May 9th, 2026 - AI, Markets, and Meme Dreams: Navigating the Now

The Van Wee Financial Hour dives into financial trends with Steven and Adam Van Wie. They discuss recent stock market highs, the impact of semiconductors, and AI’s evolving role in the job market. Callers share personal insights, while the hosts explore parental support in home purchasing and the potential implications of Chinese car imports.

Transcript

Steven Van Wie 0:00

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

Adam Van Wie 0:06

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 0:07

And Joey is away this week. He has gone to a conference up in the hinterland and should rejoin us next week, I believe. So we'll just kind of carry on without him for today unless he calls in telling us he's freezing to death or anything like that.

Adam Van Wie 0:24

It was the first night he got there. They had an outdoor event and it was 48 degrees out.

Steven Van Wie 0:29

That's Minneapolis. Wow. I've got to wonder why I stayed near there for as long as I did. That's a story for another day. 

Adam Van Wie 0:39

You were young and foolish.

Steven Van Wie 0:40

Yeah. There's something about having a job and a family and parents and all that stuff. It just kind of gets overwhelming until you wake up one day and you find out that they've all moved to Florida.

Adam Van Wie 0:53

So, more or less true.

Steven Van Wie 0:54

Can you follow? Yeah, that's how it goes. All right. Anyway, I digress a bit. Welcome to all the regulars. You know, you keep listening and we'll keep talking and this will go on and on and on because it's what we really like to do. And hopefully it's useful. If you're new to the show, discovered it by accident or somebody turned you on to it or whatever, try to stick around for the whole hour. We promise you, you'll get something out of it. And it might even possibly come in useful someday to those listening. We will have, as usual, trivia question after the first break, and just, you never know from there. There is no lack. In fact, this has been one of those years, I think, there's never been any lack of things to talk about lately, and this Saturday is absolutely no exception to that rule. And there's a lot going on in town too. There's a lot of graduations and so on. We'll talk a little bit about that as we get into the show. There's a big to-do in this building that I thought might be a graduation, and it kind of is. I asked Lydia and she said it's an ordination. It's kind of the same thing, somebody's matriculating and like that. So it's just a whole bunch of excitement and activity out there, and once again, it's another absolutely lovely Saturday morning. So keep 'em coming, I say. All right. As far as the market, if you're hanging over from Angela, you heard her say that there were thumbs up and the market did quite well this week. And I'll let Adam tell you all about it.

Adam Van Wie 2:30

Yeah. What a difference a few weeks can make. It's really insane. We went from extreme oversold conditions at the start of the Iran war to where we are now, which is extreme overbought and sitting at all-time highs. I'm not complaining, but it has been a wild couple of months, just craziness. Uh, despite the all-time highs, about half the stocks in the index of the S&P 500 are trading below their 50-day moving averages.

Steven Van Wie 3:01

That was an interesting stat this morning, I thought.

Adam Van Wie 3:03

I agree, it's quite unusual. Typically when you see conditions like this, the index should be 4% or lower from its all-time high. This is not normal for this situation to happen. Um, it, it just means that the cap-weighted index is once again being driven by large-cap stocks, and, um, that situation we really haven't seen since last year. Earlier this year, we were seeing the equal-weight index outperform the cap-weighted index, which means that more companies are doing well, um, and their stocks are trading higher. That is not what we're seeing right now. It's not a great situation, except I think there's a pretty big asterisk on this one. The stocks that are leading the market higher are tech stocks and semiconductor stocks. Why is that important? Well, you've probably heard us say on the radio that semiconductors are like the new transports for this century. And what that means is that the theory was in last century, that transports— as the transports went, as goods moved across the world, so went the economies of the countries they were going from and to. And so now with semiconductors, those little chips go in almost everything. And even if they don't go in them, they're used to move them. They're used to produce them. So they're just everywhere. And the more chips that are sold is very likely a good indicator of upcoming economic activity because they're all going into those goods and products that you're buying.

Steven Van Wie 4:46

How many did you tell me the other day are in a typical—

Adam Van Wie 4:49

Over 1,000. And in a brand new car, there are usually over 1,000 SIM chips. 

Steven Van Wie 4:54

It's unbelievable.

Adam Van Wie 4:55

It really is. So, so those semiconductors leading the market higher is in my opinion, a really good sign. As long as it proves to be the case that those companies are doing well, 'cause they're selling all these products downstream, I think the rest of the stock should follow if this whole situation is what it appears to be. So I hope it gets proven out over the next few months.

Steven Van Wie 5:23

Could be a lot of fun. It could be a great summer actually.

