Investor's Edge with Gary Kaltbaum - Walmart and Bond Yields [08.20.2026 w Adam Sarhan]

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

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Investors Edge with Gary Coltbaum. Straight talk about you and your money. Now from the BizTalk Studios, here is Gary CultBomb. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. I'm Adam Sarhan. And for Gary Kaye, who's out today? Today is Thursday, August 20th, 2026. We have a great show for you tonight.

As always, I want to thank you very much for being here. All right. Before we jump into the show, we've got some housekeeping. If you don't get the show in your city, you can go to GaryK.com. You can rewind, fast forward, listen, live or archive anytime you want from any device you want. And if I go fast, you can pause, rewind, and listen again and again and again. All for free, all on GaryK.com. Also, you can follow Gary on X just by clicking the button or search his name on X at Gary Colpom.

You can also subscribe, get Gary's morning notes sent to your inbox every day for free. Or if you want his premium service, you can sign up to Conviction, dot com. All right. Without further ado, let's dive into the messages from Gary because I want to make sure I do that at the top of the show and convey the message and make sure that, or the messages, rather than make sure that I do my job. All right.

Yesterday, which was Wednesday, Gary said on the show that he thought that crypto had bottomed and it's following through a little bit today. We'll see what happens or a little bit is depending on the crypto that you're looking at. But overall, it looks like there's a chance that crypto has bottomed and it's following through to the upside. We'll see if that continues. It's a nice follow-through today. It's not a little bit. It's a lot of bit. So crypto's up again today. Bitcoin specifically, I'm looking at big huge move yesterday on volume. Up again today, nicely on volume. Next. Let everybody know that yields were up even though the Treasury intervened yesterday, and that is a must watch. Gary's

been talking about yields for a long time. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson came out today. and well, he came out yesterday, Gary told you what happened, intervened, and then they basically, the future, or the bond yield turned right back up, almost as if nothing happened. Erased yesterday's big decline and yields weren't right back up. All right, guess what? He came out today and said, yeah, we might go actually bigger than expected. What? Okay, I guess if it's not working, just double down and do more, but he's like any 24-hour period in the market's noise. So don't worry about the initial knee-jerk reaction is what he tried to downplay it as and say, don't worry about it.

but Gary says watch the yields. It's a must watch. And then also let everybody know that Walmart, ticker symbol WMT, gap down big today. It's down almost 10%, which is a big decline. It really coughed one up and due to the fact that they do 700 billion in revenue, not a great sign, and that they really kicked retail stocks in the teeth today. And then semiconductor stocks and artificial intelligence stocks are still under some stress.

Okay, those are the messages from Gary. You want to make sure I've done my job. The rest of the show will be my two cents or two and a half cents or three cents. It'll depend on how many cents you want to add up today. I don't even think we're doing pennies anymore. So I wonder if that expression is going to change. So we'll see. For now, we have cents.

I'll give you the two and a half cents. So first off, a big thank you to all of the listeners. I got some really good emails after the last time I was on the show last week. And I want to address Jean. I want to address John, Ken. We had Mary. We had a few other people. Cindy wrote in as well. Just the most important, my take on markets, and again, this is a show about money, and that's why I stay focused on investing in money. But my real, you know, passion and what lights me up, it's the human. It's the human side of money,

if that's even a thing, right? I wrote a book. It's called psychological analysis. I love to know what makes people tick, pardon the pun there, because markets tick also. So health folks, is wealth. I mean, it doesn't matter anything you have, any amount of money you have. I don't sit here and I don't talk. I'm not on often. It depends whenever Gary asks me to cover. I'm happy to cover. Always happy and humbled and it's a pleasure to be here. But because I'm here only a short amount of time, I just try to stay focused on like Joe Friday, just a fax ma'am, just stay focused on markets and stocks and money and that's that. But obviously since there's interest and other things outside of that, I will share a little bit more of some other thoughts because a lot of what I do is high level,

because again, I'm not on every day. So whenever I come with you, I want to give you the most value. And, you know, understanding that health, physical health, mental health, emotional health, your financial health is mui, mui, mui, and portanto, super important. Because that is really ultimately what matters. the health of your relationships with other humans. And by the way, your relationship isn't just with other humans. You have a relationship with your business or with your work.

