October 16, 2025 • 38 mins
Chuck Zodda and Mike Armstrong explain why many people around the world refuse to trust traditional currency these days. Sarah Foster, Bankrate, joins the show to discuss worker pay not keeping up with inflation. Most Americans don't have good jobs. What does that say about the economy. AI data centers, desperate for electricity, are building their own power plants. What are the hidden costs of downsizing?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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
or anyone else. Investments can lose money. This program does
not offer any specific financial or investment advice. Please consult
your own financial, tax, and estate planning advisors before making
(00:20):
any investment decisions. Armstrong Advisory and the advertisers heard on
this program do not endorse each other or their services.
Armstrong and Money Matters Radio do not compensate each other
for referrals and are not affiliated. This is the Financial
Exchange with Chuck Zada and Mike Armstrong, Your exclusive look
at business and financial news affecting your day, your city,
(00:42):
your world. Stay informed and up to date about economic
and market trends plus breaking business news every day. The
Financial Exchange is a proud partner of the Disabled American
Veterans Department of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Help us support our.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Great American heroes by visiting dav five K Boston and
making a donation today. This is the Financial Exchange with
Chuck Zada, and Mike Armstrong, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Mike and Tucker with you. We are broadcasting live from
the Showcase super Lucks in Chestnut Hill. To everyone who
turned out for us today, thank you so much for
joining us. We're having a great time so far and
enjoying hanging out with all of you.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
If you do have questions for us, you can obviously
come up to us during the commercial breaks. You can
ask from across the floor whatever works best for you.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Throw things at us to get our attention. You can
throw things at Mike. I prefer not to have things well.
You can text the show too.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Six two thirteen eighty five is the text line for
the show. And always love those questions coming in.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But you can't talk to us between breaks if you're
not here. So just a reminder there are some perks
to showing up in person if you If you want
to add our next one that we'll be doing. Taking
a look around markets, We've got the S and P
five hundred up a third of a percent, about twenty
two points, the Dow Jones Industrial average up seventy nine points.
(02:14):
The Nasdaq composite is up one hundred and forty seven points,
about two thirds of a percent, so all in disease
in the green today, aside from that silly Russell two
thousand that just doesn't know what to do. Quite honestly,
it's been getting bid up on the really interesting thing
about the Russell. So we have to have just a
(02:34):
quick little digression here. Indeed, generally with small cap stocks,
the ones that perform best over extended periods of time
are the ones that are profitable, and the most profitable.
As you know, one would expect the small caps that
have been performing best over the last month have been
the most unprofitable stocks in the index, which tells you
(02:55):
that retail is just kind of fishing for all the
memi hot names and everything. And so it's just kind
of interesting when you see that kind of behavior. It's
not normally what you expect from the rustle, and it's
not something that usually ends well when everyone's buying all
the crap that no one else normally wants, because once
once the buyers of the crap stop, then the sellers start,
(03:16):
and that's when you know, things get that get dodgy. Well,
put the buyers of the crap. We should have T
shirts made of that. We need financial exchange t shirts
with that now in the back, it says the buyers
of the crap, we could do that. I think that
would be really really good. Taking a look at other markets.
US ten year treasury kind of boring today, down seven
(03:39):
tenths of a basis point to four point three eight percent.
We've been to pretty tight range for the last five
six days on this one. No further movement today, Well.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Then you want some excitement, chuck, Yeah, what do you got?
Gold's up another two percent today. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
We're gonna have to have a discussion about gold at
some point, just because we're now reaching the point where,
you know, people who aren't in the no start you know,
to tweet out things like, oh, like gold only goes up,
and you know, things like that, and listen, I'm not
saying it can or can't go in any particular direction,
but gosh, when you've seen gold run thirty percent in
(04:12):
two months, that's a pretty monster move. Gold has a
history of monster moves like this. Can compress time frames,
but even there you tend to see some sideways consolidation
like we did this summer as an example, where remember
start of the year you saw about a thirty percent
run up in gold through mid April, and then it
(04:32):
was completely sideways through mid August. It took a four
month break. It didn't really go anywhere. It just kind
of sat there and was like, yep, I'm hanging out
at the beach. I'm not doing anything. And then it
got moving again. So again, this is what you tend
to see with gold, very long periods of boredom and
short periods of either crazy excitement or pure terror.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, the gold obsession out there is starting to get
intriguing to me.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It's all over Reddit right now.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, it's overredd at social media. I keep seeing posts
of things like, oh, stocks are really expensive, but when
you price them in gold, take a look at this
chart instead. I'm like, no one has ever done that
until the LA.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That's not true, So I disagree. Yeah, I have actually
looked at S and P you know, charts priced in gold,
like Yeah, I don't do it with individual stocks, it's done,
but yeah, like looking at the whole market like in
gold terms, it's no different from looking at like the
market in yen terms or something like that. And that's
also something that I do occasionally because it can tell
you some things sometimes what is.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
The market being priced in gold.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Tell you, now, Jack, let me actually do it now,
because I haven't done it recently. So if we want
to look at it looks.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
A lot less expensive when you price it in gold
rather than dollars. Obviously it does so.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Again, like if you look at this and kind of
look at you know, the longer term trends are really
what matters. And here here's what's interesting. It basically tells
you a story about inflation in my opinion, in that
when you have the S and P rising against gold
tends to be in pretty deflationary environments. I mean, look
(06:07):
at the twenty tens just as an example, and by
and large the S ANDP was chugging along and gold
couldn't get off the mat for most of that decade.
It just it went absolutely nowhere. Now you can have
two different reasons why it moves in the opposite direction.
The first is stocks collapse, which is what we saw
in March of twenty stocks collapse, but gold didn't. And
(06:29):
so that was the reversal there. It didn't mean that
you suddenly had inflation breakout in March of twenty twenty.
That happened later. In fact, and if you look at
this over the course of twenty two, the ratio between
gold and the S and P moved in gold's favor
simply because the S and P fell about twenty five
percent over the course of the first ten months of
twenty twenty two and gold didn't because it was that
(06:50):
you know, inflationary hedge. There. Well, if you take a
look at you know, what we're seeing over the last
month or so, now you've got a case where and
here this is one point where I think it's important
to make a clear distinction. This is not just happening
in US markets right now. This is not just a
dollar phenomenon. The price of gold is appreciating versus every
(07:13):
other major currency in the world right now. So this
is not something that is betting against the US dollar.
I hear it phrase that you know really often in
the last like month or two. Oh well, this is
because no one trusts the dollar anymore.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Because nobody trusts any currency.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
No. Like you look across the board and you've got
China saying, hey, we might you know, print the equivalent
of a trillion dollars in Yuwan in order to shore
up the financial system because there's too much debt in
other places. And things are going, you know, not great.
You've got Europe saying, hey, here's five hundred billion dollars
in additional defense spending in the next five to six years.
(07:45):
How are we going to deal with it? And we'll
print it. You've got Japan putting in place new leadership
of the country that if you remember shinzo Abe and
Abbe Nomis, which was basically print the currency in order
to try to get the economy going. New people in
charge are basically yeah, let's do more of that and
more extreme. In the United States, we passed a bill
(08:06):
earlier this year that basically said, yeah, we're not really
gonna deal with the deficit. We have some fiscal measures
that we like to put in place, no tax on tips,
you know, additional deductions for people who are retired, additional
business deductions, this, that, and whatever, and yeah, we're probably
gonna have six to eight percent annual deficits for the
foreseeable future. So gold is is really I think starting
(08:28):
to sniff this out and saying, hey, none of y'all
are credible when it comes to you know, fiat currency
or anything like that. Gold is Southern too, believe it
or not. It's it's not just I I use y'all
on a pretty regular face.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It it's like.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
A lot for one show.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I don't know where this is coming from.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
We're broadcasting live at the Showcase Super We're a little
south of our regular location.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Direct directly northeast.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That depends on which way you're holding the globe in
any case, Let's take a quick break right now, and
when we come back, we're gonna be joined by Sarah
Foster from Bank Rates. She's gonna be talking about their
workers survey on pay not keeping up with inflation. We'll
talk to her when we return.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Here The Financial Exchange every day from eleven to noon
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
live on Serious XM's Business Radio channel one thirty two.
