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It’s Rush To Reason, with your host, John Rush. Presented by Hi5 Plumbing, Heating and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
All right, we are back. Rush To Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, Klz560. Charlie and I were talking about something during the break that I thought I’d just talk about on air, because it’s a good subject, and that is AI.
And we’ll talk to Scott Garlas about some of this because of the chip sides of things and so on. And AI is coming now in a lot of devices, a lot of the new cell phones. Whether you go buy an Android or an iPhone, we’ll have AI built in.
I’m not familiar completely with all of that yet. I will be here in the not too distant future. I already use AI a little bit in some areas, although I’ll be honest, not a lot.
And a lot of computers, by the way, are coming with AI built in. In fact, you’ve heard, I think even Jordan Goodman talk about how he’s got a new computer with AI built in, and how much easier it makes to do different tasks and things along those lines. And I haven’t used it, but I’m guessing that AI, in a computer, would allow you to say something like, you know, create a word document that says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Or create an Excel spreadsheet with, you know, four columns totaling at the end, and I want this data inputted, and blah, blah, blah. And it will go to either the Internet or your computer and find the data that you’re looking for, create said spreadsheet, off you go. I, frankly, I don’t want to be careful how I say this, but I’m not technically challenged.
And I said this earlier with one of our guests. I grew up in an era when computers didn’t exist. I mean, they did.
You know, when Charlie and I were young, and Charlie’s older than me, but when I was young, you know, computers only exist in big mainframes, big banks, things like that. I can remember even back in the day as a dealership when we got our first computer, it literally took up more room than the two studios. Charlie and I have this glass separating us.
I get to see him, he gets to see me. I’m on the side with all the microphones where we go out on air and he’s on the other side making sure it all goes out on air correctly. But literally the two rooms combined, the computer itself back in the dealership days wouldn’t have fit in this room.
It took up that much space. And I’m not exaggerating when I say it had to be a climate controlled room even on top of that. So when I was a kid, and you said something about a computer, that’s what you first thought.
You had no idea you’d be carrying one around in your pocket someday, which today is a cell phone. Today’s cell phone has far more computing power than that old mainframe I’m talking about that ran our dealership back in the day. That ran off of the big floppy disks, not the little ones.
The what? The big six inch ones, I think they were, Charlie, if I’m not mistaken. So I grew up in an era where as technology improved, I business wise had to learn some of those things because that’s what you did.
In fact, being self-employed, I couldn’t hire an IT guy to come in and fix things in the business. You just learn to do it yourself. So I learned everything from how to network computers, how hubs and switches worked, how a server worked, how to maintain a server on down the line you go.
I didn’t have any choice but to learn those things. And I had some great mentors and teachers along the line that helped me, which I appreciate very much. And Joe, if you’re listening, you know who you are.
Thank you. I appreciate that very, very much. And I had some great mentors that helped me because I couldn’t afford to write those checks.
Now because of that, I’m pretty technically inclined. I’m not the typical… I’m the last year of boomers.
So I’m kind of a boomer gen Xer. I’m kind of that in-between year. But I’m not the typical one because you can hand me a cell phone or any kind of electronic device and I’ll figure it out.
In fact, in our family, it’s either me or my son that are fixing those things for everybody else. That’s what we do. And I’m kind of an anomaly because of my age that I’m able to do that because most can’t.
And this is not to downplay those that can’t. It’s just the facts. Most folks my age don’t have that same ability.
A lot do, but most don’t. In fact, I will tell you this. There’s a lot of 20 year olds, 20-somethings, that don’t have that ability either.
So where I’m going with the whole AI thing is for me, the whole technology thing was kind of a hobby for me. It was for my boys and me. And we spend a lot of time even building things and doing things and modifying and this, that and the other and learning all of these different things to help not only us but our business grow at the same time.
My fear with AI is you won’t have to do that anymore. You won’t have to know how to run a spreadsheet, how to turn a spreadsheet into a pie chart or a graph or a whatever. You won’t have to.