You have a relationship with your money. You have the relationship with the market. You have a relationship with... It comes, again, multifaceted. Lots of things in life go deeper than just the surface level. And the idea is to improve the relationship with money, improve the relationship with health, improve all of the relationships,

because the better we can improve the relationships, the better the quality of life we end up having. Why? Because life at the end of the day, it's really measured by the impact we can make, by the happy moments, by the joy that we can get. And take time and smell the roses.

One of the greatest lessons I've learned, it's, well, there's a lot, but one of them, one of the many, this is not the greatest, but it's a very powerful thing. It's to learn how to trade your expectations for gratitude. And the reason why I'm starting to show with this is the market's down. It's under some pressure. And of course, we know human nature doesn't change.

Markets change. The AI stocks are the stocks de jour. But 100 years ago, they were the railroad stocks or the airplane stocks or the car's automobile stocks. Whatever the hot disruptive technologies at the time, the market reflects it, right? The market's a reflection of the economy. And right now it happened. part of the economy is AI. Well, all right, strongest sectors in the market are AI related. Not, you know, it's not a surprise or a shocker. So from my standpoint, when you look at markets

and you look at how things unfold, you really, I look for patterns. I look for recurring patterns in human nature and human behavior in the way people think, the way people operate, what happens in the market? So again, I'm going to, I'm going to direct the rest of the conversation to market and money and relationship with markets and helping people make better decisions because that's the lane that I'm in with the show. But, you know, my passions really come from upgrading the user, that transformation. Upgrade has a negative connotation because it implies that somebody wasn't good before, but now they're good. No, no, forget that. It's the evolution, right?

Who's smarter? You today or you 10 years ago? Hopefully you today. Who's going to be smarter? You today? You in 10 years? Hopefully, as we learn, we grow. You know, you 20 years ago, you today. Again, just high level. Look at the spirit of what I'm saying, not the letter of the law. Look at the spirit of what I'm saying here. We constantly grow. We constantly evolve. It's just the way the world works. So what I want to do is accelerate that inevitable growth. And that's where my real passion lies. And part of that growth comes from financial growth. But is it measuring the money? No. I'm way past that stage. And I'd like to help you get past that as well. It's really measuring what it takes to be able to earn that money, to be able to consistently beat the market, to be able to accomplish anything that you want to accomplish.

Even if it is doing the sit-ups, Miguel, I remember that email, he's mentioned last time one of the few times ago I was on the show, I talked about sit-ups. And he said, do planks. Okay, great. Get yourself to do them. I know I need to do those. I'm not doing them.

There's a disconnect. Well, the person you become to get that six-pack or get that flat stomach or make that money or accomplish any goal you want, that's the win. Because once you get into that state, that frame, that mental framework, whatever the case is, at that point in time, you become unstoppable. And when you're unstoppable, you just win. And then everything else unfolds, right? And again, it doesn't mean you have to win.

It doesn't mean you have to get results. No. But that person you become, that's my goal. It's that constant evolutionary process, the growth process, leveling up. Any word you want. That's how I internalize it. Feel free to use any language that gets you going. I'm going to use this word very, very carefully in air quotes, motivates you because life isn't

about motivation. Success comes from being disciplined to do the work, especially when you're not motivated on those days. but get yourself into that hedge space. Okay, who's that person I need to become to actually do the work? I'll just use stocks as the example. Am I going through the market when the markets are closed and looking at what happened? Am I looking at, am I using the right tools?

