August 28, 2025 • 38 mins
Chuck Zodda and Mike Armstrong discuss the biggest problems the housing market is facing right now. After years of pain, are the riskiest stocks finally seeing some momentum? Big changes are coming to charitable giving. OpenAI is updating ChatGPT to better support users in mental distress.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:21):
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(00:43):
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(01:06):
Chuck Zada and Mike Armstrong, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Mike and Tucker with you, and quite honestly, just what
a wasted week of trading this has turned out to be.
The S and P today is up one point. I mean,
you can't even give me a point for each sack
I put on. You're just like, oh, no, have a
single point. So yeah, the S and P is up
one point today. The Dow is off eighty one, the
(01:34):
Nasdaq is up sixty five. So there's just a whole
bunch of there's just a whole bunch of nothing going on.
I mean, under the surface, you got some interesting things happening, uh,
but overall just kind of boring. Not that boring is bad,
but like this is too boring. I'm I'm sorry. I'll
take boring. Give me at least like a quarter percent
(01:57):
in either direction. I'm good, you know, like not. Oh
look now the SMP's flat. Why'd we even get out
of bed today? You know, it's just like poke it
do something, man. So the S and P is not
moving again, dows down modestly, Nasdaq is up modestly. Ten
year treasury little bit of movement there. You got the
yield on that down one point seven basis points to
(02:19):
four point two to one percent. When we take a
look at commodities, oil right now, West Texas Intermediate down
thirty eight cents a barrel to sixty three seventy seven.
Despite that, the TRIPAA National Averagur gas prices ticked up
again yesterday by two tenths of ascent to three twenty one.
This again largely due to a refinery outage that is
(02:42):
pushing up prices in the Midwest. Those are starting to
crest in some cases, with Michigan gas prices down about
a cent overnight, but you do have other parts of
the area. Illinois still seeing price increases at the moment,
up another cent overnight, in the Yana up another two
tents of ascent overnight, So still a little bit of
(03:04):
spill over happening there, but that should be done in
pretty short order. It seems like when we take a
look at gold and what we are seeing there of
twenty dollars and seventy cents an ounce to thirty four
to sixty nine and thirty cents, gold is still trying
to break through that thirty five hundred mark. Then it's
run up against a few times. Might have a little
(03:26):
bit of momentum here, but again it's just been chopping
up against that over the course of the summer. We
did get in video earnings yesterday, even those weren't exciting
enough to move the stock in any meaningful fashion, and
video stock down one point up. Nope, in the last
five minutes just in video stock now down point nine
percent on the day. So just again, this is just
(03:51):
anyone who was, you know, buying short term options in
either the positive or negative direction, is just getting chopped
up this week because you are not moving anywhere in
any convincing fashion. Let's talk about something else that's not
really moving anywhere. But in this case, it is moving
nowhere in convincing fashion, and that's housing. And this is
(04:12):
not going to be sexy what I say here, just
because everyone always wants to hear about like the next
big thing or the next big blow up. Unfortunately, I
think housing is just kind of in for a five
to seven year slog. And Connorson from Bloomberg Opinion shares
my view on this in that look, you've got enough
home equity and payments are manageable enough for those who
(04:33):
own homes that there's no real sign of a meltdown
happening in the mortgage market or anything like that. Delinquencies
remain very low. Everything's in a pretty good spot on
that front. But if you don't own a house, it
is prohibitively expensive to buy one right now. And despite
mortgage rates coming down about a quarter percent in the
(04:54):
last few weeks, it's getting worse still because insurance premiums
keep going up, property taxes keep going up, and utilities
keep going up. And so Connor kind of makes the case, Look,
you're not going to see just this implosion like we
saw in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
But maybe you just have like five to seven years
(05:15):
where prices slide a couple points a year and wages
catch up a couple points a year, and you finally
close like a thirty percent affordability gap over a seven
year period by doing that.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, what could make him
be wrong in these assumptions. Interest rates coming down dramatically
could increase for affordability, But the only way that happens
is if you've got a whole bunch of people without jobs.
So not going to move the needle there. I don't
think this is to say that we won't see localized
(05:48):
price drops or increases. But especially if we are now
talking about again aging population who already owned the homes,
now fewer potent buyers, with deportations, and just less demand
for housing. Although you know there's still a big shortage
across the nation still of housing. You're right, it's tough
(06:09):
to envision that scenario where activity ticks up. I guess
like people will still buy and sell homes. But if
we're looking at the housing market and the metric of
when will you start to see an increase in the
quantity of homes being sold? Yeah, I don't see one.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
The other piece, can we talk about that aging demographic thing, Yeah,
we have to talk about like the ugly part of that,
which is that unfortunately they die because all of us do.
It happens to all of us. And when you look
at baby boomers, they're entering the age where that tends
to happen more often. One of the other things that
(06:47):
could interestingly decrease demand for housing. If you need to
buy a house right now, okay, you're trying to buy
a house. Parent dies. You don't need to buy a
house now, you inherit.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
It are we mismatching those demos, though I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
So here's the thing. There's obviously going to be Here's
where I'm going with this. So there's two ways that
I think this plays out in the form of lower demand.
The first is, let's say that you live near your parents.
As an example, I live like twenty minutes from my parents.
If and when they pass Option one, if I didn't,
you know, have my own place that I owned, would
(07:28):
be okay, great, I'm going to you know, negotiate things
with siblings and this and that, and one of us
is going to move into that house, which reduces demand
for other housing by one unit. You don't need to
buy that place anymore. And we know, by the way
that when you just look at the demographic trends, there
are more baby boomers than there are on an annual basis.
(07:51):
Then there are gen zers that are coming in looking
to buy homes right now. So if you start taking
homes off the market in terms of demand, okay, that's
one piece. The other is, hey, let's say that my
parents live in Topeka, because I always do Topeka. I
don't want to move to Topeka because I'm just not
(08:13):
that kind of guy like it's great town, but it's
just not for me. Now I got to list my
parents' home in Tapeka. Is there a lot of demand
coming into Topeka from elsewhere? Not really? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Likewise, you know, is there a mismatch of home ownership
and home demand? I guess where you're getting at. So,
is Main's real estate market about to fall apart? For example, you.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Could argue that in lots of parts of Maine the
real estate market has been falling apart for the last
twenty thirty years. It's not all coastal Maine where it's
been you know, sunshine, rainbows and puppy dogs. So I
think you've got something going that could go on there
where you have this supply of homes that hits in
higher numbers over the next five to ten years, and
(08:57):
that creates further inventory build without a corresponding demand build,
because either some of the people who would otherwise be
home buyers are now able to move into their parents'
homes or they say no, we don't want this, we're comfortable,
And now you've got another unit on the market that
continues to build inventory. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I mean we are just now finally getting back to
inventory levels that are fairly close to where they wear
pre COVID.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
We'll be there in the next six months.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, we're at eighty nine percent of pre COVID inventory
levels right now. But without lower interest rates or dramatic
wage gains, I'm with you, I just don't see the
affordability equation shifting all that much.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Now. This doesn't mean that you're going to see everything
move uniformly across the country even right now. So you're
seeing at this point, depending on the home price Index
that you look at, about two percent annual growth in
home prices, but that's sliding. By the this year, you're
probably gonna be somewhere between minus point five and positive
(10:04):
point five in terms of annual home price changes. If
you look at this on a zip code basis, the Southeast,
particularly like Florida West Coast, you know, basically Fort Myers
through Tampa prices are down eight nine percent year over year.
