Jeff Kikel: Good morning. Cents of  things. This is Jeff and Ron for  

another weekly update of what’s going on  during earning season and all the economic  

things coming out. We’ll we’ll have lots  to talk about today. It is, like I said,  

the middle of earning season and we had some  big earnings yesterday. So lots to talk about.

Jeff Kikel: Ron, how

Ron Lang: you doing, bud? Good. I  don’t know about you, but I’m sniffing

Jeff Kikel: spring. I am sniffing spring myself.  And in fact. So did the big rodents. In p

Ron Lang: we have spring, yeah. Groundhog Day,

Jeff Kikel: 83% of the time he sees his  shadow and we have six more weeks of

Ron Lang: winter. Oh, I thought  it was reversed. I I thought he,  

I [00:01:00] thought it was  a 40 60 that he predicts a

Jeff Kikel: Okay.

Jeff Kikel: Heard it this morning. 83%.  Actually no they explained it this morning.  

He is a hundred percent right. Always. It’s just,  they have difficulty with the conversation with  

them. Sometimes they’re misunderstandings  in the conversation. So that’s why he’s  

not speaking loud enough. That’s why he’s off, or  they’re off doing it like 70 percent of the time,  

but 83 percent of the time he sees his shadow  and that’s six more weeks of winter today.

Jeff Kikel: It was all sunny and nice and  which I never understood because i’m like,  

okay if there’s sun he’s gonna see his shadow  If there’s not sun and it’s gross outside,  

then he wouldn’t see his shadow and I  Maybe he’s got special vision. I guess  

I guess whatever but the big rodent saw  it and I was actually watching it This  

morning at 6 30 my time 7 30 on the east  coast And we have early spring coming now.

Jeff Kikel: We still have six more weeks of  [00:02:00] winter we’re still going to be in  

early spring here. So we’re heading for some warm  weather. Loving it. Loving it. Got a hell of a  

year starting off here Already in the markets  just it ain’t dolls. Yeah, super funny. One of  

the things that I kept hearing about and I have to  rail a little bit, you get some of these guys That  

get on the news and, it’s, they’re just spouting  off complete useless crap most of the time.

Jeff Kikel: But I heard something this week  that made me go, and that is the January effect,  

and what the January effect is. If we  start the year off good. That means that,  

we’re going to have a good  rest of the year at this point.

Ron Lang: Maybe what we’ll do in one of our next  podcasts they also have the Super Bowl effect.

Ron Lang: Remember if the NFC won, it would be an  up year, but that in the last 10 years, it hasn’t

Jeff Kikel: held up. It’s not worked at all. Yeah.  It’s just basically like the whole selling may go

Ron Lang: away. Yeah, too many [00:03:00] Patriot  and Chief Super Bowls to debunk that. That’s

Jeff Kikel: exactly right. Yeah, so  they’re just going to destroy that.

Jeff Kikel: I wanted to set the level set the  ground here as far as the market. So year to date,  

S and P 500 were up for year to date, we’re up  3. 44, 3. 81 now percent. Cause it’s apparently  

the market just updated. The Dow, year  to date, we are up 2. 13%. The NASDAQ,  

we’re up 4. 03%. And a big day today  because of some earnings from some big boys.

Jeff Kikel: Meta, yeah. The Russell, he’s  down. And we’ve been down for the last,  

I think, six years to the S& P 500. It’s  been flat. Interesting, though, that the NASDAQ  

Although this is the equal weighted index. The  S& P 500 equal weight. is just now positive.  

Actually it’s now negative year to date. But it  is, it’s just [00:04:00] not really followed.

Jeff Kikel: If you argue the point that the  January effect, if the S and P 500 which S and  

P 500 are we talking about? Are we talking about  the one that has all the high techs? In the lead  

or the equal weight one, because if you’re going  to use that argument, I would venture to say that  

the market’s going to be the market throughout  this year would be from that perspective.

Jeff Kikel: A

Ron Lang: lot of layoffs in January  too. That’s been that’s been going up.