Am I looking at the movers up and movers down on volume every day? Am I looking at the breakouts every day in the breakdowns? Am I looking at where the big money's flowing? Am I doing the work? Am I finding a watch list? am I updating that watch list every week or every day depending on your time frame or every month or whatever the case is or not? Am I doing the sit-ups, the planks? Whatever the case may be, folks, there's a goal and then there's certain items that need to get done to accomplish that to reach that goal.

If you can control what you can control, you can't control the outcome in markets, but you can control what you do, your actions. And if you can really get your actions aligned with your desired outcomes, the probability of success increases substantially. And that ultimately, folks, is what gets me going, what gets me excited, what I really enjoy, and I love seeing that transformation to other folks. So the best person to help you is yourself. Switching that mindset of, oh, I can't do this, I'm not good enough. All those insecurities are all humans, pretty much all humans at. Flip it. Hey, I'm the victor. not the victim. That being said, up next we've got a lot more to cover. I'm Adam Sarhan.

This is the one and only Investors Edge. Hi, I'm Gary Kalbaum, hosted a nationally syndicated radio show Investors Edge. We're not just handsome radio people. We manage investors money for a living, specializing in fee-based discretionary money management. No big commissions, just a fee on the assets that's managed. We also provide a full range of personalized services, including retirement planning, fixed income, and educational. needs, all to assist you in achieving your financial goals. Understanding not all individuals have the same needs, we'll carefully evaluate your personal goals to determine a proper investment

strategy. If your current approach to investing is not getting you to where you would like to be, call us to make an appointment for a complementary portfolio review. The number to call is 888-4-2-5-59. That's 888-4-2-2-5-5-9. That's 888-4-9. That's 888-4-4-8-4-8. 225559. Investment advisory services offered through Coltbaum capital management. It's time to switch on the integrator units and get the brain cells working. You're listening to. Hey, this promises to be fun.

Investors Edge. The last bastion of quality programming. With Gary Coltbaum. It doesn't get better than this. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. I'm Adam Sarhan in for Gary Kay, who's out today. So in case you're just joining us or missed any part of the show, you can go to GaryK.com, rewind, fast forward, listen at your convenience on any device you want, all for free.

All right, so we spoke about the beginning part of the show, about some headlines from Gary, but from my side, more of the mental side of it. Think of capital comes in two forms. There's mental capital and there's physical capital. And I always believe that the physical capital is important, but really the mental capital is more important. Why? Because that's what determines success from everything else. You could take somebody who's very wealthy, take away their money, and then what happens? They still become successful.

Why? Because of the fact that, hey, guess what? They have the mental capital and they know what to do or what needs to get done in order to get the results they want. You could take somebody who doesn't have good mental capital. Think about all these lottery winners or these athletes that go broke after they stop making money. And you can give them a bunch of money. but if they don't have good mental capital, they lose their money, so on and so forth. So for me, that mental capital is really, really, really powerful.

And understanding how your self-talk, how you think and how you overview market, look at markets, how you talk to yourself and you process information. And if it's not working for you, adjust it. Again, switching those expectations to gratitude is really, really, really powerful. Being in that state of, oh, grace, being in that giving yourself grace, giving yourself, that self-forgiveness, if you will. It's easy to beat yourself up. It's easy to be a punching bag or have that mental alga go off into negative land.

Control it. There's no ROI in beating yourself up. Hold yourself accountable, sure. But there's a certain point where it becomes a negative ROI. Don't get lost in the sauce like my friend Andy says. So let's talk about markets. We have a situation here where the NASDAQ 100 was flirt. with its 50-day moving average, broke it.

Not the end of the world, it's just another one of those, right? So it's now approaching the lows of the handle. Undercut that load, just a little bit. Let's see what that low was, 70850 in the QQ, the low 70852. So we're right near that low from what day was that, August 6th. So we had the, let's back up. Go back to the beginning of the year. market opened in the first quarter, we fell.

