September 20th, 2025 - The Fed Finally Figures It Out

This week on the Van Wie Financial Hour, the discussion highlighted the impact of recent Federal Reserve rate cuts, housing market dynamics, and broader economic indicators, with a focus on the resiliency and performance of U.S. and international markets. Additionally, the meeting covered the potential implications of a government shutdown and addressed concerns about recent financial industry scams.

Transcript

Steve Van Wie 0:00

It's Saturday morning, it's 10 o'. This is the Van We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 0:05

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steve Van Wie 0:07

And that silence you just heard was Joey, who is not here today for a reason that our loyal listeners will all understand and everybody else, once they hear it, will obviously understand. He's a proud new papa of a young boy. So he's rounded out the contingency at the house with a girl and a boy and now I bet he thinks he's gonna stop.

Adam Van Wie 0:31

No, actually he doesn't. Nope.

Steve Van Wie 0:33

Oh, really? Wow. He's actually gonna stick his neck out.

Adam Van Wie 0:36

But who knows? The second one can change people's minds.

Steve Van Wie 0:41

We were telling some stories in a family gathering recently about one of Annie's old law school buddies who has four boys. And the fourth one has the apparently very appropriate nickname of Sawyer the Destroyer. So I'm kind of thinking they're not going to have five. Yeah, that's just a guess. Anyway, I digress as I do so often. But anyway, best of luck to Joey and Elizabeth. And I know that it was just about on the due date, but. Oh, did it actually come on? Okay, well, I know that the several days before that he was watching his watch every minute.

Adam Van Wie 1:14

It was on the due date.

Adam Van Wie 1:23

Yeah, not as much as his watch.

Steve Van Wie 1:25

Wife was, I'm quite sure. I don't, I don't know her personally, but I'm sure that won't be too much longer. She'll, she'll need to get out of the house and do something, bring the kids over to the office or something. Anyway, here we are. And I would, I'm going to tell everybody right now that he will not be here next week either and neither will Adam. So those of you who are listeners throughout the morning on the station, Angela Walker is going to do her own real estate show and then she's going to hold over for me this second hour because the real estate business is really interesting right at the moment.

Adam Van Wie 2:07

Man, if there is a more talked about subject right now in, in the economic field, I would be surprised.

Steve Van Wie 2:15

I would too. So I'm really looking forward to it. And from her quick and enthusiastic response when I asked her, I think she is too. Now, I, I haven't been involved in it. Sarah was a realtor for a while, but it was a long time ago and so many of the rules have changed. I don't really have a good grasp on what used to be the, the commission and the commission rate and who represented who and all that stuff. So I'm going to have Angela educate me and hopefully a bunch of you on that topic next week. So we'll look forward to that. She's done this before and I've been on her show before, but it's been a while. Things changed in a while around here. All right. We had a. Had an interesting week. Should welcome everybody. Don't want to forget that, all the regulars. Thanks for always being here. That's why we show up every week. We talk, you listen, unless you want to change it and we'll do it the other way around. And to do that, you just pick up the phone and dial 904-222-8255.

Steve Van Wie 3:20

If you're new to the show for whatever reason, try to stick around for the whole hour. We have endless topics of interest because, let's face it, your money affects everything and everybody and it's constantly changing. Also this week it seems like we're on kind of a roll because I keep saying, well, that was fun this week, but the difference this week from the last few. The markets were up nicely, but Friday was actually fun.

Adam Van Wie 3:50

Yeah, it was. And we're. And I had to check the calendar again just to make sure we were still in September and we got through a Fed week without a major down day. I mean, it's just wild, wild stuff. I, yeah, I'll take this week as a win. It certainly.

Adam Van Wie 4:08

It wasn't the week I expected. I guess we're. For a number of reasons that I'll get to in a minute. But the Fed really took their time to catch up with the rest of us and decide that they wanted to cut rates. But they finally did it. And I think it was the massive, I mean, really massive downward revision to the jobs numbers under Biden that I think was the main catalyst for this rate cut. What got them over the hump into cutting mode was, was that there was only one dissent on the Fed and that was someone who actually wanted a 50 basis point rate cut instead of 25. Yeah. And so all of everything was unanimous. The cutting was unanimous. So I think we're going to see at least one more by the end of the year. The market agrees with that. You can. I just don't. I really doubt that we're. We're done at this point.

Steve Van Wie 4:41

The new guy.

Steve Van Wie 4:58

No, I don't think we're done, but I just hope they don't hurry too much.

