November 10, 2025 • 38 mins
Chuck Zodda and Paul Lane discuss how 3% inflation became the new normal. Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulant ads. Want to buy a home? It's OK to wait till you're 40. Wendy's is closing hundreds of restaurants. Italian pasta is poied to disappear from American grocery stores. MLB has a another gambling problem to sort out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
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(00:42):
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a donation today. This is the Financial Exchange with Chuck Zada,
(01:06):
and Paul Lane.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Chuck Pop Tucker with you here today, And in case
you missed the news over the weekend, it looks like
we're getting closer to a resolution to end the government
shut down. The Senate yesterday passed a bill by a
vote of sixty to forty to clear a key procedural mark.
We're still not fully reopen because it has to actually
(01:30):
the Senate has to actually pass the bill that it
wants to, then it has to go to the House
because it'll likely have some changes from the original House
pass legislation, and then you'll finally get this thing done.
The estimates that we're seeing most likely later this week.
There's obviously a chance that things could go badly, but
at this point it looks pretty clear that the federal
(01:50):
government's going to be reopening within the next three to
five days, barring unforeseen developments. So in response to that,
we had a nice rally to start the day off. Today,
SMP was up as many as eighty two points. It's
retrenching some of that now, still up forty seven points,
but the Dow has now got negative down ten. Nasdaq
is leading the way, up three hundred and some odd points,
(02:12):
about one to a third percent. So again it's it's
tech that is kind of in the driver's seat here
as we emerge or we try to emerge from the shutdown.
And so that is what is going on in equity markets,
in the bond market to the ten year Treasury up
one point seven basis points to four point one one percent.
We got the US dollar index up point one percent
(02:35):
to ninety nine point five seven and gold on the
back of this. We can talk about this later if
we if we want to, gold up about two percent,
eighty two dollars and thirty cents to four thousand, ninety
two and ten cents, and we got crude oil down
sixteen cents a barrel to fifty nine to fifty nine,
the triple A national average for gas prices up one
(02:55):
tenth of a cent overnight to three oh seven and
one tenth. Paul, we got a piece here today. It's
from Barons. It's titled how three percent inflation became the
new normal? And I think that the well outlined to
me what this piece says.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Basically, what this piece covers is the FED has a
long term target for inflation to sit at two percent.
Many listeners out there will recall, back in twenty twenty two,
we peaked out as high as nine percent on the
inflationary front. Since then, there's been tremendous progress made to
get us to the three percent that we sit at today. However,
we have plateaued at that three percent level for quite
(03:36):
a period of time here, and there hasn't been meaningful
progress towards driving it down to two percent. And what
this piece cites is many expectations for inflation moving forward,
whether it be from the Federal Open Market Committee or
others who sort of do projections as to where they
think inflation is going to go. Surveys seem to be
indicating that we're moving further and further away from that
(03:59):
two percent anchor target that the FED has has targeted.
And really where this is interesting to me, and I'm
sure you have commentary on it two is you know,
this is this is a target that the FED has.
It's not ironclad that it has to be two percent,
but it's something they're shooting for. And what I continually
debate is whether or not it has to be at
(04:23):
this level. You know, is it problematic for it to
be at three percent? I think you and I can
kind of debate the You can have really two sides
to the argument to that. Some people could say that, hey,
if it is anchored in at three percent, then you
can kind of create this spiral impact where if I
think prices are going to rise by three percent every year,
I'm going to turn to my employer more quickly and
(04:44):
more readily and say, gee, if prices are going to
continue to go up, you need to pay me more.
And as a result of that, if the employer, you know,
follows that move lockstep, they have to increase prices, and
so there's this psychological impact it can have that if
it is anchored at three percent, that's problematic because it
leads to that spo On the other end, you could
kind of say that, you know, three percent still allows
(05:06):
some flexibility for the Federal Reserve to move interest rates
around a little bit more if you're sitting at that level, sure,
and that it could kind of be eroded away over
time some of the debt that people have if inflation
is march at the level. So I'm always interested and
I don't know where you sit on that side of
the argument, but it's it's something that I don't think
you can have a clear cut winner on but there's
(05:26):
differing views out there.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, and and Mark Fandetti, it was a great summary
there by the way Paul and Mark Fandetti has talked
about this and that if you look at a lot
of the academic literature on this failure, there's no thank you,
there's no consensus as to like, this is the right
rate of inflation. Academics are generally, hey, you can be
anywhere from like one to five percent inflation, and as
(05:51):
long as you're again kind of anchored there, there's beliefs
that you can be okay in those areas. I generally
tend to err on the lower side of things, just
because people really just don't like inflation. Like even if
you make four percent more this year and your stuff
costs four percent more, you're like, oh, I'm making more,
but like it feels bad high.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Or on the price is going up.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Correct, So I think I generally err towards Yeah, like
I'd prefer lower, all else being equal. But we've had
good economies with three percent inflation, we've had bad ones
with one. There's nothing to say this is the right
inflation rate. And remember when we're talking about inflation, folks,
(06:35):
what we talk about is the rate of inflation. We're
not talking about what prices are because prices basically never
go down like in the aggregate. You never see that. Yes,
you can see the price of eggs go down, but
it happens as the price of beef's going up and
so your grocery cost. You know, this is just how
it ends up working. So I don't believe that there's
any right rate of inflation, because I think it would
(06:57):
be pretty I'd have to have an awful lot of
hubris to be like, thou shalt run at two percent inflation?
Like like, I don't think any human being can say
this is the right rate of inflation exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
The key word that you mentioned is anchored. You know,
it has to be at a steady level inflation. Whether
it's four percent, you could maybe argue it's too high,
but whether it's two percent or three percent, as long
as it's marching along on that trend steadily, then it
makes for a more palatable economic environment. If it starts
swinging between one and four, that's when you're gonna have problems,
(07:35):
and it's going to be more challenging to operate.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And those problems, by the way, are numerous. Number One,
if you have inflation that's consistently moving, you know, having
large swings, your banking sector is going to say, hey,
because we don't know where inflation is going to be
in the future, we need to charge you higher interest
rates in order to give us more cushion. Yep. So
(07:58):
you see stuff like that develop. You see businesses saying, hey,
we don't know what the cost of our goods are
going to be, of our inputs are going to be
next year, so we're going to raise our prices preemptively.
And this is how you get more consistent higher inflation
and higher prices. So those are the things that you
worry about then. And the other place that I worry
about it is in the context of we're not very
(08:23):
responsible when it comes to anything fiscal nationally these days
haven't been for about twenty five years.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
You know, this.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
SPAN's one, two, three, four, This spans five different presidencies
from both parties. You got to go back to again
the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties to find the last
time that we cared about this stuff. Because the problem
is if you have three percent inflation at a time
where you don't really seem to care what your deficits are,
and you're willing to push as much spending as possible
(08:55):
to juice the economy, which is pretty much what we've
been doing for twenty five years now. It creates the
conditions for that inflation to move higher and become more
entrenched at a higher level, and that's that's potentially dangerous.