Adam Van Wie 5:26

It really— Yeah, it really could. I mean,

Adam Van Wie 5:31

the semiconductor index has gone parabolic. It is just insane. It's up over 57% this year and 63% since March 30th. So those numbers are crazy. That is not normal, but there's gotta be something driving it. And it's not NVIDIA that's pushing it up at all. NVIDIA is actually one of the worst performing stocks in the whole sector.

Steven Van Wie 5:57

Intel's just— Intel's gone eating everybody's lunch this month in particular.

Adam Van Wie 6:02

They had a big announcement with Apple yesterday or the day before about supplying some of their chips. And so that, that, that is what the recent news was on them.

Steven Van Wie 6:13

That's probably 10 times as funny as it would otherwise be because they were really hurting a very short number of months ago. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 6:22

Remember when Intel Inside was the sign of a quality laptop? That's all you wanted. And now no one cares. Exactly. It's crazy.

Steven Van Wie 6:30

Yeah, they— their brand kind of got overshadowed, I guess. Well, part of it was Apple made its own chips, and, and then Nvidia and so on and so forth. Now it's the memory makers, Western Digital and people like that, that are really going crazy.

Adam Van Wie 6:34

It did. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 6:45

Yeah. And this, this is all related directly back to AI, um, and what is becoming more and more in demand, which was initially chips and now it's memory. So Interesting to watch, good story. But yeah, definitely having a huge effect on the market. The NASDAQ, speaking of things that it had a huge effect on, the NASDAQ led the way higher this week. It gained a pretty incredible 4.5%. The S&P was up 2.3%, while the Dow was up just 0.2%. The NASDAQ is now up 12.9% for the year, the S&P 8.1%, and the Dow 3.2%.

Adam Van Wie 7:21

Yeah, and I mentioned the semiconductor industry is driving most of that, so that's pretty, pretty incredible.

Steven Van Wie 7:28

And small caps are still knocking them dead too, doing quite well.

Adam Van Wie 7:32

Yep. And, uh, if you want to see a really good sector, check out emerging markets too. That, that one has gone insane as well.

Steven Van Wie 7:38

I, I understand that less than I understand the small caps.

Adam Van Wie 7:43

Agreed. I don't know what's driving it.

Steven Van Wie 7:45

Well, you know, momentum. Trend is your friend. All those things. Don't argue it. Just get out of the way.

Adam Van Wie 7:52

In, in good news, we saw both interest rates and the price of oil come down this week. Early in the week, yields spiked with the 10-year going as high as 4.46%, but it came back down later in the week to 4.36%.

Adam Van Wie 8:05

Oil also dropped about 6.5%, bringing down the commodities index by 1.6. That didn't stop gold and silver from rallying. Gold was up 2.5%, silver up 7%, and then falling yields helped increase bond prices by about 0.3%. We'd like to see some more of that. But overall, that— those two things really affect the overall mood in the market and in consumer behavior. So like to see, uh, yields come down and oil come down.

Steven Van Wie 8:34

Yeah, the, uh, consumer sentiment just tanked.

Adam Van Wie 8:37

It did. I, I don't know, is that Iran? Is that political? Is that— what is it?

Steven Van Wie 8:43

Maybe if you put all those in a basket and call that basket uncertainty, that's what caused it. 

Adam Van Wie 8:48

Yeah, probably.

Steven Van Wie 8:49

All right, much more including the jobs report as soon as we get back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven Van Wie

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 8:58

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie

And if you tuned in from the beginning, you know that Joey's not with us today. He will be back next week. All right, we have as usual a trivia question sponsored by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. You can call Paul at 904-636-7888. And if you pick up the phone and dial 904-222-8255, you can take a stab at this question. Adam's got kids at home, at least for another few days. Still have one.

Adam Van Wie 9:29

Yeah, I'll still have one for a few years.

Steven Van Wie 9:33

There's kind of a switch in the way parents are looking at kids at home and their future. And all of a sudden you're starting to see purchasing a home become more and more important to people with kids at home, not for themselves, but helping the kid do it. What percentage of people with kids at home say that they are already planning or beginning to plan for their kid to buy a home? That's kids still at home. So Remember, this is a pretty young subset of Americans, but parents are getting concerned about it and it shows in the numbers. Just what percentage of households say that they're already starting the planning for helping their kids get a home?

Adam Van Wie 10:18

Yeah, I mean, I can see that if, if like your kid gets out of college and says, hey, Mom and Dad, I got a job in the hometown, can I stay with you for a couple of years while I save up a down payment? That's probably something that you'd be open to.

