going. Hello everybody. Welcome to another  week of the sense of things. We have a lot  

to talk about today. Since Ron and I went to  bed on Thursday and put that last thing to bed,  

we are now in a major conflict in the world. So,  we’re going to talk a little bit about what the  

stock market typically does after major events  like this. Ron is going to cover who holds top  

foreign debt or who what foreign countries  hold our debt. Couple of other things along  

those correction lines. A couple of economic  things. I will cover economics that happened  

this week that if we didn’t have a major conflict  actually we would be having probably an amazing  

week in the stock market. And I also wanted to  talk about oil exports because that of course   is a major thing that people are concerned  about and talk about who the largest oil  

producers are in the world. So stay tuned.  We will be right back on in just a second.

Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Ron, how are  you my friend? Good. The saying still stands.  

I’m pretty sure I say it almost every week if not  every other week. Never a dull moment. Nope. And  

here we are again and we have Teflon markets. We  should be down five to eight if not more percent.  

Probably oil should be above 80 85. It’s not.  A lot of that has to do with how much oil we’re  

producing in our country, which I know go you’ll  go over in a little bit, but yeah, I’m not gonna   say I’m shocked or surprised, but yeah, I really  thought we would have down been down a lot more.  

Yeah, we had a couple big down days and it was  interesting to watch the morning overnight and  

the morning be down significantly and then by  the end of the day the bulls were rushing in to  

pick up the slaughter that was happening in the  morning almost every day and we finished either  

just slightly down or even up by the end of the  day most of the week. There’s a lot of resilience.  

Yeah, we had cash on the sideline with a lot of  clients and we were buying stuff literally in   the first couple of hours thinking, “All  right, these are good prices.” Thinking,  

“All right, they may go down a little more.” I  think they’re in the green on everything. Again,   I want to buy stuff more at a discount. So,  it’s a little I don’t want to say disappointing,  

but it was a little frustrating. Yeah. And it’s  just it everything moves so fast now that unless  

you take action immediately, you could miss it  by the end of the day. And I I just don’t see it  

slowing down. When we look at some of the economic  data, I’ll share, like I said, had we not had a   major conflict that we’re in the middle of, the  markets would have been rolling all week. Well,  

you know what? You would you would say to  yourself, hey, we need a catalyst for this   market to go down. War would be one of them, but  yeah, it would have to be negative against us,  

which I don’t I would never wish for ever, but  it’s just amazing. All right, let’s go here. This   week in history, some actually some interesting  things. I had to pull some things out or else  

we would have had a whole episode on this week  in history. All right, here we go. First thing,  

the Articles of Confederation ratified after  nearly four years. So, think about it. had a  

revolution in 1776 and here we are the Articles of  Confederation. Yep. Eight. Then eight years later,  

government under the US Constitution begins.  Even back then, things did not happen quickly.  

Yeah. When you think about it, too, the  war was effectively over right around 1781,  

but we were literally rudderless as a government  for close to 10 years. Yeah. And you think we have  

infighting now? Oh my god. Back then, forget it.  They literally were willing to kill each other.

Here you go. 1866. Texas declares its  independence. And I thought this was  

interesting. Then you fast forward 25 years later.  Texas secedes with the from the Union along with  

those following states. I’m not going to read  them all. I did not know this. And actually,   I was trying to get more information on when the  hell the union came back together and it had to  

be right after the Civil War. But yeah, I I didn’t  realize that because you guys are getting closer  

to succeeding now. Maybe or maybe not so much with  this administration, but I did not know that that  

they had all these states succeeded. I guess that  had to happen in the wake of civil war. Yeah. And  

the interesting thing is when we signed on to  be a state, the interesting thing is we never  

signed away our right to be a republic. We’re  the only state that’s did never we never said,  

“Okay, we aren’t a separate republic at that  point and never signed away that.” So that’s  

why you always hear about us seceding because  we’re the only state that literally said, “Okay,   yeah, we’re signing on, but we’re not giving up  our right to say we’re a separate republic.” It  

would be stupid. It is. That’s why you guys have  your own power grid, too. Just when you succeed,   you you don’t need to rely on the rest of the US.  Own power grid. We have our own navy. We have our  

own internal army. It’s not federalized. So, don’t  mess with Texas. Don’t mess with Texas. 1872,  

