Current Events

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon friends. Thank you so much for being a
loyal radio listener. Radio listener that is to our show.
You're listening to the Greg Hicks Show with Bow and
Wanda today, so technically it's the Bow and Wanda Show
technically day only.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
The renaming campaign starts now, so.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Grab you some water, some wine, or your beverage of
choice and let's chat. We are part of the team
of Financial Resource Management located in Raleigh with an office
at the Crystal Coast as well. You can find us
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(00:37):
where you will see our pictures and bios and a
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and we do hear that all the time that radio

(00:59):
listeners will come in and say I feel like I
know you, and that feeling is mutual for us as well,
so true to protocol, we have a topic today that
I think everyone will want to hear. So call your friends,
your family, even your enemies and tell them they have
to listen to this show. It is current events. Do
we have any current events? Guys? Anything going on?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
O there?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
So, as always, we have a guest for that show,
Hal Eddans, and we'll go more into his bio later,
but we consider him our local economists, or at least
I do. He is with our broker dealer also located
in Raleigh, Capital Investment Group, and Hal is a money
manager and a darn good one too, holl And I
work together with several of our clients, and I also

(01:43):
use them to help bring into focus what's happening on
the streets and in the market. Our clients love him,
and so do we. He does a great job, and
he's opened a meeting with you. And before we get
into it, but we got some things to talk about today.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
We got some news, a lot of red out there.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Huh yeah, let's talk.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah. So the SMP's down from its peak, and this
is Thursday that we're recording this, and so these numbers
are pretty fresh. The SMP's down nine and a half percent,
the nasdacs down thirteen, the Russell two thousand which are
the small companies. They're down seventeen and a half from
their peak. And it all happened so quick. You know,
they say the market takes the escalator up, or the
stairs up, or the elevator down, and that's certainly what's happened,

(02:25):
particularly in some names like Tesla. And you know, you
look at robin Hood and Coinbase and some of these
high flyers that went up so big after the election.
Well now they've lost a lot of their games, They've
wiped a lot of them out. And is this a
better scenario than what most people were predicting, which was,
you know, we we elected Trump and then it was

(02:48):
off to boomtown And I feel like a toot my
own horn a lot on this show. But if you
remember several months ago, up until several weeks ago, we
were cautioning listeners again it's falling victim to the mass
euphorio that was out there. Okay, Trump got elected and
it's low taxes, low regulation. You know, we're off to
the races. This is going to be great. I'm going

(03:09):
all in on risk. And it was like, hold on, buddy,
this is the time, you know, when the person cutting
your hair and the person that's serving you a drink
at the bar is talking about how much money they're
making in Nvidia and all these all these stocks. That's
when you have to scratch your head and be like,
wait a minute, something ain't right here. Maybe I should
get a little defensive. Well, the good news is this
has been a great time for asset allocation because guess what, Yeah,

(03:30):
the the US market has kind of wet the bed,
and we're going to talk about that big time today.
But international stocks they're up for the year. Bonds they're
finally serving their purpose, and accounts they're up for the year.
You know, it's interesting you look at I think it
was Tuesday of this week the US aggregate bond indecks

(03:50):
had its best day compared to the S and P
five hundred and twenty five years, twenty five years, the
bond indecks compared to the stock index. The biggest spread
between the two of those was on Tuesday this past week.
That shows, okay, bonds are once again a buoy in
a client account. They're doing what they what they need
to do, and so have to go up.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
They were so down, they were.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
So down right, right, and so's the that's the benefit
of working with an advisor and creating a thoughtful asset
allocation plan that fits your risk level and speaking a
risk level. And we'll expand on this in a little bit,
but you start to realize in times like this how
much risk you've actually taken in your account. And if
you're one of those people who looks at your account

(04:31):
and it's down ten or twelve percent and you're like,
oh gosh, I got to go to cash, don't don't
do it. Do not give into the human emotion. Call
Greg Wander myself, set up a meeting so that we
can look at you and do a full stress test
on your portfolio, look at what your portfolio means relative
to where you need to go, where you need your
account to be in five, ten, twenty five years, and

(04:54):
we can potentially make some thoughtful changes. But this is
the worst time to sell out of the market. This
is one of the better times to take some of
that cash you might have on the sidelines and do
some value buying and do some value shopping. It is
want to mention. We've got Hal Eden's here today with us,
who is an expert on all things market and is
a market historian, which I think really adds really makes