Steven Van Wie 10:31

I think that would probably go over very well with a lot of people.

Adam Van Wie 10:34

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 10:36

in any respect what percentage of people are calling that important enough that they're already planning. That's it. All right. Back to jobs. It was a— it was the one-week delayed jobs report just due to the calendar. They didn't have time last Friday. So it came out and it looked pretty good. And you want to dig back in?

Adam Van Wie 10:57

Yeah, I'll give you the high level and then you can dig into whatever details you want. But the The headline number came in at 123,000. That easily beat the 75,000 estimate. 16,000 jobs were removed from prior months. So once you subtract those, still easily beat the estimate. Uh, and other good news, all of the growth came from private payrolls and government jobs continued to decline by about 8,000. One good indicator on the report was that temporary help services has been increasing. That is a category that is very cyclical and it tends to increase as companies consider increasing payrolls. Roles but haven't made the decision to hire full-time yet. So they hire temps. And so when you see that, when you see that start to move upward, that trend, it's a good leading indicator that hiring may be to follow. The unemployment number also looked good, staying at 4.3%, the lowest level since last summer. Wage growth, while slower than it has been, is still rising at a solid 3% year over year. And then we also saw the ADP report came in at 109,000 jobs created. That was below the estimate of 120, but it pretty much confirmed the government report. And the bulk of that hiring came from small businesses, which added 211,000 jobs over the past 3 months. So pretty strong hiring in the small business department.

Steven Van Wie 12:22

Yeah, it's good stuff. Which brings us to the household survey. The establishment survey is the headline numbers, we call it, from the government on Friday. There's another survey they take called the household survey where they actually call households and say, are you working or not? And everything was kind of right in line until that number. And that number came in negative 226,000

Adam Van Wie 12:24

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 12:50

jobs. So I've been pondering and pondering what could it all mean? And there isn't really much confirmation of anything. So I had to do a little speculating. But the— as you, Adam, mentioned, that government payrolls are down again. The total is 348,000

Steven Van Wie 13:12

that we've shed since October last year when, when we really got serious about this doge and shrinking government stuff. That's just an Absolutely beautiful number. They are not the people who create a strong economy. So you look at that and say, well, okay, I got all this good news going on. And then look at layoffs. We're only at 200,000, which is historically fantastic, up a little from one of the previous weeks, but down a lot. The danger point, as we talk about a lot, is usually thought to be about 250,000.

Steven Van Wie 13:51

And there's a difference between that and the first-time unemployment claims and all that, because there's a lot of job shifting going on. But the strangest number I, I saw was that year over year, the number of people working dropped 1,276,000.

Steven Van Wie 14:11

Now, does that fit into the narrative that the whole economy is trying to show us? And I don't think it does. And so I— maybe you can say I copped out on this one, but in my opinion, we have had a great shakeup in our— in the Bureau of Labor Statistics with new people, new methods, and so on. And we had the annual,

Steven Van Wie 14:37

I guess you'd call it revisiting or recounting of the population that was a giant, giant change this year. I think we have a data problem. And frankly, rather than try to explain this to my own satisfaction or yours, I think I just ignore it until next month and see what happens. Because everything else says things are good. JOLTS openings stayed nice and high. And the consumer sentiment being low, but nobody's quitting. But quits are starting to rise again. Quits show optimism.

Adam Van Wie 15:10

Yeah. Well, quits is— it's at about 2%. It's down significantly from pandemic levels, but that was not a normal situation. 2% is actually kind of the historic norm for that number. So seeing it at 2% actually indicates stability in the, in the labor situation. The other one is layoffs. They rose to 1.2% this month. That's higher than it's been, but it's still well below historic levels. So all this talk about coming layoffs from AI, it's just not panning out yet. Or maybe ever. We don't know.

Steven Van Wie 15:46

Yeah, wait, the next couple of months should be interesting. It's true. And here's another one, though. You got to factor this into your thinking. The population growth for years has been around 250,000 a month. I track it every Jobs Day. I look at it and it's always been 240, 250, something like that. Well, now we have outmigration going on. As we're deporting people and have the border closed. And now the, the, uh, the population growth for the month was 97,000

Steven Van Wie 16:18

and we gained 115,000 jobs. Now that tells me things are pretty good. And a lot of those are married women. That's another strange statistic that came up. Married women are reentering the job market and there's opportunity all over the place for them. So, all the stuff going on is just a little different than it's been over the last few years, but that doesn't make it bad at all. And then you throw one little stat on top of all that. The earnings season now is showing the earnings beats, earnings per share beats at 68%, and the revenue beats at 73%. So corporate America is doing pretty well.