Jeff Kikel: So I caught this. It was funny.  It was if you, this came out of investopedia,  

can you make money exploiting the January  effect? Unlike even if it were real, which it’s  

probably not, the markets were, it were to rise on  characteristics uncharacteristically each January.

Jeff Kikel: The fact that people may  try to exploit this would undermine  

its appearance. It’s basically BS. I  looked at 10 different studies that  

have been done and there’s absolutely no  correlation to what the market has done  

at the [00:05:00] beginning of the year.  To what it does for the rest of the year.

Jeff Kikel: What’s

Ron Lang: your take on it? May we’ll have to  do an analysis on selling May and go away,  

which doesn’t work either. Yeah. It

Jeff Kikel: never works either. Yeah. Or it  does work sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t,  

but it is not a predictor. And once again, it’s  be in the market. Adjust to it. Certainly don’t,  

you don’t want to be full bore all  the time, but adjust to what’s there.

Jeff Kikel: But yeah, that all these things  about, oh if you do that yeah. Then why the  

hell are we working? We just throw out all of  our clients into the market. If January was good,  

we’d throw all of our clients into the  market and take the rest of the year off at

Ron Lang: that consistent  contributions up or down.

Ron Lang: Yep,

Jeff Kikel: absolutely. So that’s the  things that work are, the boring things  

are the things that work. The ones that  try and predict and prognosticate what’s  

going to happen is not necessarily going to  work in the long run. So we’ve had a hell of  

an earnings month so far. Some big earnings,  [00:06:00] that I looked at big earnings wins,  

UAL and American Airlines, the airlines  are just knocking the cover off the ball.

Jeff Kikel: If they’re, run now, there’s  a bunch of trash that’s out there,  

the spirit airlines of the  world and some of those,

Ron Lang: but it’s not  necessarily reflected in the stock

Jeff Kikel: price. Not yeah. They’ve  got, earnings were up 5 percent and,  

5 to 10 percent in both American and  United, and they’re really not there.

Jeff Kikel: I don’t know, and I’d love your take  on this. I don’t know if there’s that effect,  

the Boeing effect with the max. Yeah,  with the max planes of them predicting,  

okay, these things are going to be out of  service for a period of time or something.

Ron Lang: I will say this, it’s  tough to, comment on Boeing,  

but, regarding the airlines, a  couple of things there number one,  

people just are traveling more so now  than even they were prior to COVID.

Ron Lang: I think so. Also, one of the  reasons why I don’t invest in the airlines,  

I will watch it to see [00:07:00] traffic flow  is it’s pegged to oil and oil is down. So if  

oil is down and that’s one of their biggest  input costs other than labor, they’re gonna

Jeff Kikel: make more money. Absolutely.  And once again, and they really haven’t  

had a big contract negotiation strike  in a while in the airlines anywhere.

Jeff Kikel: They blew through that a little  bit last year. And got through it and moved  

on at that point. So there’s really no major  negotiations. From a, at least the input cost  

of that and oil is down. It’s interesting. I  just don’t see people slowing up on the travel.

Jeff Kikel: Once again, we keep saying  this every week. Credit card bills are  

through the roof, everything else, but  somehow people keep finding the money,  

or at least a subset of the. The world is  finding the money to continue to travel.  

Procter and Gamble was up doing  extraordinarily well in its space.

Jeff Kikel: We had big earnings from  Amazon and Meta [00:08:00] last night,  

largely a lot of advertising. I noticed  when I dug through it a little bit,  

a lot of advertising there Taiwan semi was up  pretty hefty. It’s up almost 10 percent since  

it’s earnings JP Morgan, really a lot of the  bank, the big banks actually did really well.

Jeff Kikel: The regionals are still  getting beat up pretty bad. One

Ron Lang: of them almost  shut down in New York. Yeah.

Jeff Kikel: And the funny part is  they’re the one that gobbled up  

most of the assets from Signature Bank.  What a surprise. You had a bunch of crap.  

