Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-10-25_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Morning news and talk, Matt Morsa from GP talks the latest stock and tariff thoughts as another active market day happens.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Good morning. It is Conspiracy Theory Thursday. If you have a good one you want to weigh in. Right now is a pretty good time to check into the show.

We're a little guest heavier than usual for Conspiracy Theory Thursday, but you can go ahead and join in. 7705633770KMED. My email is Bill at BillMeyersShow.com. I've been receiving a few emails recently over the last day or two about rumors of a big layoff at Harry and David, 1 of the 100 flowers. Can anybody confirm that? Nothing which has been confirmed anywhere else officially at this point. But this is what they're hearing. This is what they're hearing with their ear to the ground. So there's a conspiracy theory, not just

it's not a conspiracy, just a theory about what might be going on. But if true, that's a big deal for Southern Oregon. Okay? So if anybody can confirm or deny, let me know. 7705633770KMED. Wild day! Wild day in the financial markets yesterday after President Trump said, well, I'm going to put a 90-day pause on the tariffs, except for China. China is going to raise you to 125%, so it's kind of like an FU. An FU to Xi, apparently. And the markets, of course, were dancing in the aisles. And I'm going to be talking with Matt Morse. Matt Morse, of course, a buddy of mine and used to be a big stockbroker type. And he still writes on these things and thinks about this deeply. And I love talking with him. It's just going to be Bill and Matt talking stocks.

All right. We're going to talk stocks about this. Futures today are indicating the market's going to be taking another serious downward, even though it went up 3,000 points yesterday, the Dow and everything else. And it appears that what happened, because all the reporting is like Trump blinked, Trump buckled, Trump caved, you know, those are the kind of headlines I'm seeing. I think that I don't call it buckling. I'm not necessarily sure it was buckling because still the main focus always was China. And maybe other people got brought to the table and are going to be speaking more candidly

about trying to come up with fairer trade deals with the United States. But China has not wanted to do so and instead is trying to retaliate. And that, of course, means that President Trump is not going to deal with them at the moment. So it's not going to change for them, for China for right now. So hopefully you don't need a lot of stuff from China. But it appears that what was really going on is the, and I don't claim, I don't know if I really understand the bond market. And that's why I'm going to have Matt, we're going to come in, we're going to kind of kick this stuff around.

The bond market actually, even though you always hear about the stock market, the bond market is much, much, much larger and much more important from what I'm told. The bonds are government debt and various other forms of debt. It's the credit market, really, you know, the credit market. And what was happening is that the United States bond, the United States treasuries are debt, the United States treasury bonds that we sell out to the world in order to pay for climate change malarkey and all the other stupid government programs, you know, all that kind of stuff, all the deficit spending, right? You know, that sort of thing. The interest rate went up 60 basis points,

which is just a little more than half a percent. 100 basis points is 1%, so 60 basis points is 60 one hundredths of a percent. Not very much. You think, okay, so what, the interest rate goes up a little more than a half percent right away, and that's conceivable. In the bond market I guess that's a big deal. Everything about the bond market the way it is reported to me I don't own any bonds right so it's nothing that I've really studied all that much.

About the bonds these are much larger markets and much more impactful than even the stock market. You know, the bond markets go to hell, governments go broke. You know, it's that kind of thing. Stock markets go haywire, stock brokers and individual investors go broke. It's like that kind of thing. So apparently the bond market is as serious as a heart attack.

So that is a big deal. And when the bond market for United States treasuries ended up going up 60 basis points, a little more than half a percent in interest, the interest yield, that's the sign that there's something really about to crack. And then the bond market cracking, that serious stuff. Scott Besson probably went to President Trump and said, no, Mr. President, okay, all right, we're going to have to pause this, let people catch their breath. And then the markets absolutely went nuts. In fact, I was reading it was the largest traded stock day in history. More than 30 billion stock shares exchanged hands yesterday.

And they're going to be going down today. The markets are appearing to be going down. I know maybe people are just looking for a break. My baby 401k that I tell you about, it's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but it's a lot of money to me. And for the first day of the stock market sell-offs last week after Liberation Day was announced, there wasn't too much, just a little bit of noise in my particular portfolio because I was based mostly in gold, silver, miners, resources, minerals, stuff like that, commodities. I was kind of more in commodities and I wasn't into the apples and the Teslas and everything else. And so thinking okay, then Friday I got slammed, Monday got slammed again. Thinking okay what's going on here huh?