You will just tell your computer, hey, whatever, do XXX. And it will do that for you. In my feeling in this, and Charlie agrees with me, is the creativity or the lack thereof down the road, I do believe AI will start to affect.
Now, will some things grow? Maybe. Will it make some people lazy though?
I think it already is. You know, Charlie gave an example of, hey, you know, hey, whatever. Write me a song about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in this mood, in this tone, in this key, in this whatever, and pretty soon a song will pop out.
So somebody will then come along. Yeah, then somebody will say, well, listen to my song, John. Or listen to my song, Charlie.
Well, it’s not your song. Somebody else did it. The computer did.
It’s not your song. But yet that will be some of the things that happen on down the road because AI will be in that case, writing the song. So there’s a lot of things that I think, societally, we’re gonna have to figure out as to what’s acceptable and what’s not.
For example, you ask your worker to do XYZ, and as AI gets more and more involved, will they really be doing it themselves or just having AI do it and they screw off for the next three hours? And by the way, I don’t think what I just said is all that wrong because that’s what will happen. And until bosses and admins get a little bit more keen on what’s going on, they won’t have any idea what that employee just did.
I also will tell you this, as more and more of them learn that you can do that on your own and not even have to have an assistant do that for you, why need an assistant? You won’t. So in that particular end of things, yes, it’s going to consolidate the workforce.
Is that good? Is that bad? It’s neither.
It is what it is. But I do think as we move forward in society, we’re going to figure some of these things out and what are some of the parameters we put around some of these things, because I believe, and Charlie is right, and we were talking about this over the break, some of the pitfalls is going to be lack of creativity, children not having to really learn anything. They’ll just be able to speak what they want and have it happen.
They won’t have to learn multiplication tables, for example. Why? When they could ask the computer, what’s 2 times 2?
And it spits out 4. Why do they even need to know? Yeah, Charlie just said in my ear, why do you homework?
At the end of the day, you won’t need to. I mean, I think you need to, but they won’t see it that way because they’ll be able to… For example, I need a book report on such and such, such and such.
Write me one based upon blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And oh, by the way, do it in my tonality. Because by the way, the computer will know how you act, how you perform.
It will be listening to you so that it will know kind of who you are, and it will be able to write like you. And I’m not exaggerating, by the way, in the things that I just said. Those things already exist, and that will just continue to expand as time goes by.
I mean, there’s going to be a lot of things that change, including I follow some voice actors. Why? Because some of that, I don’t do voice acting, but I do a lot of voice things because of me being on radio.
And I’m amazed by voice actors and some of the things that they do. It’s just amazing how they use their voice. But moving forward, Charlie, how much will a voice actor be needed with AI?
Probably not as much as you think. The computer will be able to take, for example, even an actor. I don’t know, we were just talking about P.
Diddy and J. Lo earlier. So you take Jennifer Lopez, who does some acting, and she’s done some things even in cartoons and so on as far as that goes.
She’s been a quote unquote voice actor. Will she need to be in the future or can the computer just take what she’s already done, take some of that voice and knowing what she’s done in the past and the recordings that are already there, and then insert that into a character that Disney makes? And maybe just give her a royalty off of using her voice.
That’s what some of these strikes have been about. Thank you, Charlie, absolutely. So folks, believe me, there’s gonna be some big changes coming.
And my point with all of this is, right, wrong or otherwise, you may agree with AI, you may disagree with AI. At the end of the day, really doesn’t matter because it’s coming. It will be here.
It’s going to happen. It already is. And how we respond to it, I think, as Christian citizens and so on, conservatives.
And I’m not against it. I want to make sure that I’m very clear on that. I’m not against AI.
I just think it’s gonna be like anything else. How will it be used? And will it be used for good or will it be used for evil?
The Internet itself, by the way, can be used for either. And is used. You know, the frequencies that you guys are listening to when it comes to radio, some are used for good, some are used for evil.
So again, I’m not against it. I just think there’s some really good questions, and Charlie brought some of those up during the break that I wanted to share with you all, because it really gets you thinking about, okay, what does this mean moving forward? So just food for thought.