Adam Van Wie 17:02

More than pretty well. Corporate profits are up close to 20% year over year. That's more than pretty well. That's really, really good.

Steven Van Wie 17:10

Yeah, they're doing it without hiring more and more people because AI is actually supplanting what might have been growth in some cases. Who was it came out? One of the big guys came out and said they're going to dump something like 13% and it was all due to AI. But most people are not saying that AI is causing all the job losses. That was an exception rather than the rule. But what's happening is they're handling growth a lot better and they're handling profitability a lot better. So corporate America is a good place to be right now.

Adam Van Wie 17:43

Yeah. And with graduation season upon us, we were looking at some of the numbers that for new, new graduates, young workers entering the workforce and young graduates with college degrees,

Adam Van Wie 17:58

the numbers haven't spiked dramatically in terms of who's unemployed. And those would be the logical people to get hit by AI replacing members of the workforce. Because are you going to pay some kid $60,000 a year to, to input data, or are you going to have AI, your new AI tool, do the exact same job for a fraction of that price? I mean, it's a pretty easy decision. But it's not really playing out in the numbers yet. Young workers are still getting jobs. There might be some underemployment there, but they are, they are working and participating in the workforce at a rate that is similar to pre-ChatGPT

Adam Van Wie 18:41

numbers.

Steven Van Wie 18:42

What do you guys— this is kind of a perfect time of the year for this. As a child of a, or as the father of a graduating senior, what are the kids talking about? How many of them are talking, got to do college? How many are saying military? How many are saying, I want to start a company, on and on. Are you getting any chatter from the home?

Adam Van Wie 19:03

So we had a bunch of teenage boys at our house last night. Not a great cross-section of humanity because they all go to the same school and they are from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, not identical, but similar. And one's going to be a firefighter and the rest are going to college, I think. So Again, that's not a great cross-section. So I think you're, you know, you're— my son's friend group tends to be kids like him. So that kind of makes sense.

Steven Van Wie 19:34

Yeah, I think this is going to be a pivotal, pivotal period of time for kids because your, your kids have— your kids' age group haven't had a chance to really react to this whole new thing with AI and the, the expensive colleges that people are thinking aren't worth it and so on and so forth.

Adam Van Wie 19:53

I really hate this argument because it, it relies on that old thing. This time is different. And, you know, it's usually not. It almost never is. Like every time we've had a disruption in technology like this, it's led to more jobs, not less. Of course, this time could be different. But what are the odds?

Steven Van Wie 20:11

Well, let's see, one of my little things that I love it that other people said This one, this is from Bespoke. While things could get worse, they usually don't. I love that. That's my kind of optimism. That's like, are you half full or half empty? I've always been a glass is half full, so get the bottle and top it off. Now that's an optimist, right? All right, much more to talk about after the break, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven Van Wie 20:42

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 20:45

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 20:46

And we have lines open, 904-222-8255, where you can take a shot at this trivia question. There's a changing emphasis among parents with respect to their kids and the kids' futures. And one thing that's really taken off is the planning for helping the kid buy a home. I want to know what percentage of people are already starting to plan for that event. It's people with kids at home. How many people, what percentage of them are already planning for assisting the the child with, um, buying a house. And you think about it, the word affordability is on the front and center on practically every aspect of life right now, but it's never been any more true than it is right now when it comes to the housing market between the interest rates and the prices and so on. So I, I think people are actually reacting intelligently. At least that's my conclusion I draw from that. One part of the labor market that I've not been happy to read about— this should surprise no one, and yet I still don't like reading it— jobs at mom-and-pop shops are disappearing. Well, when did that start? With the advent of e-commerce, maybe? 

Adam Van Wie 22:06

No.

Steven Van Wie 22:07

With Walmart.

Adam Van Wie 22:08

Yeah, it was Walmart.

Steven Van Wie 22:09

Mm-hmm. This example that I've been reading about— Trevor Frampton owns a feed and pet supply store in Santa Rosa, California with his wife. They've been unable to pass costs on to cash-strapped consumers because he fears they will turn to larger rivals or e-commerce. That's what we said. So now what he's having to do is let people go, shrink the workforce a little bit just to keep his costs down where they can make money. And as he said, The only option left is reduction in force, and that just makes my stomach turn. And I am nothing but empathetic for these people, and I have no idea what to tell them to do except they're doing what they can.

Adam Van Wie 22:49

Yeah, I know it's tough. Um, there really isn't much they can't get the economies of scale that the big guys can. It just is not possible.