(05:18):
things easy for listeners to digest when how it can
take Okay, here's how many times this has happened in
the past, and the last time we saw an instance
like this, here's how we came out of it. And
so I'll pass it over to how right now, how
what are your thoughts on what's happened in the past.
I mean, again, it was quick three weeks.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
The worst since COVID, right the fast. It's just like
you're you know, you're walking along on a walk. The
next thing you know, you're pinned down to the sidewalk.
You know, it's like you're getting a carjacked or something.
It's the stuff that was always thought that there would
be a dip.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
We saw the same thing.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Happen in twenty seventeen before a growth really took off.
And yeah, there's some really great growth. You know, policy
he's going on out there, but there's gonna be a
while before they kick in.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
And unfortunately we.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Don't have the tax cuts nailed down, which is kind
of what we needed to do. You know, we talked
about you know, the big two t's or tariffs and
Trump and the thing about the tariffs are is a
lot of people think it's going to roll the clock
back to nineteen fifty five, we're at a manufacturing giant again.
But unfortunately the world has moved on and manufacturing jobs

(06:26):
don't pay like they used to. You assure the you know,
United auto workers get some really great money for putting
together cars, but in general people that's just not the case.
People think, hey, guess what, there's gonna be short term pain,
but guess what, We're gonna bring all the production back here.

Speaker 4 (06:41):
We're gonna start making vacuum cleaners in the United States
instead of overseas.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
And then so that happens, the vacuum cleaners are not
as well made, and they're a lot more expensive, and
the jobs that people are making putting them together don't
pay them enough to survive in this economy. So it's
when you start fighting, Yeah, when you start fighting the
market what the market economy is telling you, like the
economy as opposed to like the government making You know

(07:08):
that China can't get out of its own way lately
for that same reason, they want to dictate what's going on,
and you can't do that. But here's the thing I mean,
So let's bring back the manufacturing jobs from iPhone from
fox Con?

Speaker 4 (07:20):
I mean, do you really want to work at fox Con?

Speaker 3 (07:22):
They sleep in the factory in China. That's so the
smallest portion of the of the money is paid in China.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
But if an American product is designed in America by
American engineers and American CEO and American executives, they live
in beautiful northern California that most of them make four
hundred plus a year.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Do you want to work in a factory work in
horrible hours putting together that iPhone?

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Or do you do you want to work designing it,
which is where the real skill is coming from in
this case.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
And somehow they still pass Muster on the ESG test.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, well they have a lot of credits built up,
a lot of a lot of credits built up.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, I just think that I'm with you. I think
Trump is getting a lot of hoopla built around I
do like Trump. I'm a Trump I am too fan
because of his he's a businessman. I mean, you know
online he's a businessman. But I think we have to
use some common sense here, mister Trump. You can't just
you can't dogmatically put thirty percent tariffs on things or

(08:23):
twenty five percent tariffs on things. You have to kind
of gradually do that, and I think that's the skill
that he's lacking. He's not a Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan,
you were happy to pay tariffs the way he presented it, yeah,
oh yeah, you know, it was just a finessing type
of thing that Trump is not ready to do. He's
not prepared to do, he doesn't know how to do it.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, that's a good point to bring up Reagan, because
there are certainly parallels between what's happening now and with
Reagan and his FED chair back then, which is Paul Volker,
who is a name that a lot of us in
the finance industry know. They did a lot of stuff.
The markets didn't like to pump the brakes and rebalance.
I mean, we had a terrible recession for a year
in the early eighties, and then what happened in the

(09:04):
late eighties, huge economic boom that lasted all the way
basically until two thousand outside of you know, what was
it Black Monday or Black Friday in nineteen eighty seven.
And they've been very clear this administration, but they intend
to do things the markets are not going to like
during the short term, like tariffs and restricting immigration and
slowing growth and all that kind of stuff to establish

(09:25):
lower inflation, lower interest rates, healthier labor market, lower trade deficit,
et cetera. But once again, whether or not it works
remains to be seen. The idea that market fluctuations are
GDP and Q one are conclusive of the strategy, however,
is just ridiculous. Yeah, and so of course we're going
to hit some volatility, which we're hitting right now. But again,

(09:45):
your point is well taken, Wanda. I think you have
to focus on the long term, and it's not even
that long term. Just look at next year, the year after.
Sure we're going to have some volatility this year, but
things are on sale.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Stock market stenn bite Trump coming in, it was it
was we.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Were begging, begging, begging for a cellof not like this.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
But the R word was coming despite Trump. It really
was we we were see.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I don't think we're in an R word.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
I don't think we used it. He's already used it.
So it's out there on the streets and the market
does not like uncertainty. That don't like it.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
But the problem is the hedges aren't working because bonds
are actually going down and interest rates are going up
because part of that is the tough tariff talk has
got the Germans and the Europeans wound up and so
they're spending more, which is sending up their bond prices.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
The one thing that bothers me, and I will tell you.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
This, this is this is this is so complicated.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
How it's really not we know, I mean, the big
I think Smoot Harley was that Holly was the big
tariff in the thirties. We're in the Great Depression and
man it it's like we bungee jumped off the side
of a balloon when that happened.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
So we know they don't work.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
But the thing that the one thing that bothers me
is I like this stat and the December low in
the Dow, and when you take out the December low
in the Dow in the first quarter of the following year,
it's not good. We flirted with that on January fourth,
we dropped about two hundred points and then we closed

