Ron Lang: morning, jeff doing got  some fun stuff for you today. You  

let me know when you want to jump right on in

Jeff Kikel: Let’s just kick

Ron Lang: it off

Jeff Kikel: might

Ron Lang: as well.

Ron Lang: I might as well get

Jeff Kikel: into some fun.

Ron Lang: Yeah all right, here we go So  again might as well I got I only got two  

slides this time, but two good ones  worst decisions in business history  

western union turning their back on the  tech of the century the telephone Yeah,  

if people want to pause they could read all this  i’m not going to do it But you know what when I  

saw this it just reminded me of what we were  going through before about kodak and whatever  

like they’re [00:01:00] so resistant to change  because They don’t want to kill the gravy train.

Jeff Kikel: That’s exactly

Ron Lang: What did western union  do back in the day telegraph,  

right? Delivery of messages. Oh my god, if  we do the telephone what’s going to happen  

to our main business? Yep, so same  thing blockbuster and streaming and  

all the other good stuff So I thought that  this was this was a good one and it’s and

Jeff Kikel: it’s the challenge of the  dividend paying company That you know,  

okay, do you Stop paying dividends  

and you know invest in new technology or do  you just keep doing the same thing you’ve been  

doing and A lot of these companies keep doing  the same thing until there’s no use for me

Ron Lang: Here think about what I mean,  

it’s been a billion multi billion  dollar Industry for 50 60 years.

Ron Lang: He tried to sell it for  a hundred thousand dollars at the  

time You that’s hilarious. And it’s funny,  I’ve seen some documentaries on him. Yeah. I  

don’t remember this ever being a part of any  of those documentaries. And [00:02:00] yeah,  

this is a very interesting, cool point.  I thought it would be cool. All right.

Ron Lang: The other one, CBS and NBC  not wanting to do Monday Night Football  

55 years ago. It’s amazing. Yeah. They  didn’t wanna ruin the gravy train. Hey,  

we got a strong Monday lineup. Let’s  what football, who’s gonna wanna  

watch football Monday? Who wants watch  football twice a week? Large bunker.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. ’cause they watch it on  Sunday. Why would they wanna watch it on  

on Mondays too now It’s it is like every  night football. Good Lord. I think there’s  

because I see on Amazon they have it and  everything else, it’s like nonstop football.

Ron Lang: The other interesting  part to this, and this makes sense,  

NBC and CBS had been around a lot longer  than ABC, so they were more established.

Ron Lang: ABC really didn’t have programming,  right? So of course they wanted to pitch  

Monday night football to the other two. They  have been established, but ABC is like, Hey,  

we don’t have a strong lineup. Let’s give it a  shot. What the hell? [00:03:00] What’s the worst

Jeff Kikel: that can happen?  It’s one of those things.

Jeff Kikel: It’s not going to get

Ron Lang: worse.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, what’s the worst that can  happen? Okay it doesn’t work and we move on to  

something else. It’s just some of the dumbest  business decisions in history are people just  

not willing to take a risk or try something a  little bit different. It’s interesting to me.

Jeff Kikel: I’ve watched some of the spring  football, the U. F. L. It’s actually really good  

because these are people that really care. About,  they’re, and they’re buying, they’re trying to

Ron Lang: get to the next level.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. They’re getting, and  they’re, some of them, it’s gonna be their  

only chance to play professional football,  but they play hard and it’s fun to watch.

Jeff Kikel: And, Fox’s coverage is  great. Because they’ve literally got  

cameras everywhere and on the players  and everything else. So you just see  

a different part of the game than you  see, on the NFL games at this point.

Ron Lang: A hundred percent. All right,  let’s jump into some more dumb assery.

