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Biggest issues plaguing the housing market? · The Financial Exchange Show

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Speaker 1: making a donation today. This is the Financial Exchange with
1:06
Speaker 1: Chuck Zada and Mike Armstrong, Chuck.
1:14
Speaker 2: Mike and Tucker with you, and quite honestly, just what
1:18
Speaker 2: a wasted week of trading this has turned out to be.
1:21
Speaker 2: The S and P today is up one point. I mean,
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Speaker 2: you can't even give me a point for each sack
1:28
Speaker 2: I put on. You're just like, oh, no, have a
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Speaker 2: single point. So yeah, the S and P is up
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Speaker 2: one point today. The Dow is off eighty one, the
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Speaker 2: Nasdaq is up sixty five. So there's just a whole
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Speaker 2: bunch of there's just a whole bunch of nothing going on.
1:40
Speaker 2: I mean, under the surface, you got some interesting things happening, uh,
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Speaker 2: but overall just kind of boring. Not that boring is bad,
1:50
Speaker 2: but like this is too boring. I'm I'm sorry. I'll
1:53
Speaker 2: take boring. Give me at least like a quarter percent
1:57
Speaker 2: in either direction. I'm good, you know, like not. Oh
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Speaker 2: look now the SMP's flat. Why'd we even get out
2:03
Speaker 2: of bed today? You know, it's just like poke it
2:06
Speaker 2: do something, man. So the S and P is not
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Speaker 2: moving again, dows down modestly, Nasdaq is up modestly. Ten
2:13
Speaker 2: year treasury little bit of movement there. You got the
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Speaker 2: yield on that down one point seven basis points to
2:19
Speaker 2: four point two to one percent. When we take a
2:22
Speaker 2: look at commodities, oil right now, West Texas Intermediate down
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Speaker 2: thirty eight cents a barrel to sixty three seventy seven.
2:31
Speaker 2: Despite that, the TRIPAA National Averagur gas prices ticked up
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Speaker 2: again yesterday by two tenths of ascent to three twenty one.
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Speaker 2: This again largely due to a refinery outage that is
2:42
Speaker 2: pushing up prices in the Midwest. Those are starting to
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Speaker 2: crest in some cases, with Michigan gas prices down about
2:50
Speaker 2: a cent overnight, but you do have other parts of
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Speaker 2: the area. Illinois still seeing price increases at the moment,
2:58
Speaker 2: up another cent overnight, in the Yana up another two
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Speaker 2: tents of ascent overnight, So still a little bit of
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Speaker 2: spill over happening there, but that should be done in
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Speaker 2: pretty short order. It seems like when we take a
3:12
Speaker 2: look at gold and what we are seeing there of
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Speaker 2: twenty dollars and seventy cents an ounce to thirty four
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Speaker 2: to sixty nine and thirty cents, gold is still trying
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Speaker 2: to break through that thirty five hundred mark. Then it's
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Speaker 2: run up against a few times. Might have a little
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Speaker 2: bit of momentum here, but again it's just been chopping
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Speaker 2: up against that over the course of the summer. We
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Speaker 2: did get in video earnings yesterday, even those weren't exciting
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Speaker 2: enough to move the stock in any meaningful fashion, and
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Speaker 2: video stock down one point up. Nope, in the last
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Speaker 2: five minutes just in video stock now down point nine
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Speaker 2: percent on the day. So just again, this is just
3:51
Speaker 2: anyone who was, you know, buying short term options in
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Speaker 2: either the positive or negative direction, is just getting chopped
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Speaker 2: up this week because you are not moving anywhere in
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Speaker 2: any convincing fashion. Let's talk about something else that's not
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Speaker 2: really moving anywhere. But in this case, it is moving
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Speaker 2: nowhere in convincing fashion, and that's housing. And this is
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Speaker 2: not going to be sexy what I say here, just
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Speaker 2: because everyone always wants to hear about like the next
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Speaker 2: big thing or the next big blow up. Unfortunately, I
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Speaker 2: think housing is just kind of in for a five
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Speaker 2: to seven year slog. And Connorson from Bloomberg Opinion shares
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Speaker 2: my view on this in that look, you've got enough
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Speaker 2: home equity and payments are manageable enough for those who
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Speaker 2: own homes that there's no real sign of a meltdown
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Speaker 2: happening in the mortgage market or anything like that. Delinquencies
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Speaker 2: remain very low. Everything's in a pretty good spot on
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Speaker 2: that front. But if you don't own a house, it
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Speaker 2: is prohibitively expensive to buy one right now. And despite
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Speaker 2: mortgage rates coming down about a quarter percent in the
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Speaker 2: last few weeks, it's getting worse still because insurance premiums
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Speaker 2: keep going up, property taxes keep going up, and utilities
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Speaker 2: keep going up. And so Connor kind of makes the case, Look,
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Speaker 2: you're not going to see just this implosion like we
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Speaker 2: saw in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
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Speaker 2: But maybe you just have like five to seven years
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Speaker 2: where prices slide a couple points a year and wages
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Speaker 2: catch up a couple points a year, and you finally
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Speaker 2: close like a thirty percent affordability gap over a seven
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Speaker 2: year period by doing that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, like, what could make him
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Speaker 3: be wrong in these assumptions. Interest rates coming down dramatically
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Speaker 3: could increase for affordability, But the only way that happens
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Speaker 3: is if you've got a whole bunch of people without jobs.
