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What will it take to get you in that EV today? · The Financial Exchange Show

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Zada and Mike Armstrong.
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Speaker 2: Kick it off the second hour of the Financial Exchange.
1:16
It is Chuck, Mike and Tucker. We are broadcasting live
1:20
from the MGM Springfield in Springfield, and if you do
1:26
happen to be in the area, you can always pop
1:27
by and say hi. We are just upstairs of the casino.
1:31
Just take the escalator up to the second floor and
1:34
we are in one of the ballrooms there.
1:37
Speaker 3: But I've been out here before, right Chuck happened. I
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drove out to the hotel last night, spent the night here.
1:44
Is my first time. I used to commute out to Springfield,
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you know once, yeah, two or three times a month
1:49
and before this place is open and uh yeah, it's
1:54
a it's a pretty fun spot.
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Speaker 2: I've been out a number of times and uh it
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always delivers it. It's always just a great time. The
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Dow Jones today is up forty four points, the S
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and P up forty four as well, the NASDAK up
2:06
two twenty two. So we've got nice reversal happening today
2:09
on the S and P and Nasdaq. But the now
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being dragged a little bit lower at the moment here,
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not lower, but just lagging the performance of the other
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two major indices. We've got oil today, we've got West
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Text Intermediate now down three forty seven a barrel to
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seventy three sixty seven. The TRIPAA National average four gas
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prices moving up just to touch about seven tenths of
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a cent from three seventeen and four tenths up to
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three eighteen and one tenth overnight. It's just a little
2:38
bit of movement there. And we've got gold down twenty
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four dollars and ninety cents an ounce to twenty six
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forty one and ten cents. So this is a market
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that right now, Mike, if we take a look just
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at the last I don't know, a couple weeks or so,
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we've just been chopping along, you know, the S and
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P five hundred, It got above fifty seven hundred on
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September nineteenth, after that FED meeting got it to about
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fifty seven sixty, and we've just been chopping for the
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last two weeks. Now. It's there's there's no clear direction
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in this market, and I think it's just one that
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is waiting for additional news in you know, a couple
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of different fronts, certainly out of the Middle East and
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what happens there. Have we seen, you know, the worst
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of potential hostilities, direct hostilities between Iran and Israel or
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is there more to come? Market also looking for hey,
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is China going to be announcing additional stimulus? And then
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we've got earning season kicking off. And this is all
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before we even talk about you know, twenty eight days
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from now, we've got a presidential election in the United States.
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So there's you know, there's a lot that's on tap
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here as we go through the next month or so
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worth mentioning as well.
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Speaker 3: After I think seven days of closure on Chinese mainland
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Chinese stocks, the Shanghai Index reopened today closed up four
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and a half percent, whereas the Hong Kong Exchange, which
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had been opened during Golden Week in China, closed down
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about nine and a half percent today on generally just
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not enough stimulus announcements from the Chinese government.
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Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about ev tax credits, so
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part of the Inflation Reduction Act back in twenty two,
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which had nothing to do with reducing inflation, correct, but
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the everyone just loves to have these these names on bills.
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I wish I could get to name a bill I
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think would be fantastic, but they'll never love me in
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either case. Sorry. The Inflation Reduction Act back in twenty
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twenty two put in place a seventy five hundred dollars
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tax credit for US made electric vehicles. There are baselines
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that you have to meet as far as where the
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components are sourced from, and this and that where the
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batteries are produced. But it added this seventy five hundred
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dollars tax credit. And i'll quote here from the New
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York Times. The challenge in evaluating it is that the
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policy has sometimes conflicting goals. One is getting people to
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buy electric vehicles to lower carbon emissions and slow climate change.
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The other is to strength in the US auto manufacturing
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by denying subsidies to foreign companies even for better or
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cheaper electric vehicles. So they say, look, it's kind of
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confusing to sort this out. Researchers estimated that for every
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additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road,
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about three other EV buyers would have made the purchases
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even without the seventy five hundred dollars credit, so saying
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most people are making the move with or without the credit.
