March 14th, 2026 - Pi Day!

This year's “Pi Day,” was hosted by the Van Wie team, discussing various financial markets and trends. The trio humorously tackled topics like economic freedom, market volatility due to oil prices, and private credit concerns, while also giving listeners practical reminders for tax season. With engaging banter and insightful analysis, the session mixed humor, education, and a touch of nostalgia, making economics relatable and interesting.

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Steven H Van Wie 0:00

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

Adam Van Wie 0:05

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 0:07

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 0:08

We are full housed today on this beautiful PI Day. Welcome everybody to PI day. It's 3:14 and I read a little bit about how that got started this morning and it was, I think an Orlando guy started it and he was given some kind of a tour and feeding people pie and trying to get his whole concept of PI day going. And it took, it took hold.

Joey Loss 0:34

I remember in high school they'd do a PI Day competition. Just they would see how many, how many digits people could memorize.

Steven H Van Wie 0:37

Oh really?

Steven H Van Wie 0:41

You know what the world record is?

Joey Loss 0:44

I'm going to guess it's real high. You better think much higher than I know.

Steven H Van Wie 0:49

It took 16 hours just to say the digits. There were over a hundred thousand of them.

Adam Van Wie 0:53

Jeez.

Adam Van Wie 0:56

Oh my. That's incredible.

Steven H Van Wie 0:58

Yeah. You got to really care to do something like that, don't you?

Adam Van Wie 1:01

And have way too much free time, let's be honest.

Steven H Van Wie 1:03

Way too much. Unless he's winning some kind of a big prize. I don't know.

Adam Van Wie 1:07

There's a monetary reward.

Steven H Van Wie 1:09

Well, other things going on today. The people around here probably know it's tournament time out in Pona Vedra and that means there's a lot of people in from out of town. Some of them passed me on Butler on the way in going the wrong way. I didn't try to turn them around because when you're going 90 miles an hour you don't turn very quickly. Just be careful out there, people. There are a lot of people here that don't know their way around. Have a little patience. I couldn't get out of marshland this morning to save my life and I don't blame people. And I try not to get angry with people. Every one of those out of town people comes in here with their big giant American Express card, leaves a bunch behind. That's a good thing. So I hope it stays this way through tomorrow. It's not looking that good but that the TV coverage should be really good today just because the weather is so perfect and the guys are. Are killing it on the course too. Haven't gotten a full leaderboard yet, but anyway, you. Yeah, I always like to caution people on tournament week because it's easy to get frustrated when, when it's crowded and full of people that don't really know their way around. Anyway, enough of that. Welcome to all the regulars. I point out every week if you keep listening, we'll keep talking. And we so far have reason to believe that's going on. So we'll be talking about all kinds of stuff today.

Steven H Van Wie 2:41

I guess it's sort of the bright side of all the junk that's going on right now. It sure makes finding a topic easy.

Adam Van Wie 2:48

Yeah, yeah.

Joey Loss 2:50

It's been three or four months since we've had a shortage of things to talk about.

Steven H Van Wie 2:53

Yeah, it's the old thing with the news writes itself these days. You just come in and sort of summarize it. Anyway, if you're new to the program or from out of town,

Steven H Van Wie 3:07

try to listen. Unless you arrive at your location, try to listen for the whole hour and we talk about anything you want to talk about. There's hardly a topic in the world that isn't related to money. And there's hardly a person in the world that doesn't have concerns with money. And not always because there's not enough of it, but things you don't know. So if you, if you want to pick up the phone and dial 904-222-8255,

Steven H Van Wie 3:37

that's 904-222, talk. We will of course put you as always, right up to the front of the line, talk about whatever it is you want to talk about. All right. That said,

Steven H Van Wie 3:52

it wasn't a lot of fun this week, I would say. On the other hand, it could have been worse.

Adam Van Wie 3:59

Could have been worse for sure. It's a really strange market right now. The market is in extreme, extreme, extreme oversold territory. It's more than three standard deviations below its 50 day moving average and yet we're just about 5% below an all time high on the S P. Weird, isn't it? That is so strange. This is not a situation that is seen very often and, and to me it all is a direct reflection of the price of oil. The situation corrects itself in one of two ways. First, the supply constraints on the Straits of Hormuz could dissipate and the price of oil would fall, resulting in a stock rally. The other option is that oil prices could remain elevated and stocks could fall further justifying the oversold situation and bringing down the 50 day moving average. So, so obviously I have a preference there, but it's not going to be up to us. It's going to be what happens in that part of the world.

