hello Sense of Things it’s Jeff and Ron here for  another episode of the Sense of Things podcast  

blog YouTube show whatever you want to call us  this week we got a lot of good stuff we’ve got  

some funny current events that happened within  the last week uh from around the world i think  

you’ll get a good giggle on these ron’s got  some great stuff for us talking a little bit  

about the leading economic indicators which we  haven’t talked about in a while and circling  

back to some stuff we talked about last year i’m  going to cover a little bit on GDP and tariffs  

and all that kind of good stuff there’s some  things that have come out recently from the  

the World Bank and everything else estimating  growth which is not necessarily a bad thing  

and we’ll talk about some global trends going on  so stay tuned we will be right back on in just a

[Music] [Applause]

second hello everybody welcome to the show ron  how you doing bud good as we always like to say  

never a dull moment no the court struck down all  the tariffs the market flew in the pre-market  

and now it’s settled in again basically what  it comes down to is we have no idea what the  

hell’s going on we have no idea where this is  going and by the way listening to a lot of the  

earnings announcements and whatever the CEOs and  the CFOs are just shrugging their shoulders how  

can we give you guidance you don’t know what’s  going on yeah and it’s funny because I’ve had  

of course when the market was going to  hell I had clients calling me when the  

market taken back off oh my god are we back in  the market yes we’re in the market we’re lower  

layering in but I’m not pulling back on some  of the bond exposure we have even though the  

bond market’s been crazy because I’m like guys  you’re going to be calling me because then we’re  

going to go through tariff craziness you know  like the president tweeting out or whatever  

truth socialing on the Friday before Memorial  Day oh we’re going to tariff Europe at 50% all  

of a sudden the market went like that so until  we get some shity and stability and maybe it’s  

July 9th I don’t know I just think we’re going to  be all think about it hold on one second based on  

the court decision last night Yep what What is  encouraging any of these countries now to move  

any faster towards a trade deal yep zero yep  they could appeal they’re trying to get a stay  

but if the court basically says “Sorry you got  to go through Congress you can’t do this as an  

executive order.” These countries are going to be  laughing at us yeah which once again I think it’s  

going to be a fight that ends up back in the seat  of the Supreme Court of does the judicial branch  

have the ability to override the executive branch  no here’s the key factor we can get off of it yeah  

the administration said it’s a national emergency  that we have to do the tariffs now for almost 250  

years of existence anything that’s trade or  tariff related has had to go through Congress  

that’s the only legal I don’t say precedent but  that’s the legal argument at this point can the  

president say it’s a national emergency or I’m  sorry you have to follow protocol that’s what  

it comes down to period yep i don’t know i think  it’s it’s an interesting situation that we’re in  

who knows it could get mired in the court system  which honestly probably wouldn’t be necessarily  

a bad thing for those of us that are out here  in the stock market all right some stability  

all right let’s let’s have a little bit of fun  here let me get my screen up and I will share

okay can you see that i can okay um May 23rd  2025 a cow was found alive on an Australian  

beach after floodwaters carrying it 11 miles  down to this beach the cow was out there doing  

a little surfing hanging out with the seagulls  at this point obviously he wasn’t on a surfboard  

no of course not i don’t know why they would put  a picture like that amazing with that weight and  

the way it put That’s amazing it survived oh I  know it’s hilarious and it that it was taken out  

to sea at that point that’s that’s the crazy part  i get flooding and they may end up someplace else  

but literally taken out to sea and not eaten by  a crocodile is just shocking there that is one  

lucky cow that’s all yeah extremely lucky cow i  don’t know if you and I should have survived 11  

miles in the surf i wouldn’t this one is hilarious  cargo ship crashes into a Norwegian yard on May 26  

norwegian man woke up to a cargo ship in his front  yard pushed by a storm neighbor called it an odd  

delivery now can you imagine and I thought this  picture was AI generated so I was like “All right  

let me just take a look at some other pictures  of this.” And next thing I find this one that’s  

what it was they literally there’s a picture of  it showing kind of the front of the ship it was  

literally almost on his doorstep so Amazon has  taken it to the extreme at this point of delivery  

so you’re giving you curbside service curbside  ser i mean they’ve talked about delivery through  

drones and all that but this has taken it to the  next level i was expecting Amazon to be on the  

side of the ship when I saw the picture or just a  little a with a smiley face all right so last but  

not least New York be boasts a or host a pigeon  bath looking like your best pigeon at this point  

so that’s what they do in New York i just don’t  get it i guess they’re bored i guess they are  

there’s nothing better to do than to dress up  like pigeons so what do you got for us in your  

world i’ll let you sharing here okay there you go  so I got a couple of things we follow the the LEI  

every now and then leading economic indicators  and I like this chart because it shows where  

we are and where it’s trending the unemployment  claims are going down i thought that was probably  

and that the surprising thing about that is you  had all those people that were let loose from the  

government but it seems like they were absorbed  by the market pretty fast but if you remember last  

week when we saw where the jobs were coming from  Yeah government was the third highest didn’t make  

sense now the ISM orders are interesting because  that had been accelerated it is accelerating as a  

trend but obviously they’re trying to build more  in the United States i don’t know how much that  

does continue but those were a couple of things  that stood out to me despite the fact with the  

