How The Wealthy Invest Before A Market Downturn

there's two things that I want you to know. Number one is that a recession is always coming. Recessions are part of our economic system. They've happened every decade for the last century and they're going to continue happening. So, a recession is coming, but nobody knows when. The second thing is that recessions create millionaires. More millionaires are created during recessions and market crashes than any other time because these recessions create opportunities for savvy investors to buy good investments at a discounted price. That being said, history shows us that certain stocks tend to do better during recessions. So, if you're concerned about a recession and market values, you can consider diversifying some of your money into assets that tend to historically do better during recessions as a way to protect yourself. But, I got to remind you, investing has risks. You are never guaranteed to make money when you invest. In fact, you will lose money at some point, and I'm not a financial advisor, which is why you should never blindly trust a random guy on YouTube. Make sure you always do your own due diligence because in this video, I'm going to go over three different types of ETFs that you can consider investing in to give you protection during those potential downturns. Now, just so we're on the same page, when I say ETF, what that means is instead of investing in one company, one stock like Amazon, where you take on all the risk, here if you buy Amazon and Amazon does really good, you're going to make a whole lot of money because the stock is going to shoot up. But, if Amazon starts to do really bad and maybe even go bankrupt, well then you lose all of your money. So, you take on all the risk, but you also get all the upside. But, this requires you to do all the research and know what it is that you're investing in and keep up with that. Good for some people, not good for a lot of people. The alternative is to invest your money into a fund. One example is an ETF. This is essentially a basket of stocks. Now, the nice thing about ETFs is you can buy and sell them kind of like a stock on pretty much every stock brokerage. But, now instead of investing in one stock like Amazon, you're investing in a fund that's going to give you exposure to companies like Amazon, Tesla, McDonald's, Apple, Nike, Verizon all into one fund. This way now you have less risk, but also less potential return. In this case, if Amazon does really good, it's going to be balanced up by some of the losers. On the flip side, if Amazon does really bad and they go bankrupt, well, this fund can replace Amazon and put something else in like Walmart without you having to do anything because it's passive on your side. You're investing in the fund and the fund is doing all the work versus you are just investing money into the fund. That's how ETFs work. Now for this video, we're going to study a lot of history because while history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it does rhyme. So we're going to look at the last three major crashes in the United States, the 2020 pandemic crash, the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, and the 2000 dot-com bubble bursting because we can see some common denominators between each one of these three. That way you can get an idea of what generally goes up when markets go down. I want to start by talking about the differences because what caused the crash in each one of these three things are different than what we're seeing today. Today we're seeing concerns about an AI bubble, we're seeing concerns about the dollar losing its value, and we're seeing concerns about pretty much a everything bubble where a lot of asset prices are very high. In 2020, it was a pandemic which shut the economy down. In 2008, it was the housing market that crashed. In the year 2000, it was the dot-com crash where all the internet companies started to go bust. Because it was a different needle that popped the bubble each time, there's going to be some variances on what types of companies and stocks will benefit. For example, in 2020 when the pandemic hit, health stocks rallied because people were worried about their health and that helped the health sector because all the money was flowing into healthcare companies, pharmaceutical companies, vaccine companies to help get us out of the pandemic. Along with that, we saw a lot of money flow into work from home companies, companies that were producing standing desks for you to work from home, companies like Zoom that were allowing you to work from home. These companies benefited when the economy shut down. When the 2008 crash happened, this is when technology started to grow. Remember the housing market crashed and now all of a sudden we started to see all this investment into the new era of internet technology. So, Apple and Amazon started to really see a lot more investment and growth because people liked the idea of doing things on the internet, not to mention that these internet companies then were really undervalued. They didn't have a lot of debt, and they had a lot of profit margin, which was very new for companies at the time. So, we saw tech companies benefit from this, and we also saw consumer staples, things like your soap companies and your toilet paper companies, and your Coca-Cola and your Pepsi companies. These things that people want, the consumer