At the end of March, we bottomed in the NASDAQ-QQQ was at 555. We rallied all the way up to around 750. It was 748 and change at the end of June. And then in July, we had a correction, or a pullback, rather, not a correction. It went down about 10% or so thereabouts. And it went down, I think it was 8, 9%, down from 748 to 661. Okay. And then you had that Leopold low, that guy that came out was over-leverage.

we spoke about that before. And it was the day the Fed bottom that March, it was July 29. It was Wednesday, July 29. And then Citadel came in, the market gapped up the next day and had a huge rally. Then you kind of went tight for most of August. Volume dried up. And you were building a handle. You broke out of that handle about a week ago.

And then two days later, you kind of fell and rolled over and gap down as yield spiked. We're back in that handle, but we're near the lower the handle near that. 7, 70850 level. That's more or less what I'm focused on. We break down below that level definitively, which, by the way, could happen at any given moment, could happen today, undercut that low, close below it. It doesn't even matter. For me, it's more the spirit of the law than the letter of the law.

It's not so much of, oh, what exactly is that number? It's, if we actually break below that 70850 and then ask that 100 and then start heading lower definitively, then all of a sudden, hey, things can change. And if things change, we worsen, we get more selling. No, no, bueno, like they say, it won't, you know, get more defensive. The semiconductor index, which was one of the strongest indices this year, the SMH, has, you know, same thing, huge rally, end of March all the way up until Julyish or the end of June, and then you kind of topped out, you rolled over, you had the big correction, it was a much bigger one, one from 671 down to 503. Let me go do some quick math for you so you can see some

percent changes because they matter in the market. I know that percents are boring. And by the way, let me go off on a tangent here and I'll come back. I know exactly I left off. It's the pullback in the SMH. But one of the things that helps a lot as you grow your portfolio and you start investing more and more money is to think in percentages not in dollars. Meaning, this messed me up for a long time. was younger getting started, you know, I just, I would start making some money and then I would get messed up in the head. Oh my God, if I'm down, I would look at the dollars. Five thousand dollars, $10,000, $2,000, whatever the number is. It's a lot of money. And I wouldn't, I hit a wall and I wouldn't be able to grow past that wall until I realized I'm, the emotions are blocking me,

which by the way is the whole premise of my book, psychological analysis. It teaches people how to make rational, not emotional decisions with their money. I'm the first candidate, raised my hand like it's me. Okay. So with the emotions here, when I learned how to think in percentages, now all of a sudden it allowed me to get to the next level because I wasn't stuck with, oh, I just lost $10,000. I lost 1% or half of a percent or whatever the case is. But understanding to think in percentages helps you grow and get past a lot of of the emotional issues. Think of it that way because that can help a lot. Anyway, let's get back to the SMH pullback. From 671 down this to 503, that's about a 25% correction in the semiconductor

index. Many of the semiconductor stocks corrected a lot more, 30%, 40%, but the semiconductor index is about 25%. That's, you know, a pretty big pullback. Now it's about 16% below its record high. But since July, the semiconductor index, the end of July, really, or the middle of July, yeah, middle of July-ish, since July, let's put it that way, the last four or five, six weeks here, the semiconductor index, the SMH has been living below its 50-day moving average, which is no point no, which is not ideal. Now, it doesn't mean we have to crash, doesn't we have to head lower, no, it's still correcting. Even now it's about 17% below its 52-week high, still correcting.

Now, what happens, and the reason I want to bring this up, is that you have somewhat of resistance near the 50. It gets near the 50 rolls over. It gets near the 50 rolls over. It's been doing that. If it can get above the 50 and get above the high, August's high, in the SMH, that number somewhere near, let's go ahead and look at August on a monthly chart.