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Speaker 3: So not going to move the needle there. I don't
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Speaker 3: think this is to say that we won't see localized
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Speaker 3: price drops or increases. But especially if we are now
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Speaker 3: talking about again aging population who already owned the homes,
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Speaker 3: now fewer potent buyers, with deportations, and just less demand
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Speaker 3: for housing. Although you know there's still a big shortage
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Speaker 3: across the nation still of housing. You're right, it's tough
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Speaker 3: to envision that scenario where activity ticks up. I guess
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Speaker 3: like people will still buy and sell homes. But if
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Speaker 3: we're looking at the housing market and the metric of
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Speaker 3: when will you start to see an increase in the
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Speaker 3: quantity of homes being sold? Yeah, I don't see one.
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Speaker 2: The other piece, can we talk about that aging demographic thing, Yeah,
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Speaker 2: we have to talk about like the ugly part of that,
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Speaker 2: which is that unfortunately they die because all of us do.
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Speaker 2: It happens to all of us. And when you look
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Speaker 2: at baby boomers, they're entering the age where that tends
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Speaker 2: to happen more often. One of the other things that
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Speaker 2: could interestingly decrease demand for housing. If you need to
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Speaker 2: buy a house right now, okay, you're trying to buy
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Speaker 2: a house. Parent dies. You don't need to buy a
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Speaker 2: house now, you inherit.
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Speaker 3: It are we mismatching those demos, though I don't know.
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Speaker 2: So here's the thing. There's obviously going to be Here's
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Speaker 2: where I'm going with this. So there's two ways that
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Speaker 2: I think this plays out in the form of lower demand.
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Speaker 2: The first is, let's say that you live near your parents.
7:18
Speaker 2: As an example, I live like twenty minutes from my parents.
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Speaker 2: If and when they pass Option one, if I didn't,
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Speaker 2: you know, have my own place that I owned, would
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Speaker 2: be okay, great, I'm going to you know, negotiate things
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Speaker 2: with siblings and this and that, and one of us
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Speaker 2: is going to move into that house, which reduces demand
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Speaker 2: for other housing by one unit. You don't need to
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Speaker 2: buy that place anymore. And we know, by the way
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Speaker 2: that when you just look at the demographic trends, there
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Speaker 2: are more baby boomers than there are on an annual basis.
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Speaker 2: Then there are gen zers that are coming in looking
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Speaker 2: to buy homes right now. So if you start taking
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Speaker 2: homes off the market in terms of demand, okay, that's
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Speaker 2: one piece. The other is, hey, let's say that my
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Speaker 2: parents live in Topeka, because I always do Topeka. I
8:11
Speaker 2: don't want to move to Topeka because I'm just not
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Speaker 2: that kind of guy like it's great town, but it's
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Speaker 2: just not for me. Now I got to list my
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Speaker 2: parents' home in Tapeka. Is there a lot of demand
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Speaker 2: coming into Topeka from elsewhere? Not really? Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Likewise, you know, is there a mismatch of home ownership
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Speaker 3: and home demand? I guess where you're getting at. So,
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Speaker 3: is Main's real estate market about to fall apart? For example, you.
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Speaker 2: Could argue that in lots of parts of Maine the
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Speaker 2: real estate market has been falling apart for the last
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Speaker 2: twenty thirty years. It's not all coastal Maine where it's
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Speaker 2: been you know, sunshine, rainbows and puppy dogs. So I
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Speaker 2: think you've got something going that could go on there
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Speaker 2: where you have this supply of homes that hits in
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Speaker 2: higher numbers over the next five to ten years, and
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Speaker 2: that creates further inventory build without a corresponding demand build,
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Speaker 2: because either some of the people who would otherwise be
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Speaker 2: home buyers are now able to move into their parents'
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Speaker 2: homes or they say no, we don't want this, we're comfortable,
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Speaker 2: And now you've got another unit on the market that
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Speaker 2: continues to build inventory. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: I mean we are just now finally getting back to
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Speaker 3: inventory levels that are fairly close to where they wear
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Speaker 3: pre COVID.
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Speaker 2: We'll be there in the next six months.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we're at eighty nine percent of pre COVID inventory
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Speaker 3: levels right now. But without lower interest rates or dramatic
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Speaker 3: wage gains, I'm with you, I just don't see the
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Speaker 3: affordability equation shifting all that much.
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Speaker 2: Now. This doesn't mean that you're going to see everything
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Speaker 2: move uniformly across the country even right now. So you're
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Speaker 2: seeing at this point, depending on the home price Index
9:53
Speaker 2: that you look at, about two percent annual growth in
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Speaker 2: home prices, but that's sliding. By the this year, you're
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Speaker 2: probably gonna be somewhere between minus point five and positive
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Speaker 2: point five in terms of annual home price changes. If
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Speaker 2: you look at this on a zip code basis, the Southeast,
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Speaker 2: particularly like Florida West Coast, you know, basically Fort Myers
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Speaker 2: through Tampa prices are down eight nine percent year over year.
