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

with another sense of things for this  week. And it is a fun day today because  

it is leap day. It recurs once every  four years. Ron, how you doing bud?

Ron Lang: Good good. It’s funny. I don’t know  if it’s George Harrison or somebody out there.

Ron Lang: I remember years  and years ago. He goes, yeah,  

I’m only 12 years old. It’s really 48.  Yeah, I’ve only had 12 actual birthdays,

Jeff Kikel: 12 real actual birthdays. Yeah,  that’s, I was reading something this morning. The  

guy who’s of all things, the Florida times. Which,  seems to be like my Florida man research place.

Jeff Kikel: [00:01:00] It’s who  you say. And he’s yeah, he goes,  

I’m having my 15th birthday today. I  can’t even drive yet at this point.

Ron Lang: Yeah. My grandfather died on leap  year. So it’s just a little reminder. Yeah.

Jeff Kikel: Let’s kick it off here a  little bit with just that very thing.  

Happy leap year. We have some stars. In or some  famous people that have had birthdays today.

Jeff Kikel: My favorite actor. Pretty  much of all time. Dennis Farina. Yeah.  

Just absolutely the funniest sense of humor.  Tony Robbins birthday today. So he’s probably,  

I would say the most famous of them Dinah shore  and then jaw rule the rapper. And there’s a ton  

of other people, but honestly, I was like, I  don’t even know him and apparently we don’t  

have a whole lot of newer people that are  famous that have birthdays on the 29th here.

Ron Lang: Yeah,

Jeff Kikel: well, 1 of the things I saw  this week and it was, it’s interesting,  

we’ve had this [00:02:00] conversation going  on about the really what’s been going on with  

the consumer and everything else. And, everything  we’ve seen was. Okay. No matter what was going on,  

whether it was leading indicators  or anything along those lines,  

everything seemed to be trending  down, the consumer was on board,  

interestingly enough, one of the things that I  started seeing this week in the economic data,  

and this is all things that occurred during  this week on this week’s economic releases.

Jeff Kikel: And these are all things that  are either. By briefing. com measured as  

medium to high effects on the markets,  right? So new home sales down which was  

expected to be up durable goods orders down  really significantly from. Previous consumer  

confidence starting to wane off a little  [00:03:00] bit. Initial claims were higher.

Jeff Kikel: And continuing claims were  higher this week. So all of these things  

are all things that I see affecting the  consumer. What’s your thoughts, Ron?

Ron Lang: Look, we’ve been seeing a  steady downtrend for almost 24 months.  

Yeah. We’re coming up to 24 months when.  The two in the 10 yield curve inverted,  

and that’s one of the longest times  that we’ve been continuously inverted.

Ron Lang: Yeah. And we’ve been saying this for  a while, the echo chamber thing, being dogmatic,  

all that good stuff. These things will continue to  trend down, level off, trend down until something  

breaks. What that is, don’t know what the timeline  is. Don’t know but it is ominous and I think it’s  

interesting and I know you and I chuckle about  this Whether we’re on our pot or not that I love  

it when you get these permables Coming out on  tv just [00:04:00] going ignore the data, right?

Ron Lang: Profits are strong.  Profits Aren’t strong broad based,  

right? It’s very Myopically focused on a  couple of key Companies and sectors. So  

if it’s going to continue to trend you trend  down How do you not look at that? And I just  

think this is a continuing theme and we could  be talking about this every week to ad nauseam  

as But I just think it’s amazing we could look  at all this we see how bad things have continued  

to go But until there’s a catalyst You know,  animal spirits are high and get your Gatsby on.

Ron Lang: Yeah.

Jeff Kikel: And it was interesting, as  you talk about corporate profits, the,  

I guess the only bright spot in this whole thing  was personal income was up 1 percent versus an  

estimate of 0. 6%. So for the consumer, yeah,  consumer that’s good. For the employer, that’s  

not a good sign. And I will tell you, I just had  to hire somebody for one of my other businesses.

Jeff Kikel: And [00:05:00] ended up  having to pay about 20 percent more  

to get a decent candidate than I had for my  previous employee that’s leaving. So it’s,  

yeah, it’s great that personal income is up,  but the problem is that just pushes inflation  

higher and it pushes everything  higher when it comes to companies.

Ron Lang: Listen, we talked about  this last week. Big Mac meals,  

12 to 15, depending on what part of  the United States that you’re in. Yeah,  

the average half decent car is going to be  40 50 plus 1000 for half decent car. This is  

the new normal with that. So McDonald’s  is no longer, a quick, simple bargain.

Ron Lang: For your kids or for yourself. Walmart  starts talking about I don’t know how they know  

this that the their average Customer  that’s coming in their store that makes  

a hundred thousand dollars Has been trending  up for years now. So what is [00:06:00] that  

telling you about? The the more well off  families being able to go into Walmart.

Ron Lang: Walmart has a lot of good stuff.  It’s not garbage. It’s not goodwill for  

crying out loud. So I don’t even know  why they got a bad rap in that area,  

things are going up and just, you got to get

Jeff Kikel: used to it. And I would  say the other side of the coin too, is,  

I’m seeing, or I’ve heard the trend,  even with the dollar stores people.

