cover of episode 1 in 5 Americans Are Doom Spending

1 in 5 Americans Are Doom Spending

2025/2/25
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我注意到一位投资者正在寻求做空Tempest AI,这是一家最近上市的公司,股价近期大幅上涨,但公司目前并不盈利。考虑到即将到来的六个月禁售期,以及人工智能领域整体的市场情绪变化,我认为这是一个不错的做空机会。 此外,我还想谈谈当前的"末日消费"现象。根据CreditCards.com的报告,五分之一的美国人由于对未来的焦虑而囤积商品和过度消费。这种行为与通货膨胀有关,并且会进一步加剧通货膨胀。消费者正在提前购买商品以避免关税上涨带来的价格上涨,这导致了供给减少和价格上涨的恶性循环。许多人正在使用信用卡来支付这些额外支出,这可能会导致他们未来陷入更大的债务困境。

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On radio, on YouTube, streaming live on investtalk.com, and for our podcast subscribers, this is InvestTalk. Independent thinking, shared success. InvestTalk is made possible by KPP Financial, a registered investment advisor firm serving clients throughout the United States.

Here is KPP Financial Chief Executive Officer, Financial Advisor, Justin Klein. Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome back to InvestTalk. This is our Monday, February 24th, 2025 edition of InvestTalk. Appreciate you all tuning in to this hour with me and my job each and every day.

My name, Luke, at least, is to become help you become a better investor, give you some perspective and some data that you can bring back to your personal situation and improve it. And it's one step at a time. It's not something that's going to this is a get rich slow type of endeavor, not get rich quick. If you're here to, you know, make the big bucks and do that overnight, you know, you probably want to go to the casino.

If you want to learn how to be a better investor, to make smart decisions, to avoid pitfalls, capitalize opportunities, this is the place for you. So that's what this hour will be about. I'm Justin Klein, and I'm here every weekday with Luke, like I said, in order to further your investment education.

And we do that by mainly answering your finance and investment questions. So I encourage you to reach out at any time with your question 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can talk to us live. I love that four to five Pacific time or after hours, you can leave your message and we will answer it on a future show.

Now, in just a bit, we'll talk about today's market performance and run down the show topics. But as usual, we'll tackle this caller question first. Hey, Justin and Luke. Name is Brian calling you from Virginia. I was curious what you thought of Tempest AI, ticker TNM. It had a huge run up recently, and I was thinking about it for a short. If so, if it was a good one, what numbers are you thinking to get in on that? Thank you. And out. Interesting. Okay. So...

A rarity here, we have an investor looking to short a name. This is a recent IPO and it's ran up. It doesn't make money, even though it's projected to make money. And you're getting into, let's see, it went IPO back in, what was that, July? So we're getting into the six month lockup period. I'm not sure exactly what it is for this name, but it's usually about six months. Once again, it doesn't make any money.

And it's starting to roll over with a lot of the AI space. Looks like it's already down 12% after hours. Pull this up here. Yeah, I didn't even see that until just now. And so, yeah, I mean, it continues to weaken after hours. And this is very common. You know, you get a name that goes public in a time when this theme is popular. When everyone in the mother's talking about AI.

And they spin a story for the average investor, institutional investors, and they get people to buy it. And during the first six months, it tends to trend higher. Why? Because they tend to keep the float small. So people that want to buy it, there's not a lot of shares out there to buy and sell. And so there's not a lot of sellers until the six month mark, locker period ends. And then those insiders, they cash out. And this company is currently worth $1,000.

11 billion dollars in market cap and they don't make money it's all about a story and the share count continues to go higher so yeah i think this is a great short those tempest a-i-t-t-e-m is the symbol there's a lot of ground to cover over the next 45 minutes or so and we will cover as much as we can but our main focus point will be one in five americans are doomed spending

and a lot of this has to do with inflation so we'll dig into what consumers are doing and it brings back one of the original lessons i learned in macroeconomics which was in an inflationary environment it feeds on itself and this is a good example of why okay so we'll look at that also has value investing been defined in the wrong way maybe it should be

Another metric besides book value. So we'll look at that as well. And then QT, quantitative trading. I don't even know this, but the Fed has been winding down its balance sheet, allowing its mortgage-backed securities to roll off. That hasn't been doing it at a fast pace, but it's happening. And that is money or that is liquidity coming out of the economy as a whole. So at some point, they're going to stop.

