Your stock portfolio just got hit with something you probably missed completely. While you're watching the bombs fall on Iran, something far more dangerous happened to your retirement account, and no one's really talking about this. Because here's the thing. The whole around situation or any geopolitical conflict is always the shiny object. But the real story is what is happening behind the curtain. And while everyone's distracted by the explosions and the endless newsfeeds, you're missing out on this. And if you don't understand what's happening, you're going to make the same mistake that costs regular investors fortunes in every crisis before this one. I'm going to walk you through that today. I'm going to give you the data, and I'm also going to walk you through three specific investment opportunities you need to understand. First of all, oil and why it's a trap that's going to burn most people. Second, gold, why it holds value longer than oil and what it means for what you might want to be doing. And then third, defense stocks. Now, a lot of big money is going to be quietly moving into that, but is it too early or is it too late? By the end of this video, you know exactly which, so stick around because this is the playbook that Wall Street has been running for decades. My name is Felix Preen. I'm a former investment banker. That back there is Winston, who's done all the hard research for this video, which is why he's looking rather tired. And our mission is very simple. We founded the Goethe Academy six years ago. We've taught well over 20,000 people so far. I say we, I mean my mentors, my Wall Street mentors, guys who worked in the big investment banks, the Meralds, the Goldmans, the Solomons, all those guys. And they've been teaching regular retail investors. And I do my bit to spread that wisdom and knowledge because I think it is what actually sets us free. And right now with Iran, we're watching the same Wall Street patterns and action. The crisis is going to separate the people who understand the game from the inside and those who don't. So by the time we're done here in the next few minutes, you're going to be in the first group, I hope, so stick around. So let me show you what's actually happening. Starting with the money printing that you're not meant to notice, so don't tell anybody. The Fed started pumping money into the system again in October, continued heavily last week, and it may well do the same thing again this week. I'll tell you where you can get the live data matter when you watch this video. And the genius part is they've given money printing a new name so you won't notice. They are calling money printing now reserve management purchases. Previously, these things were called quantitative easing. Quantitative easing, which was about as clear as mud, but they thought, let's make this even muddier and let's call it reverse management purchases. So the government is printing money to buy government debt because nobody else wants to buy it. And they're pumping that money also into the banks to make sure the system is stable. Now let me show you the data. So I actually built that into our tool here, which we have, which tracks a bunch of things like gold and silver inventories. You know, that's running out. But we have this macro monitoring here now, the hidden money printing. And you can see just in the last year, they printed$225 billion through this reverse, whatever it's called, hidden money printing. The official money printing is also pretty significant. We went up 3.8% last year. And you note here that beginning of this year, we've really started a new kind of trend of money printing, right? Now, why is that important? Because everything depends on how much money there is. If there's more money, stock prices go up. And just zoom out 10 years, and you can see uh 77% more money around now than there was 10 years ago. Uh, do you think that might have something to do with the fact that the stock market's up? I think so. So the biggest kind of hidden money printing we had was uh 2018-19, and then they stopped that nonsense, but they're starting it again. Doesn't look like a lot, but it's 220 billion in the last year. And government spending, by the way, is also up 88%, uh, which is of course also lunacy, but the kind of lunacy that makes the market go up. So you want to keep on track of that. We also have carry trade indicators, you can screen through all the great stocks out there so you see what's going on, you can see what zombie stocks are, and just a ton of other um high, high, high value tools like retirement planning and metal insider data and so on. Um, it's like$6.23 a month as part of our community. Um, you can see all that stuff, the overnight shenanigans from the Fed and all that good stuff. There's a link down below to it. Uh, I don't know what the link is, it's something like stocks. Um, there's a link down below. Just click on it in the description and you get access to that. No questions asked. If you want to cancel it, you just cancel it. Um, it's uh it's a free wealth. You've got now you're a little bit brilliant. If you don't feel like it, just you know, buzz off. Uh so why does this matter? Because it's the same playbook they ran during COVID, right? They