Adam Van Wie 5:03

And I honestly can say I have no idea what's going to happen there next. This week we saw the NASDAQ drop 1.3%. The S&P down 1.6% and the Dow down 2% while oil actually dropped from about $116 on Monday morning down to about $678 overnight on Tuesday and then it climbed to end the week back to right around 100. So pretty volatile. The market's really having a hard time trying to figure out how to price oil with conflicting reports about Iran mining the Straits of Hormuz and attacking ships that pass through. The other thing is that that is adding to the uncertainty of the stock market right now is that the 10 year yield has been climbing as has the US dollar. The they call that trifecta the three headed monster. And when all three are headed higher it spells bad news for stocks. So keep an eye on those three things oil, US dollar and the ten year yield. On Friday, the fourth quarter GDP growth was revised down from plus 1.4% quarter over quarter growth to 0.7% quarter over quarter growth, a drop of 50%. This was largely due to the government shutdown. Actually not largely. It was all due to the government shutdown which cut the growth rate by 1.2%. Without that shutdown, the growth rate would have been closer to 2%. Purchases by the private sector actually totaled 1.9% on an annualized basis, so the private economy looked pretty solid. Additionally, that 1.2% drop in government spending really just got pushed forward forward. So it will show up as a tailwind in upcoming reports. So it's not like government spending doesn't go away. Unfortunately in many cases it just gets moved.

Adam Van Wie 6:52

Consumer spending remains solid in the fourth quarter, showing a steady growth rate between about 1 to 3% over the last five quarters after bouncing around wildly during the tariff announcements last year. Consumer income also rose slightly in December, which may have contributed to a higher savings rate which jumped to about 4% in January. The PCE report continues to Show Inflation hovering around 3% while rent continues to drop in almost every month since early 2023. Now rents aren't falling. That is just the rate of inflation that is falling. It's now running around 3%, down from over 8% in 2023. Durable goods inflation is running at 2 per 2.2% year over year, while services are steadier but higher at 3.5% year over year. Truflation, Our favorite new inflation indicator that looks at 35 million data points shows inflation running at 1.51%.

Adam Van Wie 7:50

The JOLTS report also came out on Friday and showed slightly less job openings than last month, but a pretty stable job market overall. One area that was notably weak was the professional and business services sector. While the information industry hired the most people since 2023. That really flies in the face of the narrative that AI is destroying the computer programming industry that's been so popular on the news. And one bit of good news is that the Iran war has caused investor sentiment to decline with just 32% reporting as bullish and 46% reporting as bearish. So, you know, they're always wrong.

Joey Loss 8:28

It's funny, I think at the beginning of the year we talked about how all 20 major strategists were super optimistic. They always overlook the potential for a geopolitical event. And now that everything's negative, I'm feeling a little bit better about the, the one year look.

Adam Van Wie 8:38

Always. Always.

Adam Van Wie 8:42

Yeah, I feel pretty good about it, actually. All those are being revised down now.

Steven H Van Wie 8:47

So there's a, those are economics people. They call it the dismal science.

Steven H Van Wie 8:55

Why? I don't know. We have to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 9:02

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 9:04

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 9:05

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 9:06

And we do have lines open. 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 9:12

And we have a trivia question this week brought to you as usual by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. You can reach Paul at 904-636-7888.

Steven H Van Wie 9:25

I want to talk a little bit about economic freedom today. It's kind of a big deal because it's being challenged in a lot of places around the world, including some right here at home. I was kind of surprised about the increase in economic freedom that's been shown in this country for about the last, oh, 13 months, I would say. Thirteen and a half months. We're doing a bit better, but we're not in the top five. Four of the top five are Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland and Taiwan. What's the fifth? No clues.

Steven H Van Wie 10:13

What's the fifth best economic freedom country? And I'm spotting you one thing. It's not this one.

Adam Van Wie 10:22

All right.

Steven H Van Wie 10:23

More on that in a while. All right, you want to wrap up anything else on this? Wrapped it up there in particular?

Joey Loss 10:30

No, I just, I just want to reiterate the, you know, when we comment that a sentiment falls the our kind of our brains forecasts go up. Adam, you want to share some like why that that's the case? Could we call it a contrarian indicator? Why is that?

Adam Van Wie 10:44

Because people and investors are reactive and the market is forward looking. And so people tend to get in bad moods when the market markets going down and then get euphoric when the market's going up and want to put more money in. And that's the exact opposite of how a real investor should think. You want to buy low, sell high, but it's just so hard to do because we're just not wired that way.

Joey Loss 11:08

Yeah. And we talk a lot about how geopolitical events, as serious as those events might be from a market perspective, they're not as enduring in terms of what we see from the market long term. So what they really do is just kind of turn people's attention away from fundamentals which might be very positive and create buying opportunities for longer term investors.

Steven H Van Wie 11:29

I have a little list here of things that changed in the last month and I think you're going to be a little surprised. Labor market the share of respondents reporting that they are unemployed and looking for work fell to the second lowest since April of 2022.