They're going to have to stop. And there's been some hints that they're going to do that. So we'll look at that story and what that might mean for liquidity and a tool in their toolbox to support things over the coming 12, 18 months. And then lastly, you take money of your retirement funds. There's some hidden tax traps that you need to avoid. Make sure you don't make the wrong decision.

Now we have a lot of ground to cover. Let's see. We're also going to get to voice bank questions. One is on short interest. The other is on Franco, Nevada. And the other are questions that came in via the comment section over on our YouTube channel as well. And of course, I welcome your finance and investment questions right now at 888-99-CHART. But we're heading into a short break. And on the other side, I'll take a look at today's market activity and then play more of your questions here on InvestTalk.

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2025 rolls on and you might have some fresh questions for Justin or Luke. Call InvestTalk 888-99-CHART.

Let's take a quick look at the market today. It was certainly red overall, but definitely some pockets of green. NASDAQ was down 1.2%. S&P was down about half a percent. And that's because the Mag 7 continues to be weak. Tesla down over 2%. Amazon down nearly 2%. Meta down about two and a quarter. Broadcom down nearly five. NVIDIA down three. Microsoft down one.

Really, the only one bucking the trend here was Apple up about 63 basis points there. But if you look across the market in different sectors, there's definitely some pockets of strength. Healthcare did very well today. Your consumer staples also continue to remain strong. Nike up nicely today. And

Once again, there's some pockets of strength. McDonald's was positive. What else do we have? Disney up 2%. So the consumer space is doing fairly well outside of the major tech names. And so you had Walmart down 1% again, HD down, Home Depot, sorry, HD, down nearly 1%. So definitely some weakness out there overall, but, you know,

you are once again, seeing that pockets of weakness money flowing into those non-cyclical areas of the market.

And one of the reasons is because over the weekend, it was a report came out that Microsoft is looking to trim its investment from its massive 80 billion dollar CapEx target that it has. And, you know, they're canceling leases on some of their data center capacity. So that's really one issue. You had gold up point three percent on the day.

The dollar was roughly flat. Bitcoin was down a bit and actually was down a little bit more after hours. Yields were broadly lower in treasuries. And so that was that was certainly a good thing. And there's increasing likelihood that there will be a Fed rate cut over the next few meetings. No longer pushed to the back half of the year. The likelihood will be in the first half of this year.

And so and really it's on the back of that economic data last week that was definitely soft, especially the consumer sentiment number that this goes into the the doge effect. Right. Elon coming in talking about cutting a lot of jobs.

And if you work in government, what are you going to do? You're probably going to pause and say, hold on. I don't really want to make any big spending until I figure out whether I'm going to have a job or not. Right. So that's number one. And this goes back to, you know, Trump is a disruptor for better or for worse. And from an economic standpoint, you it's order of operation. I said this when he was elected again was interesting.

He has certain ideas that are, that can stimulate the economy tax cuts. For example, his other ideas that are certainly can, can slow economic growth, make of tariffs. And now you have the, you have Doge. And so all of those can be a big drags on the economy, but it's a matter of order of operation. And I think the market was hoping that it would get to some sort of, uh,

tax cut deal relatively quickly. And that would kind of juice expectations for earnings this year and especially next year and counter any drop in spending or tariffs that might worry the market. And so right now we're not really getting that, right? We're getting the inverse. We're getting those tariffs. We're getting Doge. And those are

aspects of his agenda that certainly are weighing on the economy as a whole. And so you're starting to see that in the trends and markets. I am for the first time in a while becoming mildly bearish on the markets. It's really because of the leading

names in the markets rolling over, you know, from Nvidia to Amazon to Tesla to Microsoft, even Google, right? And so these are the Mag7 names that are certainly having some trouble in the near term. So that's where we are for markets today on February 24th, 2025. Now let's keep things moving and get a fresh question from the comment section over on our YouTube channel.