Tuesday slammed. That sort of thing. And then Wednesday the stock market goes up 3,000 points. This is in the Dow Jones, Russell went up a whole bunch, everybody just went up, all the boats were lifting. And I took the opportunity to take all the stuff that got pounded the other day, because it kind of zoomed back to where it was. But I'm still thinking they were in kind of frothy,

choppy waters right now. I sold a lot of it. I was kind of doing the Warren Buffett kind of thing. All right, there is a temporary greater fool that would like my shares of this gold mining stock, for example. And so I sold it. And already I sold it off and it's down about 5%

from where I sold it yesterday. That's what we're looking at right now. So I'm not looking at not being invested in this stuff. I'm just looking at this as an opportunity to, instead of being a stock investor, I'm going to do a little bit of trading. We'll see how this works. Like I said, I'm just a baby guy.

I play with this and kind of try to learn what I'm doing. And I read a lot of stuff from knowledgeable people on such things. So I'll tell you how that ends up going out over the next few days. Am I going to be buying a dip today? I don't know. I think I'm going to be a little more patient. I know that Warren Buffett, who of course has forgotten more about making money than

I'll ever know, than probably any of us will ever know, he's sitting on a lot of cash right now. He's been selling off positions. He sold off most of his Apple not that long ago from what I understand and he's just sticking it in the bank or sticking it in bonds as the case might be. Just kind of parking the money for a long time because they're figuring that it's going to be a lot of flopping and chopping and that if you're looking for good returns over a long time, you got to wait for the stock market to bleed off a little more. I guess that's what Warren is hoping to do.

Still thinking that most of the stocks in the United States markets are too expensive. And by traditional ways of analyzing stocks, they have been. When you hear the P-E ratio, the price earnings ratio, that's the price of the stock versus what it earns for you each year, it's real high. You know, you'll give the company a dollar and they give you maybe a penny, you know, a year. You know, that kind of thing. That would be a P-E ratio of 100. 100 pennies to one penny. You give them 100 pennies, they give you one penny a year. 100 to 1. It used to be that stocks would be around 10, 12 price, so you'd give

them 12 bucks, they'd give you a dollar's worth of earning, that kind of stuff. But that's been going up and up and up and up and up for years. And the stock prices, well, it's been the bubbly, the bubb bubble issues stuff probably from the Federal Reserve pumping all the funny money the people who really won with all the money pumps are the people in the asset classes real estate too are those kind of things gonna be cracking maybe bleeding off a little bit I don't know but the one thing for sure is that President Trump really does have a bone for China, a bone to pick for China. And rightly so.

We're going to have to let this one ride, see how it goes. And we could be seeing a lot of flop and chop and volatility and all sorts of good stuff. We'll talk with Matt about that. I always enjoy the talk. Like I said, Matt's a regular guy, good guy, Works in Josephine County Republican Party politics. Always appreciate that too. Nineteen minutes after six, some of the other news we have this morning. Not real good when it comes to the gun bills. A bunch of gun bills moved. I'll tell you more about that here coming up. And for the first time in my career, I'm going to have to play a Partridge Family bumper song.

I mean, I've been doing talk radio since what, 2003. And I have never played a Partridge Family song as a bumper, but I have to next for good reason. You're going to go, Partridge Family? Really? Yeah, seriously. Via Motoworks is Southern Oregon's trusted Volkswagen and Audi dealership. Discounts include Ford rebates and all-dealer discounts. Hi, I'm Matt Stone with Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on KMED. Point me in the direction of Albuquerque I want to go home I promised you I was going to play the very first Partridge Family song bumper ever in the history of my show since 2003.