(11:21):
back up again and took back off again. But we've
now pretty much we're down about four percent through it,
and we the average drop from there is eleven percent,
so that would put us about thirty seven thousand. We
were doing well enough in January that wasn't an issue,
but that's definitely something to take care of it.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
And where are we now right at.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Forty forty one I believe, okay, so we still could
have some pain ahead if history is any God, all right, Yeah,
we got a lot more to talk about.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
I have three more segments. Please stick with us for
current events. We'll be right back with you.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Welcome back to the second segment of the Greg Hicks
Show with Bo and Wanda. And again technically it's the
Bow and Wanda Show, so you're listening to Bo and
Wanda today. So as we promise, we have a guest today.
He's really not a guess. He's part of the family
really because we've had him so many times and we
use him consistently anyway. His name is hal Eddans. Hall

(12:19):
serves as vice president and portfolio manager for Capital Investment Council.
Hall received his BS degree in Business administration from the
University of North Carolina, Go Hills. Hall has been and
continues to be an integral component in building North Carolina
premier investment firms with an inviable client list. So just
want to give a little out to your bio because

(12:41):
you're every bit of that and more so. So here
we are, we're going to talk a little bit more
about what's going on. That's what's on people's minds. And
the big T word, it's not Trump either, it's the
big the other big T word. And what's interesting about tariffs,
how is that we've been here before. And the thing

(13:02):
I think Trump is trying to point out is we
have been charged so much terriffs and people don't the
street don't understand that. The people on the street don't
understand that we were charged enormous teriffs by Canada for
milk and eggs and things like that. So he's trying
to even the playing field. Is he going overboard? Maybe,
but I'm not up there making that decision. But I'm

(13:23):
trying to give him time because he's been an office
with what ninety days now, and that's it.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
You know.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
It's funny.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
People probably don't remember this name, but Gary Kahn a
He was from Goldman Sacks and he was in the
first Trump administration.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
He was the.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Architect of the tax deal. I think he lasted about
a year and a half or two years, but he
really was the architect of most of the good things
that happened. And then he left and that's fine, but
Peter Navarro kind of took over in that role. And
Peter Navarro thinks that there's no tariff that is too high.
I mean, he's kind of the thing that I saw
somebody said the other day. The difference between now and

(13:59):
twenty seventeen is Gary CON's not there to take Peter
Navarro's memo on terrorists and throw it in the trash.
So that's the you know, that's kind of what we're
going through. But here's here's why. Ultimately they will come
back to us like they being the other countries listen
to this, all right, Canada and Mexico they both send
eighty percent of.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Their exports to us.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
It's like, you know, when you show up to go
to a wedding venue or something, or a nice restaurant,
I'm the customer. You know, you're not trying to impress them.
So we're the customers. So they send eighty percent of
their exports us. We send them sixteen percent.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
China.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
China sends sixteen percent of their exports to US. We
only send seven to them, and then the EU that's
kind of a more of an interesting thing. They send
twenty percent to us and we send seventeen to them,
so we that's probably a closer nut to crack.

Speaker 4 (14:49):
It's kind of funny though, because.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
European things in general are more expensive, so that's that's
kind of surprising.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Actually, Wow, and I saw the dollar has lost a
little steam relative to the U euro yeah this week.
So yes, those of you planning a European vacation, I
think we're I think we're still crushing the Canadian dollar.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
We are.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
So if you want to go to Canada, yeah, it's
a good time to do it. Your dollar will go
a long way. But maybe go Montreal is great. We
went to Bam. We went skiing in Banff a few years.

Speaker 4 (15:17):
I went to BAM's definitely on my list. I want
to go in the summer.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Bamp is a lot like Jackson Hole without the outrageous prices.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
Jackson Hole's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Jackson Hole is nuts.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, Well what about didn't they delay the terras for
Mexico and China until April? Well they did, and then
then they didn't.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
Who can keep? Yeah, who can keep? Up with it.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
That's I think, I'll be honest with you, I think
that's kind of part of it is the chaos.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Do you think we're going to have a trade war?
Are we in one?

