This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. The Dow is down about two point five percent, about one thousand points, helping us follow all of the volatility on Wall Street, as our friend Merlin Rothfeld joins us.
Now, Merlin, thanks for your time.
My pleasures always thanks for having me.
Comes at a premium on a week like this, I would imagine, is this what's your reaction to what we've seen? First of all this.
Week, I would say this is zero surprise. There's not even a percentage of surprise of what's going on. We've been talking about it since the beginning of the year. And when you have such an extreme amount of regime change, political change, and all the campaign promises we know going into this year is just incredible uncertainty. And having done this for twenty eight years, training only my own money, not on other accounts, this is just the worst thing
in markets. Markets do not want uncertainty. Anything with clarity, great markets will trend, things are rosy, whether it's up or down. Now it's just some uncertainty. So as a short term trader, this is nirvana. This is the utopia you've been dreaming about. If you're a long term investor, you're losing your hair and you'll continue to lose it for the next few months.
What kind of things? What do you look for?
I mean, is there a magic number that kind of gives you the temperature of the market for the day or for the week? You know, those shorter term time limits. Because a lot of people look at the Dow and they say, it was up a lot yesterday, Now it's down a lot today, and then tomorrow it's going to be up again, and then the next day it's going to be down again.
Is there something that's more consistent that you keep your eye on.
Sure, I would say there's a bunch of market mantras that I think people resonate with, and one of them is my personal favorite. If I was to get a tattoo, would be this right across my chest. It would say the trend is your friend until the bend at the end, which is so academic and basic, but essentially what it means is as the market moves in one direction, it will continue to do so. And since two thousand and nine up until twenty twenty four, it was only up
except for the COVID drop. Now what we're witnessing is a series of lower highs, lower lows, which means the trend is now to the downside. And I hate to freak out those of you nearing retirement, but the probability is pretty good that we're going to continue lower. My guess is that we're going to bounce off this twenty percent decline mark from the market, that number being right around four thousand and eight hundred. That's about twenty percent off the all time high for the SMP. We've already
bounced off that three times. We'll probably hit it a couple more as we approach it. The Fed will probably step in and try to support the market as they did in two thousand and eight identical picture. And once that level breaks, we'll probably see continue moved to the downside until we get structured clarity on tariffs, on trade, on budget and all that stuff. So to me, to answer your question, the trend is your friend. Right now, the trend is down. I'm betting if the markets are going down.
We're talking to Merlin Rothfeld. He actually took all of his experience to Europe. He built a financial training materials lab essentially for banks and brokerages and universities, and we're hearing about the EU and its a response today as well. Globally speaking, Merlin, how do you see the rest of the week playing out in terms of reaction to what's going on here?
Just like we have the first three days of the week, you know it's going to be big ups or sorry report it is a week big ups, big downs, and just a lot of uncertainty as we try to put these chips in place. You know, if you look at the politics of what's going on and not to polarize either party either way, we're going to get this market volatility.
What we have with this unilateral reciprocal tariff issue is we are now alienating our friends and allies in Mexico and Canada and Europe, and that move starts to bring the question does Europe now start to side with China? Does it push them closer to China, make them more of an ally? Which is why I think Trump's decision was an interesting one to stop the reciprocal tariffs, and that kind of makes peace with everybody. So now we look like we're more friends with them. I don't know
where we stand in three to six months. I do think that the rest of the world is looking at the decisions by President Trump going what the heck are you doing, Bud? You know, why, why are you going to do this? Thus, whether you agree with the terraces or not is none of my business, you know. I'm just a trader trying to capitalize on these market moves. I don't know how Europe's going to ultimately come out of this. I do know that there is some angst.
My friends that live in Europe look at it as an active possibility, and they, you know, look at me going, what are you doing as an American? Like, Hey, I'm just an American trying to do my best, you know, increase my net worth over time and trade these markets. So I can't give you definitive answer on that one. As far as what I think Europe is going to do, I do think that they will start to come to
the table and negotiate. As you look across the spectrum here, the United States and China are the two bullies in the school yard. And typically when you have a fight in the schoolyard, Gary Wum, I remember this. I go out by the gym at the end of school and there's that big fight between the two big bullies. All the small kids stand around and shouting, and you know that was me. I was the one standing in inside, shouting, yelling.