Adam Van Wie 5:02

Me too. I don't think we need a tremendous amount more, and I'm going to talk about that at the end of this segment because there's some good news out there.

Steve Van Wie 5:09

There actually is, yeah.

Adam Van Wie 5:12

With the, with that rate cut, it was just so widely forecast before it happened. I think everybody in the world knew that it was going to happen. I was a bit worried that we'd see a buy the rumor, sell the news type of situation. That didn't happen. So we closed out a strong week with a strong day on Friday. As you mentioned, the Dow managed a 1% gain this week. The S&P was up 1.2% and the Nasdaq was up 2.2%. One area that was really on fire was the semiconductor sector, which is not an official sector of the S P500. But we like to talk about it as though it were one. I think maybe someday it will be one.

Steve Van Wie 5:46

Well, it's larger than some of the other sectors. So it really kind of has gotten to the point now where in my opinion it deserves to.

Adam Van Wie 5:53

I think, I think it should be broken out as well. It gained 3.7% this week. The market overall is extremely overbought right now, meeting trading way above its moving averages. And that always scares people. But the fact is it doesn't always mean it has to have a harsh sell off. There's another way that the averages can catch up to where the market is and that's a long flat period. So time can, can also cure that situation. And I'm not going to guess, but I would not be surprised to see that happen.

Steve Van Wie 6:26

No. And if you're, if your portfolio has at least some degree of an income component in it from dividends and interest and such, it's, it's not bad because it doesn't mean you just break even. You actually make a little money.

Adam Van Wie 6:39

Yeah. And then you're, if you're reinvesting those dividends, then you have more of whatever security is that you were holding when it does resume that upward trajectory. So now that that cut is behind us and earnings season is not for another few weeks, it seems to be a period where there isn't a ton of data coming out that would really move the market. So I guess the obvious question is will the market look to politics to make some moves with the upcoming battle over a potential government shutdown? You're going to hear a lot of morons in the media make that case. But I'll tell you, never in the history of the stock market has any stock's fortune been won or lost over a budget battle in Congress. Just trust me, if you ignore the budget battle narrative over the next months, you will sleep a lot better. And it just, it is so not important. But the media is going to talk about it so much and you're going to be so annoyed. So just be prepared. It is coming.

Steve Van Wie 7:39

That was good advice, by the way.

Adam Van Wie 7:40

Yeah, I just, I've, I've, I've been doing this long enough. Yeah, I know what is, I know the future on this one. So I want to talk a little bit about the rest of the world and what happened outside of the US Markets. But we are coming up on a break, so I'll probably just hold that over until after. And I have some good economic news, so that'll be fun to get to as well.

Steve Van Wie 8:01

Yeah, well, I kind of took my sweet time getting through the opening. There's, there's really a lot more to say about this market and what's driving it and just about the economics in general. It still a lot of people, including Powell, who don't seem to get what's going on. And maybe it's me and maybe it's not. But one way or the other, we'll talk about it right after a short break. So don't go anywhere. This is the Van We Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We. And we do, as usual, have a trivia question and I want to remind everybody that if you want to take a shot at it, just pick up the phone and dial 904-222-8255.

Adam Van Wie 8:32

And I'm Adam Van We.

Steve Van Wie 8:46

That's 904-222-TALK.

Steve Van Wie 8:50

I have several things that are interesting me this week, but I'm going to settle on this one. Over the past four months, what percentage of days did the NASDAQ spend in overbought territory? You know, probably from listening to this show and others, that when something is overbought, there's a tendency that they call reversion to the mean, which means it tends to drift back down until it hits its moving averages or something like that. But it's not doing that very often these days. So just think pretty solid number. It's a percentage of the days of the last four months. And if you want to start a bracket, pick up the phone and call just like that. All right. Back to some other interesting things in the market.

Adam Van Wie 9:43

Yeah. So it was a good week to be a US Investor and it was also a pretty good week to be a, an international investor as well, especially if you were in emerging markets, which were up 1.3%. Developed markets were up just a couple quarter of A percent. So the All World Index combining both of those was up about a half a percent. So not a bad week internationally either. Gold managed another gain of a little over 1% and silver was up 1.8. Commodities though, fell by 0.4%. Despite the rate cut, the bond market fell by a quarter point this week. And my guess here is that the cut was already priced into the market because everybody knew it was coming.

Steve Van Wie 10:24

A lot of people thought it'd be a half too. So it might have been overpriced into the.

