Right About Now with Ryan Alford - BUSINESS NEWS: Consumer Sentiment Tanking & It's Time for a Plan - Ecomm Coming for more Retail - Your Next Investment Opportunity
Episode Date: March 28, 2025SUMMARYIn today’s Weekly Business News episode, hosts Ryan Alford and Chris Hansen discuss the current economic climate, focusing on a significant decline in consumer sentiment revealed by a Univers...ity of Michigan survey. They express concerns about inflation, government policies, and their impact on consumer behavior. The hosts also explore retail trends, noting the closures of stores like Forever 21 and GameStop, and the rise of e-commerce platforms such as Shein and Temu. They emphasize the need for better communication from the administration and highlight the importance of adapting to changing consumer preferences in a digital age.TAKEAWAYSDecline in consumer sentiment as reported by the University of Michigan survey.Concerns about the overall economic climate and inflation.Impact of government policies on consumer behavior and the need for better communication.Retail sector challenges, including store closures of brands like Forever 21 and GameStop.Shift in consumer shopping habits towards e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu.GameStop's strategy to invest in Bitcoin as a response to retail challenges.Emotional aspects of investing and the volatility of GameStop's stock.Nostalgia for physical media and the transition to digital formats in entertainment.Importance of understanding consumer preferences and emotional drivers in business.The need for businesses to adapt to the changing economic landscape and consumer behavior. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE. Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production.
We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.
Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes.
You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks?
Well, it starts Right About Now.
What's up guys?
Welcome to Right About Now.
It's our weekly business news here on March 28th, 2025.
Joined as always by Chris Hansen down in Miami.
What's up, Chris?
What's up, Brian?
How are you, bro?
I'm good.
I'm good.
Here in Greenville, South Carolina, our studios here on the Swamp Rabbit Trail at Social
House.
Chris is down in Miami.
We're always here to bring you the news.
We take the BS out of news out of the news, Chris.
And you know, we're going to be taking the BS today.
You know, like if you listen to watch our show, you're not watching you get on YouTube,
go check that out.
YouTube or Spotify.
You can watch see how pretty Chris is.
You never know what he's going to be wearing.
Always fashionable.
I'm trying to keep up with them.
But in all seriousness, you know,
we lean certain directions.
I think we try to keep out of the politics
and more of the policies of what we believe in.
And I think when things are going good,
we talk about how it's good.
And I think when things are not feeling good,
I think we've been talking about that.
In today's episode, we're going to dive deep
into some studies and surveys that go on.
Some are yearly, some are quarterly, some are monthly,
but it's really about consumer sentiment
and about how people feel.
And I think the numbers probably won't surprise you.
They didn't surprise Chris and I
as we were looking at them.
And we're gonna dive deep into that
because I think this administration has been guns
a blazing in things that they're doing.
And many of the policies, I think we, we tend to agree with directionally, but at the same
time a word of caution has kind of been coming from us with things lately, how we've felt
like at least in our circles, things
have felt.
The studies have come out on the overall consumer sentiment, how people are feeling, both currently
and future thinking, because it's also built into that, like, what's your prognosis?
How do you feel about the future?
Some of these numbers are staggering. And I think we're at a real pivotal point where the policymakers and the central reserve and a lot of people really need
to take a look at this because people think with their head and they buy with their heart. And
literally, people are not buying. You've got money staying on the shelf if there is some,
you've got tightening of the wallet overall, You've got interest rates that have been stagnant
and real estate market that's stagnant in a lot of markets. And I think we're coming to ahead with
where if we don't get ahead of getting consumers feeling positive about the changes, feeling
positive about the economy, feeling positive about the potential of real estate
opportunities. We're in for a tough road. And the sentiment of the country drives the economic
behavior of the country. And we're going to dive deep into that today. But I think it's time that
we really point out, hey, let's talk the good, bad, and the other. We take the BS out of stuff.
We're going to take it out today. And so we're going to dive deep into some of these stats.
I think some might be surprising, some might not be, and talk about a few other business
updates of the day here on the Business News of the Week. Chris, I know, I mean, let's just jump
right into it, man. We've been kind of talking about this, like, I think more our own sentiment, right?
The last few episodes, like, eh, look, we need some good news.
Feels a little gloomy, a little flat, a little stagnant.