Face He's the Financial Exchange Radio Network. The Financial Exchange
(09:44):
streams live on YouTube. Subscribe to our page and stay
up to date on breaking business news all morning. Long
Face is the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
This segment of the Financial Exchange is brought to you
by the US Virgin Islands Department of tourism. Looking for
a getaway that's easy, warm, and unforgettable. Discover the magic
of the US Virgin Islands, Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, and
Saint John, just a short flight from New England, with
no pass board needed and no money to exchange. Soak
(10:21):
up the sun, stroll along white sand beaches, and feel
the rhythm of the harpy of the Islands. The USVII
is America's Caribbean paradise. Playing your fall escape now at
visit USVII dot com.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
That's visit USVII dot com.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Joining US now is Bank rate Sarah Foster on their
worker survey and specifically pay compared to inflation. Sarah, thanks
so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
Thanks for having me. Always great to be here.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So I want to start off with the actual data
that we have on inflation and wages, and granted where
you haven't been getting it the last couple of weeks,
but most data that's out there from the DOL or
the blast seems to indicate that compared to this time
last year, average wages are actually up more than inflation.
(11:07):
Is that the case? I know, it's not what you
found in your survey. But is that seemingly the case
that wages when measured by government statistics, are actually higher
than inflation.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
That's right, So the data that we have so far
through the shutdown shows that really, actually, since about the
middle of twenty twenty three, wages have been rising faster
than inflation. But when you look at kind of we
have a separate research report that kind of attracts purchasing power,
which is a different way of maybe looking at this question,
that's when you find that since the beginning of twenty
(11:40):
twenty one, prices have risen much faster than paychecks. So
there's a gap there, meaning Americans can't buy the same
amount of stuff that they used to be able to
buy at the beginning of twenty twenty one. So even
though wages are rising faster than inflation, right.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Now, Sarah is still there. We may have just lost Sarah.
We'll work on getting Sarah back. But let's chuck, let's
move on for just a moment here, because we have
a related story of Americans and their their jobs in
this workforce.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know why Jeff Bezo saying that millions of people
are going to be living in space by twenty forty five.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I mean, if that's where you need to go at
this early in the show, then we can go there.
Let's talk about let's talk about the American workforce instead.
What does Barons mean when they say that Americans don't
have good jobs? Because these types of stories, I don't
I don't debate that a lot of Americans have jobs
(12:41):
that they might not like very much, But I don't
like trying to categorize good versus bad jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Well, this tries to okay, And this is a study
that was done by Gallup, and I'll just quote from
Barons here. A quality job is defined in the joint
study as one that has fair pay, sustainable schedules and workloads,
and provides a safe and respectful workplace, allowing opportunities for
(13:08):
advancement and a voice in decisions. So, yeah, I gotta
be completely honest. I think the numbers might be wrong
on this actually, and the pictures bleaker than it even
is painted here, Like this is sixty percent of Americans
lack quality jobs. If you're looking for all of that
(13:30):
in a job, I bet it's probably close to eighty
or ninety percent of Americans lack quality jobs.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Then do you really need to have your voice heard
in decisions, so to have a quality job.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
No, but okay, so this I agree, Like, let me
like this is a separate tangent, but one that's related.
I think that one of the main reasons that people
become disillusioned is in anything is not because their voice
needs to be heard in making the decision. But their
voice does need to be heard. Sure, Like if you
(14:05):
look at just in terms of you know, any kind
of discontent that shows up, whether it's in a job,
whether it is in a family, whether it's in a community,
whether it's in a political party.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, they feel ignored.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
It's generally just like, hey, you're ignoring me. Someone doesn't
always have to choose what you want to do. But yes,
I do think that at least, like even if you
just have like a suggestion box or something and you
actually read the suggestions or something like that, something where
you can have a voice in your company. Yeah, Like,
little stuff like that matters. People just want to be heard.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Mike, Yeah, yeah, I understand that. And to that point,
if those are the criteria you're looking for, I would
estimate that closer to ninety percent of the workforce is
not in that quote quality job. But Yeah, I keep
going back on this, which is we are pretty certain,
(15:02):
like I am fairly certain that let me let.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Me, let me tell you what a quality job actually is.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Okay, a job.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That pays enough for you to do what you want
to do. There's nothing else. Okay, it's about the money.
Everything else is kind of secondary. We can talk more
about that. I think we got Sarah back on the line.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Sarah, sorry about that. Thanks for thanks for sticking with
us here and back to the survey. Tell us exactly
about what you found, because the most workers in four
years of doing this survey are telling you that their
pay is and keeping up with inflation. So what specifically
are they citing and did you find it varying between
age demographics.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
Yeah, so great to be back here. Thanks for having
me back. I'd say that, you know, the purchasing power
that Americans feel like they have is you know, is
worse since it was before the pandemic. So Americans are
really feeling like they can't buy the same amount of
stuff with the wages that they have. And you know,
I think the kind that the bad thing that's happening
right now is as inflation is accelerating again, the labor
(16:04):
market is also slowing, and it's a lot it's a
phrase that a lot of economists referred to as sagflation,
So they're finding it a lot harder to have the
negotiating power to really ask for raises or to find
better paying jobs.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
When you take a look at all of this data
as well, I think of the other things that are
impacting people's wallets. We've got student loans that just restarted
over the course of the last couple of years, and
inflation in the aggregate if you look back five years now,
I would guess that piece certainly has outpaced wage growth.
So what are people trying to do to keep pace
(16:39):
in today's economy if they are just in the workforce
and don't have other ways to supplement their income. Yeah, well,
we know.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
That a lot of workers do have an interest in
searching for a new job. You know, we've run a
separate survey that really finds that even though the labor
market has flowed, maybe people are still looking at what's
out there. Some are still interested in asking for high pay,
asking for more flexibility. So I think, you know, the
interest is there, it's just whether the appetite is on
(17:07):
behalf of the employers. And what we found is that
over the past couple of years, workers are really not
in the driver's seat anymore. It's really companies here, you know,
they have the leverage because there's just more job seekers
now than job opening hiring plans that flowed so much,
and so it's probably why you've seen just a rising
share of workers too. In our survey, forty three percent
(17:28):
say they didn't receive a pay increase at all.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
What portion of people you talk to are legitimately concerned
about losing their job? In twenty twenty five, we found.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
That there is a rising amount of people who aren't
confident that they'll find a better paying job or get
a raise over the next twelve months. And some of
the people who you know across generations who are feeling,
you know, worried about that lack of bargaining power, it's
it's really gen zers, it's baby boomers, it's millennials, and
(17:58):
I think it's it's difficult because you know gen zers
in particular, they're the ones kind of feeling this slowdown
in the job market even more. You know, this is
the time in their careers when they'd be job hopping,
when they'd be asking for higher pay, knowing that the
salary that they make early in their lives really fetched
the stage for what they make throughout the rest of
(18:20):
their careers. We saw a huge drop in the amount
of people who felt confident that they'll get a pay
increase in gen Z and that's also probably because just
seventeen percent of them found a better paying job over
the past twelve months. You know, the year before that,
about a third of them did so, a pretty big decline.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Sarah Foster from Bank Great Joints. They talk about their
worker survey specifically on pay not keeping pace with prices. Sarah,
thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it and we'll
talk to you again soon.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Taking a look at markets. As we head towards the
bottom of the hour, the S and P five hundred
is up eleven points, a little less than two tenths
of a percent, Dow Jones up seventy one points, about
zero point one five percent, and then as that can
posit now about seventy eight points, or a third of
a percent. As marks are trying to hold onto their games.
