'We're not dead yet!" Baby Boomers are still driving the economy

Chuck Zodda and Mike Armstrong discuss air travel demand is breaking records but airline profits are not. The noncompete clause is moving deeper into limbo. US consumer goods companies are losing upper hand on pricing. Record numbers of Americans are investing in stocks. How are baby boomers still driving the economy? Scammers are swiping billions from Americans. Sadly, many are getting away with it. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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DAV five K Boston is presented byVeterans Development Corporation This is the Financial Exchange
with Chuck Zada and Mike Armstrong alittle bit after eleven here, and stocks
are slightly positive today as the DowJones Industrial Average is up one hundred and
sixty five points. SMP is upseven points in NASDAC up twenty three.

(01:26):
Ten year US Treasury is up onebasis point to four point two eight percent.
Oil down forty three cents a barrelto eighty two to seventy three on
the back of Hurricane Barrel making itsway through the Houston area. Right now,
you're wondering why oil prices tend togo down around hurricanes. Actually,
like as they're passing through, it'sbecause the demand for oil drops then because

(01:53):
the refineries that are based in thearea can't operate in a lot of cases.
So when you have one that headsthrough Texas, it's kind of the
opposite of when they go through elsewherein that you end up with the price
of oil dropping at least in theshort term, because hey, it's still
coming out of the ground, butyou don't necessarily have a great place to
put it or anything to do withit, and so you get a little
bit of a short term inventory builduntil those refineries get back online. Do

(02:15):
you have a gas price build atthe same time, Probably not. And
what we are seeing for gas pricesjust now that you mention it, three
point fifty and six tenths of ascent. That is flat day over day from
triple A. We have bounced aroundat three forty two to three fifty range
for the last month and a halfnow, so I guess good news that

(02:36):
you're not moving any higher. Iwould have liked to see things slide a
little bit lower, but just couldn'tquite get down into the low threes in
that cycle there. We've also gotGold Today up, I'm sorry, down
sixteen dollars and eighty cents announced totwenty three eighty and ninety cents piece and
CNBC Today Airline I'm sorry. Airtravel demand is breaking records, airline profits

(02:59):
are not. So it's actually kindof remarkable what we are seeing here in
terms of the overall just amount ofair travel that's going on right now.
The TSA through put numbers for themost recent days include yesterday, which top
three million passengers going through TSA checkpointsfor the first time ever. In the

(03:22):
United States, three million people flewon planes yesterday yeah, that's one percent
of the entire A bunch of millionprobably didn't because of canceled flights, but
they went through security anyway. Thereweren't that many flights canceled. Actually,
I only saw I think it wasabout fifteen hundred, which people say,
oh, like fifteen hundred. There'sforty thousand flights a day in the United
States, so it's it's a smallfraction that we're actually canceled. So a

(03:46):
lot of people flying airlines have beenresponding with increased supply. By supply,
I mean capacity, flying about sixpercent more seats in July this year than
they did in July twenty twenty three. So I don't know what actually you
probably have it compared to July fourthweekend of last year. How much higher
is TSA? Throughput about ten percenton average, eight to ten percent,

(04:10):
Demands up ten percent, supplies upsix percent. And yet we'll get earnings
this quarter from you know, Ithink Delta kicks things off, but generally
speaking, not seeing a big boostto airline profits at the moment. No,
And it's it's kind of a combinationof factors that is leading to this.
The first is you remember last yearbasically all the airlines were going through

(04:32):
negotiations with their pilot's unions and somewith their flight attendance unions. What you
saw were some, you know,pretty significant bumps in pay, and so
Tho's additional bumps in pay are eatingup you know, a lot of that
extra revenue other things that you're seeing. The US airline market is very much
a bifurcated one, and not inthe way that we traditionally think of it.

