Latest news with #Llanes
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Cuban girl, 10, was to join her mom in Miami. Then Trump's travel ban happened
Miami — Ten-year-old Sofia of Havana recently recorded a plea for President Trump, asking him to reconsider the partial travel ban he issued for Cuba and several other countries earlier this month. "President Trump, I ask you to please reconsider family reunification for residents," Sofia says in her video posted to social media. Sofia's mother, Lia Llanes, fled Cuba three years ago and is now a legal permanent resident of the U.S. living in Miami. Llanes told CBS News she came to the U.S. with the hope of one day bringing her daughter to join her. Sofia is currently living with her grandmother in Havana. "I came with the hopes of bringing her because all the mothers who come here, and the fathers, hope to one day become residents and have the privilege of bringing our children," Llanes said. That privilege came in the form of a family reunification visa, which Llanes said Sofia was approved for. Sofia was awaiting the final step in the visa process: an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. But the interview never happened. On June 5, Mr. Trump signed a proclamation barring travelers and immigrants from 12 countries from entering the U.S., citing U.S. national security interests. It also partially restricted entry for nationals from another seven countries, including Cuba, with only certain exemptions. Under the ban, only U.S. citizens can apply to sponsor relatives from Cuba, not green card holders like Llanes. "It was a big blow because she was already approved, and she was preparing, learning English," Llanes said, adding that Sofia was left so devastated by the ban that she went two days without wanting to speak with anyone. Sofia spoke briefly this week with CBS News by phone, saying she wants to be with her mother. Mr. Trump has argued the ban is necessary to keep the nation safe. The State Department has said another 36 countries could be added to the list due to security concerns. "It's hard to manage the expectations of people that you're representing when you yourself are trying to keep up with all of the changes that are happening," Saman Movaghassi Gonzales, an immigration attorney in Florida, told CBS News. Gonzales said the changes are upending the plans of many families. "The travel ban is going to be very challenging for people who are in the middle of a process, because they've already invested themselves, money and time, into a process, and now this travel ban is going to completely divert it," Gonzales said. Llanes hopes to one day become a U.S. citizen, a process she said could take two years. But that could be two more years away from Sofia if U.S. policies don't change. One dead, several injured after lightning strikes across Southeast Smoke, flames shot out of American Airlines engine before emergency landing in Las Vegas Kilmar Abrego Garcia to stay in jail as attorneys debate potential deportation
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Separated from kids in Cuba and Haiti by Trump travel ban, parents plead for help
As Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits come to terms with what a new U.S. travel ban means for their families' hopes to reunite, many have flocked to social media in anguish — including children — seeking help. 'President Trump, I ask you to please reconsider family reunification for residents,' said a 10-year-old in a Hello Kitty T-shirt in a video she recorded in Havana. The video was published by her mother, Lia Llanes, a U.S. permanent resident living in Miami, in one of the several Facebook groups where Cubans are discussing the new prohibitions. 'I am a child who, like many others, is waiting for an interview to reunite with our parents so we can grow up in this beautiful country and become a citizen,' the child says in the video. 'With great pride, I ask you again, please reconsider. And I ask God to enlighten you. Thank you.' The child had been taking English lessons, preparing for a new life in the United States, which she thought was just days away, Llanes told the Herald. The petition to bring her daughter to the U.S. had just been approved in late May, and the family was just waiting for the visa interview at the U.S. embassy in Havana, the final step in a lengthy process to legally emigrate to the United States. Then President Donald Trump announced last week a travel ban suspending the issuing of immigrant visas to Cuban relatives of U.S. permanent residents, upending the plans of many families to reunite. 'It's very heartbreaking to know that your claim is approved and this happens,' said Llanes, who runs a small business and obtained a green card after being paroled at the U.S. border in 2022. She said her daughter spent two days 'without talking to anyone' after learning the bad news. 'It's hard to explain,' she said. 