[00:00:00] Jeff Kikel: Hello, Sense of Things audience.  It’s Jeff and Ron here once again for another   weekly Sense of Things show. Ron, how  you doing, my friend? Good morning,  

Jeff. I’m enjoying the fall weather. Oh, I know.  I bet it’s great mornings for you right now. Oh,  

it’s a high 50s, 60s. Love  it. It’s back there, man. Jeff Kikel: I got it. I walked out in  shorts yesterday morning and I was like,  

I don’t even want to be wearing shorts  right now. It’s so friggin humid,   but it’s we’re supposed to get a cold front  through today. So we’ll actually be in that  

like fifties in the morning, which I love.  No, nice. I know there’s already been snow,   up in the upper Midwest and in New York and  upstate New York and yeah, I don’t miss it.

Jeff Kikel: My friend when do you guys start  seeing it up in the higher elevations? And Oh,   up in Flagstaff in the start getting some  

snow i [00:01:00] or so. I know  Flagstaff h of snow last year. S

Jeff Kikel: don’t understand when they there  are surfing ski sho Surf and ski. Yeah,  

what are you talking about? I’m like you  got to realize there are some huge lakes   here Yeah that you could do a lot of water  sports on and you go two hours north you  

go skiing in the winter mountains Yeah So  you get the most of all in all three worlds   because then you get the nice warmer weather  When you’re here in the phoenix, valley area.

Jeff Kikel: So but Surf and ski.  What are you talking about? Yeah,   Havasu is like its own ocean in there. Yeah.  Oh yeah. And it’s funny, like Havasu, if you  

don’t have a truck. And or a boat like you don’t  belong in Lake. Yeah, you’re just raw. Yeah, it’s  

just wrong for you to be here. Somebody I know  that lives there calls it the redneck Riviera.

Jeff Kikel: I love it. It’s [00:02:00] nice. It’s  interesting. If you’ve never been to Lake Havasu,   it has the London Bridge, which a lot of  people are not aware of. Long story short,  

a gentleman, I think his name  was Bacala the London was,   during the restructuring and rebuilding  of London after post-war, they sold the  

London Bridge and he literally numbered  every brick, brought it over, rebuilt it.

Jeff Kikel: Obviously it came up to be almost  three times the cost and everything else,   but it’s pretty amazing when you check it out.  It’s a lot bigger than I thought. But they say,  

yeah, they saved a part of history that  would have, just been thrown away at that   point. So it’s awesome. And he puts it  in the middle of the freaking desert.

Jeff Kikel: Why did Britain,  why did, why did the UK let,   a non UK person by the bridge? And number  two, why did this person pick Lake Havasu?  

Because Lake Havasu would not be Lake Havasu  if it wasn’t for the London Bridge. That’s the   centerpiece. Yeah. Wasn’t he like a, didn’t  he own like a hotel or something like that?

Jeff Kikel: And so it was like a way to get  people to go out to the middle of nowhere out   there. I [00:03:00] forget what, yeah, you could  be right. I’m not a hundred percent sure the  

complete, it was an interesting story. If somebody  wants to look it up on Wikipedia and read it,   I got to tell you, it is very interesting, but  it was just basically a way of like you build it.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, they will come. Yeah.  So that was the situation. It’s a lot   of people don’t even know about it. It’s  funny. Like I said, it’s the most famous  

bridge just for the simple fact of a silly  song that people used to sing when we were   all kids and he ends up slapping it out there  in the middle of the desert, which is awesome.

Jeff Kikel: Literally, it’s and it’s right  on the border of California. Speaking of   redneck Ramiro you’ve got a couple  of Florida man stories, right? Yeah,  

absolutely. Hey, every now and then we just  have to do this just to remind ourselves  

that we are better than the average  person that’s in the United States. Jeff Kikel: So here we go. Florida man wax  acquaintance with hatchet during argument  

over a spilled beer. I’m sure this could  happen anywhere in the United States. Yeah,  

it’s normal every place. I live in  Texas and this [00:04:00] could happen,   but it’s interesting that I, he was axing him  a question and that’s what ended up happening.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. But here’s my funny part.  Sentence number two, it sparked an argument   and he blamed the victim. He provoked me  to whack him with a hatchet whack. Yeah. I,  

he spilled my beer. I spilled beer. But he hit him  multiple times. He didn’t die though. obviously,  

he didn’t go for the head. I and I  like that he had style about it though,   because he grabbed a silver  hatchet with a blue handle.