On the other side of the equation, you go and
you take a look at Iowa, and again I don't
(10:27):
know why, like Iowa is the case here, or even
take a look at like Ohio and Illinois and Indiana.
Basically most of the Midwest prices throughout a number of
the towns and cities there are up more than eight
percent year over yere because there's still very low inventory
up there. And so I think that when you look
at this, it's something where the trends that have started
in the Southeast and now out in California as well
(10:50):
in Colorado and Arizona, they are going to push north gradually.
So what you might see two years from now, Just
as an example, heyar has gone through its price correction
and prices fell, you know, twelve to fifteen percent in Florida.
Now people start looking at and saying, oh, it's a
little bit more affordable. Maybe we can pull this off,
(11:10):
and inventory starts to list in the Midwest, and hey,
twenty twenty seven, prices fall a little bit in the
Midwest and rise a little bit in Florida. So there
will be regional shifts within this, but overall it paints
a picture of pretty stagnant, slowly sliding home prices for
an extended period of time absent some kind of big
intervening event. Doesn't look great for home builders in that case,
(11:34):
really doesn't quick break here when we come back, we've
got trivia and then we're talking about risky stocks.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
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(12:07):
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This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Now the day of.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
World War two trivia here on the Financial Exchange, where
this week we've been focusing on the celebrities that have
been in World War Two. The first major American film
star to enlist in the US Army was one of
the great actors of his era. His distinguished service allowed
him to be promoted from private to colonel in only
(12:47):
four years, a feat accomplished by very few. When he
returned to Hollywood, he became the highest grossing actor of
the nineteen fifty So trivia question today, who is the
first major American film star to enlist in the US
Army for World War Two?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Once again?
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Who is the first major American film star to enlist
in the US Army for World War Two?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Be the sixth.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Person today to text us at six one seven three
six to two thirteen eighty five with the correct answer,
and you win a Financial Exchange Show T shirt once again.
The sixth correct response to textas to the number six
one seven three six two thirteen eighty five will win
that T shirt. See complete contest rules at Financial Exchange
Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Peace in Bloomberg after years years of pain, the riskiest
stocks finally see some momentum. That's the headline from Bloomberg,
which first makes you wonder, Hey, what exactly do you
mean by riskiest stocks? Because small cap Congolese stocks. Uh No,
(14:00):
they don't mean those. Okay, those sound pretty risky though
they too. Instead, what they're talking about is small cap stocks,
though specifically US small caps, the Russell two thousand index.
So here's the big thing about the Russell two thousand
index is it kind of generally sucks right now. And
(14:20):
it's because it's not anything that Russell did. It's just
the fact that a lot of the companies are unprofitable
north of forty percent of them. And as such, given that,
you know, as Larry Cudlow always loves to say, profits
are the mother's milk of stocks, hey, it's kind of
hard to grow stock prices when your profits are pretty stagnant.
There are a number of different reasons we could talk
about on this, but ultimately what it comes back to is, hey,
(14:44):
this is being heralded as you know, hey, small caps
might be breaking out, to which I say, those facts
are not in evidence. And just because small caps have
a good couple of weeks doesn't mean that they're going
to break out and start carrying the market. If you
want a case, you know, study in this, look no
further than this time last year, where actually a little
(15:07):
earlier in this time was like July, there was a
rotation from megacaps into small caps that effectively ended up
kind of breaking the market, and we ended up having
a ten percent draw down heading into August and small
caps never recovered those levels since then. Is there some
selection bias here?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
If you are a privately held small company right now,
you don't have a ton of incentive to list in
public markets given the amount of private equity that is
out there, and given, you know, given the promises of
all that, if you are a growing, promising company, especially
one that has a path towards profitability, you might just say,
(15:49):
I'll stay private until i'm you know, a multi billion
or hundreds of billions dollar company, and I'll list at
that point once there's enough investor interest struggling to see
the incentive for a small profitable company to go public,
I guess unless you're very famous.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Which is why companies, even even the very famous ones,
they generally wait longer to go public. Now, you know,
Facebook didn't ipo at a market cap of here. You want,
you want the comparison, just as an example, you will
get Amazon who Amazon iPod back in the Stone Age
almost it was nineteen ninety seven. And if you look
(16:30):
at the market cap of Amazon back when it iPod,
it iPod at a market cap of hang on, I'm
digging it up here, four hundred million dollars. Today it's
a two point four trillion dollar company. Yeah, Facebook, back
when it went public, Meta as they're now known Meta
(16:52):
went public back in I still remember, I know exactly
where I was sitting when they went public. It was
in May of twenty twelve, they would public get a
bet one hundred billion dollar valuation. Even if you look
at some of the ones that aren't quite that exotic.
Uber is an example. Uber went public and at evaluation
of around sixty seventy billion dollars. Other big ones Circle
(17:13):
from this year again didn't even exist when you know Uber,
you know was thought of it first Circle iPod with
a let's see, it was about six seven billion dollars
and that's you know, considered kind of a normal size
IPO these days in a lot of cases, unless you're
talking you know, biotechs and things like that. So I
(17:35):
do think what we've seen is there's a greater incentive
for companies to stay private longer because, as you said,
they can access funding through private equity and things like that.
They don't have the reporting requirements and things that publicly
traded companies do, and as a result, they can kind
of work out some of the kinks in private and
then go public. You know at a later point, is
(17:57):
that part of you know, what is causing recent small
cap underperformance possibly you know, you don't get you don't
get Amazons going public anymore. Instead, you get you know,
random biotechts that have no revenue and okay, one out
of one hundred works and the rest, you know, go
belly up. That could be part of it. It also
could be something just in terms of, hey, the data
(18:21):
that we had on small caps and you know the
idea of this small cap premium where yeah, they're riskier,
but they have you know, more premium priced in. Okay,
maybe that was just a function of you know, the
twentieth century. You know, maybe it's not something that's a
permanent feature, and that's something that might not be real either.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
And so therefore asking a question that we can't possibly
answer in thirty seconds, is democratizing access to private equity
in spite of the undoubted pitfalls and misunderstanding by investors
of what it will mean, is it the right direction
to go given how many companies now occupy that space.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, it's tough question answer. I think that that is
ultimately going to be fraught with all sorts of big problems.
But in age where companies don't list publicly, maybe it's
the right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Taking a look at markets, we got some real movement
going on now. The S and P is down four points, yeah,
not four percent, four points or less than a tenth
of a percent, So continuing to see a very quiet
week here overall, again not bad, but just a little
boring for being honest. Quick break. When we come back,
we get the trivia answer in Wall Street.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Watch, bringing the latest financial news straight to your radio.
