000 hospitalizations They were 80% off and a model they had made just six days earlier and these were all the scientists we were relying on to make multitrillion dollar decisions about shutting down people’s livelihoods and careers and and you know, all the deaths and stress and collateral fatalities that ended up resulting, you know, if you have if you’re in stage three, liver cancer, and you wanted to see if you had stage four, that was considered a elective procedure, so you couldn’t do it, so you still can’t do it. So this is creating a problem for the entire system. And everyone will say, oh, you’re choosing the stock market over your grandma’s life, right? No, that’s not it at all. Like people are suffering like there’s right calls to the Bronx that offer child abuse hotlines are six times higher. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 6:46
even Indiana suicide hotlines are 800% higher Yes, the suicide hotlines
James Altucher 6:53
it’s it’s insane. So I really just who knows what the right decision was, but, you know, everybody was scared, but I wish the media Hadn’t fanned the flames of that hysteria, because hysteria now is turning into history. And, you know, hopefully we climb out of this. But But yeah, so that’s a long answer. But also in terms of the economy, I think, you know, we’re going from a period of great uncertainty to a little bit more certainty, which is that the economy will reopen the stimulus packages now to have been passed, plus the Federal Reserve’s stimulus. And the virus seems to have peaked in the US. And maybe they’ll be a segue, maybe not, that’s part of the James Altuchers. But we know some things now for certain that we didn’t know even like three or four weeks ago. So that’s a good thing. But now going into this new abnormal, I’ll call it is there’s a lot of uncertainty too, which is what industries will collapse because there’s going to be a few. And you know, we don’t know about the second wave of the virus, but now that we have a lot of data about the virus, hopefully we can say, Well, okay, we don’t have to shut down the entire economy this time. And we’ll see but, you know, there’s definitely been a lot interesting data about the economy.
Jason Hartman 8:02
Yeah, no question about it. You know, I mean, going forward, first off, what type of recovery Do you think it’ll be? And before you answer, I’ll tell you what I think. So, you know, we’ve all heard, is it going to be a V shaped recovery? That’s the hopeful picture? Is it going to be a you with a big ugly trough? Is it going to be an L shaped recovery? I think it’s going to be kind of like a modified square root sign, meaning that the square root sign usually, you know, it goes down, then it goes up higher. I think this one’s going to be down. It’s gonna be down in the V and then up but lower than the start. I think this is a lasting issue. You know, it’s going to have a huge hangover on the economy. And I think the economy is going to shrink. I think there’s going to be a form of PTSD. I hate to say where travel isn’t going to resume it’s going to be a slow slog. To get back to the the new normal, I mean, there will certainly be a lot of opportunities. I’m not being like, negative. I just think there’s, you know, there’s always a lot of repositioning, right when something like this happens, but your thought,
James Altucher 9:13
I mean, look, this is a bigger disaster than, and I’m not even talking about the pandemic, the economic shutdown is a bigger disaster than what happened in the economy after 911. What happened in the economy after 2008 2009, which was a pretty big disaster. Of course, the financial system collapsed, and they had to bail it out. There was no cash left and they had to put cash into the system. And 911 the country feared it was under attack. And certainly things were affected permanently like like travel and and airports and our relationships with the Middle East and so on. And banking kind of changed forever after 2008 2009. I mean, it was
Jason Hartman 9:52
back if you if you walk into a bank now, with a couple million bucks instead of saying, Hey, you know, we’re glad to have you and by the way Here’s your free toaster. It’s like oh, we’re suspicious you might be a terrorist or money launder, it’s just totally the Patriot Act is, you know, the know your customers it’s just changed everything. Yeah, it’s like a letter on you know?
