October 11th, 2025 - Gold Skyrockets!

The Van We Financial Hour features Steve Van We, Adam Van We, and Joey Loss discussing recent market volatility, particularly the impact of geopolitical tensions with China on the stock market. They provided insights on investment strategies during uncertain times, including the role of gold and tax planning opportunities for the coming year. 

Transcript

STEVEN H VAN WIE 0:00

It's Saturday morning. It's 10 o'. This is the Van We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We.

Joey Loss 0:02

Clock.

Adam Van Wie 0:05

I'm Adam Van We.

Joey Loss 0:06

And I'm Joey Loss.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 0:07

He's back. Joey is here for the first time in a little while, having just had his second child and all the complications that come with it. But he's ready to roll today. And roll we will.

Adam Van Wie 0:22

I'm pretty sure he just wanted to come in to get a break.

Joey Loss 0:25

I've got a little less sleep than prior episodes, but it does feel good to be back.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 0:29

It might have been offset by the market yesterday, that burning desire to get a break.

Joey Loss 0:35

Yeah, a good advisor might have lost sleep because of the market movement. Mine. My reasons are different.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 0:40

Yeah, absolutely. Right. Well, we can avoid talking about that for a while. Just say, see the Jaguar game. Stay up to the last minute.

Joey Loss 0:48

Oh, my gosh.

Adam Van Wie 0:51

Absolutely. How could you not? That was a great game.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 0:54

You know, it's like golf. There are times when you make a birdie or something and it is so ugly and you just tell everybody the only room on that scorecard is for a number. There's no description on it. Well, that's like the Jaguar game where when you literally trip and fall, fall again, and then fall forward and win the game.

Joey Loss 1:25

What an athlete. It really wasn't his fault he got stepped on, but when I first saw the play, I was like, it might.

Adam Van Wie 1:26

Yeah, it.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 1:33

He was going to throw it away if he had to. I've heard.

Adam Van Wie 1:36

I mean, he. Yeah. Just to get another.

Joey Loss 1:36

Yeah, he made it work.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 1:38

This game might not have turned out as well had the guard not stepped on his foot.

Adam Van Wie 1:42

Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. No, it doesn't matter.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 1:45

It's a hypothetical. Point is, that kid does not give up.

Adam Van Wie 1:49

No, he's an athlete for sure.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 1:51

Yeah, I was. I was just so amazed that I bothered to stay awake that long. And it was worth it.

Joey Loss 1:58

It was a good time. The thing to your point about not always looking pretty, Elizabeth and I were laughing that every. At the end of every offensive drive, our players looked 10 times more exhausted than on the Chiefs offensive drives. It was just so much more work for us to get it done, but we got it done.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 2:15

But the defense is pretty much doing its job these days.

Adam Van Wie 2:19

Oh, they're great. Definitely. Hard not to. Yeah, he's been awesome in particular, but hard not to like this team and the new coach.

Joey Loss 2:20

Great.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 2:27

Yeah, no kidding. Well, hopefully it'll keep up. And what they did to San Francisco. How many teams have beaten San Francisco? Count them on your finger.

Adam Van Wie 2:37

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 2:38

And it was us that. Good going, boys.

Adam Van Wie 2:41

Yeah. I bet no one would have predicted that.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 2:44

Well, this. No one in this room. I'm pretty sure. Whatever. I'm pretty much sure you're right. Anyway, that was a lot of fun and it was a heck of a lot more fun than talking about the market.

Adam Van Wie 2:47

Pretty sure no one in town.

Adam Van Wie 2:54

Well, the market was fine until it wasn't. Until Friday.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 2:56

Yeah. I left home. I had to run out on Friday having Comcast trouble, so I had to run over to the store. So I left about 10 and there was green all over the screen. Yep.

Adam Van Wie 3:09

We hit an all intraday, all time high in the NASDAQ prior to the market turning down on Friday.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 3:15

It came home in exactly an hour. Glanced at the screen.

Adam Van Wie 3:19

What I was, I could not. I saw it happen and I said something to Joey, what's going on? What is happening? There's something happened. But I was on Wall Street Journal.com, i was on FoxBusiness.com I could not figure it out until finally the story started coming out about the truth posts that came out. So anyways, I am, I've got some.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 3:44

Comments on that, needless to say, but we'll do that after the break. Right now, I just assume drop the subject and place it over.

Adam Van Wie 3:53

Well, I'm going to, I'm going to talk about it. I mean it, it, October has a reputation. It's, it's, it's well deserved. It has a history of being very volatile, but not in a bad way. Actually, this, this period, people don't know that through the end of December actually marks the best three months in the market of any time period during the year. So. But October is volatile and it was on Friday and it is, we did see some volatility, but we are nowhere near the most volatile time of 2025. You would have to go back to April for that one. Ironically, they were both caused by tariff threats. So that's interesting.