Yellowstone. There we go. Comes America’s first  national park. I knew it was early on. I didn’t  

realize they were the first. Yeah. Now, this is  very surprising. In 1875, the first indoor game  

of ice hockey ends in a brawl. Awesome. Yeah, I  very surprising. And for the next hundred years,  

up until my broad street bullies in Philadelphia,  it continued on. Yes, it did. 1876, Alexander  

Graanbell. Oh, patent on the spelling. Patents,  the telephone. So, I thought it was a little bit  

later. I thought it was closer to 1890, a little  bit in there. But now think about it. 1876 there  

wasn’t essentially a phone in every home or  every house for another 50 years. So it took  

a while to get that text. You literally went  Yeah. You literally had to go to local Yeah.   local telegraph office to to get on the phone in a  lot of those cases or like the local general store  

would have it. Yeah, they didn’t want to change  from the horse carriage to the car anytime soon.

1966, John Lennin sparks his first major  controversy. The beagle, the Beatles are  

bigger than Jesus. And there’s video. I’ve seen  so many documentaries. All these stupid kids and  

religious rights zealots are out there burning  Beatle records and memorabilia. How much would  

that be worth today? Yeah, idiots. I know. Just  and he came out and look back then he was very  

young right he was 25 26 years old and he just  said yeah look how big we are yeah he wasn’t  

bigger than J Jesus but the idea is that he just  said something that you know what they were just  

waiting for him to say something the problem  is they misinterpreted what he said he actually  

said the Beatles are bigger than Jesus and that’s  the problem he was sure he knew Spanish back then  

it’s just they misunderstood his his Liverpool  slang and they took it as Jesus. He said it was  

Jesus. All right. 1951. I’m a little out of  order here. The espionage trial of Ethel and  

Julius Rosenberg begins. I saw a documentary  a few years ago done by the grandchildren or  

the grandchild. She did one and they went back.  It was very interesting because a lot of people  

said that he was wrongly accused. So basically  they went back and actually it was him and a  

bunch of other it was a small group of people  that were doing the espionage. The wife Ethel  

had nothing to do with it. So they said that  essentially she was murdered. Yeah. I don’t   know how they connected the dots with her.  The whole thing I remember the documentary  

taking the two kids off. They live with another  family under another name. And then obviously   the granddaughter came out and did this thing. It  was a It was actually I think it was on HBO if I’m  

not mistaken. Very good because then they went  into a lot of the details of this and Yeah. He  

was guilty. She was murdered essentially. Yeah.  Terrible. Yeah. 1971. I was not aware of this.  

Presstor war protester set off a bomb in the US  capital building they said causing about $300,000  

worth of damage. Jesus. Wow. I did not know that.  I know that there was other BS going on outside.  

and how they got into the Capitol building  with a bomb. Another whole story. Yeah. 1917,  

Puerto Ricans become US citizens are  rec recruited for war effort. 19 Okay,  

you’re on board. Guess what? You’re being drafted  now. Yep. And then obviously a lot of people said  

this came over from Spain. the first cases  reported in the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. 1962

we think the COVID pandemic was bad when you  look at the amount of people that died during   the flu and the misinformation. Absolutely. So  Will Chamberlain scores 100 points. This now  

as great as he was, it would never happen today.  Back then they didn’t have the 3-se secondond rule   in the paint. There was a lot of rules that they  changed because of Wilt. Maybe he would had 80.  

I don’t know if he would have had a hundred. And  at the end of the day, don’t you think the coach   on the other team would have said, “Hey, who’s got  Wilt? Maybe we should double or triple team him.”  

I don’t know. I was watching something the other  day. It was something on YouTube or something like   that and they were talking about Dr. J, who has  always been my favorite basketball player of all  

time. And they were interviewing somebody and I  can’t remember who it was that was talking about  

playing against Dr. J. And he’s like, I tried  to defend him and somehow he flew over me and  

then turned in the air and then went upward  and then turned again. I understand there’s  

a very good documentary on the ABA that features  Dr. J. I don’t know if it’s on Netflix or I want  

to check it out though. Pe people think Michael  Jordan was the greatest man. You gota you Yes, he  

was. Dr. J was the pioneer. I was lucky enough to  be in Philly for his heyday years in Philly. And  

actually, he, you know what, he made more money  investing in the Coca-Cola distributorship in the  