Jeff Kikel: On top of it, it wasn’t just  some rusty thing in the garage. Hey, listen,   this might’ve been a family heirloom passed down  from generation to generation. Clearly see it. I  

always have an ax laying around the house, just  in case somebody spills my beer, that’s all I’m  

saying. Yep. And because we missed the last two  weeks of podcast, we got a double shot Thursday.

Jeff Kikel: So we have one other story.  Florida man breaks into woman’s house,   sits on [00:05:00] her couch and makes  an unusual request. Okay. All he wanted  

was some water and something to smoke. Okay I  think he was probably smoking something before   he got there is what I’m thinking. He might’ve  been doing several things before he got there.

Jeff Kikel: But it’s funny you read, of course,   these are professional headline writers.  So you’re thinking to yourself, what was  

this unusual request? I must read the article. He  just wanted some water and something to smoke. I,  

is that unreasonable? I just love it. And  can I get a hatchet while you’re at it?

Jeff Kikel: Just the same guy. Maybe  he went out later after he smoked and   whacked the guy. We don’t know. Now  I need water. Cause I didn’t have  

my beer anymore. So this could be just  a continuation, just like our guy with   the hamster wheel. Yeah. We know that we  need our fill of this every now and then.

Jeff Kikel: There’s just no doubt about  it. Oh, my God. All right. What do you   got for us? Let’s jump in. Economic stuff.  It was it was in a massively quiet week on  

the economic front. I [00:06:00] think a  couple of the things if y’all do or don’t  

go to this or if you want to track what’s  going on in the economy a great place to go. Jeff Kikel: And this is the place I go to on  a regular basis is the economy calendar. So  

you just go to economy dot com. You go to the  calendar and it brings up everything that’s  

going on that week. So if you want just a quick  hit of, hey, just what’s going on, what’s maybe  

affecting the markets this week. There was very  little economic data and the economic data that  

did come out, I think the probably the most  consequential one this week was jobless claims.

Jeff Kikel: So if you click on that,  it brings up these little charts. So   you guys have seen these little charts  before, on here, it’ll say here’s what  

it was prior. Here’s what they revised it  to, which is common right now is it seems  

like they’re revising them up. every month.  Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Jeff Kikel: Then you get the consensus  and then the range of that consensus,   which [00:07:00] actually for once we’re  on is somewhat tight usually you can drive  

a truck 15 000. That’s very tight Yeah, and  we came in exactly, you know along the lines  

with consensus this week, 217k Of jobless  claims that number has been creeping up,  

and I think we’ve discussed this before I  don’t know how much of, like all these strikes,  

both UAW sag, aft, SAG aftra I don’t know how  many of those, I would say SAG AFTRA for sure has  

probably had some effect on these numbers rising  because they, they’ve been out for 130 days now.

Jeff Kikel: And actually I was watching a  couple of interviews with some economists   that just dig down into the recesses of some  of these numbers and they were talking about,  

don’t hold me. I think it was either 34  or 35 percent of the new jobs were in  

government. They weren’t even in the private  sector and the unemployment rate ticked up.

Jeff Kikel: The number was at a  low of three, [00:08:00] four,   which is just unheard of. We’re now at  three, nine. And I think 4. 5 was like  

the number people were looking at. If  we get there. We’re looking at either a   significant pullback in the economy and or  a recession. So we’re ticking up and look,  

the jet, the Fed is doing its job, whether you  like them or not, but they are doing its job.

Jeff Kikel: Inflation has been coming down a  little bit, but the private sector numbers are  

not looking good. No, they’re not. And I think  that the interesting thing is everybody looks at,  

oh the, the, or the inflation rates going down,  people are still hurting massively because.

