This is Josh Marnold, mister money. Talk with Judd Arnold here answer your questions on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and you should position your investment dollars including your IRA in four oh one K. Don't hesitate to give us a call at nine five two nine two five five six o eight. That's nine five two nine two five five six oh eight. You always get straight talk, not sugarcoaded advice. Judd is not here this week. Judd is. I'm going to say out and about, but he's more than out and
about. Jud is out in Las Vegas for this weekend, cheering on one of his good friends, who is one of ten thousand individuals who who have paid ten thousand dollars dinner the World Series of Poker that is going to be held this year at the Horseshoe Casino. The Horseshoe Casino was known as Balleies before it was renamed in his undergoing refurbishment by Caesars. This could be the biggest, or if not the biggest, but one of the biggest World Series
of Poker tournaments ever. And if you do the multiplication, ten thousand people paying ten thousand dollars to enter creates a very large pot of money to be divided amongst the winners. While jud is doing cheering of his friend Yale, I'm sure that Judd is also going to be playing in some cash poker games over the course of the weekend to keep himself sharp for any other poker that
he plays or any other small tournaments that he enters. Judd in the past has entered the World Series of Poker, but he has been eliminated before getting to the money rounds. Yet based on his reports, he has more than made back his entry fee in the cash games that surround the World Series of Poker. Now, this type of money that is going to change hands, the question always comes, well, what would Caesars get of that total pot
for hosting the tournament. Well, as many are aware, the casinos take for their poker rooms that on a regular basis or even this poker tournament, the casinos take is usually minimal, but they will make that up with the number of spectators who are placing bets elsewhere as well as the participants who are will say eating, drinking and watching shows and spending other money at not only the hotel site that being the Horseshoe, but at other other places in in
and around the Las Vegas UH Caesars is one of the larger casino operators UH in in LA in Las Vegas, as well as having casinos outside of Vegas throughout the United States. Biggest operator is MGM Resorts, which has quite a few more hotel more hotels there. Wind Resorts has two hotels UH operating there, and then Pen Gaming has a has one Las Vegas property, but that
is not on the strip. You have other other players that are both small on the Strip and then downtown, but they mostly appeal not to a national clientele but more to a local clientele. And that includes casinos like Balleis,
Red Rocks Casinos, and and Boyd Gaming. So there is, as we say, plenty of plenty of places tibet both in the casino and then outside with online gaming and online gaming has been gaining traction across the across the United States, though not all states have approved online gaming and and or sports betting. Of the leading sports betting company is to me, my favorite happens to be Draft King, which I and my clients have a have a stake in.
I also have a stake in Caesar's Caesar's Palace, but the and Draft Kings also competes with Fan Duel, which might be a little bit bigger. Fan Duel is owned by a British company called flutter but Flutterers has been considering spinning that off. The other big casino operation with um we'll say off track, off track bet and online gambling is Churchill Downs, but they have fewer locations than They're most known for horse racing, and Churchill Downs has done extremely
well as a stock until we'll say until recently. The gambling space I'm going to say has been very shoppy, but did have a really big run during the COVID period as online gambling and sports betting started to become more popular and states were starting to approve online gambling and sports betting. I'll say since we'll say March of two thousand twenty one, most of these companies have came way
down and have now slowly slowly moved moved up. I happen to like like the casinos as I've covered for a lot of years because it's one part of the leisure space that I've tended to focus on. Number one, number two regardless of of the economy, where the economy is strong, whether the economy is weak, people are still placing placing bets. Las Vegas, this is a primary place, has been reasonably strong with I'll say very few exceptions.
