Jeff Kikel: Good morning. Cents of things  audience. It’s Jeff and Ron here once again,  

and we are off and running with another crazy week  

on the markets. Crazy week in the  world. Ron, how you doing, bud?

Ron Lang: Good. Things are heating up. Not just  outside, but markets, geopolitical Europe. I just,  

you know what? This, I have an expression  for it, which this is a Disney channel.

Ron Lang: So I can’t say it, this is  a dream of financial media. There’s  

an exp, you know what I’m thinking? You  know where I’m going with that one. Yeah,  

no, this is a dream for financial media  because they have too much to talk about.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. It’s just a never ending  craziness right now, of course, we have fed the

Ron Lang: cycle.

Ron Lang: We got the earning cycle, but every  you got everything else [00:01:00] surrounding it

Jeff Kikel: on top of that. The 1st.  Fed meeting in the world of oh, yeah,  

the fed’s probably gonna cut six  or seven times this year. Oh, no

Ron Lang: How about zero now? Do you  know if you look at the fed futures?  

It’s now all under 50 For the rest of this year.

Ron Lang: Yeah, the only thing I can see great  financial media fodder for the last year and a  

half Oh, yeah Rude, that’s why I said best way  to watch financial tv is on mute. Yeah Best  

way come on why would you want to listen  they bring on 10 people a day? What do  

you think the fed’s gonna do? What do you think?

Ron Lang: Do you have nothing else to talk

Jeff Kikel: about? It’s well and it drives me  nuts because it’s just You and i’ve been saying  

this for almost a year now. There’s no way in  hell. They’re gonna cut interest rates unless  

the stagflation argument happens, which I don’t  really think it’s going to they’re not going to  

do it until rates come, [00:02:00] until the  inflation gets stopped at least or starts to  

come back the other way, or they see a massive  slowdown, they’re not going to do anything.

Jeff Kikel: And the closer it gets  to the election, there’s certainly  

not going to do anything. So the odds are  maybe 25 basis points in December at best

Ron Lang: after the election. Look, pal came  out yesterday. Even though inflation has  

been ticking up, it’s unlikely The next  move will be higher. Yeah. Okay, great.

Ron Lang: That doesn’t mean it’s  going to happen this year Yeah,  

and he they would never tip their hand but the  idiots in the audience in these pressures always  

ask the question So what do you think is going  to happen next? Are you gonna you’re gonna drop  

right? Why would you ask a question that you  know, you’re not going to get an answer to?

Ron Lang: And then some other schmuck asks almost  a similar question a different way. It says if not  

next meeting, what about later in the year? We’re  data dependent. Jesus, you could just record this  

and [00:03:00] just what are they paying you to  show up for it? Ask these idiotic questions. It’s

Jeff Kikel: the same. It’s the same agenda.

Jeff Kikel: They just changed the date. That’s the  funny part. Literally, it’s insane. Once again,  

I’m like, but what makes me laugh is I  guarantee you within two to three days,  

the narrative is going to be  that what he said was that  

he’s going to, they’re going to start  cutting rates by the end of this year.

Jeff Kikel: No, that’s not what he  said. He said the exact same thing  

every single month since last year, this  time. Yes. No change. Hire for longer. How

Ron Lang: many

Jeff Kikel: times? Hire for longer or data  dependent. It’s the same stuff. They’re not saying  

anything, but these guys will create something  out of the blue and then they start to follow on.

Jeff Kikel: Everybody else follows on.  It’s a game of telephone by the end.  

My call December at best. And I don’t  even think we’ll see one quite frankly,  

this year, odds are, I don’t think we’ll see one.

Ron Lang: Look, we said this  since the end of last year,  

[00:04:00] two to three. Now we  were talking maybe one to two.

Ron Lang: Does it really matter if you drop a 25  basis points? Does it really matter? It matters  

if you go off 25 from here, but does it really  matter? A 25 what does that mean? Economy is  

going to crash. All of a sudden the banks are  going to start opening the doors to lending,  

again, financial media, give them  a black eye and go away already.