Jeff Kikel: That inflation rate  going up is just year over year.   It’s not year over many years. And  we’ve seen a, we saw a huge spike,  

in 2022 in the in inflation. And those are  real dollars that are still hurting people at  

this point. So if you have Any extra inflation  on top, it puts a pretty good strain on them.

Jeff Kikel: And, I think as [00:09:00] jobless  claims continue to go up, you start to see the   hiring slow down. I agree with you on, I think  this is a time period where it’s okay, when is  

the, when is it going to break the back of the  consumer? Are we going to see it at this Christmas   or is it going to be another summer of 22,  2023, where everybody does the blowout and says.

Jeff Kikel: Screw it. I’m putting it all on  my credit. wE talked about that to ad nauseum  

and as a little tease, I think I have the canary  in the coal mine. A little bit later when I go,  

I got a couple more slides to go through because  everything that you’re saying all leads to,  

Hey what do we really need to look  at to know, is the damn break in our,   where are the cracks in the  ice, which we’ve seen them.

Jeff Kikel: But we haven’t breached them.  Absolutely. So I wanted to just cover one   more thing on my part of this. And this is  I have, I’ve read and followed the investors  

business daily for my entire career. I started  reading it when I got into the business in 1995,  

[00:10:00] and I have religiously read  it. I’ve shifted more to the online. Jeff Kikel: I don’t really use the newspaper  anymore. They actually only produce the  

newspaper on weekends and Mondays now. So  yeah, you don’t even have it for the rest  

of the time. This is investors dot com. One of  the things I do every day. So I have a routine  

that I go through about 30 minutes every  morning of just going through a few things.

Jeff Kikel: So one of the first places  I always go is this top left hand column  

market trend. And what this does  is this is their market article   for the day. It gives you the, here’s  what’s going on today. Here’s what,  

what happened. Here’s the stocks that are  affecting the markets and everything else.

Jeff Kikel: I’m a huge fan of Disney.  It has been a ginormous smoking,   what all year long or steaming, what partly  because they’ve caused it for themselves, I  

think by getting political and also jacking their  prices up but. They’ve got a new [00:11:00] CEO  

and he’s bringing some really interesting. I know  the new CEO is the prior two CEOs in the past.

Jeff Kikel: This is his third stint. Third  stint here. Yeah. So hopefully he’ll bring,  

he’s already said some things that he’s  bringing in. I just hope that it actually   works that way. On this column, it  also shows you the market trend,  

which is. I think extremely important. It’s  something I follow on a regular basis because  

this tells you it’s a proprietary thing inside  of IBD and it tells you where the trend is.

Jeff Kikel: So we went, if you looked at this 2  weeks ago when we took some time off and we were  

going through earning season that had reversed and  was in a market downtrend. For at least 2 weeks,  

which usually these don’t change that rapidly.  They tend to stay in 1 direction or another.

Jeff Kikel: I think from a  chartist perspective. Yeah,   it’s good seeing an uptrend. But if you  look at this downtrend that we’ve been on,  

we’ve been on this kind of steady down declined.  [00:12:00] I think you’re gonna have some stuff   on this today, Ron, right? no, not today.  I’m not going through any charts today.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Okay. All right. I look at  it from a charter’s perspective. Anytime I see   lower highs and lower lows, that’s never  a good sign because I think a little bit  

longer term trend after we had  that spike. In June this year,   we’ve been on this continual kind of  downtrend. Now you have these little  

mid moves during that time period, we’re  back into that confirmed uptrend here.

Jeff Kikel: You can see it in the market  right there. Does it break through and   continue upwards? We are right at about where the  high was, about a month and a half ago 10, 12,  

we’re right at that point. So it, does it turn  around again? I don’t know, but I think we’re   I don’t know if we’re going to be in that Santa  Claus rally is what I would say for this year.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, I think November will probably  be an up month just because we had three negative   months in a row and that just doesn’t happen. But  don’t forget to, you haven’t heard too many people  

talking about it. [00:13:00] The target, don’t  forget the debt ceiling thing is coming next week. Jeff Kikel: Of course. I haven’t heard  anybody talking about the 17th. That’s  

when the continuing resolution is supposed  to end. I haven’t heard anything. Nope. No,  

I’ve not heard a word. I am not the headline  stuff for financial news. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s,  

I haven’t even heard a mention of it since the  speaker, since they were working with the speaker   and all that, getting a, the new speaker and  I’ve not heard a mention of it now that I think  

the only thing I heard was when the new speaker  came in, like him or or hate him, he did say.