'It's strange because you have your daughter there, and you're here, and one minute, you have good news, and then the next, everything changes.' Trump's new ban restricts travel for most citizens of Cuba, Venezuela and five other countries while also placing Haiti and 11 other nations on a full ban. It's a distressing blow to families who had already been waiting years to reunite in the United States. Standing in a room full of boxes with the beds she hoped her children would sleep on when they join her in the United States, Clara Riera, a U.S. permanent resident, could barely contain her tears as she recounted how she felt after learning about the travel ban. 'I no longer have a life,' she said in a video she published on Facebook. Riera came to the United States in 2019 from Cuba, and has her own small cleaning company in Tampa, she told the Herald. Like Llanes' daughter, her children, now 16, 17, and 19, were also waiting for the visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. But their arrival had become an urgent matter because her own mother, who has been caring for Riera's three children in Granma, a province in eastern Cuba, has metastatic cancer. Adding to her desperation is that a Cuban doctor told her that due to the stress caused by their separation, her eldest now has a heart condition. 'I hope that the people at the top, those who sign and pass the laws, also take into account that we, permanent residents, also have our children in a prison country, and we want to have them here with us,' she said, her voice breaking in the video. 'At least they should take into account that there are children who aren't going to come here to commit terrorism or harm this country.' Trump hits Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti with travel bans amid immigration crackdown The ban, announced last Wednesday, suspends immigration visas for adult children of U.S. citizens and relatives of U.S. permanent residents from the 19 countries included in the executive order. Only the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens–parents, spouses, parents and minor children will be allowed to enter the United States under a directive the White House said will 'protect the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats.' Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans with visas issued before June 8 will still be able to travel to the United States. But on Monday, some relatives of U.S. permanent residents who attended scheduled visa interviews at the U.S. embassy in Havana were issued a document in Spanish stating they were not 'eligible for an immigrant visa' under the new directive, a decision they could not appeal. The document also stated that their cases did not merit an exception, citing U.S. national security interests. The State Department did not say if applicants whose immigration visas were denied solely based on the new travel restrictions would have a chance down the line to present their case again. It also did not say if cases involving young children would fall under exceptions the Secretary of State can make on a case-by-case basis. But an agency spokesperson said, 'Urgent humanitarian medical travel may be considered a basis for such an exception. Only applicants otherwise qualified for a visa will be considered.' On Wednesday, a mother with a Miami cellphone number joined a WhatsApp chat group for Cubans with pending immigration cases, wanting to know if anyone had heard of a child being denied an immigration visa at the U.S. embassy in Havana. Her child has a scheduled interview later this week. 'I am just talking to him, and he is so innocent, so oblivious about all this, and he will be very happy tomorrow at his appointment,' she said, crying in a voice message. One of the group's most active commenters replied: 'God is great. Perhaps when they see that little boy in there, they would approve it.' Many families left separated by the ban were part of a historic exodus from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. In introducing the travel ban, Trump partly blamed the Biden administration for allowing more than a half million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans into the United States under a humanitarian parole program that allowed nationals of the four nations to migrate to the U.S. for two years as long as they had a financial sponsor, passed background checks and arrived through an airport. But part of the reason so many people from the four countries took advantage of the program, known as CHNV, stems from legal immigration hurdles and restrictive policies introduced by Trump during his first term. Among other things, his administration suspended the Cuba Family Reunification Program and a similar one for Haitians. During those years, U.S. embassies in the three countries either suspended visa processing or scaled back appointments, preventing people from immigrating legally while their populations faced political and humanitarian crises, which