Ron shares intriguing insights about the market trends, including the dominance of top stocks and Apple's market cap bump. Jeff delves into the CPI data, highlighting the rising costs in electricity, transportation services, and shelter. The discussion also touches on the unique retail landscape in small towns, focusing on Dollar General's presence and the investment by Yum! Brands in Pizza Hut.

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation on various topics affecting the economy and everyday life. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, leave your feedback, and stay tuned for more engaging episodes!

Good morning, folks. Welcome to The Sense of

Things once again with Ron and Jeff. Welcome

to the show. We're glad to have you here. We've got lots of good stuff

going on today. Ron's going to have some fun facts to kick us

off. We're going to talk a little bit about Apple and

some of the things that you could have bought with some Apple

cash. And I'll go into a little bit of the CPI. I

did a little dig through and I just had a horrendously long

trip to New Mexico and back from Austin, Texas

and some observations I had in the small communities. So

Good morning, good, good, good. I got to tell you, I

think we said this last podcast, it's just amazing. We're already halfway

through this year. And it's going to get very interesting,

because I think the market will remain up through the end of this month,

just to prop up some fund numbers, end of month,

end of quarter, end of half year. But we

got a Fed meeting in July. And uh,

I think that's when the political temperature is going to go up

and I guess get your popcorn out folks Maybe we should have

a popcorn little, uh, emoji throw, you know, pop

I don't know, but we've got the, uh, we've got the first presidential

debate, the, the most inconsequential presidential debate in

the middle of June. Nobody gives a crap about it, but, uh, everybody's talking

about it on the, the news pundit world, but I'm not going to

Nope. They're going to put an octagon between the two

Yeah. So yeah, we're off to the races when

it comes to that. Certainly political season's going. But

Yep. I'm going to bring that up right now. All

right. So a couple of fun facts. So Jaws,

one of the greatest movies of all time. And I got to tell you, it

was probably 20, 25 years since I watched the entire thing

from beginning to end about a year ago. Yep. loved

it. I mean it's awesome. You know what you kind of get into

the characters more even though you know what's going to happen. You

got into it more and it was so much parallel

to Moby Dick. I don't know it was just it was just incredible. But

here's interesting that you know John Williams did the theme

from Jaws and it was just two notes. And

everybody that those two notes are ubiquitous whenever

it comes to something suspenseful in

a movie. And everybody knows exactly what movie it was from. We

are coming up next year will be 50 years. Wow.

But, you know, I think the funny part about that movie, too, is we

have like the because we've got the DVD and it's got, you know, like all

the extra stuff and all that. And and he was talking about

when he is making the movie, he goes, you know, it was so

suspenseful because you really never for a lot of the movie, you

don't really see the shark. And he's like, The reason was

because the damn shark was it never worked right. And

he goes, so we can only use like parts of it. And that made

the movie because it was like, so it was a lot like, I think

the first Jurassic Park was another example of that for

a very large chunk of the beginning of the movie. You

don't even see any dinosaurs, but there's that suspense, which,

And in the very beginning of the movie, when the girl goes skinny dipping

into the ocean and you just see her, there was a

whole scene plan where that's when you first were supposed to see the

shark. But it made it more suspenseful. Like, what happened

to her? You know something got her. You knew it was going to be a shark, but you're

right. It made it that much better that the damn shark was

It was so horrible that they couldn't actually, because when you finally

see him, he's like, okay, he looks like a fake shark. But

yeah, it was that whole point of the movie. It's a movie we

watch every single year, right around July 4th,

Yep. So my next one, again, Indiana Jones, and

most people know that Tom Selleck was

the original person cast

for the Indiana Jones character, but he

was offered the job, and I knew this years ago and I wanted to bring it up again,

and because he had gotten Magnum PI and he

wouldn't redo the Magnum PI schedule, they

gave the part to Harrison Ford, and

then rather ironically, Magnum P.I. was delayed,

I think, six months to a year, so he could have done the movie. Yeah. How

much all this would have changed his career? He still had a great

career, but how much would it have changed Harrison Ford?

Yeah. Well, I mean, Harrison Ford on Star Wars. Yeah,

that was pretty much it. You know, I mean, he he had not. I mean, really, that

that was the one that made Harrison Ford, I think, the biggest star,

you know, or the bigger star at that point. So and I just don't

know if anybody else could have pulled it off. I mean, it's like I saw something a couple

of weeks ago where they said that they were looking at

at. Who? Sinatra

to play in Die Hard, and I'm like, OK,

that wouldn't have worked at all. You know, mainly because

Diehard came out in 88. He was born in 1950. Crazy. All right.

