Donald Trum crashing the economy, were session looming? What happens next? Watch what happens?
Will happen right here on fifty five KRC, the talk station eight oh five at fifty five kr CD Talk station. Regular listeners know what time it is. Bryan Thomas always happy to welcome back to the fifty five KRC Morning Show. All were financials. Brian James to do money Monday. Brian, welcome back and have you Saint Patrick's day.
Good morning, regular and irregular listeners, And back to you, Brian, same to you.
Yeah, we've got a couple of irregular listeners out there anyhow, so your irregular speakers as well. Yeah, I understand sort of uh, reciprocal tariffs, because if someone is tariffing our goods going in, then why should they do that. I'm level playing field kind of guy. It's difficult to operate on a level playing field considering the cost of doing business relative to any given countries. You know, ohsha practices or not, or the presence of slave labor or not,
but all things aside. At least I can get my head around, Well, if they're charging twenty five percent on our goods coming in and then a corresponding tariff on their goods coming in, would you know, serve to perhaps end the tariffs completely. But if you're trying to tariff somebody into doing something they otherwise wouldn't do, and we ended up in this trade war because of course they'll put reciprocal tariffs on. So tariffs kind of bother me and it's one of the things I believe I differ
with in the Trump administration. But people are freaked out about tariffs and kind of panicking and it has impacted the stock market at least, although they've been, you know, predicting a correction for a long time now, Brian, and I know you've read articles about a correction coming. These drops in the markets have been attributed to the Trump tariffs. So what's the story about this and should we be panicking? Well, yeah, that's a lots of unpacked there.
First thing let's talk about is you mentioned potential correction on the way, Well, congratulations, it's here. We are ten percent below the highest peak on the S and P five hundred.
That's what's commonly known as a correction.
We're not calling this a bear mark or anything like that. We had a correction as recently as twenty three, we have volatility of course comes and goes. Yeah, this is of course being driven by the tariffs, and it's not so much the tariffs, it's the back and forth. What the market can handle bad news, it can handle good news. What it can't handle is unknown news. And with the Trump administration waffling back and forth on whether we're gonna put these tariffs against Canada or no, we're going to
hold off for a month, that kind of thing. What the market wants to know is how likely our company is going to be able to make a dollar and how many dollars are they going to make? And when we've got the rules changing, you know, think of it this way. Can we predict if the Bengals are going to win a game if they change the length of the field during the game. You can't really predict exactly anything when kind of the metrics of how we measure
things are changing all the time. So as tariffs and the rules are changing on a daily basis, not only the Trumpet minute stration, but also, as you mentioned, countries are reciprocating, so we're just moving things back and forth on both ends. The market hates that, and that's why we're in a bit of a downturn here.
Well, I would would putting them in place and just saying that's it, they're fixed. Would that provide some stability in the market or the market would go down simply because it's going to cost more to purchase foreign goods and we'll be exporting fewer American goods.
Well, I don't know.
I don't think that would happen because we never say we're going to put this tariff in place, it's going to sit here for two years. We're going to use it until we get what we want. And that's the unpredictable part. We have gotten the responses, you know, as a negotiating tool, these are things that have that have elicited responses, and we've gotten other countries to start acting
as we wanted them to. You know, that's not quite a tariff, but our threats to back out of NATO has gotten finally European nations to start spending the correct or closer to the correct percentages of their GDPs on defense. That's the same structure they're trying here. Let's just simply make the would change the rule, change the inputs, meaning the US is going to put less into these kinds of things. That's going to force everybody to react in a manner that we're hoping to gain from them, and
then we can see whether we still need it. We don't want permanent tariffs. They're not a way to make money. They're a way to change the behavior of those we're doing business with, and once we get that, we'll back out.
All right, Well, pitting over to buy, sell or hold? What do we what do we do with a plummeting stock? And I mean most of everything I think I'm invested in through my financial planner index funds, so it's filled. It's comprised of hundreds of different stocks, So I'm not picking and choosing which stocks I'm personally holding. It's in
a you know, a bundle of other stocks. But assuming someone is buying a specific stock, like let's just use Tesla as an example, which is down fifty percent, how do you decide what to do with something like that?
Brian, Sure, Well, those specific types of examples, it depends on what your goal is. If your goal is simply to build a financial plan for your household and execute on that need growth to keep up with inflation over time, but your goal is not to try to be the market or to own cool stocks that you can want up people on the on the first tee of the golf outing every Saturday morning. Yeah, then you're taking the
right approach. At the end of the day, all that matters is that you can you can outpace inflation and grow your assets and still live the lifestyle you're trying to. That's a little different than I want to own Tesla, and I really support Elon Musk, so I'm going to ride this out. Well, that better not be your Neste because that's going to be a volatile stock, and the
reasons for volatility in that specific example are completely self inflicted. Yes, the man invented a product that everybody wanted and that filled a need, and then he chose to throw it into the fire for whatever reason.
I cut you off.