Kevin Gucho says, I was wondering what your thoughts were on the company Powell Industries. They recently started a position in a current downtrend from an all-time high. I think it has more room to fall, which I can stomach. Do you think Powell is a decent play or a healthy company like I do? Now, let's take a look at POWL is the symbol. And this is one of those names that has been helped by the ARP.

AI capacity build out in a big, big way. You had earnings in 2022 of only 35 cents.

In 2023, it's $4.50. And then $12.29 last year, expected to make $14 per share this year and $14.80 next year. So already earnings were expected slow. But if things shift with the AI infrastructure demands, I think that flatness in earnings going forward could turn into negative.

And you're already seeing that here down 4% on the day. What do they do? They develop, design, manufacture, and service custom engineered equipment and systems for electrical energy distribution, control, and monitoring. So this goes back to all the things that go into building AI data centers. And they take a lot of power. You need a lot of power to run them. And you need...

sophisticated electrical systems in order to make sure there's not power surges and there's not problems with the whole infrastructure and power industry supplies those type of those products. And so

You know, I think this has more downside to go. Let's take a look at the current chart here. Yeah, it is getting down into some support. I will say that it's had already had a big drop from around three hundred sixty dollars per share to one hundred and sixty nine dollars per share at the close today. I would say this next support level is around one hundred and forty two.

Okay. Now it's getting a lot more attractive than it had been. I will say that it's, and it's healthy. So, you know, I think the demand for their products is not going away. It just may slow, but that might be somewhat priced in, but there is major, major support here right around the 150 level. So if you're looking to pick up more, that's probably where I'd pick it up. Thanks for the call.

They're moving into a break and still to come, my focus point and more answers to your questions and a YouTube question as well. So give me a call now at 888-99-CHART. Let's face it, InvestTalk listeners, life can be unpredictable, but securing your family's financial future doesn't have to be. That's where Fabric by Gerber Life comes in.

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Let's go talk to Jordan in Dana Point, looking at ATKR. You own it or looking to buy it? Yeah, I own it. It's been not performing very well. So I'm wondering if I should cut my losses or hang on to it. Yeah, I think pretty simple here. I would cut my losses, you know,

This is a name who's similar to the last stock we talked about. Powell is that, you know, it's in the electrical and mechanical products industry for non-residential and industrial markets. And so they sell similar type of products, but their performance from a chart perspective, as well as a business perspective, are a lot worse than Powell and many others in the industry.

Their earnings peaked out in 2022 at $21.54. This year it's just earned only $6.23 down 57% from last year. And it doesn't look like it's going to get better next year either.

So the technicals remain poor and you, you know, a lot of times you look at previous earnings and you think, oh, it looks cheap based on that. But when earnings are dropping 57%, that means cash flow is probably dropping a similar amount and it's no longer cheap. Now, the good thing is it has a pretty good balance sheet. You know, it's still a solid business, but it's bad.

It's having that reversion to the mean moment. And I think if you want exposure to the space, there are better ones out there. And I would just take my losses and move on and wait for everything to kind of settle out within this space and find a reasonable expectation for future demand for these type of products. So, yeah, I would move on from Atcor, A-T-K-R. Thanks, Justin. Appreciate it. No problem. Thanks for the call.

now let's pivot over to another youtube question and sue connor says can you please talk about balt the balt etf explain advantages and disadvantages of investing part of my portfolio in balt balt is the symbol this is a really interesting one there's been a lot of these etfs that they

They're great at marketing. It kind of reminds me of annuities, how it's really easy to spin the positives of a particular strategy and ignore the negatives. And that's kind of what they're taking that strategy and bringing it over to the ETF space. And so that's really the problem here with this type of name. And what it is, is it's kind of like a buffer ETF where it owns the S&P.