James Altucher 10:13
Yeah and a lot of things are gonna change now and I think some of them we could probably guess about some of them. We can’t but you know it’s funny just debating the different shapes I think I’m more in your camp about how I see more of a W than a V right? So you know, we go up a little which is what’s already happened we’re kind of like at the peak of the W and then we’re going to have to go down again because as long as you keep seeing insanity happen, that those are all canaries in the coal mine. So like what happened with the oil futures contracts two days ago going negative that’s never happened before. That’s a little bit of insanity. Like I even see experts being quoted in newspaper articles talking about Oh, the physical delivery of oil. Nobody wants to take your oil These were cash settled contracts, there was no oil involved. It was just, it was just a big, insane thing that happened. But as long as there’s insanity happening, there’s no way that we have the enough certainty in the market that just go straight up from here, no matter what the stimulus does. Second, the stimulus is hitting but there’s nothing to hit the economy now is a is like a patient on life support. It’s this is a band aid at best, and you have to have a living patient that’s walking around before the stimulus can work. So we don’t quite know for sure, we know what’s going to happen that the economy is going to wake up, but we don’t know when and then what how many phases
Jason Hartman 11:34
and and by the way, if I just keep your thought there, please don’t don’t forget, but what you’re kind of referring to is and we’ve been talking a lot about this rare malady of supply demand shock, you know, which sort of was pronounced in the 70s. And so we’ve seen demand destruction obviously, but I think we’re gonna see supply destruction too, because for example, oil is a you know, a great example. Right, look at this is prediction and may be totally wrong, of course. But, you know, now we have demand destruction and there’s like gluts of oil and oil is cheap and you know, they’re they’re having tankers store oil, that they’re not moving the oil. They’re just storing the oil, right? It’s a totally weird situation. But now these oil companies go out of business. And when things do recover, there’s a lot less supply. So same with the airlines like I did. I did a Google flights search today and I’ve been looking at flights just interesting. I don’t want to go anywhere I’m just doing is a study. Sure. And, and to go. I live in Palm Beach, Florida. So to go from Miami to LA x, which is like an easy route, you know, take a direct flight. It’s really expensive. In fact, looking at the chart on Google flights of the last 6075 days, it’s at the highest price it’s been and if you look, if you look just three weeks ago for that flight, it was dirt cheap. Okay, four or five weeks ago, cheap. Right, because you have lots of supply and no demand. And now that the airplane the airlines have grounded a lot of their flights and canceled the routes, you have, you know, a small amount of demand, but a lot less supply to so it sounded like you were sort of alluding to that, and I just wanted to bring that out as a discussion point.
James Altucher 13:21
Yeah, I mean, with oil like so i
Jason Hartman 13:23
i and and not only oil in particular, just generally widgets, but oil as an example. Go ahead. Yeah.
James Altucher 13:28
Yeah, I mean, I think I think because it’s such a weird thing. This this lack of demand is not based on where the economy was heading a few months ago. It’s it’s this force, lack of demand, because we’re all being told to stay at home, which I’m not questioning one way or the other. That’s not what this is about. But so I own part of a private oil company, and we just stopped producing the oil, like we realized there’s not going to be any demand. And there was no reason to pump more oil out and we’ll start pumping again when there’s demand. I think That’s what most oil companies are going to be doing. So it’s, I don’t know, if the oil companies is generally gonna go out of business, some places will like, you know, the average small business like a restaurant only had 16 days of cash in the bank, they might not have gotten their small business loans. Hardly any small businesses actually got the small business loans. A lot here. Yeah, a lot of storefront businesses are going to go out of business, a lot of small mom and pop businesses, sadly, are going to go out of business. I don’t know how you really avoid that. But they’re trying to, I mean, the premise of the $2.2 trillion stimulus package and then an additional 450 billion as of yesterday, the premise is that two and a half trillion dollars of money is not going to be spent this quarter. So that’s what they’ve calculated, you know,
Jason Hartman 14:43
give us that number. Again.