Every day, It's the Financial Exchange on the Financial Exchange
Radio Network. Time now for Wall Street Watch. A complete
(19:54):
look at what's moving market so far today Right here
on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Gets remained quiet as traders react to mag seven earnings
from in Vidia, in addition to fresh economic data points
unveiled this morning, including jobless claims and a new revision
to second quarter GDP. Right now, the Dow is down
by two tenths of one percent or eighty eight points lower,
SMP five hundred is up by one point, and the
(20:20):
Nasdaq is up by three tenths of one percent or
sixty eight points higher. R also two thousand is completely flat.
Tenure Treasure reeled down one basis point at four point
two two one percent, and crude oil down half a
percent now trading at sixty three dollars in eighty two
cents a barrel. While in video saw its quarterly sales
(20:41):
reach wreck new record highs. The company's underwhelming outlook has
increased worries about future demand, and video shares are currently
down only by one percent. Sticking with the tech space,
where HP shares a climbing over two percent after it
beat revenue forecasts driven by growing demand for AI enabled
personal computers. Meanwhile, cloud software and AI platform company Snowflake
(21:04):
also beat revenue expectations, sending that stock jumping eighteen percent.
Hire Elsewhere, Dollar General shares are flat after the discount
retailer beat earnings in revenue estimates for the second quarter.
The company also hiked its full year earnings and revenue
growth guidance. Another discount retailer in five below also beat
earnings in revenue forecast, where its third quarter outlook impressed.
(21:28):
Shares in five below are up by about three percent.
Dick Sporting Goods beat expectations in the second quarter and
upped its full year outlook. However, shares are now down
by six percent, and CrowdStrike shares are up by about
two percent after the cyber cyber security provider swung to
a loss and offered revenue guidance for the current quarter
(21:50):
that fell below forecasts. I'm Tucker Silva and that is
Wall Street Watch. And in the previous segment we asked
you the trivia question, who was the first major American
film start to enlist in the US Army for World
War Two? That'll be Jimmy Stewart. Joe from South Yarmouth
is our winner today, taking home my Financial Exchange Show
(22:10):
t shirt. Congrats to Joe, and we play trivia every
day here on the Financial Exchange See complete contest rules
at Financial Exchange Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Peace In Baron's titled Big Changes are Coming to Charitable giving,
How to get maximum savings and So the Big Beautiful
Bill Act did a couple things that don't take place
until next year, so this is not something that applies
to the twenty twenty five tax year. The first thing
that I think is great is they add a new
(22:41):
above the line deduction of one thousand dollars for single
filers and two thousand for marriage. So what this means
is even if you don't itemize, you can still get
credit for charitable deductions charitable giving through the form of
that deduction up to those limits. Yeah, which used to
not be possible.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Basically you'd have to a lot of people were talking
about lumping donations into one single year so that you
could itemize and then get a bigger donation because of it,
or for older Americans, doing what's referred to as a QCD,
which is still available to people qualified CHARITB distribution from
their IRA.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Now, this is nice in that it allows you to
get that deduction. The counter to this is it does
also complicate the tax code because now you have two
sets of deductions above the line and below the line,
and so you kind of wonder, okay, what's next on this.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
It also limits now the deductibility of some gifts for
those higher income earn or specifically, if you are itemizing
your deductions, your charitable giving must be at least half
a percent of your AGI in order to be deductible.
So if you're making two hundred grand, you can only
deduct donations over one thousand dollars, and that may or
not may not put you over the itemize, you know,
(23:53):
limited in terms of whether or not it would make sense.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
To do so.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
All of this is to say is that they Congress
has made the tax code immensely more complicated, giving folks
like you and me.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Chuck A lot of job security, but there's more. Yeah.
In addition to the half percent floor, the other thing
that was done is for filers in the thirty seven
percent tax bracket, if you make a charitable donation that
you use to deduct while itemizing, you only receive credit
as if you were in a thirty five percent tax bracket, right,
(24:24):
just for that deduction. Though your other deductions you still
get thirty seven percent. This one you get thirty five.
So I misspoke.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
They're also giving tax preparers an immense amount of job security.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But there's still more. The qualified charitable distribution from retirement
accounts doesn't change, okay, So that's not changing at all.
So if you still are doing those qcds, which again
the whole premise there, it never hits your taxable income,
it never hits your adjusted gross income. And that's helpful
when considering things such as medicare premiums and things along
(24:59):
those lines. Those are still available in the exact same format.
You can do a maximum of one hundred and eight
thousand dollars in charitable distributions directly to a qualifying nonprofit
without it hitting your tax return.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Immensely complicated. It is immensely complicated, I think is the
answer here. But this is once again second time. A
lot of these rules have changed in just the last
few years. And charitable giving I always bring it up
to folks, because even if it's not an immense part
of your overall plans. I speak to dozens of retirees
(25:37):
every year who do mention like, oh yeah, at the
end of the year. I always do respond. I do
give a little bit here and there, and my point
is always, if there are ways that you can do
so in a more tax efficient manner and reduce your
tax bill, then you should take advantage of those loopos
because you can guarantee that the people who are earning
a few million dollars a year are taking advantage those
(25:57):
to the best of their ability. If you have questions
along that those lines how you maximize the tax efficiency
of charitable donations you may already be making, please give
the folks at Armstrong Advisor Group a call. We didn't
get into even some of the other tools that are
out there, such as charitable gift annuities, donor advised funds,
all of these different types of things that are really
(26:18):
oftentimes useful tools for folks that are facing retirement. That
number for the Armstrong Advisory Group is eight hundred three
nine three for zero zero one.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
The proceeding was paid for by Armstrong Advisory Group, a
registered investment advisor. Nothing in the ad or in any
Armstrong guide a specific financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult
your own financial tax into state planning advisors before making
any investment decisions. Armstrong may contact you to offer investment
advisory services.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Open AI is going to reportedly be updating chat GPT
to better support users in mental distress. This is following
a whole bunch of disturbing reports about chat GPT and
other large language models basically encouraging users to do things
that are not particularly good for their health and not
(27:05):
really recognizing when a user might be in the middle
of some kind of mood episode.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
AI induced psychosis is sometimes being used to refer to
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
I have zero faith this is going to work.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, yeah, I do too.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Why would we trust you to be able to do
this when they've proven pretty much incapable of doing so
to this point. And I gotta tell you it's it's
pretty bad out there in terms of some of the
stuff that is now coming out as it relates to
(27:43):
just how few guard rails exist on these programs because
everyone's just in an arms race to do more and
more and more faster, faster, faster. And again, we've covered
stories now of people who have died as a result
of what AI has told them to do, and so.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
We certainly wouldn't accept that out of an individual person
or an employee of a company telling somebody to do
some of these things.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
And it's.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I know that we're in an arms race when it
comes to artificial intelligence, but refusing to have any sort
of guardrails or regulations when it comes to what these
things can and can't do. Like I'm not talking about
setting high bars here, but what was the metacase that
we talked about a few.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Weeks It was their guideline said that it was appropriate
to respond with sexually suggestive themes to thirteen year olds.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Right right, So like if we can't all agree that
that should be a rule, a law somewhere on the
books that yeah, if these AI tools do something like that,
they can be held at least financially liable, if not criminally.