Let me go to market terminal. Yeah, so 600, let's just round the 601. If it can get above 601, that's going to be a really good sign. Why? Because at that point in time, it's going to be above the 50, it's going to be above August high, and it's going to break out of a little sideways, you know, multi-week trading range. So that is something I'm looking for on the upside. On the downside, if it rolls over and breaks to below 503, the SMH, that's not going to be a good sign. That's a leading index. Right now, it's just pausing to catch its breath. One of my trading rules or observations over the decades I've learned is there's something called the great mini rotation. And the great rotations, think of stocks and bonds, and the old days money would rotate from stocks into bonds and vice versa. But I've noticed along the years, many times there's stock indexes, like indices, they're industry groups.

Money rotates from one industry group to another industry group to another industry group. So we'll see what happens as the indices grind higher. Up next, we've got a lot more to cover. This is Adam. This is an investor's edge. I'm Adam. Thank you very much for being there. You're listening to America is talking.

Investors Edge. He's got to be pleased with that. The crowd is just on his feet here. He's a Cinderella boy. With Gary Colbomb. It comes highly recommended. You're going to feel better if you talk to him. And welcome once again to Investors Edge.

In case you're just joining us or missed any part of the show, you can go to GaryK.com. Rewind, fast forward, listen at your convenience anytime you want. All right, so we spoke about the SMH, the Semiconductor index, spoke about the NASDAQ 100. We're back at the low of that handle or lower support in the NASDAQ 100. I'd like to see that level get defended. I'd like to see that level bounce. I'm not sure if that'll happen or not. We have fallen four or five days in a row now.

I wouldn't be surprised at all folks to see the market bounce sometime in the near future, especially that we're close to that 50 day and close to that 21 day. So we'll see what happens going forward. But for now, tech semiconductors under some pressure. As long as that's SMH, the semiconductor index stays below the 50-day moving average, stays below that 600 level, under some pressure. Doesn't mean the market can't go higher. It can because we have that great mini rotation, which I just discussed, which money rotates from one sector into another sector into another sector.

As that leading sector pauses, which is what's happening now, other sectors show up. Like yesterday, we had biotech and we had healthcare stocks with Moderners news of a possible vaccine for cancer, for melanoma, which I root for all these biotech companies. I hope all of them help us. They're helping humans live better, live stronger, live better lives. I wish they all can get their, I guess, drugs to work or their processes to help. The healthier humans are, the happier I am. So I root for the biotech companies.

And I interview a lot of them and the CEOs, too. on my Smart Money Circle podcast because I just love to learn. I love to say, hey, what are these guys doing? What are they working on something? You know, so on and so forth. But the Moderna news and the Merck news yesterday was big. And semiconductor stocks are pausing. Guess what happened to biotech stocks?

Rally big. Healthcare stocks, rally big. Biotech stocks are XBI. Healthcare stocks are XLV. Again, there's lots of other ETS. IBB is more biotech as well. But suffice to say big ones, XLV is health care.

and XBI or biotech. All right, that being said, could be an emerging area. So we look at Eli Lilly, I go to market terminal, I find the breakouts, and what happened? He had Eli Lilly breakout yesterday. We had Pfizer breakout all in the last few days, Pfizer breakout. BNTX had a huge move, which was also another one of the Moderna sister company that had a huge move back in COVID when COVID was announced. And the huge gap up yesterday in BNTX. So again, that's the market's way of speaking.

a day like today is 28, 30 break, 25 to 30 breakout somewhere in that range on market terminal. You know, you can go through it and just say, hey, what's emerging? What's breaking out? While the market is down, to me, that tells me these potentially new areas that are leading. Could be attractive areas with growth. Could be slow and sleepy areas that aren't going to really have tremendous growth, but they're growing nonetheless. So we can go through some of them. Coca-Cola, K-O was a breakout today.

TEM, Tempice, AI. This is a healthcare stock or healthcare technology stock, broke out today, low-level base. Gold, KGC, Kinross Gold, broke out today. GLD is an ETF that tracks gold and silver. Had a big rally over the last few weeks. The GDX, we have some of the first. some other gold stocks here as well.