And one of these, which is a survey of consumers from the University of Michigan, the preliminary
results for March, looking at the index of consumer sentiment, how do
they feel about the country?
And it slid another 11 points.
We're at 57.9 is the consumer sentiment, which is hovering right around, you know, half feel
good, half feel bad.
And that's a 27% negative change year over year. In March of 2024, we were at 79.4.
It's a big drop, dude. It's a massive drop.
And you can feel it. Yeah.
And, you know, take the who is president out of it.
It's just whoever's in charge needs to be paying attention.
We can't just heads down a glazing, you know, getting all these policies, you know, all
these pro camping promises done without recognizing what is the sentiment of, and this is, this
is covered Republicans, Democrats,
everyone else. Everyone's just kind of eh, meh about the overall economy. A lot of money
staying put in the wallet, in the savings account, and it's a lot tighter for everyone
else because inflation is still an issue. It's not good, man.
No, I feel like we're in a heavy contraction.
And when I look at the numbers, right,
down 22% from December 24, when I read that,
I'm like, that feels right.
Or it feels like it's higher than 22%.
Yeah.
And I don't know if it was the Christmas spirit
that people were living in fantasy land.
Even though I do know a lot of people remember saying this dear felt weird
At Christmas because even then things were still tight
But I had a conversation with a friend of mine last week
two different friends actually
one launching a company one her company that she was working with is shutting down and
It's kind of just seems to be that's the rhythm right now
is people are contracting,
even entrepreneurs I know are contracting, right?
I know we've pulled in on some things we do.
It's like, everyone's kind of huddling up a little bit.
And obviously, I always say this,
I feel like the new administration,
like the coaches made the calls on the play,
but there's no action on the field, Jay.
Yeah.
Or maybe there's some action on the field,
but there's no points on the board.
And I mean, we all understand
you can't turn a ship around overnight,
but I think the administration could do a better job
and maybe some messaging and just informing people of what's going on, right? It's great. We know these executive orders and whatnot, but I
Mean I think back like put someone I think back at Kaylee McEnany like doing daily updates, you know and the
When she was press secretary like bring back that, you know, yeah
Just some more up-to-date stuff and I would say
Because there's so much information, overload, false information, misleading information,
all the above, like get out there
and tell us what's going on, right?
Because like you said, I got another buddy
just got out of the mortgage business, right?
Can't deal with the pressure.
I got a family, commission only, can't do it.
Switch to a W-2 job.
So, and I don't necessarily want to see people
doing that either, right?
I want to see people trying to build themselves
and work for themselves, but same with the job market.
Another friend went to college with her.
She told me last week, I ran into her,
trying to put in their resumes.
No one's calling, getting no callbacks.
Smart girl, well educated.
So it's we're in an odd time.
Yeah.
I mean, I like data and facts and right, you know, so we've been talking sentiment, talking
things like perceptive.
And then, you know, you look at this data and, you know, back to the White House,
like, I think there's got to be some balance here. Like, we can want to do the tariff war,
and it can have positive long-term effects, but it's got to be balanced out with the realities
of today and the sentiment today, the inflation of today. And again, I'm not going to see her as an economic, economic specialist to tell you whether
that long term benefit outweighs the short term pressure that
we're feeling. I'm not. I don't know. That's my pay grade.
I've got one.
Yeah, but I will say, but I will say, you can't ignore how
people the majority of America is feeling.
It's just reality.
And this was the biggest thing.
I mean, look at this.
Despite their greater confidence following the election, Republicans posted a sizable
10% decline in their expectations index in March.
So this isn't partisan, this is everybody.
Yeah, well, especially when, you know,
the market takes a hit, right?
I think of the retirement generation.
I don't, it doesn't matter what political class you are.
If the market goes down and you look at that retirement
account is down, you're not going to feel good, right?
Especially if you're on, you know, what do they call it? Like set payments, right? You're on a
bit and a lot of money. Fixed income, right? Market goes down, then you look at the grocery
store, right? And that's still hasn't really eased up much pressure as far as inflation goes there.
I have an example, but I can't remember it now.
It'll come back.
I'm going to go through a couple of these other things.
While current economic conditions were little changed, expectations for the future deteriorated
across multiple facets of the economy, including personal finances, labor markets, inflation,
business conditions, and stock markets.
Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty
around policy and other economic factors. Frequent gyrations in economic policies make
it very difficult for consumers to plan. There it is right there. That's kind of what you
were saying. Fixed income, you got this stuff going on. You want to plan.
You can't plan when you don't know what the impact of these things are gonna do. So there needs to be more
discussion about short-term long-term and
Hey, I mean and this ain't cutting it. There'll be a little pain in the short term
Define what that means, please.
What is short term? Yeah. An example today I did see, and I was digging, right, because we do the show. I saw that India
basically was kind of lighting up to on the tariff for and they
had said they would drop a lot of the the tax on imported
American goods. So it looks like positive news there, right?
Yeah.
But we haven't seen that on any headlines, right?
No.
No one's talking about that.
And that's where, hey, if you're the administration,
be shouting these wins from the rooftop
because you know that everyone else is hating on you
for the tariffs.
And now when you've got everyone in America, right?
Even like you said, the Republicans with
their expectations, it should be a signal like, all right, guys, we need to do a little PR, right?
Like you're a marketing guy, we do marketing. It's like, do some damage control. Let's get
this sentiment up. Let's make people feel good again. Yeah. Because I'm looking for the silver lining. Like, you know, like, I'm like going, okay, I agree, like, fundamentally with the policy,
but I need to see a little silver lining short term, long term plan because it could come
off like this article, you know, the summary says, as a bit of a gyrating. Like I, it's kind of pew, pew,
but you know, we're shooting bullets and it's like, it's great, but it's kind of like fire
aim ready.
And I feel like we've just been getting the Trump Elon show since the election, the inauguration
and the Doge stuff. And it's like, that's all great.
And that is definitely part of, you know, balancing the budget is
definitely an important part and cutting waste.
But even when I go on Twitter, I'm like, all I see is.
Elon arguing with people about government policy and yeah, there's no game plan.
Yeah. Like, or it's not clear.
Right.
And even if it's just, hey, we're doing the tariff war and we're holding firm and we're
going to hold our hand.
Hold out, guys.
I mean, we need to bring jobs back to the US.
We need higher pay.
Yeah, we need all of that.
But what's the balance of the long term and the short term?
And a little bit of paying is not a balancing plan.
Sell me on why I should keep tolerating this pain, right?
Convince me, soften it.
Yeah, or get the damn inflation down and get, you know, the interest rates cut.
Almost like in the election speeches, right?
When you're campaigning, we're bringing jobs.
Keep reiterating that.
Where are the jobs going?
Where are we doing mining?
Where's the plans?
I know personally that there's plans for these things.
And I know guys working in those industries
that tell me, yeah, red tape's being cut,
projects are being opened.
But I don't think the general population knows that.
And I think whether that's the mainstream media
obviously hates this administration as part of the problem. But I think whether that's the mainstream media obviously hates this administration
as part of the problem, but I think the administration can play some offense
a little better on just communications 101.
Yeah, exactly.
And cause I'm not sitting here telling you that I know that the enactment and the
things that are happening are going to cause necessary
short-term pain.
But what I am telling you is in my wheelhouse, which is marketing and back to the buy with
their heart, if you want this economy to keep moving, you need this consumer to have an
uplifted spirit and a belief in what is happening. And you
got to get them to buy into that and understand what's happening in the short term to assist
them in sustaining either through that short pain or to get them off the, I think we we got a lot of money that's kind of getting
a little shrunk back up like, Oh, I'm putting, you know, getting tight, all this buying gold
because you know, even in my own mind, I didn't think my crypto would double in a month, but
I sure as hell didn't think it'd be down 33% in three months. I bet you didn't, Chris.
Chris Bounds Oh, no. I don't think anyone planned for
anything that's going on, even in the stock market, guys, with Nvidia, for example, that big debacle.
Because tell me what's good right now, Chris. Stock market's down. Crypto's down.
Chris Bounds Playing cards, apparently.
Chris Bounds Yeah, that's why we're talking trading cards. That's down. Crypto's down. Playing cards, apparently.
That's why we're talking trading cards. That's the only thing that's up.
I'm sitting here realizing today I've been in wrong investments the whole time, you know?