And then my last fun one. Oh, I'm sorry. Hold on.

The DeLorean. Yeah, there we go. It

was supposed to be. I didn't know this. And that's one

of my all-time favorite movies. The

time machine was originally supposed to be a refrigerator. I

mean, how much different, I mean, how much different

would the movie have been? Because how would they have gotten up to

How do you get a refrigerator up to 88 miles an hour and don't die

in the process? I mean, come on. The funnier part

of the whole thing is, I don't know how the hell they got a DeLorean up

to 88 miles an hour besides rolling downhill.

Yeah. But I'd like to

know a little bit more about this backstory that this

was in the original script. When did it change? Because actually,

I don't want to get too far off track here, but I

saw some behind the scenes listening to the people that wrote the

script and how they pitched it. And the original script was

very different than the end result. And all the

additional pieces they put in, and

it's amazing how those little tweaks like

that of somebody that, uh, you know, Oh, well, this one

had a scheduling conflict. And, you know, I mean, I love Tom Selleck, honestly,

but he would have been a terrible Indiana Jones. It just doesn't work.

You know, I think he definitely had the look and everything, but what he've had. the

charisma that Harrison Ford did. I never really thought Harrison Ford

was a great actor. If you've seen him in anything other than like three movies,

he has zero range, right? I mean, I am very critical. But,

you know, Tom Selleck, it would have brought a different, you know, flavor

But we wouldn't have had Quigley down under if he'd have done that.

I agree. And I, and I never watched it. What blue bloods? Is

I've never watched it. I know it doesn't

really, I I've watched little bits and pieces and

nothing's really caught, captured my attention with it. So I would, I

was always a Magnum PI guy. And the funny thing is I went back and

watched. The old Magnum PIs, we were going to binge

watch them. And I was like, God, these are terrible, but some

Then it got a little phony baloney, but yeah. You know, what are you going

to do? All right. So just a couple of other quick slides here. This

was as of last week that the top seven stocks,

I refuse to call it the magnificent seven, even though I just did, the

top seven stocks now make up 30% of the move

of the market cap of the S&P 500. Basically almost

making the 493 stocks almost

irrelevant. So this will, and I, you know, look, the

echo chamber continues, but This

is definitely gonna have a drastic effect on the elevator down, even

in the short term. Those companies aren't going anywhere, but

When somebody, yeah, when one of them stumbles and

stubs a toe or something like that, it's gonna cause havoc in

the markets when it happens. But I just don't know when it's gonna happen.

Apple is a very interesting component of this because it

had done well, it had pulled back, it was out of favor, all

the financial media BS about they

haven't done their AI story, which is why it's

languishing, the reset upgrade cycle

of the iPhone, is it really? I mean, all this

BS, and then all of a sudden, June 11th and

12th, it had an unbelievable day. So back on May 9th, after

the earnings, they announced $110 billion buyback.

We have this slide we talked about, what companies could

you have bought with $110 billion buyback? So

June 11th and 12th, Apple had a

$400 million market cap bump. And with that $400 billion market

cap bump, you

could have bought Kimberly Clark, Ford, GM, FedEx,

PayPal, Marriott, and Northrop Grumman. Wow.

All one time. Put it all under one umbrella. This is

the sickness of what's going on. And again, we're

not bashing Apple as a company. We're just trying

to figure out the insanity behind the market cap

And two days worth. That's the thing. I mean, it's like, you know, it's a

trillion dollar company. So for them, 400 billion is

not that big of a move, but it's an insane move when

you think about it. in the entire market.

I mean, that is insane. You're literally buying two of

the largest, you know, car companies in

the world and still have money left over

A lot of money. You haven't even

spent 75% of that move yet by buying GGM and

Ford. I mean, you can't even almost

fathom this. We could spend an hour just talking about how ridiculous

this is. it's

gonna continue because just the law of higher, bigger

numbers and the movement of that, it's just gonna go. I mean, going

from 90 to 100 is one thing, right? But then going from,

or even going from, let's say, 90 billion to 100 billion, now

It's crazy. Just absolutely nuts. Absolutely nuts.

