In this Weekly Market Recap, Andrew Brill reflects on the interviews that took place on Wealthion over the past week in another Wealthion Weekly Market Recap!
Andrew Brill 0:00 Hello and welcome to wealthions weekly market recap, I'm your host Andrew Brill. Co founder and CEO of gold bullion International and also founder of wealthion, Steven Feldman joined Anthony Scaramucci on speak up this week, they discuss the massive debt the US continues to battle and how the US economy is impacting the gold and silver market. They also talked about the use case for Bitcoin and the ongoing war in Ukraine and the landscape of geopolitics. Anthony Scaramucci 0:35 Tell us about your business first off, and then a little bit of what you see in the economy. Steven Feldman 0:39 Well, listen they are inextricably connected. So you've had a heck of a year. And it's not surprising if you are watching the tape, and you see what's happening to gold prices. And you're here to see what's happening silver prices, which is the primary businesses that we're in. So you know, 2024, if you take the exuberance of AI out of the equation, it's just another year where people are concerned about risks that have a way of making gold more attractive on a relative basis asset. So, gold's always sitting there as a hedge against government chaos, and you know, you can't go with half minute or half day, without seeing more of it. You know, we were living in it right now, in the Biden echo debate. We have Modi hugging Putin and Russia, we have wars going on in two continents, we have a federal deficit, it's gonna reach $2 trillion. This year, we got $34 trillion of debt, we have inflation, we've got mismanagement of the US government in many ways, I not trying to be political. But you know, when you are an economist or an a cabinet economics background, you can't be comfortable with this. All that is mitigated to helping our business in just a couple of in between the time we spoke last, and now even Costco has sold a billion dollars of precious metals. And that's, you know, buying it in a box and taking it home. And it's illiquid, and you can't sell it. And so our business which services, the investors has done a multiple of that better. Anthony Scaramucci 2:26 We did say that the deficit was going to explode, we thought it would head towards 10% of GDP. It's trending at seven. But of course, that assumes no recession, obviously, we go into recession, it could really hurt us really explode. What do you say about modern monetary theory? Where there are people out there that believe that you can just print the coin? Doesn't matter? Let's put it printed $34 trillion coin, we can pay off the debt tonight? And call it a day? What do you say to those people? Or do they? Are they onto something? Or are they wrong about it? Steven Feldman 3:06 Well, what I really say I wouldn't say in public. You know, it's a bit of a joke. You know, there's something about the American investor, and it goes back to that word, complacency. And if there's anything that anyone any viewer can take away from today, which is, it's not really a time to be complacent. Americans have a tendency to believe that technology will solve every problem, and government will solve every financial problem. And for the for eons they've been correct, but the moment you're incorrect, or when technology starts to work against you. And when all of this financial intervention works against you, the snapback is disgusting. And so the idea that you're going to find some, some technique to eliminate $35 trillion of debt is complete nonsense, and it's actually dangerous. And to tie it back to gold, the more people talk about that the more people should buy gold, because that's nonsense, and it will lead to financial Armageddon. Anthony Scaramucci 4:09 we thought or at least I thought Brazil was going to enter the area, the space where they would allow for a digital rial and accept Bitcoin as a form of currency in the country. That did not happen. It's still only El Salvador. But now we have new leadership in Argentina, Malay is there, what do you think any chance of it happening in other parts of South America? Steven Feldman 4:34 You know, I'm gonna have to bounce this back to you. You know, the one thing that sits in my mind as an investor is the use case for Bitcoin. And from what I understand as the use case for Bitcoin beyond store of value hasn't emerged in the same way that people would have predicted five or seven years ago, but I'm not on top of it the same way you are. And so as a store of value, it's already proven itself. And you know, it's it's got value, it's got a trillion dollars plus value or some number. I'm not positive. Exactly. But it's north of a trillion dollars. It's been relatively stable for the last year. It's been relatively held widely held. And but again, is it just merely we found something else to own and put away in a wallet forever? Or is it going to become some something useful? You can say the same thing about gold, but at least gold is in jewelry. And gold is a is a globally accepted reserve asset? So central banks find that use case is very, very attractive. There's no Bitcoin in a reserve that I am aware