Yeah. And I'm not sitting here blaming the administration for all of that, it's really regardless of the administration, but, but it is what it is,
whatever caused it caused it.
Maybe it was already built in these next six months.
We're going to happen no matter who's in office or what's happened, but
the sentiment sucks right now.
And so this administration job is to make it not suck.
You have to give us a narrative, you know, give us the roadmap.
Yeah. It's like a run. If you're going to running, it sucks a lot less when you know, I got one mile
left as opposed to, Hey, Chris, just keep running. I'll let you know when we're done. Right? Yeah.
Because my concern is less as an entrepreneur. I'm going to figure mine out.
I don't need the administration to figure it out for me. But here's the thing. Anything I sell
is going to be bought by consumers or businesses that are impacted by this sentiment. So
I need the sentiment to be higher, not because any administration or
policy is in my personal way as an entrepreneur, but I just know things move, the money moves,
the sales moves, everything moves better when this is where it needs to be. And that's the point of this rant, if you call it, is somebody's got to take accountability
responsibility for driving this up because it's a slippery slope.
Let's just say that with where things could go, because people start tightening up on
everything and your interest rates don't go down. Just be careful in the short term while you play the long term.
I mean, that, that morale up, you know?
Yeah, exactly. We kind of like the old team, you know, you got a team of players out on the
court. I mean, everybody like if you can't make them believe.
No matter how good, bad or different it is, they're never going to play well.
And we need to get some, uh, cheerleaders and, uh, you know, I, again, I, I like
the theory of what I'm hearing.
Ylan's doing.
I, it, It sounds great,
but I don't know that he's the cheerleader.
He's a pioneer and an innovator,
but I don't know if he's gonna lead the rally
of the sentiment.
Think you're gonna have to have somebody else doing that.
And I think it's gonna have to be driven by, okay,
the enactment of certain things,
both telling the plan. But we need those interest rates to go
down. Yeah. And if you still have inflation hovering, they're
not going to want to do that. But it's need money that that
loosens up money in the market. We talked about that a lot. And
That loosens up money in the market. We talk about that a lot.
And refis and sells and...
Cause that's the biggest transaction most people have.
And so it's the moment in time
when their most amount of money in one direction or the other
goes in and out of hands.
And the residual leftover of money made on a sale refinance is when you get that injected into the
overall economy. And it feels stalled right now as much as anything. It's like, I don't personally
feel like I see like the doom and gloom. It's more of this really hard pause
that's happening right now. It just feels like we're at a, like, if you were walking,
we're stuck in mud. Like, when you're stuck in mud, you take one step forward, you think you're
out of the mud, you're kind of still in it. It's kind of like the crypto, you know, up 10% one day down 11 the next. It's like, all right, can we
get unstuck here a little bit? Can we get a little ride of, of good news? We'll see
what happens. I'm going to jump ahead here. A couple of retail things I don't think are necessarily related to this economy.
I think this is more trends overall, Chris, but forever 21 and GameStop both closing retail
stores forever to be one expected to close all US stores that damn Sheen and Timooo, the cheap Ecom came and got them.
I do see Sheen everywhere.
It's all over the place.
The ads are everywhere and it's so cheap.
Yeah.
I mean, I've never purchased from it, but I know it's very popular with the ladies.
I've bought a couple things like two years ago, maybe.
And at the time I thought it was pretty decent.
I mean, it's like a $10 t-shirt or something.
And it was like, or a fashionable type t-shirt.
I was like, this is kind of cool,
but I'm a double XL slim fit.
So I'm a weird size fitting and it did okay.
Not perfect. I had to buy from certain and it did okay, not perfect.
I had to buy from certain companies to get the fit I want. But I was impressed with the overall quality
for like a $10.
It was better than I would have thought.
So, I mean, it's hard.
Like we joked about the mall's closing.
It's like, but you know, this generated,
my kids still love to go to the mall, the mall rats.
I don't, but the thing is,
I don't know if anybody's buying at the mall anymore.
You know, like when you and I went to the mall, maybe like 30, 20,
me, me 30 years ago, you 20 years ago, like the, the parents were at least buying, you know,
and the kids may have just like, can the malls,
can they survive?
I mean, even now when I'm in the mall now,
I'm like, can I find the same thing online for less money?
You know?