Steven Van Wie 22:57

Oh, somebody in Congress the other day said they, they don't want the large retailers to be able to sell products for less than the small ones, even though they buy them for much less.

Adam Van Wie 23:10

Okay.

Steven Van Wie 23:11

There's not a lot of real sharp economists up in D.C. You might have noticed that over the years.

Adam Van Wie 23:17

Yeah. We should just do price controls. That should solve it.

Steven Van Wie 23:20

Oh, yeah. That should help.

Steven Van Wie 23:24

You know, the term meme stock, as we all do, right? You remember the first one? Yep. Did you see what GameStop is?

Adam Van Wie 23:27

Sure. Um, GameStop.

Adam Van Wie 23:33

Yeah, I, I did. I don't know what this CEO is thinking. I don't think it can be pulled off, but he, he said they're going to make an unsolicited bid for eBay, which is like 5 times bigger than them or more.

Steven Van Wie 23:46

$56 billion.

Adam Van Wie 23:48

Crazy.

Steven Van Wie 23:49

And do you give them credit for guts, or, or do you look at them and say What?

Adam Van Wie 23:56

Yeah, I don't know if you heard the interview with him, but he was— he's kind of— I don't know, it didn't go well. That's— he's a, he's a strange guy. That was my impression.

Steven Van Wie 24:08

But I remember when, when the whole meme thing got going, they were selling for something like $4 or $5, and it shot up to $100 or whatever, then fell back down. And it's been in the $20s basically since then. Yeah, I keep expecting it to fall down to the $4 again. And maybe this will do it. Maybe they're just not convinced. This is a, a bricks-and-mortar retailer of computer games that most everybody plays online now.

Adam Van Wie 24:36

Yeah. I can't believe they're still in business. Yeah. It makes no sense.

Steven Van Wie 24:38

I can't either. So I think we have one here in town too. One over on Beach. But I just got a kick out of it. $56 billion and GameStop had a market value of $12 billion as of Friday. Okay.

Adam Van Wie 24:42

We might. Yeah, we might.

Adam Van Wie 24:57

We got a phone call.

Steven Van Wie 24:59

Well, good. And we're going to see if it works. Good morning, Greg.

Greg 25:05

Good morning, gentlemen. How are you?

Steven Van Wie 25:07

Excellent.

Adam Van Wie 25:08

You?

Greg 25:09

Uh, good. I'm on my way to Costco to help boost their stock price.

Steven Van Wie 25:13

Good for you. The American way.

Greg 25:15

Yeah. So, um, a couple of things. One, first of all, let me say that I was wrong. When I last called and thought that the S&P, the SPX would hit, would go, or not the SPX, but it would go back, the S&P back to 5,000 before it crossed 7,000. So I learned a good lesson. Don't bet against the Don.

Steven Van Wie 25:39

It's a pretty good lesson.

Greg 25:42

So I wanted to get that off, off, uh, before we go further. The, uh, I caught the tail end of the AI discussion, so I'm not sure where, uh, you know, if I'm at the beginning, the end, but I could just tell you from my personal experience. And, um, as far as this particular technology, and I think the one that's just about to come out and it's around the corner, which is quantum computing, I think what what is, in my opinion, what I believe is happening. And I'm not sure that us humans can actually catch up to it, but it is trans—changing the landscape so quickly that it's— that I'm not sure that there'll be new industries created as quickly as before. I think the last time when you had the, you know, the implementation of the computer and then the personal computer and then dot-com and all, there was some time lag, which gave people some breathing room. What I see in my own life— and I use AI quite a bit, I'm building a, actually, a behavioral model right now that I think we're going to get off the ground in the next 30 to 60 days— but it's happening so quickly. What I've been able to do in the last 30 days has been unbelievable. So I don't know. If I'm actually nailing this conversation correctly with where you were earlier, but, um, that's just my personal experience.

Steven Van Wie 27:21

So give everybody an overview, if you would, of what quantum is and how it's going to change things. I know that it's, it's a new topic for most people.

Greg 27:33

Yeah, it is. So basically, um, what— and, and there is, uh, IBM does let you use their, their quantum computer free every 28 days for 10 minutes. Um, and so I plan on doing that here in the next week or two. But anyways, basically quantum, as I understand it, is a much more, uh, complex compute that can take very sophisticated and high-level, um, stacks and, and create, uh, outcomes. And it, it also has a part in it that is— allows it to be almost human-like predictive, according to what I've read. Now I'm just jumping into the quantum scene, so hopefully I've not mangled that thought too much. But, um, but I— but, and, and it's different. I guess it would take AI and and put it on steroids basically.