Well, let me share a little bit. I've got some

stuff on CPI to

talk a little bit about, you know, CPI came out about a week ago. was

a little bit of one of those kind of shockers in the market where it

was like, okay, well, it was down a little bit in comparison to

where everybody thought it was going to be. And, you know, initially the

market took off like a rocket ship. And then of course, you know, the, the Prozac,

uh, the, the wall of wall street Prozac, all of a sudden the next day was

like, oh my God, is the world coming apart and all that. But

I really wanted to go into, you know, regardless of where

CPI is going down, It is still at

an elevated level from where it had been prior

to this. It's still above where the Fed wants it to

be. It's just really fighting. I

wanted to dig into it a little bit more. You

know, part of this is commodities have come down quite a

bit. They've really come off the shelf off this super

high that they were at. But it's the services outside

of energy that are just persistently not

going down. And I think a big part of that is

the cost of employees and everything else. You're seeing it

out in California. I mean, I think you're seeing some major effects out

in California right now with the restaurants

out there, the most iconic Arby's in the entire nation. I've

been there for 55 years, just closed this

week, you know, and I mean, it, it was, I don't think it was

completely, that was just the final death nail for them was the,

the $20 an hour, but I gotta tell you, I'm a big Arby's guy. Oh,

I am too. I love it. I wish they would stick to what they do

best and stop doing all this other weird stuff that they

do. But, you know, I mean, I think the lady that was in charge of it or that

owned it, she was 91 years old. And, you know, she's just like,

I'm not going to make major investments into all this technology

that Arby's wants me to do, you know, to basically eliminate employees.

And so she just closed the place down. What's

driving this? As I started to go through the components, there's

like 35 components total. But the standouts as

far as the components that were there, electricity

up 5.9 percent over the last 12 months, and

it's accelerating. It's getting more and more every month. Transportation

services, I think, is the one that you've got to look into the most. Um,

it's not buying the cars and selling actually the,

the cost of cars, both new and old

have gone down. Although it spiked up a little bit on the, the used

cars, transportation services here. One of

the biggest drivers is insurance and

it is getting off the charts. If you haven't gotten your renewal for

this next year, you are going to have a shocker when you have your

renewal. because rates have gone through the roof,

especially in the auto side. What's driving that?

Quite frankly, the biggest thing that's driving that is the cost of

getting the parts to fix things, and

the more electric cars we have, the more the

price is going to go up, because fixing an electric car is

massively expensive, and it is just going

to increase as we have more and more electric cars on the road.

Also, the other part of auto insurance is,

and a lot of people are talking about this, accidents are

up precipitously. Not necessarily major, but

also minor fender benders, and that all leads into fixing

of the cars, getting parts. Separate conversation of

why I think accidents are up so much, but that's

Yeah, but I think it's a lot of distracted driving and everything else.

People driving around on their cell phones, you know, trying

to do business or trying to check their Facebook or watch cat

videos or whatever and slamming into people. Shelter

is still persistently up there as well. So those are the three

major areas that are just driving this. And I mean, you still

get inflation across the board up, but these are the

ones that are really pushing things. And, you know, quite frankly, I

mean, yes, you can sort of kind of control electricity, you

know, by saying, okay, I'm going to raise my You know, in

the summer, I'm going to raise up my thermostat. In the

winter, I'm going to lower my thermostat. But there's

only so much control you have. Transportation services, you have

zero control over that. I mean, they're going to

tell you what your rates are. And quite frankly, shelter, you're

kind of stuck. You don't really have a choice there. So it's

it's leaving people struggling in those cases. Um,

hourly earnings are also down year over year too, which is

interesting. You know, that's a driver, but you're starting

to see those hourly earnings go down, which is not a good sign when

Question hourly earnings go back. So it was hourly earnings,

meaning the number of hours they're working or what they're earning per

Yeah. What they're earning per hour. Well, So here's the

issue though, hourly- We've got over 40 hour work week. Yeah, the

hours are being cut back. So they might be at the same rate,

but they're making less money because their hours are being cut

back. So you're seeing hours work kind of pulling

So the hourly rate went up, the hours went down, so they're netting the

Yeah, so last thing I wanted to talk about today is what I'm calling

the dollar general effect. Yeah, I

just was with my wife. My mother-in-law died and

we we had to go up to New Mexico. So we from

Austin, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico, there

is no easy way to get there besides driving through

the smallest towns in West Texas and

New Mexico that you're ever going to see. And it was just interesting

to me to see kind of the makeup of

these small towns as far as their you

know, what we take for granted, I think living in big cities, you know,

and living in a big city, I've got four different grocery stores, I

can go to, I've got dollar stores, I've got

all you know, I've got Walmarts and everything else and targets. These

folks don't have that in the small rural communities. But

what they do have is the dollar store. And in many of

these small communities, this is the

place that they go, you know, this is the place that they go in those areas.

And it was interesting to see because mainly we were really bored.