So three percent inflation not necessarily bad. It's again, I'm
not saying this to let the Fed off the hook
(09:17):
or anything, but the late nineteen nineties, you know, you
had three percent inflation through the nineteen nineties. I think
a lot of us will look back and be like, yeah,
it's a pretty good, darn good period. You know, things
were pretty okay then. Granted, then you had you know,
the tech bubble bursting and you're like, okay, this is
not okay. And then the housing bubble burst and you're like,
this still is okay. And then you had you know,
(09:38):
high inflation and shutdowns and this and that, and you're like,
this still is okay. But for a little brief period
in time, you're like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Take
a quick break when we come back, Let's do a
little bit of trivia and then we'll talk about meta
how much of their revenue comes from ads for fake
websites that sell you fraudulent products.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
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Speaker 5 (10:34):
Well, this year's DAV five k was another incredible success,
with over fifteen hundred runners and walkers, all supporting the
Disabled American Veterans Department of Massachusetts. The race results in
photo galleries are available to see and if you didn't
have a chance to participate, would bo would still like
to support our great American heroes. Please visit DAV five
(10:55):
k dot Boston. Your gifts help fund free rides to
medical appointments for better Terans in the nation's first dav
led housing initiative, providing homes for single veterans and veteran families.
Go to DAV fivek dot Boston to make your donation today.
That's dav five k dot Boston. Time for trivia here
in the Financial Exchange and on this day. Back in
(11:17):
nineteen eighty nine, German crowds began demolishing the Berlin Wall.
Over the next couple of months, celebrations were held throughout
the city, culminating with the New Year's Eve concert at
the brandon burg Gate. Trivia question today, which American actor
and singer performed his hit song looking for Freedom at
the New Year's Eve concert at the demolish Berlin Wall.
(11:39):
Once again, which American actor and singer performed his hit
song looking for Freedom at the New Year's Eve concert
at the demolished Berlin Wall. Be the third person today
to text us at six one seven three six two
thirteen eighty five with the correct answer and to win
a Financial Exchange Show T shirt once again. The third
(11:59):
correct response to Texas 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 (12:10):
Meta the company behind such blockbuster products as Facebook and
Instagram in fact, that they used to be called Facebook.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Didn't they.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yes, what a odd concept for them to be named
after something that people actually like think about instead of
the metaverse, which no one thinks about. Uh So Reuters
found some internal or not found I guess somehow they
received a report that Meta published internally that they project
(12:42):
ten percent of their twenty twenty four revenue would come
from ads from scams and banned goods, which seems bad specifically,
and like the numbers are.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Just mind boggling.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Meta estimates that its users are shown fifteen billion scam
ads per day. Now, these can take a couple different forms.
The two that are most common are well, there's there's
really three that are most common. The first is hey
company that says that they are selling products from you know,
product X, Y, and Z, and instead they're selling a
(13:18):
cheap knockoff or something like that. Number two is companies
that claim to be company X, but then you get
redirected to a website that looks just like company XES,
and then you enter your credit card information. They don't
actually take your they don't actually send you anything, and
they steal your credit card information, which is kind of bad.
And the third one is, hey, we're selling this product
(13:38):
and it's not allowed because of you know, safety concerns
or a recall or this and that, and they take
your money and send you the product that could hurt you,
which is bad. So Meta estimates that again ten percent
of their ads that they serve are scam ads, and
the reason why is that they don't go through and
manually deal with this. Instead, they have and basically a
(14:01):
software program that tries to identify if an AD is
fraudulent or not, and only takes the AD down in
the event that there is a ninety five percent probability
or higher that the AD is fraudulent. Now, I've actually
been on the bad side of this, believe it or not.
Really it was I can't remember if it was an
(14:23):
AD or just a post, but this was like ten
twelve years ago something like that. I can't even remember
exactly when, but it was specifically something about iras, which,
you know, being someone who's you know, interested and involved
in finance, like iras come up quite often. Sure Meta
(14:44):
decided that they were going to take either the AD
or the post down. Again, I can't remember what it
was because they thought it was a reference to a
different IRA Oh sure, you know the one one, Yes,
the Irish one, And so they were like, no, you
can't post this because it's like terrorist insightful content. And
(15:05):
I'm like, guys, like, did you actually read this? It
never ended up actually being allowed to be Like I
went back and forth with like an algorithm or some
fake human or something forever and basically like couldn't make
heads or tails of this.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So like I've been on the other side where it's like, oh,
like they're they're.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Two or hypervisuals and stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But the idea that Met is just like cool with
this and no one cares about it is kind of wild.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Well, not only that they up the price for those
scam ads so that they theoretically make more money on
those ads, but also their caveat is that's to act
as a deterrent from them being posted. But oh, by
the way, they're charging a higher rate for those type
of ads than a normal ad would be charged.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Meta spokesman Andy Stone, so the document seen by Ruters
quote present a selective view that distorts Meta's approach to
fraud and scams. The company's internal estimate that it would
earn ten point one percent it's twenty twenty four. Revenue
from scams and other prohibited ads was rough and overly inclusive,
and the company had later determined the true number was
lower because the estimates included many legitimate ads as well,
(16:10):
but declined to provide an updated figure. Okay, so again,
these are the people that are trying to become our
new AI overlords, and they're cool with serving up. Again,
even if it's not fifteen billion, let's say that's it's
five billion a day fraudulent ads, they're cool with that
(16:32):
because it helps their bottom line. That sucks.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Like that. That's hard to put a positive spin.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It's just not and no one seems to care about this.
There's no congressional hearings into this, there's no new legislation
to penalize companies that do this stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
It's just because you know that Meta could have the
technology in place to be more aggressive with or they
could peel back their percentage from nine five to eighty
five and all of a sudden, that would weed out
a significant amount of those You would think.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
These are not dumb people. Yeah, you know, like they're
here's the thing about Meta. I might not like them,
but they're really smart Yeah, they're just choosing to use
their smartness to serve fifteen billion scam ads a day
because it benefits their bottom line. I understand the financial
incentive for them. Number go up, got it. It just
kind of sucks for the rest of us that have
(17:25):
to be served the scam ads, thinking that we're buying
McCormick spices when in fact we're being redirected to like
someplace that turns me into cinnamon or something like that.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Like, I just I don't think that was the case
in that one, But I will say very much admitcing
ad set up.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It looks very it does. It looks wise.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Some of these other ones in the front of this article, Yeah,
I can't see the scamminess, but I will say they
did McCormick's pretty well.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I don't want to be cinnamon, more of a prekod
guy personally, but hey, your mileage may vary. Taking a
look at markets as we head towards the bottom of
the hour, the Dow is down fifteen points right now,
the S and P is up forty eight nasdak can
Posite up three hundred and fifteen, so market's still mixed here.
(18:19):
And big thing that you know, we're continuing to see you.
Look at kind of your leaders out there, pallunteers up,
AMD's up, Tesla and video. The stuff that was selling
off last week coming back. The stuff that was trying
to keep markets afloat last week is kind of getting
whacked here. And so it's something where this tug of
war is still going on and it's still is a
(18:41):
market that doesn't have a clear direction for the last
month and a half. Now it's just kind of chopping around.
And again, generally markets correct in two ways. They correct
their time or price. You can have a market that
pauses for two or three months and then decides to
carry on its merry way after its concerns are addressed.
You can have a market that says, oh, things are
(19:02):
getting worse and then it moves down. But right now
no clear direction at all. A little bit up, a
little down, and you're just kind of chopping around here
as we go through November. Let's take a quick break
when we return. We got the trivia answer and we
are doing Wall Street Watch after.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
This, bringing the latest financial news straight to your radio.