Adam Van Wie 28:39

I think that's a fair description.

Steven Van Wie 28:42

Yeah. It's like another, what do they call them?

Greg 28:47

You know, I just, uh, I'm using it in my personal, not for my personal business, but for the platform that I'm building. And actually I've been thinking about, um, ringing you guys up and kind of talking to you about it off the air, but Um, anyways, um, you know, I get— again, I, I don't know what you guys were actually talking about because I just jumped in the car.

Adam Van Wie 29:11

No, basically it was if AI is going to kill jobs or create jobs, and I, I think you can make a very good argument on either side of that right now. My personal belief is that it will, it will create jobs, um, but I, I am not foolish enough to think that I know everything, and I could see the argument that it will kill jobs.

Greg 29:33

Well, I think what, what it is, is it's going to be kind of like a bell curve type reaction in the beginning, although it may be an inverse of the bell curve. I think in the beginning you're going to see a lot of unemployment. I think we're already beginning to see the layoffs. And then you're going to see a lot of people that are going to be hurt by it. And of course, that may affect legislation is created and implemented in the future. I hope they don't try to limit the potential here, but then after you get past that runway and it's up and running and it's had some time to marinate, I think then you may see a new level of job creation in ways that we can't even imagine.

Adam Van Wie 30:28

Yeah, very possible.

Greg 30:30

Again, I'll tell you, I think this is one of these subjects where it could go either way.

Adam Van Wie 30:35

I agree. That's, that's been my, my argument with myself the whole time is that I could take either side of the debate and sound halfway intelligent, I think. Yeah.

Greg 30:47

Right.

Steven Van Wie 30:47

And make a pretty strong argument as if you really believe that was the right side. Because there are very few things that are such a toss-up as this because there's so much unknown.

Greg 30:52

Right.

Adam Van Wie 30:58

Yeah, completely unknown.

Greg 31:00

There's a lot of unknowns. Uh, and, um, um, and I, I just don't, uh, it, I, I think like in my case, uh, maybe this is where the job growth will come from. So we have a lot of people out in the workforce who are, who have been in it for some time who are highly skilled and knowledgeable. And I think if I were to give any bit of advice, I think I would tell people out there, take what you know, start learning AI, start playing around with it, start creating something that you believe would make your job or the company that you work for better. Definitely more competitive, more streamlined, more productive. More profitable. I think you maybe end up creating your own job, which could, could be if you develop like what I'm developing, an app could actually, uh, provide you with, uh, a generational, uh, retirement that you would not have made working for the company.

Steven Van Wie 32:06

Okay, Greg, we're down to about 20 seconds. Um, do you want to take a quick shot at the 59%? 59% is too light. Yeah, it's really coming on strong. I've thought everybody'd be a little surprised by that. All right, we appreciate the call. We got to take a break.

Greg 32:14

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 32:15

Wow.

Greg 32:22

And the Association of Realtors is wrong.

Adam Van Wie 32:27

Maybe.

Steven Van Wie 32:27

Very well could be. All right, go stimulate the economy. Okay, take care. He's got a— got some work to do. All right, we'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven Van Wie 32:41

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 32:43

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 32:44

And without wasting any time, on the phone we have— Good morning, Marshall.

Marshall 32:51

Gentlemen, I'll throw you a quick guess. 

Steven Van Wie 32:54

Sure.

Marshall 32:55

68.

Steven Van Wie 32:56

Little low.

Marshall 32:58

Okay.

Steven Van Wie 32:59

This is really a serious problem, apparently.

Marshall 33:01

I wanted to weigh in on someone who was very, very, very limited during my corporate life in using AI. But as a retired guy, it is enhancing my life. 

Adam Van Wie 33:14

Yeah.

Marshall 33:15

I mean, I actually can put something together in writing, let AI help me edit it, and now it makes sense even when I hand it to my wife to read.

Steven Van Wie 33:24

Wow.

Marshall 33:25

Okay. But I'll give you one other very quick example. The fraternity house remodel project, we're down to Okay. What do we do with this 60 by 40 patio? That's 1942. And I just started researching on each of the different ones that I had available to me. I learned so much so that now when I start actually talking with a concrete guy who does this for a living, I'm not an ignorant.

Steven Van Wie 33:56

Hmm.

Adam Van Wie 33:57

Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, who would have thought that it would help out a retired person? You're not even working.

