Jeff Kikel: Good morning, Cents of things, family.

It’s Jeff and Ron here for another weekly update on what’s going on in the world and

what’s going on in the economy and the markets.

Ron, good morning, sir.

Ron Lang: Good morning.

Spring is in the air.

I don’t care what part of the contiguous 48 states you’re in, but spring is in the air.

Jeff Kikel: It is except for except for Colorado and the Western territories out

there.

Jeff Kikel: They like a massive blizzard today again.

Hey, they chose

Ron Lang: to live there.

There’s no excuse.

Jeff Kikel: You know what the way I look at it is the worst the winter gets there, the

better it is for water and everything else downstream.

So the more that they get in Colorado and the mountain areas, that just means Southern

California.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

Even in the Sierras in California, they’ve had [00:01:00] record snowfall this year.

So that means they’re actually going to have water to survive on, which is good strategy.

It’s it’s spring as we’ve talked about, and I wanted to share my screen here and talk

about spring break.

Jeff Kikel: It is spring break across the country.

I know most of Texas schools are off this week and next week.

People are heading to the coast here and heading South.

I remember when I was in college, it was fun to go to Matamoros.

Now it’s a death trap.

So I can’t imagine people going to Padre Island and going across the border into Mexico.

Jeff Kikel: Maybe there’s some stupid people, but interestingly enough, as I was looking

around at, what’s going on spring break wise, Interesting story about Miami Beach, and I

think you were saying you were in Florida last week about Fort Lauderdale They are just

cracking down on on spring break.

Ron Lang: As much of it is as an injection to for business for the local [00:02:00] businesses

and the hotels and all hospitality in general What’s the other side of it that we don’t

know about whether it’s crime, vandalism, which is crime, but who knows?

Ron Lang: It’s been going on 40 something years, whatever.

Oh

Jeff Kikel: yeah.

I tell it’s been gone on since really the late forties, early fifties.

That’s when you, yeah.

Once again, it’s that baby boom generation.

It’s everything, the baby boom generation kind of created spring break and, I know it

was fully in swing when I was in college.

Jeff Kikel: I think I only ever went to a spring break, but

Ron Lang: now I did Fort Lauderdale one year.

It was the way my college did it.

Our spring break was like the week after the three or four main weeks of spring break for

everybody else.

So it was a little, it was a little less crowded.

But I saw some crazy stuff and, people and, college age people just doing stupid things.

Ron Lang: Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Like I said, it

Jeff Kikel: was weird for me because I was in the [00:03:00] military.

By the time I got out of by the time I got out of the military and I was finishing up

my last year of college, the last, I did one spring break just to say I did it, at that

point I had already been all over the world and and lived in some really.

Jeff Kikel: Horrible places.

And, the last thing I wanted to do was go hang out with a bunch of snotty little 18

year old college kids at that point.

But yeah, it’s,

Ron Lang: I think you got to get it out of your system.

Cause after I did it, I was like, all right, I don’t need to do this again.

There are plenty of other fun things you could do in spring break.

Jeff Kikel: Absolutely.

And a lot of times it was just hanging around town and enjoying myself and not having to

go to school for a week.

But yeah, it’s really intriguing from that perspective.

I know you have have some pop culture you wanted to share.

So let me unshare

Ron Lang: my screen.

Ron Lang: Let me bring that up.

Just see here.

I think this should be good.

Let me know when you see my screen.

Jeff Kikel: There we go.

Oh boy.

Here we go.

Here we go.

We’re

Ron Lang: bad product.

So [00:04:00] obviously somebody did not look at the At the printing on this because I don’t

think you could really use this to properly measure things and cook you just have to keep

taking

Jeff Kikel: it and then looking at side, taking it, looking at

it.

Ron Lang: Not only that, but if it’s not see through,

Ron Lang: All right.

So it’s McDonald’s giving you a hidden message.

I’m just saying.

Wow.

Okay.

Interesting.

And I got to tell you, I saw the image before I even read it.

That’s how this stands out.

I got to tell you, McDonald’s actually has some decent coffee.

I will say, marketing company, but a couple of times from there a month.

Ron Lang: I don’t remember seeing this at holiday time either, but wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

So nothing to say about this product design, just bad news.

People.