James Altucher 14:45
It’s well, like every quarter, yeah, the GDP of a quarter GDP of a year is about $20 trillion. Every quarter, that’s 5 trillion. And they kind of think there’s about 40 to 50%. Yeah, so then this is the government This is what I’m getting. This was on my pocket. Cast with the I had on my podcast the other day, the deputy chairman of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. So he was telling me his reasoning is that between two and 3 trillion would be withdrawn from the economy because we’re all not spending money while in our houses. And so they created two to $3 trillion of stimulus. And so it’s supposedly going to replace what we lost in terms of money. But again, all that stimulus is going to end up just sitting in a bank. And so the velocity of money needs an economy to be flourishing. Otherwise people won’t spend, they just keep the money in the bank. And the money doesn’t have the intended effect on the economy. So to your point, you could put you’d have to put in five or 6 trillion if the economy is truly going to slow down, you’d have to put in trillions more to make up the same amount that last year’s 2 trillion was. So the point is, is that if if we do have this PTSD, then you’re right, we’re going to see much more of a slowdown in the data in q3 and q4 than we expected it won’t be the V shaped surge that some Economists and government officials are predicting. Now, we don’t really know, though. I mean, the one One theory is like you said, we’re going to have this PTSD. We’re not going to realize you don’t need to go out as much. We’re gonna enjoy staying at home. On the other hand, it’s sort of like, we’re drug addicts. And we were addicted to the economy and spending money. And now we’re in drug rehab. Yeah, definitely a drug rehab to put it. Typically in drug rehab. We stopped using drugs. And but then when we get out of rehab, we start hanging out with our old friends and going our old Hangouts and we start using again we relapse. Yeah. Right. So So theoretically, we could relapse. Also, I think this is one of the uncertain things. I could say. Now, I’m never getting on a plane again, or I’m never going to a restaurant again. But when I can, and my wife wants to go to a restaurant, I’ll do it. I’m not and I own. I actually own a bar. So I hope people return to bars, but we’ll see a dirty disgusting petri dish of disease like a bar, right? Like the bar I own at least But I think it’s an James Altucher and we’ll see. But I’m more inclined to think just the mechanics of it is more like a W. And although I do think the stimulus will be enough, not necessarily the short term stimulus that Congress is passing, although that will help. But the Federal Reserve stimulus, which is cutting the interest rates, buying mortgage backed securities, buying corporate debt, that’s gonna, that that’s almost going to be forced to lift the economy. But people don’t realize federal stimulus, even this extreme doesn’t kick in for a good six to 12 months, at least. Yeah, so we’ve got a while before that kicks in.
Jason Hartman 17:37
So we’ll say you made a great metaphor there of the patient that’s on life support, right? And so, you know, you can pump money but pumping money, you know, it doesn’t solve every problem. It’s the usual tool that the Federal Reserve goes to, it’s there, it’s the sort of their go to thing you know, in fact, it’s just funny 911 you know, our Great Recession. Now, you know, whenever you have like a g7 meeting, the whole thing is like, How much money do we pump into the system? Right? That’s always that’s always the solution. But in this case, it doesn’t totally, it’s not the panacea, it is sometimes. Right,
James Altucher 18:17
right. Like in 2000. Basically, we’re following the playbook of 2009 2008 2009. So the Federal Reserve over the past two, three decades, has gotten a lot more sophisticated about the ways they can help the economy so so back in the 90s, Alan Greenspan would just cut rates, and that would do it. After 911. There was some stimulus checks, and it was mostly just cutting rates. But after 2008 2009, it wasn’t just cutting rates. It was also encouraging banks to have excess reserves by raising the interest rates that the Fed would pay banks on those excess excess reserves. It was they started buying, you know, mortgage backed securities are going out a little bit further than just treasury bills. And they’re doing more of that. Now they’re doing the same, but more now. And, again, you’re right. if nobody’s buying goods, it does nothing to help the guy. It does zero. Yeah. So somebody has to the economy has to move first. And is this stimulus enough? Are the right people getting it? Was this the right macro economic theory? I don’t know. This is a giant experiment. 2 trillion just like to replace spending. I don’t know if that we’ll see if it works. I mean, it’s probably better than nothing. And then you have we have massive deflation right now on some things, but like you pointed out, depending on how the how efficient the industry is, there might be inflation. And then, of course, structurally, does all this increase in dollars resulted in inflation? It’s unclear right now. The rest of the world buys our dollars and that’s a deflationary pressure. But I do think specifically, you’re going to see things like commercial real estate has to have a mini financial crisis after this work is going to go out and
Jason Hartman 19:56
you’re saying many, I think it’s going to be a maxi crisis.