Ron Lang: This is just ridiculous.

Jeff Kikel: It’s funny, cause we keep  talking about commercial real estate and  

there was a gentleman on, I think I was  listening to Fox business or something  

like that. And he was on there and he  said, you guys, The reality and he goes,  

I’m in commercial real estate. I think  he was with CBRE or something like that.

Jeff Kikel: We’ve got the largest  commercial portfolio and they’re  

saying with the renewals and all this,  he said, for it to have any effect,  

we’re going to have to see almost a 200 basis  point move downward for it to not have an effect  

on commercial real estate. And he’s And they  shouldn’t do that at this [00:05:00] point.

Jeff Kikel: So what he’s saying is, basically,  

it’s going to be a little bit of a crap show  when it comes to the commercial real estate,  

because all these things are renewing. I was  sitting with a guy a couple weeks ago at a,  

at an event. He’s a, basically, he does commercial  loans for buildings and he’s it’s a mess.

Jeff Kikel: Because i’m really not  in business right now because I  

can’t do anything and the banks aren’t lending So

Ron Lang: yeah, last quick point. I  heard an interview with tv and I know  

you got some stuff to get into  So this guy has been a veteran  

of real estate in the new york metro area for four  or five decades Yeah, and he’s semi retired now,  

They never retire and they were talking about  what he thought and he basically said it’s a  

crap show he said people were always worried If  they got to eight to ten percent occupancy rate,  

yeah, it’s greater than 25 So for decades,  they were worried about eight to ten.

Ron Lang: And of course, there’s more buildings.  There’s more Occupancy as far as people  

to go [00:06:00] because they go when they level  something they go higher And he says yeah, he says  

the occupancy the i’m sorry the i’m, sorry the  Not the occupancy rate the open occupancy Yeah is  

over 25 percent And they were always concerned  if it ever got to eight to ten, they’re not  

telling you everything right there I know it’s  one city, but it’s new york for crying out I

Jeff Kikel: mean that the funny part is that  I will get on to something else But that the  

same guy from cbre, they were talking about  well, can we just you know, convert all these  

office buildings then to residential and he’s  like it costs a fortune And he’s you have to  

now put in individual air conditioning  units and all kinds of stuff like that.

Jeff Kikel: He’s it takes the efficiency out  of these buildings massively. And there, the,  

the cap rates go down like crazy as a result and  the banks aren’t willing to loan. So it’s okay,  

people don’t want to live in the  city. They don’t want to work in  

the city. They want to work for the city wage tax.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. [00:07:00] Yeah, on top of  it. Let’s let’s kick off with some interesting  

facts. I wanted something fun because there’s  been just a bunch of crap in the news. So 10  

useless facts. These are things that, When you  have a drinking game, when people are asking for  

useless facts the first recorded recipe was over  4, 000 years ago, and it was a recipe for beer.

Jeff Kikel: Once again, proof  of what Benjamin Franklin said,  

that, the proof of God’s love is the fact that he

Ron Lang: created beer. I gotta say, I’m  not a beer guy. I’m a vodka tequila man,  

but I gotta tell you, I could sleep well  tonight knowing that fact. Knowing this.

Jeff Kikel: Here’s a good one. The longest  English word without a vowel is the word rhythms.

Jeff Kikel: Now that’s interesting. Yes,  I did not know that. I did not know that  

either. A group of flamingos is called a  flamboyance. I got to tell you, that makes  

sense in many ways. It does. There’s a lot  of [00:08:00] them down in in Miami. A lot of  

flamingos down there. The original Monopoly  pieces were inspired by charm bracelets.

Jeff Kikel: I actually did know

Ron Lang: that. I saw a documentary on Monopoly.  

It’s on Netflix. You haven’t seen it.  It’s actually very interesting. Yeah.