Steven H Van Wie 11:49

Who knew? Housing home purchase intentions rose month over month but remained down significantly from their 2024 peak. Not no surprise that interest rates are not going down right at the moment. Tend to climb up a bit. Consumer sentiment highest net percentage positive on the economy since September.

Adam Van Wie 12:04

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 12:14

Consumer activity Highest reading for discretionary spending intentions since 20 and acceleration sequentially in spending and foot traffic. Personal finances Strongest sentiment toward personal finances since April of 22. Drop in percentage reporting. Living paycheck to paycheck last month. Investor sentiment sequential increases in general risk sentiment and stock market optimism while negative sentiment toward crypto continue. And then there's one very interesting data point. The credit card balances on average are coming down. Less people getting into trouble on credit cards and more people making a dent in their credit card spending. I consider all of those pretty positive and I think most of them feel kind of surprising in light of the news that gets shoved in our faces 247 these days.

Joey Loss 13:16

What was the source of the. Who put that out?

Adam Van Wie 13:20

That was from the dis. I think the bespoke.

Steven H Van Wie 13:23

Yeah, I think it was.

Adam Van Wie 13:25

They do their own polling.

Joey Loss 13:27

They're very agnostic. So they, they just put out what

Steven H Van Wie 13:30

they one for what they charge for their research. They better be pretty good. And they are.

Adam Van Wie 13:36

Well and, and they also put out a thing this morning that or last night that showed how what the differences were between registered Republicans and Democrats and there was a pretty widespread in that data. But the averages were. Were good. But it was, it was definitely Republicans tended to be much more optimistic and feel better about Most of the categories and the opposite true for Democrats.

Steven H Van Wie 14:02

Yeah. Unfortunately, the polarized society is not going to heal itself because politics has reared its ugly head in far too many areas it doesn't belong. There's one of the newsletters I get in the morning, read a whole bunch of them on the computer in the morning. And I think it's, I think it's Stiles, but I'm not sure. At the end of every newsletter he's got in big letters, please stop taking politics so seriously. And I just want everybody to think about that because everything is politics.

Adam Van Wie 14:37

Everything. It's so crazy.

Steven H Van Wie 14:39

And I'm kind of a conspiracy theorist and all that at heart and a real conservative, but come on, leave it alone a little bit. Trump didn't cause everything that's wrong in the world.

Steven H Van Wie 14:52

What another comment I wanted to make on the market itself. There are traders who are basically speculators and then there are long term investors.

Steven H Van Wie 15:05

You know what to do if you're a long term investor, especially if you listen to this show very long. And we know that this too will pass and it'll come bounding back. And by the time, if you're one of the capitulators, as they call them, the last event in a down market is capitulation. That's when mom and pop sell everything and then they whine and cry, woe is me. What's happening? You know that if you watch things like odd lot sales, when the odd lot sales meaning less than 100 shares, when that activity picks way up, watch for capitulation.

Steven H Van Wie 15:43

The other thing that's important about it is that's when the market's going to turn. When the capitulation happens and people are putting money on the sidelines, you can bet, and you will generally win, that the market is about to turn up again.

Joey Loss 15:59

One of the interesting things about the last few months though is in my career doing this, you know, a dozen years, it feels like the retail investors are getting smarter. They're just moving. There's a lot of rotation, but they're not exiting for the most part. I mean, you see like right now there's some rotation out of what's been hot for the last six months into oil because people, the traders, as you said, are trying to play that. But there's still not a ton of money just exiting the market as a whole. At least I haven't seen it.

Adam Van Wie 16:27

No, I would agree.

Steven H Van Wie 16:28

No, I don't think the money market funds are growing at the same rate that you would expect. If this is really Happening the way we think it is. You see one of the headlines on the bespoke thing.

Steven H Van Wie 16:45

Like this. The market is so bad that nobody sells.

Joey Loss 16:49

Yeah. There's a clever headline.

Steven H Van Wie 16:51

I go back, something I wrote for the newsletter years and years ago. Don't try to catch the falling knife in a market that's this volatile. If you think you're going to time that downward so you can get out and get back in, you will. You're expanding your chances of losing a lot of money, period. Where if you want to just sit on what you've got, and I don't care if you move a little money around different sectors or whatever,

Steven H Van Wie 17:19

people have good reasons to do it. Talk about it first though, and then there's some idiots out there. And here's one not hard to find an idiot in my stack of stuff. His name is Michael Hartnett and he is with bank of America. A lot of you understand my feelings about big banks. I think they're very justified. I personally would never use one unless I absolutely had to. He says that he thinks this is starting to feel like it's 2008 all over again. What do you think?

Adam Van Wie 18:02

I think that that sounds political.