Quite me in the direction of Albuquerque. There's a good reason for this because it's more Democrat insanity, in my opinion, with Mexico's largest city. I've only been in Albuquerque one time, one time in my life when I was moving out to Barstow, moving out to Barstow in 1980 or so, or actually moving to I think San Jose and then moving to Barstow a little bit later on. So I'm taking that southern route in the winter, moving from Ohio at that point when I was 19. I thought it was a beautiful city, really enjoyed Albuquerque. And apparently it is just a dirtbag delight in Albuquerque and apparently it is just a dirtbag delight

in Albuquerque these days. And the Daily Mail was reporting on this story. A state of emergency declared in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Biggest city there. The Democrat governor calls on the National Guard to help combat out of control crime. This is about crime, which is just going absolutely nuts. And remember, Democrat governor, so dozens of National Guard members will be helping the Albuquerque Police Department starting next month. So 60 to 70 soldiers will be patrolling. And one fourth of the state's population is in Albuquerque.

It's kind of like what goes on in Portland, right? Big, big, big, big, big. A quarter of the state for six months to a year. This is according to Governor Michel Lujan Grisham. Grisham pulls the trigger, according to the Daily Mail, after the chief of police asked for help at the end of March at the end of the city, or at the city rather, dealing with a fentanyl crisis, violent crime, and a growing homelessness problem. Does that sound familiar?

Rhymes a little bit, huh? Some of the troops will be assigned to Central Avenue, part of the historic Route 66. The area is known as the War Zone and just the site of endless homeless encampments and open air drug use. Nick Johnson, who is a YouTuber, visited Albuquerque earlier this year calling it the most frightful neighborhood in America. And they say that National Guard members will also free up local cops, who normally provide security at the courthouse and the airport so that they can respond to crime.

Now the thing is though, the National Guard troops are not going to be armed. The National Guard troops are not going to be in uniform. The National Guard troops supposedly there to help Albuquerque deal with a emergency, an emergency of dirtbagginess and crime, they're gonna be walking around in polo shirts. Did I happen to mention that once again, the governor of New Mexico, or the people running Albuquerque too, they're all Democrats? Yes, we're having a big dirtbag explosion of crime and problems and fentanyl and homelessness and everything.

Oh, it's just going nuts. We need you to show up, National National Guard in your golf shirts. Yes! I'm reading this story and I couldn't believe it. My teeth are hurting. It's like this is the Democrat insanity 101. This is perfect. We've got an emergency and we want to take the National Guard and have you walk around. What? You're going to have tea time at the local Albuquerque golf course? It sounds like something Co-Tech would have done, right? Just shaking my head. At first I'm thinking, fine, you're going to have the National Guard showing up. Great. Cracked out on the dirtbagginess and the criminals and the gang bangers and everything. Oh, no, no, no. We're going to walk around in golf shorts,

golf shirts rather, and then the, the regular police will then have time to respond. I don't know. I would just look at the National Guard then as just being the next victims of the dirtbaggery going on. No guns, no weapons, nothing like that. Just walking around.

Wash, rinse, repeat. So there we go. I just had to share that there with you because I just couldn't believe this. Emergency, state of emergency in Albuquerque, governor and everybody here. Oh no, but don't bring your guns and don't bring your uniforms. That doesn't make sense to me. Does it make sense to you? If so, let me know. 7705633. Now, there was another headline that made my teeth hurt, and this is in The Intercept. The Intercept was the one that that online magazine, that online news magazine that Glenn Greenwald, one of the few honest liberals left there in the in the reportage, he founded it but they ended up

kicking him out because let's face it Glenn Greenwald was just too honest, right? He was an honest liberal and so he may not like you but he would report on you honestly, that sort of thing. And he reports on President Trump honestly too. It's one of the things I've always liked about Glenn Greenwald. But anyway, the Intercept has been sort of stumbling along ever since they kicked out Glenn Greenwald, and I'm still on their email list, so they'll send me headlines. What's going on here? And it says, Trump appears to be targeting Muslim and non-white students for deportation. I know I am pulling the dump dump dump out a lot.

But this is it. This is what the Intercept does. It's usually a daily digest on, we hate Trump. I understand that. But Trump appears to be targeting Muslim and non-white students. Of course, that's the scary air quotes they put in it. Non-white students. Of course, that's the scary air quotes they put in it. Non-white students for deportation. Students from Muslim majority countries as well as Asia and Africa, having their visas revoked with little or no explanation.