One of the exceptions during was during the government mandated shutdown during COVID. But Las Vegas has continued to do well since he has convention activity has expanded. And then add in now football with the Las Vegas Raiders really the previously known as the Oakland Raiders and Los Los Angeles Raiders being in Las Vegas, you have the hockey team which just won the Stanley Cup and soon to be baseball
operating there, and you could have basketball operating as well. And then you have Las Vegas still a home for the Ultimate Fight Champion Champions or the uf UFC. So I'll say gambling is I'll say gambling sports betting is not going away. Whether it's a great moneymaker, don't know, but the casinos will
at least get some piece of that. I have left out two companies really that have big exposure in Macau, Las Vegas, Sands and Win, though I did mention when having an operation still having two hotels in Las Vegas, but both Win and Las Vegas sands get the bulk of their revenue from from Macau, and Macau has not been as big a growth opportunity right now because
of issues relating to China's reopening. But this area of investment, or this focus in this particular sector of the we'll say of the marketplace to me remains a place that could be a part of a portfolio, particularly if you see the opportunities on a longer term basis as I do. This is Josh Arnold mister money Talk with Judd Arnold, always here to help you nine five two nine to five five six or eight. You always get straight talk, never
sugar cooded advice. This is Josh Arnold, missterr Money Talk with Judge Arnold, here to answer your questions on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, how you should position you're your portfolio, including your IRA in four oh one K, don't hesitate to give us a call at nine five two nine two five five six o eight. That's nine to five two nine two five five six oh eight. Do remember the usual disclaimers apply past performances, no guarantee of
future results. There's always risk in investing the opinions that we share our RS and RS alone. Any questions that you might have, you can always contact
us or any other professional. This past week, market seemed to be focusing on what Fed governors could say or we're saying, or how the FED might react to to jobs numbers, whether it be the ADP report, whether it be the FED minutes which came out on Wednesday, or the overall jobs number that came out on on Friday. And there continues to be UH speculation, continues to be speculation about the direction of the of the FED, but I'm not sure what the speculation is. As that is, Jay Powell has said
and the FED minutes seemed to follow on with that that the FED is still very concerned about inflation. The Fed is still on we'll say, on inflation watch, and the Fed still believes that much work needs to be done to bring inflation down to their target of two percent. So a few weeks ago, Jay pale a speech indicated that the fit UH could could raise rates at least twice more this year, whether that is twenty five basis points, whether
that's fifty basis points at their next meetings. Now that depends, of course, on the data that the FED will say the FED reads and or observes well some of the data that that has come out, would I'll say, could give the FED reason to continue raising more than twenty five basis points at their next meeting, though the betting odds show that the FED could raise at their next meeting in in the next week twenty five basis points, not fifty
basis fifty basis points. But definitely the Fed is not going to pause in July as they did as they did in June with their intrast rate mode. I am of the belief, which we've shared, that the FED has gone overboard in raising rates. Will say, too much, too much, and too fast without pausing enough to see the effects of their interest rate policies.
And the FED still still believes, though commodity price inflation has come down and come down significantly, said still is stuck that housing prices still have not come down despite their raising interest rates. Indeed, housing is still pretty pretty strong. Demand for housing is still still strong, and one of these stronger sectors of the market. Again we've covered this before has been housing related stocks. Just witness Toll Brothers, Paulty Homes, and even i'll call online real estate
broker Zillo and their their stock performances. Paulty has been very we'll say more optimistic than pessimistic about housing even going forward, as they say that buyers have been getting used to higher interest rates and want to buy buy houses now.
Paulty's cost for building have come down as lumber costs have come down, metals costs have come down, etc. Uh Wage costs are still up, and I'll touch that in in a minute, but the and the average selling price of the Poulte's homes has come has come down along with you know, with commodity prices, and Poulte is still building and has a look, say, a backlog of houses, of backlog of orders for for houses told Brothers the
same. So depending on the part of the country you're living in, there is definitely a shortage of houses and that could keep house prices um up more
than the FED. The FED would like. And housing uh is is a good third of the CPI report which is going to come out next next week, and investors will key in on that if if the CPI number is still showing significant growth, that is that will definitely hurt both the stock market and the bond market, and investors will will seek um, We'll say, seek the safety more of cash or play the short side of the market because of the belief that the FED will be much stronger than than had been in anticipated
in terms of their interest rate policy. When it comes to wages, well, the jobs jobs numbers that that came out still show rising wages, although the wage increases are a lot lower, maybe than had been expected. So the traders market traders, both on the stock side and on the bond side, continue to fear rising rates due to higher wages, and the FED says, oh my goodness, higher wages and job growth is not something that they
they really want. FED has continued to talk about wanting higher unemployment numbers, but unemployment numbers are not are not going up in the matter that the FED would the FED would like. I'm of the opinion and again shared with you that the FED should be more concerned and that is one of their mandates is full employment. I think the FED should be more concerned about keeping people working
than seeing unemployment go up. The latest jobs numbers one on the from the small to medium sized private payrolls report from ADP showed a pretty big increase in June and leisure and hospitality jobs, as well as construction jobs. The Jobs report coming out on Friday, which covered all employment both public and private, showed a slight decrease in construction jobs, and showed an increase in government government jobs both state, federal, and local, and showed an increase in healthcare