Every day. It's the Financial Exchange on the Financial Exchange
(19:41):
Radio Network. Time now for Wall Street Watch a complete
look at what's moving market so far today right here
on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
Market's rebounding after the tech having NASDAC log its worst
week since April. Sentiment was lifted last night after Senate
lawmakers clear a major hurdle toward ending the historic government shutdown.
Right now, the Dow is up merely three points, completely flat,
SMP five hundred up over three quarters of a percent,
or fifty two points, Nasdaq up one point four percent
(20:16):
or three hundred and twenty five points. RUSSED two thousand
is up just over half a percent. Tenure treas revealed
up two basis points at four point one point one
four percent. In crude oil down about a third of
a percent, rating of fifty nine dollars in fifty seven
cents a barrel after initially opening the day higher. Airline stocks,
including American Airlines, United, and Delta, are now down about
(20:40):
one percent. Meanwhile, Taiwan Semiconductor saw at sales climb last
month at the slowest pace since February twenty twenty four,
but remained in double digits. That stock is up about
two percent. Elsewhere, a drug maker Pfizer agreed to buy
weight loss startup met Sarah in a deal that could
be worth more than ten billion dollars. Met Sarah down
by fifty percent, while Pfizer shares now down over one percent.
(21:04):
Video sharing platform Rumble is seeing its stock jump nearly
seven percent after the company security one hundred million dollar
advertising commitment from Tether. Instacart up about two percent after
the grocery delivery company posted stronger than expected quarterly results
after if It's eleven percent tumble last week over high
valuation concerns. Pallenteer shares rebounding six percent today and after
(21:28):
today's close, we'll see more earnings from core weave in
Occidental Petroleum. I'm Tucker Silva and that is Wall Street Watch.
And in the previous segment, we asked you the trivia
question which American actor and singer performed his hit song
looking for Freedom at the New Year's Eve concert at
the demolished Berlin Wall. That would be the Hoff, of course.
David Hasselhoff from Nita Mass is our winner today, taking
(21:52):
home a Financial Exchange Show T shirt. Congrats to Nina.
We played trivia every day here in the Financial Exchange.
See complete contest rules at Financial Exchange show dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Paul, do you want to talk about AI fueled layoffs
or buying a home?
Speaker 4 (22:07):
I like the buying the home piece. Let's stick with
that one.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
All right, talk to me about it.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
So a couple different.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Things going on in the housing market, I mean, not
major changes from a trend standpoint, but this particular piece
by Alson Scheger here out of Bloomberg, talks about the
rise in the median age of homeowners of the first
time home buyers in the United States, where it is
now up to the age of forty. That is the
(22:33):
average age of a first time home buyer. That was
just thirty three a few years ago, and I believe
twenty twenty one, and if you go back to nineteen
eighty one, it was at twenty nine. And obviously many
of us know. The major culprit for that, of course,
is that the affordability of homes has increased quite a bit.
You also have household formation being delayed a lot longer
(22:56):
than it was in the eighties. And the piece it
goes on to talk about how while it is the
American dream to own a home, it doesn't always make
sense for most people. There is still a lot of
value that can be gained from the rental market, and
certainly I see both sides of it. Sometimes I don't
know if you feel the same way, but around the
house a million different things are breaking or you're having
(23:18):
issues with it, and you just look and say, geez,
it seems like this is a NonStop battle to sort
of suppress all these different things that are going on.
Once that comes with home ownership, and I look back
to my rental days and say, wow, it was a
lot simpler just to kind of show up and not
have to deal with these type of things. But this
is the conundrum that many people find themselves in, just
(23:38):
really difficult to find a house. And it's it comes
all back to the supply issues here.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
It does. It's it's supplying demand, and I I also
I also don't love just that home ownership has just
in it's always been this way to wish certain extent,
but it's it's more evidence that hey, you're gonna be
(24:06):
able to make it further financially by buying assets than
by doing work. You know. It's like you would get
millennials who were able to buy homes back in the
twenty tens. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. Again.
I had an FHA mortgage on a three and a
half percent down payment because I didn't have any money
save for a down payment. Like anytime that someone like
(24:28):
tells you, like, oh, I just like save for it,
like when you're like twenty five twenty six years old.
It's not easy to save that money for the down payment.
And the only way I could do it, quite honestly,
like you talk about things that are not great financial sense,
I pulled a bunch of money out of a retirement
account in order to be able to do it, actually,
because I didn't have other savings, so I get I'm
(24:48):
not one of these people was like, oh, I'd never
do this. No, Like, I had an adjustable rate mortgage
with three and a half percent down, pulling money out
of my retirement account.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
To do so.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
It's the only way I could figure it out. And
it was still kind of like really overwhelming for the
first year or so, just the idea. It's like some
bank lent me hundreds of thousands of dollars and now
I need to pay that back. So it does take
a lot to get there, and it's not always going
to be easy and everything, but I think quite Honestly,
(25:21):
it's kind of it's tough for me to see that,
like so many people can't get to that point because
it is something where, hey, if you have a good
housing market and you've been able to buy with a
relatively small down payment, that leverage can work wonders for
you and give you a huge kickstart to buy that
second home.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Then that twenty percent down is so difficult, particularly around
the Greater Boston area, to say that, where your averaging
homes that are close to a million bucks in a
lot of these communities, it's challenging. The other piece here
in the Boston Globe just talks about kind of a
conundrum that I found myself in too. Just you buy
the first home and sort of the being stuck in
(26:00):
it necessarily but stuck with a low mortgage rate and
trying to figure out what the next move is to
that second home. Eerily kind of reflects some of the
things that I've dealt with where we have one and
a half bathrooms in our home, and another homeowner in
this Boston Globe piece mentioned the same thing where with
three young kids, you start to look to the future, say, hey,
at some point in time, it's going to be time
(26:20):
to move. But it's hard when you're locked in at
these lower mortgage rates of yesteryear of the twenty twenties
to say, all right, it's time to buy the next
home at twice the mortgage rate, or you're looking at
renovating which is not cheap either. That's what a lot
of homeowners find and that rings true for me as well.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, folks. The Armstrong Advisory Group does have a guide
available this month specifically focused on real estate. It's titled
owning Real Estate in Retirement. Talks about considerations for owning
a primary residence in retirement, or, as we're starting to
see in increasing numbers, does it make more sense to
be renting in retirement? Beyond that, Hey, if you own
(27:03):
a second home, what are the considerations for maybe when
you decide to move on from that and consolidate down
to just one property that you own. Even beyond that, hey,
what about if you own rental property? What are some
of the considerations for that in retirement as well? Again,
the guide is titled Owning Real Estate in Retirement, and
the way to request the guide is by going to
(27:26):
Armstrong Advisory dot Com, clicking on the GUD clicking on
the button to request the guide, or you can call
eight hundred three nine three for zero zero one. Again,
you can go to Armstrong Advisory dot com or call
eight hundred three nine three for zero zero one to
(27:47):
request the guide Owning real estate in retirement.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
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 make contact you to offer investment
advisory services.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Let's see what do we want to talk about now?
Vet bills, No, not really feeling the VET bills.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
They're high, they're high.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Wendy's closing hundreds of restaurants.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yeah, why not?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
People not liking the junior bacon cheeseburgers anymore. What's going on, Paul?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
A little bit of a little bit of a turnaround
planned here, Chuck. They've got about six thousand US locations
that they they could close. But wait, that's worded weirdly.