Adam Van Wie 10:27

Yeah, perhaps. So outside of the housing situation right now, which we're going to address in depth or my data is next week, the economic data this week was pretty strong. Even the Fed had an improved economic outlook for the country. In the speech, Powell referenced several things that he sounded quite optimistic about, actually. One of our research companies, Bespoke, does a consumer pulse check each month and and this month had some pretty decidedly positive results. Investor sentiment hit all time, near all time highs. Consumer sentiment hit the highest level in four years and has spiked in each of the last two months. Labor markets are showing lower joblessness and more optimism about prospects. Consumer activity was the lowest reading, with consumers showing lots of intentions to spend, but they hadn't actually done so yet. Personal financial sentiment was strong, but income growth remains modest and even housing activity was higher than it was a year ago. So that same report just four or five months ago did not look anywhere near as rosy as it does today. So that's a huge pickup in a pretty short amount of time. Other economic data that was positive also, retail sales was up 0.6% in August. That vastly outpaced inflation. Industrial Production was up 0.1%. And then on the negative side, we saw housing starts down 8.5%. So the housing market still continues to just struggle along right now. But this rate cut should be at least a little bit of a catalyst to get things moving.

Steve Van Wie 12:02

The wait and see housing market. Yeah, waiting to see.

Adam Van Wie 12:05

Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if one rate cut doesn't cure that wait and see problem either.

Steve Van Wie 12:11

No. And just because they cut the short term rates doesn't mean the mortgage market's going to follow suit either. I think it's much more the lack of demand that they're seeing right now that's going to influence.

Adam Van Wie 12:16

No, it does not.

Adam Van Wie 12:21

Absolutely. I think eventually these banks are going to want to start writing more mortgages. They're going to have to have rates have to come down. I don't think people are interested in.

Steve Van Wie 12:30

7% Interestingly though, I read a stat earlier this week. It says refis are picking up already even at today's rate. So apparently some of the really high mortgages, 7ish types that were issued over this period of time with the rates being high, are already being, I guess they're being bought down a bit. So somebody's not charging a whole lot to do this apparently. And I wonder if the institutions aren't being just a little bit aggressive in order to make sure they don't lose customers because they went through a bad streak of that. If you remember when rates fell really low a few years ago, people were leaving them like crazy. So they started getting aggressive and calling their people and saying, hey, how about you get a better rate and won't cost anything. That happened to me and I didn't think twice about it. Now I got a 3% mortgage fixed. Yeah, definitely. You got aggressive on yours and even beat me.

Adam Van Wie 13:30

Yeah, I think I beat everyone. I have the lowest rate I've ever heard of.

Steve Van Wie 13:35

There's not usually a 10 minute window where you get the lowest possible rates and if you see one, you never hit it.

Adam Van Wie 13:41

Ironically, I found some people on the Internet in a discussion about rates that had the exact same mortgage I did. They must have refied in the same one week window that I did where rates were actually below 2% on a 15. Kind of random. But I'm looking at rates right now. It looks like the 30 year fix is at about 6.35,

Steve Van Wie 13:57

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 14:04

the 15 at 5.9

Adam Van Wie 14:08

and yeah, 30 year jumbo at 6.28. So it really hasn't moved that much right now.

Steve Van Wie 14:13

No. And I think in order to really stimulate the housing market, you're going to have to start seeing it 30 year fixes in the. It starts with a 5.

Adam Van Wie 14:24

5. Yeah, that's where I think it's. Psychologically people will see it differently.

Steve Van Wie 14:28

It's not the historical average, but then again, neither is the price of housing right now near a historical average. So one of the other is going to have to give. Yeah. Now I did, I did read that prices are starting to fall in some markets, but that's particularly true for rent rather than buying.

Adam Van Wie 14:46

And for buying. I mean especially in states like Texas and Florida that had such a huge influx of people that you're seeing prices come down not so much in the Northeast because demand, demand is steady up there, but the problem is supply. They don't have enough houses for the people that are there.

Steve Van Wie 15:06

And across the country, the builders are not putting in all of the nice little upgrades anymore either. So they're trying to keep the prices down that way. So there's a lot going on. That's why I'm kind of excited about. Excuse me. About talking real estate next week. There's just so much to consider.

Adam Van Wie 15:23

It should be a. Should be a good show. I did have a comment. Marshall, if you're listening, which you usually are, you sent us an email. My dad and I talked about it. I'm not sure we completely understood the question correctly. So if you could call in and ask it on air, that would be great. So hopefully you're listening.