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That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast
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to cost as much as three hundred and ninety billion
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dollars through twenty thirty one. And the question we raised
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this shortly after it was passed. Mark FANDETI and I
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had you know, a long talk on the air about this,
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where we said, look, if you know with absolute certainty
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that the best thing to do in the world is
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to build electric vehicles because they're the best way to
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get around and they're the most efficient, and this is that. Okay, fine,
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commit to doing this as policy. But who's this say
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that five or ten years from now, we don't sit
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there and say, gee, we've you know, figured out a
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better way to do X, Y and Z, and now
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we just spent four hundred billion dollars subsidizing a vehicle
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that's now obsolete and we need to replace because hey,
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the batteries take longer to degrade than we thought, or hey,
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you know there's there's something out there that is better
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for the environment.
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Speaker 3: Like please, chuck, when was the last time you can
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point to a government making a bad investment?
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Speaker 2: Hold on, I got a file for this stuff to
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take a look for a second. So I think these
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are the problems that you run into here. Now, if
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you want to say, look, we want to you know,
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create incentives for manufacturing of X, Y or Z in
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the United States, that's a different thing. But that wasn't
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just that wasn't the key goal. We were specifically saying, no,
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we need to make batteries and evs here because we
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need them here, not being made somewhere else, and we're
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spending four hundred billion dollars to do that. Now, you
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and I have talked an awful lot, Mike, where hey,
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I'm on board saying look, I don't know if the
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Chips Act is gonna make any economic sense, but I
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know we need to produce semiconductors here because there's a
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real risk to national security and in the US, you know,
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society as a whole if we can't source those here.
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Same thing with medicines, with medical devices, with you know,
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anything related to the military, Like, yes, you need to
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build that stuff here in the United States. Do EV's
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fit in any of those category? Like if if all
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of a sudden tomorrow, if we snapped our fingers and said, hey,
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there's no EV's produced in the US, and all of
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your foreign suppliers have said they won't sell to you.
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What does that do to US society? The answer is nothing,
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not much. The answer is nothing. And I say this
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my family, We we own an EV I likes. But
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I can also understand why this doesn't make sense. Yeah,
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I mean, I've struggled with that too.
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Speaker 3: I don't think I want the Chinese making every car
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that's sold in the United States. But not because I
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worry about, you know, the drive train of a Chinese car,
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which I would. I worry more about the technology that
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goes into cars these days and the potential effect that
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that would have.
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Speaker 2: Right, don't track where I go. I only want American
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companies tracking where I go.
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Speaker 3: Look, I know plenty of this stuff is up for debate,
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but I think the easier path would be to say, hey,
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we have this externality that seems to be a problem,
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which is let's say it's pollution, so let's try and
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you know, let's try and fix the thing that we
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have identified as the bad thing, rather than trying to
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pick the winner, which was in this case electric vehicles,
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which again I see how you get there. As the
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Biden administration and what led them to that path. But
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how do you determine that ev are seventy five hundred
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dollars more valuable to society then Honda Civic that gets
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forty miles per gallon or a hybrid that does something similar.
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You are required to place values on this. I mean,
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this would be political suicide, which is why it wasn't done.
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But if this is the real problem that you have,
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then implement a new gas tax. Yeah, it sounds fun. Again,
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political suicide, you're not going to do it. But if
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you're trying to really combat the problem and push people
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into more fuel efficient vehicles, which is clearly what you're
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trying to do is the Biden administration, here, make gas
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costs four bucks a gallon. That'll do it pretty quick.
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Take a quick break here.
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Speaker 2: When we come back, we're going to do a little
9:44
bit of trivia on the financial exchange, and then we
9:49
got a couple of personal finance topics we're going to cover,
9:51
including why saving for retirement is or is not more
9:55
challenging for the younger generation. And then also if you
9:59
happen to in the middle of required minimum distributions, you're
10:03
getting towards the end of the year and you're old
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enough that you have to take one. But what do
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you do with a required minimum distribution if you don't
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actually need a take it the money you will. Yeah, sure,
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I don't think that was one of the options. Now
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it was, But we'll take a quick break and then
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we'll discuss that when we return.
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on the Financial Exchange throughout the month of October.
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Speaker 2: So here we go.
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candy company wanted to replace one of the long standing
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on the new color trivia question today, which color Eminem
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eighth correct response will be our winner. See complete contest
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rules at Financial Exchange Show dot com Mike.