Jeff Kikel: I have a plan to avoid another  shutdown. Didn’t say what the plan was. What  

is it? Didn’t say what the plan was.  And you didn’t even hear like the two   sides are even talking. We’ll see.  And if this goes into Thanksgiving,  

holy crap. I don’t know. Yeah, Thanksgiving or  into, past Thanksgiving into the Christmas season.

Jeff Kikel: They don’t want to hang around in  Washington and, you don’t want them to kick   the can. It’s just, I [00:14:00] thought  I remembered earlier in the year that,  

oh by doing all this stuff that we did  early in the summer. That was going   to kick it for two years down the road  and we wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Jeff Kikel: And now all of a sudden  it was, right back in the, in October,   it’s the same stupid stuff again. So it’d be  interesting to see, do they come up with a real  

resolution or are they going to kick the can  and just do another CR? Six months from now,  

which maybe is part of the GOP plan to get this  right in the heat of the election cycle time.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Don’t know, but Hey,  look, they’re doing things for their own   good. Not our own good. It’s all politics.  It’s a hundred percent politics and it’s  

nothing about what actually is good for the  rest of us. I know. I know. All right. So   what I want to do is I want to go over  something. I want to revisit something  

we did back in September and then talk  about a couple of other quick things. Jeff Kikel: So if you remember from  our, so one of our September podcast,  

we were talking about GDP forecast and  we were laughing through at the spread.  

Because, [00:15:00] typically the St. Louis fed,  they got a lot of good information that we use   and I got a chart coming up on it and yeah, they  got the New York fed and this is the crazy thing.

Jeff Kikel: We were laughing  at the Atlanta fed. Meanwhile,   they were spot on with 4. 9 and everybody couldn’t  believe it. Yeah, I am sure this will be revised,  

but this is the crazy thing. All these people have  the same damn information. They all have access  

to it. Yeah. And they all have, economists  and not just dozens, but hundreds of PhDs.

Jeff Kikel: Along with the fed, you could talk  thousands of PhDs. They’re all analyzing and   crunching numbers and putting, numbers into their  models. And they can’t even come up with at least  

a one point spread on a gdp So what does this  mean for the st. Louis fed? They just had their  

head up the rear ends They weren’t looking at  half the information And we all know that the  

summer was a good summer for the consumer  [00:16:00] to be spending we all saw that   because they caught what do they call it revenge  spending or something like that So I get that.

Jeff Kikel: How does New York and St.  Louis so far off and Atlanta, which was,  

way out of range. I was shocked that they  came in that. Yeah. Because they were so   far of an outlier and, and again, I give  them kudos. You got to give people props,  

but. I’d love to see what the  revisions are on this one. Jeff Kikel: We already talked about the  revisions on on job claims have been  

revised almost a million over the last year,  which is just absurd. Like at that point,  

just close your eyes and throw your  dart at a dartboard for crying out   loud. So it’ll be C it’ll be interesting  to see this, but here’s the other thing.

Jeff Kikel: And I’ll just let it lie. So this  is Q3 GDP, and this was from 921. And I think  

the numbers came out before that. How the hell  are they coming up with this forecast so far  

in advance? And, um, [00:17:00] and the range is  just so much. Look, I’m saying this rhetorically,  

there is no answer for this. I just think  this is just something very interesting,   whether people follow it or not, because they’re  following a headline number, but I think people  

need to realize there’s a lot of smart people out  there that have very contrarian views on this. Jeff Kikel: wE and we look at it with a  lot of the economic data that I report off  

of Conaday. How many times have we looked at it  and they’re, okay the, the new job openings and,  

it’s a range from 100, 000 up to 500,  000 and, consensus is 150. Okay, great.