Go ahead, Oh no, you know, but I mean people are holding him personally responsible for, you know, exercising some cuts in government, and that's I suppose they're prerogative. But you know, five minutes ago, he was the darling of the left because he was going to save the planet from carbon emissions, and everybody was out buying Tesla's The virtue signal or on the mistaken belief that it was environmental, the environmentally good thing to do.
Correct.
And if it's hard to even point at what the motivations are, because if it was about you know, usually we blame greed and the greed of corporate America and so on and so forth. Well, he had to know, he's not a stupid man. He had to know that he was going to take some hits, a few politions, oh yeah, spots along the way, and many of his companies by making these moves. And he made them anyway, which tells us that he's a leader who is not
driven by profit and efficiency. He's driven at least in some part by power.
Indeed.
Well, okay, so I understand you. Managing emotions is important. And of course, if you have you know, a financial planner managing your portfolio and it is in all these you know, mixed index funds, then just ride it out. It's all going to go away. Don't divest because the market's gone down. Hell, I've been through the downs and ups over my life, and as you always point out, Brian James, it always ends up going up over time,
at least historically, that's always been the trend. Unless something like the Fiat currency collapses because of our overspending and government that's a completely different scenario that we can't plan for. But beyond that, it just continues to go over time in spite of the downturns from time to time.
Yeah, and thanks for their minder that we weren't even discussing the article at ant here with my little side tour on Elon Musk. But no, this is what I tell my clients every time we have any kind of a concern, which is that it is long as long as there is greed in the market, as long as someone outs there out there once more dollars than they currently have, then there is going to.
Be a stock market.
Stock market has existed in some fashion for the last four or five hundred years. This is why you learned about the Dutch East India Company in the fifth grade. You didn't know why you were learning it. Your fifth grade teacher didn't know why they were teaching it. But this is why it was the origin of the stock market. That's five hundred years ago. So now fast forward to today, and every company under the sun worth at salt. You can buy shares of and sometimes they go up and down.
I think what it boils down to, Brian Thomas is that there are five years that I consider attention getters within the last century. That's two thousand and eight, nineteen thirty seven, seventy four, two thousand and two, and twenty twenty two.
We just had one.
These are all years where the market was down more than fifteen percent. What they all have in common is every last one of them was followed by a year where the pendulum swung back the other way and got back most, if not all, of the of what had been lost. So if you can make sure you hang on for a two three year time period, then you're gonna be okay. And we do that by making sure that the dollars we need in that period aren't exposed
to this in the first place. That's an emergency fund, all right.
For those out there buying individual stocks, I mean, your options when the thing goes down is buy seller, hold. And I like to buy option because if you believe in the business and you think it has legs and will ultimately come back because it's providing a service or good that people value, then you may be good in buying more. It's a buying opportunity because it's probably going to go back up, although that's not the case with Boeing of late.
That's true, but again, that's the whole point we were talking about before any one stock is going to have its issues that you can't see coming out of left field. Hopefully most of the people were talking to were on their way to work, and you have a four oh one K, four h three B or something like that,
you are congratulations. You are already doing the right thing, as long as you haven't gone into your payroll department and told them to stop pulling money out to contribute to your bi weekly or weekly paycheck or whatever you have, because you are investing through this downturn. I love this situation, Brian, for people who have just gotten started. In the last five years, we have seen the absolute best the markets
can be, and we could have seen the worst. Those of you who remember twenty two into twenty three and twenty four, you'll remember that you saw your four to oh one K grow very very quickly, and it might have confused you. That's the pendulum swinging, pendulum swinging back the other way, and that's those dollars that you invested at the bottom getting a nitro boost all the way back to the top. So if you leave it alone, you're doing the right thing.
Yeah, you're acquiring more stock for less money when it's in a downturn. So I like that advice for folks to starting out. You're doing it at the right time, right, Congratulations. Now you're seeing them all up and down of the entire cycle. Now I just wait for it and watch your money grow, because it ultimately will. It's possible being prying back to talk about apparently one in three folks
have been victims of a financial scam. More with Money, mondays Brian James after a quick a couple of words from my friends at Foreign Exchange imported cars traditionally imported Asian or European. You're in the best possible hands taking it to Foreign Exchange, because you're gonna have an SE certified Master technician working on your car, a guy you can actually are, a person you can actually talk to if you're inclined to want to do that, like I am.
I I don't want to talk to the service manager. I want to talk to the person's working on my car. I've been going to Foreign Exchange for years. I still under warranty. Car gets its oil changes there because I save a couple of one hundred dollars per oil change. Speaking of money, Monday and money matters, save money, keep it in your pocket, maybe invested in the market, but you will save money versus the dealer, and your car will be repaired with a full warranty on both parts
and service. They'll treat you great too. They're wonderful people. At the Westchester location. I can speak directly to that one because that's one I've been going to for years. It's a Tylersville likes it off of I seventy five, just two little streets. Hang a right on Kingland Drive as you proceed east off of seventy five on Tylersville and tell them, Brian said, how when you stop in and when you call for an appointment, they can take care of your car.