You bought a big pile of crap and it’s  even worse than I think they expected.

Ron Lang: That’s what happens when  the government backstops something  

to prevent a crisis, but then you’re  just pushing the garbage onto somebody  

else and letting them deal with it. We saw  this 15 years ago. We’re seeing it again.

Jeff Kikel: And like I said, I’m just  looking at, it’s Once again, you just  

keep seeing the bigger banks getting bigger  and the regional bank struggling a little bit.

Jeff Kikel: Now, there are some players in there.  [00:09:00] I think my bank that I bank with it’s  

interesting because they were actually an  acquirer of. Silicon Valley bank, and they  

actually put themselves in a really good position  as a result of it because it came up a bigger  

footprint. Out in California and with those kind  of mid market companies that are out there, they

Ron Lang: probably got some government

Jeff Kikel: concessions.

Jeff Kikel: I’m sure. I’m sure. Last 1  on here was Royal Caribbean. Once again,  

that same thing the cruise industry, was  basically on flat line for 3 years or 2  

years. And now they’re really coming back  major Royal Caribbean. Certainly I would  

say the top of that group, you’ve  got a carnival that’s in there.

Jeff Kikel: You’ve got a couple of the other ones,  but Royals really, they seem to be hitting on all  

cylinders. They’ve got a couple big ships coming  out that are, literally like a floating city.

Ron Lang: Do you see some of  these things? First of all,  

I don’t know how they float. Second of  [00:10:00] all, a big wave. How do they stay?

Ron Lang: They’re going up. They got to go out  

too. But I don’t even know how some of  these things are even like floating.

Jeff Kikel: I, it’s amazing to me. I’ve watched  it’s interesting though the challenge though,  

they keep making them bigger and bigger  and bigger. And I’ve watched some of these,  

because we’re, we watched this one show on, on,  

I think it’s Smithsonian or something like that,  where it has all these cruise ships on there.

Jeff Kikel: And, the captains are always  talking about, man, they go into some of  

these ports where there’s a lot of wind and,  they’re trying to thread a needle to get  

this ginormous ship in. And they’re dealing  with that cross breeze coming in. And it’s,  

thank God they’ve got the bow thrusters  and everything that they get themselves in.

Jeff Kikel: But literally we watched this one  where it was, they had such a high wind hitting  

the side of the ship. They were literally  right next to the dock and they couldn’t  

make that extra little bit of difference. To  get into the dock because there [00:11:00] was  

so much back pressure from the ship against  the dock and then the wind was hitting them  

and I mean they took them like an extra  hour to go maybe 10 feet in towards them.

Ron Lang: Yeah, I don’t know. I was  on one a long time ago. At the time it  

was Royal Caribbean’s biggest ship and  we ran into a storm. Let me tell you,  

a lot of people got seasick and whatever.  It doesn’t matter how big it is. You’re  

going to feel it. And I, like I said, with the  way, some of them are today, you’ll be right.

Ron Lang: They’re floating ships, but  unless it’s calm seas, I can’t imagine  

how they’re not getting thrown around,  but that’s a story for another time.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, we did our,  the one cruise I’ve ever been on,  

we were on a Royal Caribbean and we  were, our cruise or our. Whatever  

travel agent helped get us onto the back  end of the boat, on the bow of the boat.

Jeff Kikel: And so we’re at the end of the  fulcrum of that thing going back and forth,  

and both of us were sick as a dog. And  [00:12:00] of course, our captain gets on,  

he’s from Norway, and he’s we are going into  a tropical wave at this point, and I’m like,  

a tropical wave? Okay, so that’s. Cruise industry  speak for I’m going to be puking all day.

Ron Lang: You got to understand the  nomenclature, my man. That’s it. It’s a

Jeff Kikel: tropical vape. All right.  Not everything was good. So let’s take  

a look at some of the big losers. Apple last  night. I don’t really consider it a loser that  

the earnings were okay. I’m not growing as  much. Yeah, it’s just not growing as much.