Stick that in to your memory banks, and maybe you think about it as well. If you want to send me some notes on that, text message wise, feel free to do so. Our text line, by the way, always 307-282-22.
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This is Rush To Reason on Klz560.
All right, we’re talking to Scott Garless here in about 10 minutes. I just saw a social media post asking the question, what are your thoughts on this possibly being the biggest market correction since 08, talking about the real estate market? By the way, I always hate to say these are dumb questions because if it’s a question, then it’s a valid question that somebody may have.
The reality is, yeah, no. No, there’s not going to be one. If there is, it’s already been.
And if anything, interest rates being lower as we go through the next few months, which is exactly what will happen, will do nothing but even spur more interest in the housing market. And I’m confused as to where somebody would think there’s a correction of any kind coming. Like I said a moment ago, if there is, it’s already been.
Now, are there going to be houses that always, for whatever reason, sit on the market longer than others? Of course, could be they’re priced too high, could be it’s a crap home in the first place, which by the way, there’s a lot of those out on the marketplace right now. That’s what happens in times like this.
Just because a home sits on the market longer, doesn’t mean that the housing market’s in a slump. That could be a one-off. Now, it could also be a pattern.
If you see a particular neighborhood where there’s a bunch that way, well, then you got to ask the question, what’s going on there? Is that a unique situation? Are there market conditions that are making that happen?
Jobs, et cetera? Maybe a lot of these people work for the same company that laid off, et cetera. I mean, there can be those sorts of situations as well.
Doesn’t necessarily mean that the market, you know, doesn’t mean that particular neighborhood is bad. Just could be other conditions that have caused that. But I watched the market pretty closely here in Colorado, and the reality is, yeah, you’ll see some homes that sit on the market longer than others.
But again, typically, that’s either somebody that thinks their house is worth more than it really is. It’s an outdated home that needs a lot of updating, which we talk about Premier Home remodels a lot, and that’s why you need to keep your home updated. There could be other factors, but is there a correction coming?
I’m sorry, folks. I don’t see one coming, and I follow a lot of realtors and so on, and some would disagree with me. There’s some that would speculate that, oh no, we’re going to see a big correction.
I just don’t see the markings of that. I’ll talk to Scott again here in just a few minutes and get his thoughts on that, but I really don’t see that happening. If anything, we still have a housing shortage.
And while some boomers may downsize and they may sell off a home, because in some cases, boomers own more than one home, you may see them sell off a home. I will tell you that I think in a lot of cases, the family itself will probably keep one of two homes. So let’s say they have a main home in a city and a cabin in the woods.
Most likely, the family will keep the cabin in the woods. They’re probably not going to put that home on the market. The main home may come on the market.
And even then, depending upon what that family has as far as offspring are concerned, may not. They may take a family member and actually sell to or put in that particular home. Could be a niece, nephew, grandson, granddaughter, whatever the case may be.
So are all of those homes that boomers downsize out of going to go on the market? No folks, they’re not. So this is where I always struggle with the quote unquote naysayers, always saying that, you know, there’s this coming, there’s that coming, there’s this correction coming, there’s that correction coming.
I just don’t see it. So anyways, moving right along. Toll violations.
Now this is an interesting story. I was going to cover this last week. And toll violations as in on, it’s coming on I-70, it’s already on I-25, to where if you weave in and out of the toll lane, you get a violation.
I’ll, you guys know me, I’m always honest. I got one of these not long ago. Now, I don’t weave in and out of the toll lane because I think it’s one of the most dangerous things you could do.
But on I-25 heading north, I was about three foot, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this, three foot off of the dotted line versus the striped line as I entered into the HOV lane heading north. I thought I was well safe and merged in and I didn’t think anything of it. I still got a ticket because my back tire hit the main stripe.
My front tire was on the dotted line, but my back tire as I merged in was on the solid line and I got a ticket, and it ain’t worth fighting. You’re not going to win. Picture was plain as day.