Ron Lang: Wow.

Yeah, interesting.

[00:05:00] So I know people, I, when I did all these slides the other day, I’m thinking,

oh my God, from this point forward, people are thinking Ron, I think there’s a theme.

So nothing to say about this product, by the way, it’s available on Amazon.

Wow.

And my question to you is, what country is this a delicacy?

Ron Lang: I’m

Jeff Kikel: trying to figure this out.

Is it, Middle East maybe?

And this isn’t a gag gift.

Like I said, you could go onto Amazon and buy it.

It’s interesting.

Yeah.

I’m like, wow.

And they don’t even, it’s not even a.

Oh, it by mistake, we did this.

They’re obviously telling you where we’re going with this way.

Jeff Kikel: It’s

Ron Lang: being marketed and we probably should have been put a disclaimer or disclosure in

the beginning that, children, should not be watching our podcast today.

Apparently.

Yeah.

And all I’m saying is really, I want to know who’s buying this buttermilk.

Jeff Kikel: Aye aye.

Okay.

Once again,

Ron Lang: I’ve never had buttermilk before.

Ron Lang: I’m not even I guess if you would use it in cooking.

I don’t even know.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah Just wow.

I don’t know [00:06:00] where to go with that either.

No.

Ron Lang: All right moving on I know there was a bit of a thing today.

We apologize.

We’ll change it up next week But my quick chart today Is talking about overbought over

extension markets And yes, we’ve been in the bear camp looking at the undercurrent of economic

numbers for several months, despite what the market is doing.

Ron Lang: And there has been some more broad based rally in the last couple of weeks.

But I got to tell you, I’ve never seen this level of overextension of this.

Now.

So what this chart means is that stocks over the 200 day moving average.

So the moving average, the 200 day is the red line.

Here and the 50 day is up here typically in the trading world Day traders or whatever

will use the 50 day institutions will use the 200 day the extension above the 200 day

is just absurd But not only that [00:07:00] if you look at the relative strength anything

above 70 Is overbought and it can stay up there for a while But many times and we don’t

have the chart going back several years You Many times it’ll peek its head over for a

week or two because this is a weekly chart and come back down This has been extended

now for two and i’ll basically two and a half months Yeah, I have I mean i’ve been either

in the market or trading very actively for 15 years I’ve been following the market for

40.

Ron Lang: i’ve never seen this type of an extension And this type of an overbought environment

and maybe I got to go back to 97 8 9 But this is insane.

What are your thoughts on this?

Jeff Kikel: I agree with you.

And you’ve got the Dow industrials there.

I would venture to say, and I haven’t, I keep track of it.

Jeff Kikel: And I realized this, especially on the NASDAQ.

It’s even worse relative strength on the NASDAQ was like riding up there in like the 75 [00:08:00]

range for the last month.

As I’ve been saying, it’s just, I know in our personal, in our portfolios, we pretty

much backed out of most of the, like the QQQ stuff and things like that this month which,

it fortunately it’s helped out amazingly, but.

Jeff Kikel: It’s just so far gone on all these areas and, even in the Dow industrials, it’s

still just a few, like 4 or 5 of the more technology oriented ones that are really pushing

that up.

If you took a look at that, Boeing is.

Completely dragging that thing down and a couple of other stocks are dragging it down.

Jeff Kikel: And it’s just going through the roof.

I think we are due for either a pullback or a sideways motion, but I think we’re due for

a pullback.

We saw some little signs of that last Friday going into early this week.

And then, NVIDIA just keeps pulling.

Pulling everybody along with them, it’s it there’s going to be a reckoning point where

the market has to Blow off a little bit and we need that quite frankly.

Jeff Kikel: We just [00:09:00] can’t keep going up at the pace We’re going up

Ron Lang: and I had a I heard a really good theory by two different people that I follow

in the last couple of weeks about Why we haven’t seen more profit taking or why we haven’t

seen people taking some chips off the table and harvesting And the theory behind it, I

guess it really makes a lot of sense You In today’s market versus even 20 years ago Is

that with the passive investing?

Ron Lang: And with the etfs and the funds yeah that with the inflows, right?

Money more money is coming in than coming out And people are and they’re holding on

to these funds and not selling the funds versus buying more individual stocks That makes sense.