Yeah.
Well, they become the window shopping
for online buying, right?
Yeah.
A little bit, especially if it's the same brand.
Cause if you go look at something,
you go like, I don't know, like an express or some store like that, where maybe they don't have your
size, but you can go look at the actual quality, like the exact item or something, then you buy it
online. And I mean, express is still getting the sale maybe, but that brick and mortar is not.
maybe, but that brick and mortar is not. So I don't, I don't think we've seen the end of this bloodbath of stores. I, I don't think all stores will go away. I just think you're
going to see this centralization of, okay, Walmart super stores, uh, which is the equivalent
of, you know, gigantic Amazon store, but like, you know, but discount stores like that,
I can see doing well.
Large stores where you can get lots of different things, convenience
still a factor.
And but then these kind of niche things,
and you can get it online and the tools for buying online
have gotten so much easier and the shipping's gotten better.
And really the overall expectation,
people just gotten used to what to expect buying online.
And price wise, you know?
Like I know for these, T-Moon, Sheen, Shine,
whatever you call it, it's definitely super cheap.
So, and it's not even like nowadays,
most people I don't even think are necessarily
always buying because they're looking,
there's just ads going constantly as well.
Yeah.
Here's what it said,
forever 21's brand name and international business
will come under authentic brands group.
Our US licensees decision to restructure
presents an opportunity
to modernize the brand possible revival of a new US operator takes over.
We've lost over 400 million in the last three years, including 150 million in 2024 alone.
Jumping ahead here, the game stop closing a significant number of stores in Willvest
heavily in Bitcoin.
It's an interesting headline for a company, right?
It's like, well, how is one related to the other?
Uh, massive store closures, a thousand stores shut down globally in the past year, 590 in
the U S 320 in Europe.
It's now at 3200 stores, Chris,
down from 6,000 a decade ago.
So cut in half.
Probably cut in half again.
Yep.
Says consumers moving to digital game purchases
and streaming.
Part of a broader retail decline
with brands like Joanne, Fever 21, Kohl's and Macy's also closing stores. GameStop
to invest a portion of its cash reserves in Bitcoin.
Probably smart move.
Yeah. The pivot to Bitcoin is really a defense against irrelevance.
Pivot to Bitcoin is really a defense against irrelevance. It says an odd thing is it's basically saying the strategy isn't retail, but to act as some
kind of cryptocurrency investment vehicle.
That's where they're smart because gaming is combining with blockchain and all that.
So they might be extremely forward thinking with this and pivoting.
It is interesting because then it becomes, if you're buying the GameStop stock, oh,
it's just GameStop stock, it's hard to say. Two words, GameStop stock. Why not just buy crypto
then? Like, if, like, if the whole company is, if they're putting reserves in, their value will be driven by
whether Bitcoin grows.
It's like, you're kind of, what are you buying into?
They have such a cult following, you know?
Yeah.
From the Robin Hood to Bob.
It's kind of like a reseller of this.
You know, you can buy direct.
You buy it through GameStop, who's investing. I guess you still have the side of the business that is retail.
So I've hoped that it pivots to something different.
I guess as far as, um, knowing that they won't go bankrupt, but keep your
interest in the stock, I guess. But at a certain
point, you know, you can't spend half your money on Bitcoin and then why not just buy
Bitcoin versus buying GameStop?
Yeah. However, if you were holding GameStop, when this news came out, you could have made
16% that day if you're a day trader, which I think a lot of the GameStop guys really
that fall that are like
the swing traders. Oh yeah. Cause we had that whole this, the stock jump on this thing. Well,
they go to $200. It's crazy. Talk about sentiment driving behavior. You know, like that's a whole
case study itself. Emotional levers pulling it.
Yeah. GameStop shares soared 16% in pre-market trading.
So, hey, close some stores and your stock goes up.
I mean, I guess it's all about profitability.
I get it.
It's just, it's,
do you get happy about the stock going up or you get sad
about the stores closing? You can't fight it. I'll answer my own question. You can't fight the reality
of online and especially this like digital games, like you can download them. Like you don't need the
physical. I got hate the fit. like I was the first guy to get rid
of every CD and DVD I owned, you know,
before there was Netflix.
Like it was like the moment that I could do digital,
like hard drive driven, all my stuff, I was there.