of El Salvador. Anthony Scaramucci 5:53 Yeah. Listen, I don't want to go too deep into the Bitcoin rabbit hole right at this moment in this prediction podcast, but I, I will say the following to you, which I think, you know, I think you do agree with you said at once back to me, so I'll repeat it. You felt that Bitcoin really benefited from COVID-19 that the acceleration of all that deployment of surplus money that went into bitcoin stabilized it, and it helped it get to the crossover point of it having an ETF? And so I don't see Bitcoin necessarily, for you and I, we are the end of the baby boomers in terms of the demography, terms of what our years of birth were. But I do see that we're, I do see a younger generation, my children, our children's generation, accepting this similar to the way our generation has accepted goal, we thought that there would be some cutbacks in the military support from the United States and its allies of the Ukraine. But that that didn't happen, but it almost happened. And I think what was interesting about that is, you know, Mike Johnson went to see former President Donald Trump who's obviously pro Putin, pro Russia. And he went down there and told them, Hey, man, if you allow this thing to unravel, during the election year, this could have tremendous blowback on you, as you're being criticized by our allies and being criticized internally. So anyway, make a long story short, they got to build on but ceasefire on the horizon. Steven, are you think we've got several more years of warfare? Steven Feldman 7:41 Well, tell me who's going to own the 2024 election? And I'll tell you what happens in December. Anthony Scaramucci 7:48 Okay, so let's workshop that. So Biden wins, what happens? Steven Feldman 7:52 Biden has gone out there and said even in, in last week's NATO meeting, or was it a week ago, where they wouldn't let they're not going to let Ukraine into NATO. But they reinforced the support, financial support and military support of the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people. So Biden wins, you'd have to expect him unless he forgets, which is possible, that, that they'll stay committed to that. If Trump wins, I think by the end of the year, he'll be threatening, threatening stopping military aid and financial aid to Ukraine as a way to force a... Anthony Scaramucci 8:34 Ukraine will lose half its territory, and Putin will declare victory in the Ukraine will be down a few cities on the eastern side of the Ukraine. And that, you know, and then the question will be, what does that mean? And I'll just leave our viewers and listeners with this one thought. Two countries have very smart people in the countries, Finland and Sweden. NATO is celebrating its 75th anniversary this week. Actually, there's a NATO Summit here in Washington, Finland and Sweden for 74 years, Steven elected not to join NATO. But they entered NATO this past year. And so they see a threat. There's no reason for Sweden and Finland to join NATO, if they don't see a threat. Why haven't they joined NATO? It was the Soviet Union, the Soviet empire, they elected not to join NATO, but now they feel a need to join it. I just think it's a cautionary signal light out there in terms of the geopolitical dashboard. Steven Feldman 9:35 That was in this 32 countries in NATO, Ukraine would be 33. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. And there's another 130 countries or 125 countries that are not in NATO. And, you know, a lot of those countries are flexing their muscles and flexing them together and the decline of American dominance, not necessarily the decline of American influence, but American dominance. is creating a lot of satellites and a lot of power grabs, and a lot of chaos. And so the reordering, whether that's reordering of supply chains of military alliances, trade alliances, currencies, multilateral, multinational organizations, the UN, all of those things are in a multi year process of reordering. And I can I keep taking this back to the cast, that is government. And we're going to it's going to go through this long period of reordering, it's going to be very hard to predict, and it's going to be unsettling for the foreseeable future. Andrew Brill 10:35 The President, CEO of our RIA partner Rocklinc, Jonathan, welcome joined us this week and shed light on the AI bubble that seemed to take a little bit of a hit this week, with many of the sweetheart tech stocks dropping. Jonathan also hit on some political policies, possibly strengthen the US and Canadian economies. He also talked Canadian politics and the future of the Canadian government. James Connor 11:00 And I guess the other issue I want to ask you about too, is this whole AI thing in, we all know, it's a bubble, you can't deny that. But I don't know if you saw the piece that came out of Goldman Sachs earlier this week, suggesting that AI is a massive bubble, and it's not going to reach the productivity levels that many people are suggesting. It also went on to say the companies have just been spending over a trillion dollars on infrastructure, but there's little hope of ever seen payback on that trillion dollars anytime soon. And what are your thoughts? Do you think