And so apparently they're targeting brown people and yellow people, but they're not targeting white people. And I'm thinking to myself, self, wait a minute. people. And I'm thinking to myself, self, wait a minute, it's probably true that we almost have no white people immigrating to the United States because white people are the devil, according to the, you know, the woke situation, the Marxists that are controlling a lot of this country. President Trump tried to change this. And so I wanted to find out, all right, if you're going to be targeting anybody for deportation, are they just ignoring everybody else? Well, then I looked out and found out these are all of the unauthorized immigrants and

people who are here with green cards. I found some stats on this online today. This is 2024 stats. Number from Mexico, 5.2 million. Guatemala, 780,000. El Salvador, 751, 5.2 million. Guatemala, 780,000. El Salvador, 751,000. Honduras, 564,000. 400,000 from India, 309,000 from the Philippines.

251,000 from Venezuela. 241,000 from China. Colombia, 201,000. Brazil, 195,000. And the rest of the world 2.3 million. That's out of 11.2 million. Now I know I'm throwing some numbers there at you, but the rest of the world, that might include a few whiteys, but even that, the rest of the world is probably not a lot of white.

It's like everybody that's here, legally or illegally for the most part, lot of white. It's like everybody that's here legally or illegally for the most part is not white. Not all, but that's pretty much the way that the immigration system has been set up since 1965. You know, we don't want any Europeans here. Europeans posh. Who needs Europeans here? That sort of stuff. Europeans, they're all racist anyway and they hate the country. We don't need any more of them coming here. So it flipped around. So 11.2 million or something of all these people, illegals, illegals, everything else, and the Intercept is saying, oh my gosh, he's only deporting non-white students.

It's because most of them here on the green cards and on the visas are non-white students. It's because most of them here on the green cards and on the visas are non-white. And if you're going to target troublemakers for deportation and you have the ability to deport them, when they came here they're non-white and they're still non-white when you deport them. But like I say, headlines from the left that just make my teeth ache. Both from New Mexico and from Glenn Greenwald's formerly great news magazine. Provided by Dish. Good morning.

This is News Talk 1063 KMED and you're waking up with the Bill Meyers show. Another Partridge family. Hello world, here's a song that we're singing. Come on, get happy. show. Another Partridge family. I just had to laugh out loud because Jeff from Selma says, hey Bill why don't you play come on get happy by the Partridge family that could be the fentanyl update. Jeff you always make me laugh I appreciate that. Come on get happy hang out in your homelessness camp of 149 people in Grants Pass,

at least that's what we're hearing. They're going to be moving forward with the conversation for another time. We've got Matt up in Josephine County. Matt, great to have you on. Matt Morse, of course, we talk a lot of politics a lot of times, but we've also talked a lot about stocks, bonds,

things like that, the financial world. And I just wanted to have us just kind of shoot in the breeze about this a little bit, your overall take after what, how many years ago or how many years did you do stockbroking as your main gig? I became a stockbroker in January of 1991. 1991, so 30 something years you've seen ups and downs and sideways and flops and chops and crashes and everything else, you've seen all that kind of stuff, right? Yep. Been through enough of it. Nothing's worse than getting the brand new stock broker that says,

okay, I got my license yesterday. Then here we go, right? Hey, that was me. Okay. Hey, what is your overall impression? The way things are being reported with President, about President Trump is that the typical headline is Trump caved, Trump buckled, Trump, you know, he gave in and I'm not thinking that's really what happened. And I'm not one of those guys that's like some QAnon lip spittle, kind of lickspittle kind of guy going, everything Trump does is great. You know, I'm not one of those kinds of people.

You know that. And neither are you. I mean, we just look at what's going on. I think it had just run the course or maybe accomplished what it was. And the bond market was starting to show some real cracks in it. And that's a big deal, right? Maybe you could give me your take on that. Well, that's most recently is you had, you know, China and Japan trying to put some pressure,

apply pressure by liquidating bonds. And, you know, you saw interest rates creep up pretty quick. Well, I say creep up, but they actually moved pretty quickly. You know, the, the interest rates were getting for the 10 year, we're getting down there around like the low fours and then it jumped like 50 basis points over the course of a few days. So, you know, I think what happens with, with some people is first of all, I told you this before it took me a year and a half and it was first administration to figure out what was going on. All I had to do was read his book, the art of the deal. Once you read that, um, I just know it was a pressure relief for me.