staples, benefited because even during a recession, people are still drinking Coke. People are still drinking Pepsi. People still using soap. So, we saw those companies continue to benefit because a lot of money continued to flow there, even though the housing market was going down. When the dot-com bubble burst in the year 2000, it was really like a 2-year downturn. And during that 2-year downturn, we saw a few things happen. Number one, obviously dot-com companies went burst, but we also had 9/11 happen. And that made a lot of movement and a lot of people concerned about wars. So, we saw defense stocks benefit because we saw a lot of money flow into our military and military-related companies, so that benefited the defense stocks. And then likewise, consumer staples. Because we were going through that recession, people wanted discounts, so stores like Walmart benefited. But people continued to spend money on things like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and other toothpaste and toilet paper and soaps because they were consumer staples that people spend money on even when you were in a recession. The reason I'm telling you this is because yes, there's a lot of similarities every time you see a recession, but the needle is generally going to be different than before. And because the needle is generally different, that means the things that benefit specifically from that recession are also generally different because the economy is different. So, you have to also understand that going beyond the things that I'm about to show you, there's also going to be unique companies that benefit depending on what is the needle that actually causes the next recession, whether it's AI stocks being overvalued, whether there's concerns about the dollar and inflation. I want you to pay attention to that as well. But now let's go over some common denominators of three different types of things, the three different types of ETFs that you can consider investing in that generally [snorts] have benefited in the past through history when recessions happen. So let me break this down. Want to know something crazy? Most people, statistically, are keeping their money in a savings account that's paying 0.38% a year. That is the national average at the time of me recording this video. And this is where you can flip the script thanks to my sponsor Chime. Right now, Chime's high-yield savings account pays 3.75% APY a year with qualifying direct deposits. That's nine times the national average. Now let's do the math. If you have $10,000 and you put it into a regular savings account paying 0.38% a year, which is the national average, after 1 year, you're going to get $38 in interest. But if you take that same $10,000 and you put it into Chime's high-yield savings account, now with 3.75% APY, you're not going to get $38 in interest, you're going to get $375 in interest. Right now, more than 80% of Americans do not have a high-yield savings account. If that's you, that stops today. With Chime, you have no monthly fees, you have no minimum balance, and your money is FDIC protected through Chime's banking partners. Plus you can access your money at any time. This is not a CD, your money is not locked up. Plus they have some really cool features and automations that I really like. Like they have this round up feature, which if you go out and buy a coffee for $4.67, if you have round up turned on, that would now round up to $5, so the extra 33 cents would now be taken out and put into your savings account that we're automatically building your savings through this round up tool. Plus you can automate some of your paycheck going directly into your savings every time you get paid, or you can allocate money towards buying a house or paying down credit card debt because you can build these automations within Chime. And on top of all of that, you will also get 5% cash back with the Chime card on one category that you choose. That could be groceries gas dining travel whatever fits your life. Plus, that Chime card also comes with a bunch of travel perks. And because you saw this promotion, use the link in the description and you'll get up to $350 and 5% cash back with Chime. So, if you have money sitting in a regular savings account and you want to see how you can earn more interest just by moving your money to a high-yield account, Chime has a solution for you. If you want to learn more, I have a QR code on the screen where you can go and learn more, or you can click the link that I have for you down in the description. Investment number one that benefited during the 2020 pandemic, the 2008 crash, and the 2000 dot-com bubble bursting was gold. And yes, I'll go over a couple ETFs to give you exposure to gold in just a second, but let's go over some numbers first. In the year 2020, we saw the S&P 500 fall by 30-some percent in the middle of the year, and then we saw the stock market rally. Over the course of the year 2020, the S&P 500, which is an index that measures the stock market, which is a group of the 500 largest companies in the stock market, this went up by around 18%. Well, at the same time, gold prices in 2020 grew by around 25% over the same year. In the year 2008, when the housing bubble burst, we saw the S&P 500 fall by around 35%, while gold prices went up by around 5%. When the dot-com bubble burst in the year 2000, I'm lumping in the years 2000, 2001, and 2002 because it really