Steve Van Wie 15:42

Yeah, we would love it. By the way, one more thing before we leave the market. I don't know if you've got anything else. On Thursday, a very interesting thing happened. All three of the major indices that we follow, The Dow, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500, set new records Thursday, say. But so did the Russell 2000 small cap.

Adam Van Wie 15:48

I don't.

Adam Van Wie 16:03

Yeah, I did. Men. I meant to mention that and I didn't.

Steve Van Wie 16:06

And that has been a long time.

Adam Van Wie 16:08

It's been forever. 2021, I think, was the last one. Yeah. So, yeah, seeing that break out to new highs, that's a really positive sign for the overall stock market. Small caps have just been beat up for quite some time and so the.

Steve Van Wie 16:23

Big indices followed up on that with setting records on Friday, the Russell did not. Right. But it's not been showing the same kind of strength. But when you set a new record and it stays reasonable. I think it lost 18 points yesterday. Yeah, that's nothing. But I like the. The breadth of the market. When you roll the small caps back in and when. When the winds from the world are at your back too. It's really hard to envision September turning into anything other than a solid month.

Adam Van Wie 17:02

You better knock on wood after saying that.

Steve Van Wie 17:04

Yeah, I always do, but you never know. Anyway, it was fun and I'm. I'm glad that these things happen. I've been kind of chasing the small cap thing for a long, long time, and I finally feel like I got a small reward. At least I'm good. Another thing that I caught this week, I think it was just yesterday, was that Tim Cook from Apple announced to the world that the new iPhone 17 pricing was unaffected by tariffs. Now there are people out there. One of them rhymes with Powell. Oh, wait, it sounds exactly like Powell. Jay Powell is still convinced that these tariffs are inflationary and you're going to keep seeing it. That's one of the reasons he's dragging his feet and he obviously has not been listening to Tim Cook, but even more so he's not been listening to me and I don't understand why. I've been telling him for weeks that he can't do anything about that. Because it's not inflation. It is an increase in price level that is temporary due directly to the tariffs and as soon as they're lowered it goes back down. Fed policy is totally and completely off the table for that.

Adam Van Wie 18:20

It's, it's honestly a basic lack of understanding of economics. If you. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. The reason we saw inflation post Covid was because the government flooded the market. They increased the monetary supply by 30% in like two years, maybe one year. And there was too much money chasing too few goods. That is inflationary and that is the reason that it goes on for months and months and months. A one time price adjustment is just that. It is a one time price adjustment and it's only on certain things that go into an overall product. So if something costs $100, if you have a 10% tariff on a certain portion of the products, you're not going to see a 10% increase in price increase. You might see a.5%

Adam Van Wie 19:12

increase on the price because one of the, one of the inputs into that product costs a bit more. It's just not inflationary. Yes, it can cause higher prices, but it's not inflationary.

Steve Van Wie 19:23

And in other good news, this week Trump came back from England with a deal with the trade deal for UK which they badly needed since they did the Brexit thing. The EU no longer speaks for them. And Barack Obama told the world that they would be the last people who would ever get a trade agreement because they dropped out of the eu.

Steve Van Wie 19:55

You know, one day you're a community organizer in Chicago and the next day you're a world economic expert, or at least you claim to be. So that I was really happy to see that. But then he came home, got 25 minutes of sleep and then spent two hours talking to Xi and setting up the deal. That'll probably save Tick tock. There's more good news than you can imagine if you just look around and find it. All right, we're going to take another short break, go back lots more. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ban We Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Ban We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We. And I want to remind everybody that lines are open 904-222-8255

Adam Van Wie 20:33

And I'm Adam Van We.

Steve Van Wie 20:41

and the trivia question is out there. And I forgot to give credit to Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. Call Paul at 904-636-7888.

Steve Van Wie 20:52

So over the past four months, what percentage of those days did the NASDAQ spend in overbought territory? Just a simple percentage, nothing more. All right, Anything else you want to mention about the market?

Adam Van Wie 21:07

Yeah, I wanted to mention that jobless claims as we predicted. I have to look at that dramatically back down after hitting.

Steve Van Wie 21:17

If you all remember, there was a big spike.

Adam Van Wie 21:19

Yeah. Last week there was a. They came in at 264,000. That's important because 250 is considered the level where you need to start watching out for a recession. But it was all due to one state, Texas. And it, it seemed like an anomaly. And sure enough it was. It came back down to 231,000 this week and all of that Texas bump went away. They think it was fraud related, I think I read.