(04:55):
Not high cost versus low cost,but more or less are you going
to survive with our and not gonnasurvive your Delta's Uniteds and Americans of the
world. Even your Southwest they're fine. You know, Southwest has some issues
that they're working through, but they'llbe fine. Just because of their scale.
Jet Blue and Spirit following the shutdownof that merger attempt earlier this year,

(05:18):
they're both fighting for their lives becausethey don't have the scale to compete
with the larger companies, and sotheir profitability is very much in question.
You can also throw Frontier into themix, and in Alaska as well,
So you've got some real questions onsome of these companies as to, hey,
how long are they going to bearound because as anyone who's you know,

(05:42):
followed airlines basically since they were inventedknows, bankruptcies are kind of table
stakes when it comes to airlines.I mean it, it's just it's it's
really common. It's not as commonanymore just because there aren't as many airlines
so there aren't as many to gounder. But even you look g at
the big ones that are successful now, they had in a lot of cases

(06:02):
multiple bankruptcies in nearly two thousands andthen reorganized and came out and you know,
went on to become what they aretoday. But it's a really challenging
market if you're not one of thosebig three airlines in the US today.
It also seems to me, justin terms of trends, something that we've
been looking at and I think youand I have both experienced, Delta seems

(06:25):
to be cementing their place in thatkind of premium brand. I would say,
yeah, they there's not a hugedifferentiation, but they are. Delta
is going up market saying yeah,we're gonna have, you know, in
general, the nicest, newest,playing like they're really pushing for that kind
of branding now. In a waythey haven't previously. Also, yeah,

(06:47):
I think they are, and againI think with my own comfortability level,
if it's within range, I'm definitelytaking Delta over every other airline, but
significantly over a few of the onesthat have had had severe disruptions over the
last few years. And the funnything is, ten years ago, I
would have probably said no, I'mflying Jet Blue because you know, they
had the TVs and the seats,and they were you know, a lot

(07:10):
of the newer playing and they justhave not been able to keep up as
far as you know, the overallplatform and everything. And yeah, it's
Delta's done a fantastic job the lastdecade of getting themselves in a position to
do what they're doing right now.So if you are going to be flying
this summer, expect it to bebusy. Expect maybe not to be able

(07:31):
to find a seat either at theairport or on your plane. I've heard
a number of stories about overbooked flightsthis summer that have ended with significant compensation
being paid because no one wants to, you know, be bumped to a
later flight. So I will saythat's the upside is, Hey, if
you're not in a hurry to getwhere you're going. You got some real
potential upside on overbooked flights. I'vetalked to a number of people that have

(07:54):
gotten close to one thousand dollars onover bookings. This summer twenty twenty four
has definitely been the year for me, at least where that pre check subscription
has been paying for itself. Yep, the last three years did not at
all. The lines were very similar, but I've noticed the last few that
you know, I was in Phoenixrecently and then actually I was in Phoenix
twice, once for business, oncefor personal reasons, and in both cases

(08:16):
I saved pretty significant lines by havingthat TSA pre check. So finally nothing's
paying off. So there's that.Yeah's take a quick break here when we
come back. Are talking about noncompetecauses, the FTC trying to ban them
starting in September, that from anearlier ruling, but judges now issuing some

(08:37):
contradicting orders as to what the landscapemay actually look like. We'll talk about
that when we return. Tune infor Trivia brought to you by Applebee's every
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(09:01):
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Financial Exchange Radio Network. Can't rememberexactly when it was. It was either
late last year or early this year. The FTC had announced a ban on

(09:28):
non compete clauses, and really thereason was that they were being, in
my opinion, abused by companies thathave no business making their workers sign non
compete clauses. Yeah, you had, you had sandwich shops that were,
you know, making workers signed Let'scall them out specifically Jimmy John's. Jimmy
just making people sign non compete clauses. Not if you were an executive in

(09:50):
accounting at Jimmy John's, if youwere making sandwich, If you were making
sandwiches, you were signing non competeclauses in basically minimum wage tip jobs.
So I agree that it was beingabused. Some have estimated that one fifth
of the US workforce was facing noncompete clauses in their employment contracts previously.

(10:11):
So you had a federal judge latelast week who effectively backed a challenge on
the FTC's rule, saying, Hey, I don't think this is going to
stand up to further scrutiny. It'stoo broad, it's not it doesn't have
any you know, end date,and so I'm going to issue a you

(10:31):
know, ruling that says, yeah, I don't think this is going to
hold up, and so I'm vacatingthe rule bab meaning that ban on non
competes would be vacated. Yes,yeah, So I think ultimately this is
going to take several years to playout because you're going to end up with
competing cases that probably end up makingtheir way up to the Supreme Court.