contributed to the historic exodus Trump is now citing. Since Trump signed his proclamation last Wednesday, Cubans in the U.S. and on the island have been debating and sharing information about the new immigration restrictions on several groups on WhatsApp and Facebook. Many are praying for a 'miracle' as they share their stories and give each other hope that the ban might be temporary. The directive states that after three months of its enactment, the President will review the recommendations by the Secretary of State regarding whether to continue the restrictions on nationals of the targeted countries. A review will be conducted every six months thereafter. But the lifting of restrictions relies on the foreign governments improving 'their information-sharing and identity-management protocols and practices.' So far, the Cuban government has not signaled it is interested in improving its cooperation with the U.S. and instead attacked Secretary of State Marco Rubio. After the travel ban was announced, Cuba's foreign minister said the measure 'aims to deceive the American people, blaming and violating the rights of migrants. Anti-Cuban politicians, including the Secretary of State, are the main proponents of this measure, betraying the communities that elected them.' Trump's proclamation also notes Cuba remains on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The ban also comes at especially difficult time for Haitians in a country wracked by gang violence. In a statement, Haiti's U.S.-backed Transitional Presidential Council said it plans to 'initiate negotiations and technical discussions' with the Trump administration in order to remove Haiti from the targeted countries. This is likely a tall order considering that more than 1.3 million Haitians remain displaced and armed gangs, now in control of most of Port-au-Prince, have made it difficult to circulate, raising questions about authorities' ability to improve vetting procedures and information sharing with the U.S. For Haiti, the ban prohibits the entry of all of its nationals unless they fall under the few exceptions contemplated in the new directive. Like many Haitians who arrived back in the U.S. on the first day of the travel ban, Eraus Alzime, 71, didn't fully understand its impact. The father of 10 was in Haiti visiting his children when he received a call urging him to get back to the U.S. To get out, he had to travel by bus and went through three gang checkpoints, he said. 'Of course you feel panicked,' Alzime said. 'The bandits make you get off so that they check your suitcases and see what you are carrying. You don't have a choice, you have to do it, if you don't you can end up dead.' Alzime, a U.S. citizen, said he applied for six of his children to emigrate to the U.S legally. The oldest is 43 years-old while the youngest is 14. His adult children won't be able to travel to the United States under the current ban. 'I filed for my kids and they've yet to give them to me,' he said. A victim of the country's incessant violence, Alizme says he has no choice but to travel to Haiti for his kids. 'I have to go see how they are doing,' he said. As the news about the travel ban sinks in, parents worry about the psychological toll the prolonged separation will have on their children, especially those who are too young to grasp immigration policy. Gleydys Sarda, 26, and her husband took the difficult decision to flee Cuba and left their 3-year-old son under the care of his grandparents in 2022. They didn't want to expose him to what they knew could be a dangerous land journey to the U.S. Southern border, she said. Now, he is 6 years-old, under the care of a grandparent and increasingly anxious to be with his parents. 'We live depressed because of the long wait; we ran out of excuses to tell him when he asks why he cannot be with us,' said Sardá, who is a U.S. permanent resident and works for Amazon at a warehouse in Coral Springs. 'Lately, he has been repeating more than ever that he wants to be here, that he is tired of waiting, and now this restriction broke our hearts. We have no other way.' Sardá's visa petition to bring him to the United States has yet to be approved. The couple tried to bring him using the special parole program created by the Biden administration, but they never heard back from U.S. immigration authorities. Sardá, who is currently pregnant, frets at the idea of traveling to Cuba to see her child, which currently seems to be her only choice to spend time with him, if only for a short time. The last time she visited in January, 'the goodbye was too hard. When we are there, the three of us are very happy, but after we leave,I feel I leave him worse,' she said. Sarda said the boy got depressed after they left, 'and so do we. I was in bed and didn´t want to go to work or leave the house.' 'Now I am also expecting my second child, and it would break my heart to go to Cuba with one child, return with one and leave the other in Cuba.'
