n this episode of Cents of Things, Jeff Kikel and Ron Lang break down what’s happening right now — and where the real opportunities may be. We cover: • Why the market recovered faster than expected • The difference between timing the market vs staying invested • Migration trends across the U.S. and what they mean • How innovation drives long-term market growth • Housing market signals you need to watch • Inflation data that surprised economists • Oil supply trends and global demand shifts This episode connects real-world data with investing strategy — so you can make smarter decisions moving forward. Chapters / Timecodes 0:00 Introduction and market outlook 1:00 This Week in History 8:30 U.S. migration trends and population shifts 11:30 Innovation cycles and market growth 14:00 Time in the market vs timing the market 17:00 Market recovery and missed opportunities 19:30 Housing market trends and concerns 21:30 Inflation (PPI) surprises 23:00 Oil supply and global demand 25:00 Final thoughts and outlook
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter 1: Introduction and market outlook
Hello folks. Welcome to another episode of The Sense of Things with Jeff and Ron. On today’s
show, Ron’s going to give us what happened in history first. Then he’s going to go over some
things about migration within the United States of states that have gained, states that have lost. I
think you’ll be interested in that. He’s also got some really good stuff on innovation and gains in
the stock market when we’ve had innovation, which I think hopefully we’ll talk a little bit about
what I think is one of the most interesting things in future here. And then he’s got some charts on
time in the market versus timing the market and what’s been going on with the recovery we’ve seen
that both of us agree happened way faster than we could have planned on. And I wish I even had
even more cash to have put into the market this month because it’s really taken off. I’m going to cover some economic stuff from this week and I think there’s some really interesting trends
Chapter 2: This Week in History
going on in the economics. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back on in just a second. Hey everybody.
Welcome to the show, Ron. How are you, my friend? Good. Spring is in full bloom here. I don’t know what it is by you. Um heading back to Philly next week, which you and I will meet up. And
the weather is mediocre back there right now. Kind of. I know. I looked hoping it’s going to tick up by the time we get out there. Yeah, it’s a middle e at this point. So,
we shall see. I hear you. All right. Here we go. So this week in history, I got to tell you,
we got a lot of stuff here. We’re going to buzz through them. So here we go. So George Washington signs his first veto. Nice. Declining a bill that would have provided more
seats to the northern states. 1866, Ulissiz S. Grant arrested for speeding in his horse buggy
newspaper words. Now my curious is what kind of a speed gun did they have to that calibrated that?
Was he just weaving in and out of traffic? He was a drinker, so you God only knows. But
at least he didn’t get a DUI. No. Oh my god. 1866, ASPCA is founded. So I thought that was
interesting. Wow. That’s a long time. All the way back then. I know. I know. 1881,
Billy the Kid convicted of murder and then broke out of jail. General Lee surrendered. I think
that’s supposed to be 1865. That’s 1865. Yeah, my bad. 1896. I have some pictures of this at the
very end. The first modern Olympic Games begins in Greece. I’m talking about this. We got it in
the US next year. It was no this, you know, next year. Next year. Next year. This year is all the
soccer stuff. Correct. Yep. All right. 1954. Bill Haley and his comics record rock around the clock.
What famous TV show used that as the opening to their show? Happy Days. Very good. 1959,
NASA introduces first group of astronauts. Perfect timing with everything that’s going on with the Aremis. Yep. Rewatched the right stuff this weekend, actually. I love it. You could pick
that up at any point in that movie. Absolutely. 1961, Yuri Gagarin from USSR is the first human in
space. And then they killed him a few years later, bringing him back from space. 1970, Sam Shepard,
the inspiration for the fugitive, dies of liver failure. I did not know that was based on a true
story. No, I didn’t either. Interesting. Yeah, I actually read the article on this. I’m like,
wow. And the modern ver and the modern version of the movie awesome with Tommy Lee Jones. Yep.