12:12
Speaker 2: Since twenty twenty three, most retirees have to take required
12:16
minimum distributions beginning at age seventy three that is scheduled
12:21
to you know, move to a later age.
12:24
Speaker 3: Age seventy five for some younger workers.
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Speaker 2: Correct, But at this point it's age seventy three. So
12:30
let's say you're seventy three this year. If you have
12:33
a retirement account that is not in an employer sponsored
12:37
plan where you are active, you have that rm D
12:40
that you have to take. And in some cases this
12:44
works out great because the retiree says, perfect, I wanted
12:48
to take you know, three or four percent out of
12:50
my portfolio anyways to support my my lifestyle and retirement. Wonderful.
12:56
I'm just gonna do that, and then I, you know,
12:58
kill two birds with one stone. But occasionally you run
13:02
into someone who says, look, I've got enough income already.
13:05
I got Social Security, or I got a pension, or
13:08
I have you know, rental income from properties or whatever
13:11
it might be. Hey, I don't want to take this
13:14
money out, but I'm being told I have to. What
13:17
does a retiree do in that situation. I guess the.
13:21
Speaker 3: First thing would be, hopefully you're not already there, because
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there's a lot you can do when you say sixty
13:27
five and a lot less that you can do when
13:28
you were already, when you were already seventy three and
13:31
finding yourself in this position. But believe it or not,
13:34
there are people out there who will end up paying
13:36
more taxes in their seventies than they did when they
13:39
were in their fifties and working, or in their eighties
13:42
when they were in their fifties when they were working
13:43
at a higher tax rate. Because of this, and with
13:48
a little bit of you know, forethought and planning in
13:50
your sixties, you can make a big dent on this
13:53
with a strategy that's become immensely popular over the last
13:55
decade or so Roth conversions. But you know a few
13:58
things that you Le's assume that you're not there, right.
14:01
Let's assume that you're already at seventy and you didn't
14:03
do the planning and you're now sitting there one not
14:06
necessarily too late, But you cannot, for example, take your
14:11
required a minimum distribution and toss it into a roth IRA.
14:14
Speaker 2: No, you're not allowed to do that. Get asked that
14:16
question a lot. You can't.
14:17
Speaker 3: They don't let you do that. You can go above
14:19
and beyond your required a minimum and put it into
14:21
a ROTH but you can't take that R and D
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and put it there. A lot of folks end up
14:25
reinvesting some of their money, and it can be pretty
14:28
tax efficient to do so, but it ends up going
14:30
into a brokerage account or something along those lines. The
14:34
only real way that exists to avoid taxes on that
14:38
required minimum distribution is something called a qualified charitable distribution,
14:43
and that can be beneficial too, right if you're already
14:47
donating money to charity and you're writing it out of
14:50
your checkbook, for example, doing it from the IRA if
14:53
you're in your seventies can be a lot more tax efficient.
14:56
Speaker 2: Speak with a professional about that.
14:58
Speaker 3: Before you just go and blindly do it, because you
15:00
have to follow some rules about it. But that is,
15:03
you know, really the only one area that I can
15:05
feasibly look at to say, hey, this is one way
15:08
to avoid the taxes on your required minimum distributions. But
15:11
like I said, a ton that you can be doing
15:14
in your I don't hate to put a number on it,
15:17
but the between the stage sixties generally your sixties when
15:20
you are retired, but not yet seventy three or seventy
15:24
five for our older listeners out there, there is so
15:27
much planning that can be done, and the temptation and
15:30
the you know, most common practice for most people that
15:32
I speak to is, hey, I've retired now, so I'm
15:34
gonna start taking money out of my IRA to live
15:36
off of.
15:37
Speaker 2: And that is a common strategy.