Speaker 2 (15:43):
We're kind of in one.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, I think we're in one.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Oh wow, Okay, for the longest time, like the Chinese talks,
would ignored it until really the last couple of days.
But the dollar coming down is ultimately good. I mean,
you don't want it to go too low, but it
was too high and you got remember, I think over
sixty five percent of American sale in general, especially tech,
goes overseas, so a strong dollar really hamstrings them.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Well, what's interesting is inflation has cooled some. I mean
we were up in what eight or nine percent? Yeah,
you know, and people are forgetting they're they're saying inflation's
high under Trump.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
No, I mean we oh no, no, no, definitely not.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
But that's what that's what the streets say.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
I think they really thought that he was going to
hit a light switch and egg prices were going to
get Egg prices are down twenty one percent in the
last week and a half. No one's saying that, yeah,
but I think they thought, oh, here's the Trump special. Here,
let's click the light switch and prices automatically go down.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah. I saw something that Biden killed like one hundred
and fifty million chickens because of the bird flu. Yeah,
I mean there's a story chickens that'll cause yeah to
go out.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
And what about interest rates? I mean, we are seeing
lower rates and mortgagees not as low as they once were,
which is kind of hurts a little.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Bit, but they are lowering, they are getting lower, They've
gotten better, they've gotten they've gotten better in the last
two weeks. They've gotten worse in the last week, like
I said, which is weird because of the inflation data
that came out yesterday and today. So it's not horrible.
But if we could get mortgage rates down, that would
jump start everything because the consumer, like I said, the

(17:17):
lower end, the middle consumer right now are flagging a bit.
Having said that, Dollar General had earnings today, they were
actually really good stocks.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
Up around seven percent today.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
But if they start yeah, if they start getting losing
the upper end Dollar General, Oh, I love it, I
mean it was it really looked great ago.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
Yes, it's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
But if we start losing the upper end customer, we're
going to be in trouble. And so what we need
is we need lower rates to get mortgages back down
so people can actually move and housing inventory, which has
been building.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
I'm not negative. I still think things are good.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
They're not great, But trying to crash the economy so
that race will.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
Come down, that's what a lot of people have said.
And I can't even think.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
That's a very common to a conspiracy theory here.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Well, this Treasury secretary who's from South Carolina, and he
even said that.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
There's going to be some detox is what we're going
to go through.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
You have to look at both sides. But back to
the inflation piece. So remember, falling inflation does not mean
falling prices. Falling inflation just means that the price of
goods are still going up, just not as fast as
they once were. And so I think we can relate
that to what the economy's doing right now. I think
it's a slowing economy, but not a recession or a

(18:31):
session is when economic growth reverses. I think instead of
us growing at eight percent year every year, we might
be growing at four percent year every year, you know,
and so we're still growing just at a slower pace.
And so this does not mean that we are going
into a recession at least I don't think so. But again,
who am I to call the future? Who was anybody

(18:53):
to call it?

Speaker 1 (18:53):
You have not used the word himself, I think would
be he What he.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Did last weekend is he failed to rule it out.
He was a like an MSNBC or Fox News interview
and it was do you think we're going to go
into a recession this year because of all your tariffs?
And he would not say no.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Sometimes you can be in a recession a little bit
before you realize you're in one.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
So that's you know, the unknown. But we've been through
them before. I'm not trying to dismiss it. But like
I told you, we've been through tariffs before.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
People.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
People don't realize, Uh, there were terraffs under Obama, there
were tariffs under Biden twenty twenty two. I think he
jacked the tariff up. But you know that, yes, is
this like a big, you know, rolling snowball instead of
a little one. But still, we've been there before, and
I wish people would remember that. I'm old enough to

(19:49):
have seen a lot of several recessions, and several tariff problems,
and several rising interest rates and several years of interest
rates going down. I've been seen at all, and sometimes
there's nothing like experience to bring it back to focus.
I think what people are also doing is listening to
the media and taking their their what they should do

(20:09):
from the media. That's the last place to take it from.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
Their job is to entertain. Your job is to ignore.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
You brought up a good He brought up a four
percent number, and that reminded me of something that I
used to use in one of my stump speeches, so
to speak. And this is when inflation used to not
even be an issue. But think about this four percent inflation.
And granted inflation is running lower than that now, it's
actually running about two point five. But at four percent inflation,
the cost of the goods and services that you buy

(20:38):
every day and every year will double in fifteen years.
And if you're on a fixed income, that's not good.
And that's that's another reason why you have to have
an appropriate amount.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
Of stock exposure in your account.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Bonds are fine, but bonds just don't do the compounding
like stocks do.

Speaker 4 (20:59):
They can keep up with inflation.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
And I remember when my mother in law moved down
here and she was on fixed income back in twenty
eleven in Raleigh and her her her a partment rent
was seven hundred and seventy five dollars a month, which
seemed like a lot back then. By the time she
moved back to Illinois, that rent had gone up to
fifteen hundred dollars, and she's on fixed income, she was

(21:22):
still getting.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
The same amount.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
So that you always need an appropriate amount of exposure
to stocks to help offset that.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
And over time, clients and treasury yields. You know, just
what two months ago on a ten year we're very
close to five percent. And so there was an argument,
why don't we just put all of our money in treasuries.
You know, we're retired and we're taking no risk and
we're getting the five percent we need for income. And
I'd say, well, hold on a minute, what do you
mean you're taking no risk? There's no principal risk here.