changed the name. QE quantitative easing became emergency liquidity measures. And um now liquidity liquidity measures have become reverse management purchases. So they have sort of a department that comes up with new names apparently every once in a while, so we don't notice it quite as much. Now, they sound like abstract data points, right? Just billions, trillions, whatever. But when the Fed prints money, what actually happens? Well, three things happen, and they happen every single time. It's the quiet bailout trinity, as Winston rather grandly named it. And the first effect is it pushes down interest rates. So it means cheaper borrowing for the government, but also for businesses, and also for people buying cars and everybody else who's using um financing to live a life that might impress the Joneses. And then the second step is it devalues your dollars. You print more dollars, well, each dollar is now worth less. It's not controversial, it's just like you know, logic. And then the third part is it inflates asset prices. So all that new money has to go somewhere, and where does it go? Into stocks and into real estate and into anything that isn't cash, gold, silver, and so on. So who wins? People who own assets, the wealthy, and who loses, people who hold cash. Now, who's a cash holder? Well, to start with, anybody but the salary, which is most people, right? How many full-timers have we got on the on the on watching this? Put an F in the chat, and YouTube will be very confused by all the Fs. And what happens to your salary? Well, it's worth less. And that's why this is so important, because this is not doom and gloom. This is just understanding so that you can prepare yourself better, you can take the right smart moves to protect your financial future, your retirement, your family. So why are they doing it? Well, the Fed's gotta keep the lights on. The government's got$38 trillion debt, you know, who cares, right? But 20 cents of every one of your tax dollars goes to interest. Interest on the debt, not the debt, just the interest, which is pretty insane, right? US spends more um on interest than on veterans, more than on infrastructure, more than on pretty much everything else, except for the military. Yeah, priorities, right? Um, so what the government's been doing, and it's kind of dangerous, previously they would borrow for like 10 years or for 30 years. Now, what they've been doing is they thought, no, this is nonsense. We're not going to pay this high interest for that long. Let's borrow for six months. So, what does that mean? It means that a massive amount of money has to be refinanced every single year at whatever the pri the current interest rate is. So the Fed can't possibly raise interest rates because it would just blow up the government. So they're basically going to keep rates low and lower and lower and lower, and that causes inflation. And it's, you know, call it the debt spiral trap or whatever, whatever you want. And once you undersee it, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you just know that whatever happens out there is always going to be more money printed. Which brings us to Iran, because this crisis just gave them another perfect cover. And this is not a political view on, you know, Iran, should they bomb it, should they not? Is it a government evil there or not? Well, I don't think we particularly like it, generally speaking. Um, I'm very lucky I was meant to be in the Middle East, actually cancelled my flights just two days before. Um I cat to thank for that because she isn't very well and I want to stay with her. But what's actually happening in Iran and how do we position ourselves to A, protect ourselves, and then B, potentially profit from it? So you've got military strike, you've got retaliation, you've got the Strait of Hormuz, which is the most important choke point you've probably never really thought about. Literally 13 million barrels of oil per day pass through that tiny little piece of sea straight. 31% of all the seaborne oil in the world. And apparently it's closed. Whether you're watching it and it's still closed or not, you know, it doesn't really matter that much, to be honest with you. But you want to understand what happens to gas prices if oil goes up a lot, right? You want to understand what happens to stock prices when oil goes up a lot. Now, the problem is that people are all then thinking they're waking up and they're going, oh, then I should be, I should pile into oil stocks, right? Well, hold that thought, because that's the same mistake that retail investors make every freaking time. Because what most people don't realize is yes, oil goes up first for sure, in a conflict in the Middle East, uh, particularly in that oil-rich part of the world. And then does it stay up there? No, it crashes first too. So oil is up first, and oil is down first. And maybe you think oil can't be true. I'm I'm making loads of money on oil. Well, have a look at 1991, Gulf War, right? A little history lesson. Um, Iraq invades Kuwait, oil spikes from about$17 to about 46, which is pretty pretty extreme, and literally everybody panics, everybody buys. And then what happens? Well, the day the US-led war started, so the the coalition went in, right? Um, do you