(10:52):
But you have a very good possibilitythat this rule ends up being vacated here
because one of the rulings from theSupreme Court that came down last week effectively
limited what is known as Chevron deference. And it's named after a nineteen eighty
four ruling where basically at the time, the ruling that was put in place

(11:13):
in nineteen eighty four gave federal agenciesthe authority to interpret their own statutes and
create their own rules based on theirexpertise. The ruling from last week pretty
much says no, if it's notexplicitly spelled out in something that is written

(11:35):
from Congress, you don't necessarily havethe authority and we as courts have the
authority to try to interpret what Congresswas trying to say. Yeah, so,
I mean, let's be clear,I think that the use of non
competes was egregious and just quite franklysilly and a bad look for companies like
Jimmy John's who were enforcing these thingson minimum wage employees. That is ridiculous

(12:00):
and probably shouldn't be used, atleast in my opinion. Yeah, the
excesses of non competes and credentialing requirementsfor jobs that are not life threatening or
you know, like C suite levelthings, it's kind of I was going
to further say, however, thatthe FTC coming out and blanket saying that

(12:20):
nobody can use a non compete forany job in competitive even in competitive industries
with highly compensated individuals towards the topof the corporate ladder. I mean,
if states want to go and dothat, or if Congress themselves wants to
go ahead and do that, thenthat can reshape the state of our labor
market. But that was a prettysignificant shift where things were before. And

(12:41):
so I will not be like yousaid, I will not be surprised if
the Supreme Court ends up, youknow, vacating this this rule from the
FTC. And I think likely whatwe're left with are probably different rules state
by state like we had before inMassachusetts, California. Non competes they still
exist, but they are pretty watereddown, very watered down and difficult to
enforce. Yeah, and again youcan hold two simultaneous thoughts in your head

(13:05):
at the same time, which isthere probably are too many non competes.
But this is the kind of thingthat probably needs to be legislated rather than
done through the rulemaking progress. Yeah, a process, I think. Yeah,
that's where I land. And alsothere's I think a lot of things
that we kind of treat as thelaw of the land right now that are

(13:26):
going to be facing increased challenges underthis Supreme Court. Some of the people
are going to like, some ofthe people are not going to like.
Good news here on the inflation sideof things, if you look at data
from Nielsen i Q. This isfrom a report published in the Financial Times.
In the United States, twenty eightpoint six percent of products were sold

(13:50):
with promotions in supermarkets over the lasttwelve months to through late June. We're
back to couponing. People's up fromtwenty five point one percent during twenty twenty
two, during kind of the peakof the inflation period. So coupons are
showing up on more products now thanthey were two and three years ago,

(14:11):
which is good news at least fourindividuals who are trying to, you know,
find cheaper pricing. Yeah, Ithink it's a good news for inflation
inflation expectations. It might not bethe best signal for where the consumer is
in terms of their strength and willingnessto pay full price for goods, which
could be again recession concern. Ialso think that very likely, you know,

(14:35):
just because something is discounted or soldwith the promotion does not mean that
it is fundamentally a good deal.I think, as we all know on
Prime Shore, for example, thatyou can raise the price on something by
twenty percent and then cut the priceby fifteen percent and guess why, You're
still paying pretty reasonable price for theproduct. But objectively, I think you
can look around there today and say, yeah, there seemed to be more

(14:58):
promotions out there that you know,I think actually seem like a good deal.
Right, there's the five dollars mealsat a bunch of fast food places,
and generally speaking, you know,I'm seeing more reasonable prices, more
discounts being offered on goods across theboard. And the other piece of this
that you do have to watch outfor is companies for the last couple of

(15:18):
years have been defending their margins throughincreasing pricing. That's what they've done.
And companies very rarely like to seetheir margins go down when their sales are
flat, because ultimately that means they'remaking less money. Yes, So the
thing that you have to watch foris, hey, when companies are faced
with the prospect of making less money, they tend to start cutting costs.