Adam Van Wie 4:34

So if you weren't following. On Friday, President Trump put out a truth social saying that he no longer wants to meet with President Xi in Korea in a couple of weeks because they've been, because China has been sending out threatening letters all across, to countries all across the world about putting export controls on rare earth minerals. Now why is that important? Well, rare earth minerals are used in all sorts of things like electric cars, batteries, semiconductors, all these things. And China has, has somewhat cornered the market. And from what I understand, we kind of did it to ourselves by not allowing mining of Those things in the United States, as I put it the.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 5:11

Other day, rare earths are not rare. They're just mining.

Adam Van Wie 5:16

Exactly. So. So we're kind of dependent on that part of the world for these things. So China going around putting these export controls on really hampers our ability to produce the. Those goods that are desperately needed throughout the world. So Trump said that his response to this would be to impose 100% tariffs on. On top of any existing tariffs on any and all goods from China starting on November 1st. So far this year, US imports from China are down 30%. So I think what's happening is that China needed more leverage going into this discussion with Trump. Trump needed more leverage going into this discussion with China. So what do they do? They threaten to. China threatens to cut off rare earths, and the US Threatens huge tariffs to one of China's most important buyers of their goods. So now they both are carrying this additional leverage into the meeting in two weeks, which I do think will happen. I think Trump is just being Trump when he says he won't. There's no reason to meet with him anymore. And I think they both wanted to amp up their leverage, and this is how they're doing it. And I think this will pass when they reach a deal. That's what. That's my.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 6:34

All the commies are the same, every one of them. They do not understand Americans. So they get this game plan that says, I'll show them, and what happens is, is it gets thrown right back in their face because they can't think like us. Bin Laden did it once, just a couple, three weeks, as I recall, before an election, and it changed everything. It just makes the world turn against the commies. They have to learn somehow to think like capitalists. And it's been a struggle for them, obviously.

Adam Van Wie 7:10

Yeah. I think there's additional leverage that Trump might use as well. I think the next move that he's going to do this is just a prediction, but I think he might threaten to cut off the supply of semiconductors that he opened back up from Nvidia. They're the lesser of their products, but China still needs them. And so I wouldn't be surprised if next week you saw that thrown on top of the tariffs. So we'll see if that. If that comes to light. But it's interesting. It's all very, very, I think, just negotiating tactics.

Joey Loss 7:43

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 7:44

But it also serves us well if we all look at this. This is the difference between having an active, strategic president and not. What has he already done? He cut the deal in Ukraine to get some of the rare which are that voluminous. And he, he's talking about the package for Argentina because he guess who else has lots of rares. And this is part of them. Interesting. He is always a step ahead of the, the other people, shall we say more comments on this right after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van We Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Ban We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We.

Adam Van Wie 8:09

Okay.

Adam Van Wie 8:25

And I'm Adam Van.

Joey Loss 8:26

We're Joey Loss.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 8:27

And as usual, we have a trivia question brought to you by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. You can call Paul Paul at 904-636-7888.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 8:38

We've been hearing things about Japan for a while now, and that was it's like awakening the bear after a long, long slumber. They recently held an election and I don't know if it's a popular or parliamentary, but the woman who is poised to be the next prime minister

STEVEN H VAN WIE 9:01

is exactly that. It's a female. And they've never done that before. So we, we Americans love our first. Right. I didn't care about that. What I care about was what they said next. Her role model was Margaret Thatcher and she got my undivided attention with that one right away. So good luck over there. Speaking of Japan,

STEVEN H VAN WIE 9:28

we recently have seen their market reach new highs, set records. How many times in 35 years have they set new records on the Nikkei? Just the whole number. Now, I'll tell you, in that same time, we, the dow did about 160 and they did fewer than that. So I've already bracketed the upper end with that said, let's talk to. Good morning, Bob.

Bob 9:58

Good morning. I was at that Jaguar game surrounded by Kansas City fans. My wife and I were surrounded by Kansas City fans as they show up in droves.

Adam Van Wie 10:08

They travel and they do.

Bob 10:10

They were, they were really giving us the razz when Kansas city was up 14. Nothing. But boy, we did see some sources, faces at the end.

Adam Van Wie 10:21

That's a long way to travel for a loss like that.

Joey Loss 10:23

Sweet, sweet Jeff.

Bob 10:24

Yeah, it's a long way to travel to end up with somebody stuffing a lemon in your face.

Adam Van Wie 10:30

Exactly.