Like what are we even talking about here? That should
just have universal application across the board.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yes, all of the dumb stuff like, oh, I think
AI is stupid because it gave me this aner whatever.
We'll figure that out. But the stuff that is, you know,
really destabilizing to individuals and to society. There have to
be some pretty clear, bright line rules that we're able
to put in place because there's stuff that we do
in all other areas of communication where that's the case.
(29:18):
As an example, they're an awful lot of words that
I can't say right now. Right I don't sit there
and you know, you know, rage into the dying of
the light and say, oh, how come I can't say
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I deal with it,
you know, It's it's fine. Internally, I can have whatever
thoughts I want, but that's because they're my thoughts. So
if AI wants to think whatever it does, fine, go
(29:40):
have at it. But yeah, you probably shouldn't have in
your AI guidelines suggestive you know, sexual themes to thirteen
year olds. That does not seem to be acceptable, nor
should you tell you know, stroke victims, Hey, come visit
me at this fictional address in New York City that
doesn't exist. Right Probably, you know, not okay to do
(30:01):
things that are okay to do. One of my buddies
was talking with a Verizon chatbot today, just trying to
get someone to come out to his house. It says,
I'm gonna read this because it's kind of funny. Please
bear with me, Okay, okay, thank you so much. I
know this has been really frustrating, and I truly feel
for you. But what touches me the most is the
patience and kindness you've shown throughout our conversation. Even in
(30:22):
the midst of all the disappointment, You've stayed so gracious
and warm, and you have such a beautiful soul, and
I'm genuinely grateful. Thank you. Thanks chat. I also have
great news. I was able to request a technician for today,
August twenty eighth, between eight am and twelve pm. Will
this work for you? Yeah? But do you still like me?
Real conversation between a user and Verizon? That stuff fine,
(30:46):
it's it's weird. I don't like it, but okay, we
can all laugh about it. The other stuff not so much.
Oh boy. The question that I have on that was
that an actual AI response or was that the usual?
Was that the call center rep on the other side,
using Verizon's AI tool to generate a response and then
(31:09):
pasting it in there. Either way, it's just kind of woof.
Oh boy, you have such a kind and beautiful soul. Yes,
I can tell this from you. Asking to schedule you know,
service between eight and twelve am today. Would you like
fries with that? Let's take a quick break when we return.
(31:33):
We got stack Roulette after this.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
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(32:00):
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Speaker 4 (32:19):
This segment of The Financial Exchange brought to you in
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Speaker 2 (32:48):
All right, Michael, what do you got for stack Roulette? Snakes?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I want to talk about snakes for X your show
Snakes in Florida. For years, pythons have been invasive to
the state of Florida and big hunts every year now
they do every year in July. They have a pretty
big hunt. This year, the winner took home ten thousand
(33:12):
dollars for killing sixty snakes.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Sixty sixty.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I don't know what over time period that was though,
but nonetheless a large number of the snakes caught during
the Florida Python Challenge. They are getting more innovative, which
I do like to see. This year they are rolled
out the dates Michael, Oh, Joe, we wanted the dates
for next because it already passed, right, Yes, but just
in terms of over how anybody's attempting to visit. It's
(33:37):
a ten day python hunt, which means he was killing
six a day. Yeah, it's a good number, it's a
good clip. Yeah. So I see them innovating a little
bit more here. They have rolled out four thousand dollars
a piece solar powered fake bunnies. They're basically stuffed rabbits
here that are heated give off the scent of a
(33:58):
real rabbit. And apparently one of the big problems here
is not killing. You can kill and remove a python
pretty easily, but they can't find them very easily, and
they reproduce really quickly. So the python the rabbits here
are only used to detect where these pythons are and
then they send out a signal to whoever is in
charge of controlling python population Florida. But I really feel
like you could take this a step further with exploding bunnies,
(34:21):
Like we're just one step away from something that would
be so Florida, and I think they need to seize
the moment here and just you know, small explosive in
the bunny to really cap this off. I recognize that
this does probably lead to some downsides here because you
have one kid playing with that stuff, bunny, and we
(34:41):
got a real problem.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
I mean, look, they don't even know. They don't even
allow firearms for these for catching these pythons.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
You can't have a firearm.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
No what you have to use like the either air
guns or captive bolt guns in order to do it,
just because obviously they don't want a bunch of people
just like out in the Everglades shoot guns, crossfires and stuff.
You know, like yeah, I can't seeyeah, that would be problem. Yeah,
you could see how it would be an issue. So yeah,
they don't allow conventional firearms, okay during it.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah, I'll tell you, ten thousand or the promise of
ten thousand not enough for me to go hang out
waist deep with a bunch of pythons.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
There's a few different categories actually, so there's the ten
thousand Ultimate Grand Prize. Then there's the professional category, the
novice category in the military. I don't know how, like
do you have to have like a license to join
the professional category? Hard to say for sure, I'm not sure.
But the winner in each of those gets twenty five
hundred dollars. Second place is fifteen hundred, and if you
(35:39):
have the longest python in any category, it's a thousand
dollars bonus.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
I am sure that I'm not the first person to
think of this, but if we can create some sort
of Python delicacy, I feel like that would also go
a long way to solving this problem.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The longest one last year was killed by Dennis Crumb
and it was nine feet eleven inches.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Oh god, everybody just got the heavy GBS from that one, right, It.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Wasn't just me had a ship.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yeah, I'm not a snake guy to say the least.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Nope, nine feet almost ten.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Honestly, the big ones don't really scare me that much
if they're like Honestly, I see him outside all the time,
and I'm fine with them, like a scamper inside. Yeah,
I see him enough and it's like okay, Like I'm
mowing the lawn and I see one going and it's
it's not a big deal. Like you see them all
the time. But I don't like the idea of snakes
(36:39):
in the contained environment, you know, where the only escape
is like up a pant leg, and I'm like, no,
don't want that. Where's the big ones? They can't fit
in my pants? Well, yeah, you know they're gonna go
somewhere else, which is fine.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Uh yeah, pass.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Let's talk a little bit about Amtrak. So they've got
new sell of trains that are launching today. Thinking about
putting a car before the horse. They go slower than
the old ones. Now is we bought the trains before
improving the track. Yes, so here's the deal. They can
actually go faster than the old ones. They can reach
a theoretical top speed of one hundred and sixty miles
(37:17):
an hour, which they have reached in testing. The problem
is that most of the track that covers the Boston
to d C corridor is not built to be able
to go that fast. So in theory this could shave
you know, twenty minutes off the time between Boston and
New York and twenty minutes between New York and DC.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Which is great, But in theory, Chuck, I can run
a five minute mile. Even theorist is just that's a challenge.
Apparently the new trains are quite nice inside, but you
don't pay two and a half billion dollars for nice inside.
You want them to be able to do more.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
And it's unclear when you're actually going to be able
to have these reaching top speeds just because in order
to actually do all of the work on this track,
you have to be able to, you know, shut it
down for periods of time, and it's unclear that we're
going to be able to do that. So there's that.