15:38
Speaker 3: But for folks that might have other buckets of money
15:42
spent saved up, it can be a lot more efficient
15:45
to pull from different buckets in that in between stage
15:48
and really structure your tax situation differently to avoid that
15:52
giant tax bomb later in your seventies and eighties. And
15:55
like I've said, I have seen people who end up
15:57
paying bigger tax bills in their seventies and eighties, which
16:00
impacts things like your medicare premiums and all sorts of
16:03
things they didn't really plan for. In any case, I
16:06
know a lot of people are facing questions like this
16:08
or just starting to learn about required minimum distributions and
16:12
how they might affect you down the road. We at
16:15
the Armstrong Advisor Group would love to talk to you
16:17
about it. We've got offices throughout New England, We've got
16:20
folks on call that handle these types of questions that
16:23
affect retirees every single day, and we'd love to sit
16:26
down with you and talked about your personal situation, because
16:30
every single one of these is different. Some people have
16:32
a pension, some don't, social security, how much you'll have
16:35
versus how much you have in the IRA versus the ROTH,
16:37
or your four oh one K. If you have questions
16:40
like that, please give us a call at the Armstrong
16:42
Advisory Group at eight hundred three nine three four zero
16:46
zero one. Again, offices located throughout New England, but we
16:49
have clients across the country and be happy to speak
16:51
to you too. That phone number for the Armstrong Advisory
16:54
Group is eight hundred three nine three four zero zero one.
16:58
Speaker 1: The proceeding was paid for by arms Strong Advisory Group,
17:01
a registered investment advisor. Nothing in the ad or in
17:03
any Armstrong guide a specific financial, legal or tax advice.
17:06
Consult your own financial tax into state planning advisors before
17:09
making any investment decisions. Armstrong may contact you to offer
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investment advisory services.
17:14
Speaker 2: Mike, there's a piece in Barons today. It's titled saving
17:19
for retirement is more challenging for younger generations. Here's why
17:24
do you buy it?
17:25
Speaker 3: Wow?
17:26
Speaker 5: Wow, Look as someone can buy homes now as someone
17:32
who is firmly in the millennial generation and eating avocado
17:36
toast every day.
17:38
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, there's people here watching you. They
17:41
can't you can't lie about it and say that you're
17:43
eating avocado co coast this morning. Okay, fair enough.
17:46
Speaker 2: Thank you. In any case, twenty years ago not twenty
17:51
fifteen years ago. During the Great Financial Crisis, there was
17:54
so much written about the millennials are never going to
17:56
be able to make it financially, They're going to be
17:58
scarred for life than not to be able to invest,
18:00
they won't be able to buy homes, blah blah blah,
18:02
blah blah. And if you look at the statistics now,
18:05
millennials are buying homes or have home ownership basically in
18:08
line with Gen X and the baby boomers at the
18:11
same respective ages. Just start a little bit later. They
18:13
just started a little bit later. And that's how it is.
18:15
If you look at net worth adjusted for inflation, it's
18:18
moved up in a similar fashion. And so I don't
18:22
deny that every generation has its own unique struggles that
18:25
they have to go through. And it's not to say
18:27
that every generation doesn't have hard things that they go through.
18:30
But when you read this piece, about Hey, saving for
18:32
retirement is going to be harder for this generation. Like
18:35
some of the stuff they say is they're like, hey,
18:37
for the last forty years, these were ideal years to
18:39
be invested, and markets are at record highs now, and
18:43
so future returns might not be as strong.
18:45
Speaker 3: So they're presuming that the markets are going to suck
18:47
for the next forty years with no base for we
18:50
have no idea what markets are going to do for
18:52
the next forty years.
18:52
Speaker 2: They might be better, they might be worse, they might
18:54
be the same, and just saying hey, valuations are high,
18:57
so this is going to be tough. Kind I'd also say,
19:01
you know, they were brought We're facing broad economic and
19:04
geopolitical landscape problems that were largely muted for the previous
19:08
generation when happened. Oh, I'm sorry the Cold War didn't exist.
19:12
We didn't go through Gulf War one, Golf War two,
19:14
nine to eleven, Afghanistan, right, Like, I mean, yeah, every
19:19
generation has their own unique struggles that they go through. Yes,
19:23
things are tough right now, but they've always been tough,
19:27
and so that's why this bothers me. With you quick
19:31
break here we get the trivia answer.
19:32
Speaker 6: Next bringing the latest financial news straight to your radio.
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20:04
Speaker 4: Trivia question today was which color Eminem did blue replace?
20:10
Speaker 2: That'll be ten.
20:10
Speaker 4: In late nineteen ninety five, Eminem phased out the tan
20:13
colored Eminem's in favor of blue, which beat out pink
20:16
and purple in a nationwide vote. Winner today of the
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Financial Exchange Show T shirt was Diana from New Britain, Connecticut,
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even good. In the neighborhood board, we're prohibited Dinah only.