James Altucher 20:00
Well, I guess I agree. I’m just hearing you’re being the
Jason Hartman 20:03
word being optimistic. Yeah.
James Altucher 20:04
It’s like, I don’t want to say to my wife, why don’t you get the maxi pads instead of like, like, those do that like, but yeah, I mean, what’s gonna happen when we work goes out of business which is 100% chance. Right? Right. Like ever the average they’re the biggest real estate renter for commercial real estate in New York City and other cities. So if you have a building and suddenly eight floors, your renter just disappears right? And you got to clean
Jason Hartman 20:28
it out. Find another renter and we work was already a scam. You know, before this, so yeah, right. So thank you. This is a pulldown. And that was a smart decision. So poor Adam Newman, he’s only going to be a millionaire not a billionaire.
James Altucher 20:43
Yeah, he pulled out like 700 million so he’ll he’ll he’ll survive, but I don’t know if he can feed his kids in a few years, but we’ll see. But what are all these real estate commercial real estate companies gonna do? They live on borrowed money, and now borrow time and they’re not going to survive. It’s all the Tire industry is going to change airlines, despite a bailout are probably going to go out of business cruise lines. I don’t know if Las Vegas is going to be able to stay in business. Are you going to Las Vegas anytime soon after this, like would you even slam that?
Jason Hartman 21:11
That’s the PTSD kind of concept that I’m talking about. Like, yeah, you know, I mean, this may sound weird, but, and I don’t mean to minimize the quarantines and the depressive effect it’s having on on people’s psychology. But personally, for a guy who jumped on a plane two, three times a month, I love it. I just love not owning an airline ticket, having no plans. I’m enjoying this time of just being a homebody. I actually really quite like it. I know. There’s lots of that everywhere. You know what? Well, they drive to the base. Yeah, I’m in Palm Beach, Florida. So they just reopened features and I have not been yet. I don’t know why they closed them in the first place. I can see closing them down for spring break parties and stuff. Sure, but just a regular beach. That’s not part of a scene. That seems sort of silly to me, but they close. Yeah.
James Altucher 22:02
And look at this a lot of evidence that vitamin D and the sunshine help you get the virus and kids need to go outside and run around and play question. No question. Central Park here is is I don’t want to say it’s crowded but there’s a lot of people there even right this moment and there’s appropriate social distancing and masks and
Jason Hartman 22:21
so on, as long as people are doing the thing, right. But what I meant to say by that is that as part of the PTSD concept, I think people will get used to and maybe be okay with a little bit of a simpler life. I admit that right after this is over. It’s kind of like if you live in a place with inclement weather a lot the first sunny day everybody’s out right? And you know, like your wife wants to go to a restaurant sure I get it. But after a while, I think the new normal will be like a lessening of the demand for that, you know, fewer trips, fewer cruises, fewer restaurants, fewer rebar, you know, I mean people still do it. I just don’t think it’ll be as often.