Bob 10:32

He who laughs last often laughs best. And the longest, too. Well, Adam, thank you for bringing us back to earth on Friday. We were watching, we were watching FOX that evening and Goldman Sachs came out with a statement that they expect the market to drop 10 to 30%. And I thought that was the news that that sent the market for a, for A tizzy.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 10:36

You got it.

Greg 10:39

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 11:03

But Jamie's been talking like that for a long time. This was.

Bob 11:07

Yeah, I know. Yeah. I printed out their article and looked at it. I'm like, oh my gosh, these people, you know.

Adam Van Wie 11:12

Yeah. I mean, Jamie Dimon, what he said, he's what, he's JP Morgan? But that he said that he expects within the next 18 months to see a 10 to 30% correction. Not really a stretch because in any 18 month period the chances of a 10 to 30% correction are actually quite high. So I, he didn't really say anything very novel to me and the market didn't really react to it either. And he, he does have the ability to move the market with things he says. But a prediction like that is not really, not really anything special.

Adam Van Wie 11:46

So it really was that truth social that, that caused it. And if you look at the timing of it, the market tanked right when it came out. It was, it was very dramatic.

Bob 11:56

And Trump is such a good negotiator. He's just playing G like a, like a violin, you know.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 12:03

Okay, you want a couple of interest.

Bob 12:05

You'Re not going to help the rest of the world. We can counter that.

Adam Van Wie 12:08

Yeah, exactly.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 12:09

Want a couple interesting numbers, Bob.

Joey Loss 12:12

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 12:13

We lost so much this week that the Dow went all the way back. The last time it was below yesterday's close was, oh, September 5th.

Joey Loss 12:26

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 12:28

The last time the NASDAQ was below what it closed yesterday was September 12th.

Bob 12:35

Oh my goodness.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 12:36

The last day the S&P 500 index was below where it closed was September 10th.

Joey Loss 12:44

Wow.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 12:44

The last time the small cap Russell 2000 index was lower than it closed yesterday was September 10th. We just lost a month.

Bob 12:54

You didn't even, you didn't even really need to look in your rear view mirror.

Adam Van Wie 12:58

No, hardly.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 13:00

We lost a month and I, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't panic over a month of loss.

Adam Van Wie 13:06

Yeah. And, and to the thing that I didn't mention during my summary was that the market, you just knew it was looking for a reason to take some profit. It's been such a good year, especially since April. I mean, there's just no way that people weren't looking for a reason and this just happened.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 13:23

Yeah. Let's carry that one step further too. What does it take to avoid a wash sale? 1, 30, 61 days depending on from where to where and all that. Guess what? You can still do 61 days from yesterday. You can avoid wash sales. I think you're going to see so much shuffling around because not everything is done as well as some of the big things that do. So I think the timing being early October is. Is very critical to a lot of strategic tax planning. Yes, it is. Absolutely. One person's opinion comment. I mean, backed by nothing.

Adam Van Wie 13:59

Yeah.

Joey Loss 14:01

And I think wash. Wash sale is actually 30 plus one.

Adam Van Wie 14:04

Yeah, it is. It's 30 plus.

Bob 14:05

It's 31.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 14:06

But it runs from before to after. So the total. The total package runs 61 days, depending on when you buy and sell. The wash sale rule is really a lot more complicated than it is. Is on its face. Yeah, seems.

Joey Loss 14:13

Yeah.

Bob 14:20

Well, I think the market needed a good cleansing a little bit, you know, and there may be some more, so I'm sure.

Joey Loss 14:26

But.

Adam Van Wie 14:27

Yeah, but.

Bob 14:29

But what happens? Then it rebounds and goes forward again, which is what it's been doing.

Adam Van Wie 14:34

Always easier to take out an old high than it is to set a new one.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 14:37

Yep. Want to take a shot at the trivia?

Ron 14:40

Yeah.

Bob 14:41

What did you say the US was how many times?

STEVEN H VAN WIE 14:43

100, 160 for us. 162, actually.

Bob 14:48

If you want to be 162, I'd say.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 14:53

79

STEVEN H VAN WIE 14:55

actually too high. But you really narrowed the bracket down, so I'm sure everybody appreciates it.

Bob 15:03

Yeah, that's just a swag.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 15:05

Okay. Stay dry.

Bob 15:07

All right. I'm trying.

Adam Van Wie 15:09

Thanks for the call.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 15:10

Take care.

Joey Loss 15:11

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 15:13

If, like I said, Japan was not the hot spot for quite some time. All right. Did you. You want. Either of you want to wrap up some more on the market?