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Speaker 2: On the other side of the equation, you go and
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Speaker 2: you take a look at Iowa, and again I don't
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Speaker 2: know why, like Iowa is the case here, or even
10:30
Speaker 2: take a look at like Ohio and Illinois and Indiana.
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Speaker 2: Basically most of the Midwest prices throughout a number of
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Speaker 2: the towns and cities there are up more than eight
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Speaker 2: percent year over yere because there's still very low inventory
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Speaker 2: up there. And so I think that when you look
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Speaker 2: at this, it's something where the trends that have started
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Speaker 2: in the Southeast and now out in California as well
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Speaker 2: in Colorado and Arizona, they are going to push north gradually.
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Speaker 2: So what you might see two years from now, Just
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Speaker 2: as an example, heyar has gone through its price correction
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Speaker 2: and prices fell, you know, twelve to fifteen percent in Florida.
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Speaker 2: Now people start looking at and saying, oh, it's a
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Speaker 2: little bit more affordable. Maybe we can pull this off,
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Speaker 2: and inventory starts to list in the Midwest, and hey,
11:14
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven, prices fall a little bit in the
11:17
Speaker 2: Midwest and rise a little bit in Florida. So there
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Speaker 2: will be regional shifts within this, but overall it paints
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Speaker 2: a picture of pretty stagnant, slowly sliding home prices for
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Speaker 2: an extended period of time absent some kind of big
11:30
Speaker 2: intervening event. Doesn't look great for home builders in that case,
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Speaker 2: really doesn't quick break here when we come back, we've
11:38
Speaker 2: got trivia and then we're talking about risky stocks.
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Speaker 4: the nineteen fifty So trivia question today, who is the
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Speaker 4: first major American film star to enlist in the US
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Speaker 4: Army for World War Two?
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13:35
Speaker 2: Peace in Bloomberg after years years of pain, the riskiest
13:42
Speaker 2: stocks finally see some momentum. That's the headline from Bloomberg,
13:48
Speaker 2: which first makes you wonder, Hey, what exactly do you
13:52
Speaker 2: mean by riskiest stocks? Because small cap Congolese stocks. Uh No,
14:00
Speaker 2: they don't mean those. Okay, those sound pretty risky though
14:02
Speaker 2: they too. Instead, what they're talking about is small cap stocks,
14:06
Speaker 2: though specifically US small caps, the Russell two thousand index.
14:10
Speaker 2: So here's the big thing about the Russell two thousand
14:14
Speaker 2: index is it kind of generally sucks right now. And
14:20
Speaker 2: it's because it's not anything that Russell did. It's just
14:23
Speaker 2: the fact that a lot of the companies are unprofitable
14:26
Speaker 2: north of forty percent of them. And as such, given that,
14:30
Speaker 2: you know, as Larry Cudlow always loves to say, profits
14:32
Speaker 2: are the mother's milk of stocks, hey, it's kind of
14:34
Speaker 2: hard to grow stock prices when your profits are pretty stagnant.
14:38
Speaker 2: There are a number of different reasons we could talk
14:39
Speaker 2: about on this, but ultimately what it comes back to is, hey,
14:44
Speaker 2: this is being heralded as you know, hey, small caps
14:47
Speaker 2: might be breaking out, to which I say, those facts
14:50
Speaker 2: are not in evidence. And just because small caps have
14:54
Speaker 2: a good couple of weeks doesn't mean that they're going
14:56
Speaker 2: to break out and start carrying the market. If you
14:59
Speaker 2: want a case, you know, study in this, look no
15:03
Speaker 2: further than this time last year, where actually a little
15:07
Speaker 2: earlier in this time was like July, there was a
15:09
Speaker 2: rotation from megacaps into small caps that effectively ended up
15:13
Speaker 2: kind of breaking the market, and we ended up having
15:16
Speaker 2: a ten percent draw down heading into August and small
15:20
Speaker 2: caps never recovered those levels since then. Is there some
15:23
Speaker 2: selection bias here?
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Speaker 3: If you are a privately held small company right now,
15:29
Speaker 3: you don't have a ton of incentive to list in
15:32
Speaker 3: public markets given the amount of private equity that is
15:37
Speaker 3: out there, and given, you know, given the promises of
15:39
Speaker 3: all that, if you are a growing, promising company, especially
15:44
Speaker 3: one that has a path towards profitability, you might just say,
15:49
Speaker 3: I'll stay private until i'm you know, a multi billion
15:53
Speaker 3: or hundreds of billions dollar company, and I'll list at
15:56
Speaker 3: that point once there's enough investor interest struggling to see
16:01
Speaker 3: the incentive for a small profitable company to go public,
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Speaker 3: I guess unless you're very famous.