As I was speaking, the SMP just fell another five
points and is now up six points, so you're getting
(19:15):
a little bit of choppiness still in markets. And by
the way, something that you're still seeing the VIX, the
volatility index continuing to rise on days when the market
is rising. Someone is trying to sniff something out in
this market right now, and it feels a little sniffy.
Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we
(19:37):
got trivia. We got Wall Street Watch right after this.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
A complete look at what's moving markets so far today
right here on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Markets are rolling back slightly from their earlier gains, but
remain in positive territory as traders sift through a new
batch of third quarter earnings. Right now, the Dow is
up modestly, only thirty three points higher, SMP five hundred
is up a tenth of a percent or ten points higher,
Nasdaq up four tenths of one percent, or about one
(20:22):
hundred and seven points, Russell two thousands down a third
of a percent. Ten year Treasure You yield down two
basis points at four point zero two four percent, and
crude oil up about a third of a percent, rating
at fifty eight dollars and forty seven cents a barrel.
Shares in Taiwan Semiconductor now down one percent after the
chip maker reported another record profit in the previous quarter,
(20:45):
jumping thirty nine percent, well above street expectations. Meanwhile, shares
in Salesforce jumping about four percent after the CRM vendors
said it expects revenue above sixty billion dollars in twenty thirty. Elsewhere,
JB Hunt Transports Server posted solid third quarter results, beating
on earning zan revenue. Shares in the trucking and logistics
(21:05):
company or surging nineteen percent on those results. Micron Technology
up about seven percent after UBS increase its price target
of the chip maker stock, noting Micron will get a
boost from a memory chip shortage. T Mobile upgraded by
Wills Fargo two overweight from equal weight, citing an attractive
valuation relative to rival at and T and tomorrow morning,
(21:28):
ahead of the opening bill, we'll see more financial earnings
from Amex. I'm Tucker Silva, and that is Wall Street Watch,
and we'll do trivia quick here Today is actor Tim
Robbins sixty seventh birthday. Robins most famous for starring in
The Shawshank Redemption back in nineteen ninety four. Robbins didn't
win an award for his performance in that movie, but
(21:48):
he did win Best Supporting Actor ten years later. So
our trivia question today, which movie did Tim Robbins win
Best Supporting Actor for?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Once again?
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Which movie did Tim Robbins win Best Awarding Actor four?
Uh be the fifth person today to text us at
six one seven three six two thirteen eighty five with
correct answer and win a Financial Exchange Show T shirt
once again. The fifth correct response to text us to
the number six one seven three six two thirteen eighty
five will win that T shirt. See complete contest rules
(22:18):
at Financial Exchange Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Mike, I want to go back to the quality jobs
piece just quickly. I made the point. Look, the only
thing that like, if we're talking like quality job, like,
the money is what makes it sure. And here's where
I get to this. Is there any job in the
world that has any kind of real promise of job
security at this point?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I mean five years ago, I would have told you,
like a good old government job, like.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I can't conclusively say there's job security in any one
particular spot, sustainable schedules and workloads. Mike, if some one
paid you eighty dollars an hour to work at Amazon,
you could probably deal with it. You'd be like, Yep,
sign me up. I'm good with it. The work fine,
Like whatever you want to do, safe and respectful workplace, Yes,
(23:13):
I'll put that on there, Like you don't want to
be being like squashed by you know, forklifts.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And things like or yelled that out. Yeah, okay, you
like I could understand that again, like pay in the
right pay people climb you know, cell phone towers and
do all sorts of dangerous jobs for the right pay.
People go on to oil rigs in the middle of
the ocean. So yeah, it's about pay.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Pay in safety like if you have again, like even
like there's a lot of safety regulations that are in
those industries now. I mean there's a reason why, like
you know, we we do some things certain ways. So
that that's kind of where I wanted to get back to.
But but that was kind of my last point on that.
AI data centers desperate for electricity are building their own
(23:56):
power plants. How many guinea pigs do they have fueling
these things, Michael.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
So here is where I went with this. There's been
a lot of talk about how utility companies are going
to benefit so much from the AI data center build out.
If these AI companies are coming to the conclusion that
utilities are going to be too slow or too costly
to produce the energy that they need and instead they're
(24:22):
just going to build the generation themselves, does that trade
still work? I mean, seemingly the answer is yes, because
there's gonna be so much power demand that you know,
there's plenty of profit to go around. But that's what
came to mind for me. Anyways, You've had all these
traditional utilities trading through the roof on you know, presumed
electricity demand, and at the same time you now have
(24:45):
Tesla and Oracle and a bunch of other companies saying, yeah,
we'll just build our own gas you know, gas powered
electricity plant that will not distribute to your community. It's
just going to be here to power this AI data center.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
So couple things. The first is yes, like, look, listen,
if you don't have to deal with all the interconnection
stuff and this and that, you can build power plants
more quickly. In theory, I say in theory, because there
still is one limiting factor when it comes to building
power supply, and that is the companies that actually make
(25:20):
the equipment that goes into power plants. They're not built
for a rapid you know, acceleration, just because like, here's
the thing about building power plants. If if you're like
Eating Corporation, just as an example, and they're one of
the companies that makes like big turbines for gas plants
and stuff like that. If you're Eating Corporation, Mike, how
often do you get like an unscheduled customer that just
(25:42):
walks into your business and is like, gee, I like
a undred million dollars, I like one of those turbines today.
Please think you no, Like this isn't like buying French fries.
This is you know, this is you're buying it a
natural gas turbine. And so they typically know years in advance. Okay,
we made eight last year, we made four. Team the
year before, we made twelve the year before. Yeah, we
(26:03):
can budget for eleven, and we can have an overflow
capacity of one or two. Eating corporations not suddenly going
to be like, hey, let's double our head count because
we can sell twice as many next year because they know,
guess what, you're probably not going to be on a
permanent schedule of needing you twice as many of these yep.
(26:24):
And so the interesting thing I forget where it was.
It was a month or two ago, but it was
someone at one of the big AI companies. It was
either Open Ai or Google or Meta whoever, and they
were talking about, Look, the problem that we have is
chips on one level, but the real bottleneck is you
can't get the power equipment next year because it's already
(26:45):
booked out to twenty twenty eight from the companies that
make this stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
It all leads me to one conclusion, Chuck, which is
all of us are going to be paying a lot
more for electricity over the course of the next decade.
Whether you are an AI data center or whether you
are you know, per in your home, the electricity costs
themselves will be going up dramatically. We may get to
a place a decade from now where the market has
now over supplied power generation and we're in a much
(27:10):
better spot and those costs start to moderate. But I
hesitate to see a scenario where electricity costs for everyday
consumers are not heading north and north pretty quickly over
the course of the next decade.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Do you want an off the wall prediction? As a
result of this, always the US is going to see
a huge resurgence in expansion for solar and wind power
over the next couple of years because conventional sources will
not be able to ramp up quickly enough. And despite
(27:43):
the lack of the lack of subsidies and the Trump
administration not wanting to invest in these areas, I think
they're almost going to end up being forced to because
the market is going to dictate that you need to
get any power deployed that you.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Can, and you can do that faster than nuke.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
It's kind of like how you remember during Biden administration.
At first people were like, oh, this is gonna be
terrible for energy companies, and then it turned out to
be great for energy companies because the Biden administration was
so tight on new production that prices went through the rum.
It's almost like, don't you feel that setting up for
renewables could be that It's kind of like, Hey, nobody
(28:21):
wants to subsidize you, which is why everyone's gonna end
up paying more for you, folks.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Brand new guide from the Armstrong Advisory Group for the
month of October. Required minimum Distributions, how to understand them.