know what happened? Oil went from$46 down by 10 bucks in one day. The biggest single day drop in history at that time. So everybody who bought the panic got absolutely freaking wrecked. And there's a reason for it. Before a war, gold, uh sorry, get to what gold's next. Oil has a war premium baked in. The uncertainty, the fear, the what-ifs. We've known about this for weeks, right? Just watch the news and you can see all the military stuff being flown in there. So oil prices go up. And once the shooting actually starts and it becomes clear the world isn't actually ending, that premium evaporates. So my oil war framework is very simple. If you want to buy it in advance in anticipation of a crash, go for it. I think it's gambling. I wouldn't bother, but go for it if you want to. I'm not telling you to, but you know, you can. Uh, but it crashes on execution. So the money is made by those who sell into fear, not by those buying it. So if you're looking at Iran, you're thinking I should load up on oil stocks. Well, you're probably too late. I think there are still opportunities, by the way, in oil service stocks and those kinds of things, but that's actually nothing to do with the war. That's got a lot more to do with where the money is flowing and not something we always look at. So don't be the exit liquidity, because then you're the ones who are handing your hard-earned money over to the lovees on Wall Street. So, yeah, when I say services, people like Halliburton, Schlumberger, and so on, they tend to make money regardless. But there are a lot of oil service stocks that we always talk about in our coaching community and have in the last few months that have actually done quite well. But the most important thing for any of you is actually not what you buy, it's what. It's when you sell. Because what I notice is that retail investors, they don't know where to sell, right? We just buy stuff and we don't think about selling. You want to think about selling before you're buying. Um, but even if you already own things, you want to have a plan for when to sell. And Wall Street's got three pretty simple rules for that. And they've been around for like 50 years, always been the same rules. And my offer to you is that I'll teach them to you. Not right now, because it would make this video insanely long. But live, so you can also ask me questions on Saturday. Just grab yourself a free seat at FelixFriends.org slash training and show up on time because the room will probably be full. And if you show up five minutes late, you won't be able to get into it. That's just the way the world works. So literally learn the rules. And selling isn't about just profit taking, very important though, too. But it's also about selling things that are down a little bit. It's avoiding big risks, knowing when to get out and feeling confident, and it's also about sleeping well, quite frankly. Now, we're gonna get into defense stocks and gold, where the real war money is moving. But make sure before you buy a single thing here, and it's not financial advice, I'm not registered, you know, investment advisor, before you buy a single thing in this whole time period, make sure you know when to sell. That's literally how you make money. It is when you sell. So defense stops, and maybe you think this is unethical. That's also completely fine. You don't have to buy the thing, but it still doesn't hard to understand it. That's the way the world works. We can judge it, but ultimately the money works the way the money works. So governments burn through Patriot missiles, they're about$4 million a pop. And F-35 is about$80 million a pop. I actually thought it was more than that. It's a lot more than that. Anyway. Every fat interceptor runs at about$800 million per battery. And when you look at the defense contractors right now, the numbers are really, really insane. Just look at some of these. RTX, used to be called Raytheum, they have a backlog of orders from the government of$251 billion. Lockheed Martin has$194 billion in backlog, and Northrop Grumman about$95 billion in backlog. Now, what do these guys make? Well, Lockheed Martin, for example, they're making missouts, uh, they make the the high mouse systems, the pack three, all that kind of stuff you're seeing in the news right now. And by the way, if you are watching the news on the wall, please stop. It is designed to mess up your brain. It is designed to make you fearful, and it will not make you into a happy person. It'll not make you into a more successful person. Your life will not be different because you knew exactly where something has been blown up or who's died. If it's really important, someone's going to tell you about it. So just turn off the bloody news. I don't watch the news ever. Uh Northrop Grumman, they make the B-21 stealth bombers, the Sentinel intercontinental, you know, ballistic missiles, all that kind of stuff. Um, so you know, important stuff. So what most retail investors miss about defense stocks, it isn't about that initial contract. The government estimates that operating and support costs are about 70% of a weapons system. So it's not selling it once, it's the lifetime recurring revenue. So when Lockheed sells an F-35, they're not selling a plane, they're selling