Miami Herald
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Separated from kids in Cuba and Haiti by Trump travel ban, parents plead for help
As Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits come to terms with what a new U.S. travel ban means for their families' hopes to reunite, many have flocked to social media in anguish — including children — seeking help. 'President Trump, I ask you to please reconsider family reunification for residents,' said a 10-year-old in a Hello Kitty T-shirt in a video she recorded in Havana. The video was published by her mother, Lia Llanes, a U.S. permanent resident living in Miami, in one of the several Facebook groups where Cubans are discussing the new prohibitions. 'I am a child who, like many others, is waiting for an interview to reunite with our parents so we can grow up in this beautiful country and become a citizen,' the child says in the video. 'With great pride, I ask you again, please reconsider. And I ask God to enlighten you. Thank you.' The child had been taking English lessons, preparing for a new life in the United States, which she thought was just days away, Llanes told the Herald. The petition to bring her daughter to the U.S. had just been approved in late May, and the family was just waiting for the visa interview at the U.S. embassy in Havana, the final step in a lengthy process to legally emigrate to the United States. Then President Donald Trump announced last week a travel ban suspending the issuing of immigrant visas to Cuban relatives of U.S. permanent residents, upending the plans of many families to reunite. 'It's very heartbreaking to know that your claim is approved and this happens,' said Llanes, who runs a small business and obtained a green card after being paroled at the U.S. border in 2022. She said her daughter spent two days 'without talking to anyone' after learning the bad news. 'It's hard to explain,' she said. 'It's strange because you have your daughter there, and you're here, and one minute, you have good news, and then the next, everything changes.' Trump's new ban restricts travel for most citizens of Cuba, Venezuela and five other countries while also placing Haiti and 11 other nations on a full ban. It's a distressing blow to families who had already been waiting years to reunite in the United States. Standing in a room full of boxes with the beds she hoped her children would sleep on when they join her in the United States, Clara Yoa, a U.S. permanent resident, could barely contain her tears as she recounted how she felt after learning about the travel ban. 'I no longer have a life,' she said in a video she published on Facebook. Yoa came to the United States in 2019 from Cuba, and has her own small cleaning company in Tampa, she told the Herald. Like Llanes' daughter, her children, now 16, 17, and 19, were also waiting for the visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. But their arrival had become an urgent matter because her own mother, who has been caring for Yoa's three children in Granma, a province in eastern Cuba, has metastatic cancer. Adding to her desperation is that a Cuban doctor told her that due to the stress caused by their separation, her eldest now has a heart condition. 'I hope that the people at the top, those who sign and pass the laws, also take into account that we, permanent residents, also have our children in a prison country, and we want to have them here with us,' she said, her voice breaking in the video. 'At least they should take into account that there are children who aren't going to come here to commit terrorism or harm this country.' The ban, announced last Wednesday, suspends immigration visas for adult children of U.S. citizens and relatives of U.S. permanent residents from the 19 countries included in the executive order. Only the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens–parents, spouses, parents and minor children will be allowed to enter the United States under a directive the White House said will 'protect the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats.' Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans with visas issued before June 8 will still be able to travel to the United States. But on Monday, some relatives of U.S. permanent residents who attended scheduled visa interviews at the U.S. embassy in Havana were issued a document in Spanish stating they were not 'eligible for an immigrant visa' under the new directive, a decision they could not appeal. The document also stated that their cases did not merit an exception, citing U.S. national security interests. The State Department did not say if applicants whose immigration visas were denied solely based on the new travel restrictions would have a chance down the line to present their case again. It also did not say if cases involving young children would fall under exceptions the Secretary of State can make on a case-by-case basis. But an agency spokesperson said, 'Urgent humanitarian medical travel may be considered a basis for such an exception. Only applicants otherwise qualified for a visa will be considered.' On Wednesday, a mother with a Miami cellphone number joined a WhatsApp chat group for Cubans with pending immigration cases, wanting to know if anyone had heard of a child being denied an immigration visa at the U.S. embassy in Havana. Her child has a scheduled interview later this week. 