Steven H Van Wie 18:05

You think?

Joey Loss 18:06

I think it's political, but it's also like becoming trendy. I mean, he's one of a dozen people who started saying that over the last few weeks, but the things that they point to just don't satisfy me.

Adam Van Wie 18:14

There's nothing comparison. Yeah, there really isn't any, like, basis behind it.

Joey Loss 18:19

The, the private credit shakeup that's going on is, is contributing to it. I think you're seeing more people say stuff about that, but it's just not a perfect parallel to 2007.

Adam Van Wie 18:28

And I love how when people talk about the private credit situation, they then point to spending on AI infrastructure building, which A, is nowhere near, like, alarming levels, and B, is being done by companies with solid cash flows that can make the payments. So it just doesn't add up. Yes, there is private credit funding, AI infrastructure, but there's really no, no problem with that in today's environment. They're speculating that the AI won't pay off and then these companies won't have cash flow to cover it. But it's complete speculation.

Joey Loss 19:05

Anthropic's revenue has 14x in 12 months. So, like, if that wasn't happening, I might be on that boat, but I'm not.

Adam Van Wie 19:08

Exactly.

Adam Van Wie 19:12

Yeah, there's just no, there's no data behind it. It's just like, oh, look at this. This is a lot of spending over here. It could be dangerous.

Steven H Van Wie 19:20

One of the opening paragraph lines in the same guy, the bank of America guy, says private credit is the elder concern.

Steven H Van Wie 19:31

Huh. I don't either.

Adam Van Wie 19:32

I don't know what that means.

Joey Loss 19:34

I think maybe the utmost or the high ranking. I'm not sure what that means.

Steven H Van Wie 19:40

Two bankruptcies, bankruptcies last year raised questions about the industry's underwriting standards. They're talking about private credit here. And my margin notes that I prepare early in the morning before the show say simply who cares? I don't you guys give a rip about private credit?

Adam Van Wie 20:01

Yeah, I mean I do. It's, it's could. I mean a default. A large amount of defaults in the private credit market could have a disastrous effect on the economy. But the fact is we're not seeing that.

Joey Loss 20:14

That, we're not seeing that. And it does not equate to. Just because you see the word liquidity attached to private credit does not mean that it equates to the subprime lending practices that contributed to 2007.

Adam Van Wie 20:25

2008 couldn't be any more different.

Joey Loss 20:27

I also saw an article that was trying to make the case that when we see an increase in ARM usage, adjustable rate mortgages, that that also points to the creation of a 2008 type scenario. We can talk more about that when we come back.

Adam Van Wie 20:38

False.

Steven H Van Wie 20:40

But yeah, yeah, I'm running out of time. We'll, we'll pick up on this right away. Another short break and we'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.

Steven H Van Wie 20:53

 Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 20:55

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 20:56

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 20:57

I remind Everybody, lines are open 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 21:02

And the trivia question is still out there. The five economic. The five countries with the M.O. the freest economics in the world include Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, Taiwan and the answer to this question, if you get it right. All right, back to my comments about Mr. Hart Hartnett, bank of America. He makes this observation that is just stunning. Gas prices have followed oil higher.

Adam Van Wie 21:36

It's almost like gas is a derivative of oil.

Steven H Van Wie 21:40

Oh, maybe that's it. Can I write them and tell them? Okay. At $3.63 a gallon, gas is now 22% more expensive than the day the war began.

Adam Van Wie 21:44

You should.

Steven H Van Wie 21:55

And then Adam's comment to that was.

Joey Loss 21:57

But

Steven H Van Wie 21:59

it's still what? Something.

Adam Van Wie 22:02

It's still not $5 a gallon. Yeah, it's slightly Higher, but it, I mean, yeah, there's a war going on in the number one oil producing area of the world, so that happens.

Steven H Van Wie 22:04

No, it's.

Steven H Van Wie 22:15

Well, he also says that rising oil and gas prices have revived concerns about stagflation.

Adam Van Wie 22:22

I am so tired of this. It's so annoying. Where's the. Okay, first of all, yes, okay, I, I see where the inflation side of that argument comes from, but where does the stag come from? We're nowhere near that. Like, we've been seeing strong growth rates of, you know, 3, 4%. I, I just, it doesn't make any sense. The whole argument is just like wish casting.

Steven H Van Wie 22:46

Yeah, exactly. You know, if it bleeds, it leads. So two people who agree with this guy. I'm making my own point here. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon. And if you have to ask, don't bother. When they talk, I turn it off.

Adam Van Wie 23:05

Do you remember who Kathy Ireland is? She was a supermodel, was on the COVID of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue when I in, when I was in my teen years. So obviously a very famous and beautiful woman. She is suing her money managers for fumbling her multi million dollar fortune. At one point estimated to be over $400 million. She's claiming that through mismanagement, they're now broke.