So I'm going to go off and look at these. The GDX broke out yesterday. It was on Market Terminal and that's how I saw it. And I went to go through and looked at a lot of the gold stocks and see, hey, what's actually working right now? And yesterday, a lot of gold stocks were breaking out. There was RGLD, broke out, which is Royal Gold, had a big gap up yesterday. And that followed a gap about a week and a half ago.

And another gap about in early August. So this stock has been gaping up and rallying, gaping up and railing as the market's been going sideways. You can look at Royal Gold, RGLD. Now all of a sudden, folks, hey, something has changed. Last Friday in my weekend report, I noticed that the XLE was breaking out, which led me to believe, you know, look at other oil stocks, OIH, the XOP, and today's Coca-Cola breaking out. Last Friday, Chevron, CVX was the breakout. And it broke out at 197. It's now at 206. I don't know. It's going to go higher. It doesn't have to go higher. It's just this is how I interpret and make sense of the market, make sense of the world. Listen and I try to turn my biases off. Remember, if you have a mind, you have biases. There's cognitive biases that come in all different shapes and sizes. It is somewhat boring to talk about cognitive biases. Never once as I guess I'm going to, I'm not going to make that big of a statement, but I'm going to say almost any child in the world. Never once as any child. But I, you know, I'm not going to be absolute and say any child.

Maybe there are some children that ask. But you don't have someone, a child raised their hand typically and say, hey, mommy, daddy, tell me about the cognitive biases. It doesn't happen. If you start talking to a child about that, you'd probably lose them. If you talk to an adult about it, you probably lose them. I don't know. Many adults come to me.

I wrote a whole book about psychological analysis. A lot of people know it. Not once have raised their hand and said, hey, Adam, tell me about the cognitive biases and tell me how I can make better investment decisions or better decisions in life. it's just such a dry, for lack of a better word, topic where you really have to just be patient with yourself and say, okay, let's go there. But if you have a mind, you have biases. If you have a mind, these cognitive biases that you have impact your decisions, oftentimes without you even realizing it. And that's where the opportunity comes.

Once you understand what's actually impacting the decisions, you can adjust accordingly. So when I look at the market, I know I have biases. I might secretly be rooting for the market to go down. How many people can relate to that? Or rooting for the market to go up. I've done both. They continue to do both. Think of just about any human has done that.

Come on, let's go higher. Let's go higher. It's like rooting for a sports team. But you have money on the line. Or you don't have money in the line. You want to go down and buy it or I want to go up and then buy it or whatever the case may be. Again, I try my best to be aware of the biases. So I can control them and they don't control me, meaning put them on the side and just be objective.

I might not like investing in oil stocks or healthcare stocks or tech stocks or whatever the case may be. What I like or what I don't like, frankly, is irrelevant. Why? Because all that matters is what the market is going to do. My job is to get aligned with the market. My job is not to sit there and impose my will on the market. that's where the biases come in and controlling them comes in. Super important.

Distinction. Again, I'll say it again. My job is to be aligned with the market, not to impose my will on it. Now, just because I notice that, hey, money's rotating into oil stocks on Friday, for me, Adam, I spoke about this in my weekend video on fineleading stocks.com, I said, listen, here's what's happening. It's not for me. I'm not the guy who's going to go in there and plow into oil stocks right now because it's such a headline-driven market.

It was a Friday. I saw Chevron breakout and CVEE breakout and Chevron CVX and other stock CVEE broke out. And since then, other stocks have broken out as well. Oxy's on there. Devon Energy's on there today. EOG is on there today, all in market turmoil on the breakouts. And I'm thinking of myself, I'm like, it's just what if Trump comes out tomorrow and change it over the weekend or tomorrow or today right now? it could happen, who knows, and says, yeah, I want tweet, by the way, peace deal, whatever, right?