(21:52):
But what the biggest risk that I think everyone has
in retirement is purchasing power risk YEP like you mentioned,
which is degraded by and so it is important to
have a thoughtful balance even if you are incredibly conservative
on paper, it still pays to have some money in
stock so that your account is growing and keeping up
and that later bucket for down the road is going

(22:14):
to be there and it's going to be higher than
it is today. So call us nine one nine eight
five six one nine six eight and come sit down
with us. Sit down with how we would love to
talk to you about your situation and create a thoughtfully
balanced asset allocation plan to get you to where you
need to go. Nine one nine eight five six one
nine six eight. And with that, we're going to take
our second break. We'll be right back with the third
segment of the Greg Hicks Show.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Welcome back to the third segment of the Greg Hicks
Show with Bo and Wanda today. And let me remind
you that you're listening to all three of us talk
about the market and what's happening on the street and
things like that, because that's what concerns you. So we
wanted to make sure that we did a current events show,
and I wanted to encourage you to call and make

(22:56):
your appointment to get a complimentary review. You can meet
with me Bo or Greg. You can. We can also
pull Hal into the meeting, So give us a call
nine to one nine eight five six nineteen sixty eight
to do that. And remember you can also check us
out on our website FRMNC dot com. And we also

(23:17):
are on every Saturday and Sunday at two pm, so
don't miss that as either. And you call your family
and friends help them tune in so they can also
be in the know like you are. So how we
left the show talking about a lot of things. I
think Bo brought up some good points. So let's talk
about the street and you know what's going on, and
you mentioned Dollar General. I mean, we can't do a

(23:39):
current events show without talking about stocks. And we're not
saying that your risk level is where you should go
out and buy all stocks. That's why you would meet
with us to determine that. But let's talk a little
bit about the street and the stocks and things like that.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Before we do, I just want to introduce it with
a statistic. You know, we've been talking about Wall Street,
let's talk about Main Street. How is the average American doing?
We all know that if you walk into a car
dealership with two nickels to scrape together, you can probably
get a loan for an escalade, right, I mean it
is just criminal the amount of money they will lend

(24:13):
to certain people that shouldn't be buying escalades or whatever
other cars they're buying. So the percentage of borrowers at
least sixty days late on their car payment is at
the highest level ever right now, So used car payment,
you should get back out there being on doors, put
your boots on your.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
At you did, I did?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
You got a gun?

Speaker 1 (24:39):
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
They did, Like Christy, you know when she's there.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Before kids, I worked and collects the thick skin comes
from Northwestern Bank, and I went, you know what, it's
time to move on here, change careers. So, yeah, you're right,
and get my concealing carriers and they will tear out
that guy sat there, held us at gunpoint and tore
out the seats. Yeah, he tore it up, tore it up,

(25:06):
and there's nothing we could do but call the police.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
So, you know, staunch reminder. You probably don't own your house,
and if you have a car loan, you don't own
your car, and the bank is going to remind you
of that if you miss a few payments. And so
back to that stat we are at the highest car
payment delinquency rate ever on record right now, and so
what does that mean?

Speaker 3 (25:27):
I guess it's interesting. I learned this this past weekend.
You're gonna like this because you use the escalate example.
So I have a buddy of mine and he's the
finance chief for a really big dealership in Charlotte, and
we were talking about it the other day about escalades
or whatever, and I said, who buys escalades?

Speaker 4 (25:42):
I said, men?

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Women?

Speaker 4 (25:43):
He goes, actually men for women.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
But here's the thing that surprised me, and the escalate via,
I believe is this top of line is I think
it's around one hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty
thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
That's a mortgage.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
But he's, oh yeah, well he said that there. This
is why the upper end customer or consumer is so
important for America.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
The finance penetration rate.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
In other words, the amount the people that finance cadillacs
in general is only thirty eight percent. The rest of
them are cash buyers. I want yeah, oh yeah, this
and this is a big sample size. And he also
had something interesting about tariffs. They met with GM last
week and GM said, look, if we have to change everything,
it will take us two years to retool everything and
move it back to America. And that these tariffs, oh yeah,

(26:27):
we're going to pass them on. The dealership will pay them,
who will turn on and pass them on to the customer.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
So do people think that prices won't go up with tariffs?
So the thing.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
About making a car, they go back and forth and
back and forth over the border, Yeah, to Mexico, Like
they'll assemble a piece of it and they'll send it
to cheap Yeah. I mean they'll send it to wherever
San Antonio, and then they'll send it back to Mexico
to do something else. And then every time you cross,
you're paying that tariff. Yeah, and so yeah, car, it
adds up really quickly. And so do you think how

(26:57):
that the American consumer in a decent spot right now? He?