Adam Van Wie 15:24

I wanted to at least talk about the numbers. They really weren't that bad. I mean, the overall effect of. Of this week was that the Dow ended up down 2%, the S&P down 2.4, the NASDAQ down 2.8. All of that coming on Friday. So. So all three are still positive for the year. As you mentioned, we just went back to like, early September numbers, but The Dow's up 6.9, the S&P is up 11.4, and the NASDAQ up 15. None of the. I mean, all of those are great numbers. So I just. It. These things happen. This. This is what being an investor looks like.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 15:56

Cut it off today, we'd have a great year.

Adam Van Wie 15:58

That's right. The US Wasn't the only market that was affected on Friday either. China actually ended the week down 7.75%.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 16:08

Yeah, they've been rolling.

Adam Van Wie 16:09

That hurts. That's. That's a big drop. And most of that came on Friday. Japan dropped over 4% and South Korea was just under that. So the whole Asian Market there got just, just really hit by this.

Adam Van Wie 16:23

One area that rallied though based on the that truth post was precious metals. Gold ended the week 3.2% higher and silver was up 4.4%. The overall commodities index didn't fare as well. It ended the week down 1.4% with the price of oil plunging 3.2%. So that, that really dragged on the, on the commodities basket. Bitcoin which we're still trying to figure out. It also dove with stocks on Friday

Adam Van Wie 16:51

was down over 5% for the week. And you just never know or at least I can't figure out if bitcoin is it. Is it more like a precious metal? Is it more like a stock? Is it what is like you just never know if it's going to be a risk on or a risk off asset.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 17:05

I'm the one of the few people in the world that can actually hold his bitcoin in my hand. That's true because Joey gave me one.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 17:15

I think I said last week I, I told him I hope you didn't pay more than 50 cents for this.

Adam Van Wie 17:21

Lastly, it's hard to believe but Q Q3 earning season starts next week. Analysts have been pretty bearish about it. That's usually good news if you're cutting forecast going into the season.

Adam Van Wie 17:36

The some of the notable names, there's really a lot of big names reporting next week. BlackRock, Citigroup, Goldman J&J. J.P. morgan, bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Schwab and Amex were just some that I picked out. That all happens next week. So there'll be lots of news to trade on next week.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 17:50

Yeah, I think the financials are doing better than the analysts believe.

Adam Van Wie 17:54

Yeah, I don't think a quarter point rate cut is going to kill their momentum too much.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 17:59

No, no I'm not. I have trouble expressing a lot of concern for what is going on right now. The retaliation with China is swift and sure. And look what happened last time. When Trump told him last time that it was going to be 100% they backed off so fast you could count the minutes.

Adam Van Wie 18:21

Well, I mean I thought the most compelling statistic I found this morning when I was researching was that, that we bought 30% less from China this year. That's crazy. That's a huge number. No wonder they're worried.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 18:32

It is.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 18:35

Yeah. And you know they've, they have been building some factories but they've been closing more than they've been building too. China is falling victim to the lower priced countries like India and, and Vietnam and so on.

Adam Van Wie 18:50

Where have I heard about that happening. Oh, here. We did the same thing. We, we were a huge manufacturing country and then suddenly China stepped in and became the low cost leader and a.

Joey Loss 18:54

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 19:02

Friend years ago in the 80s who summed it up this way, China is Japan's Japan.

Adam Van Wie 19:09

Okay.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 19:10

Somebody's always waiting to take you over for sure. And when, when you look into things that, that are going on with tariffs, which I'm going to get into a little more, you realize that tariffs are not what people think they are and they should not be used the way people think they do. What they are is very effective under certain circumstances. And I'm not, I'm not even going to tell you the bottom line on this thing until after the next break because it's so interesting to me what's going on. I also have some new IRS numbers we can talk about and a couple of reflections on that. Here we go again. Right. They just can't leave well enough alone with this whole inflation thing. And it's popping up already even though it's early. They won't release the Social Security increase until the government opens up or for about another 10 days. So I don't have that one yet, but we'll get there. All right. Don't go anywhere. We got to pay a few more bills. We'll be right back after the break. This is the Van We Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van WE Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We.

Adam Van Wie 20:14

I'm Adam Van We.

Joey Loss 20:15

And I'm Joey Lass.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 20:16

And I'll review the trivia question. Japan is Japan's market at least has awakened after a long slumber. And I want to know how many new highs the Nikkei has made in the past 35 years. And we know that it's less than 79.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 20:38

So you got a nice little bracket there. All right. Let's talk about the IRS for a moment. First off, one more comment on inflation. When was the last time you heard a real good solid story about the unbelievable price of eggs and how can you feed a family.

Adam Van Wie 20:56

Yeah, that, that's really gone away because egg prices are down 80 this something.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 21:02

It's just in 82%.