Philadelphia area and surrounding areas than he  ever did in basketball. A lot of people don’t know   that. Yeah. He was he was one of that generation  of guys that was like, you know what, I’m I know  

I’m not going to be able to play forever. I’m  going to I’m going to invest wisely, not blow  

all my money on stupid crap and was phenomenally  rich afterwards. So, 1978, I did not know this  

report surface of grave robbers stealing Charlie  Chaplain’s body. I didn’t see anything when they  

returned it. Why? I do not know. I get Lincoln,  but Charlie Chaplain, I don’t get it. All right,  

here we go. So, here’s our first chart. I guess  you could bring this up every couple of years when  

something happens after a very specific catalyst  global major event. What happens in the market  

one month, 6 month and one year after. And if you  could see here, the average is up 4.7, the medium  

is up 8% one year later. So many times when these  things happen, good to put new money to work.  

Yeah. Your thoughts? Yeah. except for it. Usually  wars tend to work out well. Major market crashes  

like you look at 1987 crash, major market crashes,  it takes a little while to clear that stuff out.  

And usually there’s some kind of reason why you  have issues. But I I think after major market  

crashes, one everybody goes, “Okay, we’re okay.  Maybe things weren’t so bad in the economy at that  

time.” when the when a major market crash happens,  it’s usually because economic issues are there.  

Yeah. Which we’re really not. And as we go through  some of the stuff I’m going to cover, we’re just   not there right now. So, yes, we’re having some  issues this week, as we’ve talked about at the  

beginning of the show, the market’s kind of shring  some of that stuff off later in the day. Well, if  

you take a look at two of the events in in 20 in  2008, basically the Bear Sterns collapsed. We were  

down 41% a year later. We hit a bottom March 9th  of ’09. Okay. Yeah. But if you take a look at the  

Lehman collapse, you actually made money a year  later. Because when that happened and everything  

hit the fan in that September all the way through  December when we were going down literally 1 to  

3% a day. Sure. If you would have put money  in on September 16th right after the event,  

you would have made money a year later. Even  better if you listen to Mark Hayne’s bottom even  

better off. So who holds our debt? I think this is  interesting. It has a lot of people are well aware  

China and Japan have been the long-standing  holders many years. They have reduced their  

exposure to our debt over time but they have  always been the two largest holders. I will tell  

you our partners or whatever the Cayman Islands  427 billion Cayman I know it’s a tax even that  

isn’t that their GDP our debt is that their GDP  give me a break I don’t know how many citizens are  

in the Cayman Islands but they have 427 billion of  our debt but look at Luxembourg too Luxembourg you  

could drive across in about 15 minutes I don’t  I don’t get at Belgium. These things uh we’re  

going to trade Belgium for Greenland anyway, so  it doesn’t matter. Yeah, there we go. I thought  

I don’t know. Anything else stand out to you? I  just thought No, it’s interesting. You’d think of   some of the largest economies, you’d think they’d  hold a lot more of ours, but some of these small  

countries hold a ton of our debt, which I guess in  their case, it it stabilizes their country because  

they’ve got a stable, you know, they’ve got stable  investments there. But Luxembourg versus France,  

which is interesting, but Right. And also at  the in the end, this is risk-f free. If they’re   buying treasuries, they know they’re going to  get paid. Even if with government shutdowns,  

they’re still going to get paid. Absolutely.  Yeah. I Some of these numbers really shocked me.  

Yeah. And even like Hong Kong, Hong Kong versus  China, they’re virtually half of what China holds,  

which is interesting. Yeah. So like the next big  the second the fourth largest is Canada. Yeah,  

they’re smart. And I would have thought like South  Korea, they don’t really sell sovereign debt that  

I’m aware of. I’m sure they do, but it’s amazing  how small they are in relation to some of these  

other countries. Part of the diversification  portfolio. Yeah. All right, here we go. So  

last slide here. This is always good to show every  now and then. Average retirement savings by age.  