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Exotic to the regular run of the bill cars anything five one three six four four twenty six, twenty six five one three, six four four twenty six twenty six by them online. Go to foreign X four in the letter x dot com. Fifty five car the talk station Hey twenty here fifty five KRCD talk station Brian Thomas. One more segment here with Money Monday's Brian James. Here's just some frightening statistics on the amount of fraud and scam that's going on out there. Brian James.
Yeah, absolutely, so we're seeing a spike.
I go figure, whenever there is a crazy market activity, we wind up with people trying to take advantage. So about one in three adults have experienced financial fraud in the past twelve months. About two and five have actually lost money. So that includes nineteen percent of people who lost money because somebody accessed their personal information. At about a quarter of them actually sent money themselves to a scammer or paid for some kind of phony service or something.
This isn't new. We've had fraud, of course, there was. There were counterfeit currencies as long as there have been currencies. We had our friend Charles Ponzi, I remember him, Oh yeah, in the eighteenth century, and then ever since it's been the rise of telecommunications and social media has just made it all louder.
But the endgame is pretty much still the same.
It really is. And we talk every week with Dave Hatter for Tech Friday at six thirty on Fridays and a week doesn't go by, he isn't highlighting or elevating another form of fraud our attention and the FBI quite often will issue with warnings and alerts about new scams. It's just so easy to do because so many people are connected with social media and the Internet, and there are a lot of gullible people out there, and most
notably the senior community. I'm not taking a poke at them, it's just they tend to be more believing and and and and more prone to being subject to these attacks. Are we looking at any particular type or style of financial fraud that this are highlights?
Well, I think what we're seeing most you kind of hinted at it already, or seniors are being taken advantage of, because you know, at some point, for every last one of us, the shields go down just a little bit, and the scammers out there know that. And there are up team ways to get in touch with people nowadays and can and convince them how to think a little
differently using social media, of course. So the ways to kind of protect here is if you feel like you might be in a situation like this, you might have a loved one in a situation like this, then make sure you have alerts set up on all of your financial accounts. There are ways that you if you look deep in the settings and those kinds of things that you know, normally people log into their financial sites and
get what they need and get back out. We'll spend some time poor a pot of coffee and look at the different bells and whistles inside your credit card provider in your bank's website, they will text you if transactions are happening, if somebody logs in from a different computer
that the bank has not seen before. There are a lot of ways that you can be informed that something's going wrong, and consider having those texts go to somebody who isn't you, If you have a trusted adult child, or you know, even just anybody, just a second set of eyes, just like anything else, can be really really helpful and protect us from these things.
And two factor authentication, changing your passwords, getting a password manager that creates really complex passwords that people can't hack into, and shut off your credit. I mean you can contact trans and Union and Experience and close your credit out so no one can you know, can can try to open credit in your name. That's something I did years ago. Yeah, that's a great point. Freeze your credit.
You can do that. You can turn it on and off. It adds an extra step.
But if you don't really need to apply for a new credit all that often, and most people shouldn't be, that's a whole other conversations you are, then Yeah, freeze it off and just make it impossible to use.
One mora' throw out there.
If you have not logged in or set up your own social security profile a my social Security profile, then you should go do that.
You may not be.
Receiving social Security or maybe you don't have any questions about it or whatever, but you should still go claim it. That way, you'll know that you're the one who got it. That's another way that people are stealing identities.
Now.
If someone has never set up their SOBI security profile and they get a hold of your SOLFI security number, well, they can begin to impersonate you a lot more easily.
So go set that up and lock it down.
Well, and they can begin in personing you a lot more easily if they have access to all the information on your computers. And you know, as Dave points out all the time every week, don't click on suspicious links or emails. I mean I don't click on I mean my friends with my mom sends me links, and my friends will send me links, and I am loath to click on any of them because it literally could be something that would maliciously launch software into my computer.
Yeah, if you suspect you might get an email that looks like your bank, Yeah, it's gonna have the logo, it's going to look like something they legitimately sent you. If you have a suspicion that maybe this is a real thing I need to deal with, don't click that link.
Log into the bank's website.
If it's truly an important problem, it'll be the first thing in your face and in a form of a notification or something like that. But don't click the email in or the link inside the email. Go straight to the bank or call them and ask if there's anything they need or if they're noticing any problems on their end.
Amen to that. And you got to be very proactive on this. And if your proactive, the likelihood of getting scammed or having your money ripped off it drops precipitously. Brian Jamis appreciate the sound advice as always and it's important to get a financial planner that's working in your court and feed based financial planets have a fiduciary obligation to you to maximize the return on your investment. So do that and then you don't have to worry about it.
Brian James, thanks for the time you spill my listeners each and every week. Here for money Monday, and I'll look forward to having another discussion with you next week.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day. May all things stay green all day long.
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