It was like, get rid of this, those racks.
You remember those racks?
The racks, everybody had them in their house.
Racks of CDs, racks of DVDs. It was almost like a, I don't know, a trophy of, of, of, look at all those DVDs. Yeah,
man. You got that whole collection. All right. Yeah. It's just collecting. One more thing. You
have to dust off or not dust off your college kid. Like I was. And, uh, Oh, look at all that CD collection, man. Let me go through your collection. Think how foreign things become like as technology changes.
It's like, you know, like, Oh, let me see your CD collection.
Go through it, man.
Oh, the cranberries.
You know, they got that one song.
That's a good one.
Lingering.
Dave Matthews.
I had, I had like 50 bootleg Dave Matthews CDs.
Like, I had like, I had like, I had like, I had like, I had like, I had like, I had like, That's a good one. That linger. Dave Matthews.
I had like 50 bootleg Dave Matthews CDs.
Like every concert.
Like I was like on the,
that's how I used the internet when it first started
is just in college trading live Dave Matthews shows.
Yeah.
I was a pioneer.
Oh, I had tapes.
I had, oh, I had a tape collection, like a hundred tapes.
According to the feds, I was a pirate.
Oh yeah.
I was pirating there, you know, but Dave didn't care because he was smart.
That's why he got so big.
Cause he didn't, they didn't police that.
They, they let it happen naturally.
The story there, that's an economic story right there.
How, how to get big.
Don't get in the way of like spreading the news.
Cause we still went to all the concerts bought the t-shirts did all the stuff
They made all the money
By not getting in the way of the spread of people getting to hear their music
Anyway, I digress. Oh man, that brings back some memories, dude. Oh
the toy the work involved man with tapes and CDs burning and
Failing. Oh God.
How bad was it when you'd be burning a CD and how many times would like it fail
on the burn? Like the fact that there's a laser in your computer burning a
CD, I guess it's not my different in the hard drive now, like saving shit,
but it's just the wild times, man.
I've looked at analog digital, man. I'm all not like all sides of it.
Like this analog digital conversion.
Crazy.
And that's what really what we're talking about with the stores and retail and e-comm
and all that is this movement from physical to digital.
But we do so have to wear the clothes. You know, so whether it's Sheen or it's done or ordered e-commerce until we're living.
The day will come, Chris, where it's just a digital clothes because you never leave
your house except digitally.
That's the shit that gets scary, right?
Yeah, I don't want to live in that world.
I don't either, but you could.
Can you not?
I used to be a time where I couldn't see that coming. I could, I'm not saying that I'm going to embrace wanting to do that, but can't you
see that? I can totally see that now. I mean, it's here to a degree with all the metaverse stuff.
You have people that don't leave their house and they just live online gaming, you know?
Yeah. And it will matter what your skin is and all that. I mean, my kids already care.
I will watch my kids playing Fortnite and they'll spend as much time playing the game
as they do picking out their skin before they go and who they're going to be. Literally
sitting there going through it, toiling over it, I'm like, that really matters to them. I that's how they show off, you know, me
growing up, it was where in my ear Jordans like for the first
time, and they care about that stuff, too. It's, you know, it's
more money. But it's that skin on Fortnite. dressing up is, you
know, Wimby or something like playing Fortnite is
Wimby like, or one of the NBA players or LeBron James or a banana, a
banana character, which my oldest son does, which kind of trolls everybody.
He likes to just kind of do the stupidest shit.
And cause he, he wants people to think that, that he thinks that that's cool.
When he does it, he actually, it's reverse psychology.
Like he ought to do the stupidest thing.
He's smart.
This is what you have.
Look forward to Chris.
You have kids, if you have kids.
To be determined.
Yeah.
Never know.
What else we got in the news today?
Any other big news?
Boston Celtics was sold for a record breaking $6 billion.
Boston Celtics have been sold for $6.1 billion big ones, setting a North American sports
franchise record.
Led by William Chrisolm, a billionaire from private equity.
Of course he is. And includes Robert Hale, current Celtics investor and Bruce Beal.
Bill is a terrific person, a true Celtics fan, born and raised here in Boston.
So, he brought gross back, bought the team in 2002 for 360 million. It's nice investment there, Chris.