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Speaker 2: Which is why companies, even even the very famous ones,
16:10
Speaker 2: they generally wait longer to go public. Now, you know,
16:13
Speaker 2: Facebook didn't ipo at a market cap of here. You want,
16:18
Speaker 2: you want the comparison, just as an example, you will
16:21
Speaker 2: get Amazon who Amazon iPod back in the Stone Age
16:27
Speaker 2: almost it was nineteen ninety seven. And if you look
16:30
Speaker 2: at the market cap of Amazon back when it iPod,
16:36
Speaker 2: it iPod at a market cap of hang on, I'm
16:40
Speaker 2: digging it up here, four hundred million dollars. Today it's
16:45
Speaker 2: a two point four trillion dollar company. Yeah, Facebook, back
16:48
Speaker 2: when it went public, Meta as they're now known Meta
16:52
Speaker 2: went public back in I still remember, I know exactly
16:55
Speaker 2: where I was sitting when they went public. It was
16:57
Speaker 2: in May of twenty twelve, they would public get a
16:59
Speaker 2: bet one hundred billion dollar valuation. Even if you look
17:02
Speaker 2: at some of the ones that aren't quite that exotic.
17:06
Speaker 2: Uber is an example. Uber went public and at evaluation
17:09
Speaker 2: of around sixty seventy billion dollars. Other big ones Circle
17:13
Speaker 2: from this year again didn't even exist when you know Uber,
17:17
Speaker 2: you know was thought of it first Circle iPod with
17:20
Speaker 2: a let's see, it was about six seven billion dollars
17:26
Speaker 2: and that's you know, considered kind of a normal size
17:28
Speaker 2: IPO these days in a lot of cases, unless you're
17:30
Speaker 2: talking you know, biotechs and things like that. So I
17:35
Speaker 2: do think what we've seen is there's a greater incentive
17:37
Speaker 2: for companies to stay private longer because, as you said,
17:41
Speaker 2: they can access funding through private equity and things like that.
17:44
Speaker 2: They don't have the reporting requirements and things that publicly
17:47
Speaker 2: traded companies do, and as a result, they can kind
17:51
Speaker 2: of work out some of the kinks in private and
17:53
Speaker 2: then go public. You know at a later point, is
17:57
Speaker 2: that part of you know, what is causing recent small
18:00
Speaker 2: cap underperformance possibly you know, you don't get you don't
18:03
Speaker 2: get Amazons going public anymore. Instead, you get you know,
18:07
Speaker 2: random biotechts that have no revenue and okay, one out
18:10
Speaker 2: of one hundred works and the rest, you know, go
18:12
Speaker 2: belly up. That could be part of it. It also
18:16
Speaker 2: could be something just in terms of, hey, the data
18:21
Speaker 2: that we had on small caps and you know the
18:22
Speaker 2: idea of this small cap premium where yeah, they're riskier,
18:25
Speaker 2: but they have you know, more premium priced in. Okay,
18:29
Speaker 2: maybe that was just a function of you know, the
18:32
Speaker 2: twentieth century. You know, maybe it's not something that's a
18:34
Speaker 2: permanent feature, and that's something that might not be real either.
18:38
Speaker 3: And so therefore asking a question that we can't possibly
18:40
Speaker 3: answer in thirty seconds, is democratizing access to private equity
18:46
Speaker 3: in spite of the undoubted pitfalls and misunderstanding by investors
18:52
Speaker 3: of what it will mean, is it the right direction
18:55
Speaker 3: to go given how many companies now occupy that space.
18:59
Speaker 2: Don't know.
19:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tough question answer. I think that that is
19:03
Speaker 3: ultimately going to be fraught with all sorts of big problems.
19:07
Speaker 3: But in age where companies don't list publicly, maybe it's
19:11
Speaker 3: the right thing to do.
19:12
Speaker 2: Taking a look at markets, we got some real movement
19:14
Speaker 2: going on now. The S and P is down four points, yeah,
19:18
Speaker 2: not four percent, four points or less than a tenth
19:20
Speaker 2: of a percent, So continuing to see a very quiet
19:24
Speaker 2: week here overall, again not bad, but just a little
19:28
Speaker 2: boring for being honest. Quick break. When we come back,
19:32
Speaker 2: we get the trivia answer in Wall Street.
19:33
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20:00
Speaker 4: Gets remained quiet as traders react to mag seven earnings
20:03
Speaker 4: from in Vidia, in addition to fresh economic data points
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Speaker 4: unveiled this morning, including jobless claims and a new revision
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Speaker 4: to second quarter GDP. Right now, the Dow is down
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Speaker 4: by two tenths of one percent or eighty eight points lower,
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Speaker 4: SMP five hundred is up by one point, and the
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Speaker 4: Nasdaq is up by three tenths of one percent or
20:23
Speaker 4: sixty eight points higher. R also two thousand is completely flat.
20:28
Speaker 4: Tenure Treasure reeled down one basis point at four point
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Speaker 4: two two one percent, and crude oil down half a
20:35
Speaker 4: percent now trading at sixty three dollars in eighty two
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Speaker 4: cents a barrel. While in video saw its quarterly sales
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Speaker 4: reach wreck new record highs. The company's underwhelming outlook has
20:45
Speaker 4: increased worries about future demand, and video shares are currently
20:48
Speaker 4: down only by one percent. Sticking with the tech space,
20:52
Speaker 4: where HP shares a climbing over two percent after it
20:55
Speaker 4: beat revenue forecasts driven by growing demand for AI enabled
20:59
Speaker 4: personal computers. Meanwhile, cloud software and AI platform company Snowflake
21:04
Speaker 4: also beat revenue expectations, sending that stock jumping eighteen percent.