It sort of allowed me to pull that little ring on the side of your air compressor and let the air out and you go, oh, that's why he does these things, I feel, are crude and awful. Yeah. He's actually, this is part of the negotiating process. So, so my, well, a couple of things- Hey, Matt, could you also back off your phone again? You know how we're always dealing with that with your phone. Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

I might have to move to the other room and yell from there. Okay, I don't know if this is gonna help or not. I'm actually speaking pretty quietly. But what happened is, as I was watching the market action on really, not yesterday, but the previous two days, what I saw is when there was just a little bit of good news potentially for resolution on some of these tariffs, but then to get to the negotiating phase is every time there was any kind of, any good sounding news

at all, you saw the indices rally like crazy. Yeah, it was just absolutely nuts. Even like that fake news story and what the Dow went up like 1500 points in what, two seconds? Something like that. Oh yeah, yeah, it was funny because reporters were like, is this print, right? Is this, you know, I've never seen that before. So when I saw that, right away I was thinking, you know what, any bit of good news, this

thing's going to rock it. And what it did is, when you see that two days in a row, even though they pulled back from the rally, it is a good indication that maybe I don't want to be short right now. Maybe the shorts have made their money. There was already a 20% drop from most of the industry. And the shorts are people who are betting that the stock market will go down buying an option or that would pay them if the market goes down, right? That's right. And listen, besides the bond market, I would say that Wall Street wants

the status quo. And I know you've heard that a million times if you're reading stories or whatever the last week. And that is true. Wall Street, its price bar are stock prices. And that's what they wanted. They wanted what they wanted, which is what they wanted was they wanted a negotiation. They didn't want the tariffs. But the tariffs were coming. And really, it became a battle of will. It became Trump saying, look, we have to make this change because we're going off a cliff,

which anybody listening to you I'm sure agrees with. I guess the debate is what you do about that. I think a lot of people agreed on what needed to be done, but what people seem to argue about is how it gets done, how that process comes together. Well, if you're dealing with Trump, it's not methodical. You and me, we would probably say, hey, listen, here's what I'm projecting. I'm going to have to put tariffs on you. Look, why don't, you know, let's get, you know, two or three countries that we regularly

do business with, let's go ahead and get them to come to the White House, let's sit down and have a conversation and begin negotiating. But I think Trump was right in its calculation. We've been trying that for 30 years and they never show up. And when they do, they make empty promises. And that includes our allies. I don't even consider Europe an ally anymore in regards to economics. But they don't come to the table or they just sort of jerk us around.

And I think what Trump did, and he mentioned this yesterday, he said it wasn't the bond market, or you know, this changing for the pause, excuse me, changing for the pause was the deal. The deal was when he announced that he was putting these tariffs on. And he's right, that is what caused people to come to the table. But coming to the table was really the intent all along, right? Yeah, there's no, look, I listened to the lefties last night when I finally got a chance to catch up on Main Street News. And that was their argument. They were like, oh, you know, they put the screws to him, he K-8, that's where you get that argument. Yeah. But they're, look, they know what happened. The people,

the people on the left, there's CNBC and the other financial channels on the left, they know what happened. The people on the left, CNBC and the other financial channels on the left, they know what happened. They know Trump was a forcing mechanism. In fact, it was funny because Jim Cramer, the previous two days, was losing his mind talking about Trump and the tariffs, and he was causing the market to melt down, and people were losing all this money. And then when he announced yesterday that he wanted to negotiate, I watched him last night,

he gave this flowering endorsement of, whoa, Trump and it's just the way he does things. I know a lot of people don't like Jim Cramer, but he's kind of a good barometer for Main Street financials. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he is. He can also though be quite the contrary indicator when he says that things are going to go to hell. You buy as many stocks as you can.

I think it was Dusty Waters who brought this up. He said that Jim Cramer was telling everybody to buy Bear Stearns right before Bear Stearns went out of business. Yeah, a little minor detail. went out of business. Yeah, a little minor detail. All right, you know, everybody loses a trade every now and then. Yeah, and you know what? Look, we may not like the way Trump goes about it. I'm more of a soft touch. And you know what? They probably would have run all over me. And that's the reason I'm not sitting in the White House. Not in a lot of other reasons. But you have someone in there in Trump who just doesn't care. For people, look I have people I know and I've known for a long time, 20 years plus, were saying that they don't think that Trump isn't patriotic, that he doesn't love this country, that he's mishandling all of this. This is coming

from people who are Reaganite. They're older than I am and they love Ronald Reagan and they love his ways. Well, Reagan was the right style for that particular period though. It was. That's part of the reason in the polling now you see that the older baby boomers are less supportive of Trump and Gen Z is more supportive. And I think what happens is they're still living in a different world than you and I and everyone listening is living in. This is not 1984.