You bought it for 360 mil and oh two by my ass.
What 23 years later, you sell it for 6 billion.
It's nice return on investment.
Was that 30 X? That's nice, man. Nice turn on it.
Percent increase. Yeah. Six thousand. Is it 30 X? Isn't that like, I don't even do that math.
Let's just swap numbers, man. I mean, $6 billion is a lot of damn money.
Especially for the sports team. It is, but I mean, they make a lot of money, man. All the,
all the right, it is huge business. Especially the sports cards.
That's what it is for the sports cards. Yeah.
1600% increase in value over 23 years.
All right. There's the math.
Not bad.
Not bad.
All right.
That's what I need a crypto to do.
Chris, what's the XRP?
I'm going to look it up right now while we're doing it.
I'm going to see it because I put, you know what?
I bet I got so tired of looking at like seven things that I only had like a little bit in.
I moved it all to XRP.
Just so I had one thing to look at.
Consolidated.
I just consolidated it.
Let's see where we're at today.
Bear with us here.
Up, down, yet again.
On the week, we're down 4.74%.
We're sitting at, yeah, we're down seven cents today, 1%.
Chris, I mean, it's just like, oh, up, up, up.
This chart's like my EKG, you know, it's like,
whoop, whoop, whoop, up, down, like, you know?
Like, oh, why is she yelling at me?
You know? Ha ha ha.
It's, that's why, I mean, like you, I just,
I don't pay attention to much of the market stuff right now.
No, I look at it like, that's the first time I've looked at
it, like once a week, I take a peek, I'm like, all right,
whatever.
But I would, would mind.
It's not fun when it's not moving, you know,
and that's an indicator of everything.
Like you said, you feel like it's
just on pause, you're like, all right.
Everything.
I guess I'll just go to the gym,
like not gonna have any entertainment from this today.
Yes, it's these three words that I ask
and everyone should ask themselves, to what end?
Everything we do, every dollar we spend, you know,
I'm not psychoanalyzing everything, but like to what end?
Like to what purpose?
And that's what we're asking.
You know, we've been doing all sports cards lately.
And I, you know, I want to be equal opportunity
because the kids are into everything.
And we've been doing the whole thing on trading cards.
We're starting a series on the trading card business with our guests.
So we're going to be having some big guests in on the show in the trading card business.
Got some good names lined up.
We'll be announcing that shortly.
We're starting recording next week with some of those.
Talk about the business of trading cards.
It is like the stock market in a lot of ways for another potential investment
avenue, but also fun. And we've been doing sports cars, but today, hey, I'll go tell you this much,
Chris. If you want to know the one thing sold out at every store, it'd be this guy right here.
Pokemon. Oh my God. I thought this was like
a thing like 10 years ago. Like that. Now you go to a store,
every freaking Pokemon rack is empty. I know because my kids
are into it and I'm looking to it and maybe I'm into it too,
but I like the sports cards better. But, but the kids, my
kids like sports cards, but their eyes line up, light up for the freaking
Pokemon. Yep. Were you ever into Pokemon, Chris? I was not, but I do have a memory being on a school
bus in fifth grade with a kid who had a Charizard card. And I remember those were like, that was the
one big money card back. Now there's like a hundred thousand different characters, but
That was the one big money card back. Now there's like a hundred thousand different characters, but
you get these tens. They get two packs and look, man, they got all these series.
Tell me the prismatic series is the hot ones right now. That these 151 just trust me. If you see any Prismatic or 151s and you want a good investment, if you see them for sale, buy them. If that's
retail, because let me Chris, if you find them retail, the certain ones, I mean,
they're four or five X this, this particular ones goes up a couple of
bucks, like you can buy them retail.
And you're gonna have to send me a scouting list so I can go scour
Miami for Pokemon cards.
Oh yeah.
Cause dude, these Prismatic cards, they're like $5 for a retail pack.
If you find them, you can immediately sell them for 15.
There it's three extra money immediately.
It's crazy.
Like I've even got a dealer that will buy them for me double.
Like usually you can't make any money selling anything to like a sports card.
Right.
This guy will pay.
Like if I buy them for like a, like a two pack thing and I find them for like 10
bucks, he will immediately give me 20 for every one I can find.
Tell me this though, is there a problem?