James Altucher 23:04
Yeah, that could be like look at after 2009 I bet you if we did a Google Trends search on minimalism, you know, and then and then you had the whole Marie Kondo thing and so on, I bet you minimalism really became in vogue after 2009. Kind of the, not that it was the death of consumerism, but it was a sickness. And probably a similar thing will happen here. And I think what I’m seeing when I talk to people and who knows if it sticks is that the whole kind of lifestyle influencer, you see on Instagram and Tiktok, I feel like that’s over and people now are looking for more Mental Health Solutions, stress solutions, spiritual solutions, and how does that translate into the economy? Look, there’s definitely going to be some cheap stocks out there like we’re talking right now over the internet. And bandwidth has increased so much that companies like Netflix and YouTube are saying we’re going to decrease the bandwidth quality or The bandwidth needs of our videos for short term because there’s so much demand now
Jason Hartman 24:04
they did that in Italy, when that first day when the quarantine first happened there. Yeah,
James Altucher 24:10
yeah. And so chips that help for bandwidth or chips that help for gaming or virtual reality those are gonna skyrocket. Of course Amazon’s always gonna do well, Google’s always going to do well, you know, tech companies will do well, well companies will bounce back because there will be demand again for you know, oil fuel so much of the world economy is you know, even going back to a $30 oil price or $40 oil price, you know, which will happen within a year or two easily, particularly with the stimulus. Well, you know, you have companies like shell Royal Dutch Shell, which have gone from 66 to 32, during this crisis pays a 10% dividend, those company and they’re not cutting their dividend anytime soon, right?
Jason Hartman 24:48
Those companies are going to exist James share your hot stock tips. I almost bought Carnival cruises when it got really cheap. I mean, maybe it still is, but that’s a real risky one, but Exxon’s cheap mean I’m not even a wall street guy. I like real estate. I think income property is the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. I love it. But But you know, I’m actually getting I’m getting greedy I’m getting tempted on the stock market so, so fire away with a couple of tips. So you like shelf?
James Altucher 25:19
Yeah, I like shell. And, you know, again, I think the market as a whole, if you want to take a risk, don’t buy you know, spiders spy, which is this ETF that represents the s&p 500 represents the overall market. I like RVT a little bit better. It’s the Royce value trust. It also represents the entire market, but it’s a closed end fund. So it trades at a significant discount to the assets own. So it’s like buying the market at a discount. And because of the current volatility, they’re at a larger than normal discount so you get the upside of the discount closing. It’s a little bit in the weeds here but RVT is a better way to buy the whole market is what I’m saying. I like there’s a drone company a VA And drones are gonna do good. They’re already testing out drones for delivery now, like, anything that was gonna happen in 10 years is gonna happen tomorrow.
Jason Hartman 26:08
You know, that’s, that’s interesting. You say that because, you know, one of my favorite economists is Joseph Schumpeter, right? creative destruction. Yeah. And what any crisis does since Necessity is the mother of invention, is it just brings the future closer to us. We had all the online tools. We had zoom, we had Skype before, but now everybody’s been forced to use them. Even people that really resisted that, you know, a bunch of the mastermind groups I’m in for example, you know, they’re doing zoom meetings. And I’m thinking do we really after this is over, do we really need to meet in person again, it’s so much easier to just have a zoom meeting right
James Altucher 26:45
now I used to I agree, like I used to do all my podcasts in person. Yeah, for years and years until this lockdown, right. And now I’m loving doing the podcast really not because I don’t want to see people in person, but allows me to prepare right up until the very last minute Don’t go anywhere. I can tell. It’s easier for me to take notes during the podcast. podcasts are just as high quality. It’s easy for me to book guests actually, because they don’t have to be in the city. Right. So, and it shows me I don’t have to be in the city either. I can be anywhere. Yeah. So yeah, I do think things are gonna change. I do think the stimulus eventually will work. And so I’m hoping we’ll see a mini surge in q3 q4, of this year. And then in 2021, I’m hoping we see the big surge as people finally, you know, start buying real estate again, or start traveling more again. But, you know, I do think there’s too much uncertainty at the moment. And although there are bargains, I probably wouldn’t dive in. By the way, you know, what’s been interesting, too, is law enforcement. So, in England, there’s been a surge of knife attacks against police because there’s a little bit of social unrest. I shouldn’t just say I should say, all countries in the US
Jason Hartman 27:54
or anywhere they have gun control, you get more knife attacks, you know, so
James Altucher 27:58
and then there’s a little bit more social unrest right now. And I don’t know, I think, you know, any search out right now I’m out of the markets completely I own one stock. So I’ve just, I’m not recommending this stock. I’m biased. Which one? So it’s called rap technologies, wr TC, and they introduced a non lethal weapon. And, you know, I don’t really know anything more than anyone about it, but it’s the one stock I own, because I do think the world is moving towards, you know, non lethal police forces for a solution. No, you know, police officers don’t want to wake up in the morning and say, today’s the day I shoot somebody, I really want an alternative between beating someone up and shooting someone and this this rap technology as a weapon or device that wraps a cable around you at the speed of sound. Oh, well, you can’t move it just like Batman. And people, states and countries and governments need need something like this. So it’s one thing I own it, I feel economy independent. There’s always going to be a police force and security guards for stores and so on. So that’s the only thing I want. But I am looking at drone companies like AV AV, ai robot, IR bt, and video, the chipmaker NVDA, Palo Alto Networks, whatever their symbol is, I forget Royal Dutch Shell on the oil side, you know, and then I’m just seeing if there’s I don’t, I’m curious what you think I don’t really see any deep deep value stocks yet also, which makes me nervous.