Let's take a quick break here for the entire rest
(38:13):
of the day, and we're gonna come back tomorrow. We
got core pc of E day to coming out tomorrow morning,
so we'll have that to report on and a whole
lot more
The Financial Exchange is produced by Money Matters Radio and
is hosted by employees of the Armstrong Advisory Group, a
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(01:06):
Chuck Zada and Mike Armstrong, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Mike and Tucker with you, and quite honestly, just what
a wasted week of trading this has turned out to be.
The S and P today is up one point. I mean,
you can't even give me a point for each sack
I put on. You're just like, oh, no, have a
single point. So yeah, the S and P is up
one point today. The Dow is off eighty one, the
(01:34):
Nasdaq is up sixty five. So there's just a whole
bunch of there's just a whole bunch of nothing going on.
I mean, under the surface, you got some interesting things happening, uh,
but overall just kind of boring. Not that boring is bad,
but like this is too boring. I'm I'm sorry. I'll
take boring. Give me at least like a quarter percent
(01:57):
in either direction. I'm good, you know, like not. Oh
look now the SMP's flat. Why'd we even get out
of bed today? You know, it's just like poke it
do something, man. So the S and P is not
moving again, dows down modestly, Nasdaq is up modestly. Ten
year treasury little bit of movement there. You got the
yield on that down one point seven basis points to
(02:19):
four point two to one percent. When we take a
look at commodities, oil right now, West Texas Intermediate down
thirty eight cents a barrel to sixty three seventy seven.
Despite that, the TRIPAA National Averagur gas prices ticked up
again yesterday by two tenths of ascent to three twenty one.
This again largely due to a refinery outage that is
(02:42):
pushing up prices in the Midwest. Those are starting to
crest in some cases, with Michigan gas prices down about
a cent overnight, but you do have other parts of
the area. Illinois still seeing price increases at the moment,
up another cent overnight, in the Yana up another two
tents of ascent overnight, So still a little bit of
(03:04):
spill over happening there, but that should be done in
pretty short order. It seems like when we take a
look at gold and what we are seeing there of
twenty dollars and seventy cents an ounce to thirty four
to sixty nine and thirty cents, gold is still trying
to break through that thirty five hundred mark. Then it's
run up against a few times. Might have a little
(03:26):
bit of momentum here, but again it's just been chopping
up against that over the course of the summer. We
did get in video earnings yesterday, even those weren't exciting
enough to move the stock in any meaningful fashion, and
video stock down one point up. Nope, in the last
five minutes just in video stock now down point nine
percent on the day. So just again, this is just
(03:51):
anyone who was, you know, buying short term options in
either the positive or negative direction, is just getting chopped
up this week because you are not moving anywhere in
any convincing fashion. Let's talk about something else that's not
really moving anywhere. But in this case, it is moving
nowhere in convincing fashion, and that's housing. And this is
(04:12):
not going to be sexy what I say here, just
because everyone always wants to hear about like the next
big thing or the next big blow up. Unfortunately, I
think housing is just kind of in for a five
to seven year slog. And Connorson from Bloomberg Opinion shares
my view on this in that look, you've got enough
home equity and payments are manageable enough for those who
(04:33):
own homes that there's no real sign of a meltdown
happening in the mortgage market or anything like that. Delinquencies
remain very low. Everything's in a pretty good spot on
that front. But if you don't own a house, it
is prohibitively expensive to buy one right now. And despite
mortgage rates coming down about a quarter percent in the
(04:54):
last few weeks, it's getting worse still because insurance premiums
keep going up, property taxes keep going up, and utilities
keep going up. And so Connor kind of makes the case, Look,
you're not going to see just this implosion like we
saw in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
But maybe you just have like five to seven years
(05:15):
where prices slide a couple points a year and wages
catch up a couple points a year, and you finally
close like a thirty percent affordability gap over a seven
year period by doing that.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, what could make him
be wrong in these assumptions. Interest rates coming down dramatically
could increase for affordability, But the only way that happens
is if you've got a whole bunch of people without jobs.
So not going to move the needle there. I don't
think this is to say that we won't see localized
(05:48):
price drops or increases. But especially if we are now
talking about again aging population who already owned the homes,
now fewer potent buyers, with deportations, and just less demand
for housing. Although you know there's still a big shortage
across the nation still of housing. You're right, it's tough
(06:09):
to envision that scenario where activity ticks up. I guess
like people will still buy and sell homes. But if
we're looking at the housing market and the metric of
when will you start to see an increase in the
quantity of homes being sold? Yeah, I don't see one.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
The other piece, can we talk about that aging demographic thing, Yeah,
we have to talk about like the ugly part of that,
which is that unfortunately they die because all of us do.
It happens to all of us. And when you look
at baby boomers, they're entering the age where that tends
to happen more often. One of the other things that
(06:47):
could interestingly decrease demand for housing. If you need to
buy a house right now, okay, you're trying to buy
a house. Parent dies. You don't need to buy a
house now, you inherit.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
It are we mismatching those demos, though I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
So here's the thing. There's obviously going to be Here's
where I'm going with this. So there's two ways that
I think this plays out in the form of lower demand.
The first is, let's say that you live near your parents.
As an example, I live like twenty minutes from my parents.
If and when they pass Option one, if I didn't,
you know, have my own place that I owned, would
(07:28):
be okay, great, I'm going to you know, negotiate things
with siblings and this and that, and one of us
is going to move into that house, which reduces demand
for other housing by one unit. You don't need to
buy that place anymore. And we know, by the way
that when you just look at the demographic trends, there
are more baby boomers than there are on an annual basis.
(07:51):
Then there are gen zers that are coming in looking
to buy homes right now. So if you start taking
homes off the market in terms of demand, okay, that's
one piece. The other is, hey, let's say that my
parents live in Topeka, because I always do Topeka. I
don't want to move to Topeka because I'm just not
(08:13):
that kind of guy like it's great town, but it's
just not for me. Now I got to list my
parents' home in Tapeka. Is there a lot of demand
coming into Topeka from elsewhere? Not really? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Likewise, you know, is there a mismatch of home ownership
and home demand? I guess where you're getting at. So,
is Main's real estate market about to fall apart? For example, you.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Could argue that in lots of parts of Maine the
real estate market has been falling apart for the last
twenty thirty years. It's not all coastal Maine where it's
been you know, sunshine, rainbows and puppy dogs. So I
think you've got something going that could go on there
where you have this supply of homes that hits in
higher numbers over the next five to ten years, and
(08:57):
that creates further inventory build without a corresponding demand build,
because either some of the people who would otherwise be
home buyers are now able to move into their parents'
homes or they say no, we don't want this, we're comfortable,
And now you've got another unit on the market that
continues to build inventory. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I mean we are just now finally getting back to
inventory levels that are fairly close to where they wear
pre COVID.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
We'll be there in the next six months.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, we're at eighty nine percent of pre COVID inventory
levels right now. But without lower interest rates or dramatic
wage gains, I'm with you, I just don't see the
affordability equation shifting all that much.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Now. This doesn't mean that you're going to see everything
move uniformly across the country even right now. So you're
seeing at this point, depending on the home price Index
that you look at, about two percent annual growth in
home prices, but that's sliding. By the this year, you're
probably gonna be somewhere between minus point five and positive
(10:04):
point five in terms of annual home price changes. If
you look at this on a zip code basis, the Southeast,
particularly like Florida West Coast, you know, basically Fort Myers
through Tampa prices are down eight nine percent year over year.