Speaker 4 (27:03):
He or she is.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
But I don't think anybody's in the spot to handle
a twenty or twenty five percent increase in stuff, not
in cars especially He said it would be in.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
He said it would be an absolute nightmare for car sales.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Well, but but don't you think at some point it
will equal out? Like there are some manufacturing and things
that are coming back over here, according to the.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Media, they said to be two years though to get
it up. Yeah, yeah, I know by the way that
that I mean, it's ridiculous what cars cost now, I mean,
it's it is it is.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Well, they started getting that way right off to COVID. Yeah,
you started edging up. And because I bought my tailer
ride write smack dab in the middle of COVID and
got a tremendous deal on it.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
You could probably sell it for I probably could.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
But I'm not.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
I love it was.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
I love that car. I got all the features on
it that could have gotten on you know, another like
a Toyota or whatever. All the features are more for
like eight thousand dollars less.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, has one, and I steal it all the time.
It's car. It is a good car, the best car
out there.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Well, but we were talking about the street, you know,
the people on the street and retail. I'm getting these
calls how I don't want to be in retail. I
think that's a terrible place to be. And I'm like, well,
I just bought Dollar General for you too, had you know,
I just bought it, so I'm not going to sell it.
But they won't do. Instead, by AI.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Well, well, it's interesting with AI because now with this
beatdown that we've seen in videos down from one forty
to one thirteen. Today we were talking about Marvel before
the show started, and that's down from one twenty to
sixty nine in three weeks. And it's actually very reasonably priced.
And by the way, if you think AI the AI
boom is going away, yeah, maybe Microsoft's backing off a

(28:45):
little bit of an oracle on their earnings call on
Monday says, by the way, we're going to spend fifty
percent of our revenue this year building new data centers.
So how can you not so, Yeah, the move that
is still there and the more reasonably priced up but
I guess, you know, you take advantage and let the
market do this, you know, bring prices down.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
The climactic scene in or one of the climactic scenes
in the movie The Lion King was a stampede, you know,
and move fast.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
That's where he dies.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
We are in a selling stampede is a well known.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
Term a goy Jeff's salt.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
He used to be at Raymond James and that was
always one of his things, and selling stampedes run somewhere
around seventeen to twenty five days. In other words, basically,
you're getting beaten so bad it's like I've fallen and
I can't get up, you know. I mean it's like
an MMA match where they let them hit you while
you're on the ground. That's what's going on. So we're

(29:40):
on day seventeen. Now, these things don't last two months,
and the rate of drop in this one, so we're
so close to getting that capitulation bottom. And so basically
at some point you literally run out of sellers. And
by the way, a lot of these people he mentioned
Robin Hood and everything earlier, they're in some stuff they
had no business going into. When I some of the
things I was hearing from people got yoga. But three

(30:03):
months agoes like, oh my god, you held up his
crypto wall and goes, look what I've done. I put
in thirteen and it's one hundred. He goes, but wait
till the bull market gets here, and it's going to
be really good. And I was thinking, dude, you're in
the bull market. So but the thing is is when
you're on margin and things go down, you have to sell.
There's no timing the marching clerk says, this has to
be sold by two o'clock today, and that's kind of

(30:24):
what we're running into here. So we're flushing it out,
we're putting the bottom in, and it feels horrible at
the time, but it ultimately is good.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
And I'll tell you what I look.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
I've been doing this for almost thirty eight years. The
buys that I made the most money on came from
the worst times. I think back about the crash in
nineteen eighty seven, twenty two percent in one day. How
the buys from back then were incredible. You look at
the housing crisis, you look at the Gulf War first
one in ninety one. It's that's where you make your money.

(30:56):
You look at twenty twenty two. You could buy Google
at eighty dollars a shit, it's one hundred and seventy, now,
you know what I mean? Like that's you pick out a.

Speaker 4 (31:05):
Target, something you really want to own, wait for your price,
and buy a little bit. Don't go crazy with it.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Try to think back to your emotions when these things
were taken off, when the videos and the Tesla's and
the Microsoft's and the apples were way up. Man, I
should have gotten in you know, everybody at my yoga
class is talking about how much money you're making there.
Every single time the market drops, the reason feels unique, right,
It always feels like this is the first time this
is happening.

Speaker 4 (31:31):
Yeah, yeah, like it's before.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
But the downturn itself always happens. I mean, this is
it's over and over and over again. And so take
check your emotion at the door. Better yet, work with
a professional like how wander myself. Give us a call
nine one nine eighty five six one nine six eight
so that we can help you kind of bargain shop,
particularly in this time because again, I mean, Tesla's down
fifty percent. Well, Elon Musk is a bad guy, and

(31:54):
people were putting Toyota labels on their Teslas. Well those
people are crazy, right, So I mean he has so
much more than Tesla. Anyways, that's not a recommendation. But
we've got one more segment of a show, and when
I come back, I'm going to ask how if he
thinks we'll see new all time highs in twenty twenty six.
So I'll give him three minutes to think about that,