War and Iran, Iran comes out, they have a deal, Pakistan comes out, has a deal, whatever happens, oil prices tank, and see you later. I don't want that risk. So I'm going to pass. Now, Adam, you might be asking, doesn't that mean your biases impact your decisions? No. That's risk management. That's headline news that could possibly derail my investment.

biases is impacting my decision. It's like, yeah, you know what? I don't like oil stocks. That's a bias that impacts a decision. I don't like tech. Or, which I've done as well, telling myself a story that's just not true. I have no luck with XYZ. Again, understanding that mindset is critical, folks, and controlling the narrative.

The story you tell yourself is super important. In many cases, that determines the outcome. Why? Because it really matters. It moves a needle. Like it moves a needle in such a big way that I can't even begin to tell you. And don't take my word for this. Napoleon Hill wrote a great book 100 years ago or thereabouts, thinking grow rich. And in it, he interviewed some of the greatest and most successful people in the world for his era. And he realized lots of things that they have in common. One of the things is accurate thinking. looking at reality as it is. Not how you think it will be, but actually how it is.

And then getting aligned with that reality. That's super important. And it's one of the traits of the most successful people in the business and financial world. And really in any, just about any industry. Now, you want to have a hypothesis of what could happen, but your hypothesis should be aligned with what actually happens. and when you're wrong,

be quick to be wrong and take a small loss and move on. But the faster you can get accurate thinking and get aligned with what's actually happening, usually, for the most time, the most part, the more successful you become. Up next, you've got a lot more to cover.

I want to thank you very much for being here. This is the one and only Investor's Edge. You're listening to What are we waiting for? Well, what are you waiting for? One, two, ready, go. Action! Investors Edge with Gary Culper.

Welcome once again to Investors Edge. In case you're just joining us in most any part of the show, you can go to GaryK.com, rewind, fast forward, listen at your convenience on any device you want for free, all on GaryK.com. All right, so spoke about a lot. Spoke about market, spoke about making some decisions, helping put your biases, cognitive biases on the side.

We didn't go into the biases, but just if you have a lot, if you ever mind you have biases, just be aware of what they are. And that self-talk is very, very helpful in detecting or determining what those biases are. And then I want to spend some time on Walmart. We briefly mentioned at the beginning. Walmart gapped down today on earnings. And it's one of those situations where, okay, we can ignore it, we can leave it, or we can actually dive in and discuss it.

I'm one of those guys where I like to dive in and discuss. So, retail, big retailers report this week. You had a lot of retailers that reported. and some of them gapped up, some of them gap down. Overall, Walmart is the biggest gap down that jumped out at me because, interesting enough, Target was up. I believe, let's see here, Target, let me go a daily chart here, look at something.

Target yesterday reported earnings, and earnings were up. Stock opened lower, bounced off the 21 day and closed higher, and now it's up a little bit. But Walmart is down almost 10%. And for me, that's more important than Target. Why? Because first off, they've got massive revenues. Almost 700 billion. Massive revenues.

I was going to say almost a trillion, but 700 billion in revenues. They have their finger on the pulse. Inflation has been going up. It's stubbornly high. It has not come down at all, even though the Fed told us years ago it would be transitory. It's not transitory. and the Fed's keeping rates somewhat elevated to combat inflation, but inflation is still high. And oil prices are still high.

But what happens to the consumer and to businesses, by the way, higher energy prices, higher inflation, food and energy, whatever the energy, whatever inputs you're going to do to use to measure inflation, inflation's high. Guess what? That serves as an indirect tax on both consumers and businesses. It takes money out of our pocket, instead of spending $2 to the tank to fill up the tank at the gas station, you're spending four or five or six or whatever the number is. That means I have less money to spend at Walmart, especially for the lower income folks. Why? Because their discretionary income, big fancy, schmancy word for the available money in their pocket decreases and it's a much bigger decrease than some of the money.