I get that.

It does.

And but at some point reality’s gotta set in and you know what’s gonna happen.

Ron Lang: The institution are gonna pull money off the table first and leave the retail investor

hang and dry.

Jeff Kikel: That’s pretty much, yeah that’s pretty [00:10:00] much what you can imagine

is gonna happen.

Although, the other side I’ll play devil’s advocate there.

You know what people are pouring money into 401ks every week and that money is largely

going, I’ve seen the trend, you and I have both been in the 401k business for a long

time.

Jeff Kikel: What I’ve seen the trend being is a lot of the, what I would consider the

more rational investment managers that, had actively managed funds are being booted out

of 401k plans.

And what’s being replaced is.

Just straight indexes.

So that money just every week keeps coming in.

And these, these fund managers don’t get to say geez, this thing is way overpriced.

Jeff Kikel: They have to just keep plowing money into it based on the percentage that

the index is showing.

So unless there’s some kind of major reshuffle in the index with some of these things, or

some of these companies just stink it up, I just don’t see where the [00:11:00] pullback

happens.

Until all of a sudden that money flow slows down drastically.

Ron Lang: Yeah.

It’s been impossible to time this market.

The last four and a half months has just been unreal.

I don’t even know any other way to describe it.

But I think if I had to make a prediction, I would say in the next 30 days, I think we’re

in for at least a three to 5 percent pullback for two reasons.

Ron Lang: One is we’re coming to the end of the quarter So probably a lot of funds want

to lock in profits so they may start taking something off the table And I think once they

lock in profits either right before the end of march or in the beginning of april I think

that’s when they pull things off Let the market digest come back to more realistic levels,

whatever that is And then we’ll see money come back in We have a lot of clients i’m

sure you do too and I hear about other advisors that Still have a lot of client money in short

term treasuries earning better than five percent Risk free And so all that [00:12:00] money

you can look at it.

Ron Lang: I hate the expression money cash is on the sidelines.

It’s there Yeah, and it’s ready to be deployed But I have clients that are like with the

presidential election and everything else and where the market is Who is begrudgingly

putting new money at these peak levels?

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

And you’re still getting on the short end of the market, whether it’s treasuries, which

are basically no risk at all, or CDs or money market rates or whatever you want to say are

basically high fours to, low fives at this point.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, if you’re concerned about the markets, why would you even begin to deploy

that capital when you could sit on 5 percent for a bit, and I agree for the more conservative

investor.

I think.

That’s not far off from what they’re thinking at this point of just, Hey, I’m going to,

I’ll sit and wait this out, I’m getting a little bit better.

Jeff Kikel: It’s staying high enough [00:13:00] that I’m getting better than where inflation

is at and, leading into that point, looking at CPI this week, we had CPI come in and it

was a surprise again, and it’s staying up there.

Although it came down from the highs.

Up here, when we were at the really at the beginning of the Biden presidency, we saw

that massive rise.

Jeff Kikel: And it’s come down, but it’s starting to mellow out here and start to sit there.

And that’s what the Fed is looking at, and we look at, here’s where the Fed’s target

is.

They like to be in this 2 percent range and we’re a long way away.

And it’s losing that last 20 pounds of fat.

Ron Lang: I think it could take three to five years for it to sift out because All of that

money that was injected in the economy doesn’t go away.

Ron Lang: No.

And now the, if you take, I heard the, the Big Mac, right?

We were joking about this seven, eight months ago, a Big Mac meal, whatever it’s 12 to 15.

Now [00:14:00] inflation comes down.

Do you think that’s going to go back to where it was?

No.

I, so I think three plus percent CPI is here to stay for quite some time.

Ron Lang: And before we go under three, that’s my thought.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

And you look at X food and energy, it is persistently the services X food and energy are just not

coming down.

They’re, they hit a peak and sometime mid 2023 and yeah, they’re coming down, but they

are not coming down fast now, commodities.

Jeff Kikel: Have come down, but they’re still, the, that actual service price because people

are having to pay more for employees.

We talked about that.

An employee I just hired, I’m paying 30 percent more than I was.

For somebody that’s

Ron Lang: okay.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

Yeah.

If I’m getting 30 percent more work.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

Then that’s fine.