Jeff Kikel: But you’re. Yeah, you’re talking  literally a 400, 000 job swing at this point and  

again, they’re all have the same data politically  motivated on one side or the other. Yeah. They’re  

supposed to be the smartest and most talented  in the room. I don’t know what to say. I

hear Jeff Kikel: you. All right. Jeff Kikel: So next thing too. I know we had  talked about this before. This was the [00:18:00]  

credit card interest rate. It has now ticked out  to 21. 19. Average rate. This is unbelievable.  

Again, I haven’t really heard any momentum at  all. Talk about trying to regulate this or cap  

it or whatever, but I think this is definitely  something you got to keep your eye on because  

that, look, we already talked about credit  card balances breaching a trillion dollars. Jeff Kikel: And if the average is 21  percent on that money, these credit card  

and bank companies and banks. You know at some  point there’s got to be defaults here. Yeah,  

I don’t know what’s going to happen All right.  One more article so before I get to it I just   want to give a little preamble, one of the things  you always talked about with You know heading  

into a recession or the potential of coming  out of recession is Transportation, right?

Jeff Kikel: If transportation ticks up, that means  there are more goods being, [00:19:00] transferred  

in commerce that, hey, that’s good. And  if transportation goes down, they’re not  

transporting as much. That means there may be a  slow down Maersk. Oh, I’m sorry. Here. So here,  

let me go look again at Maersk, which is one  of the largest shipping companies in the world.

Jeff Kikel: Just had an 18. I just had a 18  percent decrease in their job force. 10, 000  

jobs cut, profit lowered. I actually heard,  and this is always an economist that I heard,  

spin things to the Democrat kind of way  of thinking, which is fine. But they said,  

Oh yeah, they were due to lay off a lot of  people because they ramped up with COVID.

Jeff Kikel: Wait a minute. That ramp  up was done two years ago. Yeah. So   they would’ve gotten rid of jobs a  year ago. , not now. Yeah. They’re  

getting rid of jobs now because  what they’re forecasting. Is less  

in shipments. Yeah. Less. You don’t get rid  of people now because all of a sudden yeah. Jeff Kikel: We let it go on long  enough. [00:20:00] No. These people,  

like every government public company is quarter  to quarter. They got to do better next quarter.  

So I think that I don’t know how you feel in  some of the things that you’ve fallen that   you have seen, but obviously you could see  that, this is the lowest level since 2020.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. I, yeah, there’s  an old, there’s an old trading theory   called the Dow theory. And what it would  do is look at the Dow industrials versus  

the Dow transports. And if those were  diverging. You followed what the Dow  

transports did. So you’re always followed  what the transports did either up or down. Jeff Kikel: Let’s say the stock market is  down. The Dow Jones is down now realize  

that only represents 30 stocks. And by  far is less of an industrial anymore,  

right? It’s a little bit more tech and  software than it is. A, an industrial,  

but that has always been that trend of.  Okay, you followed where the transports   went and, if the stock market, [00:21:00] if the  Dow was going down and transport started going up,  

that was an indicator that it was  going to start going that way. Jeff Kikel: Now that the Dow transit or  the Dow theory has been discredited in  

the current world because it doesn’t, once again,   it’s not industrials anymore. So it’s  not all the big industrial companies  

where you would see them, the industrials.  You could still follow, there are many.

Jeff Kikel: Indexes for transportation. Yeah,  and I, I agree. And then, if you think of this,  

okay, let’s say mares Starts cutting  jobs because they feel like, okay,   there’s going to be less shipping.  What does that affect? That also  

affects railroads because a large portion  of railroads and trucking are intermodal.

Jeff Kikel: That means those things that  are on those ships that they take off,   they either put onto a train and  that goes off or they put it onto  

a truck and that goes off. And what  was the, and what was the company a   month and a half ago that went bankrupt?  Yellow. Yellow. Yeah. One of the largest.

Jeff Kikel: They small. Yeah. That was, yeah. I  think I [00:22:00] forgot how many people they   laid off or whatever it were. They ended up  having to let go. I forgot it. Was it 30,000  

less? Yeah, it was like 40,000. I think so.  Oh, was it? Okay. Yeah, that’s so now if they  

were busy, if they if there was more than  enough demand they’d still be in business.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Obviously there were  some other factors there that I did read,   but certainly, competition and demand  were two big factors. Yeah. And like  

I said this is the canary in the coal mine.  When you start seeing it from the shippers,   because they do so much overseas, it’ll be  interesting to see the other, their competitors.