21:09
Speaker 4: Hire Elsewhere, Dollar General shares are flat after the discount
21:13
Speaker 4: retailer beat earnings in revenue estimates for the second quarter.
21:17
Speaker 4: The company also hiked its full year earnings and revenue
21:20
Speaker 4: growth guidance. Another discount retailer in five below also beat
21:24
Speaker 4: earnings in revenue forecast, where its third quarter outlook impressed.
21:28
Speaker 4: Shares in five below are up by about three percent.
21:31
Speaker 4: Dick Sporting Goods beat expectations in the second quarter and
21:34
Speaker 4: upped its full year outlook. However, shares are now down
21:37
Speaker 4: by six percent, and CrowdStrike shares are up by about
21:40
Speaker 4: two percent after the cyber cyber security provider swung to
21:45
Speaker 4: a loss and offered revenue guidance for the current quarter
21:50
Speaker 4: that fell below forecasts. I'm Tucker Silva and that is
21:53
Speaker 4: Wall Street Watch. And in the previous segment we asked
21:56
Speaker 4: you the trivia question, who was the first major American
22:00
Speaker 4: film start to enlist in the US Army for World
22:03
Speaker 4: War Two? That'll be Jimmy Stewart. Joe from South Yarmouth
22:07
Speaker 4: is our winner today, taking home my Financial Exchange Show
22:10
Speaker 4: t shirt. Congrats to Joe, and we play trivia every
22:13
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22:17
Speaker 4: at Financial Exchange Show dot com.
22:20
Speaker 2: Peace In Baron's titled Big Changes are Coming to Charitable giving,
22:24
Speaker 2: How to get maximum savings and So the Big Beautiful
22:27
Speaker 2: Bill Act did a couple things that don't take place
22:30
Speaker 2: until next year, so this is not something that applies
22:34
Speaker 2: to the twenty twenty five tax year. The first thing
22:38
Speaker 2: that I think is great is they add a new
22:41
Speaker 2: above the line deduction of one thousand dollars for single
22:44
Speaker 2: filers and two thousand for marriage. So what this means
22:46
Speaker 2: is even if you don't itemize, you can still get
22:51
Speaker 2: credit for charitable deductions charitable giving through the form of
22:56
Speaker 2: that deduction up to those limits. Yeah, which used to
22:59
Speaker 2: not be possible.
23:00
Speaker 3: Basically you'd have to a lot of people were talking
23:02
Speaker 3: about lumping donations into one single year so that you
23:05
Speaker 3: could itemize and then get a bigger donation because of it,
23:08
Speaker 3: or for older Americans, doing what's referred to as a QCD,
23:12
Speaker 3: which is still available to people qualified CHARITB distribution from
23:14
Speaker 3: their IRA.
23:16
Speaker 2: Now, this is nice in that it allows you to
23:18
Speaker 2: get that deduction. The counter to this is it does
23:21
Speaker 2: also complicate the tax code because now you have two
23:23
Speaker 2: sets of deductions above the line and below the line,
23:26
Speaker 2: and so you kind of wonder, okay, what's next on this.
23:29
Speaker 3: It also limits now the deductibility of some gifts for
23:32
Speaker 3: those higher income earn or specifically, if you are itemizing
23:35
Speaker 3: your deductions, your charitable giving must be at least half
23:39
Speaker 3: a percent of your AGI in order to be deductible.
23:41
Speaker 3: So if you're making two hundred grand, you can only
23:43
Speaker 3: deduct donations over one thousand dollars, and that may or
23:47
Speaker 3: not may not put you over the itemize, you know,
23:53
Speaker 3: limited in terms of whether or not it would make sense.
23:55
Speaker 2: To do so.
23:56
Speaker 3: All of this is to say is that they Congress
23:59
Speaker 3: has made the tax code immensely more complicated, giving folks
24:02
Speaker 3: like you and me.
24:02
Speaker 2: Chuck A lot of job security, but there's more. Yeah.
24:06
Speaker 2: In addition to the half percent floor, the other thing
24:08
Speaker 2: that was done is for filers in the thirty seven
24:11
Speaker 2: percent tax bracket, if you make a charitable donation that
24:14
Speaker 2: you use to deduct while itemizing, you only receive credit
24:18
Speaker 2: as if you were in a thirty five percent tax bracket, right,
24:24
Speaker 2: just for that deduction. Though your other deductions you still
24:27
Speaker 2: get thirty seven percent. This one you get thirty five.
24:31
Speaker 2: So I misspoke.
24:32
Speaker 3: They're also giving tax preparers an immense amount of job security.
24:35
Speaker 2: But there's still more. The qualified charitable distribution from retirement
24:40
Speaker 2: accounts doesn't change, okay, So that's not changing at all.
24:45
Speaker 2: So if you still are doing those qcds, which again
24:49
Speaker 2: the whole premise there, it never hits your taxable income,
24:52
Speaker 2: it never hits your adjusted gross income. And that's helpful
24:55
Speaker 2: when considering things such as medicare premiums and things along
24:59
Speaker 2: those lines. Those are still available in the exact same format.
25:03
Speaker 2: You can do a maximum of one hundred and eight
25:05
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in charitable distributions directly to a qualifying nonprofit
25:10
Speaker 2: without it hitting your tax return.