this AI is a massive bubble that's getting ready to pop? Jonathan Wellum 11:35 Yeah, let me make a couple of points. First of all, let me say that we have not profited, you know, a great deal from the run up in AI. I mean, we've owned some apple, we've had Amazon for many years. And some of those companies have benefited. We also have exposure to some data center, construction oriented companies like Schneider Electric, and so forth. So we have some exposure, but the direct play, we have not owned the video, missed it up 155% year to date, it's crazy. But no, I would go back and say, look, we've seen these trends before AI is important, it's going to have a significant impact over time. But that's the key thing over time as it gets integrated into businesses in on many different levels. But this cap spending and this enthusiasm, where you just extrapolate, you know, the last year and just say that's going to happen for the next 15 years, that's just insanity. And we've seen this before, we've seen it in tooth, you know, 1999 2000, that huge capital spent on the internet, that was wonderful, develop the internet, but then it fell off a cliff for quite a few years. And those companies came tumbling down. And you know, many of them have rebounded, some of them disappeared. But I think it's just that, you know, the way the market works is everybody wants a trend is developed, people run that trend. And they just go, go, go go. I had to chuckle when I heard, you know, the numbers for nividia. I mean, there's people coming out and saying it's gonna be worth $10 trillion, $20 trillion dollars, they're just throwing out numbers that that are absolutely insane. I mean, our global economy is only is less than $100 trillion. To think that a company would be 20 or 30 trillion in matter, you know, 10 or 15 years, seems absolutely absurd. But it is typical of this kind of excess and enthusiasm. And the market just gets way ahead of itself. So we're very, very cautious, very, very careful what we get we have not owned a video. It's it is an amazing company. It's fantastic, what they've done, no question about that. It's not taking anything away from them. But when you have companies that are worth 3 trillion and more, they have to make a lot of money. And they have to do that on a long term basis for years and years and years into the future to justify those kinds of valuations. James Connor 13:46 So you brought or you touched on Trump earlier, and is looking November, still quite a few months away. But right now as it stands, is looking at like a Trump victory. And he's made numerous comments recently about letting the dollar fall and using the dollar as a weapon. And he's also talked about onshoring. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what this will do to the US economy and also to inflation. And I'm kind of wondering if this is what's happening right now, the markets looking ahead. They're looking for a devaluation of the US dollar lower interest rates. And maybe this is one of the reasons why gold is catching a bid like it has been in the last couple of weeks. Jonathan Wellum 14:26 Yeah, I mean, I think those are all factors. I mean, if you look at the situation in the United States, and you'll look who Trump is up against, I mean, if you look at President Biden, and you looked at that last debate, if you want to call it a debate, I mean, it's pretty obvious. I mean, anyone who's been following this, it really even back in in in 2019, let alone 2021. Biden actually ran that this is an individual who was not fully engaged intellectually. He's got some kind of, you know, dementia and so forth onset you add For more years, and you see just the devastating impact from a health perspective, I mean, people are seeing that they're also responding to policies that have been tremendously detrimental to the health of the US economy. So, you know, you've got to open borders, you've got increasing taxation and regulations, you've got, you know, energy costs going up, because they're not allowing drilling and so forth, then you got inflation, all of those things have basically come together to create a an economy similar to what we have in Canada, under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. This is not a pretty situation. It's a deteriorating situation. And so, I think that if there are fair and free elections in the US that yeah, that Donald Trump will win substantially, and much more than you did previously, in 2016. And that's simply because people are hurting people are feeling the pain, they do not. And you know, the inflation is killing people. And, and if you think about Biden's similar to what Trudeau is doing in Canada, there's no solutions from these folks. I mean, they're not offering any change of policy, it's basically just continue to double down. So I think when people look at that, and they also look at his response to the assassination attempt, which really, I think emphasize his strength of character. I mean, I mean, how much can you throw with this guy? I mean, I mean, it's unbelievable. What what he's taken the the incoming, I think they see him as quite the leader. And if he comes out of this, this week, the National