Jeff Kikel: But of course, Tim Cook hinted. At  at something coming from an AI perspective, it’s  

interesting to see that Apple has just absolutely  done nothing with AI. But have they done

Ron Lang: nothing or they’re just not  talking about what they’ve been doing?

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Or they’re not putting  out tools on their stuff with AI.

Jeff Kikel: I would argue this

Ron Lang: is my frustration.  Isn’t Siri some form of AI?

Jeff Kikel: That absolutely.  I was just going to say that.

Ron Lang: How [00:13:00]  long has that been around? 10

Jeff Kikel: years, 12 years. Yeah, it was  basically the advent of the iPhone, which is about  

12 years ago that, they embedded Siri into it and  okay, they’ve been doing AI before everybody else  

came up behind them, they don’t have any  new little AI tools or anything like that.

Jeff Kikel: So of course. The stock’s kind  of gotten whipped around a little bit this  

morning. 3m general electric not great and even  worse kind of worse projections going forward  

manufacturing Yeah, the only thing I saw with  general electric is it looks like it looks to be  

that they’re going to shed off another they’re,  I think they’re down to three major units and  

I think they’re going to shed another one off  and really get down to, the basics of what they

Ron Lang: do.

Ron Lang: They’re just unwinding  Jack Welch’s empire from 25

Jeff Kikel: years ago. That’s exactly  right. And honestly, that’s probably  

a good thing because they’ve managed it  horribly. Charles Schwab. Interesting.  

Schwab’s kind of a weird animal. I’ve worked  for him and [00:14:00] it’s an oddball animal,  

but they were down both revenue and earning  or earnings and revenues across the board.

Jeff Kikel: So they just weren’t  good. And, interestingly enough.  

It may be the acquisition of TD  would be my take in there that,  

it took them a long time to merge them  in which is actually a good thing because  

usually Schwab kind of merges stuff in and  bailing wire and duct tapes it together.

Jeff Kikel: And this time they actually put  some thought into it and I think probably  

the biggie of this whole thing was Tesla it  just got hammered again. At this point, look,

Ron Lang: They’re rolling out cars  more than ever. But they’re getting  

squeezed on margins and competitions going up.

Jeff Kikel: And the problem is, now you’ve  got competition going up and less people  

even want them at this point. I think people  buy the Tesla’s because of the cool factor.  

Most of the electric cars that the big  three are putting out ain’t cool factor.

Jeff Kikel: I’m [00:15:00] sorry. A  four door crossover is not a Mustang.  

I’m sorry. I don’t care what you say.  It ain’t a Mustang. Yeah, but the other

Ron Lang: reason too, that I think the little  Scott was his gas has come down. If gas was,  

95 instead of 70, 75. Tesla  would be getting more headlines.

Jeff Kikel: Sure. And they’ve gotten  some really bad headlines with,  

of course, the ice storms and everything else.

Jeff Kikel: And, people not getting their cars  charged and all that, it just all hurts. I think  

it doesn’t necessarily hurt tesla per se, but  I think it just continues to hurt the electric  

car industry that You know what? We don’t have  the infrastructure for it yet. We just don’t  

have it. And a lot of the batteries are just not  good in extreme weather, especially extreme cold.

Jeff Kikel: They are not good in extreme cold  because you have to run your heater. And when  

you run your, you know that I love the excuse  there, the car companies[00:16:00] just don’t run  

your heater. Okay. It’s like negative 20 degrees  outside. I’m going to run my freaking heater. Yes,

Ron Lang: no they’re great cars.

Ron Lang: And look, someday we’ll figure  out how to look right. I think they’re up  

to 300 miles per charge now, which is, basically  right there with the internal combustion engine,  

but eventually they’re going  to be three 50 and 400 and the,  

the the gas powered car just,  it is not going to get there.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah I like, I personally, I  think the reality of this is the hybrid  

step is a much better step going through the  process. If I were buying another vehicle,  

I’d probably buy a hybrid because it  makes sense. If I’m on a long trip  

I’m not going to go for, three hours and  then stop and charge my car for an hour.