related jobs and some construction. Now, some of the construction jobs going up are definitely part of the we'll call it the stimulus that is being provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act definitely done an awful lot of construction workers to build manufacturing plans and increase the infrastructure of the economy. And to me, that's a good thing, not a bad thing, even if it
means the Fed keeps rates higher for longer. This is Josh Arnold missed or money talk here to answer your questions with on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, how you should position your retirement accounts, including your IRA in four oh one K give a call nine to five two nine two five five six oh
eight. You'll always get straight talk, not sugar cooded advice. This Josh Arnold mess your money talk with Judd Arnold here to answer your questions on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, how you should position your investment dollars including your IRA and four oh one K. Don't hesitate to give us a call at nine five two nine two five five six oh eight. That's nine to five two nine two five five six oh eight. You always get straight talk,
not sugar coded advice. The opinions that we are providing our r's alone. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Markets are always changing. The
opinions we share are rs and RS alone. Well. Market this week did have we'll say a lot of ups and downs and did finish on a down going into going into the weekend on continued worries about the FED and interest rates, and concerns about the consumer Price Index coming out next week and what the FED could do with interest rates, though bets are that the FED is going to increase rates twenty five basis points for a quarter of one percent at their
next meeting in a little over a week. Bank earnings start the earnings parade at the end of next week. Banks have been we'll call it underperformers to say the least, or maybe I should say serious underperformers this year. I am I am not jud is not bank investor. So it's an area that we have will say avoided. Banks and our view have had a difficult time
making money in both low interest rate environments and high interest rate environments. And I do know that there are many many investors who have said, when interest rates are going up, you've got to be in banks. Well, if interest rates are going going up, yes, the banks can probably make make a little bit more money on lending lending it out, But if the banks are sitting on bonds in their portfolio, as interest rates go up, bond
prices go down. This past week, on fear of interest rates moving up, bonds sold off and bond prices were down. At least bond prices on the long end we're down about two and a half percent, which is to me significant because the only way that you can make that up is for interest rates to come down. The ten year treasury increased in yield this week from three point six percent of just a tad over four percent, So the ten year treasury came down a bunch. The two year treasury um that moved over
five percent. Shortly, they'll finish the week out at four point nine nine percent. Yes, bonds, I'll say, bonds have had a difficult time this year, and bond funds also a difficult time. Again, jud and I are not not only not bank investors, we're not bond investors. As bonds are going to just move with interest rates, and interest rates we need
to come down significantly for bond prices to go up. I do know that there have been several large, large firms that have been recommending reducing stock exposure and increasing bond exposure on the belief that the FED is close to the end of their interest rate raising cycle. But that's not a not necessarily a bet that I'd want to want to make. And that's still you know, a long I'll say, not a long, long way out, but that's still
a ways ways out. I'm also of the belief that we're not not necessarily going to be tipping into a recession. A recession defined as two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth. Well, we had that a year ago, so the first two quarters of twenty twenty two we had negative GDP growth. Since then, the GDP number has been increasing, not decreasing. And if that's the case, then that would indicate that the economy is not in
a recessionary mode, but more in a recovery mode. And if we're in the early process of a recovery, all right, that would that would bode well for for stocks overall. Are we in a bull market? Well, I've been called a will say a perpetual bull because there is as as one as Jim Kramer of of TV and CNBC fame has said, there's always a
bullmarket somewhere, he'll try to find it. Well. I am of the belief that that stocks, over time, and that could be over a long period of time, have tended to go up more than they have gone down, and in looking for companies that have rising sales and rising earnings, you
could could be rewarded for that. Again over over a period of time, I have favored or have focused my investing in companies around the Internet, leisure related businesses, China related businesses, and real assets which you know could include energy or real estate, and then doing some short term trading. Judd has tended to focus on small to mid size companies. My focus has been more
on larger, larger capitalization, growth growth companies. So that's just been a little I'll say, that's just been our philosophy and our strategy for a very very long period of time, and that has has done well for us. And but that again is not to say that's going to happen all the time or every day, because as we've said before, markets do fluctuate. Stocks fluctuate both on the upside and on the on the downside. But in any
case, bank earnings are going to start the earnings parade next week. We are not a bank investors and all have to wait for some of our companies to start to start reporting. But in the internet the space, uh, This past week, Meta also known as Face Facebook, introduced their new Instagram application called Thread, which is to compete with Twitter. Oh, that could be a very interesting competition, though it might take a little bit long long
to play to play out. That could um that could be the say cage match that has been talked about between Zuckerberg and Musk, but not going to take place in a cage and take place online. Thread introduced on Thursday, already has seventy million subscribers signed signed up. Well, that's a big, big number in a short period of time. Analysts have said that, um, well, this may not add significantly to Meta's earnings, it could incrementally.