So nothing special there. And it's buying downside protection, 20% downside protection on the S&P every quarter. And then it's taking the dividends and the dividends plus what it looks like they're doing is they're selling call options to the upside as well to finance the put options that they're buying on the S&P. That's what it looks like here.

And it's a simple strategy that you can go do at home. Just go buy the S&P, buy a put option going out three months is what they do. And every three months you renew that put option and you sell the call option at a certain level to finance the downside protection. And it's simple, but you're getting charged 69 basis points in order to do that. Way too expensive.

now if you don't want to do it yourself that's fine but you know it's also what about the upside you're capping the upside is this the is this the best portfolio to hold just the s p would a more value or cash flow based strategy be better long term probably and then you go look at the performance and it's not that good so far this year it's only up one percent last year was up ten percent or the market do right um so you know it's fairly steady

But over the long term, you're not going to do nearly as well as a lot of other investments. Now, could this be part of a portfolio? Sure. Could it be a way to get equity exposure with more limited downside? Sure. One of the things I don't like about it is that it's looking to guard against 20% drawdowns in the S&P in any given quarter.

The S&P during the financial crisis was down 50% peak to trough in a little over a year. I think it was like 15 months peak to trough. So really, this is crash protection. And you're which is, you know, you're going to have something as bad as 08. Probably not because those in government are trying to avoid that. Right. Look at COVID. They came in and save things pretty rapidly by spending money doing QE, etc. And they'll probably do that again.

And so I think it's just playing on your probably fear. And once again, there's nothing wrong with using part of it, using it as part of a portfolio. Excuse me. But as a just buy and hold strategy, you're definitely going to underperform over the long term. Now we're moving to a break. Now my focus point is coming up next, but so are your calls. So give me a call now at 888-99-CHART.

InvestTalk is ready 24-7 for your finance and investment questions. I'm hoping you'll give me your take on Ormat Technologies, O-R-A. Is it a good idea to sell your losses in a Roth IRA and just use whatever you have left to reinvest into better stocks? Don't forget to call InvestTalk, 888-99-CHART.

Invest Talk. Your questions are free. The answers are unbiased. Justin Klein is here now. 888-99-CHART. Now let's go discuss our main focus point for today, and that has to do with the fact that one in five Americans are doom spending, doom spending. And this goes back to what I was saying at the top of the show, which is when inflation rises,

perks up the consumer notices and they tend to hoard in many ways and that shrinks supply then that increases prices and you have this doom loop shall we say in inflation now currently 19 percent this is a risk this is a a survey done by creditcards.com

And they showed that 19% of respondents say they're buying significantly more or slightly more. So 5% for significantly more, 14% for slightly more than they usually do because of the Trump tariffs. So people are paying attention and thinking, hey, I want to get ahead of this. I want to buy before the tariffs push prices higher. Now, when you're talking about large purchases, 22% say they're doing it because of tariffs.

Actually, they said tariffs had a big impact. 30% said it had some impact. Okay. So right there, that's some or a lot over 52%. 22% said there was no impact at all from the tariffs. And 26 or 22% said not much. 26%, not at all. So over half are buying big ticket items a bit ahead of time in order to potentially avoid tariffs. So that's number one. Four in 10 Americans are also stockpiling.

items such as toilet paper that's 72 percent food 76 and half are stocking up on medical supplies 44 also 44 are also buying over-the-counter prescription medications as well now when they when they ask how they characterize their spending habits they say it is doom spending

5% says definitely is. 13% say they probably are doing so. That's about 18%. That's about one in five. Now, could this be partisan? We've seen that in a big way. These surveys lean one way or the other and drastically flip as soon as one party's in the White House and not the other.

Now, how are they financing this spending, this extra spending, pulling this spending forward? Well, 28% say they're relying on credit cards for most of their purchases. And 34% say they are likely to worsen or go into more credit card debt this year to secure those particular items so that they avoid paying up again, right? A higher percentage, 25% imports from Mexico or Canada, supposedly.