took the year 2000, 2001, and 2002 to see the full market downturn. We saw the S&P 500 fall by around 37%. We saw the Nasdaq, which was very tech-heavy, very dot-com heavy, it's another index that measures the stock market, this fall by around 70%, while gold prices went up by around 22%. Now, if you wanted to get exposure to gold, you can invest in a gold ETF, something like GLD or IAU. These are two different ETFs that you can buy and sell on pretty much any brokerage on the stock market that will give you exposure to gold, but remember you you're just buying a paper contract that says you have ownership or exposure to gold. You don't actually own the physical gold. Another alternative is to actually buy the physical gold. That's something that I personally do. I've been buying gold since well before the pandemic, but I do want to express some concerns that I have about gold as well. Gold prices have been booming a lot since the pandemic and a lot in 2025 and a lot of people who don't even understand how to invest in gold have been dumping money into gold because they believe that gold prices are going to continue to go up because of how fast it has gone up, but there are concerns with that because well, when people are betting on gold, they're betting against the dollar. Because remember gold is generally a hedge and when people are concerned about the dollar, when they're concerned about inflation, when they're concerned about the United States economy, that's generally when they buy physical gold. So, when you hear people buying gold because well, they believe it's a great investment, that generally creates some concerns because well, maybe there may be something seriously wrong about the dollar or it could be creating a bubble around gold as well. What we've been seeing happen in 2025 is that gold prices have been outpacing stocks and the reason why that's so unique is because when you invest in a stock like say Amazon or Apple or Nvidia, these companies are working to produce a profit. They have employees that are working to create a better product. So, they're working to produce value. Whereas your gold is just sitting there looking back at you. It doesn't actually produce any value. So, it's a type of insurance, a type of hedge against worst case scenario situations and gold prices have been outpacing stocks, which means yes, investors have some serious concerns and it's something you want to pay attention to. Now, the other thing that I want you to understand about gold is that gold prices don't always go up. Gold prices generally go up when people are concerned about the dollar. Take a look at this chart. You can see that gold prices really boomed after the 2008 crash because people were concerned about the dollar when quantitative easing was happening. That was when the government was passing all these stimulus programs to fund and stimulate the economy and people were concerned about hyperinflation. so gold prices were booming between 2008 to 2012. But in 2012, when people realized that the economy was recovering, gold prices crashed. As the economy recovered and markets went higher, and gold prices did not hit a new high after 2012 until the year 2020, when of course the pandemic hit, the recession hit, and worries about inflation and hyperinflation started again. And now gold prices have been breaking new record highs ever since because people concerned about the dollar, they're concerned about inflation, they're concerned about the economy. But if those concerns go away, well, gold prices could fall again. So, from history, we can see that gold prices have generally benefited when a recession happens. But today, we're not in a recession and gold prices are breaking record highs, which has some people concerned. Does this mean something's really wrong with the economy or something wrong in the gold market? And the other thing that I want to talk about before I get into number two has to do with Bitcoin because a lot of people say that Bitcoin is the digital gold. Is Bitcoin an alternative to gold? And yes, Bitcoin has provided some amazing returns over the last number of years, but it hasn't been around the same way as gold. Now, let's take a look at some numbers of what happens during volatile periods. Bitcoin was not around for the 2000.com bubble bursting, so we can't talk about it here. Bitcoin wasn't around for the 2008 housing market crash, so we can't talk about it here. But Bitcoin was here during the 2020 pandemic, and what we saw is that during this time, Bitcoin prices went up by around 300%. So, yes, it beat gold and it definitely beat the stock market. But what we've also seen is that Bitcoin doesn't always move in the same direction as gold because sometimes when people are worried about inflation, gold goes up, but Bitcoin goes down. For example, in 2025, when gold prices were breaking new record highs in October, Bitcoin prices were falling because people were concerned about technology. In the year 2022, the S&P 500 fell by around 20% because inflation really started to kick in. Gold prices stayed flat, but Bitcoin prices fell by about 60% in the year 2022. So, Bitcoin and gold don't always move in the same direction. And what we've seen, at least in the recent years, is that Bitcoin moves closer to tech stocks than it does to gold prices. So, is Bitcoin really a digital gold? Well, time will have to tell. But, what we've seen