Steve Van Wie 21:41

And they normal.

Steve Van Wie 21:44

Oh yeah, that's interesting.

Adam Van Wie 21:46

Yeah.

Steve Van Wie 21:48

Numbers can be weapons too, can't they?

Adam Van Wie 21:51

So crisis averted there.

Steve Van Wie 21:53

Good. Speaking of crisis averted, there's one that isn't and that's September 30th. Marshall. Marshall's listening. Let's take this.

Adam Van Wie 22:02

Oh, good.

Steve Van Wie 22:05

Good morning, Marshall.

Speaker 2 22:08

Hey, what's happening? I can't. I don't know who I should give credit to this comment because I heard on someone who was being interviewed on Maria's show, but it was somebody qualified.

Steve Van Wie 22:21

Then if Maria got him. Him or her.

Speaker 2 22:25

Yeah, the lady was comparing 4.1%

Speaker 2 22:30

for overnight funds. Terrific liquidity,

Speaker 2 22:37

riskless scenario.

Speaker 2 22:40

And the 10 year treasuries at 4.05

Speaker 2 22:45

now, by the way, went up to 4.08 for last week's results.

Adam Van Wie 22:49

Yep.

Speaker 2 22:54

That seems to be pushing the banks to leave money in overnight, which

Speaker 2 23:04

honestly is almost subsidizing the banks.

Steve Van Wie 23:08

Where's the 4.1?

Steve Van Wie 23:11

Talking about overnight repos or something like that?

Adam Van Wie 23:13

No, like what? The Fed will loan banks money. Oh, at that rate, I think is what he's referring. The overnight rate is commonly. What if a bank needs cash quick, they go to the Fed and say, I need this amount. And that's the rate that they get it at. And so it's directly controlled by that rate. Cut. Cut the overnight rate.

Steve Van Wie 23:28

Okay.

Steve Van Wie 23:34

Adam and I compared notes and we both said we're not good at banking stuff. So I'm glad you're around.

Speaker 2 23:42

If a bank puts money there,

Speaker 2 23:45

that counts as their capital.

Speaker 2 23:50

So there's a lot of benefits for them to leave their Money there, I guess, is my point. And then I look at the other side of the Fed. Is the Fed acting like a savings and loan? If they're paying short term 4.1

Speaker 2 24:08

and they've had all these mortgage securities supposedly they've picked up from the days of some people who got a 3% mortgage, by the way.

Steve Van Wie 24:18

Yeah. What a shame. Think of all the people that suffer because of that.

Speaker 2 24:25

That tells me they're acting like a savings and loan.

Speaker 2 24:29

So I just, I was looking for the professional's opinion of that overall scenario.

Steve Van Wie 24:36

You know, I'm just, I'm not.

Steve Van Wie 24:40

What's the word? I'm not really that well versed on banking and I've never considered it that much. If the, if the Fed is charging 4.1, the banks are willing to pay it, then how is the bank making money? And why did they have to borrow in the first place?

Adam Van Wie 25:00

Well, because they're lending that money out in mortgages at 5, at 6.2%. So that spread between 4.1 and 6.2, they're making money.

Steve Van Wie 25:11

So they. Yeah, they got that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 25:13

But if the Fed is paying them that for the overnight deposit from the bank. That's my point. If the bank goes and puts overnight deposits, and I tell you what, if you talk with your knowledgeable banker, the amount of money that banks have been putting in that overnight deposit has increased, I think pretty steady over a long time. So they're not putting it into the loans for the small business. Not putting it into, you know, their typical loan products as much because they're getting 4.1%.

Adam Van Wie 25:37

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 25:50

Yeah. And that's down from recently because of the cuts from closer to five. So. Yeah, I mean, obviously at those rates, especially when you're coming off of a decade of 1% interest rates, they start to look really attractive. And when you can get a risk free 4.15%.

Adam Van Wie 26:09

Absolutely. I'm not surprised to hear that banks are doing that. I would do that.

Steve Van Wie 26:13

Yeah. The, the Fed is also unwinding its balance sheet, selling off bonds like crazy.

Speaker 2 26:19

Which is, is further causing the mortgage market rates to be higher. Because they're putting this excess supply into the market.

Steve Van Wie 26:25

Right.