So we started counting dollar generals and dollar trees

and and family dollars. And it was

hilarious to see, you know,

it was almost like if you went into one town, it was a really, really, really

small town. There might be a dollar general there. And then, as

I put it, as you as you were coming up

in the world, you might also have a family dollar or a dollar

tree there. And so there was some competition. But

in many of these towns, there was just one or maybe two of

these stores with no grocery stores or anything like that. Now,

Dollar General is closing 800 stores. And I think part of

that is they have stuck to their guns when

it comes to, everything's a dollar in those cases. They've

really stuck to their guns. And the

other ones have it, you know, and Dollar Tree and Family Dollar are

owned. Dollar Tree, a decade ago, took over

Yeah, well, and they've done that. And they've said, you know,

it's $1.25 is their base price now. And they have

a lot of like $5 items and things along those lines. It

was interesting to see, though, that there's like some dual branded stores.

So you'd go by and you'd see Dollar Tree, Family Dollar. They're literally

in the same building, two separate signs, and it's the

same store, basically, which I

don't understand that branding. Dollar

Tree is closing a bunch of Family Dollars, but it

just, I think more than anything, they're probably just rebranding them or

they're closing them, but it's these dual branded stores, which

make absolutely zero sense to me. But

that says, I mean, at least Dollar Tree has thought through this

a little bit and said, OK, we're going to be smart about what we're doing. They're not

abandoning the communities. They're just saying, well, why do we have a Dollar Tree

and a family dollar when we're the same store at that

point in a lot of these communities? But for

me, I looked at this and said, it's amazing the

investment that they've made in these communities, these small communities.

I mean, they're a small player in my town. People

go there, but it's not the biggest deal. Here, this is

where people go to shop for clothing. This is where they go to shop for their

sundries and everything else. That is the option.

Or you drive 40 or 50 miles to get to a bigger

city to go to your grocery store. And you know, a lot

of these are, you would aid up and gas. Yeah. And, and a lot of

these are farm communities. So I think, you know, the farmer and ranching community,

so they grow their own food, but this is the place they go for

sundries and everything. Yeah. So it was just interesting to me. And

I'm going to do a little bit of research next week, uh, for the

next week show. So a little, little, uh, thing

to, to talk about, about, uh, one of the other things

I recognized, which is interesting was the,

uh, Yum! Brands Pizza

Hut in these small towns. They

have made a massive investment in

these small towns of going back to the

old school. Like when you and I grew up, you know, Pizza Hut was the

Pizza Hut. You went to Pizza Hut. That was like a major thing on

a Friday night or something like that. You went to Pizza Hut. You

know, dad got the dad and mom got the, you know, the big

old Pitcher beer. And, you know, you sat

there and you ate a pizza pizza. You didn't order out these.

It's interesting in these small rural communities. Pizza Hut

has made a massive investment. And I mean, there were

some of the nicest, newest pizza huts that I've ever seen

coming through all these towns. So it's interesting. I want to see what what

Well, Yum also owns Taco

Yeah. So like I said, it, it was an interesting story for me. I

want to see how much they're investing into that. And, you know,

we'll see if that is a smart idea. I mean, I personally think

it is kind of, because in a lot of these towns, you

know, you might have like one or two mom and pop. Restaurants. And

then you have this nice new shiny pizza hut that

is taking over the dinner shift, you know, because a lot of these, but when we

were kids to kind of wrap it up, when we were kids, you

to pizza hut for 12 to 15 bucks. Yep.

I mean, I know we sound like old codgers at this point, but I mean, today

Yeah, but still, I mean, in comparison,

I mean, good Lord, you go to, if you're out in California, you

go to a McDonald's, you're gonna spend 40 or 50 bucks

to go to a McDonald's. And I think you've got a little bit healthier food

at a pizza hut. to get through McDonald's at that point.

No, I agree. It's just, uh, I mean, I look,

I still make my lunch and dinners and

breakfast, you know, 70% of the time. And it's because I

enjoy cooking, but also you just go out and you're like, how

Well, I think that was the that was the shocker for us, you know, because I'm

used to dropping 40 or 50 bucks for two of us to

go to breakfast. And, you know, New Mexico, typically

prices are a little bit lower. You know, I mean, we're I don't think I've

spent more than 30 bucks on breakfast for some really good

breakfast. Way better than I get here. You know, so it's just those potatoes.

No, no, no, no, no. Well, yeah, that's the components of

it. But green chili, that's the key, man. Breakfast burritos. We

were shoveling those down every day. Well, folks,

thank you for joining us. This is why we do

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