On the other side of the equation, you go and
you take a look at Iowa, and again I don't
(10:27):
know why, like Iowa is the case here, or even
take a look at like Ohio and Illinois and Indiana.
Basically most of the Midwest prices throughout a number of
the towns and cities there are up more than eight
percent year over yere because there's still very low inventory
up there. And so I think that when you look
at this, it's something where the trends that have started
in the Southeast and now out in California as well
(10:50):
in Colorado and Arizona, they are going to push north gradually.
So what you might see two years from now, Just
as an example, heyar has gone through its price correction
and prices fell, you know, twelve to fifteen percent in Florida.
Now people start looking at and saying, oh, it's a
little bit more affordable. Maybe we can pull this off,
(11:10):
and inventory starts to list in the Midwest, and hey,
twenty twenty seven, prices fall a little bit in the
Midwest and rise a little bit in Florida. So there
will be regional shifts within this, but overall it paints
a picture of pretty stagnant, slowly sliding home prices for
an extended period of time absent some kind of big
intervening event. Doesn't look great for home builders in that case,
(11:34):
really doesn't quick break here when we come back, we've
got trivia and then we're talking about risky stocks.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
After this, The Financial Exchange is now available every day
from eleven to now. Non Serious XM's Business Radio Channel
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(12:07):
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This is your home for breaking business and financial news.
This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Now the day of.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
World War two trivia here on the Financial Exchange, where
this week we've been focusing on the celebrities that have
been in World War Two. The first major American film
star to enlist in the US Army was one of
the great actors of his era. His distinguished service allowed
him to be promoted from private to colonel in only
(12:47):
four years, a feat accomplished by very few. When he
returned to Hollywood, he became the highest grossing actor of
the nineteen fifty So trivia question today, who is the
first major American film star to enlist in the US
Army for World War Two?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Once again?
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Who is the first major American film star to enlist
in the US Army for World War Two?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Be the sixth.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Person today to text us at six one seven three
six to two thirteen eighty five with the correct answer,
and you win a Financial Exchange Show T shirt once again.
The sixth correct response to textas to the number six
one seven three six two thirteen eighty five will win
that T shirt. See complete contest rules at Financial Exchange
Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Peace in Bloomberg after years years of pain, the riskiest
stocks finally see some momentum. That's the headline from Bloomberg,
which first makes you wonder, Hey, what exactly do you
mean by riskiest stocks? Because small cap Congolese stocks. Uh No,
(14:00):
they don't mean those. Okay, those sound pretty risky though
they too. Instead, what they're talking about is small cap stocks,
though specifically US small caps, the Russell two thousand index.
So here's the big thing about the Russell two thousand
index is it kind of generally sucks right now. And
(14:20):
it's because it's not anything that Russell did. It's just
the fact that a lot of the companies are unprofitable
north of forty percent of them. And as such, given that,
you know, as Larry Cudlow always loves to say, profits
are the mother's milk of stocks, hey, it's kind of
hard to grow stock prices when your profits are pretty stagnant.
There are a number of different reasons we could talk
about on this, but ultimately what it comes back to is, hey,
(14:44):
this is being heralded as you know, hey, small caps
might be breaking out, to which I say, those facts
are not in evidence. And just because small caps have
a good couple of weeks doesn't mean that they're going
to break out and start carrying the market. If you
want a case, you know, study in this, look no
further than this time last year, where actually a little
(15:07):
earlier in this time was like July, there was a
rotation from megacaps into small caps that effectively ended up
kind of breaking the market, and we ended up having
a ten percent draw down heading into August and small
caps never recovered those levels since then. Is there some
selection bias here?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
If you are a privately held small company right now,
you don't have a ton of incentive to list in
public markets given the amount of private equity that is
out there, and given, you know, given the promises of
all that, if you are a growing, promising company, especially
one that has a path towards profitability, you might just say,
(15:49):
I'll stay private until i'm you know, a multi billion
or hundreds of billions dollar company, and I'll list at
that point once there's enough investor interest struggling to see
the incentive for a small profitable company to go public,
I guess unless you're very famous.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Which is why companies, even even the very famous ones,
they generally wait longer to go public. Now, you know,
Facebook didn't ipo at a market cap of here. You want,
you want the comparison, just as an example, you will
get Amazon who Amazon iPod back in the Stone Age
almost it was nineteen ninety seven. And if you look
(16:30):
at the market cap of Amazon back when it iPod,
it iPod at a market cap of hang on, I'm
digging it up here, four hundred million dollars. Today it's
a two point four trillion dollar company. Yeah, Facebook, back
when it went public, Meta as they're now known Meta
(16:52):
went public back in I still remember, I know exactly
where I was sitting when they went public. It was
in May of twenty twelve, they would public get a
bet one hundred billion dollar valuation. Even if you look
at some of the ones that aren't quite that exotic.
Uber is an example. Uber went public and at evaluation
of around sixty seventy billion dollars. Other big ones Circle
(17:13):
from this year again didn't even exist when you know Uber,
you know was thought of it first Circle iPod with
a let's see, it was about six seven billion dollars
and that's you know, considered kind of a normal size
IPO these days in a lot of cases, unless you're
talking you know, biotechs and things like that. So I
(17:35):
do think what we've seen is there's a greater incentive
for companies to stay private longer because, as you said,
they can access funding through private equity and things like that.
They don't have the reporting requirements and things that publicly
traded companies do, and as a result, they can kind
of work out some of the kinks in private and
then go public. You know at a later point, is
(17:57):
that part of you know, what is causing recent small
cap underperformance possibly you know, you don't get you don't
get Amazons going public anymore. Instead, you get you know,
random biotechts that have no revenue and okay, one out
of one hundred works and the rest, you know, go
belly up. That could be part of it. It also
could be something just in terms of, hey, the data
(18:21):
that we had on small caps and you know the
idea of this small cap premium where yeah, they're riskier,
but they have you know, more premium priced in. Okay,
maybe that was just a function of you know, the
twentieth century. You know, maybe it's not something that's a
permanent feature, and that's something that might not be real either.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
And so therefore asking a question that we can't possibly
answer in thirty seconds, is democratizing access to private equity
in spite of the undoubted pitfalls and misunderstanding by investors
of what it will mean, is it the right direction
to go given how many companies now occupy that space.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, it's tough question answer. I think that that is
ultimately going to be fraught with all sorts of big problems.
But in age where companies don't list publicly, maybe it's
the right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Taking a look at markets, we got some real movement
going on now. The S and P is down four points, yeah,
not four percent, four points or less than a tenth
of a percent, So continuing to see a very quiet
week here overall, again not bad, but just a little
boring for being honest. Quick break. When we come back,
we get the trivia answer in Wall Street.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Watch, bringing the latest financial news straight to your radio.