I was in an interesting meeting just a couple of
weeks ago with my ninety year old client and her
sixty five year old daughter, and we were talking about
the subject of required minimum distributions, and the nine year
old mother had her own set of rm ds. The
(28:46):
daughter had lost her husband two years prior, and so
we were talking about the rules regarding his old IRA.
We then talked about what would happen if mom passed
away and left the IRA to the daughter, and the
different set of rules that apply under that scenario. And
then I threw out a fourth one of my own
mother in law who lost her longtime unmarried partner who
(29:07):
passed away left her the IRA and a complete different
set of rules for her and that IRA. The rules
around required minimum distributions are immensely complex. I constantly joke
that Congress is making sure that the folks at are
Armstrong Advisory Group have permanent job security based on how
complex they make this. But if you are anywhere within
(29:30):
let's call it a decade of retirement, now is the
time to start thinking about how these rules are going
to affect you and how to best prepare for them.
There's a lot of things that look like a gift,
like the IRS pushing back that RMD age from seventy
and a half to now seventy five. Whenever the IRS
gives you a gift, there's usually some caveat to it,
(29:52):
and we're here to help explain what that actually means
and how you might end up paying more taxes even
though the IRS has pushed back that date. If you'd
like a copy of our brand new guide It's Understanding
Required minimum Distributions, you can get it by calling eight
hundred three nine three four zero zero one. It's our
free guide. You can request it online too at Armstrong
(30:14):
Advisory dot com, but the phone number eight hundred three
nine three four zero zero one.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
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, like.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
What story do you want to do next? I kind
of destroyed my stack hidden costs of downsizing, Chuck. We
talk about this one all the time with clients of Hey,
you know, I raised my family in this four bedroom
home and now it's just me or just you know,
me and my wife and would love to find something smaller,
but smaller homes don't really exist. This piece explores from
(30:58):
the New York Times some of the those costs of
actually downsizing and making this transaction, because I think, as
many people probably out there listening have come to find out,
downsizing is not that convenient or easy, and finding a
new home that is smaller in many cases does not
save much money.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
No, And the other thing that I will advise people
to be very careful of in this situation is if
you're downsizing happens to be moving into a condo community,
whether it's single family homes, town homes, apartments, whatever it
might be, you really got to do some due diligence
on the financials of it these days, because, especially if
(31:40):
you happen to be living in Florida, Texas, California, areas
that are getting hit by you know, more and more
natural disasters. Some of the assessments that I am seeing
on a per unit basis for these condo associations are
significant to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah,
and you really have to do the due diligence on Hey,
(32:02):
how well funded is the association, what contingencies is it
prepared for? You know how the master insurance policies for
the association, How are those covered? How have they evolved
in the last few years. There's a lot of work
you need to do because I've seen people go in
being like, oh, yeah, this is fine. Then the condo
fees two hundred a month and blah blah blah, and
(32:23):
then first year they're like, by the way, here's a
forty thousand dollars assessment that we're hitting every unit for
because of X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I will also say, though, that people dramatically underestimate how
much it's going to cost to upkeep their larger home
that they don't need as they age. Nobody ever factors
in the cost that they're gonna have to hire somebody
to snowblow the driveway or to mow the lawn, or
to you know, do those projects that one used to
be able to do in their fifties and now are
in their late seventies and are not comfortable.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Doing my general rule of thumb during kind of your
working years, assume that upkeep and maintenance and everything will
cost one percent of the homes value each year. Once
you can't do it all, it's gonna be double that
quick break, We got stack Roulette.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Next.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The Financial Exchange Show podcast drops every day on Apple, Spotify,
and iHeartRadio. Hit that subscribe button and leave us a
five star review. You're listening to the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
The Financial Exchange is Life on Series XM's Business Radio
Channel one thirty two weekdays from eleven to noon. Get
the latest business and financial news from across the country
(33:31):
and around the world, and keep up to date on
how it might affect your wallet. That's the Financial Exchange
weekdays from eleven to noon on Series XM's Business Radio
Channel one thirty two. Face He's the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
All right.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
The prior segment, we asked you the triviute question, which
movie did Tim Robbins win Best Supporting Actor?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Four?
Speaker 4 (33:56):
I'll be Mystic River. That's right, Adam from Orleans, mass
This is our winner today taking on my Financial Shane
Show t shirt. Congrats to Adam and we played trivia
every day here on the Financial Look Shane. See complete
contest rules at Financial Look shaneeshow dot com.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
All right, I gotta cover Jeff Bezos saying that millions
of people are gonna be living in space twenty years
from now. So here here's the thing. So I admire
Jeff Bezos. How now, Michael, let me just let me
let me do.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
I got a lot of questions for you, Chuck, go ahead, I'd.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Like to talk about this. So here's the thing. Any
anyone who's a visionary by their nature is going to
say things that sound absolutely crazy and insane. So I
think it's important to note that, Like if twenty years
ago you had told people, hey, in the palm of
your hand, you're going to have you know, the entire
(34:52):
you know, computing power of the entire world in nineteen
sixty seven, we had been like, no, like, that's that's crazy.
But we sit here today and I can make memes
on my phone using AI as much as I want to,
like it's it's great. This, on the other hand, is
what I do think is that the not real kind
(35:12):
of visionary stuff. And if I'm wrong, then shoot me
into space is one of those millions of people because
I love to go. But Michael, do you know how
many people in the world have ever been to space?
I don't know six hundred plus the numbers are between
six fifty and six seventy depending on how you define space.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yeah, trying to hit the millions twenty, but it's it's.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Over six hundred and six hundred and below seven hundred.
So the idea that we're gonna have millions of people
in space within you know, twenty years, millions of people
living which means that you have to like start getting
them up there soon because you're not gonna suddenly just
be like, hey, we're gonna get a million people up
in twenty forty five. You gotta be starting with like
(35:55):
ten this year and twenty next year and four. You know,
like you gotta have some kind of growth rate to
get there. It's not just it's not just gonna happen.
So I'm going to take the under on millions of
people living in space in twenty forty five. Tucker, can
you put that on the board that I would under
I'll put right up there twenty four five.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
We'll keep that track of that shock.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So I got the under and we'll check in in
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Sam Altman being once again forced into the public on
issues with open AI and and what he's calling the
moral police.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Oh because he decided to open a porn shop.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah yeah, yeah, effectively, Yeah, And he's basically come out
and said, with very few exceptions, we're not going to
be the moral police to decide what chat GPT can
or cannot be used for. In this case, it was
discussing discussing erotica, and he basically said that they're going
to chop out Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Like imagine like Walmart being like, well, you know, we're
not gonna police what's in our stores, like anyone who
wants to can sell whatever they want. Like, no, that
you make decisions as to this is the kind of
business we are, and this is who we want to serve,
and then you serve those people.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Well, no, they are making a decision. They're saying they're
perfectly comfortable with it.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Which the interesting thing that I pointed out yesterday, not
even three months ago, Altman came out and said, hey,
we're not going to try to juice our revenue and
profits by putting AI sex spots on our website. And
that's exactly what they're doing now, which makes me personally
be like, oh, gee, you're super smart. AI doesn't seem
to be so super smart if you just have to
have it talk dirty to you, doesn't.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
The only thing that they seem willing to do is
crack down on age verification in order to determine what
can be used and what cannot.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
And look this is going on, which they say they're
also going to verify using AI. I'm sure that's gonna
work great.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, they are not the only company that is struggling
with this issue, and it will not be the last.