Adam Van Wie 21:04

Yeah. Crazy.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 21:05

So I guess if Trump couldn't do it in two or three days, it doesn't mean he still couldn't do it. Oil has dropped by half from the peak of the invasion of Ukraine. And all in all, they still lying through their teeth about inflation. And nobody will ever, ever convince me otherwise. But let's talk about the new tax numbers which are just starting to come out for next year. There isn't a lot yet, but there's a few things. The standard deduction increased to 32. Two for married couples filing jointly, of course, and that represents a 2.22% increase. Now, I don't think the government has told us lately that the inflation rate was a mere 2.2%, do you? In fact, I think I could pretty much directly contradict that because. How about the 12% bracket for incomes 24. 8 for married couples? That is up 3.98%.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 22:25

So where. Where's the inflation rate? I've been. How many years have I complained about this? On this show? The government is charged with calculating the inflation rate for the past 12 months, and yet they come up with how many different inflation rates. And some of them I know are targeted elder elderly ones. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about things that impact everybody, like the tax code. But let's look at that 3.98%.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 22:58

Under the perspective of someone who is a higher earner, like a 35% person, their bracket went up 2.28,

STEVEN H VAN WIE 23:11

as did the next one, down the 32% and the 24%. But the 12 and the 22% brackets are being expanded 3.97%, which is great. It's outstanding.

Adam Van Wie 23:26

Yeah, but.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 23:29

We'Re squeezing. We're punishing success again. In one more way.

Adam Van Wie 23:33

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 23:35

I worry more about the bulk of people who fall in that 12 and 22% brackets. That's.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 23:42

Well, I do two. But I worry also about fundamental fairness.

Adam Van Wie 23:46

I get it. But those people aren't squeezed like the, like young families who are making $150,000.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 23:53

Right. Well, how about we unpunish the rich for a moment? Although you have to die first. Estates are going up. The, the exclusion part for estates are rising from 13. 9 to 15 million, which is 7.97%.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 24:12

That one left me a little quizzical.

Adam Van Wie 24:14

That again, those numbers are so high now that you, you have to be in the. The 0.01% to even worry about it.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 24:24

Right. Here's one, Joy. Joey knows a lot about taxes. Did you realize that the limitation on itemized deductions was done away with last year this year? What do you mean? You, you used to not be able to take itemized deductions over a certain percentage of your tax them?

Adam Van Wie 24:43

Oh, I didn't know that.

Joey Loss 24:43

I didn't know that.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 24:44

We've never had that problem. Yeah. But it was eliminated as part of. As part of OBBBA and the. Now they have a limitation on the tax benefit derived and that says you can't get a benefit greater than 37%

Adam Van Wie 24:46

No. Yeah, it's very rare.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 25:06

on your deduction. But I just think it said in here that your top rate was 35%.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 25:14

So is that just make work or oberdicted? I, I don't know. Anyway, those are the things that have come out now. The AMT exemption amount is up a little bit. No biggie. And they have not gotten rid of the amt. You all probably know that they did get rid of it for, for companies, for corporate taxes, but they kept the individual. Yeah, that's up.

Joey Loss 25:38

I thought it does hit a lot of people.

Adam Van Wie 25:40

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's one that needs to go. I don't know why they can't get.

Joey Loss 25:44

Rid of the ridiculous. It just means for anybody who makes a reasonably significant amount of money, anything that's talked about on the news as far as tax code is basically irrelevant because there's a second tax calculation. To make sure that you don't get away with paying lower taxes in the first.

Adam Van Wie 25:56

Right.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 26:00

I've been dinged on it in the past. The strange part of it is the first year that you're not subject to it because your situation changed or maybe you had a big sale on one year or whatever, then they give it all back to you. And I just think what's the point? Maybe the CPAs of America have this little underground thing where they lobby Washington D.C. to make the code more complicated. Similar. Maybe you will see a few more.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 26:30

The not standard deduction anymore, a few more itemized people because of the, the elevated limits now up to 40,000 on the salt. So if you're from the right state, you probably have a better chance now to itemize than you do.

Adam Van Wie 26:45

You do. Except that the people that can take advantage of it also get phased out on income. So it's very small percentage of people. And that on top of that, the couples filing jointly, the standard deduction is now $32,200.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 27:00

So if you happen to be 65 or over, you get an extra 6,000 a piece. But that also phases out with income.

Adam Van Wie 27:08

Right.

Joey Loss 27:08

And, and we are now that we're doing tax planning, end of year we're seeing a lot of retirees, even if they don't have pensions. You know, just normal income from other sources from your portfolio is enough to start to eat into that 6,000.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 27:21

Yeah, they really put that ceiling down.

Joey Loss 27:23

Yeah. It's not as high as you might think.

Adam Van Wie 27:25

No, but the, but overall I think that people, when they prepare their taxes for 2025, are going to see significant reductions. Most people will see significant reductions in the amount of tax that they owe.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 27:39

I think you're right.