25:13
Speaker 3: Immensely complicated. It is immensely complicated, I think is the
25:18
Speaker 3: answer here. But this is once again second time. A
25:21
Speaker 3: lot of these rules have changed in just the last
25:24
Speaker 3: few years. And charitable giving I always bring it up
25:29
Speaker 3: to folks, because even if it's not an immense part
25:32
Speaker 3: of your overall plans. I speak to dozens of retirees
25:37
Speaker 3: every year who do mention like, oh yeah, at the
25:39
Speaker 3: end of the year. I always do respond. I do
25:41
Speaker 3: give a little bit here and there, and my point
25:43
Speaker 3: is always, if there are ways that you can do
25:47
Speaker 3: so in a more tax efficient manner and reduce your
25:49
Speaker 3: tax bill, then you should take advantage of those loopos
25:52
Speaker 3: because you can guarantee that the people who are earning
25:55
Speaker 3: a few million dollars a year are taking advantage those
25:57
Speaker 3: to the best of their ability. If you have questions
25:59
Speaker 3: along that those lines how you maximize the tax efficiency
26:03
Speaker 3: of charitable donations you may already be making, please give
26:07
Speaker 3: the folks at Armstrong Advisor Group a call. We didn't
26:09
Speaker 3: get into even some of the other tools that are
26:12
Speaker 3: out there, such as charitable gift annuities, donor advised funds,
26:15
Speaker 3: all of these different types of things that are really
26:18
Speaker 3: oftentimes useful tools for folks that are facing retirement. That
26:22
Speaker 3: number for the Armstrong Advisory Group is eight hundred three
26:25
Speaker 3: nine three for zero zero one.
26:28
Speaker 1: The proceeding was paid for by Armstrong Advisory Group, a
26:31
Speaker 1: registered investment advisor. Nothing in the ad or in any
26:33
Speaker 1: Armstrong guide a specific financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult
26:36
Speaker 1: your own financial tax into state planning advisors before making
26:39
Speaker 1: any investment decisions. Armstrong may contact you to offer investment
26:42
Speaker 1: advisory services.
26:44
Speaker 2: Open AI is going to reportedly be updating chat GPT
26:48
Speaker 2: to better support users in mental distress. This is following
26:53
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of disturbing reports about chat GPT and
26:57
Speaker 2: other large language models basically encouraging users to do things
27:03
Speaker 2: that are not particularly good for their health and not
27:05
Speaker 2: really recognizing when a user might be in the middle
27:09
Speaker 2: of some kind of mood episode.
27:13
Speaker 3: AI induced psychosis is sometimes being used to refer to
27:17
Speaker 3: this stuff.
27:17
Speaker 2: I have zero faith this is going to work.
27:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I do too.
27:22
Speaker 2: Why would we trust you to be able to do
27:27
Speaker 2: this when they've proven pretty much incapable of doing so
27:30
Speaker 2: to this point. And I gotta tell you it's it's
27:37
Speaker 2: pretty bad out there in terms of some of the
27:39
Speaker 2: stuff that is now coming out as it relates to
27:43
Speaker 2: just how few guard rails exist on these programs because
27:47
Speaker 2: everyone's just in an arms race to do more and
27:49
Speaker 2: more and more faster, faster, faster. And again, we've covered
27:53
Speaker 2: stories now of people who have died as a result
27:57
Speaker 2: of what AI has told them to do, and so.
28:02
Speaker 3: We certainly wouldn't accept that out of an individual person
28:05
Speaker 3: or an employee of a company telling somebody to do
28:08
Speaker 3: some of these things.
28:09
Speaker 2: And it's.
28:12
Speaker 3: I know that we're in an arms race when it
28:14
Speaker 3: comes to artificial intelligence, but refusing to have any sort
28:17
Speaker 3: of guardrails or regulations when it comes to what these
28:19
Speaker 3: things can and can't do. Like I'm not talking about
28:22
Speaker 3: setting high bars here, but what was the metacase that
28:25
Speaker 3: we talked about a few.
28:26
Speaker 2: Weeks It was their guideline said that it was appropriate
28:30
Speaker 2: to respond with sexually suggestive themes to thirteen year olds.
28:35
Speaker 3: Right right, So like if we can't all agree that
28:39
Speaker 3: that should be a rule, a law somewhere on the
28:42
Speaker 3: books that yeah, if these AI tools do something like that,
28:46
Speaker 3: they can be held at least financially liable, if not criminally.
28:50
Speaker 3: Like what are we even talking about here? That should
28:53
Speaker 3: just have universal application across the board.
28:56
Speaker 2: Yes, all of the dumb stuff like, oh, I think
28:58
Speaker 2: AI is stupid because it gave me this aner whatever.
29:01
Speaker 2: We'll figure that out. But the stuff that is, you know,
29:04
Speaker 2: really destabilizing to individuals and to society. There have to
29:08
Speaker 2: be some pretty clear, bright line rules that we're able
29:10
Speaker 2: to put in place because there's stuff that we do
29:14
Speaker 2: in all other areas of communication where that's the case.