Here to two hundred to three hundred fifty restaurants mid
single digits would be closed out of their six thousand
(28:48):
locations here and they are just looking at the ones
that are underperforming and dragging down the chains overall performance.
It's interesting the fast food sector in general. McDonald's has
been dealing with us trying to find the value focused
customer out there. There had been sort of a split there.
You're seeing fast casual lose some momentum and perhaps Wendy's,
(29:10):
you know, catching some of that in the fast food
space as well, not performing.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
How does it work the restaurants that they may consider closing,
are those all corporate owned or like, let's say that
you're a franchise that owns a Wendy's franchise, what happens
to you.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I've seen it similarly with dunkin Donuts locations. I don't
know if you've ever bumped into this, but there's a
lot of them in gas stations around my area that
I would hit, and several of them have closed recently.
I just kind of wonder who's behind that decision. Is
it dunkin Donuts corporal corporate that's saying you're underperforming so
you need to go, or is it something that is
(29:49):
a mutual decision between the franchise e in the franchise
are like Wendy's.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, I don't know enough about the franchise business model
to say to be able to say like, here's what
happened in that event, because oftentimes, like hey, you pay
for that franchise for a certain amount, right, and then
there's certain revenue that you have to kick back to
the company. There are certain expenses that you have to
pay for that the company says, you know, physical improvements
and things like that. But I've never look, I've never
(30:19):
even seen a franchise agreement, so I don't know like
what it says, like, hey, if corporate decides you're closing,
they must have some certain term. There has to be
something in there. I just don't know what it is.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I'd be interested in Texas if anyone's a franchise e
owner six one seven three six two one three eight five.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Otherwise I'll have to ask chat GPT and just accept
whatever it tells me. So what they're going to franchise
owners of fast food restaurants, Yes, please text us at
six one seven three six two thirteen eighty five. Uh,
and also let us know what your favorite Wendy's order
is as well quick break here, stack, rule out is next.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
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Speaker 2 (32:12):
Paul, what do you got for stack roulette? Chuck?
Speaker 3 (32:15):
As an Italian yourself, I don't know if you're concerned
about this, but Italian pasta is poised to disappear from
American grocery shells perhaps come January, as the Trump administration
is set to impose duties of one hundred and seven
percent on Italian pasta imports, one of the most punitive
of the terifs that they have levy this far. It
(32:38):
is a portion of it ninety two percent of it
an anti dumping duty on pasta made in Italy, and
then there is also the additional fifteen percent tariff on
imports from the EU. Having feedback here from one of
the executives of an Italian pasta manufacturing company saying that
it's an incredibly important mart market for US, but no
(33:01):
one can maintain of course, those type of margins they
would have to pull from the shelves in twenty twenty
six if this were to actually go into effect concerning
news here for pasta.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
You're saying we're gonna have a pasta shortage from if.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
You like your Italian pasta.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
You might plenty of other American choices out there, but
we all know that not as not as good as
the Italians do it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
No, we can't. We can't be having any of this year.
We can't have a pasta shortage heading into the Christmas season.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
My goodness, those seven fishes aren't going to feed themselves.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Huh no, they're not. Not.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
You got a favorite pasta, Paul.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
Typically Linguini guy.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
You're a Linguini guy. Yeah, okay, no surprise there, rock
What about you? I'm a little surprised.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Why what'd you think? It's like the most basic choice.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I don't think Linguini's the most basic choice.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
The most basic choice is probably elbows, or I would
have we would have even said spaghetti in a long format.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
If i'm if I'm being a it's it's probably spaghetti. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
I like a nice Oh sure, I'm a short pasta
guy myself, so a little fussili does a little nice work.
I also a little far folly. If you like a
little bow tie, that kind of action can do. Well,
it's too cute. What about a little rotee the little
wagon wheels? Not a rote fan?
Speaker 5 (34:25):
Silly?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
What do you mean, silly?
Speaker 5 (34:27):
It's just a wheel.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
You know what I got to say. Used to be great.
There was a there's a restaurant in Milton that used
to do uh rigatoni, but they did it with the
wagon wheel the full length, so it was like a
long wagon wheel. Spectacular just because you get the sauce
sticking to the entire inside of that thing. Oh, I
know what you're talking about. Okay, yeah, uh huh. Now
(34:51):
you're cooking the other things. Actually, if I'm going my
favorite long pasta bucatini, Yeah, God to love because that
way you get that sauce just coming right up the
middle there, and it's just outstanding. I'm want to talk
a little bit about this uh Major League Baseball uh
(35:14):
gambling scandal.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
You've got a couple new charges here, not new, it's
obviously new. You got a couple of charges in this scandal.
So remember a couple of weeks ago you had this
NBA one. Now you've got Cleveland Guardians pitchers Luis Ortiz
and Emmanuel Casse who have been charged with fraud basically
for manipulating pitches to try to get bets to pay
(35:39):
off on different betting platforms, and all of these different
sports leagues old you know, tell you, oh, you know,
this is a horrible thing and this can't be happening.
And then here's the parlay of the day, brought to
you by and I honestly, at this point, here's where
(36:01):
I've gotten to. I've said this before, I'll say it again.
I think it's totally fine if you want sports gambling
to be legal. I don't think it should be allowed
on phones because it is becoming a scorge on society
and it's too easy to make these bets on phones.
You can't police it appropriately, and it threatens the integrity
(36:21):
of these games, which quite honestly, like look their sports,
Like I'm a huge sports fan, but ultimately, like even
I realize sports is kind of dumb. It's literally like, hey,
let's take this oblong shaped ball and try to get
it across that line there, and these guys can tackle
us to stop. I love football. I watched the entire
Patriots game yesterday. It was fantastic. Sorry to our you know,
(36:44):
Tampa Bay listeners. But ultimately sports are like I realized
that they're dumb. It's hey, let me take this like
golf club out and see how far I can hit
this ball. It's it's dumb. When we're getting to the
point now where professionals are changing how they play the
game because of you know, extra money that can come
their way that you know, makes the game not be
(37:07):
legitimate anymore. When you've got professional athletes across major sports
that are saying they're being threatened on social media because
they didn't hit this better, that bet we've gone too
far and we're starting to lose like the fact that
we're human beings and are supposed to have souls.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
I'll push back on some of it here where some
of these issues on gambling, there's definitely gonna be more
of them to come out, to be clear, But this
goes back one hundred years. I mean, if you go
back to like the Black Sucks, it's always been not always,
there's always an under seedling of this kind of stuff
that goes on. I would argue you're right, it probably
is more prevalent now just because of how just it's
(37:43):
really become pronounced in terms of how many platforms are
out there, and there are gonna be more bad actors,
I'm sure, over the course of the next few years
or so, but but ultimately hopefully they can get into
a better place. There are some pros and cons that
come with it, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Make a quick break for the rest of the day.
We're gonna see you tomorrow on the financial exchange. We're
looking forward to and hopefully you are too. Thanks for listening.
We'll catch you then.