So, I’m gonna tell a quick little story and then  I’ll turn it over to you. We got a lot of new   prospective clients coming our way every single  month. And we get a lot of 50somes that say,  

“Okay, the kids are out of the kids are out of  the house. We paid for college. Maybe they paid  

for a wedding. Maybe they kicked them out of the  basement. Whatever. Now, we’re ready to save for   retirement in the mid-50s.” And I’m like, “All  right, when do you want to retire? I’d like to  

retire at 65.” and all of a sudden they’re like,  I don’t want to change my standard of living. I   want to live off the same amount of income.  How much do you have? So, rather ironically,  

185 in that range is interesting because I would  say the average that a lot of people have in their  

50 mid-50s that say this to me is around 150 or  just under. And there’s no way they could retire  

in 10 years um at at making the same amount they  are right now. I I these numbers really haven’t  

changed over the last 20 years too much other  than the market going up. Your thoughts? Yeah,  

and it’s interesting and if I can find it, I was  listening to the news the other afternoon and they  

were talking about savings rates around the world  and some of the highest savings rates. Yeah, it  

was it’s off the chart. I think the highest in the  world is Ireland at 61%. Savings rate is insane.  

And ours is around what 10 maybe? It’s under No,  no, no. It’s under five. I think during crisis  

situations it goes up to seven or eight, but we’ve  always hovered plus or minus five for decades.  

Yeah. Yeah. The difference is if you want to live  a different life, you got to live a different way.   You can’t sit here and go, “Oh, I’ve got the my my  kids have moved out. Everything’s done and I still  

need a an 8,000 square foot house.” Okay, let’s  be real about this. If you want to retire at 65,  

you’re gonna have to make some massive changes.  And I look at it in my life at the more money I  

make, spending and saving. Yeah. It’s like you  got to stop the spending part, which of course  

our economy is built on spending, so that affects  the economy, but the reality is you’ve got to be   real about this. And there’s no way you’re going  to get there if you’re still going to continue  

to save four or 5% at the most over time. And I  think that’s one of the challenges we created in  

our country, saying, “Okay, we’re shifting  from that pensionbased economy to a, hey,  

you’re on your own.” People, yeah, they’re on  their own. And they just haven’t really come to  

the reality of this. So, I hear you. Okay, what  do you got? All right, let’s let’s rock through  

this pretty fast here. So, some of the stuff this  week, like I said, once again, when you look at  

what the economy has done versus the fact that  we’ve been in a major conflict all week long,  

a lot of really interesting numbers this week.  So, ISM manufacturing index, so Institute of  

Supply Managers Manufacturing Index over  50 is good. This is the second month in a  

row we’ve been over 50. And this is back all the  way to 2022 that we’ve not been over 50. So we’re  

running positive 52.4 which beat the consensus  once again. If you look at the services index it’s  

even better 56.1 versus 53. Couple of other things  the manufacturing PMI purchase manage man managers  

manufacturing index up 52. Once again, same thing.  Over 50 with ISM and PMI is good is awesome. That  

just means that things are starting to kick in the  right direction. ADP employment report, and we’ve   talked about this before, it doesn’t necessarily  mean that much as a grand scheme of things, but it  

is a really good indicator of small businesses.  And we’re looking at it came in up 63,000. Now,  

what I had heard in the media was the expectation  was 50. The consensus actually was 43. So it beat  

by almost 20,000. That is huge. That’s a big  number up. Now, one of the things that they didn’t  

talk about is it did get reduced down in January  from where it was. I don’t know. Some of that  

may be a little bit hanky there when it comes to  it, but it’s a good number and it’s a really good  

number in the end. Jobless claims, they’re holding  steady around that 213 215 range. This one was  

interesting. It’s we’re starting to finally get  some of these numbers which I think are important.  

Non-farm productivity up or 2.8%. So the consensus  was 1.9. Unit labor costs are up 2.8%. Which you  

might say this is a bad thing because that’s cost  to employers. But when you have productivity up,  

if productivity is up, it doesn’t necessarily mean  that labor costs are are reflected are reflective  

on inflation inside of companies and everything  else. Last one, and I thought this one was  

extremely important, and once again, we’re just  now getting some of the stuff from the government  

shutdown in this is for January, and we’re getting  these things in March. Import export prices. So,  

import prices month overmonth 0.2 2 that was  a little bit better or actually quite a bit  

better. Export prices up 6 which was way  above but when you start looking at import  

versus export import prices. So if you believe  the if we have tariffs everything is horrible.  

We’re actually down.1% year-over-year on import  prices. We’re up 2.6 on year-over-year export  

prices. So what does that mean? That means that  we’re not paying as much on things coming in. So,  

we’re not necessarily seeing inflation on things  coming in, but the stuff we’re selling overseas,  

we’re making a heck of a lot of money on. So,  once again, those are things that if you took out,  

all right, we’re having a major war that we’re  in the middle of in the Middle East right now.  