Jeff Kikel: Homeboy was pretty, he’s pretty  innovative and nobody really thought that it  

was going to work and it worked immensely well.  The world’s longest word is over 189, 000 letters.

Jeff Kikel: It’s the protein that they  call Titan, but I didn’t even begin to,  

I couldn’t even fit it all on the screen with 189,  000 letters. Here’s an interesting one. Honeybees  

can recognize human faces. How the hell do they  know that? I don’t know. Apparently they just  

come up and, if it’s a attractive face, if it’s  a Florida man, they run, all that kind of stuff.

Jeff Kikel: The ears of a cricket are  located on their front legs. So they’re  

always going [00:09:00] Hey, speak up here.  Come on. I did. I did not know that. This one  

I thought was the greatest one of the whole  group though. The inventor of the Frisbee was  

turned into a Frisbee. So when he died, his  wishes were that he wanted to be cremated.

Jeff Kikel: And then there’s a,  there was a limited edition set  

of frisbees that all include his ashes in them.

Ron Lang: Thank God. I don’t have one of those.

Jeff Kikel: There are more  possible chess games or yeah,  

overall games than there are Adams in  the observable universe. So I don’t

Ron Lang: believe that, but that’s how

Jeff Kikel: incredibly  complicated the game of chess is.

Jeff Kikel: And then the final one is  Australia is actually wider than the

Ron Lang: moon. A lot of people don’t know because  I’ve been to Australia. Landmass of Australia is  

actually very similar size, maybe a little bit  bigger than the 48 contiguous states of the U.  

S. [00:10:00] Yep, but they only have 25 million  people living there at 30 million because they’re

Jeff Kikel: they’re on

Ron Lang: The fringes

Jeff Kikel: Nobody

Ron Lang: lives in

Jeff Kikel: the middle.

Jeff Kikel: You

Ron Lang: don’t want to live in the center there.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, I was watching. I We  watched this one train show where on  

the smithsonian channel and they were oh,  here’s this Like the west coast of perth  

all the way across to the east coast and  it’s oh, yeah we’re stopping in this one  

spot in the middle and it’s a hotel and i’m  like who the hell goes to that It’s nothing

Ron Lang: Probably the train company owns it.

Ron Lang: That’s the only  reason why they stopped. It

Jeff Kikel: was

Ron Lang: a

Jeff Kikel: private family and that’s how they  get their mail and all their stuff and all this,  

but I’m like, who in the hell  goes out to the middle of nowhere,  

their own zip code. Yeah. It’s hilarious.  Couple things. A lot of you guys know that  

I’m a big follower of the  investors business daily.

Jeff Kikel: One of the things that they’ve  always had is a stock market exposure or  

stock market. Exposure chart, I guess the  best way to explain it or indicator which  

they’ve recently updated. And it was really  [00:11:00] intriguing because I, I’ve followed  

this for years. I used it as part of our cash  trigger for our portfolios that I manage.

Jeff Kikel: And what used to be, it  was basically 80 to I think it was  

like 70. Maybe 80 to 100%. Then there was a yellow  and then there was a red. And now they’ve tight,  

they’ve loosened that up a little bit  to give it a little bit more nuances.  

And it was intriguing to me because Using  this for my own portfolios that I manage.

Jeff Kikel: If you looked at this at the  beginning of April, it was sitting here right  

in this 60 and 80 percent stock market exposure.  And within, so the, this started, basically around  

April 15th ish. The Tuesday of that week, it  went from here to here in a matter of a day. And  

this is triggered off of [00:12:00] getting, the  indices going below their 50 day moving average.

Jeff Kikel: So it got as bad a few days ago  as being to the zero to 20 percent range  

here and it’s now started to recover  back a little bit. So you understand  

what this means? It’s almost like an  overbought oversold indicator. Yeah,  

I mean it is it’s just their own unique  way of doing it. So basically This big  

drop here in the S& P 500, the line, the  red line here is the 50 day moving average.