Joey Loss 27:39

Yeah. I think almost everybody sees something positive.

Adam Van Wie 27:42

Definitely the really cool thing for next year, the bracket that came out, the 12% bracket for couples, is up to $100,800. So you can actually make over $100,000 and not pay more than 12% in.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 27:56

Taxes and get your capital gains free as long as the capital gains are included in that 100,800.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 28:03

So if you're looking to take some capital gains, take a really good look the tax planning, and we do a lot of it. The tax planning is not getting any simpler with all these new rules, but it's back to being fun again.

Joey Loss 28:19

It is. Yeah. It's fun for nerds like us.

Adam Van Wie 28:20

Definitely.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 28:22

Yeah. And that's exactly right. If you're, if you're nerds like us and you see some of these things, the first thing you do is you start thinking about your own. Is this going to help me? And then you start thinking about your clients. Is this going to help anybody? We know? And I think it's going to be okay. I hearken back to one, one day about this time of the year. Can't remember what year it was, but remember when they raised or they expanded the tax brackets by 5.84%, but everything was running more like 2, 3, and 4. And your comment was, wow, that's a tax cut. And it was. Well, they're taking some of that back from what I see right now. I, you know, I look at these details more as details than I do as a comprehensive package until I'm doing my own, feeding them into the. We have tax planning software that just picks up on this stuff so fast. I love that service. That's a good one.

Joey Loss 28:39

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 29:04

Yeah, a little bit.

Joey Loss 29:23

One other note on the tax subject before we move on. If, if folks out there have been given just a little bit to church or to charities throughout the year, that now matters. You don't have to itemize for these.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 29:34

Smaller deductions starting in January. Yep. So think about charitable deductions come January. The first ones you do come January unless you're okay with the qualified withdrawals from IRA charitable withdrawals. You can do it either way with those. But if you don't have the QCD, in other words, if you're under 70 and a half, then don't forget to take your first 1,000 per single and 2,000. And I do believe these are indexed too. But they won't start until next year.

Joey Loss 29:36

So starting in January.

Adam Van Wie 30:08

Next year they're yeah big one.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 30:10

But you can pay that without it ever hitting your income line and without hitting the tax man. And when you can do that and you're charitably minded anyway, do it. Or if you're just looking for a good way to save some taxes and you're not really that big on charitable gifting, try it out. You might like it for sure.

Adam Van Wie 30:27

And also you can use both. You can do the 2000 and then also use the.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 30:32

Yeah, there's a hard limit on the outside of the ira. Limit. But they're the hard limit now in the IRS. Like 125,000.

Adam Van Wie 30:35

Right.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 30:41

It's very, very large.

Adam Van Wie 30:42

Yeah. So if you do something like tithing to your church, do your first 2000 as a couple out of your just normal income and then after that look.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 30:54

To use your, your, if you're, if you're a 10 percenter, then that 10% is a big deal. If you can do it qualified and, and you don't have to be taking RMDs to count the charitable gift from your IRA. If as long as you're 70 and a half but

STEVEN H VAN WIE 31:16

is good in the year you finally do take RMDs, it is good for the credit against your RMD. So it's kind of a double positive whammy on this thing. But everybody gets a shot at taking that first thousand or two thousand and income free. That that adds up too it depending what bracket. That's, you know, 22 cents, 24 cents, 28 cents, whatever. So I like it. Once in a while they, they stumble and do something that's actually taxpayer friendly. Doesn't always happen. I much more to come. These things just kind of roll past and all of a sudden we've got to take a break. This is the Van We Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van We.

Adam Van Wie 32:02

I'm Adam Van We.

Joey Loss 32:03

And I'm Joey Loss.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 32:04

And we have a caller. It is Greg. Good morning.

Greg 32:10

Good morning gentlemen. How are you?

STEVEN H VAN WIE 32:12

Excellent, and you?

Greg 32:14

Oh, I'm on my way to Costco to return a Vitamix two years old. And I called them up this morning, it's two years old and they said bring it down, we'll will give you a new one.

Adam Van Wie 32:26

Nice.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 32:27

You know that is one of the classiest companies in America and it is American made.

Joey Loss 32:34

Yeah.

Greg 32:35

And Costco's not a bad brand either.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 32:38

No, no, not at all. No.

Greg 32:41

Maybe a little overpriced on the sticker, but on the stock, but

Greg 32:48

they're one of a kind. Anyways, I called to take a stab at the trivia shoot. You're talking about the Nikkei 225, and I think it's 10 times.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:00

Actually. You're a little low.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:05

Maybe your data was a little out of date, but you're gonna love hearing the whole synopsis of it, so I hope you can stick around to the end of the show.