'I am just talking to him, and he is so innocent, so oblivious about all this, and he will be very happy tomorrow at his appointment,' she said, crying in a voice message. One of the group's most active commenters replied: 'God is great. Perhaps when they see that little boy in there, they would approve it.' A historic exodus Many families left separated by the ban were part of a historic exodus from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. In introducing the travel ban, Trump partly blamed the Biden administration for allowing more than a half million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans into the United States under a humanitarian parole program that allowed nationals of the four nations to migrate to the U.S. for two years as long as they had a financial sponsor, passed background checks and arrived through an airport. But part of the reason so many people from the four countries took advantage of the program, known as CHNV, stems from legal immigration hurdles and restrictive policies introduced by Trump during his first term. Among other things, his administration suspended the Cuba Family Reunification Program and a similar one for Haitians. During those years, U.S. embassies in the three countries either suspended visa processing or scaled back appointments, preventing people from immigrating legally while their populations faced political and humanitarian crises, which contributed to the historic exodus Trump is now citing. Anguish and uncertainty Since Trump signed his proclamation last Wednesday, Cubans in the U.S. and on the island have been debating and sharing information about the new immigration restrictions on several groups on WhatsApp and Facebook. Many are praying for a 'miracle' as they share their stories and give each other hope that the ban might be temporary. The directive states that after three months of its enactment, the President will review the recommendations by the Secretary of State regarding whether to continue the restrictions on nationals of the targeted countries. A review will be conducted every six months thereafter. But the lifting of restrictions relies on the foreign governments improving 'their information-sharing and identity-management protocols and practices.' So far, the Cuban government has not signaled it is interested in improving its cooperation with the U.S. and instead attacked Secretary of State Marco Rubio. After the travel ban was announced, Cuba's foreign minister said the measure 'aims to deceive the American people, blaming and violating the rights of migrants. Anti-Cuban politicians, including the Secretary of State, are the main proponents of this measure, betraying the communities that elected them.' Trump's proclamation also notes Cuba remains on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The ban also comes at especially difficult time for Haitians in a country wracked by gang violence. In a statement, Haiti's U.S.-backed Transitional Presidential Council said it plans to 'initiate negotiations and technical discussions' with the Trump administration in order to remove Haiti from the targeted countries. This is likely a tall order considering that more than 1.3 million Haitians remain displaced and armed gangs, now in control of most of Port-au-Prince, have made it difficult to circulate, raising questions about authorities' ability to improve vetting procedures and information sharing with the U.S. For Haiti, the ban prohibits the entry of all of its nationals unless they fall under the few exceptions contemplated in the new directive. Like many Haitians who arrived back in the U.S. on the first day of the travel ban, Eraus Alzime, 71, didn't fully understand its impact. The father of 10 was in Haiti visiting his children when he received a call urging him to get back to the U.S. To get out, he had to travel by bus and went through three gang checkpoints, he said. 'Of course you feel panicked,' Alzime said. 'The bandits make you get off so that they check your suitcases and see what you are carrying. You don't have a choice, you have to do it, if you don't you can end up dead.' Alzime, a U.S. citizen, said he applied for six of his children to emigrate to the U.S legally. The oldest is 43 years-old while the youngest is 14. His adult children won't be able to travel to the United States under the current ban. 'I filed for my kids and they've yet to give them to me,' he said. A victim of the country's incessant violence, Alizme says he has no choice but to travel to Haiti for his kids. 'I have to go see how they are doing,' he said. 'We live depressed' As the news about the travel ban sinks in, parents worry about the psychological toll the prolonged separation will have on their children, especially those who are too young to grasp immigration policy. Gleydys Sarda, 26, and her husband took the difficult decision to flee Cuba and left their 3-year-old son under the care of his grandparents in 2022. They didn't want to expose him to what they knew could be a dangerous land journey to the U.S. Southern border, she said. Now, he is 6 years-old, under the care of a grandparent and increasingly anxious to be with his parents. 'We live depressed because of the long wait; we ran out of excuses to tell him when he asks why he cannot be with us,' said Sardá, who is a U.S. permanent resident and works for Amazon at a warehouse in Coral Springs. 'Lately, he has been repeating more than ever that he wants to be here, that he is tired of waiting, and now this restriction broke our hearts. We have no other way.' Sardá's visa petition to bring him to the United States has yet to be approved. The couple tried to bring him using the special parole program created by the Biden administration, but they never heard back from U.S. immigration authorities. Sardá, who is currently pregnant, frets at the idea of traveling to Cuba to see her child, which currently seems to be her only choice to spend time with him, if only for a short time. The last time she visited in January, 'the goodbye was too hard. When we are there, the three of us are very happy, but after we leave,I feel I leave him worse,' she said. Sarda said the boy got depressed after they left, 'and so do we. I was in bed and didn´t want to go to work or leave the house.' 'Now I am also expecting my second child, and it would break my heart to go to Cuba with one child, return with one and leave the other in Cuba.'