Jeff Kikel: This is that day that I had  made some changes to our portfolio as we,  

we started raising cash. It’s not going  to stop you. It’s not going to stop a down  

decline a little bit, but it does indicate when  things go below like that. And so the S& P,  

we’re still hovering between the 50  and the a hundred day moving averages.

Jeff Kikel: The real big one that’s made a  bigger move down is the nasdaq which kind  

of needed to Because it was ridiculous and  we’ve been saying [00:13:00] that for months,  

we’re still hovering now below the hundred  day moving average. But it’s amazing to me,  

all the bad news, all the horrible  stuff, all the just, I think,  

economic data that we’re getting some  of the earnings data we’re getting.

Jeff Kikel: It’s amazing to me the resilience  of the Nasdaq and the S. And P. How about you?

Ron Lang: The top eight stocks are  the same. Yep. The top eight stocks  

have the majority of the waiting and  both, they both needed a breather.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. And but still  they’re pretty damn resilient now.

Jeff Kikel: So I guess it’s the same  stocks, yeah, it was interesting how  

meta got whacked during earnings. But then,  the, when people started to realize. Oh,  

what they said is they’re spending a lot of  money because they’re making a crap ton of  

money on on AI based stuff. Oh maybe that’s  not such a bad thing that they’re spending.

Jeff Kikel: Good.

Ron Lang: Then Google propelled it the  

other direction when they had  their earnings. Yeah, exactly.

Jeff Kikel: From the economic standpoint  interestingly enough, some of the things  

[00:14:00] this week, specifically that, when I  look on briefing. com on their economic calendar,  

these are some of the things that were high there  are things that are highly affecting the market.

Jeff Kikel: ISM index, it’s been since  December of 22, it’s been below 50,  

which tends to indicate contraction in the  manufacturing sector. Recently it’d been  

moving in the positive direction. Once again,  this month we pulled back down below 50%. Even  

the months that were above were like  50 point, four or something like that.

Jeff Kikel: So it wasn’t anything  major, but we’re still indicating  

on the manufacturing side that  we’re in a contractionary area.

Ron Lang: Yeah. Anything under 50% is not good.  Not good. I shouldn’t say 50 percent the 50.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. And it’s been,  

it’s been riding there for quite a  while now. Yeah. Consumer confidence.

Jeff Kikel: I think this is a, this is  a, for me as an indicator [00:15:00] of,  

all right, the consumer’s now starting  to get a little bit worried and I’ve  

got a couple of slides after this that,  that kind of confirm this thesis for me,  

but we’ve been on a kind of gradual decline  this month, really dropped off quite a bit.

Jeff Kikel: And it was a bit of a surprise  to the market when consumer confidence went  

down. The total, it’s here in the middle.  The expectations are much, much worse.

Ron Lang: Again, the expectations is  the mentality. Yeah. The mentality has  

just been on a steady decline. Yeah.  Since COVID. So it doesn’t matter.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. And here’s the interesting  part of it. Three stocks that I think,  

are bellwether. There are  bellwether stocks. But also  

are an indication of the consumer and  where they’re willing to cut. Starbucks  

second quarter earnings were absolutely  atrocious. The stock got poleaxed down.

Jeff Kikel: You had revenue down, net income  down, profit margins are down. You know pretty  

much [00:16:00] everything across the board was  just bad for Starbucks at this point Another one

Ron Lang: real quick on Starbucks. The  CEO was on CNBC yesterday and got totally  

roasted by all of his typical CEO political  rhetoric about Where the company is and where  

they’re benefiting and the key got completely  roasted and the stock got decimated Yesterday.