Steven H Van Wie 23:07

Sure.

Adam Van Wie 23:38

Broke or on the verge of being broke or it's the, the article is very light on details, but there's a lot of, like, they didn't do this. I, I'm not even sure which side to come down on on this argument, but it's going to play out in the courts over the next couple of years.

Steven H Van Wie 23:57

Well, what you do, put it in a blind trust. So they never had discussions about it along the way.

Adam Van Wie 24:03

Well, that's what I'm wondering. Like these people were her manager since she was young, like in her 20s, and now she's in her 40s or 50s. Probably 50s, probably. And did you just not notice or

Joey Loss 24:15

like, it sounds like an absence of financial planning, which I would be remiss

Adam Van Wie 24:18

not to mention it does. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 24:20

So.

Joey Loss 24:20

Including all the most important stuff with it.

Adam Van Wie 24:23

Yeah, I, I just wonder how you, you. I just wonder about the validity of these things. Where was she spending too much? Was she making bad investments? Was she, you know, buying stuff for fr. I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 24:37

Or was she getting robbed blind?

Adam Van Wie 24:39

It's possible. All of those things are possible.

Steven H Van Wie 24:41

I'll look for any news on that for a while and see if we

Adam Van Wie 24:44

learn anything because it has a setup to be an interesting story. So. It just didn't have a lot of details except that she's a. She's very strong in her faith and. And can't believe that someone would do this to her. So who knows where that is going to come down now?

Steven H Van Wie 24:48

Yeah, it does.

Joey Loss 25:00

Let's see.

Steven H Van Wie 25:01

Yeah, I'm. I'm flabbergasted. Don't deal with people you meet at church. People.

Adam Van Wie 25:08

You always say that.

Steven H Van Wie 25:09

I do. Speaking of. Well, you know why they are. They're not. They're not licensed with series sevens or CFPs or anything like that. They're. They sell mutual funds. And the license you have to get to sell a mutual fund is.

Steven H Van Wie 25:25

What's the simplest thing in the world, I would say, anyway. Mutual funds. I have a question for you. How would you guys react to a change in the tax law for mutual funds where if you got your dividend and reinvested it at the end of the year, you would not be taxed

Adam Van Wie 25:44

on it until you sold dividend or capital gains?

Steven H Van Wie 25:48

Both.

Adam Van Wie 25:49

Hmm. I mean, I think it would reignite interest in me.

Steven H Van Wie 25:52

Definitely capital gains. I think they want to include both of them.

Joey Loss 25:55

But you mean like when mutual funds do capital gains distributions, it's no longer taxable because that's really the biggest tax deferred. In other words, it's tax deferred. I mean, that. That's a big deal that affects a lot of people every year. I mean, this time every year we're looking at 1099 and explaining to people. that this is why we're moving to ETFs whenever we. Which is tricky because you got to realize a capital gain to avoid this capital gain distribution. There's a difference between the two. It's a lot for people to understand.

Adam Van Wie 26:11

We've had a lot of conversation around

Adam Van Wie 26:22

I had that conversation with a client yesterday.

Joey Loss 26:24

Yep.

Steven H Van Wie 26:25

I'm trying to figure out exactly where I stand on it. It would be good for investors. It would be great for the mutual fund industry. It would. And I. Not sure how I feel about that compared to the ETFs.

Adam Van Wie 26:40

I mean, you're still lacking the tradability of the ETF. It's still going to trade after hours. At the end of the day, it's not. It's still less attractive overall to me. I don't think there's any reason that these mutual fund companies, they're all opening ETFs anyway. Why don't we just move the industry there?

Steven H Van Wie 26:49

That's true. And that's a good point, too.

Joey Loss 26:57

Yeah. And a lot of them are doing like these conversion options. They have these event, almost these events where they announce, hey, you can do a conversion from this window to this window and it will not be taxable. The IRS signs off on it. And that, that's a great deal because you get the, you get the transition at really no cost.

Steven H Van Wie 27:13

Yeah. I think there's a lot of room for improvement in, in the taxation for investors.

Adam Van Wie 27:20

This might be unpopular in certain segments, but I don't think we need to prop up the mutual fund industry when we have a better vehicle available already.

Steven H Van Wie 27:29

Yeah, I've argued that on and off over the years too. And when I started in this, it was, oh gosh, 2001 and there were a handful of ETFs that maybe there were a hundred or something like that. And now, what is it, 15, 17,000?

Adam Van Wie 27:46

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 27:49

It's Choices. There's no way you could know all of the options that there's so many.

Steven H Van Wie 27:55

And then the number of mutual funds has shrunken accordingly. And it seems to me like investors are, are voting with their feet.