Jeff Kikel: Higher income people shopping in  the dollar stores for, I remember hearing this  

during the beginning of school season this  year. They’re shopping there versus going to  

target or someplace else for school supplies  because it’s basically the same thing at that  

point. Last thing I wanted to cover market wise  this is something I watch on a daily basis.

Jeff Kikel: Part of my morning routine  is to go to investors. com and then  

briefing. com investors. com. This popped up  this week the stock market exposure indicator  

went from 80 to [00:07:00] 100 percent stock  market exposure, sick backwards to 60 to 80%.  

And their reason for that is. We’ve had  such a massive upturn in the S and P 500,  

the and they track, basically they use the S  and P Dow and NASDAQ, and there’s been such  

a massive run up and all of them that they’re,  their recommendation or their read is to start  

pulling back a little bit on the stock exposure  and portfolios, which, I agree a hundred percent.

Ron Lang: Yeah. I, and it’s interesting.  I, When I look at that chart, it’s a  

headline. I’d like to know what,  how they know that what I mean is,  

if people are taking profits  or taking money off the table,  

why hasn’t there been some type of a precipitous  pullback or even 3 to 5 percent pullback?

Ron Lang: So what does that say? There’s

Jeff Kikel: typically Yeah, theirs is typically  predictive of their recommendation of exposure.  

So it’s not because the market is starting to  pull back. It’s just because [00:08:00] of,  

things are stretching beyond the,  reasonable valuations and things like that.

Jeff Kikel: So they’ll start to pull  back a little bit. I will tell you,  

they’ve been pretty much balls on. Accurate  in the 30 years I’ve followed them and now  

they’ve revised this. It actually used  to be I think it was just 3 phases. So  

it was 80 to 100. Then it was a middle  1, which was maybe 6, maybe like 40%.

Jeff Kikel: And then. Zero to 20 when we were  in like a full on correction, and they’ve just  

recently revised this to where they’ve got a  little bit more, it’s a little bit more. Okay,  

make some adjustments here. Pull some cash  back just in case we have a pullback or  

something like that. But I will tell you, it  is something I keep an eye on all the time,  

and it’s part of it’s one of the factors  that we use with our predictive AI it’s  

one of the factors that we plug into our  predictive AI, our portfolio management.

Jeff Kikel: So just saying,

Ron Lang: yeah, [00:09:00] if you’re taking  money off the table, 2. 5, 3 years ago,  

you had no place to put it today, the  treasury. And I got to check the 1 year.  

But I know the one to six month, they’re  still yielding over 5%. Yeah. Annually.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, money markets are still  yielding. Yeah. I think the Schwab money  

markets that I’ve got a couple of clients in  that had, cash, I think it’s still above five.

Jeff Kikel: It’s not keeping up with inflation,  but it’s right there at inflation at that point,  

actually a little bit higher  than inflation is even. Yeah,

Ron Lang: so like I said, I, a lot of these  things are interesting between economic data,  

sentiment data, all that good stuff.

Ron Lang: The sentiment data is, surveys  and, people are looking at the headline,  

but I’d like to know, oh, hold on a second. What’s  socioeconomic classes? Who are you asking about?  

Spending habits and things like that. That’s  another conversation. Oh, yeah, but when you’re  

looking at all this data and it’s trending down  [00:10:00] and in a presidential election year,  

we don’t know what’s being manipulated I don’t  care which president which parties in the white  

house or not I know every presidential election  year the other side always accuses the incumbent  

side Of oh why aren’t we getting all the  data or that this can’t be on the data?

Ron Lang: Even if it is all the data,  they’re still making the accusation  

to put doubt in people’s minds,  and this is just the game that’s  

being played. And hopefully the average  American out there is a bit smarter than

Jeff Kikel: that. My, my  favorite is watching what,  

one of the things I pay really  good attention to on economic data.

Jeff Kikel: And this is one of the things I love  about briefing. com is they not only every time  

they post like a number. They also post okay, what  was the previous number and what was the revision?  

So you can see that. And it’s amazing to me that  really probably about the last 6 to 7 years. What  

I’ve seen is, boom, they post this number that,  everybody’s oh, my God, it’s great.[00:11:00]

Jeff Kikel: Then you watch about a month later and  they’re adjusting that number massively back, and  

I, it’s just I that, that whole either you suck  at measuring it or you’re trying to manipulate  

stuff and I’ll just, how about both? Yeah, it’s,  I think it’s a little bit of both. I am amazed  

at the ability of the government to be just  absolutely terrible at tracking these numbers.

Jeff Kikel: It’s that it hits the headline.  That’s the important number for them. And then  

they adjust it back and that doesn’t ever  seem to get reported that much. In today’s

Ron Lang: day and age, I could have said this 20  years ago in this day and age. With technology  

and the expeditious nature that we can get  and analyze data Yeah, there should be not  

no excuse revisions in the first year Okay,  I get it three five ten years down the road.