And people want to avoid that. They're okay because I'd rather pay 10%, 15% interest over the next year than 25%, 30%, 40% more. And remember, when you're looking at tariffs, it's not just 25% because retailers are going to double that. So in many instances, it can be up to 50% higher costs for things that now cost 25% more to import. So you can use a simple example.

something that used to cost a hundred dollars to import and it would they'd sell that to a retailer for 200 this is how retail works and then they sell the retailer sells that to the consumer for 400. that's a typical model for a consumer product now if that goes from 100

to 125 to import. That means they sell it to the, to maintain their margins. They need to sell it to for two 50 to the, uh, retailer. And then they sell it for 500. So that's a, that's how these things can escalate. Okay. And, uh, that's what a lot of, a lot of consumers are trying to wrestle with and figure out exactly whether they want to pull that, uh,

pull that purchase forward or wait. And a lot of them are pulling it forward and that exacerbates inflation.

Now let's pivot back to the Best Stock Voice Bank for a fresh question that came in earlier on the 888-99 chart. Hi, my name is Pancho from Huron, California, and I'm calling about FNV, Franco, Nevada. I need a little gold play in my portfolio, and why not have time to buy it then now? And I just want to say thank you for everything you're doing, and it is now a good time to get into that gold play of FNV. If not, where's a good support to get in at? Thank you.

All right, looking at Franco Nevada, this is a name that we've owned for a long time, and it's one of our favorite precious metal plays that are out there. It's not a minor, but it's a streaming company. Basically, they go and they help. They invest in the development of mines around the world with all these different mining companies. And then they take a cut of what comes out of those mines. And this helps diversify the industry.

spread the risk around for the miners in order to help with the cost of getting those mines up and running. But for Franco Nevada and a lot of the other streaming companies out there, it's, it's a nice consistent cashflow. Now it's still correlated to gold because it's,

You know, they get a certain percentage of the gold that comes out of the ground, but then they still sell it for that higher price. And so it is correlated and it is a very good business, much better than a lot of the pure play miners that you might see out there. So that's why we like Franco, Nevada. You know, gold has continued to.

Franklin, I did have some issues with one of their minds, but they're a diversified company because they have a lot of different minds that they have basically stakes in. And so they did have some Central American ones that were under, um,

just had jurisdictional problems to say that i don't want to get too into the weeds on that but they're resolving those looking to resolve those and i think they will over time uh so that's why it's actually underperformed over the last year or so but it is starting to bounce back and frankly i think gold will continue higher and i think the miners will continue to get more money flowing there so i wouldn't be too i wouldn't wait too long uh to get into franken nevada if you were looking to do so thanks for the call

Now, I hope you've been telling your friends and family that you can check us out over on our YouTube channel in video form. I have charts. You can see my face. And we can you can really see what I'm talking about with context. And we are getting hundreds and hundreds of new people there every single week.

And we appreciate all of you. And we get questions in maybe the comments section. So we always try to get to those. So let's grab one of those right now. Hey, guys. Chuck from Clayton. Thanks for the show.

Short interest. Here you guys talk about almost every stock that you guys debrief on. Did a little research myself and not finding a real, what number is bad? What number do we want to stay away from somewhere? Does it depend on the type of stock we're looking at? Or is 6% short interest a high amount? What do you guys take on short interest? Thanks, guys. Okay, simple. Short interest is how many shares are out there borrowed, okay? Okay.

And this can be fuel to the fire if a stock rallies. Okay? Because remember, when you're shorting a stock, you have unlimited losses, unlimited potential for losses. And so stock goes up, well, you could be forced to buy back the shares and that kind of adds fuel to the fire. Now, what am I looking for, for a level that is elevated, that could spark some sort of short covering rally?

15, 20% of the float or higher. And the floats is the money, the shares that are out there being traded. There can be other shares outstanding that are kind of locked up. But what's the percentage of the float that is actively being shorted? And that's what I'd be looking for. Once again, 15, 20% more. Those are elevated levels where...