Jeff Kikel: I want to keep going and, that’s the  impracticality. If you drive short distances,  

I think an electric car is amazing. If  I would buy one, but I’m a gear head,  

man. So I’m just not gonna give up my Camaro for  a goofy electric [00:17:00] car at this point,  

but I drive four miles back and forth to work,  

literally drive for your bike, say  what you should be riding your bike.

Jeff Kikel: No, I won’t. I’m sorry, I live  in Texas, like you living in Arizona and  

riding your bike on you could ride it in  the morning because it’s nice and cool,  

but the afternoon would be a little  toasty riding back in a suit in the

Ron Lang: summertime. 100%. Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff Kikel: What else have you  got for us on on earning season?

Jeff Kikel: Anything that from your perspective?

Ron Lang: I thought it was interesting. I  don’t have the slide on it. But they were  

talking about how the top seven stocks are  making up for either 90 or 95 percent of  

the overall S and P’s earning growth. Which, it’s  just astounding if you think about it. Meanwhile,  

the market still continues to hold  and go up and and go from there.

Ron Lang: I know in our next podcast, we’ll get  [00:18:00] into some of the the Fed futures and  

talking about future rate cuts, which will be  a spirited conversation. But overall, look,  

I think after this week and next week. We’ll  get over the hump of the major companies in  

the reporting and overall, it’s been very mixed  and I would say more towards flat to negative.

Ron Lang: If you’re looking at the  aggregate numbers they are looking at  

some earnings growth in the first couple of  quarters and negative growth. In the fourth  

quarter. I don’t know how they’re projecting  all that. Yeah. Unless they’re anticipating,  

economic slowdown, which, we heard about  all through last year, you and I were an  

echo chamber there and very dogmatic, at  some point the ice has got to break here.

Ron Lang: But as long as employment stays  high, how many times have we’ve said this  

the market will levitate. There’s no doubt about  it. But I still think it’s standing on quicksand,  

at least in the short and medium term until the  election. But we’ll see, we had to get through  

January. So we’ll see what [00:19:00] happens  here in the the balance of the first quarter.

Jeff Kikel: And it’s interesting. I just happened,  I was coming back to my office from from dropping  

something off the shredder and just happened to  look up at Fox business. And they were saying,  

oh today’s, today’s employment number is so good  that, it assures the soft landing at this point.

Jeff Kikel: And I’m thinking to myself,  okay, so it assures the soft landing,  

but that doesn’t mean that interest rates  are going to come down. If it was soft

Ron Lang: landing, the futures almost  were off 80 or 90 percent for the pre  

market. What is that telling you? So  now we’re selling on good news again. I

Jeff Kikel: mean, there we go.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was  sell on the news or yeah, sell on the news,

Ron Lang: buy on the rumor, sell  the news or buy on good news,  

sell on bad news. Who the hell knows?

Jeff Kikel: Just buy or sell. I’m not sure. Cool.  So our next episode that we’ve got coming up,  

it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re  going to be focusing on really the,  

that, leading into that thought.

Jeff Kikel: Of some of the predictions on the  interest [00:20:00] rate sides of things and.  

Are much anticipated episode talking a little  bit about trading strategies. And discussing  

what a trailing stop order is something  that I know Ron and I both use with our  

clients and something that if you’re  sitting there and you’re looking at,  

okay, how do I protect, it,  they, the market keeps going up.

Jeff Kikel: I know it can go the other  way. And how do I protect that a little  

bit? Maximize those profits. Maximize  as much as you can. And we’ll we’ll  

have a good discussion on that on  the next show. So we will see you  

guys back here for next week. Make sure  that you have hit that subscribe button.

Jeff Kikel: Make sure that you give us an up  vote. And we love comments. I’ve had some fun  

discussions with folks. On YouTube with questions  that they had and everything else. So make sure  

that you give us a comment. We’d love to have  a little conversation there. So thanks a lot.

Jeff Kikel: And we’ll see you  guys back here the very next time.