Jeff Kikel: I think Maersk,  if I remember correctly,   is the only publicly traded one here in the  United States. That’s a U. S. based company.  

All the others are foreign based companies  that trade from Denmark too. But yeah,  

I’m not sure how they trade. But here’s the  other thing. I thought that was interesting. Jeff Kikel: Car payment defaults at 29  year high. So if credit card balances  

breach a trillion credit card [00:23:00]  payments are at a 29 year high and student   debt loans are now coming back. How many  people are part of all three of those  

contingencies? I don’t know. And I’ve  already heard, it’s interesting because  

I’d been beating the drum when it came to  the student loan debt and everything else. Jeff Kikel: And, like I said,  I have that one program that I.  

Offer to people that can reduce their  student loan debt. And I cannot tell   you how many clients are coming to me  talking with their kids where it’s oh,  

my God, I have a 300 a month payment now, and  I can’t even afford that. That’s affecting me.

Jeff Kikel: And it’s only been a few weeks.  Drag that out a few more months and it’s   going to start to have, I think, some profound  effect. It has to look, we know the dam is going  

to break at some point. I thought it would  have been by Q4. I heard a couple of very   smart people that I do follow talk about Q2  next year, nobody could predict it exactly,  

obviously in the government based on some of  their policies [00:24:00] could extend it out.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, further. I don’t think they  could extend it out past the presidential   election as next November. So it should  be interesting to see because obviously,  

the more adrenaline shots that  you give somebody at some point   the body can’t take it anymore.  Yeah, it doesn’t have an effect.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, I think that’s the challenge  is just stops having any kind of effect. And,   I guess the good part is. I don’t know. I  don’t know your take on this. I think the  

Fed’s going to hold where they’re at for a  little bit here and see how things roll out.   Because the bond market is effectively  doing the job of the Fed at this point.

Jeff Kikel: The bond market is definitely moving  and having an impact on the rest of the economy  

pretty significantly. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.  And I heard the same thing from some people that  

I do follow also. And the interesting thing  about that is, we were talking about this in  

the pregame, we, 10 year knocked on the door of  5 percent again, pull back to 4846.[00:25:00]

Jeff Kikel: It’s now above 45 again.  And that’s what people are looking   at. The people that are looking longer term and  effects on economy people are basically saying,  

if this happens. Going above five percent  again and or stays there and people are   looking at even going above that Maybe  closer to five and a half or six.

Jeff Kikel: That’s not even good for the banks  That’s not good for commercial paper commercial   property paper because of all that’s all  that has been essentially flexible rates  

over the years They never thought it would you  know, double or triple from two and a half to   three and you think that, commercial paper,  especially if it if you have rates like that,  

what commercial for those of you guys  don’t understand what commercial paper is. Jeff Kikel: Let’s say Ron is a.  Company here in the United States,  

he buys things from overseas. You buy something  and then you’ve got to get it shipped to you and  

that might take 30 to 60 days. So that  means it’s 30 or 60 days before you get  

that [00:26:00] product and you can resell  it. So what commercial paper is short term. Jeff Kikel: Money that I can go to a bank and  say, hey, Ron, you need, how much do you need?  

I need a million dollars to get this product on  shore over a 60 day period. And so that’s what  

commercial paper is. If you go up to five point,  5. 5, let’s say, or five, that adds 5 percent more  

costs to those goods coming in, which is a  challenge and the U S dollar has been going up.

Jeff Kikel: That makes it even more challenging to  try and sell back things overseas at this point,  

because it’s much more expensive. Yep. I hear  you had perfect explanation and it should be  

interesting to. To really see how this is,  how this really has an effect. I know we’ve,  

I know we’re basically, just sounds like  we’re in an echo chamber at this point,   week after week, month after month, but  I don’t see any real reason, zero reason.