Greg 33:15

Okay. Fair enough.

Joey Loss 33:16

All right.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:17

Thank you. We appreciate it. Okay, bye.

Greg 33:19

Okay.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:23

Yeah, Vitamix is. It's just kind of an amazing thing. It's a cult, basically. And. And for sure, our family is. You're part of the cult. Member. Yeah. Absolutely. If they. They really have well built things. They. They last forever. They back them up and, you know, all that stuff.

Adam Van Wie 33:29

Yeah.

Joey Loss 33:34

Proud members as well.

Joey Loss 33:43

They scare your toddlers. They scare toddlers. That's very loud. Everybody's crying and I need a milkshake. That's the time.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:45

Pardon?

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:49

They can be.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 33:52

Especially if you put ice in them. It's really bad. You know, I used to. You remember the old Oster blenders?

Joey Loss 34:00

Yeah, I know the brand.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 34:01

My metal stamping company made the blade that spun around the bottom. So when you packed a bunch of ice in it and turned it on, the blade would cut through the ice and make ice chips out of it. And in developing that thing, we found out something very interesting. It's a piece of stainless about maybe a quarter of an inch thick and very hard. And the stamping was made by putting the twists on it so the ends went up and then putting a cutting edge, a really sharp cutting edge on it, the direction it was going to spin. And when we first tested them, we'd hit the button with the ice on the thing, and it would spin and spin and spin and nothing would happen. It created a channel, a groove in the ice cubes, and it was so sharp and so warm that it just sort of froze everything in place. So we went back to the drawing board and banged up the cutting blade down a little bit, and it worked perfectly. You learn a few things with trial and error. Just. Yeah, I digress. Frequently, as we all know.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 35:11

All right, Adam, want to cover anything in particular? Joey was hitting taxes today, and I don't know what.

Adam Van Wie 35:18

Yeah, I mean, we. We did talk a little bit about gold in the break there. I think it's been on a lot of people's minds.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 35:24

That's a discussion I'm interested in what both of you have to say about that? Because I have my own opinion and I don't want to either cut anybody down or supersede them.

Joey Loss 35:36

Adam, why don't you start now?

Adam Van Wie 35:38

Yeah, well, if you haven't followed gold's been, I mean it's practically gone parabolic. It's like it's. It's almost out of control after a long, long period of not setting a record high. I believe it was back in what, oh, 708 time period the last time we saw numbers anywhere near where they are now. And all of a sudden it's just, it's seen an amazing increase in buying and demand. And a lot of people are pointing to a lot of different reasons for that happening. But I think, I think some are correct, some are probably not correct or are. Some are the main reasons and then there's probably some lesser reasons. Maybe that's a better way to put it. Some of the things that we've seen pointed to are just uncertainty. There's a lot of things going on in the world, a lot of change taking place and people do look for safe havens during those times. I don't know if I buy this one a little bit. I'm not a huge supporter of it. I don't think things are that much more uncertain than they were two years ago. I mean, when we were seeing record inflation and prices going through the roof and Covid was on its way out. I mean that seems like a lot more uncertain times time than now. So I don't know if I buy that one completely inflation eroding the purchasing power of the dollar is another one that people point to. I that one I buy interest rates going down. It makes things that don't pay a dividend look more attractive. I think that's a fair assessment. A weakening dollar makes. Makes a gold cheaper for international buyers. Maybe government shutdown. Nah, I don't buy it. I don't think people buy gold because the government shut down. That seems silly.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 37:25

Oh, Adam, I forgot to tell you. An amazing thing happened this week. Your mom got her Social Security payment.

Adam Van Wie 37:33

What? I thought she had been getting it.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 37:35

Oh, she did. But the government shut down and everybody on the left was saying who's going to get hurt? Social Security recipients. So now I'm optimistic that I'll get mine next week. Isn't that incredible?

Joey Loss 37:46

Good.

Adam Van Wie 37:46

I'm happy to hear that.

Adam Van Wie 37:50

Yeah. So central bank buying is another one that is definitely, I think behind some of it. Investor inflows obviously driving demand up through the ETFs and then just stability is another one that I've seen pointed to. I. What do you guys think about those? Or are there any that I missed?

Joey Loss 38:07

I definitely have some thoughts, but I think we've got a caller that just jumped in.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 38:10

Oh, we actually do.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 38:13

Good morning, Ron.

Ron 38:14

Good morning, gentlemen. Great show as always.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 38:16

Thanks so much. What's happening?

Ron 38:18

I was going to take a shot at the trivia question, but I was going to ask you first. If we have another down day on Monday like we did Friday, would you consider that a good buying opportunity or just kind of sit tight and let it kind of settle down?

STEVEN H VAN WIE 38:30

Are you talking about stocks or equities or gold?