The Financial Exchange is produced by Money Matters Radio and
is hosted by employees of the Armstrong Advisory Group, a
registered investment advisor. All opinions expressed are solely those of
the hosts, do not reflect the opinions of Armstrong Advisory
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(00:20):
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at business and financial news affecting your day, your city,
(00:42):
your world. Stay informed and up to date about economic
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(01:06):
and Paul Lane.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Chuck Pop Tucker with you here today, And in case
you missed the news over the weekend, it looks like
we're getting closer to a resolution to end the government
shut down. The Senate yesterday passed a bill by a
vote of sixty to forty to clear a key procedural mark.
We're still not fully reopen because it has to actually
(01:30):
the Senate has to actually pass the bill that it
wants to, then it has to go to the House
because it'll likely have some changes from the original House
pass legislation, and then you'll finally get this thing done.
The estimates that we're seeing most likely later this week.
There's obviously a chance that things could go badly, but
at this point it looks pretty clear that the federal
(01:50):
government's going to be reopening within the next three to
five days, barring unforeseen developments. So in response to that,
we had a nice rally to start the day off. Today,
SMP was up as many as eighty two points. It's
retrenching some of that now, still up forty seven points,
but the Dow has now got negative down ten. Nasdaq
is leading the way, up three hundred and some odd points,
(02:12):
about one to a third percent. So again it's it's
tech that is kind of in the driver's seat here
as we emerge or we try to emerge from the shutdown.
And so that is what is going on in equity markets,
in the bond market to the ten year Treasury up
one point seven basis points to four point one one percent.
We got the US dollar index up point one percent
(02:35):
to ninety nine point five seven and gold on the
back of this. We can talk about this later if
we if we want to, gold up about two percent,
eighty two dollars and thirty cents to four thousand, ninety
two and ten cents, and we got crude oil down
sixteen cents a barrel to fifty nine to fifty nine,
the triple A national average for gas prices up one
(02:55):
tenth of a cent overnight to three oh seven and
one tenth. Paul, we got a piece here today. It's
from Barons. It's titled how three percent inflation became the
new normal? And I think that the well outlined to
me what this piece says.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Basically, what this piece covers is the FED has a
long term target for inflation to sit at two percent.
Many listeners out there will recall, back in twenty twenty two,
we peaked out as high as nine percent on the
inflationary front. Since then, there's been tremendous progress made to
get us to the three percent that we sit at today. However,
we have plateaued at that three percent level for quite
(03:36):
a period of time here, and there hasn't been meaningful
progress towards driving it down to two percent. And what
this piece cites is many expectations for inflation moving forward,
whether it be from the Federal Open Market Committee or
others who sort of do projections as to where they
think inflation is going to go. Surveys seem to be
indicating that we're moving further and further away from that
(03:59):
two percent anchor target that the FED has has targeted.
And really where this is interesting to me, and I'm
sure you have commentary on it two is you know,
this is this is a target that the FED has.
It's not ironclad that it has to be two percent,
but it's something they're shooting for. And what I continually
debate is whether or not it has to be at
(04:23):
this level. You know, is it problematic for it to
be at three percent? I think you and I can
kind of debate the You can have really two sides
to the argument to that. Some people could say that, hey,
if it is anchored in at three percent, then you
can kind of create this spiral impact where if I
think prices are going to rise by three percent every year,
I'm going to turn to my employer more quickly and
(04:44):
more readily and say, gee, if prices are going to
continue to go up, you need to pay me more.
And as a result of that, if the employer, you know,
follows that move lockstep, they have to increase prices, and
so there's this psychological impact it can have that if
it is anchored at three percent, that's problematic because it
leads to that spo On the other end, you could
kind of say that, you know, three percent still allows
(05:06):
some flexibility for the Federal Reserve to move interest rates
around a little bit more if you're sitting at that level, sure,
and that it could kind of be eroded away over
time some of the debt that people have if inflation
is march at the level. So I'm always interested and
I don't know where you sit on that side of
the argument, but it's it's something that I don't think
you can have a clear cut winner on but there's
(05:26):
differing views out there.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, and and Mark Fandetti, it was a great summary
there by the way Paul and Mark Fandetti has talked
about this and that if you look at a lot
of the academic literature on this failure, there's no thank you,
there's no consensus as to like, this is the right
rate of inflation. Academics are generally, hey, you can be
anywhere from like one to five percent inflation, and as
(05:51):
long as you're again kind of anchored there, there's beliefs
that you can be okay in those areas. I generally
tend to err on the lower side of things, just
because people really just don't like inflation. Like even if
you make four percent more this year and your stuff
costs four percent more, you're like, oh, I'm making more,
but like it feels bad high.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Or on the price is going up.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Correct, So I think I generally err towards Yeah, like
I'd prefer lower, all else being equal. But we've had
good economies with three percent inflation, we've had bad ones
with one. There's nothing to say this is the right
inflation rate. And remember when we're talking about inflation, folks,
(06:35):
what we talk about is the rate of inflation. We're
not talking about what prices are because prices basically never
go down like in the aggregate. You never see that. Yes,
you can see the price of eggs go down, but
it happens as the price of beef's going up and
so your grocery cost. You know, this is just how
it ends up working. So I don't believe that there's
any right rate of inflation, because I think it would
(06:57):
be pretty I'd have to have an awful lot of
hubris to be like, thou shalt run at two percent inflation?
Like like, I don't think any human being can say
this is the right rate of inflation exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
The key word that you mentioned is anchored. You know,
it has to be at a steady level inflation. Whether
it's four percent, you could maybe argue it's too high,
but whether it's two percent or three percent, as long
as it's marching along on that trend steadily, then it
makes for a more palatable economic environment. If it starts
swinging between one and four, that's when you're gonna have problems,
(07:35):
and it's going to be more challenging to operate.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And those problems, by the way, are numerous. Number One,
if you have inflation that's consistently moving, you know, having
large swings, your banking sector is going to say, hey,
because we don't know where inflation is going to be
in the future, we need to charge you higher interest
rates in order to give us more cushion. Yep. So
(07:58):
you see stuff like that develop. You see businesses saying, hey,
we don't know what the cost of our goods are
going to be, of our inputs are going to be
next year, so we're going to raise our prices preemptively.
And this is how you get more consistent higher inflation
and higher prices. So those are the things that you
worry about then. And the other place that I worry
about it is in the context of we're not very
(08:23):
responsible when it comes to anything fiscal nationally these days
haven't been for about twenty five years.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
You know, this.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
SPAN's one, two, three, four, This spans five different presidencies
from both parties. You got to go back to again
the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties to find the last
time that we cared about this stuff. Because the problem
is if you have three percent inflation at a time
where you don't really seem to care what your deficits are,
and you're willing to push as much spending as possible
(08:55):
to juice the economy, which is pretty much what we've
been doing for twenty five years now. It creates the
conditions for that inflation to move higher and become more
entrenched at a higher level, and that's that's potentially dangerous.