Then Harrison Ford, one of Harrison Ford’s better movies. I’m not the biggest Harrison Ford fan, but I was good in that. But the thing, this is during the 60s, they had the Fugitive with David Jansen.
He played the Fugitive. Yeah. 1970, Paul McCartney announces break from the Beatles. 1970, again,
this was the same week Apollo 13 launches towards the moon. We all know what happened. Four, Hank
Aaron breaks Babe Roose home run record. I always love baseball trivia. Do you know what pitcher
first? Do you know against what team? against what pitcher? I have no clue. It was against the Los
Angeles Dodgers and it was against left-hander Al Downing. I that I that wouldn’t even be floating
around in the useless information in my head. Sorry, I am full of useless. I I can’t even use my trick of going Yeah. drinking a couple beers and all of a sudden all the useless trivia pops
out. Wouldn’t have popped out at all. Baseball and movies. I’m full of useless information.
All right, here’s more baseball for you. Frank Robinson becomes the first black manager of the Cleveland Indians. Oh, he was actually a player manager. Yeah, there’s not a lot of those out
there, but yeah. And then another use piece of useless trivia. Who was the last player manager?
I have no idea. Baseball is not my Huh. Rose. Yeah, we know how that ended. 76 Howard Hughes
dies. Yep. 1976. One of my favorite alltime movies, All the President’s Men. I’m not a big
Robert Redford fan, but that was actually a really good movie for him. Fantastic. And actually, I’ve been told many times of people, you got to read the book. I’m like, the movie was damn good. No,
no, you got to read the book. Yeah. Well, 197 also 780 pages. So, yeah, I don’t think so. Just think
about what they had to delete from there. I mean, with all the information. Yeah. Another baseball.
Ken Forch throws a no hitter matching a feat done by his brother Bob Forch who actually had the
uh the better career 80 post-it note is invented and sold to the market. Now here’s a t here’s a
trivia point for you. What is another 3M product that was created by the mother of a famous Yes.
White out rockstar white out. Yeah, I think it was Peter Torque, was it? No. No, it’s Peter Nz. Peter
Nesb. Yes. His mom. Yeah. Yep. I knew that. I knew that one a long time. Full of useless information.
Come on. That’s exactly right. 1989, Jim Abbott makes debut and was the first without a right
hand. And actually, people don’t realize this. He was actually a pretty good hitter in college, even though he didn’t have a right hand, but and actually ended up throwing a no hitter later on. I
think it was with the Yankees. All right. You want to impress me, do it with both hand or no hands.
Hey, somebody will do that with their foot one day. They will. 1994, Kurt Cobain dies by suicide.
Another tragic day. Idiot. And he was 27. Also, if you know what what he would have done had he lived
much longer. That’s for sure. I I don’t know. You could go back. Jimmyi Hendricks, Janice Joplin. I
I I just Some of the biggest geniuses ever have just been idiots and killed themselves or just
self-sabotage. Yeah. Jim Morrison, another one. I I’m a big time Doors fan. So, very frustrating.