My back tire was on the stripe and I got a ticket. It’s that, by the way, those cameras are that accurate. You’re not going to weave in and out.
Now, one other thing that I thought everybody knew, if the dotted line is… I’ll make sure I can explain this visually on air because this is always hard to do without having a picture in front of you, but there’s dotted lines and striped lines. And when it comes to HOV lanes on I-25, and it’ll be the same for I-70 down the road here, because those cameras are up.
I see them on a daily basis. They’re not enforcing it on I-70, but they will. I-70 through Tannamy.
Currently, though, there’s parts of I-25. So you get up around, for example, 136 in I-25. As you’re wanting to merge into, or get into the HOV lane, there’s a solid stripe on your side, and there’s a dotted line on the other side.
The dotted line on the other side are for those people exiting the HOV lane, because it’s dotted on their side. So it’s dotted on the inside lane of the HOV, but it’s solid on the outside lane. Just so you know, if you cross a solid line, you’re still getting a ticket.
Even though there’s a dotted on the other side. Some people are confused. They think, well, it’s dotted, I can move in.
No, it’s not dotted on your side. It’s dotted on the other side so they can exit. And they do this so that people can exit, and then down the road, people can enter and not be running into one another.
But there’s some confusion, because there’s a Nine News article on this news, talking about how people feel slided because they crossed over even though there was a dotted line there. No, the dotted line was on the inside lane, not yours. And yes, the cameras are programmed well enough to where they know you crossed over the solid line and you’re going to get a ticket.
AI, thank you, Charlie. There are, by the way, over 900 hearings related to those types of tickets I just mentioned. And out of 900, 50 got dismissed.
50 out of 900. So if you think you’re going to fight one of these for whatever reason, good luck. The only ones in this whole story that were fought and won is if there was snow covering the lines and maybe somebody edged over because they couldn’t see the line markings, those I think you’ve got a pretty good chance of getting dismissed.
Now, on the same token, if you’re cutting across and you know there’s a solid line there, you’re not going to get that dismissed. If you’ve just edged over the line, though, because you can’t see where the snow is, you’re probably going to get a dismiss. But if you’re crossing over and you know where the lines are, you’re still going to pay a ticket.
So point with all of this is don’t weave in and out of the HOV lines. Tell your friends and family to do the same, because if they get caught, there’s a huge fine for these if that in fact takes place. So you’ll see these again on I-25, north and south, I-25.
You’re going to start seeing these because the cameras are already up. They’re not enforcing it yet, but you’re going to see the cam… You’re already seeing the cameras because they’re on I-70 already in the area where they just finished I-70 going east of I-25 all the way out to I-25, that whole section that just got redone.
And folks, this is a safety issue. You can agree or disagree with this, because there’s no Jersey barrier and people can just float back and forth in the lane, this is a way to keep people from doing so. And I guess the next step is you put a Jersey barrier up and then you can’t exit or enter, but that’s super expensive and I think the camera system is a really good way of controlling people from jumping over the white lines, the double white lines, by the way.
So just food for thought. As some of you are traveling around and even have friends and family that are, please make sure you let them know how this works. Because if they get a ticket, it’s hefty, mine was $75.
And you’re going to pay it. If you don’t, it goes up from there. I learned my lesson.
I won’t do it again. I’ll make sure that I’m fully across the dotted lines before I pull in, because the cameras are, yes, that accurate. All right, we’ll be right back.
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Now, back to Rush To Reason, presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
All right. We are back. Rush To Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, Klz560.
Charlie’s getting Scott Garless rounded up. And again, that last article was really more of a reminder that you’re not going to fight those tolls. That’s one of those situations where they’re going to send it to you.
You’re going to have a picture taken. And the way that works is, I suppose you could try fighting it if you weren’t the driver. That’s one of those things where I need to get Kevin Flesh on and probably talk to him a little bit more about that and determine what your rights are in that regard.
And you might be able to fight it if you’re not, in fact, driving the car. But they take pretty good pictures. And if you are, your chances of fighting that are going to be pretty slim.