Adam Van Wie 28:04

Exactly.

Joey Loss 28:05

Definitely.

Steven H Van Wie 28:05

So do we need a change in the mutual fund industry to try to save their businesses for them?

Steven H Van Wie 28:13

No. Although we talked about this a lot too. There are things that we do where we like the active management you find in a mutual fund, but you can I know, and I have not seen enough about it to have a real good picture of how they're doing. You guys have any experience with them?

Adam Van Wie 28:24

get actively managed ETFs now.

Adam Van Wie 28:33

Yeah. I mean, Pimco Income is now available as a ETF and it's not 100% the same, but it's pretty close. And it has a, it has a lower cost per share, better tradability and no cap gains. Why would I not?

Steven H Van Wie 28:49

And you still get the expertise of a good manager. Okay, well, that's where we should be going.

Adam Van Wie 28:51

Yes.

Joey Loss 28:55

Yeah. There's really very few cases where at this point where like the mutual fund is a clear, better wrapper for. And even in the case that it feels that way a lot of times what you see is just kind of a closed end fund approach where you have limited tradability for something like private credit, where you really don't want redemptions every day. If you're trying to achieve what that fund should be trying to achieve, you'll

Adam Van Wie 29:16

see those as an interval fund where you can trade at the end of a quarter.

Joey Loss 29:19

Right. And that really makes sense and actually protects investors.

Steven H Van Wie 29:22

I also think that ETFs reduce market volatility. You know what happens when you sell a mutual fund? The only Customer is the fund company. They have to buy it that day after the end of the market. Same thing. When you buy, you buy it from them. Nobody else. I can't buy one from Adam or Joey. I can't sell one to either of you. So what happens is that the big mutual fund companies, when they start getting redemptions or purchases in excess, they have to do some buying and selling that they might not want to do. But if I sold an identical ETF to you, this guy had to make redemptions, but this guy didn't. Because you just take everything I own and give me money instead. There's no buying or selling in the market. The number of shares on the float don't change. So to me, it protects you from excess volatility. Another reason to support the etf, definitely.

Joey Loss 30:28

There's probably listeners out here who may remember this. If you owned a bunch of mutual funds in 2007, 2008, after losing money and before the market recovery, you may have also in 2009, have been hit with a massive capital gains distribution related to the redemptions you're talking about because the only buyer and traders are between you and the fund company. And that liquidity squeeze creates a need to sell and generate taxes that passes through to those who've held. It's painful.

Steven H Van Wie 30:54

That's true. That's sort of a second wave effect.

Joey Loss 30:58

It is.

Steven H Van Wie 30:59

Well, these are good topics for discussion because there's a push for all this stuff, but it's still very, very small in its infancy. But I'd like to know what my opinion is, and I get part of that from chatting with you guys and people in the office. All right, let's talk about.

Steven H Van Wie 31:23

Adam's going to take an airplane trip here pretty soon, and everybody knows that the government shutdown is impacting the tsa.

Adam Van Wie 31:32

Yeah, it's just not a full government shutdown. Just Homeland Security.

Steven H Van Wie 31:36

Right. Well, they are losing a lot of agents, so it's going to make it worse because, you know, don't get paid.

Steven H Van Wie 31:46

My idea, which is so radical, is why don't we privatize it?

Steven H Van Wie 31:52

Like Atlantic City, Sonoma County, Dawson Community Airport, Great Falls International, Glacier Park, Greater Rochester International, Kansas City, Clayton Airport, Orlando, Sanford, Portsmouth International, Punta Gorda Airport, Roswell International, San Francisco International. They're all privatized. See any problem with that? Go to any of those airports. You're not going to wait in a long line.

Adam Van Wie 32:20

Really? Said the. The San Francisco airport has privatized security? Or tsa? I didn't know that.

Steven H Van Wie 32:24

Yep. Yep. Most People don't. I. I had heard that before. That's why I looked up the whole list this morning.

Joey Loss 32:27

I did not.

Adam Van Wie 32:33

Yeah, I mean, those, some of those are really small regionals, so that makes sense. Yeah, San Francisco is not.

Joey Loss 32:37

But.

Steven H Van Wie 32:39

We'll be right back. Got to take a quick break. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 32:42

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 32:44

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 32:46

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 32:47

And I remind everyone again, 904-222-8255

Steven H Van Wie 32:52

where.

Steven H Van Wie 32:56

Good morning, Greg.

Speaker 4 32:58

Hey, good morning, gentlemen. How are you?

Steven H Van Wie 33:00

Outstanding. And you?

Speaker 4 33:02

It's a beautiful day today, isn't it? And nice. Nice day to be out in the yard taking care of the weeds and things. What's on your mind and listening to the Van. Weeds. That's good.