So three percent inflation not necessarily bad. It's again, I'm
not saying this to let the Fed off the hook
(09:17):
or anything, but the late nineteen nineties, you know, you
had three percent inflation through the nineteen nineties. I think
a lot of us will look back and be like, yeah,
it's a pretty good, darn good period. You know, things
were pretty okay then. Granted, then you had you know,
the tech bubble bursting and you're like, okay, this is
not okay. And then the housing bubble burst and you're like,
this still is okay. And then you had you know,
(09:38):
high inflation and shutdowns and this and that, and you're like,
this still is okay. But for a little brief period
in time, you're like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Take
a quick break when we come back, Let's do a
little bit of trivia and then we'll talk about meta
how much of their revenue comes from ads for fake
websites that sell you fraudulent products.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Find daily into news and full shows of the Financial
Exchange on our YouTube page. Subscribe to our page and
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This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network. The Financial Exchange
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(10:19):
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the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
Well, this year's DAV five k was another incredible success,
with over fifteen hundred runners and walkers, all supporting the
Disabled American Veterans Department of Massachusetts. The race results in
photo galleries are available to see and if you didn't
have a chance to participate, would bo would still like
to support our great American heroes. Please visit DAV five
(10:55):
k dot Boston. Your gifts help fund free rides to
medical appointments for better Terans in the nation's first dav
led housing initiative, providing homes for single veterans and veteran families.
Go to DAV fivek dot Boston to make your donation today.
That's dav five k dot Boston. Time for trivia here
in the Financial Exchange and on this day. Back in
(11:17):
nineteen eighty nine, German crowds began demolishing the Berlin Wall.
Over the next couple of months, celebrations were held throughout
the city, culminating with the New Year's Eve concert at
the brandon burg Gate. Trivia question today, which American actor
and singer performed his hit song looking for Freedom at
the New Year's Eve concert at the demolish Berlin Wall.
(11:39):
Once again, which American actor and singer performed his hit
song looking for Freedom at the New Year's Eve concert
at the demolished Berlin Wall. Be the third person today
to text us at six one seven three six two
thirteen eighty five with the correct answer and to win
a Financial Exchange Show T shirt once again. The third
(11:59):
correct response to Texas 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 (12:10):
Meta the company behind such blockbuster products as Facebook and
Instagram in fact, that they used to be called Facebook.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Didn't they.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yes, what a odd concept for them to be named
after something that people actually like think about instead of
the metaverse, which no one thinks about. Uh So Reuters
found some internal or not found I guess somehow they
received a report that Meta published internally that they project
(12:42):
ten percent of their twenty twenty four revenue would come
from ads from scams and banned goods, which seems bad specifically,
and like the numbers are.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Just mind boggling.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Meta estimates that its users are shown fifteen billion scam
ads per day. Now, these can take a couple different forms.
The two that are most common are well, there's there's
really three that are most common. The first is hey
company that says that they are selling products from you know,
product X, Y, and Z, and instead they're selling a
(13:18):
cheap knockoff or something like that. Number two is companies
that claim to be company X, but then you get
redirected to a website that looks just like company XES,
and then you enter your credit card information. They don't
actually take your they don't actually send you anything, and
they steal your credit card information, which is kind of bad.
And the third one is, hey, we're selling this product
(13:38):
and it's not allowed because of you know, safety concerns
or a recall or this and that, and they take
your money and send you the product that could hurt you,
which is bad. So Meta estimates that again ten percent
of their ads that they serve are scam ads, and
the reason why is that they don't go through and
manually deal with this. Instead, they have and basically a
(14:01):
software program that tries to identify if an AD is
fraudulent or not, and only takes the AD down in
the event that there is a ninety five percent probability
or higher that the AD is fraudulent. Now, I've actually
been on the bad side of this, believe it or not.
Really it was I can't remember if it was an
(14:23):
AD or just a post, but this was like ten
twelve years ago something like that. I can't even remember
exactly when, but it was specifically something about iras, which,
you know, being someone who's you know, interested and involved
in finance, like iras come up quite often. Sure Meta
(14:44):
decided that they were going to take either the AD
or the post down. Again, I can't remember what it
was because they thought it was a reference to a
different IRA Oh sure, you know the one one, Yes,
the Irish one, And so they were like, no, you
can't post this because it's like terrorist insightful content. And
(15:05):
I'm like, guys, like, did you actually read this? It
never ended up actually being allowed to be Like I
went back and forth with like an algorithm or some
fake human or something forever and basically like couldn't make
heads or tails of this.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So like I've been on the other side where it's like, oh,
like they're they're.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Two or hypervisuals and stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But the idea that Met is just like cool with
this and no one cares about it is kind of wild.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Well, not only that they up the price for those
scam ads so that they theoretically make more money on
those ads, but also their caveat is that's to act
as a deterrent from them being posted. But oh, by
the way, they're charging a higher rate for those type
of ads than a normal ad would be charged.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Meta spokesman Andy Stone, so the document seen by Ruters
quote present a selective view that distorts Meta's approach to
fraud and scams. The company's internal estimate that it would
earn ten point one percent it's twenty twenty four. Revenue
from scams and other prohibited ads was rough and overly inclusive,
and the company had later determined the true number was
lower because the estimates included many legitimate ads as well,
(16:10):
but declined to provide an updated figure. Okay, so again,
these are the people that are trying to become our
new AI overlords, and they're cool with serving up. Again,
even if it's not fifteen billion, let's say that's it's
five billion a day fraudulent ads, they're cool with that
(16:32):
because it helps their bottom line. That sucks.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Like that. That's hard to put a positive spin.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It's just not and no one seems to care about this.
There's no congressional hearings into this, there's no new legislation
to penalize companies that do this stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
It's just because you know that Meta could have the
technology in place to be more aggressive with or they
could peel back their percentage from nine five to eighty
five and all of a sudden, that would weed out
a significant amount of those You would think.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
These are not dumb people. Yeah, you know, like they're
here's the thing about Meta. I might not like them,
but they're really smart Yeah, they're just choosing to use
their smartness to serve fifteen billion scam ads a day
because it benefits their bottom line. I understand the financial
incentive for them. Number go up, got it. It just
kind of sucks for the rest of us that have
(17:25):
to be served the scam ads, thinking that we're buying
McCormick spices when in fact we're being redirected to like
someplace that turns me into cinnamon or something like that.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Like, I just I don't think that was the case
in that one, But I will say very much admitcing
ad set up.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It looks very it does. It looks wise.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Some of these other ones in the front of this article, Yeah,
I can't see the scamminess, but I will say they
did McCormick's pretty well.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I don't want to be cinnamon, more of a prekod
guy personally, but hey, your mileage may vary. Taking a
look at markets as we head towards the bottom of
the hour, the Dow is down fifteen points right now,
the S and P is up forty eight nasdak can
Posite up three hundred and fifteen, so market's still mixed here.
(18:19):
And big thing that you know, we're continuing to see you.
Look at kind of your leaders out there, pallunteers up,
AMD's up, Tesla and video. The stuff that was selling
off last week coming back. The stuff that was trying
to keep markets afloat last week is kind of getting
whacked here. And so it's something where this tug of
war is still going on and it's still is a
(18:41):
market that doesn't have a clear direction for the last
month and a half. Now it's just kind of chopping around.
And again, generally markets correct in two ways. They correct
their time or price. You can have a market that
pauses for two or three months and then decides to
carry on its merry way after its concerns are addressed.
You can have a market that says, oh, things are
(19:02):
getting worse and then it moves down. But right now
no clear direction at all. A little bit up, a
little down, and you're just kind of chopping around here
as we go through November. Let's take a quick break
when we return. We got the trivia answer and we
are doing Wall Street Watch after.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
This, bringing the latest financial news straight to your radio.