Marshall 34:05

I mean, just, you want to find out. The other day, um, the question was asked at our men's breakfast, oh gee, if you'd bought Nvidia when it first came out, what would it be worth? And I said, well, we can figure that out. So I went on to Grok. I said, uh, if I invested $1,000 at the IPO, what it would be worth now? And it was $6.5 million. Wow. Well, if you tried to Google that, they would send you to how many different sponsored site. Yeah, you know, yeah, trying to find the answers to stuff. So I would say it's going to enhance. And then people like yourself, which is really a person-to-person business, you can enhance your performance. Maybe sometimes seeing some things thrown at you when you ask a question going, you know, that's one item I didn't think about.

Adam Van Wie 34:56

Yeah, definitely. We're using it routinely in our business. We are— we're not using it to make selections of investments or anything like that. But what we are using it for is to compile data for a financial plan. It is— it saves so much time. We're using it for note-taking and record-keeping. We're using it for help with compliance, like reading through thousands of emails to look if we violated any compliance rules. Instead of me having to go and do that. Hours and hours of my time saved. So it just— in the last year, it's made our jobs so much easier. It's incredible.

Steven Van Wie 35:36

And it's allowing growth of the firm with homegrown people. All right, thanks. Always fun to hear from you. Happy Mother's Day. Yeah, that kind of thing, I think we're just barely touching on how, how really much it's going to save people like us. You know, we'd be hiring a compliance consultant, we'd be hiring a couple of admins, and now we don't. You've got to use a consultant a little bit.

Marshall 35:39

Thank you very much.

Adam Van Wie 35:42

Yeah, great call, Marshall. Thank you.

Adam Van Wie 35:55

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 36:05

But yeah, we have a consultant. But that is because they're— I, I was talking to an AI-driven company the other day and they're— that is their thing. And what they say is AI will get you 70% of the way. and then you have to have a human check on everything that it does.

Steven Van Wie 36:25

So 70% is the boring part.

Adam Van Wie 36:27

Exactly. It's the menial tasks. It's the data entry. It's the, it's the data compiling and slicing and dicing it the way you need to see it. But AI can do all that for you, but you still need to verify and check that it's correct.

Steven Van Wie 36:41

No more keypunch operators, huh?

Adam Van Wie 36:43

But also that, that's a great thing. Just in my experience in the financial technology industry, there has to be 30 new companies in the last couple of years that are AI-driven. So yes, they're probably not hiring as many people as if they weren't AI companies, but those companies didn't exist. And that's probably 1,000 new employees over those 30 companies, or at least 500. just working at those companies that didn't exist 2 years ago.

Steven Van Wie 37:15

Well, you could see that in the ADP stats that came out for the month too. Where's the real growth? It's in these little companies everywhere from startup size to about 500 employees. Yeah, that's where job growth is actually happening in this country right now.

Adam Van Wie 37:30

Yeah. Which makes sense because if that's happening in the finance, the financial software industry, it's happening in all sorts of software for other companies like medical. And I think medical is is going to explode with this.

Steven Van Wie 37:44

Barely been touched. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 37:45

Yeah. And it's— my wife actually works for a company that has started to use it in medical, and they're one of the larger players in this arena, and they're just getting started on it.

Steven Van Wie 37:56

Hmm. And imagine the diagnostic component of it, for instance, you know, it's not going to replace your doctor, but what if it made your doctor bigger, stronger, faster? Yeah, better.

Adam Van Wie 38:07

Exactly. And she works on the billing and insurance side and connecting the providers to payers and things like that. And there's so much opportunity there.

Steven Van Wie 38:18

Yeah, I think something like radiology, it's just begging for definitely.

Adam Van Wie 38:24

Yeah. I mean, at very least it's a second opinion.

Steven Van Wie 38:29

Yeah. Cool. I love it. All right. Still got the trivia question open. We'll wait a couple more minutes before giving it out. I was asking Adam in the break what his teenage

Steven Van Wie 38:46

graduating type guys are like, the friend group, if they know what they're doing or whatever. And he brought an interesting statistic to me.

Adam Van Wie 38:57

The number one

Adam Van Wie 38:59

career or the number one major declaration for Central Florida incoming freshmen at UCF. I just happened to see the UCF data.

Steven Van Wie 39:06

And I was shocked. Mechanical engineering.

Adam Van Wie 39:09

Yeah. Number one intended major for incoming or applicants. I think it was based on applicants.

Steven Van Wie 39:15

Mind-blowing to me. I, I always considered mechanical engineering as kind of an elite group. And maybe that's what we're looking at is kind of an elite group of students applying for it.

Adam Van Wie 39:26

They do have an excellent program there. So that is part of it.

Steven Van Wie 39:29

All right. But I'm going to warn each one of you guys individually. You got to get past Difficule.