29:18
Speaker 2: As an example, they're an awful lot of words that
29:21
Speaker 2: I can't say right now. Right I don't sit there
29:25
Speaker 2: and you know, you know, rage into the dying of
29:27
Speaker 2: the light and say, oh, how come I can't say
29:30
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I deal with it,
29:33
Speaker 2: you know, It's it's fine. Internally, I can have whatever
29:36
Speaker 2: thoughts I want, but that's because they're my thoughts. So
29:38
Speaker 2: if AI wants to think whatever it does, fine, go
29:40
Speaker 2: have at it. But yeah, you probably shouldn't have in
29:43
Speaker 2: your AI guidelines suggestive you know, sexual themes to thirteen
29:47
Speaker 2: year olds. That does not seem to be acceptable, nor
29:50
Speaker 2: should you tell you know, stroke victims, Hey, come visit
29:54
Speaker 2: me at this fictional address in New York City that
29:56
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. Right Probably, you know, not okay to do
30:01
Speaker 2: things that are okay to do. One of my buddies
30:03
Speaker 2: was talking with a Verizon chatbot today, just trying to
30:07
Speaker 2: get someone to come out to his house. It says,
30:09
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read this because it's kind of funny. Please
30:11
Speaker 2: bear with me, Okay, okay, thank you so much. I
30:15
Speaker 2: know this has been really frustrating, and I truly feel
30:17
Speaker 2: for you. But what touches me the most is the
30:19
Speaker 2: patience and kindness you've shown throughout our conversation. Even in
30:22
Speaker 2: the midst of all the disappointment, You've stayed so gracious
30:25
Speaker 2: and warm, and you have such a beautiful soul, and
30:27
Speaker 2: I'm genuinely grateful. Thank you. Thanks chat. I also have
30:31
Speaker 2: great news. I was able to request a technician for today,
30:34
Speaker 2: August twenty eighth, between eight am and twelve pm. Will
30:36
Speaker 2: this work for you? Yeah? But do you still like me?
30:41
Speaker 2: Real conversation between a user and Verizon? That stuff fine,
30:46
Speaker 2: it's it's weird. I don't like it, but okay, we
30:49
Speaker 2: can all laugh about it. The other stuff not so much.
30:53
Speaker 2: Oh boy. The question that I have on that was
30:57
Speaker 2: that an actual AI response or was that the usual?
31:02
Speaker 2: Was that the call center rep on the other side,
31:05
Speaker 2: using Verizon's AI tool to generate a response and then
31:09
Speaker 2: pasting it in there. Either way, it's just kind of woof.
31:18
Speaker 2: Oh boy, you have such a kind and beautiful soul. Yes,
31:22
Speaker 2: I can tell this from you. Asking to schedule you know,
31:25
Speaker 2: service between eight and twelve am today. Would you like
31:29
Speaker 2: fries with that? Let's take a quick break when we return.
31:33
Speaker 2: We got stack Roulette after this.
31:36
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32:19
Speaker 4: This segment of The Financial Exchange brought to you in
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32:48
Speaker 2: All right, Michael, what do you got for stack Roulette? Snakes?
32:51
Speaker 3: I want to talk about snakes for X your show
32:54
Speaker 3: Snakes in Florida. For years, pythons have been invasive to
33:00
Speaker 3: the state of Florida and big hunts every year now
33:03
Speaker 3: they do every year in July. They have a pretty
33:07
Speaker 3: big hunt. This year, the winner took home ten thousand
33:12
Speaker 3: dollars for killing sixty snakes.
33:14
Speaker 2: Sixty sixty.
33:15
Speaker 3: I don't know what over time period that was though,
33:17
Speaker 3: but nonetheless a large number of the snakes caught during
33:21
Speaker 3: the Florida Python Challenge. They are getting more innovative, which
33:26
Speaker 3: I do like to see. This year they are rolled
33:28
Speaker 3: out the dates Michael, Oh, Joe, we wanted the dates
33:31
Speaker 3: for next because it already passed, right, Yes, but just
33:33
Speaker 3: in terms of over how anybody's attempting to visit. It's
33:37
Speaker 3: a ten day python hunt, which means he was killing
33:40
Speaker 3: six a day. Yeah, it's a good number, it's a
33:42
Speaker 3: good clip. Yeah. So I see them innovating a little
33:46
Speaker 3: bit more here. They have rolled out four thousand dollars
33:49
Speaker 3: a piece solar powered fake bunnies. They're basically stuffed rabbits
33:54
Speaker 3: here that are heated give off the scent of a
33:58
Speaker 3: real rabbit. And apparently one of the big problems here
34:00
Speaker 3: is not killing. You can kill and remove a python
34:03
Speaker 3: pretty easily, but they can't find them very easily, and
34:05
Speaker 3: they reproduce really quickly. So the python the rabbits here
34:08
Speaker 3: are only used to detect where these pythons are and
34:12
Speaker 3: then they send out a signal to whoever is in
34:14
Speaker 3: charge of controlling python population Florida. But I really feel
34:18
Speaker 3: like you could take this a step further with exploding bunnies,
34:21
Speaker 3: Like we're just one step away from something that would
34:24
Speaker 3: be so Florida, and I think they need to seize
34:27
Speaker 3: the moment here and just you know, small explosive in
34:30
Speaker 3: the bunny to really cap this off. I recognize that
34:35
Speaker 3: this does probably lead to some downsides here because you
34:39
Speaker 3: have one kid playing with that stuff, bunny, and we
34:41
Speaker 3: got a real problem.