Convention in Wisconsin, if he comes out of that as a unifier, I think, yeah, I think you'll have a strong, strong probability of winning, and people are looking ahead, they're saying, you know, don't, Trump is a businessman, it's America first. He's going to be brutally competitive. He will do what it takes to advance the United States economy, and make sure that money is flowing into that economy, and that capital is cheaper, energy costs are lower. And that's going to have I think, dramatic implications for the US economy. And for those other economies that have to compete with them like Canada, where we're, it's going to be a little tougher for us in that kind of environment. James Connor 17:03 Yes, it definitely looks like the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction when it comes to both the US and Canada, which is good to see. Jonathan Wellum 17:11 Yes, absolutely. No, I mean, a strong US economy is always beneficial for Canada. And I mean, our trading with the US as as you know, as actually looked like it's almost falling down, falling behind Mexico, the Mexico's stepped up a little bit. And that's unfortunate, I think if we can unleash and get better government in Canada, unleash a lot of our commodities, and sell to the US and be more competitive and, you know, make more parts and do more manufacturing up in Canada that we can sell into the US, we would be much further ahead also. And so I think there's opportunities for Canada, with a stronger US economy that's open for business, and much more productive and less regulations. James Connor 17:51 I want to end our conversation by getting your opinion on Canadian politics. And we talked a little bit about it earlier, and how many policy mistakes have been made here in the last few years by the Liberal government. But there was a by election recently in Toronto, and it was a liberal stronghold since 1993. The Conservatives won the seat in a by election. Do you think this is the basic beginning of the end for the Trudeau coalition government? Jonathan Wellum 18:19 I hope so. I'll let my bias out. But I do think it is I was in Ottawa, actually about a week and a half prior to that by election. And I was speaking with a number of folks in government, including some MPs, a couple senators and some diplomats in Ottawa, just by virtue of the venue I was at. And they were all watching that by election. And the liberals were very, very concerned. They said, It is not nice to be an incumbent in this in this environment. And so I know, I think that the decisions that have been made by the NDP Liberal government have been disastrous on many, many levels. And we're feeling the effects of it, dramatically feeling the effects of it. And so and I think that the government in Canada also, they just have not, their manner of their behavior is one where there does seem to be no sympathy for the difficulty people are experiencing. And I think that's been picked up and people are very, very upset with them. And that is demonstrated me our Prime Minister Trudeau can hardly go anywhere in the country without all sorts of things being hurled at him in terms of verbal abuse, if you will. And that's that's because I think people's frustration levels are so so high. And so I do think that we will see a sea change. There's nothing in the Trudeau agenda that indicates to me that they want to change at all, they keep doubling down and more taxes, more regulations, justifying all of their past decisions. And therefore I think if Pierre Polly of the Conservative leader can continue to articulate his message of freedom, less regulation, less government, lower taxation, stimulating the economy through The business sector, I think that is resonating, and he's doing an excellent job at communicating that message. So I think that that should lead to a significant change in government in Canada. Andrew Brill 20:10 It is never too early to talk about retirement and Brandy Maben of Winrock, who is another partner RIA of wealthion, join us to explain how you can lower your student debt payments, while also thinking about putting money away for retirement. She also touched on the value of a Roth IRA versus a traditional 401. K, and how to take advantage of the Roth and also explain a backdoor IRA and its value. Lot of people that are coming out of school have student loans, and nobody really thinks about that when they come out of, you know, come out of school, but how do you how should somebody view everybody? It's like an albatross around the neck. Everybody see, oh, my God, I have all these student loans. I have a son going to medical school. And he's That's all he's worried about. He's, you know, he almost didn't apply because he's worried about how much is going to cost? And they said, Look, don't worry about it. We've got the tools that help you out. And how should someone look at their student debt? Brandy Maben 21:08 Right, yeah. Student debt these days is overwhelming more than you and I ever had to go through these kids cost of living and everything is just substantial. So there's a lot of ways you can go through it, you can make sure that as soon as you get to college, you find the best rate between lenders, you