Steven H Van Wie 33:10

Good.

Steven H Van Wie 33:17

It kind of makes the time go by.

Speaker 4 33:19

Yeah, it helps the time go by and helps get over the drudgery of pulling weeds.

Steven H Van Wie 33:24

Yeah. It's not my favorite thing.

Speaker 4 33:26

No. I have. First I have a comment or a question, and then I'll take a stab at the trivia question.

Steven H Van Wie 33:34

Sure.

Speaker 4 33:36

It seems like, well, I don't know if you guys knew this or not. I'm sure you did. You guys are pretty smart fellows. But it was about what, 26 years ago, I think yesterday when the dot com era pop

Speaker 4 33:52

in 2000, I think it was March 13, 2000.

Steven H Van Wie 33:56

It kind of went on from the 13th to the 19th, I think. But yeah, there was one of those days really bad.

Speaker 4 34:04

Right. You're right. So my question or my comment is that this, you know, we could see the selling in the market

Speaker 4 34:18

after the. For instance, the SPX topped at around 7,000 and it's been selling and selling and you know, it's a couple days ago up, couple days go down, whatever. So my question to you is this. Do you, I get the feeling that the selling that's currently happening since, let's say, the end of February is not so much retail as it is institutional selling, just by the volume, the sheer volume of shares that are, that are being transacted and where the price of the S and P is now, obviously this, what's going on in Iran doesn't help at all. So if the institutions are, and I think, you know, when you think about it, that the price

Speaker 4 35:18

is. I think it officially broke down yesterday, but so someone's coming in and supporting it. I don't know if it's retail or who, but there was a lot of volume yesterday in that market. So I'm curious as to what you think if you think you guys had made a prediction at the end of the year 2025 that you thought by the end of 2026 that the market would be higher. My question to you is this. Do you have any thoughts on how low the market, the S and P, for example, might go before it turns up higher?

Speaker 4 36:05

Do you have a figure there or have you not given it much thought? What do you guys think about that?

Adam Van Wie 36:11

It's a great question, but honestly, I haven't really given it a lot of thought. I think it's way too dependent on factors that are yet to be determined. The biggest one being the price of oil. I said it at the beginning of the show, but if we stay see oil stay high longer, you're going to see the market go lower. If oil reverses and everything gets back to quote, unquote, normal, I think that you could see a relatively shallow dip.

Speaker 4 36:40

Okay, Joey, want to contradict anything?

Joey Loss 36:43

No, I don't contradict that at all. I think it's. We're in a very unusual time. It's usually there's a myriad factors that are impacting the market at any given time. And it's unusual for us to be in a position of saying it's pretty much all oil today is what's driving it.

Adam Van Wie 36:57

I don't even remember ever saying that.

Steven H Van Wie 36:59

In fact, the day we find out one of two things, either Iran did not bomb or did not put the mines in the Strait of horror moves, or the day we go in there and say it's cleared and now ships are going to go, I think that's how low the S and P will go.

Speaker 4 37:18

Okay.

Joey Loss 37:19

And just to give an example of why that's so impactful is the longer oil stays high and the longer these, this. We're in this sort of interest rate spike, that's a reversal of the downward trend we've seen for the last few years. The more cash is running out for small businesses and home building and things that seem kind of unrelated, but the more they start to run out of cash, the more you're trying to. You're starting to dry up liquidity in the system and you start to see broader impact to the market. But just for context sake, we typically have about a 10% correction every year and we're coming up on about a year since the last one. So that doesn't mean we're going to have one. But history would say you should expect probably a 10% correction at some point this year, for whatever that's worth.

Steven H Van Wie 38:04

Yeah, I hate to Pin anything on one thing like that. But I think you guys are both right, that this is a 100% oil driven phenomenon right at the moment.

Adam Van Wie 38:14

Well, and I do want to say also the effects of higher oil. So you're seeing the 10 year spike and that is directly related to the price of oil. And so that again is not helping the market.

Steven H Van Wie 38:26

Right. We got this situation clear.

Speaker 4 38:29

So it sounds like that you also consider, you know, historical cycles like what occurred about a year ago, what occurred 26 years ago. If you go back even 52 years ago, back to 1974, you know where we were at then with the Arab oil embargo. So it's, it's, it's interesting how these things seem to rhyme in the market. Don't ask me why, it just happens that way. So

Adam Van Wie 38:52

Yep.

Speaker 4 39:03

I'm gonna take a stab. That I think that the market is going to hit 5,000 this year. With any. No, let me not say this year. In a year. I think it's going to go there before we get better. But that's just my own two cents. And it's not worth.

Adam Van Wie 39:05

Okay.

Adam Van Wie 39:22

Okay.