This is not, we had a huge manufacturing base, China was a nothing burger. And by the way, I would also add that Democrats were different in those days too. And you'd have Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill go out for beers or whatever it is after the day's work on Capitol Hill and truly have a meeting of the mind, those kind of things. That is not the Republican Democratic Party mix that we have these days. That's not what we're dealing with.

We have this same problem in the state legislature too. You know what I'm getting at? In which the Emily McIntires of the world think that their job is to go up and make friends with Democrats that just want to kill you. Trump I think is almost a reaction to that kind of failed policy thinking these days. I've made this argument on air years ago when you and I were talking, and I said, look, the reason we got Reagan is because of Carter. The reason we got Bush Senior is because Reagan's terms were so good for the economy and for

manufacturing and for the country. But the reason they got Bill Clinton was partly because of Ross Perot, but it was also because of Bush senior Bush senior read my lips. No new taxes, right? And then he did taxes. Yeah. And so what we get, whatever president you get, you get because of the previous president. That's just how it's always worked. You know, and once people went through Monica Lewinsky and everything else, and even though we had a balanced budget during those

Clinton years, people wanted George Bush. They wanted someone who was more, you know, with higher moral character. I don't know that that's true, but that's what- But at least it appeared to be that way on the campaign trail, and we bought that. That's right. All right. Well then, yeah, so, but back to the markets here. What you're seeing now is you've got, as I'm talking to you, you've got the NASDAQ down 480, you've got the Dow down 784. And here's what it came down to. Last night, you had the speaker say, yeah, we're going to have to reconvene. We just don't, we don't have the votes to get this tax package passed.

Oh, they don't. Oh, that's a big deal. All right. It is. Well, right before the market opened, he came out and said, yeah, I think we have the vote. And then you watch the Dow go from being down 600 plus to being down just over 400. And then it's kind of bounced back again.

So this is Wall Street figures like they have Trump's number now, and it's that Trump does care about the market and he does. But he doesn't care about the market to the exclusion of where he needs to take the country in his view. No, no, he doesn't. And that's the reason he was willing to push to the limit, you know, yesterday evening. So from my perspective, I don't like to make general market predictions because there's

too many variables to really make an accurate prediction. But I will point out what I observe, and that is that it was going to be very difficult to close out a short position if there was any good news. And that's part of the reason you saw the rally that we saw yesterday, is you had people who were still pushing, they were still pushing the envelope about being short, which was stupid. The other problem we have though, this is something to keep in mind, whenever you see outside move, it's computer generated, but you have a lot of these traders who trade with tremendous leverage in the market. So they're not just putting up a hundred bucks and buying $200 with a stock.

They're putting up millions of dollars to buy double that amount in stock. And they use other leverage instruments, options, and other kinds of things. And when they get wrong, and they do get wrong, people seem to think that Wall Street always makes money. No, plenty of Wall Streeters get it wrong. They make a bad prediction. They built up in their mind that whatever happened with Trump was going to be negative because he's crazy and crude in the way he goes about things.

They made a bad bet. Part of that, I think, look, you couldn't convince me that China and other sovereign wealth funds weren't shorting the stock market hardcore to try to get what they wanted. They thought America just stares at the stock market. If we put the hammer on them, then Trump will have to cave. And Trump did say, hey. But then it got to the point where they couldn't afford

to be betting against the stock market any longer, right? Soon as this thing turns, look, I won't know the numbers. You and I will never know the numbers of how much money was lost yesterday for the people who were short. But I'll tell you, they're going to be hesitant to get too short again. Now, again, the Dow is down 750, 744 to be exact. So you have some selling. However, I think the risk is still trying to get short this because for the first time in my lifetime,

I'm watching a very small minority or majority of Republicans getting together on something. This never happens. You always have people who pay, they wander off the reservation. Part of the reason I was for this particular package coming together with all the money for the taxes and for the border stuff is because you can do one of these reconciliation packages twice. So I wanted to see everything get done in one big, beautiful bill and then have that last bullet

in the chamber to go back and maybe say, hey, now that we've got more information from Doge, now let's go ahead and make these cuts. This is money related, so it can be reconciliation again, and then come back and do that. But I will say this is really funny. Just the political side of it is listening to the Democrats saying, well, we're going to find out how many Republicans were actually long the market the day before or the morning of Trump's announcement. And when I hear those words coming out of stiff's mouth, I was laughing so hard last night. I thought, are you kidding me? The Democrats and Republicans have all made money on insider trading.