That’s not going to happen.

I look, also today was a big day for a [00:15:00] lot of just news out today was PPI, retail

sales, initial jobless claims, all of them are high trading impact.

And, once again, Traditionally, if you’ve watched the show, I used Econoday for years.

Jeff Kikel: I made a switch over to briefing.

com primarily for some of the stock research I do, and I just really liked the way they

present their economic calendar.

And what I will tell you is they’re pretty damn close on their forecast and the consensus

that they use.

It’s a consensus of economists that contribute information to briefing dot com.

Jeff Kikel: They’re usually they’re pretty damn close in agreement.

And their forecast, and, today, PPI surprised everybody the.

Main PPI 0.

6 percent versus estimates 0.

3%, and that was consistent and the prior 1 was 0.

3.

so when we start to look at.

[00:16:00] All right, is the Fed going to loosen everything else?

Jeff Kikel: We go back to the CPI numbers.

They’re moderating and they, there’s nothing that’s going to tell the Fed, even with these

numbers with PPI, there’s nothing that’s telling the Fed, okay we need to slow things down

a little bit.

And you look at consumer price index has been going up at a pretty hefty clip.

Jeff Kikel: And is staying high PPI actually has not been that bad, but it’s starting to

creep up.

So it’s squashed in the margins that a lot of these producers

Ron Lang: challenging many of our economic numbers that have been coming out in the last

six months.

And when we, when you get through, I wanted to circle back on the unemployment number.

Ron Lang: I heard some interesting analysis from some analysts last week.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

And we’ll just cover that real quick here.

Initial claims came in lower than, the forecast was two 18 consensus, two 20 briefing.

com forecast.

They came in at [00:17:00] two nine, but I think to your point here, you’ve got the revision.

Jeff Kikel: So they, they revised.

From 217 down to 210.

And it’s been this kind of consistent thing.

And I think just a couple of things I wanted to stress and then we’ll go into your piece.

As I was looking at some of the key factors in here, one of the interesting things that

I got from briefing dot coms analysis of the PPI was this one sentence here.

Jeff Kikel: The final demand of goods increased 1.

2%.

Nearly 70 percent of that increase is attributed to the index for final demand energy.

So it’s that back inside of the production costs.

Are largely being pushed by Energy cost.

Yeah, and energy cost is starting to creep back up again.

Ron Lang: Yeah, it’s amazing And I know we talked about this a couple weeks ago I don’t

know how oil is in over a hundred dollars a barrel that’s I, again, [00:18:00] I, that’s

why I don’t invest in oil.

Ron Lang: I’ve been saying oil, Bitcoin, crypto, and precious metals.

I don’t know.

They’re manipulated and that’s it.

Yeah.

But where I was going with this is that if you look at it, gas has actually moved up

and the price of oil is stabilized or even gone down.

So there’s definitely manipulation there.

Ron Lang: I wanted to talk about the unemployment number So everybody looks at the headline

number with all this stuff, but going into the internals.

I thought was interesting that a couple of economists and analysts were really going

into it that the majority of the Quote unquote new jobs created Are all government jobs.

Ron Lang: Yeah, and that government spending Has gone up.

So this is where behind the scenes the puppeteer with the government is Manipulating our numbers

because I remember 10 15 years ago I knew some people that worked in the government

pretty much their whole careers and they had said that government’s getting smaller.

Ron Lang: I’m like, what [00:19:00] do you mean?

They said a lot of people are retiring And they’re leaving but for every three people

that leave depending on the department for every three people that leave They’re only

hiring one back right shrinking of government or whatever I believe it’s the reverse now.

Oh, I think so too with all the spending that the government is doing in injecting the economy

It’s giving you a false sense of things are really good and now I heard a report actually

it was on I can’t remember which program it was But they were talking about I think it

was vanguard had given an analysis about their 401k plans that Over 3.

Ron Lang: 1%, which is twice the amount it ever was in the past.

People are doing hardship withdrawals from their 401ks or borrowing against the 401ks

to pay mortgage and bills and whatever.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, when you get to the point of a hardship withdrawal you’ve exceeded,

maybe one or two loans that you’re allowed to do.

Jeff Kikel: So [00:20:00] that’s impacting your cash flow.