Hey, this is at risk of a short squeeze. So hope that helps. Hope that simplifies it for you on selling short and short interest. Let's make it two callers in a row from 888-99-CHART.

Hi there. This is Matt from Connecticut calling about ticker symbol CMCO, Columbus McKinnon Corporation. It's an industrial machinery company and took a huge nosedive after earnings and also talk of buying another company and the market didn't like it. I went from about $36 to $20 a share and just wondering what I should do with it. It wasn't a big part of my...

portfolio only about 3%, so it didn't take too much of a hit, but just wondering what your thoughts are with Columbus McKinnon and also what to do when a stock goes down about 40% in a day. Thanks. Wow.

That is a big, big loss. Let me take a look here. This is a small cap name, $528 million market cap. Now was not long ago, about a billion dollars, but obviously down pretty dramatically. What do they do? The design manufacturer market intelligent motion solutions. Okay. So yeah, they're in automation business. That's typically good. I like the business they tend to be in. Oh, the issue here has to do with debt.

and cash flow. And so that's the first lesson that you need to learn is that this is these small names that have a lot of debt on their balance sheet. And when they, when their cash flow tends to disappear, so does the stock price. Okay. And that's the issue is that cash flow is threatening to turn into negative territory. Might've already done it on a quarterly basis.

Yeah, quarterly cash flow went to six million from a high back in 2023 of 63 million. OK, so down dramatically. I'm not sure how they guided. That could be another issue that, hey, it's not doing well and things are not going to get better anytime soon. And in the market says, OK, well, if you're not going to start producing decent cash flow, then you're not going to be able to support this debt.

And that means bankruptcy. And you look at last quarter, revenue is down 8%, earnings down 24%, and estimates for this year and next year continue to go down. So if this didn't have any debt in its balance sheet, then I'd be like, okay, I'd want to dig deeper. But it's pretty clear the market is now afraid of a bankruptcy here. So unless you have confidence that that cash flow is going to bounce back, that what's changed with the business over the past couple of quarters is going to

flip back positive i would just move on i would sell it uh take your losses and find a name that has a good balance sheet and so you know this is a small this is a perfect example why small caps tend to be more more risky because they have rougher balance sheets and more volatile cash flow situations and so when you're playing in the small in the small caps

You have to be very aware of the balance sheet risk because they can't just turn to the market like most large cap companies that have a good relationship with Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or whatever and go issue more bonds or more equity very easily. Their access to capital is not the same.

And so it's vital that you have when you invest in small cap companies, that they have good balance sheets. And that's the lesson here that you should bring home and implement. And hopefully everyone else can learn from that as well. Now, let's go touch a bit on that. Let's pivot over to value investing. And value investing is starting to get a bit better in its...

performance compared to growth over the past couple of years, especially as interest rates have gone up. But what people are not paying attention enough to is not just book value. That's the classic metric for value investing. Companies are trading near liquidation value. The problem is that that paper that was published, that was Eugene Fama, that was in 1992. So over 30 years ago.

And what it showed was that those that traded at low book values were outperformed. They destroyed companies that traded at high book values. Problem is they were looking at data that was the 50 years prior. And obviously businesses changed in a gigantic way since because more of a company's value is not just on a brand, but on intellectual property.

and that is more difficult to really value but some recent analysis has kind of updated this and said yes over the long term book value is important but what's even more important cash flow and cash flow yield cash flow yield and so why warren buffett you know still a great investor in many respects the old adage of buying things near book value is kind of antiquated and when you

When you buy companies with the highest free cash flow yield compared to the lowest free cash flow yield, you're talking about over from 1991 to 2024, you're talking about in the top one, first decile, top 10%, 17%. That was the average return. The lowest decile, 3.7%.

So you can see a drastic difference. And that's why when you're looking at buying, being a value investor, it's not just about book value anymore. It's really about cash flow. Now this is InvestDoc. I'm Justin Klein. We have one goal here each and every weekday is to help you achieve your own version of financial freedom. And our work continues after this final break. So get your questions in right now at 888-99-CHART.