10-year it’s around four or five right now people  are concerned about the bond market i know we were  

just talking about that before i don’t know what  out of this but here’s the interesting thing so  

there’s less unemployment claims but the average  work week is going down yeah here just a kind of I  

guess my my Jeff’s gut reaction talking to people  was talking to one of the employees at our local  

supermarket and I he always is a he’s an older guy  he’s retired he works there part-time and every  

time I’m there George is there and it doesn’t  matter if I go during the middle of the day if  

I go on the weekend or whatever he’s always there  and he’s like the hardest working guy you’re ever  

going to meet he’s probably in his late 60s and  we were talking to him we’re like “All right I  

bet we’ll see you here tomorrow.” And he’s “Oh no  i won’t be here tomorrow.” And I was like “George  

takes a George takes a day off.” And he said “Nope  the company has decided because you know of costs  

and things like that that they’re cutting cut him  back from 35 hours a week to 12 at that point.”  

And then I started realizing I was looking around  i’m like I haven’t seen a bunch of the people that  

we normally see around there so yeah it’s an  ancillary thing i don’t know if it’s just that  

grocery store struggling a little bit but our  other big grocery store crap you go in there  

and they’ve got 30 employees working up front  so is it that is it whatever the other grocery  

store does mostly in private brand type stuff so  that’s that they put the private brand first and  

then like the public brands below there so it  might just be that they just are a little bit  

more profitable as a result but yeah it’s the mom  and pop grocery stores have been phased out over  

the last 40 or 50 years yeah and they were just  they were talking on the news last night of even  

not as much employment for the graduating seniors  and stuff like that and and the summer jobs are  

just not there because a lot of companies are just  like okay I don’t know I don’t know at this point  

so they’re cutting back on hours and everything  so pizza places and ice cream will always hire  

the kids yeah i look the one interesting thing I  see there though is industrial production still  

strong and accelerating which is interesting to me  is that is that an effect of what we’ll talk about  

in a second like a lot of stuff getting pushed  forward because of the the tariff threats and  

things like that or is it actually true don’t  know don’t know but we’ll have to see how the  

how this continues to trend and then my last one  is it’s about freaking time us Treasury is going  

to phase out the penny now here I thought this  was interesting the penny has been in use since  

1792 and will save them 56 million a year because  they cost the coin cost almost 4 cents to make i  

had heard numbers like 2.4 2.7 the nickel cost  10.4 cents to make are they going to phase out  

the nickel i mean who knows i heard No I heard  Scott Bessant last night or like last week is  

I think it was on Friday or Thursday or Friday  of last week he was being interviewed and they  

were talking about the penny and he’s it’s the  most useless coin ever because it’s just such a  

small denomination at this point but he was saying  the nickel costs so much that they’re looking at  

okay how can we produce this at a much much lower  cost and honestly do you really need nickels you  

could probably get away with 10 cents because you  know being over in Europe I don’t think I ever got  

more than I don’t think I ever got less than a 25  p or 25 euro coin the whole time I was over there  

i will say this the I read a couple different  articles i just happened to snip this one but  

it says they go out of circulation next year it  doesn’t mean we’re no longer going to use them no  

they’re still gonna be we’re not producing anymore  yeah yeah which it’s going to save the government  

money but they’re still going to be out there in  And how soon do we forget do you remember four  

or even five years ago during co nobody could  find a freaking penny nope remember that whole  

thing oh it was like panic city off anyway yeah  where were that where why where were the pennies  

during COVID yeah toilet paper and pennies we had  shortage yeah and I never understood that because  