Adam Van Wie 26:32

Yeah. But also the Fed. Yeah. I mean, it's weird because the Fed has certain things they have to do, certain things that they are, that they have a mandate to do, and it doesn't always directly benefit every group that they're supposed to be servicing. So I, it's tricky. I mean, buying all those securities and buying all those mortgages and buying all Those. Those Treasuries and bonds during the rough times, they have to unwind at some. At some point. So I think they need to gauge the relative strength of the economy. And that's kind of what I was referencing earlier with Powell. He mentioned that the outlook for jobs seems better than it was. The overall economic conditions seem better than they were. So I think they're pretty probably doing more of that unwinding than because of that more generally positive outlook.

Speaker 2 27:26

Well, it just concerns me when we have some people that are sitting as board governors and whether or not the lady committed fraud, her background is absolutely nothing to do with economics.

Steve Van Wie 27:39

It's education, dei higher.

Speaker 2 27:42

Like we need the best and the brightest people agreed on that board trying to find a way to wind the. The Fed out of business.

Steve Van Wie 27:53

Yeah, it was definitely a DEI hire. When you read her background, I got nothing against hiring anybody who's qualified, but this was not that case. And the new guy, Mirren or my ran or whatever, he was sworn in, so they'd let him sit at the table. That close.

Adam Van Wie 28:11

Yeah. Yeah. Just under the wire.

Steve Van Wie 28:14

He has a much different opinion about how things should be going. And he is actually an economist.

Adam Van Wie 28:20

Imagine that.

Steve Van Wie 28:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:22

Yes. If you have heard him speak on Kudlow or one of those shows. You can tell, yes, this gentleman does understand economics.

Steve Van Wie 28:27

I have.

Steve Van Wie 28:31

Right. And unfortunately, that it's the kind of the lost art and the dismal science all thrown together. There aren't very many of them that are good anymore. And if anybody isn't familiar with Kudlow, they should get that way because he is good at this stuff.

Speaker 2 28:48

Thank you for your weekly education, including the podcast, by the way.

Steve Van Wie 28:53

Great. I'm glad you listened to it. And thank you for. You know, you've taught me over the years, as hopefully I've taught you over the years, too. And we appreciate it. You get us thinking about things that. That I would not necessarily think about. That's important.

Speaker 2 29:08

Let me get. Let me give you a wild guess on our percentage. NASDAQ. How about 75?

Steve Van Wie 29:11

Absolutely.

Adam Van Wie 29:11

Yeah. Go for it.

Steve Van Wie 29:15

That's a great lower limit because it's higher than that.

Speaker 2 29:20

All right, well, good. We've set up. We set a parameter.

Steve Van Wie 29:22

You just did the world a favor. Thank you. Take care.

Adam Van Wie 29:24

Thanks, Marshall. Yeah, so obviously that's not our strongest area. We don't have. Neither of us has ever worked in that banking or anything related to that. So.

Steve Van Wie 29:36

No. In fact,

Steve Van Wie 29:39

I have my 10 rules somewhere in my stack. My rule number two is work very long and very hard for the goal of never, ever needing to do business with a bank.

Adam Van Wie 29:54

No doubt about it. There's no worse experience than being forced to do business with a bank.

Steve Van Wie 29:59

No, no. You know, my, my apologize, my apologies to all the bankers who are actually very good at what they do.

Adam Van Wie 30:07

Yeah, I agree. But it just can be just a mind numbingly. They've got their difficult experience, they've got.

Steve Van Wie 30:14

Their regulatory papers and they all read them or they're going to lose their job.

Adam Van Wie 30:19

Yeah. If you've ever been in a situation where you're applying for a mortgage and you're dealing with underwriting and they're coming back to you with these inane, just nonsensical things that you have to do to meet their requirements. That is, it's just such a common experience. And it's not really their fault. They're heavily regulated. And I understand that, but it can be just the most frustrating thing that you can go through.

Steve Van Wie 30:44

Yeah, it's just. Yeah, I'd rather go into something much more fun. So how about this one? How many ways can federal judges find to try to get to Trump? I got a new one here. A federal Judge dismissed an 85 page libel lawsuit TRUMP filed for being ready unnecessarily long.

Adam Van Wie 31:09

No way.

Steve Van Wie 31:10

Yeah. So somewhere along the line, there is apparently a limit on paper. Now, when you sue somebody. I've never heard of that. Have you? Yeah, that is. That is definitely new. And so his lawyers have exactly 28 days from Friday to refile a revised suit that's no longer than 40 pages. I can't make this up, Adam. I can't.

Adam Van Wie 31:19

I have not. That's a new one on me.