right now, especially recently, is that Bitcoin moves more similarly to tech than it does to physical gold. The second asset to generally benefit when markets go down are treasuries. So, a treasury is a loan that you make to the United States government. And treasury prices are a little weird because the way that it works is when a lot of people are buying treasuries, treasury prices go up and treasury yields go down. What that means is when you lend money to the United States government, you are buying this asset right here. And this asset has a price, and then this asset is going to pay you with an interest rate. So, if a lot of people are buying this treasury right here, the price of this treasury is going to go up because everybody wants to buy it. Or demand and supply. Everybody wants to lend their money to the United States government, it becomes more expensive, and then the interest rate that the government pays you goes down. Why? Because you can kind of think of it like if everybody wants to lend money to the United States government, it doesn't have to incentivize you with high interest rates because everybody's already lending money to the government. On the flip side, if people are scared to lend money to the government, or they don't want to lend money to the government, so people are not buying treasuries, well, now treasury prices go down. You have more supply than demand. If treasury prices are going down, well, now the government has to incentivize you with higher interest rates to get you to want to lend money to the government. So, treasury yields, treasury prices are generally inversed, meaning if a lot of people are buying treasuries, treasury prices go up, yields go down. If people are not buying treasuries, prices go down, yields go up. Now, generally speaking, treasuries are not good investments. They don't generally give good returns because it's considered a risk-free investment. If you lend money to the United States government, you're guaranteed to get paid. Every economics textbook will tell you that the government always pays their bills. Now, if you're more financially savvy, you might say, "Well, Dust Breathe, the value of the dollar will drop if the government doesn't have the money to pay the bills cuz they're going to have to work with our central bank to print money to pay those bills." And you're right. But they'll still pay the bills. So, even if the government doesn't have money to pay you, they can print the money to pay you, which means, yeah, they'll give you the $1,000 you're owed, but that $1,000 is not going to be worth as much. So, the government has the ability to pay you, but they just don't guarantee that the value of the money that you're going to make is going to have value. So, that's why Treasury bonds generally are not good investments, but what we've seen is that when downturns happen, people get scared. They want safer investments. And the United States government historically has been a safe investment, so people generally turn to Treasury bonds when markets go down because we've seen that happen in 2020, 2008, and 2000. So, let me just show you. Now, if you wanted to invest in these Treasuries, you can go directly to TreasuryDirect, which can be a little bit complicated, or you can just do it on the stock market by investing in an ETF that's giving you exposure to these long-term Treasuries. So, for example, TLT is an ETF that gives you exposure to the 20-year Treasury bond. And then you have IEF, which is an ETF that gives you exposure to the 7- to 10-year Treasury. So, both of these will give you exposure to Treasuries, and TLT was around during the 2020 pandemic. It was around during the 2008 pandemic, but it was not around during the 2000 and dot-com bursting. So, I'll just give you the returns of TLT in 2020 and 2008, and I'll just talk generally about how the Treasury market did during the year 2000. That way you can compare it to the other assets. In the year 2020, when markets crashed and rallied by 18% in total, TLT grew by 18% as well. In the year 2008, during the housing market crash, the S&P 500 fell by 35%. Gold rallied by 5%. TLT went up by 28%. And then during the dot-com bubble bursting between the years 2000 and 2002, again these ETFs were not around at the time but long-term Treasuries went up by around 45% while the S&P fell by 37%, Nasdaq fell by 70% and gold rallied by around 22%. Now, again, Treasury bonds generally a horrible investment. But when markets go down, investors want safety and over the last few decades we have seen that investors still turn to Treasuries when markets are going down, which can create opportunity there. Now, there is concern now that we didn't have as much of during the previous recessions and that concern is of course the health and strength of the United States government because a lot of people are concerned about the United States dollar, which is one of the reasons why gold prices have been rallying so much in 2025 even though we're not in a recession and even though inflation has been calmed. But the United States government is still the world's superpower. The United States dollar is still the world's reserve currency and people still respect the United States economy. So, yes, there's concerns but United States is still number one. So, something to keep in mind. And the third type of ETF are defensive ETFs. And when I say defensive ETFs, I don't just