(32:15):
and I'll give you all three minutes to wait for
the answer. Stick with us.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Welcome back to the Greg Hicks Show. This is our
last segment, so get it while it's hot. So you
might want to make a call and get your people
tuned in for this last segment, and then they can
go back and listen to the rest of it on
the one of six one FM talk station where you
can pull up past shows, or on our website FRMNC
dot com, or better yet, you can meet with the

(32:41):
man himself, Hal Eddens. So give us a call nine
one nine eight five six nineteen sixty eight to schedule
your complimentary review. I don't think I've met with any
radio listener that left and said this is the worst
use of my time. I've not gotten that I know
you having because I've heard you talk to radio listeners

(33:02):
who wouldn't sit down with you. That charm and finanse
that you use. And well, here we go on this
last segment, and we want to make sure we make
some good bullet points to finish this out.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
But you know, I had a question for how Yeah,
you did, go ahead, But before I get into that question,
I'm gonna make you wait a little bit longer. I
just wanted to talk about how we work with how
and what capacity who is how is the extension of
our team? Yes, Richard Bryant would like me to call
him a member of the Capital Investment Company Ensemble platform.

(33:39):
And what that means is he is effectively an extension
of exactly, mister Ensemble. He's an extension of our team.
But what I mean by that is, obviously if you
come to work with Greg Wander and myself, well then
we're your immediate team. And then we have administrators around
us that kind of keep the wheels on the bus moving.

(33:59):
But then we have a state planning attorneys, we have CPAs,
we have family law practitioners, we have trust officers, we
have insurance specialists, all as part of our extended team.
Because what we want our resources. What we want is
for a client to be able to call into our
office and for us to be able to get what
they need done. And if it can't be done internally

(34:21):
inside the walls of our office, we want to be
able to refer them out to a professional who can
take care of it, like if it's doing a high
level will or filing taxes or something else, or even
if it's portfolio management. And that's where how comes in
and so I tell my clients, look, I'm fully licensed
to do all this stuff myself, to build you a
portfolio and manage it. I know some people do that.
I think Greg want to do that, and that's fine,

(34:43):
But I find a lot of value in working with
a professional whose sole job is doing just that. Allows
me to focus on the service side of the business
and get clients what they need from a planning perspective,
and all that stuff freeze up my bandwidth a little bit.
And person like how and How's team Capital Investment Council.
They are solely focused on your account, managing your account,

(35:07):
tax loss, harvesting, all the stuff that goes in to
a good investment investment manager that you would look for. Yeah,
and so I urge you to reach out and give
us a call to see how this ensemble platform, this
team approach can really benefit you. Nine one nine eight
five six one nine six eight. Okay, So, how before

(35:28):
the break, I asked you if you thought we would
see market highs new market highs this year right now?
Obviously we're down in the SMP almost ten percent from
where we peaked, So do you think we'll make that
whatever we need? Twelve and a half percent back in
Crest New Highs. Before the end of the year, you're

(35:48):
on the gun.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, If not this year, I think I would say
definitely like the first quarter of next year. Now, the
big caveat is going to be tariffs. Because here's the thing. Traditionally,
UH is some of the best performing stocks in the
last couple of months. I wish I bought more of them,
Jay and Jay Kimberly Clark. I mean, good lord, I
did toilet paper y, but I mean I bought somebody.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
I wish I bought more. And but so you usually have.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
A shift, you know, like you when you know tech
is was a lot of tech is ever valued, not
all of it, but a lot of it.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
But that's where the growth is.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
But if we don't have a shift into these other
names because tariffs are wrecking them too, that's a problem
because we always need to have a morph into another group,
and you have another you need to have another vine
to swing to if your tars in. But I'm thinking
they'll figure the tariff thing out. Here's the thing too,
we need the two things we need. We need productivity boost,

(36:42):
which is good and I think AI the AI use
I have is in I can't imagine. Not I'm on
there probably thirty times a day.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
It's just I use it for everything.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I think for myself anymore.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
It's amazing. Here's the thing that's crazy. It will talk
to you, you like you, and it will argue with you.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
How do y'all do that?

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Comes you?

Speaker 1 (37:04):
I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
If I want she got a log on the internet.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, if the internet is really cool, you plug it
into the telephone jack into the walk and I.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
Know, I'm just serious. I have not used yeah because
I think for myself. But anyway, let's.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Talk about Well, here's the thing, though, is you can
like I give an example. UPS is a stock that
I've stayed away from because if.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
The tree, well I do now too.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
But but I didn't like it at one seventy five. Hey,
we're paying our drivers two hundred thousand dollars a year. Gee,
I can't understand why it cost me forty dollars to
ship something on UPS. But now that it's down here
in the one teen's one twenty, it's interesting. But I
still had some problems with it, and so I was
wondering I wanted another opinion on it. So I go
on there, what am I, and I laid outlined my

(37:53):
argument on it, and what's your counter argument?