Adam Van Wie 31:34

Are you kidding me?

Steve Van Wie 31:42

It's psychobabble,

Steve Van Wie 31:45

the things that these judges are doing to get him. And they've irritated the Supreme Court, something, you know, furiously, lots of them. They're getting under Kavanaugh's skin, among others. But he's the one that's been pretty vocal. But Gorsuch has been doing the same thing, and the world is just so tired of it. You don't win or lose cases up front because of who you are. If the court's doing its job. Real simple. All right, we're going to take one more break. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van We Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We. And I want to remind everybody that the lines are open 904-222-8255.

Adam Van Wie 32:21

And I'm Adam Van We.

Steve Van Wie 32:28

And the trivia question is, out there in the last four months, what percentage of days did the NASDAQ spend in its very much oversold position? And without

Steve Van Wie 32:42

waiting any longer. Good morning, Bob,

Steve Van Wie 32:47

you there? Bob? Maybe I didn't get it, Bob.

Adam Van Wie 32:54

I don't know, maybe he dropped off. Hey, Bob, if you're listening, just call back. Yeah, he's not there.

Steve Van Wie 33:00

Yeah, something's wrong. Okay, we. Then let's move on a bit. I have one of those things that I can't resist. Absolutely can't resist. There is. There are a lot of what I don't like. I think pushy, aggressive and maybe some other terms who do financial radio programs. And some of them I would file under the category of I don't believe it, it sounds too good to be true, and all that stuff. So

Steve Van Wie 33:40

much to my surprise, I woke up a couple days ago and the SEC securities and Exchange Commission has accused the Florida radio host of fraud in connection with selling $52 million in risky unregistered oil and gas securities to about 50 retail investors.

Adam Van Wie 34:01

Just to be clear, it's no host that you are currently listening to that is exactly right.

Steve Van Wie 34:06

I'm sure there are people, most of the people who listen to us listen to talk radio and there's a couple of different stations in town, as everybody knows, we flip around between them, but Charles D. Oliver, a licensed insurance agent in Lake Mary, Florida, defrauded and deceived investors and breached his fiduciary duty in connection with the securities sale the SEC alleged in a complaint filed last week in the U.S. district Court in the middle district of Florida. I read that because I'm not going to get myself in trouble by giving you even more of my opinion. But most of you have probably heard him and he goes under a couple of different things, but the basic is the retirement protected. And I don't know how you can protect someone's retirement by selling them millions of dollars worth of stuff. Keep an eye on this and I may talk about it more soon.

Steve Van Wie 35:14

Good morning, Bob.

Speaker 2 35:20

I had to take another call.

Steve Van Wie 35:22

Oh, okay. I'm glad it wasn't our end then.

Speaker 2 35:25

Yeah. No, no, no. Hey, I have a solution on that 85 page brief that Trump filed. Yeah, all they need to do is change the type to a minuscule level. 40, 40 pages. And then they'll come back and say we can't read what you sent us.

Steve Van Wie 35:46

I'll make it bigger for you here. Oh, it's 85 pages.

Adam Van Wie 35:50

I have another solution. Don't have it written by lawyers. Yeah, there's a Group that cannot be concise. It is Lawyers.

Steve Van Wie 35:59

You are a devious man and I like that in a person.

Speaker 2 36:04

I've got to go work on this fence, but hey, I sent you something about Chase. Cheap economists saying that we were in a recession. I don't know if that was true or not.

Speaker 2 36:15

Also, I was watching Fox yesterday and they had one of their economic pundits on. He said that the Fed is so slow and with this 20.25%

Speaker 2 36:26

drop in the interest rates, it will throw us in a recession. So I'll take your thoughts off the air.

Steve Van Wie 36:33

All right, I'll respond to some of that. Thanks for the call.

Steve Van Wie 36:39

How many things do you have to predict before you get one right?

Adam Van Wie 36:42

Yeah, that. No, we are not in a recession. A 25 point rate cut is not going to throw us in a recession. That's absolutely stupid. The. I'm actually glad this came up because I wanted to talk about this for a while. We had a recession. It was in the first half of 2022. For whatever crazy reason, they refused to admit it, label it a recession. It was a recession. We saw two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. And the, the, we saw inflation out of control. We saw the market crash. We were in a bear market. That was a recession. Why can't we just buy one definition? Why? Why? Why?

Steve Van Wie 37:25

Because it wasn't Trump. It didn't fit the narrative.

Adam Van Wie 37:30

I mean it. I, I hate conspiracy theories, but this feels very political.