The bully can knock me out right away, right The US can knock out Vietnam and Cambodi in Thailand with regards to tariffs. We can bully them into submission, which we are doing, I hate to say it. China, on the other hand, is the big juggernaut that we can't really bully. So I think this is going to escalate and come to a head here in the next couple of months. I don't know what the ultimate outcome will be. I do think you'll see more downside movement though.
Did a lot of people take advantage of this? Like you said, it was not a surprise. I didn't think it was a surprise either. I mean, I could we could have charted this out in our opinion. Is watching this happen knowing that Donald Trump doesn't have the kind of personality where he was just going to let Wall
Street bleed forever, you know, or even another week. Were there a lot of people who saw the low numbers jumped in and then knew that it would rally the way it did when he finally said, all right, we'll pause this whole deal.
Well, I would say the one thing for certain the markets is nothing as certain. So to make it ifid it seeming like did people absolutely know? No, I think people suspect it. You know, when you look across the spectrum at like the magnificent seven stocks, which is you know, Google, Amazon, Tesla, and Vidia, most of those which have been leading this market up to record games twenty five plus percent gains
per year for the last two years. That's all because those seven stocks, and as those start to drop, as they have aggressively. I mean, Tesla's down was down over
fifty percent. There does come a group of people like myself when I look at my long term accounts, and I'm sure most of your audience in their investment accounts, look at something like Tesla and at fifty percent drop, going hey, I may not be keying a Tesla, or I may not like Elon Musk, but as a company they're shaping the future of technology, of AI, of robotics,
of you know, all sorts of different areas. It's probably a good deal fifty percent down, I think a lot of people believe that and looking for value buys, so it'll bounce accordingly. But again I keep emphasizing it. I do think will slowly trick lower, probably ending the year down right around I would say probably about thirty percent slide per the year from the piece that tattoo.
Are you thinking like Sanskrit comic.
Sandi's New Roman? I would suggest, Franklin gossip, I like just style.
You like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I have to create my own thought for that one. And you know you said something funny earlier. I wanted to say. You talked about, you know, a higher education kun of being a waste. I look at my degree. I have a finance degree, and I would say, on for the most part, a colossal waste of time and money. Other than the networking and friends I made. The most significant thing my finance degree taught me was the utopian view of how
the financial markets actually operate. In reality, it's the complete opposite. The markets do what least people expect it to do. So right now, people think the markets are going to rally because Trump's going to save the day. I think we're gonna keep going down.
Wow, all right, Marlin Thank you so much, appreciate your time.
I'm glad any time Merlin Rothfield, They'll follow him on, follow him on X. You can follow him at Trader Merlin and get some of that great information up next, there's a book that's out and it pulls a curtain back on something that I think we all had a inkling about. But the description of the descriptions of how close people were to Joe Biden and what he literally looked like up close, and his behavior up close.
You and I watched from a country away in this coal could tell that it was heartbreaking.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on Demand from KFI AM six forty.
ABC News anchored George Stephanopolis reportedly said his post debate interview with Biden was heartbreaking up close. This is the new book we talked about, I believe last week, Chris Whipple's new book. It's called Uncharted, How Trump beat Biden, Harris and the Odds and the wildest campaign in history.
Gosh, you could write that about every camp.
I mean, it feels like every campaign, the next one is the wildest one.
Or the most important, exactly the last one right.
Whipple described Biden as horse semi coherent throughout the interviews, said Stephanopolis was equally disappointed. Whipple wrote, Stephanopolis questioned the president gently, like a grandson. Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor my buy email for his impressions, he replied, heartbreaking up.
Close, of course, it is.
We've all seen it with relatives, or some of us have seen it with aging relatives. Used to be on top of their game, quick, quick as hell, and then when they're not.
It's very heartbreaking, yeah, because I.
Mean, they're technically the sale there, but they don't seem like the same person, right, And that's a hard thing to give up for a lot of people. The you know, the identity of who this loved one that is different. It to me is very telling that we've seen one public event with President Biden one since he left office. And listen, I don't begrudge any president their privacy because I can't imagine and what it's like to be in
the office in the first place. I can't imagine the relief you would feel or the just the letdown that you would feel after you're out of office and things relax. But it is significant that people don't go to him to ask him questions about the current economy and listen, part of that.