Every day, It's the Financial Exchange on the Financial Exchange
Radio Network. Time now for Wall Street Watch. A complete
(19:54):
look at what's moving market so far today Right here
on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Gets remained quiet as traders react to mag seven earnings
from in Vidia, in addition to fresh economic data points
unveiled this morning, including jobless claims and a new revision
to second quarter GDP. Right now, the Dow is down
by two tenths of one percent or eighty eight points lower,
SMP five hundred is up by one point, and the
(20:20):
Nasdaq is up by three tenths of one percent or
sixty eight points higher. R also two thousand is completely flat.
Tenure Treasure reeled down one basis point at four point
two two one percent, and crude oil down half a
percent now trading at sixty three dollars in eighty two
cents a barrel. While in video saw its quarterly sales
(20:41):
reach wreck new record highs. The company's underwhelming outlook has
increased worries about future demand, and video shares are currently
down only by one percent. Sticking with the tech space,
where HP shares a climbing over two percent after it
beat revenue forecasts driven by growing demand for AI enabled
personal computers. Meanwhile, cloud software and AI platform company Snowflake
(21:04):
also beat revenue expectations, sending that stock jumping eighteen percent.
Hire Elsewhere, Dollar General shares are flat after the discount
retailer beat earnings in revenue estimates for the second quarter.
The company also hiked its full year earnings and revenue
growth guidance. Another discount retailer in five below also beat
earnings in revenue forecast, where its third quarter outlook impressed.
(21:28):
Shares in five below are up by about three percent.
Dick Sporting Goods beat expectations in the second quarter and
upped its full year outlook. However, shares are now down
by six percent, and CrowdStrike shares are up by about
two percent after the cyber cyber security provider swung to
a loss and offered revenue guidance for the current quarter
(21:50):
that fell below forecasts. I'm Tucker Silva and that is
Wall Street Watch. And in the previous segment we asked
you the trivia question, who was the first major American
film start to enlist in the US Army for World
War Two? That'll be Jimmy Stewart. Joe from South Yarmouth
is our winner today, taking home my Financial Exchange Show
(22:10):
t shirt. Congrats to Joe, and we play trivia every
day here on the Financial Exchange See complete contest rules
at Financial Exchange Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Peace In Baron's titled Big Changes are Coming to Charitable giving,
How to get maximum savings and So the Big Beautiful
Bill Act did a couple things that don't take place
until next year, so this is not something that applies
to the twenty twenty five tax year. The first thing
that I think is great is they add a new
(22:41):
above the line deduction of one thousand dollars for single
filers and two thousand for marriage. So what this means
is even if you don't itemize, you can still get
credit for charitable deductions charitable giving through the form of
that deduction up to those limits. Yeah, which used to
not be possible.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Basically you'd have to a lot of people were talking
about lumping donations into one single year so that you
could itemize and then get a bigger donation because of it,
or for older Americans, doing what's referred to as a QCD,
which is still available to people qualified CHARITB distribution from
their IRA.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Now, this is nice in that it allows you to
get that deduction. The counter to this is it does
also complicate the tax code because now you have two
sets of deductions above the line and below the line,
and so you kind of wonder, okay, what's next on this.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
It also limits now the deductibility of some gifts for
those higher income earn or specifically, if you are itemizing
your deductions, your charitable giving must be at least half
a percent of your AGI in order to be deductible.
So if you're making two hundred grand, you can only
deduct donations over one thousand dollars, and that may or
not may not put you over the itemize, you know,
(23:53):
limited in terms of whether or not it would make sense.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
To do so.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
All of this is to say is that they Congress
has made the tax code immensely more complicated, giving folks
like you and me.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Chuck A lot of job security, but there's more. Yeah.
In addition to the half percent floor, the other thing
that was done is for filers in the thirty seven
percent tax bracket, if you make a charitable donation that
you use to deduct while itemizing, you only receive credit
as if you were in a thirty five percent tax bracket, right,
(24:24):
just for that deduction. Though your other deductions you still
get thirty seven percent. This one you get thirty five.
So I misspoke.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
They're also giving tax preparers an immense amount of job security.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But there's still more. The qualified charitable distribution from retirement
accounts doesn't change, okay, So that's not changing at all.
So if you still are doing those qcds, which again
the whole premise there, it never hits your taxable income,
it never hits your adjusted gross income. And that's helpful
when considering things such as medicare premiums and things along
(24:59):
those lines. Those are still available in the exact same format.
You can do a maximum of one hundred and eight
thousand dollars in charitable distributions directly to a qualifying nonprofit
without it hitting your tax return.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Immensely complicated. It is immensely complicated, I think is the
answer here. But this is once again second time. A
lot of these rules have changed in just the last
few years. And charitable giving I always bring it up
to folks, because even if it's not an immense part
of your overall plans. I speak to dozens of retirees
(25:37):
every year who do mention like, oh yeah, at the
end of the year. I always do respond. I do
give a little bit here and there, and my point
is always, if there are ways that you can do
so in a more tax efficient manner and reduce your
tax bill, then you should take advantage of those loopos
because you can guarantee that the people who are earning
a few million dollars a year are taking advantage those
(25:57):
to the best of their ability. If you have questions
along that those lines how you maximize the tax efficiency
of charitable donations you may already be making, please give
the folks at Armstrong Advisor Group a call. We didn't
get into even some of the other tools that are
out there, such as charitable gift annuities, donor advised funds,
all of these different types of things that are really
(26:18):
oftentimes useful tools for folks that are facing retirement. That
number for the Armstrong Advisory Group is eight hundred three
nine three for zero zero one.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
The proceeding was paid for by Armstrong Advisory Group, a
registered investment advisor. Nothing in the ad or in any
Armstrong guide a specific financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult
your own financial tax into state planning advisors before making
any investment decisions. Armstrong may contact you to offer investment
advisory services.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Open AI is going to reportedly be updating chat GPT
to better support users in mental distress. This is following
a whole bunch of disturbing reports about chat GPT and
other large language models basically encouraging users to do things
that are not particularly good for their health and not
(27:05):
really recognizing when a user might be in the middle
of some kind of mood episode.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
AI induced psychosis is sometimes being used to refer to
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
I have zero faith this is going to work.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, yeah, I do too.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Why would we trust you to be able to do
this when they've proven pretty much incapable of doing so
to this point. And I gotta tell you it's it's
pretty bad out there in terms of some of the
stuff that is now coming out as it relates to
(27:43):
just how few guard rails exist on these programs because
everyone's just in an arms race to do more and
more and more faster, faster, faster. And again, we've covered
stories now of people who have died as a result
of what AI has told them to do, and so.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
We certainly wouldn't accept that out of an individual person
or an employee of a company telling somebody to do
some of these things.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
And it's.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I know that we're in an arms race when it
comes to artificial intelligence, but refusing to have any sort
of guardrails or regulations when it comes to what these
things can and can't do. Like I'm not talking about
setting high bars here, but what was the metacase that
we talked about a few.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Weeks It was their guideline said that it was appropriate
to respond with sexually suggestive themes to thirteen year olds.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Right right, So like if we can't all agree that
that should be a rule, a law somewhere on the
books that yeah, if these AI tools do something like that,
they can be held at least financially liable, if not criminally.