Yeah. Like I said, it’s just frustrating when I’m like, you would have had such an amazing and then you have the guys from the the Rolling Stones and I think that every day they wake up and go,
“Good God, I’m still here.” And it’s funny because the one guy in the band that really was not a
partyier, he was not a a womanizer was Charlie Watts and he was the first one to die. Yeah,
exactly. Actually, Brian Jones was if you want to look back at it and he was a genius in many ways,
but of all the years, Charlie Watts was the first one to pass. Like I said, I think the other two
original founders, I think every day wake up, look in the mirror, and go, “Holy [ __ ] I’m still here.” Keith Richards has been off alcohol for years and I think he said it was tougher for
Chapter 3: U.S. migration trends and population shifts
him I think to quit smoking than it was drinking. Yeah. How he hasn’t turned to dust yet. I have no
idea. I really honestly I think there’s been I I think at one point in his life he had a full blood
transfusion if I remember correctly because he had so much garbage system. Yeah, exactly. All right,
here we go. Let’s get into some meat here. Oh, so here are some pictures Olympics. I actually
had these and then when it was the first week I’m like I had to go into the my archives and get these because I thought it was amazing. Look at how they lined up for a sprint race and look
how they were dressed for a marathon. Remember they didn’t even have sneakers back then. No, they had basically these little leather they effectively I think they had the spike traction
shoes. I don’t think they even had that. Yeah, they ran effectively barefoot. These were some tough dudes. Yeah. All right. So, here we go. So, migration United States. So, I don’t think
anything here surprises me. I know in the last six or seven years, Phoenix metro, where I am right
now, has had population growth over the other top six cities. New York, LA, Chicago, Houston,
then Phoenix, and Philadelphia all had negative population growth. But if you were looking at
the overall state, New York, the what were the two biggest tax states? New York and California.
Look at Massachusetts. I didn’t realize that. Holy crap. Yeah. Big tax state. But here, look at this.
People moving to Delaware. 54%. That is amazing. Cuz I’m like, it’s a really small state. Yeah.
When you look, cuz we’re be up in Philly and we’re going to try and do a little run through to check
Delaware off of our list of states that we’ve been in. And I’m like, there’s nothing to do there.
Well, Wilmington’s the biggest city and it’s kind of eh but yeah, look, Texas with a nice bump. Uh
Tennessee, look, people moving to Tennessee for years. I thought that was interesting. But yeah,
notice there’s a lot of people from Texas that moved during the pandemic and later moved to
Tennessee because they it was like, okay, our prices in real estate went up just ridiculous
and it wasn’t happening in Tennessee. saw a ton of people move there. Yeah. But here’s the crazy
thing. Northern states, people are moving out of there. Look at the growth here. Idaho, 63%,
but South Carolina had the biggest was 79.7%. Wow, that’s amazing. And and you hear so much
about Florida and that’s really not Yeah. But it’s pretty saturated where you can live, too. But the
one thing I thought was interesting, I know it’s an expensive state to live in. Hawaii had negative
population growth. I thought that was interesting. But you got to remember too, you wiped out a
pretty big city in Maui. So, a lot of people just went, “Okay, I’m this is it. I’m out of here.” At
Chapter 4: Innovation cycles and market growth
that point, yeah, it’s not a ton, but I think it’s just massively and it’s interesting. Even Alaska
lost a ton of people. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, and you can only live in a few parts of Alaska,
too. Yeah. But there’s people that like, “Oh, this is the greatest thing. I love living out in the country or whatever.” I’m like, “Not during the winter.” Yeah. When it’s cold, like 12 months
of the year, not seven months of the year, it’s winter. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Then,
I thought this was interesting. If we look all the way out to the late 20 19 when you look at select
innovations that came out what happened in the market. Now this was interesting. I didn’t think
the microwave came out until the 70s. I thought that stood out to me. Now jet flight came out in
1939 but it really didn’t become prevalent until the 50s and 60s. Uh nuclear power we know in 42.
But I look look at this like with the space age it basically if you remember the 70s were just the
malaise following the moon. It was like the moon landing and like all right we’re done. Also had
the oil embargo and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. High inflation. It was just everything bad for a
decade. Yep. And then you take a look and then the 80s, right? And then tech took over. You had
technology had Microsoft the web, right? Or even know that was really the mid 90s. and Al Gore. So,
yeah. Yeah. Thank Al Gore. Yeah. Yeah. He just said yes. You had Google in 98. I don’t know why
they put the Prius here, but I guess that was the first mainstream EV. Wikipedia, I thought was I still use it today, but Facebook was 2004. That’s what it was out there. Really didn’t become
mainstream until a few years later. Yeah. I mean, you had a couple of the others that were really on
top. Yeah. iPhone. I my opinion was I think the catalyst for a lot of stuff and then obviously
Uber and I don’t know why Uber in 2009 is a big innovation thing but the Tesla certainly in 2012
I remember when that thing was like selling for 20 to 30 bucks a share pre-split and it was just like
yeah they’re a nice little company they’re grow you had so many attempts at alternatives to the
big three and they’ve all failed miserably until Tesla came along and Elon just went,
“You know what? I’m just barreling forward full boore.” It’s interesting that because I’ve got a
Chapter 5: Time in the market vs timing the market
client that’s a huge Tesla guy and he’s scrambling to buy the the model he likes, which I think it’s
the Model X or whatever. He’s he got the plaid because he was like, “I like that style. I don’t
like the one, but they’re basically going down to one ugly model and the ugly truck and that’s it.”