I’m like “Okay all you need to do is adjust your  prices to where they don’t they’re not denominated  

in the pennies.” Yeah where do they go where did  they go yeah exactly they came back it’s It’s not  

like dollars that kind of wear out over time  pennies pretty much i’ve got pennies i have an  

old stamp collection that my parents my dad gave  me and I’m like I’ve got pennies back to you know  

like the 1800s and I’m like they still you could  probably still use them 100% theoretically because  

they last worth less than a penny yeah they’re  Yeah they’re they’re copper so they’re going to  

last even the ones today are copper jacketed so  well let me cover that last couple did they they  

needed the copper so I think this the the pennies  were they were silver were they steel yeah they  

were steel pennies yeah for four years i know that  they they look like nickels but I think it was  

three years they didn’t use copper to make pennies  yeah which was stupid i’m like why don’t you just  

continue that i have no idea but all right let me  cover the last couple things I had or last couple  

slides I had first off we’ve discussed this a  little bit with tariff tensions and US GDP i  

thought it was interesting imf is projecting  3.3% US GDP growth in 2025 which I think is  

very realistic yeah and I think that’s pretty  realistic with with hopefully the tax cut stuff  

and maybe a little regulation cut i think that  could offset tariff risks pretty significantly  

q1 saw 51% import surge during tariff years so  that might be masking a little bit weaker growth  

and I think the other side of the coin if  you’re listening to a lot of these like you  

were saying you’re listening to a lot of the  companies they’re just not given any kind of  

prediction of what if you’re a CEO or a CFO yep  and one day the tariffs are on the next day the  

tariffs are off the day after that they’re cut  by 20% the next day they’re up 5% you may be  

able to know your sales maybe how do you give  bottom line guidance yeah and you can’t those  

type of things you just can’t pass on it’s nice  for companies to say “Yeah we’re going to raise  

prices.” But reality is okay the guys that don’t  raise prices are probably going to garner more  

business out of it so none of them are going  to want to do that some global trends the UN  

forecast or forecast 3.2% global growth outside  the EU for 2025 down because of trade tensions  

and then another little bit I had that story  I think month or two ago talking about Poland  

poland is continuing to be a major hub in the  AI growth side of things it’s really interesting  

to me and then of course Brazil their rare earth  stuff and I think probably the most telling thing  

that I’ve seen and I think the good thing that’s  going to come downstream is oil prices are below  

their 50we average that just goes out into all  parts of the economy which I think is intriguing  

oh yeah and like I said that’s the one I think  if I were to say any one thing that’s going to  

affect pricing and inflation and everything  else is if oil continues to stay down and we  

really haven’t reached any kind of the drill baby  drill stuff because a lot of these companies were  

basically shuttered for the last four years and  it takes some time to get up and running but it’s  

intriguing to me yeah oil’s at 61 right now and  why would it go up if they’re making that deal  

with the Saudis they’re going to pump more in  yeah you know again why would you invest in a  

in an oil and in an energy company i don’t want  to touch them like I said the only thing I ever  

touch are the pipeline companies because you know  that’s just all on demand and it’s they’re a toll  

booth so that’s the only exposure I ever have  yeah we’re at a four-year low which is awesome  

yeah that that’s going to be the thing because  it affects it affects the trucks that deliver  

stuff it affects the fertilizers and everything  else it’s just so much of that filters out into  

the world it’s not going to be an overnight  thing but I see it as being a late this year  

going into next year going into the next growing  season next year if it stays there it’s going to  

have a huge effect on the like food production  and everything else i just brought it up you  

would think lower and this is another industry  I never invest in it’s airlines and while oil  

has been going down it’s been going no the airline  industry’s been going nowhere as far as aggregate  

stock price yeah which is but you’ll see like  little once again you’ll see little interesting  

shoots like Delta doing extraordinarily well yet  Southwest which has historically been fantastic  

company to invest in very odd southwest American  Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines were some of the  

best to invest in and they’re just completely  terrible now southwest is now charging bag fees  

yeah which I think and they’re assigning seats  so I’m like “Okay so what makes you individ?” I  

had a client in here yesterday who goes back and  forth to the east like every other month and she  

was really upset she says “But because she’s got  a Southwest credit card she believes the bag fees  

will be free.” And I’m like “Hey you may want to  check that.” Yeah and it may be if they’ve got  

that they’re making money somehow but they may  have to change their stock symbol you know what  

Southwest stock symbol is right love luv might  have to change it to B A we don’t love you no  

more we want to make some money like everybody  else yeah yeah so you there’s no differentiator  

at that point i used to travel a ton i was very  loyal to one airline I will say that uses the  

initials AA and I was based out of Dallas so that  was the place to be but after I stop traveling a  

ton I basically go where the cheapest price is  that can get me there at the right time you know  

so I don’t really have any loyalty like I used  to in those cases i I totally agree with you  

yeah all right folks thank you for joining us we  do this for you so make sure that you subscribe  

to the channel make sure that you give us some  comments love to love having those conversations  

with you guys offline so thanks a lot and  we’ll see you guys back here the very next time