Steve Van Wie 37:35

You know, Harry Dent said that in this year. This is a newsletter guy that's always full of something. And he, he announced this year and I've got the paperwork on this and I saved it to prove him wrong. He said the stock market is going to lose 80. What did I say, 3 or 85% of its value this year. Something like that. Yeah, the cash in the market is way bigger than that, people.

Adam Van Wie 38:01

Yeah, the. And then you, you think about things like, okay, the inverted yield curve had previously 100% accurate prediction of a recession. Well, yeah, it did because it predicted the 2022 recession that we already saw. Yeah, it just makes no sense why we can't.

Steve Van Wie 38:20

Another guy now is a DC guy, pundit of sorts. They've got some kind of an organization. His claim to fame is that he predicted that the House would be taken over by the Democrats in 2018. And he was right. And so did I. But I predicted a lot of other things since then that were right. And apparently he hasn't predicted anything else that was right or they would put it there because 2018 is a long time ago. Okay, I got to talk a little more about Charles Oliver. You might hear it some. Well, you won't hear it anymore, but you might have heard it called Hidden Wealth Radio. And he,

Adam Van Wie 38:39

Okay.

Adam Van Wie 38:52

Yes, it is.

Steve Van Wie 39:06

he was making it sound really, really good. I'm trying to be very careful here with what I say, but he sold a bunch of unregistered securities through Resolute Capital Partners LLC and Homebound Resources llc. Guess who owned them? Could it be Charles Oliver?

Steve Van Wie 39:31

Were they listed on any exchange? No. Could you see the value of those day to day on any website? How many times do we have to tell you? You have to be able to see it on an independent, well known third party website or you might just be out your money real soon. He served as a broker for these transactions into his own company. So knowing that, I went to broker check like we always tell you guys to do. You want to know who you're doing business with or thinking about doing business with, you go to brokercheck.com

Adam Van Wie 39:37

No.

Steve Van Wie 40:11

and you can try by name, location or anything else.

Adam Van Wie 40:16

Company name, company name.

Steve Van Wie 40:18

I did all of this. They've never heard of him and yet he's taken commissions acting as a broker. He's an insurance agent. This is the kind of thing that drives me absolutely insane. You have to, you have to take responsibility for yourself. You don't do business with someone that you can't figure out.

Adam Van Wie 40:44

I guess just to Update, it's actually brokercheck.finra.org brokercheck.com will not take you there.

Steve Van Wie 40:51

So. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. One retiree client invested 410,000 in the oil and gas securities based on Oliver's advice and recommendations and never received his money back. Another invested $550,000

Steve Van Wie 41:08

and got 10,000 back. Oh, he did really well. Yeah.

Steve Van Wie 41:17

Enough. I get so upset. I've been asking myself for 23 years of doing radio, do guys like that make the rest of us look better or do they take the industry down in the hearts and minds of people? I don't have an answer for that yet.

Adam Van Wie 41:37

I mean, I don't think so. I think the industry is huge and yeah, is growing every year, especially on the RIA side which we are on. I, I, I think they are sometimes our best source of could be new clients.

Steve Van Wie 41:51

But if it costs people a lot of money, I hate it. But, and especially if they're older people, it is my number one pet peeve in all of the financial world. So don't, don't listen for hidden wealth radio anymore. And I personally am laughing all the way. And I mean that. This guy's been driving people nuts for too long. All right, let's talk about the government shutdown. As you probably know if you're watching the news, the Republicans in the House passed it because they have enough majority to do it. They sent it over to the Senate where it takes 60 votes. The Democrats turned it down and resubmitted their own proposal. And it's only we're talking about a short term continuing resolution to stay exactly the same as it is now. The Democrat package came back and Schumer had added a trillion dollars over that time to their proposal. And that trillion dollars would be, what's the word we just used? Inflationary, of course. And of course the Republicans are not going to buy that, so they turned it down. So unless something gets negotiated in the background, it's going to change. But there are 446 people who don't care because there are 446 people who get paid under other laws. That's the Congress, both houses, the president, the vice president and nine Supreme Court justices. And that's it. Stuff you'd like to know. All right. The NASDAQ spent 93% of the last four months in the overbought territory and strangely enough, The S&P 500 spent 89% of its time that way. Also, these are historically large but not unprecedented numbers. Do not take it as bad news because strangely enough down the line it's all done pretty well after that. So we'll let you know next week a little bit more. Thanks for listening and be there again. This is.