Invest Talk. Tell your friends they can listen live, download the free podcast, or watch Invest Talk on our YouTube channel. Now, before we wrap up, let's fit in one more listener question from our YouTube channel. And Frozo5525 says, thoughts on KYVO, Klaviyo. The six-month chart has me eyeing them. Before I get into one of my talking points, let's fit in an...

Sorry about that. Okay, so let's see. Klaviyo. Where are we? There it is. Klaviyo. So this is interesting because this is actually a company that I've done business with. We've subscribed to Klaviyo in the past. It's been a long time. It might be 10 years. So I will say this.

As somebody who used their product, I was not a fan. Now, things might have changed. It's been a decade. We had actually a bad experience with them. Might be new management. I don't know. But that's number one. Number two, it's a relatively recent IPO back in September of 2023. So a little over, it's called a year and a half. Now, it's certainly in an uptrend. It has pulled back.

to the 100 day moving average. So there is support here from a trading perspective. Problem is, is that the valuation is just egregious. Going back to my last topic, free cash flow yield. Right now it's less than 1%, less than half a percent. Free cash flow of 148 million on $11 billion market cap. Actually, sorry, let's call it 1%. It's about 1%. Very low, extremely low, no dividend.

And what's happening with shares as they've been public? Well, they continue to go up and up. Shares outstanding. Gone from 251 million shares outstanding to 273 million shares outstanding in just a short period of time. So you're getting diluted. Earnings growth estimates are coming down for this year and next year. And last quarter, for the first time,

at being a public company, earnings were actually down 22% year over year. Revenues were still up, but earnings were down 22%. And it's a $41 stock, supposed to make 50 cents this year, 84 looking P. So this is not a good investment, speaking as a former customer of theirs, as well as just looking at the valuation of the stock. It's just egregious.

Like I said, technicals, they're okay. It's an uptrend. It's at support. If you want to buy it for a trade, that's fine. But this is not a good investment. It's just not. Now, lastly, let's talk a bit about QT, quantitative tightening. I don't even know this, but slowly the Fed's balance sheet has been shrinking. They're allowing mortgage-backed securities to roll off. That is likely to change this year at some point. And the Fed meeting...

minutes for the January meeting showed that they were talking about slowing this balance sheet reduction. And then incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says that they're looking to keep issuance of debt at the same maturities as they are now, not expanding it to long-dated securities. What's that telling you? Is there worry about the long end of the bond market blowing out?

And they want to safeguard against any accidents happening. Just say that. Now, if yields drop, maybe they change their mind and give some room to issue longer-dated securities. But clearly, this is a worry for them. And it shows you that underneath the surface, they're worried about the liquidity within the system. And it certainly is a justifiable word. Now, they hope, the administration hopes, that the

that economic growth as well as the cuts from doge can offset what could worry the bond market by doing tax cuts. The problem here is that of the $55 billion that doge has said they earmarked for savings, only about $8.5 billion is actually real. And so Musk's pledge of a trillion dollars in savings is still far off. And that's why our debt situation

is no more on a sustainable path today than it was a month or two ago. Well, I'm Justin Klein. This is another InvestTalk program. We thank you for tuning in. You can find your podcast anytime at iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play. Be sure to rate and review on iTunes as well. And if you need help better understanding your risk tolerance level and the risk in your portfolio and how that fits with your broader investment goals or financial goals, I encourage you to head over to investtalk.com and click on the portfolio review button.

Independent thinking, shared success. This is InvestTalk. Good night.

Specifically, nothing said shall be taken to be investment advice, or shall statements on this program be considered an offer to buy or sell security, because such advice is rendered solely on an individual basis and at times will require that the investor review a prospectus before investing.

InvestTalk is a copyrighted program of Klein, Pavlis & Peasley Financial, a registered investment advisor firm which retains all rights. For more information regarding KPP's investment advisors, call 1-800-557-5461. Thank you for listening and your comments and questions are welcome on our 24-hour listener line at 888-99-CHART.