Jason Hartman 29:22
Yeah, I don’t. I’m not thinking like it’s totally time to dive into everything yet. But again, I’m not a stock expert. But I do want to ask you about this. So last week, I interviewed Dottie Herman, the CEO of Douglas, Elliman real estate on the show. And of course, she’s a New Yorker like you she was in the Hamptons when we did the interview. And we talked about
James Altucher 29:42
money. She’s not a New Yorker, by the way. Everybody, everybody says they’re a New Yorker and they all make they all went to the Hamptons, and I’m, I’m a New Yorker,
Jason Hartman 29:52
yours, okay, okay.
James Altucher 29:55
All right, York City. I’m in New York. I’m right across the street from my bar. I’m here. With with the gang. You’re the you’re
Jason Hartman 30:01
the real deal sticking it out. Okay. All right. All right here. Yeah. Good deal. So anyway, um, you’re saying she said, Well, I asked her about my theory that after the lockdowns lift, will there be a mass migration from high density to low density living. And, you know, again, it could be just 10% of the people that live in high density areas, and high density defined by not just New York City, but by anything where you’re typically living in a five storey or more building where you’re forced to take an elevator, and you’re you’re very likely to be using mass transit. Okay, um, you know, even after there’s a vaccine, better treatments, whatever, I think there is going to be kind of a PTSD a sort of suspicious nature with people that hey, you know, maybe there’s gonna be another virus You know, there’s what’s what’s the next one will it be sorry. Again, will it be, you know, Hey, remember, you know now everybody’s suddenly watching and learning about the Spanish Flu back in 1918. So, will there be this mass migration like that? And interestingly, she has a self interest. She runs a big New York real estate brokerage. And she says, I think people are moving. I guess on one side, you get a lot of listings, but ultimately you want people moving into your market to make money long term.