But whether it's Facebook, Pair and Company Meta, whether it's
Open AI, there are going to be some morally ambiguous
use of AI that they're going to be continued pressure
to create.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
As we had to the top of the hour, the
S and P and down now slightly negative, the Nasdaq
holding on to quarter percent gains. So we got some
inter day volatility, just like the last few days here,
a lot of choppiness and markets a lot of sorting
out going on. We'll be back tomorrow to finish up
the week. On the Financial Exchange
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
or anyone else. Investments can lose money. This program does
not offer any specific financial or investment advice. Please consult
your own financial, tax, and estate planning advisors before making
(00:20):
any investment decisions. Armstrong Advisory and the advertisers heard on
this program do not endorse each other or their services.
Armstrong and Money Matters Radio do not compensate each other
for referrals and are not affiliated. This is the Financial
Exchange with Chuck Zada and Mike Armstrong, Your exclusive look
at business and financial news affecting your day, your city,
(00:42):
your world. Stay informed and up to date about economic
and market trends plus breaking business news every day. The
Financial Exchange is a proud partner of the Disabled American
Veterans Department of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Help us support our.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Great American heroes by visiting dav five K Boston and
making a donation today. This is the Financial Exchange with
Chuck Zada, and Mike Armstrong, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Mike and Tucker with you. We are broadcasting live from
the Showcase super Lucks in Chestnut Hill. To everyone who
turned out for us today, thank you so much for
joining us. We're having a great time so far and
enjoying hanging out with all of you.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
If you do have questions for us, you can obviously
come up to us during the commercial breaks. You can
ask from across the floor whatever works best for you.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Throw things at us to get our attention. You can
throw things at Mike. I prefer not to have things well.
You can text the show too.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Six two thirteen eighty five is the text line for
the show. And always love those questions coming in.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But you can't talk to us between breaks if you're
not here. So just a reminder there are some perks
to showing up in person if you If you want
to add our next one that we'll be doing. Taking
a look around markets, We've got the S and P
five hundred up a third of a percent, about twenty
two points, the Dow Jones Industrial average up seventy nine points.
(02:14):
The Nasdaq composite is up one hundred and forty seven points,
about two thirds of a percent, so all in disease
in the green today, aside from that silly Russell two
thousand that just doesn't know what to do. Quite honestly,
it's been getting bid up on the really interesting thing
about the Russell. So we have to have just a
(02:34):
quick little digression here. Indeed, generally with small cap stocks,
the ones that perform best over extended periods of time
are the ones that are profitable, and the most profitable.
As you know, one would expect the small caps that
have been performing best over the last month have been
the most unprofitable stocks in the index, which tells you
(02:55):
that retail is just kind of fishing for all the
memi hot names and everything. And so it's just kind
of interesting when you see that kind of behavior. It's
not normally what you expect from the rustle, and it's
not something that usually ends well when everyone's buying all
the crap that no one else normally wants, because once
once the buyers of the crap stop, then the sellers start,
(03:16):
and that's when you know, things get that get dodgy. Well,
put the buyers of the crap. We should have T
shirts made of that. We need financial exchange t shirts
with that now in the back, it says the buyers
of the crap, we could do that. I think that
would be really really good. Taking a look at other markets.
US ten year treasury kind of boring today, down seven
(03:39):
tenths of a basis point to four point three eight percent.
We've been to pretty tight range for the last five
six days on this one. No further movement today, Well.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Then you want some excitement, chuck, Yeah, what do you got?
Gold's up another two percent today. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
We're gonna have to have a discussion about gold at
some point, just because we're now reaching the point where,
you know, people who aren't in the no start you know,
to tweet out things like, oh, like gold only goes up,
and you know, things like that, and listen, I'm not
saying it can or can't go in any particular direction,
but gosh, when you've seen gold run thirty percent in
(04:12):
two months, that's a pretty monster move. Gold has a
history of monster moves like this. Can compress time frames,
but even there you tend to see some sideways consolidation
like we did this summer as an example, where remember
start of the year you saw about a thirty percent
run up in gold through mid April, and then it
(04:32):
was completely sideways through mid August. It took a four
month break. It didn't really go anywhere. It just kind
of sat there and was like, yep, I'm hanging out
at the beach. I'm not doing anything. And then it
got moving again. So again, this is what you tend
to see with gold, very long periods of boredom and
short periods of either crazy excitement or pure terror.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, the gold obsession out there is starting to get
intriguing to me.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It's all over Reddit right now.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, it's overredd at social media. I keep seeing posts
of things like, oh, stocks are really expensive, but when
you price them in gold, take a look at this
chart instead. I'm like, no one has ever done that
until the LA.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That's not true, So I disagree. Yeah, I have actually
looked at S and P you know, charts priced in gold,
like Yeah, I don't do it with individual stocks, it's done,
but yeah, like looking at the whole market like in
gold terms, it's no different from looking at like the
market in yen terms or something like that. And that's
also something that I do occasionally because it can tell
you some things sometimes what is.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
The market being priced in gold.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Tell you, now, Jack, let me actually do it now,
because I haven't done it recently. So if we want
to look at it looks.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
A lot less expensive when you price it in gold
rather than dollars. Obviously it does so.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Again, like if you look at this and kind of
look at you know, the longer term trends are really
what matters. And here here's what's interesting. It basically tells
you a story about inflation in my opinion, in that
when you have the S and P rising against gold
tends to be in pretty deflationary environments. I mean, look
(06:07):
at the twenty tens just as an example, and by
and large the S ANDP was chugging along and gold
couldn't get off the mat for most of that decade.
It just it went absolutely nowhere. Now you can have
two different reasons why it moves in the opposite direction.
The first is stocks collapse, which is what we saw
in March of twenty stocks collapse, but gold didn't. And
(06:29):
so that was the reversal there. It didn't mean that
you suddenly had inflation breakout in March of twenty twenty.
That happened later. In fact, and if you look at
this over the course of twenty two, the ratio between
gold and the S and P moved in gold's favor
simply because the S and P fell about twenty five
percent over the course of the first ten months of
twenty twenty two and gold didn't because it was that
(06:50):
you know, inflationary hedge. There. Well, if you take a
look at you know, what we're seeing over the last
month or so, now you've got a case where and
here this is one point where I think it's important
to make a clear distinction. This is not just happening
in US markets right now. This is not just a
dollar phenomenon. The price of gold is appreciating versus every
(07:13):
other major currency in the world right now. So this
is not something that is betting against the US dollar.
I hear it phrase that you know really often in
the last like month or two. Oh well, this is
because no one trusts the dollar anymore.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Because nobody trusts any currency.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
No. Like you look across the board and you've got
China saying, hey, we might you know, print the equivalent
of a trillion dollars in Yuwan in order to shore
up the financial system because there's too much debt in
other places. And things are going, you know, not great.
You've got Europe saying, hey, here's five hundred billion dollars
in additional defense spending in the next five to six years.
(07:45):
How are we going to deal with it? And we'll
print it. You've got Japan putting in place new leadership
of the country that if you remember shinzo Abe and
Abbe Nomis, which was basically print the currency in order
to try to get the economy going. New people in
charge are basically yeah, let's do more of that and
more extreme. In the United States, we passed a bill
(08:06):
earlier this year that basically said, yeah, we're not really
gonna deal with the deficit. We have some fiscal measures
that we like to put in place, no tax on tips,
you know, additional deductions for people who are retired, additional
business deductions, this, that, and whatever, and yeah, we're probably
gonna have six to eight percent annual deficits for the
foreseeable future. So gold is is really I think starting
(08:28):
to sniff this out and saying, hey, none of y'all
are credible when it comes to you know, fiat currency
or anything like that. Gold is Southern too, believe it
or not. It's it's not just I I use y'all
on a pretty regular face.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It it's like.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
A lot for one show.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I don't know where this is coming from.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
We're broadcasting live at the Showcase Super We're a little
south of our regular location.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Direct directly northeast.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That depends on which way you're holding the globe in
any case, Let's take a quick break right now, and
when we come back, we're gonna be joined by Sarah
Foster from Bank Rates. She's gonna be talking about their
workers survey on pay not keeping up with inflation. We'll
talk to her when we return.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Here The Financial Exchange every day from eleven to noon
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
live on Serious XM's Business Radio channel one thirty two.