Is just curs.
You hear about Obama every day, and you know, age is obviously a factor when it comes to that, but it is weird to me.
I'll say the same thing about the first Lady of the United States. When's the last time you saw Malania Trump in any capacity? She doesn't want to have anything to do with the public spotlight. Understandable, but for her it's probably a different reason than it is for Joe and Jill Biden. They are protecting him. It seems like from just getting too much.
Caring That on for as long as they did was really criminal, It really was.
It makes me wonder more about the ongoing discussions that were taking place between Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, right these two, I don't know, stalwarts of the Democratic Party. What were those conversations actually like and did it ever cross the line of Listen, I'm not coming to you as the minority leader in Congress and you as the
President of the United States. I'm coming to you as somebody who's known you for the last forty five years, and I'm seeing something in you that needs to be addressed well.
And you know, I catch how, Oh you don't say anything about Trump. He's old and crazy. Yeah, but he's always been crazy. I'm not saying that it's okay. I'm just saying that's who he is. His behavior has been the same as it was the first term. It's been the I remember interviews I saw with him in the eighties. He is the same guy. Biden was not the same guy. He was old plus not the same guy. He wasn't
himself and everyone could see it. And the idea that you were saying, Oh, but he's fine, he's going to keep running. It's gonna know what world are you living.
In looking at that guy and jesting that he's got for four strong years?
And lord, what a mess? What just a complete denial.
And if you care about the person, I always thought Joe Biden was a nice guy. I mean, agree with him or disagree with him. He was super likable. I liked him from what I saw about him.
And if you liked him, you're like, what are you doing? Why would you keep trotting this guy out there?
If you care about him, freaking take care of him and take care of his legacy. You're gonna let him go out like that. That to me, it's like the homeless. Oh you care so much about the homeless, you're gonna let them just go pour needles into their arms.
All that's really caring? Doesn't them continue to live?
Yeah?
Really caring.
We talked earlier about this record breaking couple, these schoolgirl friends who had been sending cards back the same literally the same birthday card, back and forth to each other for decades.
Gary and Shannon, I just wanted to tell you, when my grandson was around eleven, twelve, thirteen years old, I noticed when I gave him his birthday card, he took the money out of the card and just tossed the.
Car a sign no interest.
So I picked it up out of the backseat of my car, and I gave it same guard to him the next year, and the next year and the next year.
That's a lesson you should learn very early on in life, to the point where you don't even remember learning the lesson because you were so young when we when you learned it that you got a card from a family member and you took the money out without looking at the card. I mean, I look at cards to this day with such interest because That lesson was so impounded in my brain at such a young age of Oh no, no, no, no, you're going to.
Read the card.
You're going to look at the little Easter bunny or the egg or whatever it is or your birthday, you know, car, and you're gonna read it. You're gonna read the inscription and all of that and then get to whatever was put in.
Like that's a lesson that you should learn.
Also, another lesson that I think that has gone by the wayside is thank you. Teaching your kids to say thank you. It is the simplest thing you can do, and there's so many adults that lack that skill.
I'm floored by it. And when it's kids, it's almost worse.
But when it's adult, you're like, how did you get through childhood without thanking people?
I was hyper aware.
I don't know why this weekend's different than other weekends, but I was hyper aware of the way I was talking to UH waiters and waitresses when I was in Texas with my wife and daughter. And I don't know why, but I was as absolutely friendly as I could. Thank thank you for the extra syrup, eye contact and everything, like stop what I'm doing, not looking at my phone, but thanking them for everything that they would come by has everything?
Okay, is this enough? Yes? Everything's great.
Eye contact I was at I think it was because it was your story about the guy that you were going out with one time that we rude to the way. Yeah, it's like, these are real people, like you know, and it's just eye contact, having eye contact with people. I was with Joe in Orange County somewhere, I forget where. We were having lunch and the waitress came by and she's like, Hey, can I get you guys something to drink or whatever?
And I was like, Hi, how are you? And she's like a good, thank you, how are you?