Every day. It's the Financial Exchange on the Financial Exchange
(19:41):
Radio Network. Time now for Wall Street Watch a complete
look at what's moving market so far today right here
on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
Market's rebounding after the tech having NASDAC log its worst
week since April. Sentiment was lifted last night after Senate
lawmakers clear a major hurdle toward ending the historic government shutdown.
Right now, the Dow is up merely three points, completely flat,
SMP five hundred up over three quarters of a percent,
or fifty two points, Nasdaq up one point four percent
(20:16):
or three hundred and twenty five points. RUSSED two thousand
is up just over half a percent. Tenure treas revealed
up two basis points at four point one point one
four percent. In crude oil down about a third of
a percent, rating of fifty nine dollars in fifty seven
cents a barrel after initially opening the day higher. Airline stocks,
including American Airlines, United, and Delta, are now down about
(20:40):
one percent. Meanwhile, Taiwan Semiconductor saw at sales climb last
month at the slowest pace since February twenty twenty four,
but remained in double digits. That stock is up about
two percent. Elsewhere, a drug maker Pfizer agreed to buy
weight loss startup met Sarah in a deal that could
be worth more than ten billion dollars. Met Sarah down
by fifty percent, while Pfizer shares now down over one percent.
(21:04):
Video sharing platform Rumble is seeing its stock jump nearly
seven percent after the company security one hundred million dollar
advertising commitment from Tether. Instacart up about two percent after
the grocery delivery company posted stronger than expected quarterly results
after if It's eleven percent tumble last week over high
valuation concerns. Pallenteer shares rebounding six percent today and after
(21:28):
today's close, we'll see more earnings from core weave in
Occidental Petroleum. I'm Tucker Silva and that is Wall Street Watch.
And in the previous segment, we asked you the trivia
question which American actor and singer performed his hit song
looking for Freedom at the New Year's Eve concert at
the demolished Berlin Wall. That would be the Hoff, of course.
David Hasselhoff from Nita Mass is our winner today, taking
(21:52):
home a Financial Exchange Show T shirt. Congrats to Nina.
We played trivia every day here in the Financial Exchange.
See complete contest rules at Financial Exchange show dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Paul, do you want to talk about AI fueled layoffs
or buying a home?
Speaker 4 (22:07):
I like the buying the home piece. Let's stick with
that one.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
All right, talk to me about it.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
So a couple different.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Things going on in the housing market, I mean, not
major changes from a trend standpoint, but this particular piece
by Alson Scheger here out of Bloomberg, talks about the
rise in the median age of homeowners of the first
time home buyers in the United States, where it is
now up to the age of forty. That is the
(22:33):
average age of a first time home buyer. That was
just thirty three a few years ago, and I believe
twenty twenty one, and if you go back to nineteen
eighty one, it was at twenty nine. And obviously many
of us know. The major culprit for that, of course,
is that the affordability of homes has increased quite a bit.
You also have household formation being delayed a lot longer
(22:56):
than it was in the eighties. And the piece it
goes on to talk about how while it is the
American dream to own a home, it doesn't always make
sense for most people. There is still a lot of
value that can be gained from the rental market, and
certainly I see both sides of it. Sometimes I don't
know if you feel the same way, but around the
house a million different things are breaking or you're having
(23:18):
issues with it, and you just look and say, geez,
it seems like this is a NonStop battle to sort
of suppress all these different things that are going on.
Once that comes with home ownership, and I look back
to my rental days and say, wow, it was a
lot simpler just to kind of show up and not
have to deal with these type of things. But this
is the conundrum that many people find themselves in, just
(23:38):
really difficult to find a house. And it's it comes
all back to the supply issues here.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
It does. It's it's supplying demand, and I I also
I also don't love just that home ownership has just
in it's always been this way to wish certain extent,
but it's it's more evidence that hey, you're gonna be
(24:06):
able to make it further financially by buying assets than
by doing work. You know. It's like you would get
millennials who were able to buy homes back in the
twenty tens. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. Again.
I had an FHA mortgage on a three and a
half percent down payment because I didn't have any money
save for a down payment. Like anytime that someone like
(24:28):
tells you, like, oh, I just like save for it,
like when you're like twenty five twenty six years old.
It's not easy to save that money for the down payment.
And the only way I could do it, quite honestly,
like you talk about things that are not great financial sense,
I pulled a bunch of money out of a retirement
account in order to be able to do it, actually,
because I didn't have other savings, so I get I'm
(24:48):
not one of these people was like, oh, I'd never
do this. No, Like, I had an adjustable rate mortgage
with three and a half percent down, pulling money out
of my retirement account.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
To do so.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
It's the only way I could figure it out. And
it was still kind of like really overwhelming for the
first year or so, just the idea. It's like some
bank lent me hundreds of thousands of dollars and now
I need to pay that back. So it does take
a lot to get there, and it's not always going
to be easy and everything, but I think quite Honestly,
(25:21):
it's kind of it's tough for me to see that,
like so many people can't get to that point because
it is something where, hey, if you have a good
housing market and you've been able to buy with a
relatively small down payment, that leverage can work wonders for
you and give you a huge kickstart to buy that
second home.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Then that twenty percent down is so difficult, particularly around
the Greater Boston area, to say that, where your averaging
homes that are close to a million bucks in a
lot of these communities, it's challenging. The other piece here
in the Boston Globe just talks about kind of a
conundrum that I found myself in too. Just you buy
the first home and sort of the being stuck in
(26:00):
it necessarily but stuck with a low mortgage rate and
trying to figure out what the next move is to
that second home. Eerily kind of reflects some of the
things that I've dealt with where we have one and
a half bathrooms in our home, and another homeowner in
this Boston Globe piece mentioned the same thing where with
three young kids, you start to look to the future, say, hey,
at some point in time, it's going to be time
(26:20):
to move. But it's hard when you're locked in at
these lower mortgage rates of yesteryear of the twenty twenties
to say, all right, it's time to buy the next
home at twice the mortgage rate, or you're looking at
renovating which is not cheap either. That's what a lot
of homeowners find and that rings true for me as well.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, folks. The Armstrong Advisory Group does have a guide
available this month specifically focused on real estate. It's titled
owning Real Estate in Retirement. Talks about considerations for owning
a primary residence in retirement, or, as we're starting to
see in increasing numbers, does it make more sense to
be renting in retirement? Beyond that, Hey, if you own
(27:03):
a second home, what are the considerations for maybe when
you decide to move on from that and consolidate down
to just one property that you own. Even beyond that, hey,
what about if you own rental property? What are some
of the considerations for that in retirement as well? Again,
the guide is titled Owning Real Estate in Retirement, and
the way to request the guide is by going to
(27:26):
Armstrong Advisory dot Com, clicking on the GUD clicking on
the button to request the guide, or you can call
eight hundred three nine three for zero zero one. Again,
you can go to Armstrong Advisory dot com or call
eight hundred three nine three for zero zero one to
(27:47):
request the guide Owning real estate in retirement.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
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 make contact you to offer investment
advisory services.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Let's see what do we want to talk about now?
Vet bills, No, not really feeling the VET bills.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
They're high, they're high.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Wendy's closing hundreds of restaurants.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yeah, why not?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
People not liking the junior bacon cheeseburgers anymore. What's going on, Paul?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
A little bit of a little bit of a turnaround
planned here, Chuck. They've got about six thousand US locations
that they they could close. But wait, that's worded weirdly.