Face He's the Financial Exchange Radio Network. The Financial Exchange
(09:44):
streams live on YouTube. Subscribe to our page and stay
up to date on breaking business news all morning. Long
Face is the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
This segment of the Financial Exchange is brought to you
by the US Virgin Islands Department of tourism. Looking for
a getaway that's easy, warm, and unforgettable. Discover the magic
of the US Virgin Islands, Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, and
Saint John, just a short flight from New England, with
no pass board needed and no money to exchange. Soak
(10:21):
up the sun, stroll along white sand beaches, and feel
the rhythm of the harpy of the Islands. The USVII
is America's Caribbean paradise. Playing your fall escape now at
visit USVII dot com.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
That's visit USVII dot com.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Joining US now is Bank rate Sarah Foster on their
worker survey and specifically pay compared to inflation. Sarah, thanks
so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
Thanks for having me. Always great to be here.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So I want to start off with the actual data
that we have on inflation and wages, and granted where
you haven't been getting it the last couple of weeks,
but most data that's out there from the DOL or
the blast seems to indicate that compared to this time
last year, average wages are actually up more than inflation.
(11:07):
Is that the case? I know, it's not what you
found in your survey. But is that seemingly the case
that wages when measured by government statistics, are actually higher
than inflation.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
That's right, So the data that we have so far
through the shutdown shows that really, actually, since about the
middle of twenty twenty three, wages have been rising faster
than inflation. But when you look at kind of we
have a separate research report that kind of attracts purchasing power,
which is a different way of maybe looking at this question,
that's when you find that since the beginning of twenty
(11:40):
twenty one, prices have risen much faster than paychecks. So
there's a gap there, meaning Americans can't buy the same
amount of stuff that they used to be able to
buy at the beginning of twenty twenty one. So even
though wages are rising faster than inflation, right.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Now, Sarah is still there. We may have just lost Sarah.
We'll work on getting Sarah back. But let's chuck, let's
move on for just a moment here, because we have
a related story of Americans and their their jobs in
this workforce.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know why Jeff Bezo saying that millions of people
are going to be living in space by twenty forty five.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I mean, if that's where you need to go at
this early in the show, then we can go there.
Let's talk about let's talk about the American workforce instead.
What does Barons mean when they say that Americans don't
have good jobs? Because these types of stories, I don't
I don't debate that a lot of Americans have jobs
(12:41):
that they might not like very much, But I don't
like trying to categorize good versus bad jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Well, this tries to okay, And this is a study
that was done by Gallup, and I'll just quote from
Barons here. A quality job is defined in the joint
study as one that has fair pay, sustainable schedules and workloads,
and provides a safe and respectful workplace, allowing opportunities for
(13:08):
advancement and a voice in decisions. So, yeah, I gotta
be completely honest. I think the numbers might be wrong
on this actually, and the pictures bleaker than it even
is painted here, Like this is sixty percent of Americans
lack quality jobs. If you're looking for all of that
(13:30):
in a job, I bet it's probably close to eighty
or ninety percent of Americans lack quality jobs.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Then do you really need to have your voice heard
in decisions, so to have a quality job.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
No, but okay, so this I agree, Like, let me
like this is a separate tangent, but one that's related.
I think that one of the main reasons that people
become disillusioned is in anything is not because their voice
needs to be heard in making the decision. But their
voice does need to be heard. Sure, Like if you
(14:05):
look at just in terms of you know, any kind
of discontent that shows up, whether it's in a job,
whether it is in a family, whether it's in a community,
whether it's in a political party.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, they feel ignored.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
It's generally just like, hey, you're ignoring me. Someone doesn't
always have to choose what you want to do. But yes,
I do think that at least, like even if you
just have like a suggestion box or something and you
actually read the suggestions or something like that, something where
you can have a voice in your company. Yeah, Like,
little stuff like that matters. People just want to be heard.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Mike, Yeah, yeah, I understand that. And to that point,
if those are the criteria you're looking for, I would
estimate that closer to ninety percent of the workforce is
not in that quote quality job. But Yeah, I keep
going back on this, which is we are pretty certain,
(15:02):
like I am fairly certain that let me let.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Me, let me tell you what a quality job actually is.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Okay, a job.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That pays enough for you to do what you want
to do. There's nothing else. Okay, it's about the money.
Everything else is kind of secondary. We can talk more
about that. I think we got Sarah back on the line.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Sarah, sorry about that. Thanks for thanks for sticking with
us here and back to the survey. Tell us exactly
about what you found, because the most workers in four
years of doing this survey are telling you that their
pay is and keeping up with inflation. So what specifically
are they citing and did you find it varying between
age demographics.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
Yeah, so great to be back here. Thanks for having
me back. I'd say that, you know, the purchasing power
that Americans feel like they have is you know, is
worse since it was before the pandemic. So Americans are
really feeling like they can't buy the same amount of
stuff with the wages that they have. And you know,
I think the kind that the bad thing that's happening
right now is as inflation is accelerating again, the labor
(16:04):
market is also slowing, and it's a lot it's a
phrase that a lot of economists referred to as sagflation,
So they're finding it a lot harder to have the
negotiating power to really ask for raises or to find
better paying jobs.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
When you take a look at all of this data
as well, I think of the other things that are
impacting people's wallets. We've got student loans that just restarted
over the course of the last couple of years, and
inflation in the aggregate if you look back five years now,
I would guess that piece certainly has outpaced wage growth.
So what are people trying to do to keep pace
(16:39):
in today's economy if they are just in the workforce
and don't have other ways to supplement their income. Yeah, well,
we know.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
That a lot of workers do have an interest in
searching for a new job. You know, we've run a
separate survey that really finds that even though the labor
market has flowed, maybe people are still looking at what's
out there. Some are still interested in asking for high pay,
asking for more flexibility. So I think, you know, the
interest is there, it's just whether the appetite is on
(17:07):
behalf of the employers. And what we found is that
over the past couple of years, workers are really not
in the driver's seat anymore. It's really companies here, you know,
they have the leverage because there's just more job seekers
now than job opening hiring plans that flowed so much,
and so it's probably why you've seen just a rising
share of workers too. In our survey, forty three percent
(17:28):
say they didn't receive a pay increase at all.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
What portion of people you talk to are legitimately concerned
about losing their job? In twenty twenty five, we found.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
That there is a rising amount of people who aren't
confident that they'll find a better paying job or get
a raise over the next twelve months. And some of
the people who you know across generations who are feeling,
you know, worried about that lack of bargaining power, it's
it's really gen zers, it's baby boomers, it's millennials, and
(17:58):
I think it's it's difficult because you know gen zers
in particular, they're the ones kind of feeling this slowdown
in the job market even more. You know, this is
the time in their careers when they'd be job hopping,
when they'd be asking for higher pay, knowing that the
salary that they make early in their lives really fetched
the stage for what they make throughout the rest of
(18:20):
their careers. We saw a huge drop in the amount
of people who felt confident that they'll get a pay
increase in gen Z and that's also probably because just
seventeen percent of them found a better paying job over
the past twelve months. You know, the year before that,
about a third of them did so, a pretty big decline.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Sarah Foster from Bank Great Joints. They talk about their
worker survey specifically on pay not keeping pace with prices. Sarah,
thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it and we'll
talk to you again soon.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Taking a look at markets. As we head towards the
bottom of the hour, the S and P five hundred
is up eleven points, a little less than two tenths
of a percent, Dow Jones up seventy one points, about
zero point one five percent, and then as that can
posit now about seventy eight points, or a third of
a percent. As marks are trying to hold onto their games.