20:44
Speaker 2: Mike. There's a piece in the Financial Times today. It's
20:47
titled will Google be broken up, do you know?
20:53
Speaker 3: No, I don't think anybody but the judge knows. And
20:55
here it is today. The judge did receive the Department
20:59
of Justice high level remedies for Again, you have to
21:02
go back a few months here, but Google was found
21:06
to be a monopolist by a federal judge. So that's
21:09
already been determined. The extremely complicated part of this is
21:13
so what does that mean for Google?
21:15
Speaker 2: And nobody knows yet, and so the DJ is going
21:17
to deliver these, you know, remedies to the judge saying, hey,
21:21
here are the options that we have in terms of
21:23
what could happen. And it could be, look, you can't
21:27
sign agreements like you have with Apple to be the
21:30
exclusive search provider of you know, on the iPhone. It
21:34
could be that we have to break YouTube off from Google.
21:38
It could be we have to separate the search business
21:41
from the ad business. There's all kinds of different things
21:44
that could happen here.
21:45
Speaker 3: Given that this was primarily about search, it would seem
21:48
odd to me that they would say yeah, and so
21:50
as a result, we're stripping YouTube away from the rest
21:53
of Google.
21:54
Speaker 2: I don't know, wouldn't it just be kind of nice?
21:55
I would love it, but it's not.
21:56
Speaker 3: It just seems like it's not connected to the case
21:59
that here, which is primarily about search.
22:01
Speaker 2: True. So the uh, basically, these are going to be
22:05
delivered to the judge today and then you have a
22:07
hearing set for April, with the judge saying that they
22:10
are going to attempt to rule by August of next year.
22:14
So it still is going to be another ten months
22:16
or so at least potentially longer before we end up
22:21
understanding what might end up happen here end up happening here.
22:25
And remember this is the first major anti trust win
22:30
for the DOJ since Microsoft in two thousand. Yeah, tech
22:35
side especially Well again I say major, like, hey, they
22:39
stopped Staples and Office Depot from merging Spirit and jet Blue. Great,
22:43
Like you know, wow, now you know Staples went out
22:46
of business and Spirit's going to go out of business,
22:48
you know. So I think this is something that none
22:52
of us really know how this is going to play out,
22:54
because the precedent hasn't been set. Like there's a whole
22:57
generation that has never seen any kind of substantial anti
23:02
trust action against a tech company. And so we'll see
23:06
what ends up happening here. I will say, according to
23:12
people who were you know, more familiar with anti trust
23:14
law than I am, they have said that it would
23:17
be unusual to see, you know, a significant structural remedy
23:23
such as breaking up Google or spinning off its web
23:26
browser or something like that. But you might see the
23:29
DJ propose them just to say, hey, here's how far
23:32
we might want to go, and here's something lesser that
23:34
still might have some kind of substantial impact. It leads
23:37
me to a question.
23:37
Speaker 3: I mean, has sooner I had done a good job
23:41
the CEO of Google you compare him to, I mean,
23:44
certainly he's overseen Google among you know, some of its
23:49
most dominant years. It is a let's be honest, you
23:54
don't get sued for being a monopoly by being bad
23:56
at business. The entire reason you're getting it is because
24:00
you've become so dominant in the space that you play
24:02
in that you're being anti competitive and you are a monopoly.
24:07
So I acknowledge that, But part of your job is
24:09
also to make sure that you don't get sued by
24:11
the Department of Justice and forced to be broken up.
24:13
Speaker 2: Here and Google is.
24:16
Speaker 3: Now, you know, in a position where not only are
24:19
they facing these you know, anti trust concerns and potential remedies,
24:22
and a you know, successful lawsuit from the Department of Justice.
24:26
They're also facing a new threat from artificial intelligence that
24:30
quite honestly seems like the first legitimate threat to their
24:32
advertising business that we've seen in a couple decades.
24:37
Speaker 2: How do we define doing a good job? I hear
24:40
is the CEO of Google. Look, if you look just
24:42
at the stock price, but Chi came on in twenty fifteen,
24:46
when the stock was trading in the twenties. Today it's
24:48
one hundred and sixty four dollars in change. So from
24:50
a pure stock price perspective, like if you're a Google
24:52
shareholder over that time, not much to complain about it.