But people still buy them. Really isn’t involved with Tesla. He’s much more involved with SpaceX
robotics and the AI company. Yeah. You know, it’s Hey, I did it. Time to move on. Yeah, we’re still
we’re still going. We’re making money. I’m off doing things that I do best, which is But it is
funding everything for him. Yeah. Yep. Hear. All right. So, this chart, if you have never seen this
before, you you should have. And if you’ve already seen it, it bears repeating. So this is about not
timing the market but timing the market. And if you take a look really look, we’ll see how this pans out this year, but last year people panic. People sold out. And then one day the market was
up 10%. I believe it was April 8th last year. And if you missed that one day and then decided to get
back in, you didn’t lose, but you missed out big. And it’s one of those things. And now right now,
I look, this war is far from over. I don’t believe it’s, but as long as the bombs are under control
and everything else and we’re not going to blow them back to the stone age, the market may hold.
We’ll see. I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re going to reach new highs in the next few months. I just think we’re going to be walking on eggshells here. But again, you don’t want to pull your money
out of the market. You want to add on the way down to high quality positions. Your thoughts? Totally
agree. I think the end of combat type operation where we’re bombing the living crap out of them.
I I think we’re pretty well done with that at this point. You can see the administration’s kind of
shifting gears into a new phase which is blockade their ports. They basically have no money coming
in. And then now with with the Treasury Department working on the sanctions and everything else,
pretty severe sanctions, they’re just going to choke them out at this point. They beat him up pretty bad. Now they’re just going to choke him out. So yeah, but the straight of Harmuz is not
open. It is open. It’s just people are scared because they think that these idiots are going
to fire off a rocket or something. No, it’s not. It’s not really free and open. It is open. It is
free and open. It’s the insurance companies that are blocking it because they’ve been running ships through there. Some of the Yeah, I the claim that there was all these mines and all that. There is
none. The US Navy ran back and ran back and forth through there and found no mines. So, it’s mainly
just the companies not insuring these ships. And yeah, there’s always that chance that some idiot
with a an idiot with a rocket fires one off from shore into it, but they have no navy. They have
Chapter 6: Market recovery and missed opportunities
no air force. They really don’t have a leg to stand on at this point is my take on it. So,
I think we’re closer to the end. They then they should have done a death kneel by now and they have not. That’s because they’re idiots. Okay. But yeah, they’re they’re they’re literally I look at
it at this point, they are literally nuts at this point and they don’t care about their people.
They are not going to give in. I I guarantee you they’re not going to give in, but they’re going to have no choice at some point. So, let me uh let me quickly whip through the stuff that I have here.