As I was speaking, the SMP just fell another five
points and is now up six points, so you're getting
(19:15):
a little bit of choppiness still in markets. And by
the way, something that you're still seeing the VIX, the
volatility index continuing to rise on days when the market
is rising. Someone is trying to sniff something out in
this market right now, and it feels a little sniffy.
Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we
(19:37):
got trivia. We got Wall Street Watch right after this.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
A complete look at what's moving markets so far today
right here on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Markets are rolling back slightly from their earlier gains, but
remain in positive territory as traders sift through a new
batch of third quarter earnings. Right now, the Dow is
up modestly, only thirty three points higher, SMP five hundred
is up a tenth of a percent or ten points higher,
Nasdaq up four tenths of one percent, or about one
(20:22):
hundred and seven points, Russell two thousands down a third
of a percent. Ten year Treasure You yield down two
basis points at four point zero two four percent, and
crude oil up about a third of a percent, rating
at fifty eight dollars and forty seven cents a barrel.
Shares in Taiwan Semiconductor now down one percent after the
chip maker reported another record profit in the previous quarter,
(20:45):
jumping thirty nine percent, well above street expectations. Meanwhile, shares
in Salesforce jumping about four percent after the CRM vendors
said it expects revenue above sixty billion dollars in twenty thirty. Elsewhere,
JB Hunt Transports Server posted solid third quarter results, beating
on earning zan revenue. Shares in the trucking and logistics
(21:05):
company or surging nineteen percent on those results. Micron Technology
up about seven percent after UBS increase its price target
of the chip maker stock, noting Micron will get a
boost from a memory chip shortage. T Mobile upgraded by
Wills Fargo two overweight from equal weight, citing an attractive
valuation relative to rival at and T and tomorrow morning,
(21:28):
ahead of the opening bill, we'll see more financial earnings
from Amex. I'm Tucker Silva, and that is Wall Street Watch,
and we'll do trivia quick here Today is actor Tim
Robbins sixty seventh birthday. Robins most famous for starring in
The Shawshank Redemption back in nineteen ninety four. Robbins didn't
win an award for his performance in that movie, but
(21:48):
he did win Best Supporting Actor ten years later. So
our trivia question today, which movie did Tim Robbins win
Best Supporting Actor for?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Once again?
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Which movie did Tim Robbins win Best Awarding Actor four?
Uh be the fifth person today to text us at
six one seven three six two thirteen eighty five with
correct answer and win a Financial Exchange Show T shirt
once again. The fifth correct response to text us to
the number six one seven three six two thirteen eighty
five will win that T shirt. See complete contest rules
(22:18):
at Financial Exchange Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Mike, I want to go back to the quality jobs
piece just quickly. I made the point. Look, the only
thing that like, if we're talking like quality job, like,
the money is what makes it sure. And here's where
I get to this. Is there any job in the
world that has any kind of real promise of job
security at this point?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I mean five years ago, I would have told you,
like a good old government job, like.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I can't conclusively say there's job security in any one
particular spot, sustainable schedules and workloads. Mike, if some one
paid you eighty dollars an hour to work at Amazon,
you could probably deal with it. You'd be like, Yep,
sign me up. I'm good with it. The work fine,
Like whatever you want to do, safe and respectful workplace, Yes,
(23:13):
I'll put that on there, Like you don't want to
be being like squashed by you know, forklifts.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And things like or yelled that out. Yeah, okay, you
like I could understand that again, like pay in the
right pay people climb you know, cell phone towers and
do all sorts of dangerous jobs for the right pay.
People go on to oil rigs in the middle of
the ocean. So yeah, it's about pay.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Pay in safety like if you have again, like even
like there's a lot of safety regulations that are in
those industries now. I mean there's a reason why, like
you know, we we do some things certain ways. So
that that's kind of where I wanted to get back to.
But but that was kind of my last point on that.
AI data centers desperate for electricity are building their own
(23:56):
power plants. How many guinea pigs do they have fueling
these things, Michael.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
So here is where I went with this. There's been
a lot of talk about how utility companies are going
to benefit so much from the AI data center build out.
If these AI companies are coming to the conclusion that
utilities are going to be too slow or too costly
to produce the energy that they need and instead they're
(24:22):
just going to build the generation themselves, does that trade
still work? I mean, seemingly the answer is yes, because
there's gonna be so much power demand that you know,
there's plenty of profit to go around. But that's what
came to mind for me. Anyways, You've had all these
traditional utilities trading through the roof on you know, presumed
electricity demand, and at the same time you now have
(24:45):
Tesla and Oracle and a bunch of other companies saying, yeah,
we'll just build our own gas you know, gas powered
electricity plant that will not distribute to your community. It's
just going to be here to power this AI data center.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
So couple things. The first is yes, like, look, listen,
if you don't have to deal with all the interconnection
stuff and this and that, you can build power plants
more quickly. In theory, I say in theory, because there
still is one limiting factor when it comes to building
power supply, and that is the companies that actually make
(25:20):
the equipment that goes into power plants. They're not built
for a rapid you know, acceleration, just because like, here's
the thing about building power plants. If if you're like
Eating Corporation, just as an example, and they're one of
the companies that makes like big turbines for gas plants
and stuff like that. If you're Eating Corporation, Mike, how
often do you get like an unscheduled customer that just
(25:42):
walks into your business and is like, gee, I like
a undred million dollars, I like one of those turbines today.
Please think you no, Like this isn't like buying French fries.
This is you know, this is you're buying it a
natural gas turbine. And so they typically know years in advance. Okay,
we made eight last year, we made four. Team the
year before, we made twelve the year before. Yeah, we
(26:03):
can budget for eleven, and we can have an overflow
capacity of one or two. Eating corporations not suddenly going
to be like, hey, let's double our head count because
we can sell twice as many next year because they know,
guess what, you're probably not going to be on a
permanent schedule of needing you twice as many of these yep.
(26:24):
And so the interesting thing I forget where it was.
It was a month or two ago, but it was
someone at one of the big AI companies. It was
either Open Ai or Google or Meta whoever, and they
were talking about, Look, the problem that we have is
chips on one level, but the real bottleneck is you
can't get the power equipment next year because it's already
(26:45):
booked out to twenty twenty eight from the companies that
make this stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
It all leads me to one conclusion, Chuck, which is
all of us are going to be paying a lot
more for electricity over the course of the next decade.
Whether you are an AI data center or whether you
are you know, per in your home, the electricity costs
themselves will be going up dramatically. We may get to
a place a decade from now where the market has
now over supplied power generation and we're in a much
(27:10):
better spot and those costs start to moderate. But I
hesitate to see a scenario where electricity costs for everyday
consumers are not heading north and north pretty quickly over
the course of the next decade.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Do you want an off the wall prediction? As a
result of this, always the US is going to see
a huge resurgence in expansion for solar and wind power
over the next couple of years because conventional sources will
not be able to ramp up quickly enough. And despite
(27:43):
the lack of the lack of subsidies and the Trump
administration not wanting to invest in these areas, I think
they're almost going to end up being forced to because
the market is going to dictate that you need to
get any power deployed that you.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Can, and you can do that faster than nuke.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
It's kind of like how you remember during Biden administration.
At first people were like, oh, this is gonna be
terrible for energy companies, and then it turned out to
be great for energy companies because the Biden administration was
so tight on new production that prices went through the rum.
It's almost like, don't you feel that setting up for
renewables could be that It's kind of like, Hey, nobody
(28:21):
wants to subsidize you, which is why everyone's gonna end
up paying more for you, folks.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Brand new guide from the Armstrong Advisory Group for the
month of October. Required minimum Distributions, how to understand them.