Ron Lang: So the fed, I gotta tell you,  I’m giving CNBC all the props. I was in  

the airport yesterday and had a couple of  minutes. I’m thumbing [00:04:00] through  

some news stories. Because the fed had the  announcement and I had my head to my head  

my hand on my head and i’m just like This  is crazy Because I do know I believe That  

you know the the report comes out two o’clock  eastern time But the journalists get a copy  

of this 10 minutes before and they’re not  allowed to share it With anybody right?

Ron Lang: They can’t you know, they can’t  text somebody. Hey, by the way You know,  

but here’s interesting and cnbc did  this look at This was the statement  

from the fed and I wanted to make sure I got  the whole thing including so basically the  

black Is the same language from the  March statement The red underlined  

is what’s new the red is what was taken  out 60 to 70 percent of this is the same.

Ron Lang: It’s amazing And meanwhile  people are waiting with bated breath  

for this Did they change a word? How did  he say it? What was the inflection? Did  

he [00:05:00] have his eyes up? Did he have  his eyes down? What did he bring his brief?

Jeff Kikel: Remember? Remember, in the days of  Greenspan, did he bring his briefcase in with him?

Jeff Kikel: To that? No.  To the testimony? No. Which

Ron Lang: hand He brought it in. Oh, that’s  right. It was on his left hand. If it was on  

his right hand, it went down. He caught wind  of it. So he let his assistant carry in the  

briefcase. The next meeting, yeah. This isn’t  new folks. This is going back 30, 40 years.

Jeff Kikel: If you’ve ever seen  the movie was it a rat race?

Jeff Kikel: We’re all the, it’s like  out in Las Vegas and all these guys  

are like betting on everything. It’s  the same thing. Oh yeah. He’s gonna,  

he’s gonna step and trip over that  thing right there. Yeah. Okay.  

Who’s going to give me 50 bucks on that?  Yeah. It’s just the same. Idiotic stuff.

Ron Lang: And then of course we talked about in  our last episode, the more idiotic reporters that  

are in the room asking them questions, they  know they’re not going to get an answer to.

Ron Lang: So is that because they can’t  think of an intelligent question or they  

know what the answer is? They know they’re  not going to get a real [00:06:00] answer,  

but that’s what they’re going to  write about. Who are the fricking  

editors that are their bosses telling  them that they, to ask these questions.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. They might trip him  up. He might just say something and, you

Ron Lang: know, No, it’s not  going to happen. I don’t look,  

we, I, I paid attention to the last the  last three in the current fed speaker.  

It’s all the same BS. It’s all the same  BS. Greenspan spoke in tongues. He was,  

he, I think he made up words and the other  ones just were just political figures.

Ron Lang: That’s all they were. All right. A  couple of things. So just a couple of the quick  

slides on profit margins by sector. And I thought  this was interesting. Real estate shocked me here.  

With with where interest rates are in, 30 year  fixed, vacillating between five to five and five.

Ron Lang: And so I’m sorry, seven, two, five  and seven, five, info tech doesn’t surprise  

me. Communication services and info tech are  very overlapping. Financials that makes sense,  

right? Because there’s higher  interest rates. [00:07:00] They  

got higher net profit, that net  interest margin. Interestingly

Jeff Kikel: enough, not much of a  change from 24 or 23 to 24 there.

Jeff Kikel: And financials which I mean, I  guess the interest rates went up and they’ve  

just been stable and steady So it’s easy  for a financial company to predict that

Ron Lang: but I’m going to tell you  what shocked me Consumer staples.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah

Ron Lang: with inflation prices going  up. You would have thought that might  

have been margin expansion I would have bet on it.

Ron Lang: If somebody said you  want to bet a buck. I’m like,  

yeah, of course The margins  are higher. The other one it’s

Jeff Kikel: shocking to me is  healthcare there, too You Yeah, that

Ron Lang: was my second one. I agree. Yeah

Jeff Kikel: I guess I understand  that a little bit because a lot  

of that pricing is controlled by medicare

Ron Lang: The margin shrunk from a year ago.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, but a lot of that is controlled  by medicare I mean they you know, they have some  

control, but they don’t necessarily have control  over it And then even even consumer discretionary  

is [00:08:00] really not that much different from  the consumer staples. It’s they’re just yeah.