Adam Van Wie 39:34

Well, there is going to be a couple of weed-out classes that are going to make that not the most graduated major at UCF, I'm guessing.

Steven Van Wie 39:42

That's true. On the other hand, you want a use for AI? Maybe those intuitive type math problems will do that. All right. Good morning, David.

David 39:55

Oh, hey, morning. Yeah, I heard you all touting the AI and I'm not only chilled by it, but I heard a report yesterday about how— you remember a year ago when Doge went into Social Security and, uh, basically captured everybody's Social Security data? And, uh, that's apparently 500 million people all the way back into World War II when it got created. 500 million people's data is captured by them. And then the crooked Supreme Court said that they could keep it. These are those little weasels that were with Elon Musk. Uh, and so I'm thinking that with AI, they could fleece us and we would never know who actually did it, that AI took it instead of some human. And so I'm really skeptical of putting one ounce of, of support into AI if that still looms over America.

Steven Van Wie 40:57

Okay, let's just let China do it.

Adam Van Wie 40:59

Yeah, that's, that's the concern.

David 41:00

Well, that's not a funny answer.

Steven Van Wie 41:03

That's what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, so let's, let's not win the AI race because there is nothing that you and I are ever going to agree on no matter how many times you call, and this is certainly one of them because there is—

David 41:16

Oh, you mean you support Doge getting into our Social Security?

Adam Van Wie 41:20

First of all, the government already had that data. It's not like I mean, they're making it for the department. 

David 

Well they kept it safe.

Adam Van Wie

Okay. The government kept it safe.

Steven Van Wie 41:28

Yeah. I'm tired of you.

Adam Van Wie 41:30

Yeah. What a— what a—

Steven Van Wie 41:32

Every time he calls, it's just a smokescreen to get his liberal policies on air and make us appear that he's very bright. And I'm not buying it. So anyway, the numbers actually, and this is according to our favorite researchers, Bespoke, for which we pay, by the way, and we pay it because they're so good that they earn it. It's 74% who feel like— about 59% is the number, and I'll put this one back to Greg. That's the number that they got for the people who think it's even more important than saving for retirement. So it's 74% overall. And that kind of snuck up on me. I really have not heard people talking about their still-at-home kids. And helping them getting into housing. So very strange. Oh, I just gave it out, Bob, but I'll talk to him. Good morning, Bob.

Bob 42:30

78%.

Steven Van Wie 42:33

I gave it out while you were waiting.

Bob 42:34

I couldn't hear it. What is it?

Steven Van Wie 42:36

74.

Adam Van Wie 42:37

Yeah, you were close.

Bob 42:38

Yeah, it was 74%.

Steven Van Wie 42:41

That's what bespoke came up with.

Bob 42:44

Oh, okay. Well, see, I was close, and we really appreciate you guys. I don't ever call and debate you.

Steven Van Wie 42:54

Well, don't be afraid to.

Bob 42:56

I thought I'd provide some— I thought I'd provide some land. You know, I can come up with some salient points and, you know, we can have a discussion. But, uh, you know, you know I'm not mean-spirited.

Adam Van Wie 43:04

Yeah, I think we all need to be very worried about Elon Musk stealing our Social Security, uh, data because clearly the man needs it to make some more money or something.

Steven Van Wie 43:15

Absolutely. Yeah.

Bob 43:16

Yeah. Did you see the thing on Fox the other night about the imported Chinese cars, they are, uh, spy machines with all the electronics that are in it.

Steven Van Wie 43:25

Yep.

Adam Van Wie 43:26

Yeah, those, those apparently they're pretty cool though.

Bob 43:28

Just, yeah, I mean, I know, I know they look, they look really neat, but, uh, they're gathering information.

Steven Van Wie 43:33

There's a real discussion going on now about whether it should be legal to have Chinese cars imported.

Adam Van Wie 43:41

It is a big discussion.

Bob 43:42

I thought it was just an ex-CIA Democrat officer was talking about that Yesterday, and she is against them because from her work with the CIA, she knows that these are not good vehicles. They're beautiful, but they're also gathering data.

Steven Van Wie 43:58

Yeah, and you know, there's enough people gathering data that we probably shouldn't even worry about it, except that makes us worry about it more. Yeah, very human reaction, I think.

Bob 44:09

We got rain out here, thank God, and it's supposed to rain the next 4 days. Okay, take care of yourself.

Steven Van Wie 44:13

Good, keep it up. We need it. Thanks for the call. Happy Mother's Day to one and all out there. Adam's having a bunch of mothers and a couple of fathers over tomorrow. We're appreciative of that, so we get to see everybody.