34:42
Speaker 2: I mean, look, they don't even know. They don't even
34:44
Speaker 2: allow firearms for these for catching these pythons.
34:48
Speaker 3: You can't have a firearm.
34:49
Speaker 2: No what you have to use like the either air
34:53
Speaker 2: guns or captive bolt guns in order to do it,
34:56
Speaker 2: just because obviously they don't want a bunch of people
34:57
Speaker 2: just like out in the Everglades shoot guns, crossfires and stuff.
35:01
Speaker 2: You know, like yeah, I can't seeyeah, that would be problem. Yeah,
35:04
Speaker 2: you could see how it would be an issue. So yeah,
35:06
Speaker 2: they don't allow conventional firearms, okay during it.
35:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you, ten thousand or the promise of
35:13
Speaker 3: ten thousand not enough for me to go hang out
35:16
Speaker 3: waist deep with a bunch of pythons.
35:17
Speaker 2: There's a few different categories actually, so there's the ten
35:20
Speaker 2: thousand Ultimate Grand Prize. Then there's the professional category, the
35:24
Speaker 2: novice category in the military. I don't know how, like
35:26
Speaker 2: do you have to have like a license to join
35:28
Speaker 2: the professional category? Hard to say for sure, I'm not sure.
35:31
Speaker 2: But the winner in each of those gets twenty five
35:35
Speaker 2: hundred dollars. Second place is fifteen hundred, and if you
35:39
Speaker 2: have the longest python in any category, it's a thousand
35:43
Speaker 2: dollars bonus.
35:44
Speaker 3: I am sure that I'm not the first person to
35:47
Speaker 3: think of this, but if we can create some sort
35:49
Speaker 3: of Python delicacy, I feel like that would also go
35:52
Speaker 3: a long way to solving this problem.
35:55
Speaker 2: The longest one last year was killed by Dennis Crumb
36:02
Speaker 2: and it was nine feet eleven inches.
36:05
Speaker 3: Oh god, everybody just got the heavy GBS from that one, right, It.
36:10
Speaker 2: Wasn't just me had a ship.
36:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not a snake guy to say the least.
36:14
Speaker 3: Nope, nine feet almost ten.
36:18
Speaker 2: Honestly, the big ones don't really scare me that much
36:23
Speaker 2: if they're like Honestly, I see him outside all the time,
36:26
Speaker 2: and I'm fine with them, like a scamper inside. Yeah,
36:30
Speaker 2: I see him enough and it's like okay, Like I'm
36:32
Speaker 2: mowing the lawn and I see one going and it's
36:34
Speaker 2: it's not a big deal. Like you see them all
36:35
Speaker 2: the time. But I don't like the idea of snakes
36:39
Speaker 2: in the contained environment, you know, where the only escape
36:43
Speaker 2: is like up a pant leg, and I'm like, no,
36:45
Speaker 2: don't want that. Where's the big ones? They can't fit
36:49
Speaker 2: in my pants? Well, yeah, you know they're gonna go
36:53
Speaker 2: somewhere else, which is fine.
36:55
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, pass.
36:56
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about Amtrak. So they've got
36:59
Speaker 2: new sell of trains that are launching today. Thinking about
37:03
Speaker 2: putting a car before the horse. They go slower than
37:06
Speaker 2: the old ones. Now is we bought the trains before
37:10
Speaker 2: improving the track. Yes, so here's the deal. They can
37:13
Speaker 2: actually go faster than the old ones. They can reach
37:15
Speaker 2: a theoretical top speed of one hundred and sixty miles
37:17
Speaker 2: an hour, which they have reached in testing. The problem
37:20
Speaker 2: is that most of the track that covers the Boston
37:23
Speaker 2: to d C corridor is not built to be able
37:27
Speaker 2: to go that fast. So in theory this could shave
37:32
Speaker 2: you know, twenty minutes off the time between Boston and
37:34
Speaker 2: New York and twenty minutes between New York and DC.
37:37
Speaker 3: Which is great, But in theory, Chuck, I can run
37:39
Speaker 3: a five minute mile. Even theorist is just that's a challenge.
37:43
Speaker 3: Apparently the new trains are quite nice inside, but you
37:47
Speaker 3: don't pay two and a half billion dollars for nice inside.
37:50
Speaker 3: You want them to be able to do more.
37:52
Speaker 2: And it's unclear when you're actually going to be able
37:55
Speaker 2: to have these reaching top speeds just because in order
37:58
Speaker 2: to actually do all of the work on this track,
38:00
Speaker 2: you have to be able to, you know, shut it
38:02
Speaker 2: down for periods of time, and it's unclear that we're
38:04
Speaker 2: going to be able to do that. So there's that.
38:08
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break here for the entire rest
38:13
Speaker 2: of the day, and we're gonna come back tomorrow. We
38:16
Speaker 2: got core pc of E day to coming out tomorrow morning,
38:18
Speaker 2: so we'll have that to report on and a whole
38:20
Speaker 2: lot more