(15:41):
And the single biggest cost that mostcompanies can cut is labor. Yep.
And it might be through actual jobcuts, it might be through just not
filling a role that you know,someone departs from and they say, Okay,
we're just not going to fill thatrole and we're going to reduce headcount
that way. But this is oneof the things when we talked, you
know, earlier in the show abouthey, the labor market's showing some signs

(16:04):
of weakening and could this you knowbe exacerbated heading into the fall. This
kind of stuff could cause it becauseif companies can't use pricing power to you
know, push their margins forward andtheir earnings forward, they may start to
rely on cost cutting and that couldmean that the labor market changes, you
know, more dramatically in the secondhalf of this year. Potentially, It's

(16:26):
it's something that's out there as apotential risk. In my opinion, that's
where those earnings calls matter, rightone of these executives. Clearly, these
executives are telling the general public thatthey don't feel they have the same pricing
power that they did over the lastthree years. The question will be,
you know, okay, we're offeringall these promotions when we go and report
our earnings. Are those promotions eatinginto sales or are those promotions just you

(16:52):
know, kind of promotion for thesake of making somebody feel like they're getting
a deal, and yeah, we'restill growing sales, we'd still growing profits
via that method. Because if they'renot again to chuck point, you don't
really want to be an executive ora CFO reporting to analysts that, hey,
we offered all these promotions and ourprofit expectations for the year are now
down by five percent. Yeah,so this is something that I think bears

(17:14):
watching. Also, just a kindof humorous line in here that I think
is worth noting. Mandoley is themaker of Ritz crackers and Tobo, her
own chocolate is going to have achallenging year in the US. It makes
it sounds like that's all they makeis, Hey, we specialize in Ritz
crackers and Swiss chocolates, nothing else. That's it. Obviously it's a broader,

(17:36):
you know company. But I justfound that kind of funny that,
you know, oh like sure,that's that's what they're known for. I
mean, when's the last time youhad a tobal own. I've never had
one. I was just gonna saythat. I think my father had traveled
to Europe on business and brought oneback. Cool nineteen nineties, good talk,
Take a quick break when we comesOh cool man, let's take a

(18:02):
quick break when we come back.We'll rip on Mike some more after this.
Bringing the latest financial news straight toyour radio every day. It's the
Financial Exchange on the Financial Exchange RadioNetwork. The Financial Exchange is now available

(18:22):
on your Alexis smart speaker has toplay the Financial Exchange and catch up on
anything you might have missed. Thisis the Financial Exchange Radio Network. A
couple pieces today talking about what's goingon with individual stocks. We're talking awful
lot about the stock market, andyou know, it's again in general,

(18:42):
it's not something where you know,we focus too much on auto like this
stock or that stock, talk aboutthe businesses. But one of the things
that is most definitely back with stocksat or near all time highs, at
least with stock indices at in yourall time highs, is retail traders.
Yep. And you've got you know, just this, this record participation that

(19:04):
we are seeing amongst Americans in theirinvestment accounts right now, and it's predominantly
still targeting individual stocks in concentrations thatwould make any investment manager run for the
hills. I guess you know.One of the questions that I have for
you, Chuck, I remember earlystages of twenty twenty, we were talking

(19:26):
about this phenomenon when sports were shutdown, gambling was largely shut down,
and investors, in many cases tovery detrimental rests results turned to the stock
market as kind of a form ofentertainment, and many of them learned some
hard lessons. Many of them didn'tand are doing a lot of the same

(19:48):
types of things right now. We'renow three four years out from that period
of time. Net. At thetime we said, hey, are the
lessons that people are going to learnhere are going to be a net po
it or net negative to let's talklet's not talk about the stock market as
a whole, but just to thoseindividuals, and on average, I think
even with the craziness going on withRoaring Kitty and and you know, meme

(20:14):
stocks net net, I think I'mstill slightly positive that, hey, you
know, people at least have learnedsome lessons and understood at least how the
tools work to utilize the stock market. Well, it's I think it's a
great thing. This is gonna comeoff like really weird. I think it's
a great thing when investors go outand don't necessarily know what they're doing and