If you get to the point where it’s a hardship withdrawal, you either have some massive health

issue or you’re literally going to lose your home.

Yeah at that point and all that they’re going to allow you to take out as a hardship withdrawal

Is the money that it’s going to take to get you back to where you’re not losing your house

It’s not going to fix the problem.

Jeff Kikel: It’s all going to hurt

Ron Lang: you in the future because these are all tax deferred funds

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, exactly But I you know, that’s one issue But I think the other part

is it doesn’t fix the cash flow issue at all, it’s not fixing the cashflow issue.

So if it’s, if you’ve gotten yourself into trouble at that point, the chances are, you’re

probably going to get yourself into trouble again, because there’s less money coming in

than is going out in your situation.

Jeff Kikel: And that’s, it’s scary.

As that number keeps going up.

It gets scary and we’re in a good employment situation.

That’s the thing.

You’ve got [00:21:00] really good employment.

I just heard something off the ear as I was driving in this morning and it was interesting.

Thing that I need to do some more research on, but the guys on the radio were talking

about that, although debt has increased, credit card debt has increased assets have increased

at a higher level than that.

Jeff Kikel: And I’m thinking to myself.

Yeah, that’s okay, but you don’t always get to spend assets No, it’s that

Ron Lang: infamous thing the wealth effect the market goes up.

Everything’s everybody thinks they’re wealthier Yeah, again, it’s not money in your pocket.

It’s money down the road, but we all know, Trees don’t grow to the sky.

Ron Lang: So Yeah But

Jeff Kikel: yeah, I measure wealth creation Yeah, I move I measure wealth creation by

the amount of income that my assets You know, generate for me.

So if I’ve got, yes, I could be wealthy because my house has gone up, 35 percent in the last

[00:22:00] three years.

But I don’t get to spend anything.

Jeff Kikel: All it is a big sucking hole of money that sucks money out of my pocket.

Ron Lang: And even if you refinanced and pulled money out or did it doesn’t matter.

It’s just you’re borrowing against your wealth.

It’s not extra wealth, that’s another whole debate.

Jeff Kikel: Exactly.

Like I said, I think, our thought process has been over the last year.

Jeff Kikel: I personally think we’re getting there.

It’s taken a lot longer than I expected, but just more and more cracks are showing up.

And, I don’t think the government’s going to be able to come to a rescue of, okay, putting

more and more money in.

I just heard this morning, Bernie Sanders is trying to pass some legislation on reducing

the work week to 32 hours a week.

Jeff Kikel: And I’m like but paying people 40 hours, I’m like, okay, you’ve never had

another job outside of.

Government

and

Jeff Kikel: you’ve actually never had to write a payroll.

Most of them haven’t.

[00:23:00] Yeah.

And you’ve never had to write a payroll ever in your life.

You have no idea the stupidness of that, just to try it, those are the

Ron Lang: crapper at that point.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

The reality is I, one of my businesses I run as a physical location, We do testing and

we do co working and everything else.

I don’t I can’t hire another person to cover that extra day.

It just wouldn’t work.

So I’d have to, basically to 20 hour a week people and I’d never be able to find them

because I don’t have those.

Jeff Kikel: People in my world, I’ve, I tried to hire one recently and I couldn’t find anybody

that was willing to work a more part time schedule.

They wanted two part time or, they wanted a full time schedule, but I think what people

are like, I think the younger generations looking at this going, oh, this is a great

idea.

Jeff Kikel: I work 32 hours a week, but I’m like, I still have to cover.

40 hours.

Ron Lang: Last quick point.

It just happened this week.

[00:24:00] So we’re talking about earning more, working less and inflation and all the

other stuff.

And basically, if you remember going back, that the, just the interest, the debt on our

treasuries on our nation’s debt is now greater than our military budget, right?

Ron Lang: Our debt is over 34 trillion, all these things that everybody knows.

Here’s the other thing.

So they just presented the new budget.

They want to spend more money.

We want to tax

Jeff Kikel: the corporations more, but we want to spend more money.

Okay.

If you’re going to stop spending money and tax me a little bit more.

Jeff Kikel: Okay.

Great.

That’s fine.

Ron Lang: Reducing our burden.

Yeah, that’s what I want.