All of them. Yeah. I could see it becoming an investigation and all of a sudden Schiff is sitting there and somebody turns to him when he's up there on the desk and says, hey, by the way, we found out you made about $4 million on the short. You want to explain that? To me, it's absolutely ridiculous that they wanted to investigate. But they know, in fact, in a shift in an interview, they know that one of the reporters said, well, you know, the White House is just going to ignore the letter you sent them that you're demanding. We're demanding an investigation. He says, well, yeah, they probably will. He knows they will. So he knows he's in no danger.

Nancy Pelosi is probably calling him saying, look, I know they won't do anything about this, but is this really the thing we want to have happen? Do we really, because now you're asking for an investigation. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great to be a fly on the wall when Paul Pelosi makes his traits? Huh? Exactly. And somebody told me yesterday that apparently there's a guy who started, I don't

know, he's got a blog, blog, website, YouTube channel, where he's found a way to track Nancy Pelosi's trades. And he said that if you go back and you track like all of the trades she's made, like her winning percentage is off the charts. So he's developing something now where you can actually follow whatever trades that you make. But I think the disclosures don't come before they make the trade, which is what should happen. I think they come after. But yeah, it's hysterical to think that anybody in Congress wants to do an investigation about insider trading. Yeah. Now, honestly though, we're looking at a time though, if you were going to talk to folks that were looking at this, I ended up raising cash is what I did yesterday.

I took yesterday's insane rally and sold a few positions that I was already up on. I told you about that yesterday because I'm kind of thinking like Warren Buffett right now. Warren Buffett seems to be loading up on a bit of cash because I guess he's expecting to do a little bit of bottom feeding in the flopping and chopping in drama. Do you think that's a pretty good strategy these days? You know what? Now that we've had this bit of a rally, I always tell people, they'll say, well, gosh,

I'm up on this position or that position. Now I'm nervous because of whatever. And I tell them, I say, well, gosh, you know, I'm, I'm up on this position to that position. You know, now I'm nervous because of whatever. And I tell them, I say, you know, it's not all or nothing. You don't have to like, buy all the shares you intend on owning at any one time. And you don't have to sell all the shares at all at once. If you've got a nice profit in something, then sell part of it. So 25%, 50%, right, right. And then you can always leave some in there

in case your position continues to move in your direction. So yeah, that's something. And you know what, you made a comment to me yesterday, you're 100% correct. The biggest mistake that I've witnessed over the last 34 years is that people, they jump in when the market's rallying and they jump out when the market's bottom

And it's almost always the case and then they get so discouraged that they don't come back The biggest problem investors make from my perspective Is that if you're going to be an investor in the stock market? You have to stay tuned all the time because otherwise, how would you know when there's a pop? How would you know when there's a bottom? How would you know when momentum is even moving up or down? So that's the problem. They get out, they go, oh, I'm done or whatever. And then they come back two or three years later after the market's already bottom and

now it's up 100%. And now they're not sure what to do. Here's the one thing that's sure. If you're not going to invest, fine, close your eyes, do something else. But if you intend on investing over the long run, which is the only way you should invest, is you have to stay tuned. Pay attention to what happens day to day.