Ron Lang: Yeah. Yeah again deserved by the way.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Once again, it’s okay, but I  think it’s also It’s coming to that point where  

it’s okay people are stretched thin Inflation is  continuing to go up. Where do you start to cut  

back? You start to cut back on that five dollar  coffee You That you’re going to have, it doesn’t,

Ron Lang: it doesn’t

Jeff Kikel: seem closer to say young brands.

Jeff Kikel: Another one, you think,  Oh, maybe the big, heavy, why don’t

Ron Lang: you tell the audience  what young brands makes up?

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. So you have a  [00:17:00] Kentucky fried chicken  

Taco Bell A& W root beer, I think  Long John Silver’s in there too. Of  

course their big one is really a Kentucky  fried chicken because it’s worldwide.

Jeff Kikel: Brand, another one  revenues down their net income was up,  

that can be monkeyed around with, but  with tax stuff, profit margins were up,  

which is good because they had lower  expenses. But it, I think the revenue  

number for them was big one, another one  that just got pole axed the other day.

Jeff Kikel: And I think the final one, which  this one is interesting to me. Because they’ve  

they’re a big brick and mortar, but they  also have a huge online pharmacy and they  

just got crushed. CVS health revenue down  4%, net income down 48 percent from the year  

before. Margins are down, which they don’t  have a whole lot of margin to begin with.

Jeff Kikel: And just everything  pretty much down at this point. So I,  

it’s, to me, it’s [00:18:00] saying that. All  right, we’re starting to see some major cracks.  

We’ve seen cracks, but we’re starting to see  some major cracks in I think the low to mid,  

mid layer of the economy. Those people that  are in the lower end and the mid layer plus,  

I think in CVS’s case to another  big part of was the loss.

Jeff Kikel: Not only

Ron Lang: that, but it wasn’t just  the earnings that this thing fell  

off a clip. If you look back at  the chart, this thing started  

to have a precipitous decline about a month  ago, which means somebody knew something.

Jeff Kikel: And I think  the other part too, that I,  

I listened on the conference call on this one  because I’ve had my eye on it for a while.

Jeff Kikel: The loss that they’re having in  some of these markets from theft is just off  

the charts. Horrible. And some of these  markets I was in Boston a few months ago,  

you go into a CVS and literally the  toothbrushes are locked up. So you have to,  

you literally have to go in. It’s  like going to a [00:19:00] museum.

Jeff Kikel: You have to have somebody  come and open up every piece of it.  

Just so that you can get a toothbrush or, Going

Ron Lang: back to where retail was  60 70 years ago. Yeah Everything

Jeff Kikel: was behind the counter. Maybe  more effective to do that it’s just you have  

to go to the counter and and get everything  from them directly from the counter Yeah,  

but yeah just I mean it’s interesting to  see some of these companies as we roll  

into earning season Of course, you know  a lot of the tech companies are doing  

extremely well You But those companies that are  really supported by the consumer I think are  

starting to show some signs of okay now it’s  hitting the bottom line for a lot of these

Ron Lang: Yep.

Ron Lang: No, you hit three good  ones there. No doubt about it

Jeff Kikel: That is our that is my piece of the  show for the day. Folks we’re here to do this  

for you We’re trying to keep these as tight and  as short as we can So that you can consume them  

and get on to your day But I, I think while though  the stock market is indicating, Hey, we’re out of  

this, whatever we were going [00:20:00] through  over the month of April it’s interesting to see.

Jeff Kikel: And I think we have to watch  

very carefully with. Earning  season what’s going on here?

Ron Lang: Yeah, I agree. I agree.  You know what never a dull moment  

Every episode is going to have  something new. That’s for sure

Jeff Kikel: lots of information to give out.  Thank you all for joining us Make sure that  

you share this with somebody make sure that you  hit that up vote and Make sure you’re subscribed  

to the channel so that You don’t miss any  of these as they come out because ron and  

I are starting to do a few more of them  Because there’s just so much information.

Jeff Kikel: We just can’t do it  all in one show So thanks a lot.  

And we’ll see you guys here back the next time.