mean defense stocks and war stocks, I mean stocks that generally people still need when markets go down. This could be things like your toothpaste, your soap, the Coca-Colas, the Walmarts. These are the necessities that people still spend money on even when there's a recession going on. So, I'm going to break this up into a few different categories that we can understand an idea of different ways to play this defensive trade. More specifically, I want to talk about investing for dividends because when people are concerned about markets going down, they want safety and dividend paying companies are generally the safer companies. They look for consumer staples, those are the things that people are always buying even if you're in a recession. And then there are the defense companies, especially during a time where there's a lot of geopolitical conflict, well, wars continue happening and wars get funded, which creates also investment opportunities. So, let me wipe off this part of the whiteboard, and then I'll explain these types of ETFs. The way you build wealth in the stock market is not by chasing hot stocks. It's through what I call ABB, always be buying. And I just wrote a brand new book called ABB, always be buying, how you can build wealth in any market, where I break down the exact strategy of how you can build wealth in the stock market and turn your extra money into income or more wealth, that way you can now use the stock market to build wealth. And because you're watching my video, I'm going to give you a digital copy of my book completely free. I have that link for you if you want to download it down in the description below. And when you sign up for the book, you're also going to get access to Market Briefs, which is my newsletter for investors completely free, where my team is breaking down what's happening in things like the economy housing stocks crypto and global markets. It's read by hundreds of thousands of investors every single morning. So, if you want to get my ebook and Market Briefs all for free, all you have to do is sign up, and I have that link for you down in the description below. When recessions happen, investors want to put their money into a place where there's a little bit more safety, and companies that are paying out dividends are generally your bigger, profitable companies because in order for a company to pay out a dividend, they have to have a big cash profit. And out of that profit, they can do three things. They can save this money for an emergency, they can reinvest this money back into the company, or they can give this money away to their shareholders. So, if companies during a recession still have money to give away to their investors, those types of companies, those types of stocks tend to become hotter investment opportunities when markets go down. Now, that doesn't mean that they're not going to also go down, but you'll start to see more investors look for those safer investments when markets are going down because when markets are going down, people stop making as many risky investments, they want the safer investments. So, those dividend paying investments can be more attractive opportunities. So, let me go over a couple examples. Example number one is NOBL, Noble. This is an ETF that gives you exposure to S&P 500 dividend paying aristocrats. What that means is that there's three tiers that a stock has to meet in order to be in this fund. Number one, it has to be a part of the S&P 500. That's a group of the 500 largest companies in the stock market. If you're not one of the 500 largest companies, you don't make it into this fund. Number two, you also have to be paying a dividend. So, that means you have to be profitable enough to pay out a dividend to your shareholders and elect to do so. If you don't pay a dividend and you're not in the S&P 500, you don't make it into this fund. And then tier number three, is you have to be a dividend aristocrat. That means not only have to you have been paying a dividend, but you must have increased the dividend every year for at least the last 25 years. Which means, yeah, there's not a lot of companies in this NOBL fund. At the time of me recording this video, it's paying out around a 2% dividend a year. But, from the dividend play, this is one of the safest options out there because it is extremely difficult to be in this fund. Option number two is VIG. This is another fund that's very difficult to get into. This is a fund created by Vanguard that is investing in companies that are number one, high dividend, but also appreciating dividends. Meaning, this is focused on the larger companies that have been in the game of working to increase their dividends every single year. So, these two dividend plays are not going to be the most aggressive, the most risky, more of the safer plays that when markets go down, people want safer investments, these are the types of funds that could see more inflow, which could benefit the funds. I'm not saying that they're not going to go down when the markets go down, but you'll start to see more safety and more investors start to dump their money into funds like these when things get risky. The second more defensive play would be to invest your money into consumer staples. Again, these are not your aggressive, fast-growing companies. These are the companies that are producing products that people need on a day-to-day basis. Soap, body