Scott Garland is joining us now. Scott, welcome. How are you, sir?
Hey, John, how are you?
I’m good, sir. How are you?
Doing all right.
All right. Consumer confidence dropping. What’s up?
Yeah. So we’ve got some numbers that came out yesterday from the conference board. And what we saw was consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in three years.
It basically hasn’t been this bad since 21.
Which, by the way, is not a good thing, because that’s really what drives the economy, correct?
Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s what I was going to say. It’s very interesting because the economy, for all intents and purposes, seems to be doing fine right now when we’re looking at the data.
So what these numbers said was pessimism rose regarding both labor market conditions and the short-term business outlook. So that’s also concerning, too. We have talked about job growth is slowing down.
And then individuals are also pessimistic about their future income prospects. So again, here, there’s a lag effect. And I think it could get worse going into the election.
And this is kind of telling why we’re looking at polls that are saying people are worried, and they favor Donald Trump in terms of what they think he can do with the economy versus Kamala Harris. And it’s probably because of a lot of the stuff they’ve seen already going on.
Yeah, and this is where, again, you know my thoughts on this. You and I have talked about it many times. I feel like the Fed was way too late in doing this last rate reduction.
They went a full half a point, which a lot of people said they wouldn’t do, because it sends a signal that we’re kind of desperate, I guess you could say, Scott. But the reality is, I think, knowing now what you just said in regards to consumer confidence, consumers feel the exact same way. So I don’t think the Fed is wrong in what they did.
They were late in doing it. Had they done that sooner, I don’t think consumer confidence would be where it’s at. Once again, and I’m not trying to belabor this, Scott, but the reality is they waited too long to raise them.
They waited too long to lower them. And now we’re back in a position where if we don’t get some sort of recession out of this, I will be shocked because when consumer confidence drops, people don’t spend money.
Yeah, no, it’s highly possible. I mean, I can’t remember going back to the financial crisis. You know, in the front end of everything, I remember having a dinner with my in-laws and was talking about all the stuff I was reading about the housing market slowed down at the time because the interest rates had been raised really quickly, not quite as quick as what we saw this last rate hike cycle, but the Fed was trying to slow down the economy because of all the borrowing and sort of the ATM-like way that people viewed their houses.
My in-laws sat there and looked at me like, what are you talking about? They couldn’t believe any of this stuff’s happening because they didn’t see it on the nightly news. And to your point, once it started showing up on the nightly news, like six, eight, 10 months later, all of a sudden they were like, holy cow, this is all the things you’re talking about.
And that’s when people really started to pull back and got nervous. And so the Fed needs to be doing something now, before that happens. Because if that happens, I want to say, I mean, it took like five years for consumer confidence to really bounce back after the financial crisis.
And the Fed could, I’m sorry?
No, you’re exactly right. I mean, I was going to say, you’re absolutely right. I mean, the reality is people got scared.
They didn’t want to spend money. They stopped spending money. I mean, for some, that was a good time.
You were able to go out and find some good deals on things. And for some, they benefited from that. But Scott, once again, that’s typically the minority, not the majority.
Yeah, that’s right. And again, to that point, the Fed took seven years before they could even introduce a rate hike again because the economy was doing okay. Yeah, so look, I think what this tells me, like looking at…
So I’m trying to think about this in stock market and investing terms and what we want to see economically. This tells me that the Fed does need to be more aggressive going forward, it needs to lose some policy up more. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, he was presenting at a conference recently and he said, look, what we’re seeing, the consumer is not in trouble yet, but if the Fed doesn’t get going on rate hikes, we’re going to have a big problem.
And a comment like that from a guy like that, they see a lot of the credit metrics across the spectrum because they hold money for a lot of people in their bank accounts. That’s very telling.
And I’m making sure I’m clear on this. He’s saying not hikes but cuts. You said hikes.
I’m assuming cuts, though.
Well, he said they better get… If I said hikes, I apologize. I meant cuts.
I mean, OK, that’s what I thought. I mean, yeah, I knew what you meant. And reality is because of that debt load that a lot of families are carrying, if that continues to stay high, they flat won’t be able to cover it.