Like if I were doing eBay, is there a lot of fakes?
There's some, but eBay's pretty good.
Like we've been selling some of our stuff
and you can see everything that we have at BreakingRad.com.
Yeah, that's creative.
You like it.
BreakingRad.com and our eBay store is Breakingrad.com.
They have an authenticity guarantee.
So that like, if this card is a certain value,
it gets sent to the authenticity person first,
authenticator or whatever.
And so I feel like they've got some stuff to where
you could pull that trick like once. You know what I'm saying?
Like you might could get away with one sale
and it's like, okay, is that worth it?
So anyway, we're opening.
This is the Scarlet and Violet series.
I tell you what, you gotta do lots of YouTube
you're doing this.
You gotta see the pack opening.
Pouty on Fates.
My kids were here.
They tell you everything about like this particular series
and everything like that.
You're hoping for these one special cards.
The one thing I don't like about Pokemon, Chris, and I hope I'm not like
Jake's myself, they don't get the greatest card ever, but the hit rate is pretty low.
They're only the back cards are good.
They're kind of get this shiny.
You'll see the, the difference in the cards.
You can probably see this if you're watching YouTube and oh,
there's a little EX that guy's pretty good. Actually, that's a
I think that's at least a $2 card might be higher. I might be
pretty decent there, Chris. I'm sitting here knocking them and
then so funny that you can see the shine on the
card.
Can you see that?
Are you seeing that Chris?
Yeah.
Oh, fancy, right?
That's holographics.
Put that here on our play button.
You to play buttons gotta be good for something.
Then these energy like this whole trick, this whole thing is a playing game.
Like you can play these cards.
If there's a card game, I mean, i open it for the cards and the investment yeah my kids
don't even play the game either i don't know what percent actually play the game but you can go to
some of these stores and there's kids like literally just playing that game what problem
is if you play the game with the cards the cards get beat up and they're not worth as much so
The problem is if you play the game with the cars, the cars get beat up and they're not worth as much.
So what's your in it for? Right.
So there's all these characters, they're cool looking,
but none of these cards are worth anything until you get to the back.
This guy that looks cool, but there's a single gold star.
That might be worse than you see these stars at the bottom.'s what I'll tell you like whether or not it's anything good
This trainer. I don't know who that is, but this might actually be something
My kids are gonna like, you know, some of these things I could look through and know if I'm seeing something good
My kids have to tell me some of these
Pokemons are any good. But anyway, crazy.
It's a whole thing.
If you get on Facebook Marketplace, they're freaking everywhere.
And like for sale, because people are just rating the freaking Walmarts and Targets and
everything else.
So the word is out.
The word is out.
There's our hits.
I think both of those are pretty decent.
That might be, I could be anywhere from,
funny thing about these Pokemons is these could be like
$1 cards or these can be like 50 to a hundred dollars.
You never know.
It's hard to tell.
You gotta get your boys to come verify for you.
I know we're gonna get them on.
Fladen Hudson, Hogan or Nash.
Check us out at breakingrad.com or breakingrad underscore on Instagram. See everything we're
doing. Having fun. Teaching my kids business through sports cards. They're teaching me
business. I don't know which one it is, Chris. Teaching me the business. Hey, no doom and gloom
here. Getting into sports cards. We're giving you alternate investment. This is all about alternate investment
avenues here. You know, like, I will say the sentiment meter on
sports cards is up like everything else kind of
stagnant. Everything else trading cards is kind of up a
little bit. It's best in Pokemon. It's like, the craze
is out there, dude. We'll see what happens. Any final words
today, my friend?
there, dude. We'll see what happens. Any final words today, my friend?
Hey, get you some Pokemon cards. Get those prisms.
Yes. Hey, and hey, let's get the sentiment up. But we hey, let's
let's get some let's get the interest rates down. Let's get
some plans in place talked about. And we're gonna do nothing.
But keep the bullshit out of the business news.
That's what we do.
That's what we're here for.
Go to Ryanisright.com.
You'll find the highlight clips, the full episode, links to YouTube, links to trading
cards, other alternative investment routes, and links to Chris on Instagram.
Even if you came here just for that, it'll be there.
We promise.
Chris, I appreciate your brother.
We'll see you guys next time on Right About Now.