I was in an interesting meeting just a couple of
weeks ago with my ninety year old client and her
sixty five year old daughter, and we were talking about
the subject of required minimum distributions, and the nine year
old mother had her own set of rm ds. The
(28:46):
daughter had lost her husband two years prior, and so
we were talking about the rules regarding his old IRA.
We then talked about what would happen if mom passed
away and left the IRA to the daughter, and the
different set of rules that apply under that scenario. And
then I threw out a fourth one of my own
mother in law who lost her longtime unmarried partner who
(29:07):
passed away left her the IRA and a complete different
set of rules for her and that IRA. The rules
around required minimum distributions are immensely complex. I constantly joke
that Congress is making sure that the folks at are
Armstrong Advisory Group have permanent job security based on how
complex they make this. But if you are anywhere within
(29:30):
let's call it a decade of retirement, now is the
time to start thinking about how these rules are going
to affect you and how to best prepare for them.
There's a lot of things that look like a gift,
like the IRS pushing back that RMD age from seventy
and a half to now seventy five. Whenever the IRS
gives you a gift, there's usually some caveat to it,
(29:52):
and we're here to help explain what that actually means
and how you might end up paying more taxes even
though the IRS has pushed back that date. If you'd
like a copy of our brand new guide It's Understanding
Required minimum Distributions, you can get it by calling eight
hundred three nine three four zero zero one. It's our
free guide. You can request it online too at Armstrong
(30:14):
Advisory dot com, but the phone number eight hundred three
nine three four zero zero one.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
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, like.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
What story do you want to do next? I kind
of destroyed my stack hidden costs of downsizing, Chuck. We
talk about this one all the time with clients of Hey,
you know, I raised my family in this four bedroom
home and now it's just me or just you know,
me and my wife and would love to find something smaller,
but smaller homes don't really exist. This piece explores from
(30:58):
the New York Times some of the those costs of
actually downsizing and making this transaction, because I think, as
many people probably out there listening have come to find out,
downsizing is not that convenient or easy, and finding a
new home that is smaller in many cases does not
save much money.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
No, And the other thing that I will advise people
to be very careful of in this situation is if
you're downsizing happens to be moving into a condo community,
whether it's single family homes, town homes, apartments, whatever it
might be, you really got to do some due diligence
on the financials of it these days, because, especially if
(31:40):
you happen to be living in Florida, Texas, California, areas
that are getting hit by you know, more and more
natural disasters. Some of the assessments that I am seeing
on a per unit basis for these condo associations are
significant to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah,
and you really have to do the due diligence on Hey,
(32:02):
how well funded is the association, what contingencies is it
prepared for? You know how the master insurance policies for
the association, How are those covered? How have they evolved
in the last few years. There's a lot of work
you need to do because I've seen people go in
being like, oh, yeah, this is fine. Then the condo
fees two hundred a month and blah blah blah, and
(32:23):
then first year they're like, by the way, here's a
forty thousand dollars assessment that we're hitting every unit for
because of X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I will also say, though, that people dramatically underestimate how
much it's going to cost to upkeep their larger home
that they don't need as they age. Nobody ever factors
in the cost that they're gonna have to hire somebody
to snowblow the driveway or to mow the lawn, or
to you know, do those projects that one used to
be able to do in their fifties and now are
in their late seventies and are not comfortable.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Doing my general rule of thumb during kind of your
working years, assume that upkeep and maintenance and everything will
cost one percent of the homes value each year. Once
you can't do it all, it's gonna be double that
quick break, We got stack Roulette.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Next.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The Financial Exchange Show podcast drops every day on Apple, Spotify,
and iHeartRadio. Hit that subscribe button and leave us a
five star review. You're listening to the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
The Financial Exchange is Life on Series XM's Business Radio
Channel one thirty two weekdays from eleven to noon. Get
the latest business and financial news from across the country
(33:31):
and around the world, and keep up to date on
how it might affect your wallet. That's the Financial Exchange
weekdays from eleven to noon on Series XM's Business Radio
Channel one thirty two. Face He's the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
All right.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
The prior segment, we asked you the triviute question, which
movie did Tim Robbins win Best Supporting Actor?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Four?
Speaker 4 (33:56):
I'll be Mystic River. That's right, Adam from Orleans, mass
This is our winner today taking on my Financial Shane
Show t shirt. Congrats to Adam and we played trivia
every day here on the Financial Look Shane. See complete
contest rules at Financial Look shaneeshow dot com.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
All right, I gotta cover Jeff Bezos saying that millions
of people are gonna be living in space twenty years
from now. So here here's the thing. So I admire
Jeff Bezos. How now, Michael, let me just let me
let me do.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
I got a lot of questions for you, Chuck, go ahead, I'd.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Like to talk about this. So here's the thing. Any
anyone who's a visionary by their nature is going to
say things that sound absolutely crazy and insane. So I
think it's important to note that, Like if twenty years
ago you had told people, hey, in the palm of
your hand, you're going to have you know, the entire
(34:52):
you know, computing power of the entire world in nineteen
sixty seven, we had been like, no, like, that's that's crazy.
But we sit here today and I can make memes
on my phone using AI as much as I want to,
like it's it's great. This, on the other hand, is
what I do think is that the not real kind
(35:12):
of visionary stuff. And if I'm wrong, then shoot me
into space is one of those millions of people because
I love to go. But Michael, do you know how
many people in the world have ever been to space?
I don't know six hundred plus the numbers are between
six fifty and six seventy depending on how you define space.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yeah, trying to hit the millions twenty, but it's it's.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Over six hundred and six hundred and below seven hundred.
So the idea that we're gonna have millions of people
in space within you know, twenty years, millions of people
living which means that you have to like start getting
them up there soon because you're not gonna suddenly just
be like, hey, we're gonna get a million people up
in twenty forty five. You gotta be starting with like
(35:55):
ten this year and twenty next year and four. You know,
like you gotta have some kind of growth rate to
get there. It's not just it's not just gonna happen.
So I'm going to take the under on millions of
people living in space in twenty forty five. Tucker, can
you put that on the board that I would under
I'll put right up there twenty four five.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
We'll keep that track of that shock.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So I got the under and we'll check in in
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Sam Altman being once again forced into the public on
issues with open AI and and what he's calling the
moral police.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Oh because he decided to open a porn shop.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah yeah, yeah, effectively, Yeah, And he's basically come out
and said, with very few exceptions, we're not going to
be the moral police to decide what chat GPT can
or cannot be used for. In this case, it was
discussing discussing erotica, and he basically said that they're going
to chop out Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Like imagine like Walmart being like, well, you know, we're
not gonna police what's in our stores, like anyone who
wants to can sell whatever they want. Like, no, that
you make decisions as to this is the kind of
business we are, and this is who we want to serve,
and then you serve those people.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Well, no, they are making a decision. They're saying they're
perfectly comfortable with it.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Which the interesting thing that I pointed out yesterday, not
even three months ago, Altman came out and said, hey,
we're not going to try to juice our revenue and
profits by putting AI sex spots on our website. And
that's exactly what they're doing now, which makes me personally
be like, oh, gee, you're super smart. AI doesn't seem
to be so super smart if you just have to
have it talk dirty to you, doesn't.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
The only thing that they seem willing to do is
crack down on age verification in order to determine what
can be used and what cannot.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
And look this is going on, which they say they're
also going to verify using AI. I'm sure that's gonna
work great.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, they are not the only company that is struggling
with this issue, and it will not be the last.
But whether it's Facebook, Pair and Company Meta, whether it's
Open AI, there are going to be some morally ambiguous
use of AI that they're going to be continued pressure
to create.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
As we had to the top of the hour, the
S and P and down now slightly negative, the Nasdaq
holding on to quarter percent gains. So we got some
inter day volatility, just like the last few days here,
a lot of choppiness and markets a lot of sorting
out going on. We'll be back tomorrow to finish up
the week. On the Financial Exchange
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.