Ron Lang: Yep. So this is quarter,  basically year over year for quarter  

over quarter. Got it. And you  look at the five year average,  

hasn’t been much better. It’s almost a very  similar setup. Basically the same thing. Yeah, so

Jeff Kikel: amazingly,

Ron Lang: What do we infer from this? What do  we take from this? How do we invest with this?

Ron Lang: I’m telling you this real  estate number just keep shocking the  

hell out of me But the info techno obviously  as long as interest rates are going to stay  

high financials are going to be above the curve  because you can see That q124 is higher than the  

five year average but health care Meanwhile,  we’re still paying a fortune for medicine.

Ron Lang: I had a doctor appointment this  past week. Look, there’s no shortage of sick  

people. So again look at that five year  average compared to where it is Q1. And  

healthcare, [00:09:00] remember we were talking  about this as far as, it was depressed last year.  

It should have a good bump up this year not if  these profit margins are going to stay the same.

Ron Lang: No,

Jeff Kikel: not at all. Yeah, I mean it’s  yeah that the thing we went through what  

about three or four shows back where  You had that kind of interesting look  

at you know where healthcare falls  during the year typically is in the  

back half Yeah, starting in april.  Yeah, is that gonna happen this year?

Jeff Kikel: The other piece is Historically  april has almost always been a positive  

month and april was a freaking  nightmare this month or this year

Ron Lang: So first time they said I forgot how it  

was with the margin 1936 yeah that  we had a big first quarter of more  

than x percent higher and a down april  First time in basically almost 90 years.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah

Ron Lang: Unbelievable.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Like I said,

Ron Lang: we’re getting all  these strange market anomalies.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. But I think we also had  the anomaly from October to February of  

the market just [00:10:00] being on  fire. And, we were saying all along,  

it’s got it. Sometimes it’s going  to have to correct and it corrected,  

but it was not really that big of  a correction and kept, they kept

Ron Lang: drinking from the punch  hole and hooked up with the IV too,

Ron Lang: but yeah, that’s what  I got until next week. But this  

is all important stuff to just keep  going into the information funnel.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. And like I said, real estate, I  look at it from a REIT standpoint, until we start  

seeing interest rates coming back down. They can  hold their margins up, but, typically it’s that  

trade off between, okay, I can get 5 percent on  a treasury or I can make 4 percent on a read.

Jeff Kikel: Why would I take the risk

Ron Lang: or why would you go into a 5 percent CD?  Versus a 5. 2 percent treasury. You’re only going  

to pay federal income tax on a treasury and the  interest income you’re going to get on the CD is  

that full ordinary tax rates, ordinary [00:11:00]  tax, but I’ll do this because the banks,  

dangle that carrot and the average person there  doesn’t understand it’s not how much you make.

Ron Lang: It’s how much you keep, but  the other side of taxes on the interest.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah. Still through a mutual fund  company, I can still get close to five on a  

money market and it’s. Instant money. I  mean at treasury is too. I can basically  

sell it immediately, but risk free It’s risk  free pretty much on a money market at this  

point If I have a government money market I  can get in and out as I need to so Why would  

I lock it up into something for five years at  this point when I could just keep it in cash?

Jeff Kikel: Until that starts to go down.

Ron Lang: I agree. I agree

Jeff Kikel: All right, folks we do these for you.  We’re trying to get them a little shorter so that  

you can consume them faster. Hopefully this is to  your liking. Let us know give us a comment down in  

the comments section. And in addition to that, let  us make sure that you subscribe to the channel.

Jeff Kikel: Make sure you give us an upvote  on this because it lets us know that you’re  

out there and we appreciate you [00:12:00] guys.  And we’ll see you back here the very next time.