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Advisor who thrived on Black Monday sends warning on tariffs' next victim
People who were there said it felt like an earthquake. They used words like "surreal" and "unsettling," and said there was a sense of impending doom. 💵💰Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter 💰 This was Oct. 19, 1987, also known as Black Monday, the largest one-day percentage decline in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The massive sell-off resulted in roughly $500 billion in market capitalization vanishing and a lot of mighty scared people. But Louis Llanes wasn't one of them. "No, no, no," the portfolio manager and TheStreet Pro contributor insisted. "It got me excited because I actually was at that time more involved with more thinking global macro. You could be short, you could be long, you could be commodities, stocks, bonds, currencies." Llanes, founder of Wealthnet Investments, LLC and author of The Financial Freedom Blueprint, shared his views about a variety of market-related topics with Chris Versace, lead portfolio manager for TheStreet Pro Portfolio, in the May 15 edition of TheStreet Stocks & Markets Podcast. "So, I've been in a lot of different areas in the business," he said. "I started off on the sales side, where you're going out and finding clients. And I learned very quickly at that time that many of the incentives at the larger Wall Street firms were not necessarily aligned with making money." More Wall Street Analysts: Analyst reboots Apple stock price target ahead of earnings Analyst unveils surprising Tesla stock target after Musk's remarks Analyst raises eyebrows with Amazon stock price target "We had all the research," he added. "I was, like, this doesn't make sense. I'm in this business to make money." As far as people who are just coming to the market, Llanes said he sees two types of newer investors. "One wants to do it themselves, is interested in it, and highly capable of doing it themselves," he said. "Maybe they're an engineer or something like that. Their psychology is different than, say, somebody who's got a job. They're a manager or something like that, and they don't have time for that. You have a different kind of a view on how to do things." Llanes advises people generally to continue investing based on the long term. "It depends on how old you are," he said, "but to have more of a longer term view and to have one based on an investment strategy that's based on economics, not on emotion. The biggest problem you get is, for example, let's say you're a doctor, you're going to hear all sorts of things in the operating table or when you're doing whatever." "And those clients that I have that are in those fields, they tend to have all sorts of things like, hey, 'what do you think of this?'" Llanes added. "They're hearing all these things and people will talk about, all the things that they made money on. Nobody talks about the things that they lose money on." Remember, he said, "the people who are talking a lot about how much money they made on something probably aren't doing as well as you think they are." Llanes said that the old adage about letting your profits run and cutting your losses short is probably the most important rule in investing. "As soon as you know you're wrong, get out," he said. "And if you're not sure, if things are working out in your favor, be a little bit apprehensive or a lot apprehensive to just unload that security." The conversation turned President Donald Trump's scattergun tariff plan that has gone through several personality changes since the April 2 "Liberation Day" said that he expected from the very beginning that tariffs would be rolled back "because it was a shock that came to the system on the approach." "There's a difference between how the initial communication went to the public on how we were going to deal with tariffs," he said. "Right on its face, we knew it wasn't feasible. So we knew there'd there would be some pulling back." While Llanes thinks the negotiations will be more on the normal side, the initial approach was good since it got a lot of people talking very quickly, and "the ball is moving a lot faster" now than the traditional country-by-country method. "So, in terms of as an investor, I think that the biggest thing is that you just have to understand that there's going to be winners and losers in this." he said. Llanes' said all of the trends are pointing toward interest rates staying higher. "Nobody really knows how the tariffs are going to work out," he said. "I mean, we're still working through it. The tariffs won't be as inflationary as the alarmists are saying." Llanes believes the other part of the equation, which will see more investment in the U.S., will continue to increase. "That will hold up interest rates," he said. "And I think that's going to affect the real fast-growing companies that are way overvalued. They're going to struggle, I believe."