Like? It was such a shock that somebody would make eye contact and have like a human conversation as opposed to You're just here to do something for.
Me, transactional thing. Yeah, I'll take the Uh. She was like what it was like? It totally took her off guard. All right.
Up next a little wellness segment to get to we have some interesting stories about what you're hearing level.
Your hearing level says about your.
Risk of heart disease, and there's a very interesting aspect of it that I noticed in my parents when they started getting a little bit older.
Oh yeah, well, when the hearing goes, everything goes, including the heart, right, I mean it all starts breaking down. At some point you get lucky enough to live long enough and everything breaks.
Gary Chennon will care you go feel good. Thursday rolls on.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI Am six forty robin.
I forgot to ask.
You have our little wellness thing, the little desk ready to go so we can play a little like Blue La Lou. It's wellness time. Okay, well, then let's hit that thing and we'll get into our wellness segment.
Yeah, it's all right, No, no future. He spends most of his day at the office city into the variot, preferably some exercise late in the afternoon. I never exercised a.
Day in my line.
You just got to sit here and wait till die.
Every morning I smoke a cigarette and for lunch, I eat a bacon sandwich, and I usually drink my dinner.
It's time for Gary and Shannon's Periodic Guide for Wellness and Personal Improvement for your health.
Which grain juice should I drink while you're doing this one, the darker one. Are you sure I've got a home right home? Okay, it seems like there's a lot of a lot of fiber in this This one's got celery and cucumber and kale and parsley and romaine and wheat, grass and cilantro and basil and mint and spinach and dill and fennel.
Send you home with a roll of roll of paper towels. Yeah, are you sure about this? Totally?
All right, let's see because I don't have to clean out the front seat. More than sixty million people around the world suffer from heart failure, and the most common causes would be heart disease and high blood pressure and obesity. But there's a new study in the journal Heart that says that hearing loss is linked to a heightened risk of heart failure.
Oh my god, that's awful. Yeah, you're going to finish that whole thing. Okay, you opened it.
So it doesn't mean heart failure, doesn't mean that it stops working all together. It just means that the heart needs extra support to do its job. And what they have said in this new study is that about four thousand of the people who were studied with heart failure were hearing aids. Those who didn't were categorized as having either normal or insufficient or poor hearing. And what they said was on an average follow up of about a dozen years later, about three percent of the people in
the study develop heart failure. People with the insufficient or poor hearing had a fifteen to twenty eight percent higher risk of heart failure compared to those who lived with normal hearing. This is an observational study. It can't prove that hearing loss actually causes heart failure, but that there
is some kind of link there. Now, as we've seen and know, if you've got family that has reached a certain age and hearing starts to go, if they don't stay on top of it, it can be a massive problem and have much more of an impact than just hearing loss.
And that's what I'm curious about.
How does hearing loss impact the other I can understand all of the things breaking down at once, but you're saying that the hearing loss impacts the other organs.
Or the key is the social isolation that comes with hearing problems. And you can hear I mean you can see it in people in their fifties in some cases in their sixties where if they can't hear very well, they're not involved in conversations as much as they were before. They have purposely avoid social situations where they would be maybe surrounded by people that different.
The ice we've talked about being isolated affects your health.
This is kind of the same thing.
Yes, it then can not always, but it can increase the psychological distress that you have. It can and all of that obviously simply the body stress response, the inflammation, the damage to the blood vessels, all of those things trickling down from the social isolation because you can't hear very well, trickles down to the things that make your heart work harder and make your heart need.
Money SAE help. I see that makes sense. That's fascinating.
They said that people who with poor hearing and those who were hearing aids had a similar increase in the heart risk failure, suggesting that while hearing aids can help you, they don't fix those underlying blood flow problems that might
be driving that risk. My dad didn't get hearing aids until the last year of his life, and even then it was a frustrating endeavor because if they're not right, they don't work exactly right, or you'd get the new technology that doesn't you know, is not the same as the older technology. It's it can be super frustrating, which all it does. All that does is add to that psychological stress that's already you know, a burden on your health.
And there's a whole rigmarole of is something wrong with your ears too?
What do you mean? Oh, you know, do.
You have build up in your ears or what have there's that hurdle to get over to on the on the path to hearing aids. Yeah, you know, and plus both can be true.
