Smart Investing with Brent & Chase Wilsey

Is a reduction in cardboard demand a warning sign of a slowing economy? The simple answer is yes, but it also is one of many indicators we are seeing. Cardboard is used in many items in the economy from pizza boxes to the multiple items you get delivered from online stores. The numbers show that box shipments after reaching record highs during the pandemic are now down to levels not seen since 2016. If you look at a per-person basi...

Investors have a false sense of safety in the stock market

A psychologist by the name of Gerald Wilde came up with the term homeostatic years ago and I believe this is totally relevant in today's market. It essentially means that when the environment comes to feel safer, people’s behavior becomes riskier. A great example he used was that people will probably drive faster in a big SUV than in a little tin can of a car. Relating it t...

Retail sales are still surprisingly strong

Although the labor market has been softening and consumers say they are worried about inflation, people are still spending money. August retail sales were up 5% compared to last year and if the annual decline of 0.7% in gasoline stations was excluded, sales would have increased 5.5% compared to last August. Strength was broad based in the report and outside of gasoline stations the only ot...

Should members of Congress be allowed to trade stocks?

I recently saw there was a bipartisan bill presented in the House that would ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks. I feel like we have been hearing about this for years, and according to NPR, “For more than a decade, a series of bills have been proposed to address such trades, but differences about the details and a lack of support from top congressional leaders stalled...

You don’t always need to pick the hot technology stocks to get great returns Investing is very emotional and it’s always nice to be part of the crowd and buy the hot stocks like Apple, Alphabet and Amazon, but they are not always the top performers. Sometimes your boring, undervalued companies can do very well. As an example, Apple over the years has performed nicely, but over the last five years the gain was 114%. Not a bad return...

Yet another warning on private investments!

I remember hearing about a company by the name of Yieldstreet a few years ago and how it was a new way for smaller investors to get access to private investments and diversify away from stocks. The company promoted their platform with the tagline, “Invest like the 1%.” Unfortunately, it is now coming out that several investors may have lost everything they invested in the platform. One ge...

How much will EV car makers lose in credits? The nations Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards are still in place; however, penalties for violating those standards have been removed. So obviously there’s no incentive for any car maker to abide by them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is focusing on standards to try to make cars more affordable again. But the big EV car makers, I will call them the bi...

Unfortunately, more Americans are using their 401(k)’s for financial emergencies

I’m sure some will disagree with me based on the headlines arguing they were so happy that they had their 401(k) to tap for whatever their financial emergency was. In my opinion, people are thinking short term and not thinking about the long-term crisis when they retire in 20 or 30 years and then might be living at the poverty level because their 401(k...

Will the stock market crash?

With the market continuing to march higher and setting record high after record high, I do worry more and more that a crash could be coming. It doesn’t mean it will happen tomorrow, next week, or maybe even this year, but I do believe the risk to reward of investing in the S&P 500 at this point is not favorable when you take all the data into consideration. I have talked a lot about the fact that th...

Should you be concerned by the jobs report?

The July jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls grew by 73k, which missed the estimate of 100k. Unfortunately, the news got even worse as you dug into the report. The prior two months saw major negative revisions as June was revised from 147k to just 14k and May was revised from 125k to just 19k. This amounted to a total negative revision of 258k when looking at the two months combined. Anot...

Big bank earnings give a cautious green light on the economy

Every quarter we get excited about listening to and reading about how things went for the big banks in the most recent quarter as they release their earnings. I’m primarily talking about JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. We have held a couple large banks in our portfolio for years and they have provided very useful information along with great r...

Are tariffs impacting inflation yet?

The Consumer Price Index, also known as the CPI, in the month of June showed an annual increase of 2.7%, which was in line with expectations. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, came in at 2.9% and was also in like with expectations. It was slightly above May’s reading of 2.8%, but given all the news around tariffs I think most would be surprised to see the limited change in prices given a...

Crypto losses increase 66% in 2024

At first you may be saying I thought Bitcoin has been increasing in value? While that is true, you have to remember that is only one of the many thousands of cryptocurrencies that are available. According to the FBI in 2024, there was 149,686 complaints for total losses of $9.3 billion. It was somewhat surprising to learn that people over 60 years old, who I thought knew better than to gamble with...

The June jobs number looks stronger than it really is

I want to be clear; I wouldn’t say this was a bad report, but the headline number that showed an addition of 147,000 jobs in the month of June doesn’t show the full picture. The number did come in well above the estimate for 110,000 jobs and it follows upward revisions in the months of April and May that have totaled 16,000 jobs, but the concerning part I saw was government acco...

Watch Out For This Chinese Stock Scam!

Yes, there’s another scam out there trying to part you from your hard-earned money. This has happened many times in recent years and it’s occurred in very small Chinese stocks that are vulnerable to manipulation. For some reason some US investors see these and think they’ve hit it big. US regulators try their best, but typically cannot get access to information in China to go after these peopl...

May retail sales look stronger than headlines show

After seeing headlines from several media outlets, I was worried May retail sales were slowing to a problem point, but I would say they actually looked quite strong. Compared to April, sales did fall 0.9%, which was larger than expectations for a 0.6% decline. It’s important to point out though that consumer rushed to auto dealers in April to try and beat the tariffs. This led to a...

Alternative Assets Appear to Be a House of Cards

I remember using that same terminology back before the tech bust about 25 years ago. I was maybe a little bit early back then, but the house of cards collapsed. The more I read about alternative assets the more I scratch my head and ask how is Wall Street getting away with this? In the end, I believe the small investor will end up paying dearly for investing in these alternative asse...

Jobs market remains in a good spot 

Headline nonfarm payrolls increased 139k in the month of May, which was above the estimate of 125k, but below April’s reading of 147k. A big negative in the report was the fact that March and April saw negative revisions that caused payrolls in those months to decline by a combined 95k versus what was previously reported. Even with that, if you zoom out and look at the big picture the economy is ...

First Time Homebuyers Hit a Record Low

With the high cost of housing and higher interest rates, people trying to get their first home dropped to a record low around 23% in 2024. The average age of the first-time homebuyer has increased 10 years over the historical average to 38 years old. The median income is now $97,000 and the first-time home buyers are coming up with an average down payment of 9% of the value of the home. Many o...