Steven H Van Wie 39:24

You're on the record. You're on the record. In my notes. Good.

Adam Van Wie 39:27

I got it down here.

Steven H Van Wie 39:31

See, unlike most places, you have to be accountable for what you say around here.

Joey Loss 39:36

Yeah, yeah. When the market hits 5,000 and Adam spontaneously has a vacation so that I can deliver the bad news, I'll make sure to give Greg his tea that day.

Speaker 4 39:47

Well, let me just say this. If it hits, if it gets there, that's a great buying opportunity. You know what happened 52 years ago as well, Colgate Palmolive had, had posted their earnings and it was far below expectations. You know who posted earnings this week and it was also below expectations?

Adam Van Wie 40:10

I don't.

Speaker 4 40:11

Campbell soup.

Steven H Van Wie 40:12

Oh, yeah,

Steven H Van Wie 40:14

yeah. They've been struggling for quite a while.

Speaker 4 40:18

Yeah, they are. But you know what? It's at a, at a 22 year low. And I, and I bought some this week.

Adam Van Wie 40:25

That's funny. I did see someone just ripping on Campbell's soup on the news this week on the financial channel. Just saying, look, they can't figure out how to sell highly salted water to Gen Z. And I don't think they ever will because they just don't want it. And I was, I was laughing. It was, it was pretty good. Obviously someone who was biased against them, but it was pretty funny.

Joey Loss 40:47

If you put an avocado in that can, it'll start selling.

Steven H Van Wie 40:50

We all grew up on it and look at us. Well, I don't know, is that good news or bad news?

Speaker 4 40:58

All right, can I take a stab at the question?

Steven H Van Wie 41:00

But of course.

Speaker 4 41:02

And I can tell you that I had a little help with this. So I'm gonna say that it's Luxembourg.

Steven H Van Wie 41:10

Well, unfortunately, you are not correct.

Speaker 4 41:15

Well, then I'm going to be listening to your show till the end.

Steven H Van Wie 41:18

You won't have to listen long. We're getting there.

Speaker 4 41:21

Okay. All right, thanks. Take care.

Steven H Van Wie 41:23

Have a great one. Yeah, that's interesting, though.

Steven H Van Wie 41:28

We don't really have time to get into it. So the top five in order are Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, Taiwan, and shockingly, Australia.

Steven H Van Wie 41:42

I never think of Australia or New Zealand as being economically free anymore. They've been taking the wrong turns for a long time. But this was brand new data.

Joey Loss 41:54

So what are some of the key underlying metrics that determine that?

Steven H Van Wie 41:59

Let's see.

Steven H Van Wie 42:02

Gains in monetary freedom, government spending, fiscal health and investment freedom have outpaced the lower score in trade freedom, reflecting the positive impact of major regulatory and tax reforms on economic growth, investment, business confidence. By the way, we're up to number 22. We rose five points, I think, and we're 22nd in the world. And if that doesn't disgust you, I'm shocked.

Steven H Van Wie 42:30

See, progress is not accidental. It reflects the Trump administration pragmatic pro growth economic strategy. So they. Yeah, they got it right. Argentina, a lot of you know that

Adam Van Wie 42:43

would they have to be up massively in the last few years?

Steven H Van Wie 42:46

They are up 40 places. Two on a guess.

Adam Van Wie 42:54

It's still probably fairly low because they were really down there. I don't know, like, like 30th, 146. Oh, my God. That's incredible.

Steven H Van Wie 42:58

You got it.

Joey Loss 43:02

Oh, my gosh.

Steven H Van Wie 43:04

They went up 40. Wow. A score of 48.3. And ours is over 72. 72.8. So just interesting, I thought. All right, Joe's got a couple of tax reminders for people since it is that season.

Joey Loss 43:20

Yeah, we're running out of time, so I'll hit these kind of rapid session. Well, your filing date's coming up. I'm sure, you know, and hopefully you're either in TurboTax or working with your accountant to get that sorted out. Tax deadline is April 15th. That is also your deadline for IRA or Roth IRA contributions. And I want to plug a reminder that if you have a high deductible health plan and you're pre age 65, you can also make HSA contributions. That's a good way to push down your tax liability for 2025. And you have until April 15th to do it. If you're an individual, you can put up to $4,300. And if you're on a family plan, you can put up to 85.50 for the year 2025. Your deadline for RMDs if you turned 73 in 2025 is April 1, 2026. That you have to take your first RMD by that date. If you did not take one last year, you'll also have to take a second one later in the year. Those are really the big ones. There's a couple other things that we can talk about and save for next week, but I just wanted to put those out there.

Steven H Van Wie 44:23

One of the big ones is tax scams. IRS will not call you, they will not email you, they'll send you a letter, and then you can start talking to them. So.