All these things are really conducive to, hey,  the economy is firing on all cylinders right now.  

What’s your thoughts? These numbers sound good,  but there’s been a lot of layoffs. JP Morgan  

just announced Mayo allay a lot of layoffs. Block  Meta announced a lot of layoffs. Some of them say  

because of AI. You know how I feel about that.  In the end, I think AI may make may create jobs.  

I don’t think it’s just like with technology back  in the day with word processors. Did they replace  

typewriters? Yeah, they didn’t necessarily replace  people. They just made people more efficient. So,  

with the import export stuff, this looks good.  I have a feeling that a lot of the these numbers  

will change and be modified over time as we see  tariffs kind of keep swinging left and right.  

It’s it’s really tough. Obviously, the PMI and  the ISM numbers are really good because anything  

above 50 means expansion in both of them. We’ll  have to see. But the it’s the employment number  

to me that I’m keeping a bigger eye on than some  of these. Yeah. Like I said, an employment number  

and one of the things we’ll cover next week. We  just didn’t have the time to this time was your   piece on delinquency rates and things like that.  Kind of giving everybody an update on that. So,  

make sure Yeah. Make sure that you watch next  week’s show because we’re going to cover that.   And that’s the canary in the coal mine that as  delinquency rates go up, if we see any kind of  

a slowdown in employment, man, that’s slow down  spending and consumer discretionary. Yep. And it’s  

we did see a little bit of that in the fall.  Anyhow, I think it’s very interesting there.   The last thing I wanted to cover and I think this  is extremely important as we look at you know why  

why didn’t oil spike over a hundred during this  time period 2024 production and this is 2024 this  

is not even 2025 after President Trump came in  and it was the drill baby drill era here in 2024  

the world’s largest oil producers hello here’s the  United States at 22% of the world’s total. I would  

venture to say that’s probably closer to maybe  30 at this point. I don’t know, but we’ve been  

producing like crazy. Saudi Arabia is half what we  do. Russia is half what we do. Canada production  

has slowed down for a reason. Yeah. Iraq is Iraq  and Iran. So Iran, if you take them out of the mix  

at this point, they’re only 5% of the world right  now. And I think the interesting thing has been,  

yeah, during this time period, this few days, the  six days, okay, oil’s slowed down out of the Gulf,  

but we could easily ramp up. And one of the  ones that comes in right below where Brazil  

is Venezuela, and we effectively have control of  that right now because we’re able to refine it  

faster than some of their refineries in Venezuela.  That ramps up that production a little bit more  

as well. Okay. Could could we make up for the  fact that Iran is effectively not going to be  

able to produce? Yeah, I think we easily can at  this point. So, it that explains to me why we’re  

really not seeing major spikes. I think really  the any spike that we’ve seen self-sufficient  

that’s a huge part of it. But I would like to  see a chart. Maybe we could do it for next week.   What does this chart look like either in  spaghetti lines left to right or what?  

Where were where were these countries? How  did we compare to these countries 10, 20,  

and 30 years ago compared to today? This is where  we are today. But over time, where were we 10,  

20, and 30 years ago? Yeah. Which was horrible in  the early 90s. I know. I found a chart when I was  

looking for this one that showed where we were in  71. And we’re basically back to where we were in  

71. We were about 70. That was before George Bush  senior helped the Saudi Arabia find find oil in  

the desert. Yeah. Once they found it and then they  they held our feet to the fire. Yeah. With OPAC,  

they held our feet to the fire in the late 70s.  Thanks guys. We helped them. I just don’t think  

they have the ability to they’ve got withering  reserves at this point. And I think Russia’s  

way up there, but I think Russia’s we’ve been  able to replace Russia in a lot of cases with  

our friends and neighbors that were saying,  “Hey, we can produce it.” And you’re not  

basically funding the Russian war against Ukraine  at that point. So, it it’s intriguing. All right,  

folks. Thank you for joining us for  another week. We appreciate your time.   Make sure that you subscribe to the channel and  make sure that you catch us back here because  

we’ve there was a bunch of stuff we couldn’t do  this week that we’re going to do next week. So,   make sure that you are on and watching because I  think we’ll have more and who knows where we’ll be  

war-wise by that point. All right, thanks a lot  and we’ll see you guys back here the next time.