You know, add over the course of the year at least another five billion dollars in revenue to the UH to Meta, and that could help continue to boost boost the stock Metas Meta's stock is trading at a price earnings multiple of seventeen would makes it probably the least expensive on a price earnings multiple basis of any of the large capitalization technology companies. But Meta is gets their earnings from advertising only, and there is plenty of competition for that advertising dollar.
This is Josh Arnold, mister money talk here to answer your questions on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, how you should position your investment dollars including your IRA in four oh one K. Don't hesitate to give us a call at nine five two nine two five five six o eight. This is John Arnold, mister monney talk here to answer your questions on stocks, bond, mutual
funds. How you should position your investment dollars including your IRA at four oh one K. Don't hesitate to give us a call at nine five two nine two five five six o eight. That's nine to five two five five six ozho eight. You'll always get straight talk, not sugar coded advice. Do bear bear in mind the opinions that are shared on this program are ours and
hours alone. Markets do fluctuate, UH stocks, UH and bonds. Mutual funds also go go up and down, and the usual disclaimers apply past performance do not guarantee future results. Well again, an interesting past past week on Wall Street with the Fed. The Fed in in focus more than anything else. UH Mark Zuckerberg's uh Meta introduced thread through Instagram to compete with Elon Musk's
Twitter, and that could be an interesting an interesting bet. Microsoft continues to get some positive positive press and numerous analysts think that Microsoft is going to be the big, big winner in regenerative art artificial intelligence because they we'll say they
have the first mover advantage. Price targets for Microsoft have continued to move move higher, and several analysts have said that Microsoft could be the next three trillion dollars company, following favorite Apple, which hit three million or three trillion dollars market capitalization last week only to finish finished this current week just under that that
number. Microsoft is, you know, has always been a market leader, does have a significant base of customers built in and Microsoft's moved to ALFE to funding open AI to add chat GPT to their bing search engine seemed to be what kicked off the recent move in NASDEK stocks and in particular companies that could be involved with artificial intelligence or regenerative artificial intelligence and any company that has in
the last two months even talked about artificial intelligences has gotten a nice, a nice boost up. Do bear in mind that revenues from artificial intelligence or that part of the business aren't going to be hitting the market in this coming quarter or even in the next quarter, but it's going to be over the course, over the course of the next year plus. Regenerative artificial intelligence is very very interesting. Well Apple, Apple calls a machine learning. Is it be
all an end all? Know? It has been around for um a lot of years and there has been much promise in artificial intelligence and or machine learning and what it can do will say, to help productivity gains and help people
with u with making making decision decisions over time. Yes, there's some some issues that they can be used nefariously, and many of the companies involved in this are pushing for regulation around artificial intelligence at least to put we'll say, some guidelines for going forward, which I think is a UH is A is
a positive positive. But the larger, larger companies, whether it be a Microsoft or a Google, a Facebook and Apple or an Amazon, UH, they they probably will be UM winners is i'll say longer term winners given the resources that they have UH to develop UH I'll say, to develop the capabilities UH for for using for using this and the ability to UH either attract subscribers or more customers on an on an ad hoc basis than some other companies would.
Now, this is also going to extend. This artificial intelligence is going to extend the companies like Adobe. It will definitely extend or or or provide need for more cyber security companies, whether it's a CrowdStrike, cyber Arc, or Palo Alto Networks. You could see UM salesforce, dot Com coming out with products involved with this as could you use a Snowflake or Oracle or Cisco. So there are a lot of companies that are going to be involved.
It is said that the hardware you know to to make this stuff go because it definitely takes a lot of we'll say horsepower. Right now, that's the leader in that is on the video and then followed by advanced micro devices. These these companies are expensive on both a price to sales and a price to earnings basis, and then you're going to need plenty of storage um for the artificial intelligence, which would lead back to many of the cloud cloud company providers.
Well, that comes back to Microsoft's z or Amazon Amazon to Amazon Web Services, and Google's company as well as Oracles stores Store or cloud as well. But it's going to be an interesting place to place over the next several years. But it is not going to be a straight up move, and I would urge, We'll say urge a little bit of caution along with the
you know along the way. Given all the excitement, say, this is Josh Arnold, mister money talk here to answer your questions on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, how you should position your investment dollars, including your IRA and four oh one K. Never hesitate to give us a call nine five two nine two five five six oh eight. You always get straight talk, not sure coded advice. Please make sure that you fund your four oh one
K and IRA. Josh Arnold Investment Consultant is a registered investment advisor located in a state of Minnesota. All securities discussed are for informational purposes only. Investing contains risks, including risk of loss. Consult your investment professional before making any decisions about your investment portfolio.