James Altucher 31:27
Well, don’t forget she sells also in I mean, Douglas, Elliman that the company sells in or represents people in Westchester. The Hamptons, New Jersey the summer in suburbia. Yeah, got it. So she she benefits either way, but it’s interesting. She says that. I agree, though, because who’s going to come out of this day one and say, You know what, I’m gonna finally move to New York City. Yeah, right. I don’t care. They might have a second wave and they’ll shut down the whole economy again, and maybe there’ll be riots in the streets. I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna buy and, and furthermore, no one’s gonna say Can’t wait to fulfill my lifelong dream of starting a pizza restaurant in the middle of enhan. Like, they’re just not going to do that. So I agree with you and there’s gonna and that means there’s gonna be less things to enjoy in New York City and more reasons to move away and not just in the suburbs of New York but down to Florida. I was I was just looking at real estate prices in Florida. Come on, come on
Jason Hartman 32:20
down. The weather is beautiful. In fact, James I coined a new term just yesterday to describe Florida Now note that I’m from California almost all of my life the Socialist Republic with super high taxes worse the New York by the way. slightly worse. Yeah. And I moved here two years ago and I’ve coined a new phrase I call it Florida has luxury whether luxury whether it’s a new kind of weather, luxury together. Yeah,
James Altucher 32:48
I love Florida weather I love right where you are Palm Beach, that whole area, Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale del Rey, Miami, I like that whole quadrant but
Jason Hartman 32:59
coming down in green Missile Command games that Missile Command behind you
James Altucher 33:02
know Missile Command is a horizontal box that is defender joust, Stargate robotron, the more vertical game,
Jason Hartman 33:10
you’re reminding me of being a teenager when I used to play video games all the time. Yeah,
James Altucher 33:14
yeah, that’s why I got this is $300 for that box, you should get it. It’s got 50 games on it. But um, what I’m hearing from real estate brokers is that the listing prices have not yet changed. But the offers are coming in 20 to 50% lower right now, and maybe people think they’re gonna get a bargain and maybe that’s gonna be over once the economy reopens. But some of those offers have been accepted as well. And we’re just not seeing the change in listing prices but but apparently they’re seeing and I don’t know if she had any insight into this, but apparently they see they are seeing the change in in offers out there. But we’ll see if that holds again. It’s one of the James Altucher James Altuchers. Yeah, right. Yes. Yes, Rumsfeld.
James Altucher 33:53
Rumsfeld, known James Altucher matrix. I love it.
Jason Hartman 33:56
Well, hey, is there anything else you want to share with our audience? You know, just anything I haven’t asked you. I know. Yeah, I mean, you’ve got so many books, I wouldn’t even know where to go with your books. There’s just so many but I loved choose yourself that concept that there’s no gatekeeper and, and about a year from now you got another great book about skipping the line which I can’t wait to read that one.
James Altucher 34:16
Well, I think I just want to remind people that, that even if there is this PTSD, even if your job seems insecure, or or it’s over or you were furloughed a little too easily and you get nervous or this time alone has made you think you don’t really want to go back to your job or career. Just I think there are a lot of opportunities out there. I think the stimulus there is going to be money in the economy. So the stimulus is a very real trillions and trillions of dollars between Congress and the Federal Reserve. We’re talking like six $7 trillion. That’s real money and and the dollar is not going to inflate so quickly. There will be opportunities when everyone else is scared to kind of step up and change your life. If you want. or start a business or invest in yourself, maybe don’t buy stocks, maybe start taking a photography class and, you know, change careers or come up with an idea for, you know, any kind of business. Well, James, actually,
Jason Hartman 35:12
you know, you wrote 40 alternatives to college. Right? Yeah. And you know, what’s interesting about this, too, is that for the smart and ambitious people, they’re using this time as a huge self improvement program. You know, they’re either improving their mind, they’re taking courses online, they’re exercising. And interestingly, you know, the schools, the colleges and the universities and just school school has sent everybody home to learn. And I think this is going to cause a collapse in ridiculously high student tuition for colleges, because nobody’s going to pay 50 grand a year to learn online without getting a college experience, and all of that college real estate, because almost every university now is basically a hedge fund real estate investing company. Right and a branding agency. It’s ridiculous how far they’ve gotten away from their mission. I can’t blame them though. I mean, I would do it too if I was there. But you know all of that college real estate is going to it’s going to be reused it’s going to come up for sale those dorms that can be sold as condos are turned into apartments are I don’t know what’s gonna become ghost towns like will become ghost towns. Yeah,
James Altucher 36:22
I agree college is clearly the tide has come in and the colleges were left standing naked on the beach.
Jason Hartman 36:29
Yeah. The emperor has no clothes. It’s a ripoff. Yeah,
James Altucher 36:32
the college is clearly a scam. Because they like you said they sent everyone home. And they were like, oh, we’re kidding. You don’t really need to be on campus to get the college experience is do it all online. Don’t look but don’t look at Coursera where you have really great teachers teaching up to date stuff or Code Academy or Khan Academy, Khan Academy class or LinkedIn learnings Yeah, don’t don’t look at those which have really great teachers and stuff. Just keep going to our Old out of date textbooks that we charge you $1,000 a book for. And by the way, get the hell out of the dorm rooms because we got to take those over, but we’re not giving your money back.