wash, groceries, toothpaste, Coca-Cola. People spend money on these things whether in a recession or an economic boom. And this can create opportunity as a more of a safer investment. Again, when I say defensive here, I mean safer investment during these downturns. And we have seen in the 2000 dot com bubble and the 2008 crash that during those times defensive stocks actually were not hurt as bad or actually went up while markets were going down. A couple examples of ETFs here are XLP [snorts] and VDC. XLP is an ETF created by State Street that gives you exposure to consumer staples and VDC is an ETF created by Vanguard that's also giving you exposure to consumer staples. XLP has about 37 stocks in its fund. VDC has about 106 stocks in its fund. So, this is going to give you more broad exposure. This is going to give you more niche exposure. Again, I'm not telling you what to invest in. I just want you to start thinking like an investor and understand that there's a lot of opportunities out there depending on what it is that you want to invest in. And then of course, there are true defense stocks. Now, I just say this because there's been a lot of geopolitical tensions lately and even during times of recession, there can be wars. And when wars happen, well, certain companies are producing products for those wars, things like ammunition and tanks and guns and artillery. All these things are produced by private companies and there are ETFs that can give you exposure to those types of funds. Again, these tend to benefit more during times of tension and hostility. So, just keep that in mind. And a couple examples here are ITA and PPA. ITA is an ETF created by iShares that gives you exposure to United States aerospace and defense companies. PPA is giving exposure to the Invesco fund which invests in aerospace and defense companies. ITA has about 39 stocks in its fund. PPA has about 60 stocks in its fund. So again, this one's going to give you a little bit broader exposure. So, we started this video talking about two things. Number one, recessions always happen. There's always going to be a recession coming. When is it coming? Nobody knows. Now yes, there are some concerns happening right now with AI stocks being in a bubble. There's concerns about our national debt. There's concerns about we have this everything bubble going on where every asset is breaking record highs with inflation still going on. There's concerns, but we don't know when the recession's coming. Number two is we also know recessions create more millionaires than any other time. That being said, we also know that there are certain funds, certain things that tend to benefit historically when these downturns happen. And [snorts] those three things that we've seen throughout history are gold, treasury bonds, and certain defensive stocks. Now, every single recession in the past had a different needle that popped the bubble. And depending on what the needle was, certain stocks benefited more than others. For example, during the year 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst, we saw a lot of defense companies benefit because of 9/11 that happened. And we also saw a lot of consumer staple companies benefit because people continued to go to Walmart and buy the general groceries that they would have needed. During the year 2000 when the housing market burst, we still saw a lot of tech companies benefit because they were newer, a lot of money was going into tech, they didn't have as much debt as they had today, and they were making big profit margins. It was a newer industry for 2008. So, tech benefited along with consumer staples for the same reason as 2000. During the year 2020 when the pandemic happened, we saw a lot of health companies benefit, pharmaceutical companies benefit because so much money was going in to try to help counteract the pandemic. And we also saw work-from-home companies benefit because well, people were working from home. Now, despite the nuances during each recession that we've seen, we've seen a few common trends. And those common trends are number one, gold, treasury, and defensive stocks. But there's concerns with all of them. I mean, gold prices have been booming even though we're not in a recession, even though concerns about inflation have gone down. Either that means that people are really concerned and there's a big problem brewing, or it could also mean that there's a gold bubble brewing. We don't know what it exactly is because hindsight will be 20/20. Of course, I have my own opinions, but this is where I want you to start thinking like an investor to understand how markets work. Number two are treasuries because when things go wrong, people want to go to safety. And historically, treasuries have been one of the safest investment because it's backed by the United States government, but of course there's concerns with that too. Because of how much debt the United States government has. Yet at the same time the United States government is still the most powerful country and we have the most powerful currency in the world. Money isn't what it used to be. And it's about to change again. For centuries money wasn't this paper, it was actually physical gold. It was coins, it was bars that people would carry around. But carrying around physical metal wasn't very easy and that was when this paper money got created, but this paper money was backed by physical gold. So if you had a $100