Ron 38:35

No, stocks. I'm sorry.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 38:37

Well, I'd be a lot more interested than I was yesterday.

Adam Van Wie 38:40

I. I personally would look at it as an opportunity. I do think that if we see a big down day on Monday, it could go down further, but I do think it would be one entry point, maybe one of many.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 38:53

I kind of have to agree. And by the way, folks, for those of you out there, Monday is Columbus Day. The stock market. Stock market is open. Bond market is closed. Just so you know.

Adam Van Wie 39:01

Yeah, it is. Right. And some. Some banks are closed, I think. Okay.

Ron 39:04

Okay.

Bob 39:05

Okay.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 39:07

Yeah. And you won't get mail. Oh, and by the way, I did say Columbus Day, and I. It is Columbus Day as of this week. Trump signed that into law. No more of this Indigenous Peoples Day thing.

Joey Loss 39:21

I can't keep up. I just know when I have work or don't.

Ron 39:26

Hey, real quick, can I take a shot at the trivia? I was going to say 14.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 39:28

Please do.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 39:32

Ooh, a little too low, unfortunately. Yeah. You're not in the. And again, you're. You're about to hear the reasons why. And you. You'll kind of like it. But that's life. Rules are rules. Anyway, I will let you know in just a couple minutes.

Adam Van Wie 39:36

Really?

Ron 39:51

Thank you so much for another pleasant hour of entertainment. You guys are awesome.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 39:55

Oh, thank you. We appreciate that.

Joey Loss 39:59

All right.

Adam Van Wie 39:59

So, Joey, what are your thoughts on the gold topic?

Joey Loss 40:03

I think you hit a lot of good ones. I'm glad we started with you. Yours was more organized than what I was going to give listeners, but the one thing you pointed to, broad uncertainty and not thinking that's the reason. I agree. I don't think it's a similar type of broad uncertainty as we felt during coronavirus or other big events, but I do think there's a growing fiat uncertainty globally. And I think some of the narrative this year has been concerns about the US Dollar Our continual buy now, pay later approach to government spending has made people concerned. We're not the only country that started that's doing that. I mean, that's, that's, that's a growing phenomenon. And I think you're seeing more and more countries, developed and undeveloped countries, you're seeing money pour in from those places into gold as a way to kind of spread things around in case there's fiat trouble in the future. So I think that's a good and a bad thing compared to what I believed before, which was most people were just saying it was a US specific concern.

Adam Van Wie 40:49

So.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 40:56

Yeah. Central banks are buying quite a bit. And it's partly because they want their own currencies to become part of the currency which eventually replaces the US dollar. And in order to get any credibility, they have to have stashes of gold. So that's happening. But I've also heard that there's so much gold. If they opened up some of the caves in the Grand Canyon, they said they could mine gold in there until we doubled, tripled, quadrupled, whatever the world supply. I have no idea if it's true. Who knows?

Adam Van Wie 40:59

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 41:29

Who knows?

Adam Van Wie 41:31

So more importantly, what happens next? Does this continue or is this. Is this like a 2008 type event where it goes up and then it comes back down?

STEVEN H VAN WIE 41:42

My opinion, what goes up comes down. What goes up fast, comes down faster. Yeah, I've been just bleeding off like 10 shares at a time of my IAU and SOB. Only when the profit on them is over 100%. And I just, I can't, I can't justify hanging on to something like that.

Adam Van Wie 41:46

I tend to agree.

Adam Van Wie 42:02

Yeah. Silver slv, the, the ETF that tracks the price of silver last quarter was up about 29%.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 42:09

That's, that's still going nuts. All right. In the year 1989, the Nikkei peaked, and then all of a sudden, Japan imploded. In the years 1990 through 2003, the Nikkei set 00

Joey Loss 42:11

Yeah.

STEVEN H VAN WIE 42:26

new highs in 2024

STEVEN H VAN WIE 42:31

and 2025. Yes. 41 and 24 and 9 this year so far. Oh, no, I'm sorry. That was the Dow numbers that. 27 in all in those two years. 24 and 25. So one of the major lessons that Adam and I have always taken away from this, and I'm sure a lot of you agree, is that I think we finally put Zerp and Nerp to bed. Good. I certainly hope so. 0 interest rates were bad enough, negative interest rates were awful. And 33

STEVEN H VAN WIE 43:10

years later, they finally got out of their funk. And how did they do it? They started raising interest rates a couple years ago. There is a. An interest rate that makes sense for every country and every condition. It is never zero and it is never negative, in my opinion. Which you all just received for free by listening. Well, that was fun. Let's see what happens this week and we'll see you talk about it next week, same time. Be there. This is the van we Financial Hour.