shop, if you will, between brokers, or lenders you find online and you refinance those loans, you can try for a shorter term loan, long term. So instead of a 30, year you go to 15, that might increase the payment in the immediate, but it will shorten that time significantly. And then like you said, your son's going to medical school. If he plans it out, right, his first couple of jobs could really be strategic and in lowering that debt, with governmental offers that help those loans pay off quicker, such as the public service, loan forgiveness, or National Health Service, corporate corpse, employer repayment plans, they always have assistance as well. So if you strategize correctly, those can be more manageable. How Andrew Brill 22:21 does someone find out about that stuff like the you know, the programs that you just mentioned, I clearly didn't know about them, but they exist. So how does someone go about finding those things to lower to try and actually lower their burden. Brandy Maben 22:34 It's always smart to go with a financial professional. Windrock, we always provide this holistic advice and approach to your finances. And when young professionals need advice, it covers these topics, immediately, we source out why you're alone is how much it is compared to not only our own clients, but national averages. And then we can go in the direction of helping them what their best strategy is, we have a family of doctors right now that the students, the two of them, have parents of doctors, they got married, the parents didn't even have these offers that we have today. So both of these young doctors went into the public service industry, they are going to commit 10 years into these industries to help their student loans significantly get reduced in that time period, they're going to work on what their private practice is going to look like. Because, optimally, they want their own private practice, that's going to be where the significant income can be you in their careers. Andrew Brill 23:42 What about shortening the life of a loan, let's say you have an interest rate, whatever it is, you're happy with your interest rate, is there a way to shorten the life of that loan other than just paying it off outright, which a lot of people just don't have that cash? Brandy Maben 23:55 Right? Exactly. Well, bi weekly payments is one of my most favorite strategies with loans, because it does increase your payment by one payment a year. It basically makes you have 26 payments throughout the year doing it every 14 days instead of once a month or every every calculated amount that the loan officer wanted you to do. That will make you pay at least one, one payment more a year. And then it it really significantly drops it. If you look at a mortgage. If you do that at the start of a 30 year mortgage, you could reduce your years on that loan to 24 to 26 years depending on how much you pay forward. So it can be in small increments like that. Andrew Brill 24:40 Are there strategies to paying off? A you know, I know that we you talked about making extra payments, are there other programs to lower your debt burden? The government stuff? Brandy Maben 24:53 Yeah, I would say those three that we already talked about are really significant. And then the early payments you can sign up for bi weekly payments with any loan you have. And they help do it automatically for you. So it's like auto pay. So there's, there's a lot of options there. And I think seeking advice from a financial advisor is your best route to get those setup. Andrew Brill 25:15 Is there a big difference between a Roth IRA, excuse me, a Roth 401 K, and a regular 401k? Brandy Maben 25:23 The amount you can contribute is the significant difference. So if you and I open a Charles Schwab Roth IRA, that's not linked to any business, your contribution this year is about $7,000, depending on age, if you go into your private practice, you open a solo 401 K with a Roth component, that amount now equals whatever the annual contribution is of the 401k. So could be $23,000, $22.5 thousand this year that you can actually put towards a Roth. And if you own your own company, it's huge savings. If you own your own company, also, you can make a solo 401 K, that means you have no employees, but your spouse can technically be an employee, that would then double the contribution to not only you as an employer putting towards it, but also as an employee. Andrew Brill 26:17 So the Roth 401 K has a limit. But the I'm sorry, the Roth IRA has a limit of 401 k does not? Or is it a higher limit? Brandy Maben 26:27 They both have limits correct. It's just a higher limit, the government restrictions on a 401 k or a Roth 401 K or just higher on an annual basis Andrew Brill 26:37 And the tax difference between the two, I think is significant unless I'm incorrect. Brandy Maben 26:44 No, you're right. So on a 401 K, it's just deferred. So you pay the taxes later, when you withdraw the money, a Roth IRA or a Roth 401 K, you pay the taxes initially, but then later on after it's grown, you pay no tax implication on that. Which means all of these high income earners that windrock works with, they actually probably going to make more money in their