Some of it. Some of it is stubbornness. Some of it is like I just don't feel like I need hearing it.
Or if you're in that category, if you're in their fifties or your sixties, you think to yourself, hearing aids are for old people.
I don't want to be old people.
Yeah, and that sucks to you know, but guess what, it's better to have the And they're super tasteful these days. Too tasteful they are. You can barely tell them say fashionable. Well I would go that far. But you can wear hearing aids and it's not a big deal. No one, No one knows. No one's going to look at you and think you're old. You know.
It's like when Richie looks at your toes and he's like.
Old, people won't do that when you Okay, to be clear, he didn't say old, he said gray.
That was a really fun conversation. And I know people who have gray hair that are not old at all. I agree.
My dad started getting gray hair when he was like thirty and now he's dead.
See all that worked.
Out that that escalated very quickly.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI Am sixty.
We were talking earlier about the kid who wrote the college essay that was like, no, I'm probably too good for college, but I'll go just for the social aspect of it. Yeah, and got turned away from everything, despite the fact that he's probably a multi millionaire already for his startup that he founded.
You know what's.
Funny is all of the teachers that I had in high school told me I wasn't going to amount to because I didn't want to go to college. And now here I sit in a pizza heavy equipment on the side of the freeway in southern California, making more than those teachers made ever in their lives.
There is a I honor you, sir for actually doing a job and getting dirty and having calluses on your hands.
That's good. Let me see those hands. No, they're all clean. Huh, they're clean. They're clean and saw times.
Okay, I get home from work, I'll walk over to the little dirt patch that's by my lawn in the front, and I'll just stick my hands in the dirt like this.
So when I walk in, the first thing I do is I wash my hands. My wife's like, oh, you must have worked today.
I was like, do you have any projects right now that you're working on at the house.
I've been trying to figure out what to do with the laundry room. I want to take the cabinets out and put new cabinets up and then build a surround around.
The washer and dryer.
But my wife doesn't like the washer and dryer that we curtainly have, so I'm not going to build something that I'm gonna have to then take out them.
We'll go in the go in the shelving around the washer and dryer. What goes in the shelf, Yeah, laundry stuff.
Like there's severick sauce, so there's like one one little cubby that you would need, right, Like you don't need.
A whole walling shelf. No, no, no no.
And the cabinet itself is there's like batteries and light bulbs and pantry style things.
I mean not that cabin try is about a need. It's about building cabinets, which is cool.
And I've got a cabinet there. It's fully, fully functional.
It's just what kind of wood would you use? Pine I would buy a cabinet. I don't think I would. Really, you wouldn't build it?
Well, I don't have my grandfather who wore a similar jacket relaxed build cabinet.
Your grandfather also had a table saw, probably, and I don't have that.
Not that I couldn't get one, but.
Where she could you get one? At the depot. It's just one of those circular things, right, I'm sorry. Do you have a work bench, Yes, you should have a saw.
I agree. I do have a saw.
I have a chop saw, but I don't have I don't have a table saw, which would be different to cut the panels down to make into the cabinets.
I'm sorry, are we not in America?
I don't even know what a table saw is.
You made that very obvious when you did this with your hand.
And this is one of those circular things. Yeah, is it? Is it a circle? The saw blade is a circle? Yes?
And it goes on the table like I have I been advertised to correctly when I look at home depot ads.
I don't know what you're just it goes on a table.
No, like a work I'm imagine with a saw that comes up through the right there. Yeah, that's a saw. That's a table saw, and I don't have that.
So do you build other things with that other than cabin try really anything? You could slice any piece of wood for anything, right right, Yeah.
But I would use it to cut down the plywood panels that would then turn into the box that becomes the cabinet.
Right.
If you were to build your own cabinets, what kind of wood would you use?
Uh?
Quarter inch birch, probably birch, something like that. Yeah, finished on one side, maybe finished on both sides. That's pretty cool. I would love to build something and say I built that. Well, I'm never going to trust you with a saw of any kind. That's probably not going to happen. Maybe we give you a couple of sticks to glue.
Together, postacle sticks. Call it it all right.
We'll talk trending, we'll talk about real things when we come back.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app