They just won’t be able to make it. It cuts into all of the money they have. And this, by the way, why I think consumer confidence is low.
They just don’t have anything left over at the end of the month to spend, right?
That’s exactly right. And look, part of the problem with that, again, I hate to harp on this, but all these handouts that were done during COVID, and you sort of falsely inflated the sense of security of households all over this country because they had all this free money being put in their pockets, well, they’ve blown out of it. And I think it was Sanford and Fed that said in March, it was basically completely gone.
And you can really see how everything has slowed down since March. And again, it’s, you know, and because of that, the Fed had to go on one of the quickest rate hike cycles ever. And now, back to your point here, people have become so in debt, trying to keep up with where they were and to maintain things that it’s basically become impossible.
And they’re worse off because their savings have been wiped out.
Yeah, I mean, people forget that, and this is what always cracks me up. Well, you know, inflation’s, you know, down at 2%. Well, no, inflation still means overall we’re 25% plus from where we were four years ago.
So folks can say all they want that, yeah, it’s lower now. Well, it may be lower year to year, but collectively it’s still at 25 points. And I’m not exaggerating, Scott, when I say that.
And the reality is no one politics-wise, I mean, there’s a few that talk about this, but for the most part, we absolutely have one political candidate that basically kind of laughs at that. And, you know, everybody needs a chance, is what we’ve got one side of the party saying, with no explanation as to, well, what is that chance? What’s that look like?
Well, so, and to, right, to put, so to maybe make it a little more granular on what you’re talking about, with inflation, let’s say, think about the number 100, you know, and if something costs $100, inflation goes up, drives the price up 20%, so now it’s 120. Well, and then the following year goes up another 10%. Well, now that means it’s gone up to $132.
That’s right.
Versus two years ago, it was 100. So, that is a 32% inflation increase in price. You could say 32% inflation.
And so, yeah, the pace is slowing, but the costs haven’t stopped going up.
No, and we’ve had nothing that’s deflationary, not that we want that. Although you could go as far as to say that, you know, some of the things Donald Trump is proposing, you know, in his first few days of office is, you know, reducing the cost of energy, which he feels like in the first six months of his presidency, he could get that down by 50%. By the way, I don’t know that I can disagree with him because a lot of that just comes down to the whole attitude that a particular administration has versus another.
And if the powers that be that are out there in that particular end of the world, the energy world feel like, wait a minute, we’ve got somebody on our side now that’s not against us. Yeah, some of those things will happen overnight, Scott. And the reality is if you get energy prices to come down, you could actually see some price deduction, some deflation if you would in some items, i.e.
groceries. The reality is we haven’t seen any of that yet.
No, no. And like you said, to just start handing out more money to people is, that’s going back to what we’re trying to get away from.
Correct.
So it’s, yeah, I mean, look, if you can get cost down for producers, the benefit there is producers can pass on the cost deflation to consumers by charging them less, but they’re still able to make good money off of the products they’re putting out.
Well, and really quickly, if you use the food side of it as well, Scott, we already know that commodities, food especially, is all based upon a net cost versus what they’re going to sell things for at the end of the day. And yes, there’s futures and so on. And you know far more about that than I do.
But the reality is they’re still going to make their profit just like a bank does. But at the end of the day, if their costs go considerably down, so if the cost of a bushel of wheat goes down because the diesel fuel and everything else that it takes to actually produce that goes down, then they can make a bushel of wheat for less money, produce a bushel of wheat for less money than they could say a year ago. Then, of course, you’re going to see the cost of bread and other things come down.
That’s deflationary, but it’s not bad deflation because nobody’s getting injured by it. It’s not like somebody had a bunch of cost of goods on the shelf that they had to then go right down and then sell at a cheaper price. That’s not what I’m talking about.
This is one of those areas where deflation is not bad.
Yeah, yeah. No, you’re talking about finding that sort of you’re looking for that fine line where actually if you can get the cost down to produce to the cost of sale drops, you might actually be able to make more and sell more as a result. And people’s dollars get stretched further in that process.