later years, if not their highest income could be in the last years of their life where they're taking out so much money that they saved. We don't know where taxes are gonna go at this point. I think everyone is afraid about that, right? That Texas could be huge. By the time we're all retired and you don't want to pay taxes then. And if you have to with some of your 401k. At least you have your Roth retirement and your 401k to split the difference. And if you're taking half of your withdrawals from a deferred account, and half from what you already paid taxes on, your tax mitigation is really strategic and smart at that point. A backdoor Roth IRA is someone that is over the limit of contributing directly to a Roth. So we deal with this because none of our clients are in a sector that they can just directly fund it. So what we do is we open an empty IRA, and it has no funding to it so that there's no pro rata taxes, implications. We will fund the IRA with the maximum amount, let's say $7,000 This year, and then we will just roll it right over into their IRA, their Roth IRA. And since you are going to file that as a non deductible contribution with your CPA, you technically already paid the taxes on it, you'll get a 1099 R with your Roth IRA investment statements at the end of the year. That shows you already paid the taxes on it because it was a non deductible contribution and your Roth is funded, even if you're in the highest tax bracket. Andrew Brill 28:55 Interesting, so many loopholes and ways to save money and make money. And when it comes to used cars, the economy plays a bigger role than one might think. Brandon from the popular YouTube channel car questions answered, join wealthy on to explain how the economy has taken a big role in repossessions and how a Fed rate cut could impact the car market. I like the fact that you you talked about the economy interest rates, how does that affect you? Do you? Do you go out and borrow money to buy inventory? And I would assume you buy less than or I would assume some car dealers do New Car Dealers certainly do they borrow that money and they have to sell the cars in order to pay back those loans. But how does that affect you and car dealers. Brandon Reeves 29:43 So most used car dealers what they do is is actually borrow money to be able to buy their inventory. They don't have any cash. They they're basically living paycheck to paycheck and a lot of people don't know this but I mean most car dealers do not own their inventory. They they finance it through a bank and that's not The way I operate, I've always run cash I've never taken on any debt. I don't, I don't like that. So, I, I've grown my business organically every car that we have we own we paid cash for. And that's just not how most used car dealers run. So as far as interest rates, how it has affected those car dealers that have borrowed money on their vehicles, their interest rates have gone up like crazy over the last three years, this is no secret, we know this Fed has pumped rates. And what this has has meant for a lot of these car dealers is okay. Well, if as time goes on, and as they're not able to sell cars, they're putting more money into each one of these vehicles. So we're having a it's an interesting time period as as a car dealer, because over the last three years, car prices have gone up and up and up and up. But so have interest rates have gone up and up and up and up. But now we're getting to a place where Okay, interest rates have still gone up, but car values are going down. So we're seeing this tipping point where as interest rates have stayed high. And car dealers can't sell their cars, they keep on adding into what they have into the car, but their car values going down. So they're actually crossing where a lot of these car dealers are underwater on a lot of their vehicles. And what's interesting about this is that if they can't sell these cars in a timely manner, and therefore playing companies there where they're borrowing money, see some kind of problem, then car dealers can actually have their cars repossessed from them. And we're starting to see a lot more of that pop up at auctions where we'll see, I can see the seller on a lot of these cars, and some of them will just say floorplan. And what that means is the Floor Plan company went to this car dealer lot, and I've talked to some floorplanner reps. And they said, we go and we help these dealers sell their cars. And what that means is they go grab these cars off of these dealers lots, they take them to auction, whatever they bring, they sell them and then that dealer is on the hook for the difference. And there's going to be a difference. They're going to bring less money now than what they paid for them two, three months ago. And here's the problem those dealers never had that money to begin with. So there's something I like to say a lot. And if this happens, then therefore plans will get decreased or just go away altogether. And at that point, they have no money to buy cars. If you can't buy cars, you can't sell cars, you can't sell cars can't make any money. You can't make money. Why are you even in business? So we've seen quite a few car dealers go out of business for