Jason Hartman 37:09
They won’t even refund the money. It’s unbelievable what a scam is 101 possessions nine tenths of the law, we got your money. See you later. So I don’t know why people will be excited about going to college. But you know, we’ll see. Well, we’ll see. I agree with you though. I think again, it’s one of those things that what would have been a conversation five to 10 years from now is going to become a conversation tomorrow much sooner which is which is creative destruction. It’s great. And you know, the the bottleneck in the college, I call it the the university debt enslavement complex. Okay, like the military industrial complex, the bottleneck seems to be the accreditation concept, right? You know, like the Khan Academy, or Coursera is not accredited. You can’t get that document. You can’t get that degree. And as soon as they somehow figure out the roundabout to the accreditation thing, I mean, certainly some companies I Google hire people without a degree now. And that’s awesome. Because there are tons of smart people walking around without degrees, then when you get around the accreditation bottleneck, then I think things really work.
James Altucher 38:12
I’ve thought a lot about this. So one thing is you and I know that that accreditation aspect is doesn’t really make any sense. Like you say, you know, Google’s actually hiring people without degrees. And many people would be willing to take a chance. They see you have the skills they’d rather have that than an MIT degree. Sure. But, you know, kids are influenced by their guidance school counselors and their other friends and their peers. They think you need college. It’s really the kids now they think you need college to get a job. Yeah, and it’s not true. But, you know, maybe there’s a business opportunity. Maybe you could you get a panel of experts or whatever educators and you say, these online courses across these different platforms are what we’re going to accredit. We’re going to say this is a worthwhile computer science, the greatest And we’ll
Jason Hartman 39:00
verify if there’s a a financial course that James altucher and Ray Dalio endorse, and you have been pass it. A Wall Street firm should hire that person. Right. Yeah. And I think I think
James Altucher 39:13
that is a reasonable business plan, there’s probably going to be some business models, we’re not even aware of now that that are going to be in that category. Remote learning is definitely a thing that’s going to ramp up. Big time. Yeah. And, you know, I think also, you know, maybe just people won’t care about accreditation, at some point, maybe, you know, which is the other extreme. And the opportunity now is creating more and more online courses. So, you know, an online course is fairly easy to set up. It’s a good way to make a living. It’s one of those make money while you sleep things. Yeah. And we all have the capabilities to be expert enough to teach non experts something right. And so if you just start now, within two years or less, you could have a great online course that you’re teaching and make a lot of money.
Jason Hartman 39:58
Yeah, and just for the record, I want to say that I don’t think College is a scam in and of itself. I just think it’s massively overpriced. You know, that’s all. You know, I think if you could work your way through school with a part time job and pay for it, it’d be okay. I have no objection to that. I just think when it increases in price it three or four times the rate of real inflation. That’s a complete scam.
James Altucher 40:21
It’s it is increasing. tuitions have increased faster than inflation, every single year for 50 years in a row.
Jason Hartman 40:28
Well, when the government ensures the loans and floods money into the system, you get inflation. What a concept, right? Yeah, absolutely. James, give out your website.
James Altucher 40:36
It’s James altucher calm or you can find me on Twitter at jL stitcher or find me on Instagram at Al Dutcher or find me on tik tok at James altucher just started doing my Tick Tock videos on this break.
Jason Hartman 40:49
That just proves beyond the shadow of a doubt. You are hip and cool. You do Tick Tock
James Altucher 40:56
I hope my kids Listen to this. You Tell them that
Jason Hartman 41:00
Yeah, well have them listen definitely that their dad is HIPAA gold ever had me on the show. I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for joining us, Jason. Thanks so much. Thanks again.
Jason Hartman 41:13
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