Yeah.

No, keep spending where we got a printing press.

Keep going.

Yeah.

That’s going to come back to bite us at some point, maybe not our generation, but the next

one.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

And I think when I pulled in this morning, the guys in the radio, we’re talking about

that we literally in the next three years, the guy that was on as a, like a treasury

analyst or whatever.

Jeff Kikel: And he was like, in the [00:25:00] next three years, we’re going to have to refinance

half.

Of our outstanding debt because we’ve done all that short term borrowing here We’re gonna

have to refinance half of that debt and I don’t see interest rates going down anytime

soon

Ron Lang: No, and I gotta tell you and I been on the similar page about rate cuts And you

know the funny thing they’re talking about, november december then it was march now It’s

may now it’s possibly june now, maybe it’s one or two times There’s a very good chance.

Ron Lang: I’m going to say a 50 percent chance.

They don’t lower at all this Unless there is a catalyst or a crisis or something if

things continue Why would they lower rates?

Jeff Kikel: Yeah, it makes no sense like I said when you’re looking at that cpi number

it was coming down at a pretty good clip and then all of a sudden it started to you know

You and I are both chartists.

Jeff Kikel: So it’s like when you start seeing a chart just Moderating out It’s not going

to go down.

It’s not like it’s [00:26:00] and typically the market overcorrect.

If you were to say, okay inflation is coming down, then it should be coming down and go

past that 2 percent mark and then come back up and it ain’t doing it.

Jeff Kikel: It’s starting to turn out to where it’s getting flattened out and it’s flattened

out higher than it’s been since 2008.

Yeah, it ain’t going down.

I’m sorry.

And I think there’s probably not if

Ron Lang: the government keeps spending, it’s going to level off.

Jeff Kikel: I think there’s a 50, 50 shot or better that we won’t see an interest rate

drop at all.

Jeff Kikel: Because really, when you think about it, they’ve only got from let’s call

it May, June, where they potentially could do it to about September.

And then they’ve never historically done anything.

Prior to an election in those last few months.

So that’s means that you have basically 3 months where they could potentially do it

where there’s nothing on the table.

Jeff Kikel: I see [00:27:00] today that would make them want to do it.

They’re not going to do it from September to November.

So then they’ve only really got until December.

So either things go to hell in a handbasket.

During the summer and then they have to go panic mode in december and into the new administration

or They just do nothing at this point and inflation kind of hangs out where it’s at

Because they don’t want to see it spike back the other way.

Ron Lang: Yeah, I think the meetings are made

Ron Lang: March.

I think you got may june and july you skip august and then you’re right So if they’re

going to do it, they may do a quarter of a point by July.

Yeah, only, but there’s got to be something that triggers a data dependency, but you’re

right.

There’s no way it’s going to happen in the September, October meeting.

Ron Lang: Nope.

And then quarter point is behind that political motivation.

Jeff Kikel: Yeah.

And the quarter point is going to do absolutely nothing at this point.

It’s really them saying, they, If things start to go to hell in a handbasket, okay, what

do you do?

[00:28:00] You’ve built a nice big, you, they basically given themselves a lot of dry powder.

Jeff Kikel: They, I think the thought process or what I would be thinking if I’m sitting

in that chair at the Fed is, okay we’ve built a nice big powder keg.

So if something does go to hell in a handbasket, we have the room to do 50, 75, 100 basis points

quickly.

And, give a shock to the market or whatever.

Jeff Kikel: So a quarter point here and there, what’s the point.

It’s, it does nothing and all it could potentially do is just buy the asset prices up

Ron Lang: or lowering rates.

Even if it’s a quarter of a point and they don’t do it again for six months.

Oh, they’ve begun the process.

Jeff Kikel: Yes.

No, we’re not going up anymore.

Jeff Kikel: Okay.

Reality says it doesn’t make any difference.

To be seen.

I agree.

Folks, thank you for joining us as always.

We we work hard to put these shows together for you.

So make sure that you keep commenting.

I’ve had some wonderful conversations with folks on YouTube.

So we appreciate [00:29:00] you sharing with us.

Jeff Kikel: Make sure that you subscribe to the channel.

So you catch the updates as they come out and we will catch you guys back here the very

next week.