So all these points you’re talking about. And so then maybe you see an arresting of, you might not see wages go up more. And so that really kills that.
But those wages might start going further because the prices people are paying.
That’s right.
Or dropping the economy. And so what you’re really talking about is something that some of these technology advances we’re seeing bring into the equation is you see an economy become more efficient as a result.
Correct. And again, and this is where you can get into the investing side of this in just one moment. But when consumer confidence starts to then go back up and people feel like, wait a minute, I do have a little bit of money left over at the end of the month.
I’m not paying 32%, 35% of my credit cards. Even though it sounds high, Scott, even if they can get that back down into the low 20s, that’s a huge difference from what they’re paying right now in the mid 30s. That’s a 10%, 12%, 15% difference in some cases.
That alone is huge. And if that starts to happen, that frees up money. People can go spend on other things.
Completely. Or they can pay off their credit card, get that much faster.
Correct.
Yes, yes. But that’s right. You’re freeing up a lot of disposable income.
And again, you’re talking about making the economy more efficient and more efficient and making things run better.
And yes, I was talking about this before I was going to have you on here. The top of the hour, you know, as I came back in and I was reading some things on social media, which I kind of do at the top of the hour. And somebody was talking about, is there, you know, a housing correction coming in?
Scott, I just continue to say that I know you and I have talked about this in the past. I don’t know where some of this comes from. I don’t know who starts some of these rumors.
If there’s been any correction, it’s already happened. I don’t see anything housing correction wise coming at all. Yeah, consumer confidence isn’t high.
But, we also still have a housing shortage. As interest rates continue to drop, which I believe they have to now with what you’re saying, Fed doesn’t have any choice. Reality is, it’s going to actually spur some growth on the housing end of things, buying wise, I mean.
There still isn’t a plethora of homes on the market. By no means is the housing market crashing right now.
No, not at all. I can’t remember. It may have been a while since we’ve talked about this.
I’ve got friends that work in that industry. They do different things. One’s an excavator.
There’s a lot of work with the big builders. He’s been telling me that the big builders got smarter after the financial crisis. They do a much better job of controlling their inventory because they don’t want to have a housing crash happen again.
That’s right.
So as a result, we’re not seeing all this. And also, you’ve got all this private equity out there buying up homes and renting them. That’s actually a good thing that keeps supply tight.
Correct.
People that are trying to buy a house might not love it because they want to see houses crash. But when I hear things like that on social media, I immediately think there’s somebody that’s trying to benefit profit-wise and they’re trying to talk things into that scenario. I’m with you, I just don’t see, unless there’s a complete financial economic panic, how the housing market is going to crash right now.
I don’t either. I just don’t see it. The fact that there’s so many people in a low mortgage that don’t have to move, they may let other things go, they may even let a credit card go, but they’re not going to miss a mortgage payment.
They’re going to stay in that house because of where they’re at. The reality is, Scott, if anything, things will get tighter with consumer confidence reducing, not get higher. So at the end of the day, do I see a housing correction on the horizon?
Not at all.
No, I don’t either. I wholeheartedly agree.
All right, where do people invest right now? And then I’ll let you get going.
Yeah, sure. Look, I think semiconductors offer a really attractive investing opportunity right now. They’ve gotten beaten up on the recent market pullback.
Micron put up numbers last night. They talked up AI demand. They said they’re going to see record revenues next quarter, record profitability next year.
They can buy the VanEx Semiconductor Holders Index. It’s an ETF. It’s a big basket of semiconductors.
SMH is a ticker symbol.
All right, Scott, as always, I appreciate you, man. Have a great rest of your day.
Thank you, too.
You betcha. Take care. again, Scott Garlas.
I appreciate him. And you can find him on Twitter and other places as well. Affordable interest mortgages next.
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All right guys, that’s it for today. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back tomorrow.
And Dr. Kelly should be with us at the 3 o’clock hour. Have a great evening. Rush To Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, Klz560.