24:55
It's tough to be like, hey, I'm really upset, you know,
24:57
like things have been good. If you're talking about innovation,
25:07
I'm not sure there's anything there, quite honestly, yeah, I
25:10
mean he took a business that already had a model
25:14
and that was remotely interesting. That's extreme.
25:20
Speaker 3: But like for genuine, genuinely innovative I come up, I struggle.
25:26
Speaker 2: And and what's what's tough about that is Google. You
25:28
can make a case. During the tech bubble was one
25:30
of the most innovative companies. I mean, they were not
25:32
the first search engine on the block. They were like
25:35
the twelve thousandth but their algorithm provided better results, and
25:41
people flocked to it, and people people chose it. It
25:44
was It wasn't that Google imposed itself on people. People
25:48
that came later. People sought it, sought it out right,
25:51
and then Google said, well, now that you're here, we
25:53
want to make sure you can't leave. And and that's
25:55
why they're in the situation with the DOJ. So I
25:58
struggled to look at the last years of Google and say, hey,
26:02
what have they done from a product perspective that's really interesting?
26:06
I don't have anything. I mean, yeah, they've got their
26:10
you know, Waymo cabs that they're trying out, but they're
26:13
still in like two cities.
26:15
Speaker 3: They've got an entire healthcare division that, as far as
26:17
I know, has not done much in the way of
26:20
interest to my knowledge. Yeah, I mean, I think the
26:25
most compelling thing you can talk about is that they
26:27
have maintained market dominance for a much longer period of
26:30
time than I think most technology companies do historically, and
26:37
and they're being sued for that. So don't get me wrong.
26:40
Speaker 2: They're not like a bad company. I mean, they're well run,
26:43
they're profitable. But I don't know. Don't you want your
26:46
tech companies to come up with tech? I kind of do.
26:53
I kind of do. Speaking of tech, should we talk
26:56
about artificial intelligence? I was pretty fat.
26:59
Speaker 3: So there was a survey done that was we sometimes
27:03
talk about surveys and you're left questioning like what am
27:07
I supposed to do with this? And was this even reliable?
27:09
This was a big survey that was done based on
27:14
trying to get the same demographics as our census, and
27:16
they asked a few questions similar to what you ask
27:18
on the Census to really test Hey, was this a
27:21
good survey and did it correspond similarly to census questions
27:25
and answers?
27:25
Speaker 2: And the answer was yes.
27:26
Speaker 3: So it was pretty representative of the American public and
27:30
found I think some pretty surprising stuff in terms of
27:33
Americans' usage of artificial intelligence right now. So do you
27:36
want to rattle some of them off, Chuck?
27:37
Speaker 2: Yes. And this is as a study that was done
27:39
by the good nerds at Harvard. They looked at a
27:42
bunch of data and said, here's what we found based
27:45
on this survey and forty percent of Americans age eighteen
27:50
to sixty four have used Generative AI, so that would
27:53
be something like chet GPT correct and a sizeable percentage
27:58
they say seems to use it regular They found that
28:01
more than twenty four percent of American workers have used
28:04
it at least once a week in the you Know
28:08
survey period, and nearly one in nine used it every
28:12
work day.
28:13
Speaker 3: So that's ten percent of Americans are using generative AI
28:19
every single day for work.
28:22
Speaker 2: Now I'm someone I use it on that kind of
28:25
once a week basis occasionally more than that, but like,
28:29
I fit into that group, and there are certain things
28:33
for which it's really useful. There are also things where, again,
28:35
you poke around on it enough and you're like, okay,
28:37
I can't use it for this, or things where you
28:40
have to figure out how to train it in order
28:43
to do something that you want it to do because
28:46
it doesn't have the proper training to begin with, which
28:48
is kind of creepy but also kind of amazing at
28:51
the same time, because you basically tell it, hey, I
28:55
want when I ask you for X, here's how you
28:58
do it in order to spit out why, and then
29:02
it can actually do it and you don't have to
29:04
be a programmer. You don't have to know any kind
29:06
of coding. You just literally tell it like you're teaching
29:09
a dog or a child, or like even like anything.