Let me get this thing up on the screen. So, just looking at some of the economic data this week,
I there’s some things I have concerns about that I think we need to keep an eye on. I’ve been
keeping track of home sales and things like that because it’s such a big driver of our economy. So,
looking at existing home sales this week, this came out on Monday. So, this is all finally current data. We’re through the pandemic lag stuff came in this week. Prior prior month,
we were at 4.09 09 million of existing home sales. We dropped to 3.98. So, it’s not a dramatic drop,
but it’s a trend that you don’t really want to be on. We’re down 3.6% month over month,
1% year-over-year. When you look at, let me get this out of the way. Housing market index. This
is another one that kind of is coming in on the bottom end, actually below consensus,
below the previous month. So, this is something I want to keep an eye on because like I said, it’s such a driver across the board because people getting into new homes or start to go
to Home Depot and blah blah blah. It’s just a lot of things that happen and if that’s slowing down,
that really hurts the economy overall. Now, that’s the bad, the good PPI. March, we were full on in
the war. PPI came out this week month over month 0.5% which the market kind of went what how could
that happen consensus was 1.2 too. Once again, even with food and energy and stuff like that,
it’s still it’s really well better than what had been anticipated by the hand ringing economists
that are out there. So, we’ll see what happens this month in April. This is the funny one, and I love the consensus outlook here. Manufacturing seems sluggish with the index
Chapter 7: Housing market trends and concerns
barely in contraction territory at minus 2.0 0 for April down from an already unimpressive
minus.2 in March. Yeah, it came in at 11 Empire State. So, oops. Got to love economists. Yeah,
boy. Really caught that one right on the money there, bud. Import export prices once again. So, wait, hold on. So, why didn’t they change the Oh, I guess the consensus was before the actual. Yeah,
consensus is always there before. Then they give the actual which makes them look like complete idiots. Import export prices once again. Okay, what’s the theory? Everything is hard. The
the economists are hand ringing because of the conflict. Consensus was 2.1% increase in import
prices. It was point8 1.7% in export prices, 1.6, which is good because we want export prices to be
up a little bit, but import prices have been down pretty significantly here. Uh, last but not least,
and this is the probably the most concerning thing for me when you see the next slide,
Energy Information Administration put out crude oil inventories week overw week. Prior week we
were 3.1 million barrels. This week we’re million barrels. I don’t know how you can have a negative.
We’re down basically almost a million barrels from the previous week effectively is what it
means. So why is that concerning to me? this because as of the beginning of the blockade,
which of course the blockades up here, this is the line of ships coming to the Gulf of America
from every place because with this shut down or this not really transiting traffic, these
guys are going, we need oil from someplace and it’s coming from us. The challenge we have, and
I think the administration realizes this, they’re having a call with the big oil companies to say,
Chapter 8: Inflation (PPI) surprises
“Hey guys, you’ve got to increase production at this point so that we can handle this need for
oil coming in.” And I think we’re going to have to even if prices come down, they’re going to have to
stay high on production to keep basically because I’m guessing the vast majority of these tankers
are probably heading back this direction to Asia at that point and Europe. Yeah. and Europe. Yeah,
that’s all these ones over here that emptied out in Europe are coming over here, which I would assume these probably came to America anyhow at that point because it’s certainly
the shorter distance to come. So, that’s that’s my take on it for the week. So, like I said,
I think some things to to be cognizant of. Real estate worries me and I think oil supplies. We are
a major supplier. We do 25% of the world’s oil. By the end of this, I think we might end up doing
more because I think a lot of people are going to go, “Hey, it’s just it’s not worth it.” Yes, it costs a little bit more to transit that distance, but you don’t have the risk premium on
if you don’t. Yeah. Like I said, look, I didn’t hear any deadline or line in the sand and for
anything to be done, but I think Congress is going to get involved here. I don’t know to what extent
because they need more budget and appropriations. I don’t know how that’s going to go. Yeah. Yeah,
it’s we’ve got to we’ve got to fund our operations and stuff like that. So, yeah, that may be the
fight over appropriations and all that, but once again, there’s vehicles to to get through that
Chapter 9: Oil supply and global demand
point at this point. Great. Look forward to seeing y’all. We’re Ron and I’ll probably do a quick little short video next week. We’re going to take the week off from doing a show,
but we may do a a quick surprise video while we’re in Philly together. So, make sure you keep an eye
out. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and we will see you guys back here the very next time.