(20:38):
end up, you know, losingsome money a few times, which everyone
will do, but then stay inthe game because that's the thing that you
have to get to and there's away to do it so that you're not
putting your home at risk by liketaking out a mortgage to put all of
your money into one company and stufflike that. Like that's the stuff that
scares you, yep. But I'llalso tell you that every single investor goes

(21:00):
through that that learning phase where they'relike, yeah, I probably shouldn't have
done this because of X, Yand Z, and mostly it's because I
didn't know what I was doing right. And I can tell you, like
I've gone through these too, LikeI've had a number of things that have

(21:22):
been really quite dumb that I've donepersonally, And you kind of have to
go through that learning phase and figureout, you know, what actually works
for you because there's a lot ofdifferent approaches that you can take in markets,
and you have to really hone inon what works for you and how
it's going to actually help you.I mean, I look on a personal

(21:47):
level, I'll tell you something likethe dumb stuff that I did, because
it's no dumber, it's no like, sure, I'm not any smarter than
people who have done like some ofthis stuff. I remember back in I
think it was like twenty fourteen,twenty fifteen. I started, I like
read one article online. I waslike, oh, like, let me
put a bunch of money into likeRussian and Greek ETFs, and it was

(22:07):
like the dumbest thing I could havepossibly done. I had one where I
had a buddy of mine who workedfor an investment company that like focused on
materials companies, and he was like, he came home one night he's just
telling me. He's like, look, you gotta read through this perspectus on
this company. And I invested inlike some small uranium company based out of

(22:27):
Argentina or something like that, andgot completely wiped out, sure, completely
wiped out. So everyone has liketheir dumb investment stories. And if if
you say, hey, like,oh, this is easy, like all
I do is make money on this, well we haven't been investing long enough,
because there will come a day whereyou get absolutely smoked and lose fifty

(22:47):
sixty seventy eighty percent and you're gonnahave to do some soul searching then and
say, hey, maybe my processneeds to change in order for this to
be sustainable. And that's the partof the story that I would, you
know, serve as a counterpoint tomy initial argument that, hey, this
is a net positive on average,we have not been through you know,
since the shutdowns and the market recoveryof twenty twenty we have not been through

(23:10):
a tough recession. Twenty twenty twowas a uniquely bad market for both stocks
and bonds. But we have notbeen through a big draw down like you
saw in a wait, like yousaw in O one, accompanied by a
recession where there is job loss.And I think that would be the counterpoint
is maybe those hard lessons have notyet been learned, and that's that's the

(23:33):
challenging piece here, And I don'tthink we will know for some period of
time. But I think the overallmessage that I would attempt to deliver here
is, like Chuck mentioned, understandwhat you are doing with your investment portfolio?
Am I here because I enjoy itas a form of entertainment? Would
I be otherwise spending this money ata casino or on sports gambling? Am

(23:57):
I setting restriction around myself to makesure that I treat it that way and
not as an investment thesis? Andthen, first and foremost, do I
actually understand what I am investing inor what someone else is investing in on
my behalf. And I'll give youan example, like last year, in

(24:21):
the third quarter most of the summer, you know, July through September,
the S and P five hundred losta little more than ten percent. And
if you were someone who, justas an example, had bought put options
betting that the S and P fivehundred was going to go down, you
know, over that time, andyou said, hey, I think the

(24:41):
SMP is going to lose you know, ten percent over this time because it
was such a gradual and low volatilitydecline. Depending on the options that you
bought, even though you were predictingthat the market would go down, you
might not have made money. Andif you don't understand why that is the
case, then it's probably something thatyou shouldn't be investing in. You got
to really think about these things.So it's not just hey, am I

(25:03):
right about what's happening? It's thendo I have the right vehicle? Do
I have the right timeframe? Andthese are really complicated questions that you probably
quite honestly, have to get burnedon a few times if you're really going
to try to do it yourself.So on a self assessment time if you
fall into that camp of saying,you know what, I'm investing a certain
way, or someone is investing onmy behalf in a certain way, and