Ron Lang: No, i’m sorry five data is final and  here’s my other fun thing The irs requires us  

to file our [00:12:00] taxes every single year  nobody’s filing January 2nd, right? You still  

got to get your bank statements and your credit  card statements. There’s other reconciliation. Own

Jeff Kikel: businesses. You’re not  going to get anything until March.

Ron Lang: Yeah. People don’t close their books.  For last month typically to the middle to the  

end of the next month and people don’t  close out their year typically For you  

know a month or two and every business is  different because of how the data comes in  

Why can’t we expect the same? Consideration  from the government and the agencies to be  

able to present data in a timely fashion Makes  no sense to me I’m going to make a revision.

Ron Lang: I understand like fractional percentage  points off whole percentage points off. I’m sorry.

Jeff Kikel: The ability of big data, it’s  okay, hire, it’s time for you guys to hire  

Amazon or somebody that does big data. To  do this stuff a hell of [00:13:00] a lot,  

there’s no excuse. I know there isn’t. Yeah.  We spend ridiculous amounts of money on.

Jeff Kikel: All of this, and we’re getting  probably the worst data science I’ve ever seen

Ron Lang: it. I should say it’s  going to get better. But if the  

political discourse continues, it’s.  It’s basically the same BS moving

Jeff Kikel: forward. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I  don’t necessarily think they want to know. They,  

it if they knew pretty much right on the money,  

then they’d have to actually do  something about it at that point.

Jeff Kikel: And they’re just not. I agree.  

I agree. All right. What do  you got on your side there?

Ron Lang: I’m going to flip over. I got the  pop culture. Okay. Go over there. And you  

know through popular demand of last week and  the week before of bad business decisions and  

bad products We’re just going to keep writing  this for bad products for this podcast and  

next so [00:14:00] I know last week We did one  where a raid can and a drink look very similar.

Ron Lang: What didn’t you know this week?  Radiator coolant looks like an energy drink  

to me. I’m just hoping. In convenience  stores and gas stations that this is  

definitely in a separate refrigerator  or a different to end cap in a store.

Jeff Kikel: The funny part is,  

and it’s using like a normal pull top  can thing like you would for a drink.

Jeff Kikel: Yes,

Ron Lang: This is damn scary. I don’t know  much about cars, but I certainly I would  

get confused. Yeah. All right. Again, who  are designing these slides? Adults beware.

Ron Lang: Look, there’s already enough  liability with kids playgrounds. You got  

to institute this for potential bodily harm  and you know some, you know Some parents  

that didn’t get enough sleep where the kids are  coaxing them. We’re gonna get on this thing Oh,  

yeah, forget about going feet first  going head [00:15:00] first, baby

Jeff Kikel: I don’t know which end  I would rather take it in but yeah

Ron Lang: And then again, getting on  the bad designs and staying with kids  

playgrounds who approved this  design for a playground slide.

Ron Lang: I really

Jeff Kikel: okay. Yeah,

Ron Lang: Just say, wow. And if you take  a look at this at the structure support,  

this is the way it was designed. Nobody  ended up doing this on their own. No,

Jeff Kikel: No.

Ron Lang: Wow. Anyway. I was never a big  Pikachu person. I know the kids were back  

in the day. It was a big thing, I  think this is a bad product design.

Ron Lang: I don’t know what you think.

Jeff Kikel: Wow.

Ron Lang: I don’t know. It

Jeff Kikel: took me a second to  figure it out. It’s Oh yeah. Wow.

Ron Lang: Okay. Why wouldn’t this go like back of  

the head in? So it’s staring at  you, maybe put it in its mouth

Jeff Kikel: or belly or something like that.

Ron Lang: I don’t [00:16:00] know. All right. If  it only serves one. Why is this ideal for sharing  

please help me out Did anybody sign off on this  before they printed up a few thousand or whatever  

it may have been oh lord all right, so that’s  my pop culture for the week a good way to end it

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, I love it.

Jeff Kikel: Love it. Love it. Folks, thanks for  for joining us for this week. This was a little  

bit of a shorter show. But I think it was mainly  dominated by what I feel like is A time where,  

we’re living through a time where I  think some of the cracks are starting  

to get a little bit more cracky  than they have been, so to speak.

Jeff Kikel: And I think we need to get to  the point where we were a little bit more  

protective of our money. So I’d encourage  y’all to start thinking about that, paying a  

little bit more attention now because we don’t  know what’s coming around the corner. And it,  

once again, it’s an election year, so things  could be [00:17:00] just completely crazy.

Jeff Kikel: So thanks for joining  us. Get your popcorn out. Yeah,  

no kidding. It’s just going to get crazier here  and. I think after next week, after super Tuesday,  

it’s pretty much going to determine who the,  the battle of the, network stars is going to  

be here. , thanks for joining us as always  make sure that you hit that up vote button.

Jeff Kikel: Let us know that you’re out there  and subscribe to the channel. So you get these  

updates every single time. So thanks for joining  us and we’ll see you back here the very next time.