that can afford the higher energy prices or higher food prices. In other words, if I'm living on a dollar and I spend 30 cents on food, now I have to spend 60 cents on food, that's going to impact my ability to live. The other person has an income of $10, it goes from 30 cents to 60 cents. It's not going to be the same proportional increase based on how much it's going to impact them. And of course, they still have a lot more leftover discretionary income. So the amount of money left over after the inflation, you know, what you want to do with it for the wealthier folks, the higher income folks, it's not one to one. It's not linear. But Walmart gaping down 10%, that's a concern, especially because we know inflation's a problem. And also it could be a sign that, hey, listen, what if the economy slows down a little bit? What's going to happen to the consumer then? And that matters because consumers or consumer spending makes up a big chunk of GDP. a big chunk, I think 75%, 70%, 80%, somewhere, I mean, 75%, 2 thirds of GDP is a consumer. I mean, the consumer makes up a lot of the economy.

And if the low-end consumer is starting to hurt, enter any reason you want, what's going to happen to the mid-level consumer and then the higher-income consumer? So the higher-income consumer typically doesn't even spend that much. That's part of the reason how the higher-income person can get there to begin with. If you ever read the book, Millionaire Next Door, it's a great. great book and it surveys a bunch of millionaires that could live next door to you. And you would think that millionaires have yachts and private jets and huge fancy, fancy cars and so on and so and forth. It's not the case. They live below their means. That's a secret to accumulating wealth

over the long term. People tell me all the time, Adam, I wish I could make more money. Okay, well, what if you make $10 million and you're spending $11? You're still minus $1 million at the end of the year. It's always just like weight loss. It's calories in versus calories out. It doesn't matter what the diet is. You want to lose weight. Simple. Less calories come in and go out. It's very simple. You want to lose weight, increase the calories that go out and decrease the calories that come in. Same thing with money. You want to make money over the long term. Do your best to increase your income. But sure, that's one side of it, money coming in. The other side is cut your expenses. Nobody wants to hear that, but that's how people accumulate wealth

over the long term. Most people at least. Some people get, have different situations where they get a windfall. They can sell a business. They can inherit money. But for the most part, you know, accumulating wealth is a, it compounds. And it's one of those situations where if you can control money out versus money in, your way ahead of the game. All right. That being said, with the final minutes here that we have, I'd like to also look at two scenarios. One, we're in a bull market. And yes, we're under some pressure. But it's the summer doldrums is what they say. Next week we have Navidia's earnings. We have Jackson Hole, which is the annual Fed symposium, central banks come together. We know the new central bank guy wants to cut

rates, which should stimulate markets. We know that the Trump and Besson and the Treasury guy and all these guys, they want markets to go up. It's just based on the behavior, not they didn't, I guess some of them have directly said it. I think Trump said go buy stocks, we're doing well and so on and so forth. But their action show us that they pay attention to markets. And we're even with all of this going on, just keep in mind. Now, if one domino falls, like the yields get out of control, the government intervenes and intervenes again, and the markets still go, the yields still go up. You know, things could get messy, but for now, it's a pullback in a bull market.

That's it. And the S&P 500, if you start, just look at the major indices, is right near its record high. I think the S&P 500, let me go on market terminal, check this out. Yeah, it's 2% below its all-time high. Not a good day, by the way, but 2% below an all-time high or thereabouts. The NASDAQ 100 is about 5% below its all-time high. The Dow, and it's fighting right by that 50-day, the Dow is 3.5% below. its all-time high. The Russell 2000 is 2.5% below its all-time high. And the mid-cap 400,

the MD-Y, is about 2.8% below its, around it to 3% below its all-time high. So again, it won't take much for the market to blast off. That being said, I believe that's all the time we have for today. As always, I want to thank you very much for being here. This is the one and only Investor's Edge. This has been Investors Edge with Gary Cult Bomb on Biz Talk. To listen to past episodes or to get in contact with Gary, go to Garykay.com. That's GaryKK.com.