(25:23):
I can't honestly say that I fullyunderstand what they are doing on my behalf
and how it all is going toplay out into my long term financial scenario,
right, how this is going tocontribute to me sending my kids to
college or retiring or some other lifephase buying a home. Take a step
back and give the folks at ArmstrongAdvisor Group a call. We'll offer you

(25:45):
a free consultation. We'll sit downwith you analyze what you are doing today
both from your investment and financial planningscenario, to give you a sense of
hey, are these the tools bestsuited to achieving your goals? We have
offices our north is Portland, Mayas far south as Wallingford, Connecticut,
and everywhere in between Massachusetts, RhodeIslands, New Hampshire, happy to sit

(26:07):
down with you in person, viazoom over the phone and just give you
that assessment to at least put youon what hopefully will be the right track
going forward. You can book anappointment by calling eight hundred three nine three
four zero zero one. I'll giveyou that number again, but you can
also book a callback on our websiteArmstrong Advisory dot com. But that phone
number once again, eight hundred threenine three four zero zero one. The

(26:33):
proceeding was paid for by Armstrong AdvisoryGroup, a registered investment advisor. Nothing
in the ad or in any Armstrongguide a specific financial, legal, or
tax advice. Consult your own financialtax into state planning advisors before making any
investment decisions. Armstrong may contact youto offer investment advisory services. We're not
dead yet. That's the message frombaby boomers. This is an actual headline

(26:56):
from the Wall Street Journal, andit's from It's actually a quote from Suzanne
Hernda, who was interviewed in thispiece, and it's talking about how cities
are now trying to attract retirees becauseno kids. I've been saying this for
a while. If you really haveproblems with authorizing more building in your town,

(27:17):
you should really be trying to buildfifty five plus communities because you don't
have to hire more teachers, youdon't have to build more schools, and
you get a bunch of people movingin who likely have liquid assets and or
pensions, who are going to spendthat money in your community, says the
mayor of Sun's City. Sorry,so says the mayor of Green what's the

(27:37):
name of the town that Sun Cityis in Georgetown, Texas? Rather where
a retirement community called Sun City,which totally ripped it off from Arizona.
But good for them, sun City, Texas. The mayor quote, it's
like they're at college, except theydon't have to go to class, and
they have three million dollars in thebank. They might not all have three
million dollars, but that's a prettyfunny description coming from the mayor of the

(28:00):
town. And you can see howthat would be a fairly good recipe for
economic development in some of these areas. Having seen some of the stories that
have come out of like the villagesin Florida, it does sound an awful
lot like college. You know,it gets kind of wild there from what
I hear. So. I was, as I mentioned, recently, out

(28:22):
in Arizona and spent a lot oftime with my eighty four year old grandfather.
I'm trying to make sure I gotthat right. It might be eighty
five now, and he expressed tome that like one of his biggest regrets
actually was that he and my grandmother, who is now deceased, didn't move
into one of these facilities even earlier. Specifically, they're in an independent living

(28:45):
facility now, and he's like,you know, honestly, the number of
social connections and things along those linesthat we made compared to where we were
previously, it was just a farbetter quality of life in their experience.
It's also not necessarily cheap. Uh, So there's there's something to that as
well. But yeah, these peoplequestioned whether these types of places were going

(29:08):
to be as popular after COVID,and I think the answer is that,
yes, there's still a group ofaging individuals who might not want to be
in a nursing home, but certainlywant to be around their peers. I
will say reading this it did mademe make me laugh a few times.
Quote. At some city, Texas, popular activities include the theater, troupe,

(29:29):
and singles clubs. So immediately twothings come to mind. The first
is the final season of Everybody LovesRaymond, where Ray's parents get kicked out
of the over fifty five community becausethey, you know, basically, Marie
just you know, takes over anddoes a little bit too much, but
singles clubs. There is a realproblem that happens in these communities with STDs,

(29:53):
and it's I know, I'm sorry, Mike, I'm aware that it
is a real problem, but Iwe need to cover it. We have
to talk about this a little bitbecause one of the things that these communities
do need to realize is there maybe some healthcare costs that they didn't anticipate.
Got it. Shuttle it off withthat today, we don't need to
hire a teacher, but you doneed to hire a sex editude. Yes,