decades of maintenance, upgrades, parts, software, training, right? And that's just the most beautiful business model for them. Now, picking individual defense docs may feel too risky for you, and again, I'm not telling you to buy a defense. Um, so you can do something that feels easier, and that would be to buy an ETF. There's a big ETF out there called ITA. It is the iShares, Aerospace and Defense ITA. Uh, there is another one that's called S crikey. My handwriting is being sabotaged by the powers that be. SHLD. Um, and they give you very broad exposure. No single contractor bet, just you know, betting kind of broadly. And by the way, let me know. If you own any defense stocks already, put the ticker in the comments and it might be, you know, Palantir or it might be Lockheed or BA or whatever. Um, let's see what everyone's holding. It's kind of interesting to see. But as I say, defense stocks have run up significantly. That ITA thing is up 90%. My handwriting is just being totally sabotaged here, otherwise, it is beautiful. All right, we're gonna have to uh skip that. Uh, that tool is clearly having a timeout. Let's try a different one. Um, yes, ITA is up 90% so far over the last year. One of the reasons we've been very bullish on defense stocks for probably about a year. Why? Because I didn't know there was a war coming. I didn't like these companies particularly, but I could see the institutional money flowing into them, and that's all I ever followed. I don't care about the business, the CEO, the plan, any of it. I just care about is the money flowing there. And that's what, again, what most people really, really miss out on. And when do we sell it? Well, when the money starts flowing out. And again, that's something that I'll teach you if you guys join me on Saturday, feedexfriends.org slash slash training. But beyond the big boys, you know, the RTX, the Lockets, the Northrop's, there are hundreds of subcontractors that make the sensors, the chips, the specialized materials, you know, that stuff that give us some interesting opportunities. Um, and and maybe I'll just name a couple of them for you and you can do a bit more research on those. We've talked about a lot of these over the past. Uh, L3 Harris is one, communication systems, sensors, uh, that kind of stuff. Not as famous as Lockheed, but they often perform better because it's a little bit less of a crowded play. But yeah, as I say, there are many others. We don't need to go too too much into depth on these. Now, the next thing I want to spend a little bit of time on because I think it's the obvious opportunity, it's gold, the shiny stuff. So it's the one asset that's doing exactly what it's supposed to do right now. And if I look into our community here, and first of all, you can stay on top of gold news. We covered them pretty well. Um, but also the gold inventory, and for that I go in here, and there's two things I want to highlight to you guys. One is gold, registered gold at Comex is down pretty significantly. It was a year ago at 22 million ounces. Now it's at only 17. That's 5 million ounces leaving the door. And the second thing I keep an eye on is the Shanghai premium on gold. What does that mean? Well, Shanghai is a different market. And by the way, we strip out VAT on these prices, particularly on silver. There isn't any on gold, but there's on silver. So all of the time people show you these crazy numbers on social media about how much more expensive gold and silver are in in Shanghai. And it's actually the VAT that they have to pay there. There's 30% VAT. So we take that out. But as I'm recording this, gold is 13% more expensive in Shanghai than it is in the US. And that tells me, gives me a piece of information about which way the market may be heading, not the be all end or, but it is definitely useful. We look at gold and silver metrics and so on. There's a ton of stuff there. We also send out a daily newsletter here. You can get all of that if you go and sign up for the the better stocks uh community down below. I'm just saying it's about$6 a month, uh week. Sorry,$6 a week, so about$27 a month. And you can just try it out. If you don't like it, you just you know tell me and we'll make it even better. And and and you can you can cancel it anytime. Um but gold is different to oil. So while oil is this is oil, right? That's oil. Gold, let's find a golden color. Gold is a bit more, hey, where's my gold? Gold is a little bit more like that. Stays higher for longer. It might come down a little bit at some point, but it is a less volatile. So it goes up during crisis, just like oil, but it holds the gains longer. The gain period is much, much longer. And we can look at 1979, the Iranian Revolution, right? When the um Ayatollahs came into power. I'm not going to walk you through who backed them because of it upset most people to go in history research. But gold surged to historic highs and it stayed elevated for months afterwards. 