this very reason. Andrew Brill 32:31 Brandon, given the economy the way it is the personal debt rising the way it is, have you seen a lot more repos than you have in the past? Brandon Reeves 32:39 Yeah, so we are starting to talk about this a lot on my channel and actually go to the auctions. And I show this on my channel. But we have seen repos rise greatly at these auctions. And it started it started I would say about 12 months ago is when when I started to see the increase, I went to some bigger auctions, where cars from Wells Fargo Capital One A lot of these big banks started to pop up and pop up, it seemed like all at the same time. About what, probably eight 910 months ago, even talking to a lot of the auction workers, they would say the six months prior to that they had no repose. And then just all of a sudden, we had cars from a lot of these big banks just really flooding these auctions. And as far as some of the smaller auctions that I go to, those are the ones I'm able to actually show on my channel, those ones I can film at. But I see a lot of Buy Here Pay Here dealers, these ones that hold their own notes. What they'll do is they'll sell a car, customer Miss copayments, they'll pick it up, they'll take it auction, they'll dump it. We're seeing many, many, many more cars in those repo lanes than we've seen in a very long time, at least in my 13 years of doing things. This is the most repos that I've seen come through the auction lanes. Since I've been in business. Andrew Brill 33:55 In preparing for this interview. I'm here in New York. So I went I looked for car auctions, there's many, many car auction sites in and around New York City, the five boroughs. But I happen to notice that the the New York City sheriff and the marshals actually have auctions that I would assume cars they've taken that were involved in a crime or somebody you know, it was, you know, whatever it is, are those have you heard of those auctions? Are those auctions worth attending? Brandon Reeves 34:24 Yeah, we don't have a lot of those around where I am I would assume that those cars are mainly theft vehicles in anything that says within a crime scene. I don't know how they actually categorize those titles. I know the theft ones are easy when I see that a lot at these auctions pop up, but anything that's been taken in because of drugs or any kind of other crime or whatever. I actually don't have any expertise dealing with any of that stuff at all. But I have heard that there's there's some guys out there they'll go and they'll they'll buy a lot of those cars and you can get good deals because it's just there's some there's some paperwork, you have to deal with that. It just makes up our process a lot more difficult. Cuz we're doing scale, we're doing a lot of cars a month. So any kind of hang up by that even we're gonna save a little bit of money, we don't even want to mess with it. Andrew Brill 35:13 So we talked a little about interest rates, we talked about, you know, the Fed is now the expectation is that we're going to see an interest rate cut in September. How fast do you expect that to get to New Car markets? And do you think that's going to energize? Because new car sales are dropping? There's no doubt that new car sales are dropping? Do you expect to see that pickup? And then how will that affect, you know, your market obviously, not your market, because a lot of people paying cash, but the 5 to $15,000 used car market? Do you expect more people to go out and start buying cars again. Brandon Reeves 35:53 I would anticipate you would have almost zero effect right when they first start because they're probably going to drop it by 25 basis points. So that's, that's not going to do anything for for buyers, what has to happen for the car market to get better for the prices to drop is, it's all supply and demand. So you're gonna have new car manufacturers on the new side, you're going to have them keep trying to pump inventory to dealers, which should put some downward pressure on the pricing. And then on the used car side, what we need is transaction. So the only way that we get more cars into the used car space is from people buying new cars trading in their old cars. And then those cars get sent to the auction. So the used car space can't get better, until the new car space gets better, the new car space can't get better, until really monthly payments get better. And because people don't shop price they shop monthly payments. So the way that monthly payments get lower is by MSRPs coming down and by interest rates coming down interest rates, I think are going to be slow. So I think the thing that really fixes the car market and fixes it quickly is for manufacturers to lower MSRPs. They have not shown a willingness to do this anytime soon. So I think we're just stuck in this rock and a hard place for the foreseeable future. Andrew Brill 37:13 Thank you for watching this week's recap don't forget to head over to wealthion.com for a free no obligation portfolio review with one of our registered investment advisors and please follow us on social media for the latest news and information to help you invest wisely. 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