(30:17):
there is very much that situation thatdevelops from time to time. So
I just wanted to put that outthere as an unexpected thing that you read
about occasionally. Let's take a quickbreak here on that note, and when
we come back, we'll do stackRoulette. Find daily interviews and full shows
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(30:37):
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Boston is presented by Veterans Development Corporation. Mike, what do you got for
me? For? Stack? Roulettescammers swiping billions of dollars from Americans every
year. Worse, most crooks aregetting away with it. This is nothing
new. I think everyone hears thesestories if you tune into any news whatsoever.

(31:51):
But quite honestly, the stories justkeep getting even more tragic every step
of the way. A recent casein Ohio was when an eighty one year
old man was targeted by a scammerthat scammer hired an uber driver to go
to the person's house. And againthis Uber driver had no insinuation or understanding
that they were scamming somebody, butthey were instructed to show up at the

(32:15):
person's house to pick up a package. The eighty one year old man,
believing that she was part of thescam, shot and killed her. Tragic
all around. We see these everysingle week. I hear about new stories
of people getting scams. Not outof thousands of dollars, those ones are
very common, but instances of peoplebeing scammed out of hundreds of thousands of

(32:38):
dollars. And this is unfortunately,I think something like a six billion dollar
a year industry in terms of moneythat they are able to make off of
people. And I just have noadvice other than you must be vigilant at
every step of the way, andyou, unfortunate today, have to assume

(33:00):
that any single email, phone call, or text message that you receive is
this until you can prove otherwise.Because these are these scams that are being
perpetrated are generally speaking, not peoplebreaking into your bank account and stealing the
money. They are convincing you,yes to part ways with your own money.
And a couple things just to gainin terms of basics. If someone

(33:22):
calls or emails you claiming to befrom somewhere and basically from like any business
that you do business with, orgovernment agency or anywhere, hang up the
phone, find the phone number onyou know, a piece of documentation that
you have, and call the numberthat's on that piece of documentation that you
already have for the bank statement,mortgage statement, things along those lines.

(33:45):
Just if you get a text messageand you know it's a scam and you
apply back to them, nice scambuddy, or something like that, Now
you're on a list. You're ona list now where they have now confirmed
that this is an active phone number, and you're going to get ten times
as many of them. Yeah,don't ever replied to any of those texts
ever. Other things, just tobe aware of no business or government agency

(34:07):
is going to ever demand that youpay them now, and by now,
I mean like right now. Itcan always wait till tomorrow. It always
one hundred percent of the time.So if someone is you know, getting
if you've kind of just gone downa rabbit hole that you shouldn't have and
someone saying, oh, like youneed to pay this now otherwise, No,

(34:29):
you can. You can always doit tomorrow. Other things that you
need to be aware of. Nowwith all this generative AI stuff, scammers
are starting to use to generate thevoices of people you may know. It
might sound just like your son orgrandson, it might sound like your aunt
or uncle. You don't necessarily knowif it's them unless you're able to really

(34:52):
verify who that person is. Thingsthat you can do set up like a
family pass code, you know,a dumb stupid word that you use in
order to verify that, hey,someone's actually who they say there are.
Have you know something that your referencethat you know you can talk about with
that person that you know is anold running joke or something like that,

(35:12):
so that you actually know it's them. Don't just assume, Hey, I'm
in the hospital, I need twelvethousand dollars, guys. Hospital billing doesn't
work that quickly. It doesn't likeagain, it can always wait. If
anyone is, you know, demandingthat you do something. Now, as
it relates to money, just it'snever it never hurts. Just take an

(35:37):
extra day just to make sure thatyou're not getting you into something that you
shouldn't be so just be really carefulbecause this stuff, as Mike noted,
it's it's really starting to become agrowing problem. Let's take a quick break
for the rest of the day.We'll be back tomorrow. Stocks remain positive
on the S and P and Nasdaq. That the Dow has slipped into negative

(35:59):
territory. Will see it tomorrow onthe Financial Exchange. M