9-11, gold spiked, it maintained higher levels again for a long period of time. 2014, essentially Ukraine war number one. Um, gold gained 14%, and again it held on to most of it. We could add 2022 to that, Ukraine number two, gold stayed above elevated levels for very extended periods. Why does that happen? Because gold isn't just a war hedge, it is kind of the everything hedge. Currency devaluation, gold, inflation, gold, loss of confidence in governments. Gold, right? And right now, gold is above wherever it's trading right now, as I'm recording this, 5,300 something. And analysts are looking at somewhere between, depending on what numb you listen to, sorry, Wall Street analyst, they're looking at 6,000,$5,500 to about$6,000. There are some more aggressive forecasts, yes, to$8,000. These are always by year end, if you know the world really does fall apart. Where do you see gold going? Literally put your number in the comments because actually it's it's sentiment that drives everything. So your sentiment will help everybody else by giving them a little nugget of information. Put the number in the comments down below. Be curious to see what you guys think. But the key thing with gold is that it is not just Winston buying gold, although he's a golden retriever. I mean, he has no choice, right? Massive gold vault somewhere in Switzerland or something. It's um central banks who are buying them, who apparently also all run by golden retrievers. And there are near multi-decade highs. So you've got China, India, Turkey, Poland systematically increasing their gold reserves. Uh they purchased about 15% year over year, more than you know, previous year. Again, we have a little bit of data here. Gold purchases 2025 was over a thousand tons, which is pretty uh pretty interesting. Pretty interesting piece of data. So why does it matter? Well, think about it this way: the people who print the money, they're causing all the inflation, they're buying gold. The people who run this paper fiat currency system are diversifying out of their own fiat currencies. So the central banks are saying we're diversifying our reserve assets, but what they're doing is they're basically preparing for a world where paper money is just less trusted because there's a lot more around. And a lot of that's got to do with the Russian war, quite frankly, because central governments around the world have lost faith in the dollar, because you can steal the dollar. Rather to steal the gold if it's sitting in your own vault, right? So let me give you Winston's crisis goals framework. Winston, would you care to explain it? He's not that much of a hard worker, is he, really? He's like you, you, you do the talking. Okay. So this is what I think about during geopolitical events, and this is what I learned from my mentors. Everything I ever tell you, I learned from my mentors. I'm not particularly, you know, um, I don't come up with much. I just learn from people who've been there before, done it before, and were instructed by people who were experts in their field, which is my mentors. So these are guys who worked in big investment banks, big hedge funds, metal exchange, market makers, and so on, so on. So to me, my first rule with gold is it isn't a trade, it's an insurance. You don't buy homeowners insurance hoping your house burns down, right? Well, unless you're a nutter. But you buy it so you can sleep at night. That's the first rule with gold for me. The second one is you buy insurance before you need it. If you're buying gold after it's already on fire, then in the house, you're going to pay a big, big, big premium. You are not necessarily wrong, but you're definitely late. And the third rule is that gold holds value through the crisis, but also through the aftermath of it. So once it's all over, unlike oil, which is just you know, for the real loons out there. Why? Well, it's usually got something to do with money printing and inflation. So for most retail investors, the question isn't should I buy gold? It's what percentage of my portfolio should be allocated to it. Again, this isn't financial advice, another financial advisor, go talk to yours. A lot of those guys are now talking about 10 to 15% of your portfolio should be metals exposure. It used to be 5 to 10%. And then we were all told, no, no, gold's dead, forget about gold. Um, but you don't want to overconcentrate. Gold can also be very volatile. It is not a magic hedge, it isn't a magic bean. It's also had periods where it does very, very little, right? So if you own gold at the moment, give us an idea. How much gold do you own? Is it zero? Is it 5%? Is it more? Like what's your percentage right now? I'd be very curious to see what our viewers in our community here hold. But this Iran crisis isn't just about Iran, it's about how the system responds to any crisis, and the response is always the same. You get money printing, it gets disguised with some new fancy name that nobody understands. At the present, it is reserve management purchases. Asset prices go up through inflation, wages lose value, and people who understand the game, they accumulate assets. People who don't understand the game sit on cash fearful and think, oh, I'm gonna buy when this is over. It's too terrible, it's all gonna die. I sold everything on Friday. But this isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature. Every crisis becomes an opportunity to transfer wealth from those who hold cash to those who hold assets. But if you talk about that, you become a conspiracy theorist. Apparently, I've