Speaker 4 (37:56):
And it laid out some things that I.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Had, some things I hadn't thought about.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
No, well, it's it's here.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
I know I'm being funny, but it's here whether we
like it or not, and so we can either use
it or get rolled over by it.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
But it's a big risk in AI. And this is like,
you know, this is revenge of the machine type situation. Uh,
if we go into a recession and corporations have at
that point, like fifty percent adopted AI, and then the recession.
We come out of the recession, but corporations choose not

(38:27):
to hire back the entire workforce they had, and they
use that recession as an excuse to just make more
efficient what they do by using more AI, and AI
ends up taking a whole lot of these jobs and
then you leave these people on the street without anything
to do. I mean, that is a that is a
real life scenario that could play out. It's it's certainly

(38:48):
worst case, but who knows, I don't know what the
chance of that is.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Hopefully it's Intel has double the number of people working
on teams that in video and like AMD do like
that's that's a very ripe thing. Here's the thing, but AI,
when you use it, I always say please and thank
you because when they self actualize and take over the world,
I'm gonna be one of their friends on the Good Show.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
What do you think that's a joke.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
By the way, an article since the R word was
yeah has come up about Campbell's soup. You know that
now might be the time to look at Campbell's soup
because some of these companies like that do well in
a recession if there is going to be one.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Oh yeah, And I think unfortunately this is another AI thing.

Speaker 4 (39:30):
This is just my take on it.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
If you have a good idea when it comes to
buying a stock or selling a stock and you're thinking
about it, I would tend to act sooner rather than later,
because if the idea is good, it happens the market,
but the market doesn't wait. But I really feel like
there's a lot of stuff with AI is able to
slice and dice through the past scenarios like we do

(39:53):
as humans. And I'm just surprised that something like Jay
and j was one that I really looked at. I
bought some and then before I know it it gone
up twenty points, and I'm like, god knows. But in general,
it's a The moves are happening quicker than they did
even a year or two ago.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Well what do you think about Passer because I think
what happened to.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
What about what about mark Mark? Is interesting?

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah? I think it is too.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
I tell you what they for me.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
XLV is the ETF exchange traded fund that holds all
of them. Those Now that was a great buy, I
think in the one twenties, last fall safety trade. But
sometimes it's easier just to buy the basket because man,
that you get one drug and you just yeah, I did.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
That during COVID. I figure out where to go for clients,
but I knew I needed to be buying because it
you know, oh yeah, And so I did XLV and
SPLV and those kind of things and they did quite well. Yeah,
so it was a good call because I just didn't
know where to hit. So I just did did the
basket thing. Sometimes that's a little easier. Now, Notice you're

(40:53):
drinking out of a Yetti and I'm looking at Yetti.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
Because my American baby.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, I think it's interesting. Now my only consumer with them?
Have they built all they're gonna build build, and you know,
I don't know, but it is an interesting stock in
the pe hes very low.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
That's an interesting story. It was an interesting divorce as
far as I understand, because I think what happened Arctic
is Arctic. Yeah, was his wife and maybe really had
she owned part of the patent, I think, And so
basically Artik is a It's kind of like if you
know the story about Charles Shaw tu Buck Chuck Trader Joe's.
I think the story there is the guy who invented

(41:28):
or started Trader Joe's in the divorce settlement gave his
wife the proceeds and the revenue from the wine sales,
and so he created two buck Chuck so that there
was effectively no revenue. And I think Arctic and YETI
is a similar story. And she was like, I'm just
gonna come in and undercut you and rip you off. Anyways,
we got so much more to talk about. There's so

(41:48):
many current events that are out there, but unfortunately our
producers waving her hand at me, we got to shut
this thing down. But we really appreciate everybody tuning in
and remember you are on the acts of two years
of twenty plus percent in the market. So if this year,
if this year winds up a ten percent down year,
and three years ago you would have said, hey, I'll

(42:10):
give you twenty percent, twenty percent and ten percent down,
would you take it? I would say absolutely. So if
this is the price we have to pay for what's
happened over the past two years, hopefully it's ten percent
and nothing worse. But again you heard it here hal
Adden thinks for going to new highs, so we'll hold
them to it. We'll see what happens on January first,
twenty twenty Sex bringing back hell. Thank you so much
for being here. Wanda love you as always, and everybody,

(42:31):
thank you all for tuning in. Our number nine one
nine eighty five six one nine six eight is a
great place to start get your finances in order. It's
never too late, so give us a call. Nine one
nine eighty five six one nine six eight and remember this,
it's your money, it's your future, don't blow it. Advisory
services through Capital Investment Advisory Services LLC. Security is offered
through Capital Investment Group BING. Remember finra in SIPIC one thousand,

(42:52):
e six Forks Road, Raleigh, North Carolina. Nine one, nine, eight, three, one,
twenty three seventy. Past performance is not indicative of future results.