Like what are we even talking about here? That should
just have universal application across the board.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yes, all of the dumb stuff like, oh, I think
AI is stupid because it gave me this aner whatever.
We'll figure that out. But the stuff that is, you know,
really destabilizing to individuals and to society. There have to
be some pretty clear, bright line rules that we're able
to put in place because there's stuff that we do
in all other areas of communication where that's the case.
(29:18):
As an example, they're an awful lot of words that
I can't say right now. Right I don't sit there
and you know, you know, rage into the dying of
the light and say, oh, how come I can't say
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I deal with it,
you know, It's it's fine. Internally, I can have whatever
thoughts I want, but that's because they're my thoughts. So
if AI wants to think whatever it does, fine, go
(29:40):
have at it. But yeah, you probably shouldn't have in
your AI guidelines suggestive you know, sexual themes to thirteen
year olds. That does not seem to be acceptable, nor
should you tell you know, stroke victims, Hey, come visit
me at this fictional address in New York City that
doesn't exist. Right Probably, you know, not okay to do
(30:01):
things that are okay to do. One of my buddies
was talking with a Verizon chatbot today, just trying to
get someone to come out to his house. It says,
I'm gonna read this because it's kind of funny. Please
bear with me, Okay, okay, thank you so much. I
know this has been really frustrating, and I truly feel
for you. But what touches me the most is the
patience and kindness you've shown throughout our conversation. Even in
(30:22):
the midst of all the disappointment, You've stayed so gracious
and warm, and you have such a beautiful soul, and
I'm genuinely grateful. Thank you. Thanks chat. I also have
great news. I was able to request a technician for today,
August twenty eighth, between eight am and twelve pm. Will
this work for you? Yeah? But do you still like me?
Real conversation between a user and Verizon? That stuff fine,
(30:46):
it's it's weird. I don't like it, but okay, we
can all laugh about it. The other stuff not so much.
Oh boy. The question that I have on that was
that an actual AI response or was that the usual?
Was that the call center rep on the other side,
using Verizon's AI tool to generate a response and then
(31:09):
pasting it in there. Either way, it's just kind of woof.
Oh boy, you have such a kind and beautiful soul. Yes,
I can tell this from you. Asking to schedule you know,
service between eight and twelve am today. Would you like
fries with that? Let's take a quick break when we return.
(31:33):
We got stack Roulette after this.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
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(32:00):
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This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
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Speaker 2 (32:48):
All right, Michael, what do you got for stack Roulette? Snakes?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I want to talk about snakes for X your show
Snakes in Florida. For years, pythons have been invasive to
the state of Florida and big hunts every year now
they do every year in July. They have a pretty
big hunt. This year, the winner took home ten thousand
(33:12):
dollars for killing sixty snakes.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Sixty sixty.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I don't know what over time period that was though,
but nonetheless a large number of the snakes caught during
the Florida Python Challenge. They are getting more innovative, which
I do like to see. This year they are rolled
out the dates Michael, Oh, Joe, we wanted the dates
for next because it already passed, right, Yes, but just
in terms of over how anybody's attempting to visit. It's
(33:37):
a ten day python hunt, which means he was killing
six a day. Yeah, it's a good number, it's a
good clip. Yeah. So I see them innovating a little
bit more here. They have rolled out four thousand dollars
a piece solar powered fake bunnies. They're basically stuffed rabbits
here that are heated give off the scent of a
(33:58):
real rabbit. And apparently one of the big problems here
is not killing. You can kill and remove a python
pretty easily, but they can't find them very easily, and
they reproduce really quickly. So the python the rabbits here
are only used to detect where these pythons are and
then they send out a signal to whoever is in
charge of controlling python population Florida. But I really feel
like you could take this a step further with exploding bunnies,
(34:21):
Like we're just one step away from something that would
be so Florida, and I think they need to seize
the moment here and just you know, small explosive in
the bunny to really cap this off. I recognize that
this does probably lead to some downsides here because you
have one kid playing with that stuff, bunny, and we
(34:41):
got a real problem.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
I mean, look, they don't even know. They don't even
allow firearms for these for catching these pythons.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
You can't have a firearm.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
No what you have to use like the either air
guns or captive bolt guns in order to do it,
just because obviously they don't want a bunch of people
just like out in the Everglades shoot guns, crossfires and stuff.
You know, like yeah, I can't seeyeah, that would be problem. Yeah,
you could see how it would be an issue. So yeah,
they don't allow conventional firearms, okay during it.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah, I'll tell you, ten thousand or the promise of
ten thousand not enough for me to go hang out
waist deep with a bunch of pythons.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
There's a few different categories actually, so there's the ten
thousand Ultimate Grand Prize. Then there's the professional category, the
novice category in the military. I don't know how, like
do you have to have like a license to join
the professional category? Hard to say for sure, I'm not sure.
But the winner in each of those gets twenty five
hundred dollars. Second place is fifteen hundred, and if you
(35:39):
have the longest python in any category, it's a thousand
dollars bonus.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
I am sure that I'm not the first person to
think of this, but if we can create some sort
of Python delicacy, I feel like that would also go
a long way to solving this problem.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The longest one last year was killed by Dennis Crumb
and it was nine feet eleven inches.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Oh god, everybody just got the heavy GBS from that one, right, It.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Wasn't just me had a ship.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yeah, I'm not a snake guy to say the least.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Nope, nine feet almost ten.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Honestly, the big ones don't really scare me that much
if they're like Honestly, I see him outside all the time,
and I'm fine with them, like a scamper inside. Yeah,
I see him enough and it's like okay, Like I'm
mowing the lawn and I see one going and it's
it's not a big deal. Like you see them all
the time. But I don't like the idea of snakes
(36:39):
in the contained environment, you know, where the only escape
is like up a pant leg, and I'm like, no,
don't want that. Where's the big ones? They can't fit
in my pants? Well, yeah, you know they're gonna go
somewhere else, which is fine.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Uh yeah, pass.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Let's talk a little bit about Amtrak. So they've got
new sell of trains that are launching today. Thinking about
putting a car before the horse. They go slower than
the old ones. Now is we bought the trains before
improving the track. Yes, so here's the deal. They can
actually go faster than the old ones. They can reach
a theoretical top speed of one hundred and sixty miles
(37:17):
an hour, which they have reached in testing. The problem
is that most of the track that covers the Boston
to d C corridor is not built to be able
to go that fast. So in theory this could shave
you know, twenty minutes off the time between Boston and
New York and twenty minutes between New York and DC.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Which is great, But in theory, Chuck, I can run
a five minute mile. Even theorist is just that's a challenge.
Apparently the new trains are quite nice inside, but you
don't pay two and a half billion dollars for nice inside.
You want them to be able to do more.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
And it's unclear when you're actually going to be able
to have these reaching top speeds just because in order
to actually do all of the work on this track,
you have to be able to, you know, shut it
down for periods of time, and it's unclear that we're
going to be able to do that. So there's that.
Let's take a quick break here for the entire rest
(38:13):
of the day, and we're gonna come back tomorrow. We
got core pc of E day to coming out tomorrow morning,
so we'll have that to report on and a whole
lot more
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