Here to two hundred to three hundred fifty restaurants mid
single digits would be closed out of their six thousand
(28:48):
locations here and they are just looking at the ones
that are underperforming and dragging down the chains overall performance.
It's interesting the fast food sector in general. McDonald's has
been dealing with us trying to find the value focused
customer out there. There had been sort of a split there.
You're seeing fast casual lose some momentum and perhaps Wendy's,
(29:10):
you know, catching some of that in the fast food
space as well, not performing.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
How does it work the restaurants that they may consider closing,
are those all corporate owned or like, let's say that
you're a franchise that owns a Wendy's franchise, what happens
to you.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I've seen it similarly with dunkin Donuts locations. I don't
know if you've ever bumped into this, but there's a
lot of them in gas stations around my area that
I would hit, and several of them have closed recently.
I just kind of wonder who's behind that decision. Is
it dunkin Donuts corporal corporate that's saying you're underperforming so
you need to go, or is it something that is
(29:49):
a mutual decision between the franchise e in the franchise
are like Wendy's.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, I don't know enough about the franchise business model
to say to be able to say like, here's what
happened in that event, because oftentimes, like hey, you pay
for that franchise for a certain amount, right, and then
there's certain revenue that you have to kick back to
the company. There are certain expenses that you have to
pay for that the company says, you know, physical improvements
and things like that. But I've never look, I've never
(30:19):
even seen a franchise agreement, so I don't know like
what it says, like, hey, if corporate decides you're closing,
they must have some certain term. There has to be
something in there. I just don't know what it is.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I'd be interested in Texas if anyone's a franchise e
owner six one seven three six two one three eight five.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Otherwise I'll have to ask chat GPT and just accept
whatever it tells me. So what they're going to franchise
owners of fast food restaurants, Yes, please text us at
six one seven three six two thirteen eighty five. Uh,
and also let us know what your favorite Wendy's order
is as well quick break here, stack, rule out is next.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Here The Financial Exchange every day from eleven to now
Non Serious XM's Business Radio Channel one thirty two. Keep
it here for the latest business and financial news and
the trends on Wall Street. The Financial Exchange is now
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(31:14):
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Speaker 5 (31:25):
This segment of The Financial Exchange is brought to you
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(32:07):
and follow market activity all morning long, only here on
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Speaker 2 (32:12):
Paul, what do you got for stack roulette? Chuck?
Speaker 3 (32:15):
As an Italian yourself, I don't know if you're concerned
about this, but Italian pasta is poised to disappear from
American grocery shells perhaps come January, as the Trump administration
is set to impose duties of one hundred and seven
percent on Italian pasta imports, one of the most punitive
of the terifs that they have levy this far. It
(32:38):
is a portion of it ninety two percent of it
an anti dumping duty on pasta made in Italy, and
then there is also the additional fifteen percent tariff on
imports from the EU. Having feedback here from one of
the executives of an Italian pasta manufacturing company saying that
it's an incredibly important mart market for US, but no
(33:01):
one can maintain of course, those type of margins they
would have to pull from the shelves in twenty twenty
six if this were to actually go into effect concerning
news here for pasta.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
You're saying we're gonna have a pasta shortage from if.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
You like your Italian pasta.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
You might plenty of other American choices out there, but
we all know that not as not as good as
the Italians do it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
No, we can't. We can't be having any of this year.
We can't have a pasta shortage heading into the Christmas season.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
My goodness, those seven fishes aren't going to feed themselves.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Huh no, they're not. Not.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
You got a favorite pasta, Paul.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
Typically Linguini guy.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
You're a Linguini guy. Yeah, okay, no surprise there, rock
What about you? I'm a little surprised.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Why what'd you think? It's like the most basic choice.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I don't think Linguini's the most basic choice.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
The most basic choice is probably elbows, or I would
have we would have even said spaghetti in a long format.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
If i'm if I'm being a it's it's probably spaghetti. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
I like a nice Oh sure, I'm a short pasta
guy myself, so a little fussili does a little nice work.
I also a little far folly. If you like a
little bow tie, that kind of action can do. Well,
it's too cute. What about a little rotee the little
wagon wheels? Not a rote fan?
Speaker 5 (34:25):
Silly?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
What do you mean, silly?
Speaker 5 (34:27):
It's just a wheel.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
You know what I got to say. Used to be great.
There was a there's a restaurant in Milton that used
to do uh rigatoni, but they did it with the
wagon wheel the full length, so it was like a
long wagon wheel. Spectacular just because you get the sauce
sticking to the entire inside of that thing. Oh, I
know what you're talking about. Okay, yeah, uh huh. Now
(34:51):
you're cooking the other things. Actually, if I'm going my
favorite long pasta bucatini, Yeah, God to love because that
way you get that sauce just coming right up the
middle there, and it's just outstanding. I'm want to talk
a little bit about this uh Major League Baseball uh
(35:14):
gambling scandal.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
You've got a couple new charges here, not new, it's
obviously new. You got a couple of charges in this scandal.
So remember a couple of weeks ago you had this
NBA one. Now you've got Cleveland Guardians pitchers Luis Ortiz
and Emmanuel Casse who have been charged with fraud basically
for manipulating pitches to try to get bets to pay
(35:39):
off on different betting platforms, and all of these different
sports leagues old you know, tell you, oh, you know,
this is a horrible thing and this can't be happening.
And then here's the parlay of the day, brought to
you by and I honestly, at this point, here's where
(36:01):
I've gotten to. I've said this before, I'll say it again.
I think it's totally fine if you want sports gambling
to be legal. I don't think it should be allowed
on phones because it is becoming a scorge on society
and it's too easy to make these bets on phones.
You can't police it appropriately, and it threatens the integrity
(36:21):
of these games, which quite honestly, like look their sports,
Like I'm a huge sports fan, but ultimately, like even
I realize sports is kind of dumb. It's literally like, hey,
let's take this oblong shaped ball and try to get
it across that line there, and these guys can tackle
us to stop. I love football. I watched the entire
Patriots game yesterday. It was fantastic. Sorry to our you know,
(36:44):
Tampa Bay listeners. But ultimately sports are like I realized
that they're dumb. It's hey, let me take this like
golf club out and see how far I can hit
this ball. It's it's dumb. When we're getting to the
point now where professionals are changing how they play the
game because of you know, extra money that can come
their way that you know, makes the game not be
(37:07):
legitimate anymore. When you've got professional athletes across major sports
that are saying they're being threatened on social media because
they didn't hit this better, that bet we've gone too
far and we're starting to lose like the fact that
we're human beings and are supposed to have souls.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
I'll push back on some of it here where some
of these issues on gambling, there's definitely gonna be more
of them to come out, to be clear, But this
goes back one hundred years. I mean, if you go
back to like the Black Sucks, it's always been not always,
there's always an under seedling of this kind of stuff
that goes on. I would argue you're right, it probably
is more prevalent now just because of how just it's
(37:43):
really become pronounced in terms of how many platforms are
out there, and there are gonna be more bad actors,
I'm sure, over the course of the next few years
or so, but but ultimately hopefully they can get into
a better place. There are some pros and cons that
come with it, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Make a quick break for the rest of the day.
We're gonna see you tomorrow on the financial exchange. We're
looking forward to and hopefully you are too. Thanks for listening.
We'll catch you then.
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