29:12
Speaker 3: I tried to teach my dog how to do math
29:14
for years and it didn't work too well, but.
29:16
Speaker 2: Doing it wrong.
29:17
Speaker 3: I mean further, with this study found twenty two percent
29:20
of blue collar workers have used it and other than
29:23
personal services, so barber's, hairstylists, nail salons, workers, every other
29:30
major job category had seen at least twenty percent adoption
29:33
of generative artificial intelligence. I'm not saying this is universally
29:38
a good thing. By the way, I hope you don't
29:40
misunderstand me. There are massive potential pitfalls to all of this.
29:45
But I was quite frankly shocked by the headline number
29:50
that forty percent of Americans age eighteen to sixty four
29:54
have used AI in some way, shape or form.
29:57
Speaker 2: Generative AI now has been around for two years. Right,
30:01
show me one technology that was about technology has been
30:04
adopted by almost a quarter of all working people in
30:08
a two year period.
30:11
Speaker 3: I would hesitate to come up with one. Smartphone didn't.
30:14
Speaker 2: Smartphone took you know, probably five to seven years, I
30:16
will Internet. I mean, this is kind of wild stuff. Yeah,
30:21
and arguably depending on how it you know, social media.
30:25
Speaker 3: Social media might be the only one that I can
30:27
look at hardly a technology, but it might be the
30:30
only one I can look at to say that had
30:32
a very rapid adoption. But for us, yeah, even then,
30:39
I doubt it was forty percent of Americans eighteen to
30:41
sixty four with than two years.
30:43
Speaker 2: It's wild. Yeah. To take a quick break here. When
30:47
we return, it's time for a little bit of stack roulette.
30:51
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31:55
Speaker 2: Michael, what do you have for me for stack roulette?
31:58
Speaker 3: I want to talk about a new type of flation
32:02
thatation haven't discussed. We've talked about inflation, deflation, shrink flation.
32:08
What other flations have we have? We disinflation, disinflation, this
32:12
one is skimpflation that Whole Foods was accused of here,
32:17
and skimflation is, according to whoever coined this phrase, just
32:23
making a product cheaper and can I say crappier, just
32:28
generally worse at the at the behest of profit. And
32:32
Whole Foods saw some backlash on this, so I can't
32:35
say that I have frequently tried their berry Chantilly cake,
32:39
but apparently they shrunk it, replaced it with garbage ingredients,
32:42
made it a lot worse, and.
32:46
Speaker 2: Go ahead. This this piece says that it's an iconic
32:51
berry chantilly cake.
32:53
Speaker 3: I I think iconic a little bit extreme. But in
32:59
any case, what I liked about this is that people
33:02
got poed. They got really angry, and they started posting
33:08
about it on social media and whining about it and
33:10
complaining about it so much that Whole food said, forget it,
33:12
We're not doing that. We're going like over two days
33:16
they went and changed their policy on all this. And
33:19
what it reminds me of is that we actually, as
33:22
like consumers, do have some power over these companies that
33:24
sell us stuff all the time. Like if we actually
33:27
make a point of pushing back on this, well that
33:30
would be My point is Unfortunately that power seems to
33:33
be concentrated at wealthy households that shop at Whole Foods
33:36
rather than the general public.
33:37
Speaker 2: But no, the general public has this too. It's the
33:40
problem is that we just there are two problems. Either
33:43
A we just accept it or B the problems that
33:46
we see are in industries for which there is no
33:48
competition and so we can't do anything about it. Sure
33:50
see the airline industry. Hey, you're trying to fly to Austin, Texas. Great,
33:55
you got forty five Southwest flights and one flight from
33:58
United that'll get you there. And so you don't have
34:02
any alternatives in terms of, hey, I want more leg
34:06
room or this. No like that. There is no more
34:08
leg room because we're the only company that does this.
34:11
So this is one of the reasons why I'm so
34:14
adamant that we could get rid of an awful lot
34:17
of regulation when it comes to business practices if we
34:23
just had more competition. Yep, because stuff like this is
34:26
solved by someone saying, hey, you know what you're you're
34:28
making a bad cake. Great, I'm gonna get my cake
34:31
somewhere else.
34:31
Speaker 3: And Hohpefood's changed their mind rather quickly, right, Wholefood said, which,
34:34
good job. Whole Foods too, like, actually listen to your customers.
34:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. I give them credit for that, because it would
34:39
be easy to just be like, no, like, we've made
34:40
this change, and this is what we're sticking with because
34:43
a lot of times that is what you end up
34:44
hearing from companies is right.
34:46
Speaker 3: We are Amazon. We don't care about what you have
34:49
to say, so we're not going to change anything. You
34:51
have to keep Amazon, That's what I mean. Oh like
34:54
that you could see you can see them saying that, hey,
34:56
we you know, I understand that you're exact about your
34:59
Barrish Antilly cake, but we're Amazon. We don't care. But
35:01
they did. They actually went and switched it.
35:03
Speaker 2: I want to talk about pickleball piece of the Wall
35:07
Street Journal. The turf war between tennis and pickleball is escalating.
35:11
Speaker 3: So there are tennis courts right next to our office
35:14
where we usually do the program from today we're in Springfield,
35:17
but generally were speaking, we do the program from Needham.
35:19
There's tennis courts that are right next to our office
35:22
that for years were empty and now are packed with
35:25
pickleballers all the time. And it actually made like somewhat
35:28
regional news that somebody snuck in in the middle of
35:30
the night and took a knife to all all the
35:32
pickleball nets, which I just find so petty and hilarious.
35:36
But go on, the pickleball wars are real.
35:39
Speaker 2: I'll quote here on at least one front, there is
35:41
no longer denying that tennis and pickleball are in direct conflict.
35:44
The battle for court space has arrived and tennis is
35:47
losing ground fast. Today. The USTA says at least ten
35:50
percent of tennis courts in America have been taking over
35:53
and repurposed for pickleball. Quote, there are not enough courts
35:57
to support tennis growth, and court infrastructure is being comprom
36:00
with people playing pickaball on those courts or courts being repainted,
36:03
according to USTA chief Blue Share. Now, as someone who
36:10
you know, both skis and plays soccer in the US,
36:13
I understand, you know, niche sports that don't have you know,
36:16
a ton of following following in the United States. But look,
36:23
I go past tennis courts all the time, like just
36:25
driving around. It's rare to see them empty, except when
36:29
you actually have pickleballers in and then there's like forty
36:32
six pickleballers on each court. And so I don't buy
36:36
that there is a lack of courts that's restricting the
36:39
growth of American tennis.
36:41
Speaker 3: No, there's a lack of demand that's restricting the growth.
36:43
Speaker 2: Right, Americans just have not been playing as much tennis.
36:46
Speaker 3: I like tennis, I like I watch it occasionally. It's fine,
36:51
it's okay, not my favorite. Like this is a market
36:54
based problem. That is being solved by the markets. There
36:57
is a twenty one court pickaball complex opening up for
37:01
one hundred thousand square feet in the Natick Mall in
37:04
Massachusetts this month. They're going to have bars, restaurants like
37:09
they are solving this problem with market based solutions. And
37:13
I mean the problem is that tennis. Yeah, you are
37:16
the uh, the victim here of the growth of pickleball,
37:19
and it's going to come at your popularity. But sorry,
37:25
I don't know what you want me to do about it.
37:27
What do we want to do? Ban pickleball courts in
37:29
order to support plenty of places, well, not to support tennis,
37:32
but plenty of people have been banning pickleball courts because
37:35
they want to complain about the noise, which I find
37:38
to be hilarious. If you should see the noise coming
37:40
from the hockey rink when I play once a week,
37:42
is there a lot? Well, it's just far more offensive.
37:45
Speaker 2: Oh well, it's also indoors though true.
37:48
Speaker 3: You know.
37:48
Speaker 2: Taking a look at markets, as we had towards the
37:51
top of the hour, the Dow is up seventy two points,
37:53
the S and P's up forty six, the NASDAG up
37:55
two twenty seven, so all three major US markets in
37:58
positive territory to start the day. We'll see if they
38:01
finish the day there. Oil price is still falling today,
38:06
down three point fifty a barrel on West Text Intermediate
38:09
to seventy three sixty four. We'll see if we get
38:10
some follow through. If we continue to see no further
38:14
activity in the Middle East, we're done for the day.
38:17
We'll see you tomorrow on the Financial Exchange