Miami Herald
16-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Advisor who thrived on Black Monday sends warning on tariffs' next victim
People who were there said it felt like an earthquake. They used words like "surreal" and "unsettling," and said there was a sense of impending doom. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter This was Oct. 19, 1987, also known as Black Monday, the largest one-day percentage decline in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The massive sell-off resulted in roughly $500 billion in market capitalization vanishing and a lot of mighty scared people. But Louis Llanes wasn't one of them. "No, no, no," the portfolio manager and TheStreet Pro contributor insisted. "It got me excited because I actually was at that time more involved with more thinking global macro. You could be short, you could be long, you could be commodities, stocks, bonds, currencies." Llanes, founder of Wealthnet Investments, LLC and author of The Financial Freedom Blueprint, shared his views about a variety of market-related topics with Chris Versace, lead portfolio manager for TheStreet Pro Portfolio, in the May 15 edition of TheStreet Stocks & Markets Podcast. "So, I've been in a lot of different areas in the business," he said. "I started off on the sales side, where you're going out and finding clients. And I learned very quickly at that time that many of the incentives at the larger Wall Street firms were not necessarily aligned with making money." More Wall Street Analysts: Analyst reboots Apple stock price target ahead of earningsAnalyst unveils surprising Tesla stock target after Musk's remarksAnalyst raises eyebrows with Amazon stock price target "We had all the research," he added. "I was, like, this doesn't make sense. I'm in this business to make money." As far as people who are just coming to the market, Llanes said he sees two types of newer investors. "One wants to do it themselves, is interested in it, and highly capable of doing it themselves," he said. "Maybe they're an engineer or something like that. Their psychology is different than, say, somebody who's got a job. They're a manager or something like that, and they don't have time for that. You have a different kind of a view on how to do things." Llanes advises people generally to continue investing based on the long term. "It depends on how old you are," he said, "but to have more of a longer term view and to have one based on an investment strategy that's based on economics, not on emotion. The biggest problem you get is, for example, let's say you're a doctor, you're going to hear all sorts of things in the operating table or when you're doing whatever." "And those clients that I have that are in those fields, they tend to have all sorts of things like, hey, 'what do you think of this?'" Llanes added. "They're hearing all these things and people will talk about, all the things that they made money on. Nobody talks about the things that they lose money on." Remember, he said, "the people who are talking a lot about how much money they made on something probably aren't doing as well as you think they are." Llanes said that the old adage about letting your profits run and cutting your losses short is probably the most important rule in investing. "As soon as you know you're wrong, get out," he said. "And if you're not sure, if things are working out in your favor, be a little bit apprehensive or a lot apprehensive to just unload that security." The conversation turned President Donald Trump's scattergun tariff plan that has gone through several personality changes since the April 2 "Liberation Day" announcement. Related: Veteran investor turns heads with bear market advice Llanes said that he expected from the very beginning that tariffs would be rolled back "because it was a shock that came to the system on the approach." "There's a difference between how the initial communication went to the public on how we were going to deal with tariffs," he said. "Right on its face, we knew it wasn't feasible. So we knew there'd there would be some pulling back." While Llanes thinks the negotiations will be more on the normal side, the initial approach was good since it got a lot of people talking very quickly, and "the ball is moving a lot faster" now than the traditional country-by-country method. "So, in terms of as an investor, I think that the biggest thing is that you just have to understand that there's going to be winners and losers in this." he said. Llanes' said all of the trends are pointing toward interest rates staying higher. "Nobody really knows how the tariffs are going to work out," he said. "I mean, we're still working through it. The tariffs won't be as inflationary as the alarmists are saying." Llanes believes the other part of the equation, which will see more investment in the U.S., will continue to increase. "That will hold up interest rates," he said. "And I think that's going to affect the real fast-growing companies that are way overvalued. They're going to struggle, I believe." Related: Veteran fund manager who forecast S&P 500 crash unveils surprising update The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