You don't have to do an in-depth analysis. But if you happen to look at the Dow and you see the Dow's down 20% from where it was three months ago, you know what, find out why it's down. Pay attention a little bit to the news, find out why it's down. Pay attention to a little bit to the news. Find out why it's down. Read some, you know, go to MarketWatch or whatever. Get some background on why the market's down. Look at your own life. Say, wow, when I go to Home Depot, is

it crowded or is it empty? If I go to the grocery store, you know, when I'm standing in line checking out, what are people buying? Are they buying, you know, Fruity O's or are they buying Fruit Loops? You know? Yeah, that's a great one. Are they buying the store brand or not, right? Yeah, and if you notice what people are buying, if you look around,

you know, the masses are always wrong. They're always wrong. You know? The only reason that being a herd animal works at all is everybody's praying that I won't be the one that gets taken out by the lion. Yeah, exactly. Now, the one thing that you will notice right now though is due to pricing that more of

the Fruity-Os are being purchased than the actual brand name Fruit Loops. I can assure you of that much. Okay? Yeah. Well, look, probably it's not Dollar General. It's the other discount place with the name dollar in it. I can't remember, but that stock actually was doing pretty well. The one thing that caught my eye last week is you have, I'm just going to take Coke, for example. I could

use McDonald's. I could use Pepsi. Those were actually making new all-time highs when the tech stock, all the AI stuff was getting killed. Okay. So the consumer staples, so to speak, right? Right, right. The things that people have to buy, including Johnson & Johnson. Now, Johnson & Johnson had other issues because this whole thing with the talcum powder came up again and so they had gotten whacked recently. But on the 4th, which I believe was last Friday,

Coke traded as high as $7301, and it hit a low of $69.79, which is a $4 drop. It's a pretty good drop. So those broke. It's moved up for a few days in a row. I Mean, I don't drink soda but honestly Sometimes when you look at a particular stock, you're even if you're looking at the indices There's times where I look at it and I say should they really be this cheap? that that's when I know should they really be this cheap and

And you know a lot of people Won't do this, but the best time, I felt this way forever, the best time to look for new stocks if you're somebody who buys individual stocks is when the market is getting cream because you get a chance to see a stock in its worst light. It's almost like... I'm not going to say that. But sometimes when you get a clear view of something and when you see it in the light of day, I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. Well, I've talked to many other traders too, like yourself, and they say everybody else is panicking and selling when it's cratering. And the smart money is usually out there with their checkbooks, as long as they're good quality stocks. That's just the bottom line.

Warren Buffett did something during the financial crisis that surprised me. Even for him, because he's a buy and hold forever. He always says that's his favorite hold economy, buy and hold forever. He always says that's his favorite holding comment, buy and hold forever. He was buying municipal bond insurers. And so you had NBIA, and I can't remember the other one, but they were two bonded shares. So when a municipality raises money for something and they want to get a lower interest rate, they'll buy insurance for the bond. So when people come by the... I don't know what those ratings are now for insured municipal bonds. They used to be AAA back in the 90s when I was a broker.

But he went in and he bought the bond insurers. And people forget this because people have a very short memory, unfortunately. S&P, it's a big business. They have a rating service for stocks, for bonds, for all kinds of stuff, for economy. And also Moody, both of them were giving these bond pools, these mortgage pools, AAA ratings, when they were, a lot of them were garbage. So you really have to, I mean, people don't want to because they're lazy, but you really have to do

your own research and your own analysis. But it was one of those things where he went in and he said, now you need to buy the bonds, right? Yeah. He didn't buy the municipal bonds, but he bought the insurers, which was really smart. It was like, I'll buy the insurance companies because those were having trouble.

And then, you know, if the bonds go bad, they go bad, but I'm just going to own the insurance company or whatever. So yeah, I would just say if you invest at all, good times and bad, pay attention to what's going on in the market, pay attention to what's going on in the economy, And once in a while, go fishing. Yeah. Well, the thing is, you've said right from the very beginning on this, Matt, is that when you're investing, you're paid to notice things. That's just it. You're paid to notice things. I appreciate the talk here. Like I said, just wanted to kind of shoot the breeze a little bit. I noticed that the conventional media was talking about cave, cave, cave. I didn't necessarily see it that like that. Now, Trump didn't want to break the bond market because getting the bond market

interest rates down was something that he wanted to do. It's well known. Besant wanted to do that. Trump wants to do this. He wants lower mortgage rates and everything else. And it was going the opposite direction. But ultimately, it's about squeezing China's nether regions. We'll just leave it at that. OK? Yeah, I agree, Bill. All right. Hey, Matt, thanks for the call.

We always appreciate that. Have a good one. You too. Matt Morse. It is a couple minutes after seven.