Jeff Kikel: I don’t see any  real [00:27:00] reason to say,   what. Let’s fully allocate the portfolio to  that growth. You got somebody that’s got 10,  

15 or more years to go for retirement. I don’t  see how you now pushing your chips to go. Yes.  

All is safe. All is clear in my opinion. I  think you have to wait at least Q2 or Q3.

Jeff Kikel: You could leg out. But until you start  pushing in your chips I just don’t see it because  

I think you could buy things more on sale we can’t  get a bottom tick on this to you know do this But  

I just don’t see in a real, you know in a full  growth oriented portfolio Why you would put new  

money to work, and push your chips in right now  Yeah, I think you still got to be in the game a  

little bit, but I fully invested, and if you  looked at that IBD, that the IBD market trend  

or the uptrend, one of the things, and as you look  at it, you want to read it very specifically, but,  

the way they talk about it, it says, Hey, they,  it regained its 50 [00:28:00] day moving averages,   meaning both indices, the S and P 500 and the  NASDAQ regained their 50 day moving averages.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, but you’re only,  they asked or they guide you to put   only exposure of 40 to 60 percent of your  portfolio in equities. Just because it’s  

in an uptrend doesn’t mean it’s a  strong uptrend with momentum. Yeah,   it’s in an uptrend in a, yeah, it’s in a  short term uptrend in a downtrend right now.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. And, yeah, and we’re  vacillating the 50 day moving average   is a great indicator and I’ve always used  it, but, going back, to the trading days,  

the whole thing is catalyst and conviction. Yeah.  Okay, great. There’s a catalyst above, the 50 day  

moving average, it’s always acted as a ceiling  on the way up, but if you look at the conviction,   it’s been petering out. What’s the next push  we’re past corporate earnings. We just had the  

GDP reading. We just had the Q three unemployment  number. So what’s the next catalyst to push  

it higher? Yeah. Earnings [00:29:00] estimates  have been flat to negative for Q four and Q one.

Jeff Kikel: So what’s the catalyst to  get this thing 2 4600 or to even get to  

new highs of 4,800 in the next three to six  months? I don’t see it. There’s really none,  

and I think the next number that’s  going to come in that’s going to   have any major effect on the market  is going to be the retail sales.

Jeff Kikel: I think the next catalyst would be if  there’s a ceasefire in Ukraine and Russia. There’s   a ceasefire in with Hamas and or there’s complete  peace. It’s not going to happen. No, it’s not  

going to happen anytime soon. I don’t want to be  negative because I want to see it happen. Yeah, I  

just don’t see it happening anytime soon idea once  again, and there’s only so much we can supply.

Jeff Kikel: They, these countries are going to  have to fight it out. And I think Israel is,   they’re looking at it. They’re going  to fight it out themselves. They don’t  

want other people getting in the mixed of  it. And, I just don’t know. I’ve not even   heard where things are at in Ukraine because  [00:30:00] everybody’s been so focused on the  

Israel situation and the Hamas situation  that I’ve not heard a word about Ukraine.

Jeff Kikel: And at last I heard is the, the  big surge that they were supposed to have   during the summer petered out and didn’t  work because we didn’t get all the stuff  

they needed to do it. The last I heard, and  it’s probably been about a week and a half   because I’ve been out of it for a little  bit on the international news like that,  

the last I heard was there hasn’t been  much ground gained on either side.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, it’s I don’t want to say it’s a  stalemate, but not much has been gained on either   side. And I just don’t understand. Russia has what  the 3rd largest army in the world behind us and  

China. They should have rolled over Ukraine a year  ago. Everybody said that. So why are they not just  

doing a full of, I don’t want to see it happen,  but why are they just not doing a full offensive? Jeff Kikel: I think it’s a clown. I  think their military quite frankly,  

is a clown show. They talk about how  good, I remember being in the Mideast  

during the first Gulf war [00:31:00]  and the talk of Saddam Hussein had the,   I think the fourth largest military  in the world and they’re a clown ship.

Jeff Kikel: It was, it’s, they looked big, there’s  fighting spirit and, the big thing with Russia  

is they’re a largely conscripted army and more so  today than it was. And conscripts aren’t going to,  

they didn’t want to be in, if they wanted  to be in, they would join voluntarily.