been called much, much worse. So let me give you my three-step crisis framework. And you might want to write this down because this is gonna help you with the next crisis, and there will be one in approximately six to twelve months, depending on how quickly this one's over, uh, because the world sort of thrives on that. Um, step number uno is following the fresh money. A very good friend who always says, uh, I want fresh money, fresh money. And fresh money is, in this case, money freshly printed. So when the Fed starts a new program to bail out something or other, um, the money goes somewhere. Your job's to figure out where the money is going. And that's much, much easier done than you think, um, because Wall Street has some rules on that. But let's focus on the second rule here. Know the sequence of assets, assets that attract money. So here number two. The first one is oil, goes nuts, corrects hard. Number two is gold, spikes and then holds longer. And then you get defense stocks, which seems to, well, just keep going up and up and up because Trump wants to increase the defense budget from a trillion to a trillion and a half. Where's the money gonna flow? Defense stocks. And then choose whether you want to be early or you want to be right. You can't really be both. So you can be right, you wait for a confirmation and accept slightly worse prices. Uh, or you can do a coin toss and be early. So my lesson to you is very simple. Don't react to crisis, anticipate the response to the crisis. The crisis itself is noise. The policy response is always the signal, and to me, it isn't about what the politicians are yap, yap, yap, yap, yapping about, it is about money. And money can be tracked much, much more simply than you ever thought because it shows up on the charts. So, what do you do with all of this information? Okay, number one, look at your cash position. If you're holding a lot of cash, understand you're being devalued. Decide if that's intentional. And then number two, review your metals allocation. If it's zero, think about why that is. And three, if you own oil or oil stocks, the service ones for the ones that just make money, more money out of oil prices, have an exit plan. I give you an exit plan for everything that you currently own and plan to own forever in the future if you join me live on Saturday, because I think that is the biggest, lowest hanging fruit for any investor and any trader, it is knowing when to sell. We don't decide it day by day. We have rules for that. And then four, if you're looking at defense stocks, look a level deeper. Not just the headline guys, but look at their suppliers. And I think there is some opportunity in some of those. And most importantly, keep learning. The investors who do really well in these volatile times are not the smartest. They are not necessarily the most informed, but they are the ones who understand the patterns and the structures and they act with rules in a system rather than like, oh my God, what should I do this morning? You know? So if that's what you're thinking, the best thing you can probably do is to absolutely bagger all and sign up for the live training on Saturday, because that'll make sure you never have to do that again. But let me give you a brief summary here. Fred's printing money again, pretty significant amounts, 229 billion basically since October. Oil is spiking, but it'll crash unless this conflict gets much, much bigger. And gold is doing super well. And one reason we've been talking about gold for quite a while, been talking about silver quite quite a while as well, not because of this war, but because money started flowing into it. So separate the noise. Please turn off the CNBC and the CNN. Just never watch the news again. You'll be so much happier, I can tell you. And you're gonna be, oh, I'm missing out, I'm missing out. No, you're not. You're just getting visual, terrifying images that mess up your mind. You get rid of that, you'd actually have time to think. And honestly, if it's important, someone's gonna tell you about it. You can't avoid news altogether. Now, is there any news that's useful? Yeah, just the stuff that you need. So I have stock alerts on the Trade Vision setup, which is our app. Um, but other than that, no, I never ever watch videos on horrible things happening in the world like war. And don't react to this crisis, other than that, you might want to realize that maybe you're not prepared well enough in terms of rules and skill set and grab this. Join me Saturday, freedom.org slash training, and we'll do a lot for that, and we'll teach you when to take profits, when to get out, which is really, really, really the key thing here because 90% of retail investors blow it. They might buy well, they might hold well, and they give it all back. Have you done that before? You're giving up back all your gains before? Yeah, if you have, put the ticker in the chat down below. And that's literally why we're going to be running this live training on Wall Street rules on selling stocks. They're the very rules that I learned as an investment banker. They're the very rules that my mentors, who have worked in those very banks for decades, taught me not textbook staff, just the real rules. I wish you a beautiful week.