Jeff Kikel: So they don’t want to be in there.  And it’s very difficult to get somebody,   especially when things go bad, it’s difficult  to get that kind of push that you need. They’ve  

called up all the reservists. They’ve drafted  more people. And, when you’re in one of these,  

just slug it out kind of wars. I think the biggest  thing for the Ukrainians is, there’s only so much  

fighting spirit you can have when you’re in one  of these trench wars where it’s just nonstop,   you’re not moving and you’re just getting  pounded on nonstop, it’s almost attrition.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, it is. It’s just, it’s, it comes  down to now, not necessarily [00:32:00] equipment   as much as fighting spirit. And can they maintain  that fighting spirit? To push the Russians out,  

or is there just too many Russians to  push out at that point? And does it   end up coming to the same borders that Russia  had before, which is the whole Dombask region,  

which is largely Russian speaking because they  dumped a whole bunch of Russians into that area.

Jeff Kikel: And Crimea, which is, traditionally  was a Russian stronghold because it was their  

access to the Black Sea and, was once again, it  was, I think Stalin or somebody had dumped a whole  

bunch of Russians into that area. For generations,  they’ve been, they’re ethnic Russians.

Jeff Kikel: That live there. So are you going  to be able to break through and take over? And   will Ukraine be able to hold and stay steady with  that? I don’t think I, and the other thing too,  

diplomacy is not going to work. Nope. And  diplomacy in the middle East is definitely  

not going to work because they’ve been  fighting for [00:33:00] 3000 years. Jeff Kikel: And I don’t really see  that changing anytime soon. we’ve  

got to support Israel because God knows  they’re the only people that actually   like us. in The Middle East at this point.  They’re the only democracy. Yeah. The next  

democracy I think is India. Yeah. Right in,  in the middle, in the, in Middle East Asia. Jeff Kikel: I think that’s the only other real  demo. True democracy. Yeah. Yeah. So we shall  

see. Yeah. All right. Until next week, I think  we got some more economic stuff coming out. I  

think I’ll just make my little Nostradamus  prediction. I truly believe that I think  

we’ve hit now we’ve gotten our dead cat bounce,  our head fake, whatever you want to call it. Jeff Kikel: Nobody likes to call it a  dead cat bounce, baby. I’m a dog guy.  

So what can you say? But I think we, we’ve  did a short term peak and I think we’re   just going to be flat to range bound. Thank  you. Balance of this year. I think we, 4400,  

I think is the peak now through the end of the  year. I think maybe we’ll end up closer to 4000. Jeff Kikel: I don’t know. We’ll have  to say. Yeah. And I can see it from  

your perspective. I [00:34:00] can see this.  And, once again, being a bit of a chartist,   or I at least play 1 on TV. I could see us  just being in this little range going into  

the 1st quarter of the year because I just  don’t think we’re going to see a huge amount.

Jeff Kikel: We saw surprises this time and a lot  of surprises, but we also saw some weakness and  

the market really reacted to the magnificent  7. Each of them they’re priced for perfection  

and if there’s any chink in the armor, they  get whacked. Microsoft just hit a 52 week  

high and NVIDIA gained most of its losses  from the last two weeks or three weeks ago.

Jeff Kikel: Gained it all back  in the last week and a half or,   wherever it is 465. I know they were near  500 at its peak. So all those are the only  

two that I’ve been performing. Google came  back a little bit from its peak and then they   pull back. We’ll have to see next week.  Maybe we should do some charts on that.

Jeff Kikel: But like I said, all these  economic factors are stacking up. We’ll   just have to see how the reaction is. [00:35:00]  Absolutely. Folks, we do these shows for you. So  

make sure that if you are watching this now,  quickly drop down to that subscription button  

and hit that button because we do these every  week for you and you don’t want to miss one.

Jeff Kikel: In addition to that, make sure that  you give us a little upvote there because we   like that. And that actually helps us get out  to more people outside of our audience. So we  

really appreciate you doing that. We will be back  next week. Thanks a lot. And we’ll see you then.